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Seventy: A Diary of My Seventy-First Year
Ian Brown, award-winning author of The Boy in the Moon and the memoir Sixty, now recounts his daily reckoning with the milestone age of seventy. Fearlessly candid, often funny and relentlessly real, Brown asks the terrifying questions we all have about growing old, even when he doesn’t want to know the answers.
An acclaimed journalist and chronicler of contemporary life, seventy-year-old Ian Brown is not going gently into his eighth decade. The outlook is more perilous than it was at age sixty, but Brown is determined (however hopelessly) not to let time get the better of him. During the course of his seventy-first year, Brown writes incessantly, travelling on assignment for the Globe and Mail across the United States in the months leading to the shocking 2024 election; holidays with family and friends, always aware he might not see them again; skis and rows and exercises like a madman while turning a wary eye on the live-forever movement; takes up pickleball and talks books; and in general tries (and frequently fails) to show some human courage in the face of the march of his dwindling years.
Along the way he encounters the lists that have suddenly become essential to daily life (what to take when leaving the house, what to pack for a trip, what to pick up at the drugstore); the indignities of medical tests and the shock of financing a retirement; the terrors and pleasures of growing older with one’s spouse of four decades; the now-suspenseful drama of sex; the thrilling spectacle of watching adult children inhabit new roles of familial responsibility; and the shocking new lessons of life as an older person (accept compliments with grace, remember to smile, stand up straighter).
As the percentage of the Canadian population over eighty-five will triple in the next twenty-five years, Brown contemplates his mortality and that of his contemporaries for readers of all ages. Growing old—anything after seventy—is a grave challenge, but also enormously if there is something you want to say or do, now is your chance to say it or do it. “I have to keep taking chances,” Brown reckons. “I don’t want to give in too soon.”
An acclaimed journalist and chronicler of contemporary life, seventy-year-old Ian Brown is not going gently into his eighth decade. The outlook is more perilous than it was at age sixty, but Brown is determined (however hopelessly) not to let time get the better of him. During the course of his seventy-first year, Brown writes incessantly, travelling on assignment for the Globe and Mail across the United States in the months leading to the shocking 2024 election; holidays with family and friends, always aware he might not see them again; skis and rows and exercises like a madman while turning a wary eye on the live-forever movement; takes up pickleball and talks books; and in general tries (and frequently fails) to show some human courage in the face of the march of his dwindling years.
Along the way he encounters the lists that have suddenly become essential to daily life (what to take when leaving the house, what to pack for a trip, what to pick up at the drugstore); the indignities of medical tests and the shock of financing a retirement; the terrors and pleasures of growing older with one’s spouse of four decades; the now-suspenseful drama of sex; the thrilling spectacle of watching adult children inhabit new roles of familial responsibility; and the shocking new lessons of life as an older person (accept compliments with grace, remember to smile, stand up straighter).
As the percentage of the Canadian population over eighty-five will triple in the next twenty-five years, Brown contemplates his mortality and that of his contemporaries for readers of all ages. Growing old—anything after seventy—is a grave challenge, but also enormously if there is something you want to say or do, now is your chance to say it or do it. “I have to keep taking chances,” Brown reckons. “I don’t want to give in too soon.”
Audible Audio
Published August 25, 2026
About the author
Ian Brown
200 books49 followersA Canadian journalist and author.
He is currently the host of Human Edge and The View from Here on TVOntario, and has hosted programming for CBC Radio One, including Later the Same Day, Talking Books, and Sunday Morning.
He has also worked as a business writer at Maclean's and the Financial Post, a feature reporter for The Globe and Mail, and a freelance journalist for other magazines including Saturday Night.
Brown is also the editor of What I Meant to Say: The Private Lives of Men a 2006 collection of twenty-nine essays by prominent Canadian writers, including Greg Hollingshead, David MacFarlane, Don Gillmor, Bert Archer, and Brown himself, who asked his contributors to write on subjects that they'd like to discuss with women but had never been able to.
Brown has also published three books, Freewheeling (1989) about the Billes family, owners of Canadian Tire, and Man Overboard. He is an occasional contributor to the American public radio program This American Life. The Boy in the Moon, a book-length version of Brown's series of Globe and Mail features dealing with his son Walker's rare genetic disorder, Cardiofaciocutaneous Syndrome (CFC), was published in the fall of 2009.
In January 2010, Ian Brown won British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction for his book The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search for His Disabled Son. The award is Canada's richest non-fiction prize and offers the winner a $40,000 prize. In February, 2010, the book won the Charles Taylor Prize, a $25,000 prize which recognizes excellence in literary non-fiction.
Brown is married to Globe and Mail film critic Johanna Schneller.
He is currently the host of Human Edge and The View from Here on TVOntario, and has hosted programming for CBC Radio One, including Later the Same Day, Talking Books, and Sunday Morning.
He has also worked as a business writer at Maclean's and the Financial Post, a feature reporter for The Globe and Mail, and a freelance journalist for other magazines including Saturday Night.
Brown is also the editor of What I Meant to Say: The Private Lives of Men a 2006 collection of twenty-nine essays by prominent Canadian writers, including Greg Hollingshead, David MacFarlane, Don Gillmor, Bert Archer, and Brown himself, who asked his contributors to write on subjects that they'd like to discuss with women but had never been able to.
Brown has also published three books, Freewheeling (1989) about the Billes family, owners of Canadian Tire, and Man Overboard. He is an occasional contributor to the American public radio program This American Life. The Boy in the Moon, a book-length version of Brown's series of Globe and Mail features dealing with his son Walker's rare genetic disorder, Cardiofaciocutaneous Syndrome (CFC), was published in the fall of 2009.
In January 2010, Ian Brown won British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction for his book The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search for His Disabled Son. The award is Canada's richest non-fiction prize and offers the winner a $40,000 prize. In February, 2010, the book won the Charles Taylor Prize, a $25,000 prize which recognizes excellence in literary non-fiction.
Brown is married to Globe and Mail film critic Johanna Schneller.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
August 31, 2026
There are books that quietly stay with you because, somewhere between the humour and the honesty, they make you pause and look at your own life.
Seventy was that kind of book for me.
Ian Brown writes about growing older with remarkable honesty, wit, and wisdom. Turning seventy means confronting questions many of us would rather avoid: mortality, the changing body, love, marriage, friendship, family, regret, and the frightening realization that time is no longer something we take for granted.
But this is not a gloomy book.
What I loved most was Brown’s ability to find humour in the uncomfortable and beauty in the ordinary. He is candid about the fears and indignities of aging, yet the book never feels self-pitying.
The writing was absolutely beautiful. I found myself wanting to slow down, reread passages, and sit with his thoughts. I was only a few pages in when I knew I was going to love this book.
And although I am far from seventy, I still found so much to connect with. Because this isn’t really only a book about being seventy. It is about getting older at any age. It is about realizing that life is finite, that the people we love are getting older too, and that perhaps the things we want to say and do should not always be postponed for another day.
There is something both sobering and liberating about that thought.
This book made me laugh, think, reflect, and appreciate the ordinary moments of life a little more.
Seventy was that kind of book for me.
Ian Brown writes about growing older with remarkable honesty, wit, and wisdom. Turning seventy means confronting questions many of us would rather avoid: mortality, the changing body, love, marriage, friendship, family, regret, and the frightening realization that time is no longer something we take for granted.
But this is not a gloomy book.
What I loved most was Brown’s ability to find humour in the uncomfortable and beauty in the ordinary. He is candid about the fears and indignities of aging, yet the book never feels self-pitying.
The writing was absolutely beautiful. I found myself wanting to slow down, reread passages, and sit with his thoughts. I was only a few pages in when I knew I was going to love this book.
And although I am far from seventy, I still found so much to connect with. Because this isn’t really only a book about being seventy. It is about getting older at any age. It is about realizing that life is finite, that the people we love are getting older too, and that perhaps the things we want to say and do should not always be postponed for another day.
There is something both sobering and liberating about that thought.
This book made me laugh, think, reflect, and appreciate the ordinary moments of life a little more.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review