David Fennario, acclaimed as English Canada's first working-class playwright, was born in Verdun, Quebec. His father, James Wiper, English in origin, is a house painter; his mother, Margaret Kerr Wiper, part Irish, emigrated from Scotland at the age of five. The second of six children, David Fennario dropped his original surname, Wiper, and adopted his new one from Bob Dylan's song "Pretty Peggy-O." Although he found high school tedious and his peers scoffed at education, he became a voracious reader. "I can remember my mother saying, 'all that reading is gonna hurt your eyes." He left high school after one year, worked at unskilled jobs, and hitchhiked through the United States. He returned to school but left before completing grade nine, and he subsequently worked as a shipper and mail clerk. In 1966 he drifted around Toronto with other "flower children" and spent a month in jail for vagrancy...