CORNWALL, Ontario - Canadian author and notorious bank robber Roger Caron has died at age 73.

Cornwall Funeral Home confirmed Thursday that it was handling the funeral arrangements for the writer.

He had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in the early 1980s.

Mr. Caron won one of Canada’s most prestigious literary awards, the Governor General’s Nonfiction Award in 1978 for his prison memoir “Go Boy!’’ The book detailed the 24 years Mr. Caron spent incarcerated.

Mr. Caron, who overcame illiteracy to become an author, wrote three more books after “Go-Boy!’’

He was known for breaking out of prison more than a dozen times.

He was convicted in 1993 of seven crimes after being arrested following a robbery at an Ontario store.