From The Vancouver Sun (March 29, 1994)

by Malcolm Parry

Sonic boomers . . . Bestselling Douglas Coupland's Generation X, Shampoo Planet and now Life After God must have heaped the groceries on bookseller Celia Duthie's table.

Duthie reversed the loop Sunday at a reception in her newish Fourth Avenue store, where possibly expecting the usual book-producing crowd she laid on plenty of meaty sandwiches and bright red Portuguese wine.

Hardly the combo, one thought, for City Food publisher Rhonda May, who attended with wine-hip stockbroker husband Graeme.

La May and Coupland worked at city magazines together, but long before that shared a sandbox at the now-closed Canadian Armed Forces base in Lahr, Germany.

On firmer ground, May is surveying Toronto and other centres for editions of her publication, which this month included a lightly seasoned parody of Coupland's style.

Hitting Duthie's sandwiches with a bush pilot's appetite was the writer's dad, Dr. Doug Coupland, who logged more than 1,000 hours up north in Aeronca Chiefs and De Havilland Beavers before becoming an RCAF jet-fighter jockey and medical officer.

Anything in that to match his son's groundbreaking definition of the post-Baby Boom generation?

"There was the Vampire," Coupland said of the early military jet, which had no dual-seat trainer version. "You just got into it, turned on 2,000 pounds of thrust, and your first flight was alone."