No witchcraft, only magic

Wildcraft Medicine: In the Presence of Wonder
by Sheila Anne Wray

Victoria: FriesenPress, 2025
$43.99 / 9781039197220

Reviewed by Cathalynn Labonté-Smith

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Sheila Anne Wray’s book Wildcraft Medicine: In the Presence of Wonder, offers practical yet magical words in a beginner’s guide to natural Earth-based remedies, with biographies, memoir, and personal wildcrafting stories for those who want to use what’s bountiful in the forest that surrounds them. I’ve never read a book dedicated to plants before, only to humans, so instantly I knew that her book would be different if not a bit quirky. It sounds more like Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream cast of fairies, than a traditional dedication:

To St. John’s Wort by the old water tower on the hill, to the Wild Ginger in the gully behind the abandoned school, to the Cottonwood stand by the river…Special thanks to Red Cedar…Willow, Pine, and Meadowsweet…To the family of Pearly Everlasting, whose lives were cut short when the land was cleared for a new housing development…In memoriam, I dedicate it to you.

I was excited to learn about BC’s native plants and recipes using them for medicines. When I was a child, my mother taught me to hunt for wild green onions when I had a cold. She made me sandwiches with the slender yet powerful green sprigs that helped unclog nasal congestion with their strong vapours. Now I use a blend of peppermint, lavender, eucalyptus, and rosemary essential oils to soothe my migraines. Being prone to sunburn, aloe has always been my friend, ginger helps with seasickness, and peppermint tea helps an upset stomach. But those few things were the extent of my herbal knowledge before reading Wildcraft Medicine, that Wray says is practiced by “80% of the world’s population.”

Although, once I dallied with Chinese herbal medicine. I was dragged to an herbalist in Chinatown for asthma, and the next thing I knew my pulse was being taken by an elderly Asian man in a shop with a thousand wooden drawers filled with dried exotic ingredients. He asked me about my bowel movements, then wrote a prescription in characters and gave it to a younger version of himself behind the counter. A mountain of dried wood chips, flowers, and hopefully no animal parts, were weighed on a scale then dumped on brown paper, wrapped, and bagged. A handful of candied plums was thrown into the bag supposedly to take away the bitter taste of the prescribed tea made from the “herbs.” Let’s just say I didn’t go back for a refill.

Currently I’m facing cancer, so I was curious as to what Indigenous wisdom documented in Wray’s book may hold to ease the aftermath of surgery, and potentially radiation and chemotherapy. I wasn’t looking for a cure for cancer just recipes that may reduce scars, pain, burns, nausea, and worse. Would I find those scripts within the collection of poetic prose, poetry, inspirational quotations, lovely illustrations and photos, mystical recipes, and traditional stories?

Although it’s best to heed this warning: plants can have powerful medicinal effects on your body and interact with your other medications. If you’re going to try recipes in Wildcraft Medicine, please consult your primary care physician and/or specialists beforehand to determine that it’s safe for you.

The setting of Wildcraft Medicine is Clayoquot Sound where Wray gained most of her knowledge of healing plants from Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers. Her early years were spent in Powell River, then her family moved to West Vancouver where she met First Nations Medicine Woman Norma Myers, who played an important role in her education in plant medicine. As a mother, she turned to plants to for the medicinal needs of her family through childhood viruses and infections, as well as afflictions that affected the adults, as well as her pets.

I have raised a family and nursed them through childhood diseases of measles, mumps, chicken pox, flus, and fevers. Red cedar has been a faithful friend. As the years passed, we have suffered our share of bladder infections, tendonitis, back injuries, arthritis, and stomach aches.

While Wray made natural remedies for her children and now her grandchildren, she wants readers to know:

I am not an anti-vaxxer.  I am, though, very confidently schooled in West Coast Indigenous medicine and have used it for all manner of viruses, bacterial infection, many of them very severe. I would never assume to have all the answers or give medical advice or guidance. I am grateful to the government of Canada for how they dealt with the pandemic, in a calm and collective way. It was a scary time for so many of us. . . In our family we have many different beliefs and faiths from wild medicine, to naturopathy, Chinese medicine, and western pharmaceuticals.

Regarding the section entitled: Earth Medicine, the Wild Lands and Ourselves – Contemplation of a Lockdown, my aim is not to challenge vaccination technology, or to stir a political debate but simply to highlight the Earth’s anti-viral medicine and to take a look at the larger ecological picture, in keeping with the purpose of my book-Preservation of the Wild Lands and her folk herbal wisdom. 

The first recipe is for Mrs. Radford’s Cough Medicine. I compared the ingredients to the dreaded Buckley’s Cough & Congestion syrup that my spouse pulls out when I have a racking cough. (Yes, it does work and tastes godawful.) Buckley’s contains pine needle oil whereas Mrs. Radford’s contains pine twigs, so maybe the commercial and traditional aren’t so far off? Mrs. Radford’s has horehound as an ingredient that’s used a flavouring in candy, so maybe it tastes better than Buckley’s, that contains Canada balsam, plus menthol and camphor — shiver.

Wray’s Sword Fern Oil recipe to ease arthritis and muscle aches sounds worth trying although it takes a lot of effort, because who doesn’t have sword ferns growing in their backyard on the West Coast, or know where they can get them? Maybe it smells better than the commercial products, that you can’t leave the house wearing because they’re so pungent?

Wray has a whole section of Child-Friendly Teas that sound easy on the tummy, taste buds, and pocketbook, using easy to find ingredients in the wild or a health food store, like chamomile, peppermint, ginger, wild marshmallow, and licorice root. One strange ingredient is catnip, so if you have a cat they may want a lap of the Sleepy Tyme Tea.

Wray gives encyclopedic descriptions and identification drawings of plants that can be used to strengthen our immune systems against viruses and bacteria, such as Black Cottonwood, Oceanspray, Old Man’s Beard, Wild Licorice Fern, and Turkey Tail (a fungus), and for use in first aid. She also details how to create a first aid kit of compresses, tea, plasters, poultices, and salves from arnica, burdock, comfrey, oak, Oregon Grape, Pearly Everlasting, plantain, usnea, yarrow, and clay.

She has an entire chapter devoted to pain control. Who knew that skunk cabbage can be used externally to ease foot pain, or that every part of the Red Cedar has medicinal qualities, that a pinch of tobacco could be added to an oil of tree barks to help with muscle and joint pain? Wray’s chapter on analgesics contains instructions for homemade willow bark aspirin, lobelia muscle relaxant, and other surprising recipes.

The chapter ‘Medicine From the Forest’ is fascinating if only to help with identifying the trees of our rainforest, let alone their curative properties. You may be familiar with pine, cedar, arbutus, but do you know the Balsam Poplar, Tamarack (Swamp tree), the difference between a White Spruce and Black Spruce, a Trembling Aspen? You will with Wray’s book at hand.

So what did I find that may help me with potential cancer treatment side effects? Indeed, there’s rigorous treatment for cancer, including herbal enemas, and the Indian Herbal Formula in Appendix D. However, due to having many allergies to plants, I’ll have to forego those treatments that have up to thirteen ingredients depending up on the type of cancer.

However, comfrey is a healer for wounds according to Wildcraft, so I can test a salve of that on a patch of healthy skin before putting it on surgical wounds. Also, Douglas Fir Resin Salve looks like it has healing properties for burns, although being winter at the time of this writing and May to September being the best time to collect the sap, I may have to stick to aloe if radiation therapy is ordered. For nausea, the Tummy Soothing Tea with peppermint, ginger and licorice root couldn’t hurt.

Sheila offered to make me “[a] salve combination of Comfrey and burdock root with a little fir resin added, that has been used by a cancer patient a few years back, she claimed it helped with the radiation burns.” I don’t know if radiation will be in my treatment plan at this time, but it’s comforting to know I can reach out to Sheila for a natural remedy if needed.

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Cathalynn Cindy Labonté-Smith grew up in the Lethbridge and Cardston areas of Alberta and moved to Vancouver, BC, to complete a BFA in Creative Writing at UBC. She later taught English, Journalism, and other subjects at Vancouver high schools. She currently lives in Gibsons (and North Vancouver), BC, where she founded the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society, including the annual Art & Words Festival, the Book Awards for BC Authors, and a literary map. Her previous book, Rescue Me: Behind the Scenes of Search and Rescue (Caitlin Press), was a bestseller in BC. She has a new book, I’m Not A Mormon (Anymore), to be released in Winter 2026, available for preorder from Caitlin Press or Amazon.ca. [Editor’s Note: Cathalynn Labonté-Smith recently reviewed Susan Aglukark, PP Wong, Rob Fillo and PJ Reece, interviewed Bob McDonald, and profiled the Sunshine Coast Tale Trail for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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