“At long last the people of Canada have suitably marked the spot where British history on the North-west Pacific Coast had its real beginnings” — H.N. Sage First published: January 20th, 2016 “It seemed as if the mists of time had rolled away and that we were back again with Captain Cook on the deck…
Read more #2 The Mecca of B.C. is Friendly Cove
Richard Mackie and BCBookLook are teaming up to provide a new vehicle for serious writing about B.C. The Ormsby Review will be named after Margaret Ormsby, the venerable historian who often met with Richard Mackie for tea and talk during her retirement near Vernon. First published September 16th, 2016 * Note: The Ormsby Review was…
Read more #1 Welcome to The Ormsby Review
Two of the unsung heroes of B.C. literature, Ernest Hekkanen and Margrith Schraner, began The New Orphic Review, a bi-annual journal of fiction, poetry, reviews and essays in 1998 when they had just turned fifty-one. “To create a product of no obvious practical value,” Hekkanen writes in the penultimate issue, “and for which there would be…
Read more New Orphic Review Archives
With the subtitle, Mountains, Marriage, and Motherhood Jan Redford’s End of the Rope (Penguin Random House $32.00), alerts us to the fact that the End of the Rope merges two subjects—ferocity and domesticity. As an unhappy young girl, Redford threw herself against a rock face in frustration with her father, climbed it, and unleashed an…
Read more #468 MEMOIR: Terror and elation over mountains & marriage
Judy LeBlanc’s debut collection, The Promise of Water (Oolichan $19.95) evokes a tangible sense of place—Vancouver Island—where the sweet fragrance of cedar mingles with the murky odours of damp mould and stale cigarette smoke can be washed away by a clean, cold blast of salt air. It is populated with fully-imagined lives, allowing us to gain…
Read more #293: Giving Vancouver Island its due