“Much of this restoration work laid out in Nature-First Cities, is happening in real-time with municipalities creating sustainability master plans, and nature-based development in partnerships with residential developers among others. The final chapters of the book detail the process for bottom-up land stewardship, joining individuals, neighbours, and community groups.” Ryan Mitchell reviews Nature-First Cities: Restoring Relationships with Ecosystems and with Each Other, by Cam Brewer, Herb Hammond, and Sean Markey (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2024) $39.95 / 9780774868648
“Robin Ward, a graduate of the celebrated Glasgow School of Art and respected architectural critic and author, does justice to that inheritance. He has added to the comprehensive yet accessible guidebooks he has written singly or collaboratively, including on Victoria and Vancouver, in this province. The photography is excellent and selection of buildings and civic statuary or artwork both astute and appropriate to exploring the built environment of Canada’s one-time leading metropolis.” Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe reviews Exploring Montréal: 151 Best Buildings, by Robin Ward (Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2026) $29.95 / 9781771624619
“Seto, mourning the past and given time to resurrect her creativity, recreated the buildings of memory and left them empty so that memory and desire could replace the ghosts inhabiting them with real lives configured with real information, the sensory details, smells and sounds that gave them life.” Linda Rogers reviews Chinatown Vancouver: An Illustrated History, by Donna Seto (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2025) $29.99 / 9781487011970
“Victoria’s urban landscape is littered with these remnants or references, in this case, to the golden age of Victoria’s great garden estates. They are a part of a legacy of similar markers, such as iron curbs that once protected sidewalks from steel-rimmed carriage wheels, hitching posts for horses stabled in the Rockland and Fernwood neighbourhoods, or small pockets of Garry Oaks that survived from a pre-settlement habitat that nurtured the Lekwungen people. These touchstones of community memory lend richness and meaning to the built heritage that tells Victoria’s story.” Martin Segger contributes the article Silent Sentinels, adapted from his upcoming book Tending Eden: A garden history of Victoria.
“Surviving Vancouver…is a reckoning with that lost history. The word in the title divides the book into two parts. Surviving as an adjective refers to the buildings and cityscapes that somehow managed to survive the past century of booms and depressions, immigrations, and globalization; whereas surviving as a verb deals with the social divides in a city – and province – where sheer survival is a daily challenge for far too many people.” Peter Hay reviews Surviving Vancouver by Michael Kluckner (Vancouver: Midtown Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781988242545
“This is Taylor’s third architectural biography. His previous two were The Spencer Mansion: A House, A Home and an Art Gallery and The Birdcages: British Columbia First Legislative Buildings 1859-1857. In terms of its topic, the book nestles between two previous volumes, Peter Cotton’s architectural exploration of the two Cary Castles that preceded the present 1958 Government House, Vice Regal Mansions of British Columbia, and Government House: The Ceremonial Home of All British Columbians by Rosemary Neering and Tony Owen which primarily focuses on the current house. Martin Segger reviews Between Heaven and Balmoral: A History of Cary Castle, British Columbia’s First Government House 1860-1899, by Robert Ratcliffe Taylor (Victoria: Friesen Press, 2024) $17.49 / 9781039184534
“Whether illustrating the unique contents or uniform structure of carts, the carefully pruned or overgrown hedges guarding homes, or the materiality of prefabricated elements such as iron, brick, or stone, Yamamoto’s drawings encourage us to take a closer look at the structures which surround our daily environment…” Stella Gatto reviews Carts, Hedges, Lions by Taizo Yamamoto (with essays by Kevin Chong, Aaron Peck and Jackie Wong), (Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2024), $40 / 9781773272429
“Michael Prokopow, former curator of the Design Exchange, is a cultural historian with a distinguished academic career investigating the varied international streams influencing Western Canadian architects and designers…He is particularly sensitive to the fact that no self-declared Indigenous architects, or clients, are represented in these pages.” Martin Segger reviews Reside: Contemporary West Coast Houses by Michael Prokopow (Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2024) $55 / 9781773272634
“Trained in visual art … FitzGerald arrived in Victoria in March 2020 having made her decision to sketch and write about the city before the COVID-19 pandemic hit Canada and beyond. The focus of the book is ‘on the life pulse of the city of Victoria that kept on going in spite of it.'” Mary Ann Moore reviews Hand Drawn Victoria: An Illustrated Tour in and around BC’s Capital City, by Emma FitzGerald (Toronto: Appetite [Penguin Random House], 2024) $19.95 / 9780525611042
Essay collection relates the “great pleasure of strolling in great cities” and offers an appealing and illuminating “window into a wider world.” —Bill Paul reviews The Coincidence Problem: Selected Dispatches 1999-2022, by Stephen Osborne (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781551529653
“Genius loci, roughly translated as ‘spirit of the place,’ … This was the concept explored in the thought-provoking summer exhibition focusing on four modern Westcoast buildings and featured at Victoria’s Wentworth Villa Architectural Heritage Museum. The exhibit was the brainchild of museum curator Ben Clinton-Baker.” Martin Segger reviews the recent exhibition From the Ground, into the Light: Architecture and the Island, 1950-2000, at the Wentworth Villa Architectural Heritage Museum.
“Condon’s book is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of our cities, and is a call to action; challenging us to rethink urban development and advocate for policies that put people first.” Ryan Mitchell reviews Broken City: Land Speculation, Inequality, and Urban Crisis, by Patrick M. Condon (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2024) $32.95 / 9780774869553
“Staggering, epic, a treasure trove – are words used to describe British Columbia Artists, an extensive digital finding aid to references for B.C. visual artists, started over 25 years ago…” Christina Johnson-Dean reviews Gary Sim’s British Columbia Artists (Vancouver: Sim Publishing, 2024)
Debut author blends memoir, mall history, and critique with a “self-effacing love letter to her hometown’s most famous institution.” —Logan Macnair reviews Big Mall: Shopping for Meaning, by Kate Black (Toronto: Coach House Books, 2024) $23.95 / 9781552454725
“Even among the group of young architects who were transforming Victoria’s post-war urban landscape in the 1950s and ’60s with their ambitious Modernist designs, John Di Castri was an outlier.” Architectural historian Martin Segger reviews Wentworth Villa Architectural Heritage Museum’s recent retrospective ‘John Di Castri, Architect.’
When we launched The British Columbia Review — then The Ormsby Review — in September 2016, little did we expect that seven years later we’d post our 2000th review. I’m grateful to everyone — reviewers, publishers, authors, booksellers, and readers — for making it such a success and promoting BC writers, writing, and culture. It… Read more No. 2000 for the BC Review!
Exploring Vancouver: Ten tours of the City and its Buildings (Fifth Edition) by Harold Kalman and Robin Ward Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2023 $29.95 / 9781990776274 Reviewed by Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe * Exploring Vancouver has evolved alongside the city. Once a series of First Nations settlements amidst a stupendous maritime setting, it became a lumber… Read more 1858 ‘Obscure as much as to reveal’
The Power of Dreams: 27 Years Off-grid in a Wilderness Valley by Dave and Rosemary Neads Surrey: Hancock House Publishers, 2022 $24.95 / 9780888397188 Review by Phyllis Reeve * A couple built a house in the wilderness of Precipice Valley, on the ancient trade route linking BC’s Interior Plateau with the coast, and stayed for… Read more 1837 A dose of planetary reality
Room at the Inn: Historic Hotels of British Columbia’s Southern Interior by Glen A. Mofford Victoria: Heritage House Publishing, 2023 $26.95 / 9781772034233 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Remember staying at that cozy little hotel on your honeymoon, that summer vacation spot by the lake or that mountain resort? Well, now you can vicariously enjoy… Read more 1831 Bordellos and a dog named Dinty
