“Yeah, I’ve been buying flashlights lately. I’m addicted to them. Oh, you gotta see this one. It’ll floor you. I keep it by my bedside.”

It had lithium batteries and sixty-five lumens of power. Since I knew nothing about flashlights, I shone it directly onto the page of my notebook, completely blinding myself.

The seventieth anniversary of the Governor General’s Awards was November 21, 2006. Meier had confessed a tiny, slender private hope that he might be invited to the ceremony for the announcement of the book that completes his collection. But true to personality, he was not expecting anything from anybody. He went on the website first thing that morning and read that Peter Behrens’s The Law of Dreams had won. Meier had two boxes ordered before breakfast. It was just days after his fiftieth birthday.

“Belated happy birthday,” I said when I called. “What’d you give yourself?”

He’d had his fortune told by a Toronto-based seer he’d tracked down after extensive research. “She’s had some major predictions come true. She’s good.” And what she told him reassured him. She quite distinctly saw Meier sitting in front of a computer a lot next year, which he thought was a good sign he was going to make progress on the bibliography.

Meanwhile, the Owen Meany didn’t make the reserve price on eBay, and Michaëlle Jean still hasn’t contacted him. But he has received grant money from the Bibliographical Society of America. Meier is alive to twin ironies: that the commemoration of this Canadian literary record might well be made possible by American funds; and that he is being sustained in this moment of need not by the nation to which he is paying tribute, but by the one his family fled.

No time to ponder the subtleties, however. He has a bibliography to write. And it’s not as if the collection doesn’t require his ongoing attention. He has the seven-decade set, true, and material that no other collector would ever find. Even Rideau Hall — which had gamely tried to rebuild the collection in the final days of Adrienne Clarkson’s tenure — hasn’t managed to acquire all of the first editions. They don’t even have all the book jackets. “It’s basically a good reading collection,” Meier told me.

Faint praise from the master who checks twenty-two online book search engines daily for copies that might enhance the collection. “The hunt is never over,” he said. “I’m always looking for more copies, better copies, rare advance states.” There was a long pause before Meier mused aloud: “And then, of course, there’s the poetry.”

Really? Is he seriously going to start collecting the Governor General’s Award winners in poetry, too? Another seventy-odd titles?

Meier hasn’t decided yet. He’s mulling it over.