Prolific writer Harry Bruce was drawn to the culture and eccentrics of Canada’s East Coast

As a boy, Harry Bruce would watch his father scribbling away with a big black pencil on a cheap pad of newsprint while reclined on the living room Chesterfield at their home in Toronto. After toiling all day for The Canadian Press, the older man would kick back and let words flow – words that became celebrated poems and a novel.Bright, young Harry also had words in his veins, and he came by his own success as a journalist and nonfiction writer by this same method – albeit by putting ball-point pen to paper. It started out as a way to get the top of the story down amid the intimidating clack of typewriters in local and national newsrooms. Later, it was his preferred method to unravel long-form magazine pieces onto the page. Even long after he belatedly embraced word processing, Mr. Bruce still reached for a ball-point pen whenever he was stumped, describing the mode as “some mysterious force of creativity to flow from my brain down through my neck, shoulder, arm, hand and into the fingers.”