Unremarkable: A Good Place to Start

Blake Heathcote was born and raised in Toronto, and worked as a freelance director and playwright in the theatre, subsequently directing many Canadian premieres as well as over a hundred other productions across Canada and in the United States. He has worked as assistant director to renowned Broadway director Hal Prince on three musicals, as well as with playwright/director Sir Alan Ayckbourn in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, where Sir Alan directed two of Blake's plays at the Stephen Joseph Theatre-in-the-Round. He has written fifteen plays, some of which have been produced across North America and in the U.K. In 1999, inspired by his father and grandfather's experiences in WW 1 and WW 2, Blake conceived the Testaments of Honour project whose objective is to chronicle on video first-hand accounts of Canadian veterans to provide future generations with a richer, deeper understanding of Canadian history through use of first-person testaments. Random House of Canada approached Blake to author books based on his interviews, and he subsequently published his first book, "Testaments of Honour" in October 2002, which became a number one Canadian bestseller. His second book, "A Soldier's View" also became a bestseller. This was followed by The Survivor: Scruffy's War" in the fall of 2013, "In Flanders Fields: Writing on War, Loss and Remembrance," in October 2015, and Unremarkable: A Good Place to Start," which was published in December 2015. He lives in Toronto and Bracebridge, Ontario.