“When I arrived at Burnaby’s Simon Fraser University in the spring of 1970, the dust had barely settled on the previous five years of growing pains. A Magical Time took me back to the many exciting moments that would leave a lasting impression on members of my student cohort for better or worse.” Ron Verzuh reviews A Magical Time: The Early Days of the Arts at Simon Fraser University by the Simon Fraser University Retirees Association (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2025) $38.95 / 9781998526062
“Fisher and Dickinson worked together for decades to preserve the history of Atlin. Tales, Trials and Triumphs makes a valuable contribution to this preservation. Though the book is largely a collection of photographs, its text is substantial and substantive, complementing and explaining the hundreds of black & white and colour photos and maps.” Howard MacDonald Stewart reviews Tales, Trials and Triumphs: Echoes of Atlin, by Kate Fisher and Christine Dickinson (Atlin: Atlin Historical Society, 2025) $50 / 9781069075604
“Arnott’s storytelling has some of the qualities of Mark Twain floating down the Mississippi or Walt Whitman strolling the Great White Way. Lord Byron, too, comes to mind with his peripatetic Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. But perhaps this travel memoir is more akin to John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. More like Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods.” Ron Verzuh reviews A Season in the Okanagan, by Bill Arnott (Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2025) $20 / 9781771607247
“Blanchet was a single mum after her husband’s disappearance. He apparently fell from the family’s boat, Caprice. Nevertheless, she kept the vessel and explored the Salish Sea from Puget Sound to Queen Charlotte Sound.” Marianne Scott reviews The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024 revised edition) $19.95 / 9781990776786
“Readers of Ted Binnema’s The Vancouver Island Treaties will gain a greater insight into a formative piece of British Columbia history. For this book is history as it should be. Here is how it is done.” Robin Fisher reviews The Vancouver Island Treaties and the Evolving Principles of Indigenous Title, by Ted Binnema (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2025) $44.95 / 9781487554095
“Mather, who has worked at Fort Edmonton and Barkerville and in 1984 became manager and curator of the Historic O’Keefe Ranch, is well placed to write on his subject. He is able to draw on the O’Keefe archives and his O’Keefe family contacts, including the Indigenous descendants, to assemble a highly detailed account.” Ian Pooley reviews The O’Keefes of O’kanagan: The Families of O’Keefe Ranch, by Ken Mather (Victoria: Heritage House, 2025) $34.95 / 9781772035377
“Dombrowski’s passion for nature is evident throughout, making it clear that this book is as much about inspiring families to explore as it is about providing practical information.” Amy Tucker reviews Family Walks and Hikes of Vancouver Island, Volume 2: Nanaimo North to Strathcona Park (Revised Edition) by Theo Dombrowski (Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2025) $22 / 9781771607438
“But make no mistake—the incorporation into federal and British Columbia laws of the principles of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the recent recognition of Haida title and the Heiltsuk establishment of a constitution are not merely rumblings. They and other recent events represent a tectonic shift that will have profound legal and social implications. The results need not be catastrophic, as some might fear, but they will certainly be disruptive.” Richard Butler reviews Indigenous Intellectual Property: An Interrupted Intergenerational Conversation by Val Napoleon, Rebecca Johnson, Richard Overstall and Debra McKenzie (eds.) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2024) $32.95 / 9781487558222 & Creating Indigenous Property: Power, Rights and Relationships by Angela Cameron, Sari Graben and Val Napoleon (eds.)(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020) $45.95 / 9781487523824
“Although he isn’t related to George Vancouver’s former botanist and surgeon aboard the HMS Discovery, Archibald Menzies experienced extraordinary times, times that Graeme Menzies felt had to be shared. The result was the book Bones: The Life and Adventures of Doctor Archibald Menzies, in which Graeme Menzies tells of how the doctor used reason and his senses, as well as his familiarity of the Scottish clan system, to understand what he found as the lone scientist on board that British vessel of exploration.” Trevor Marc Hughes presents an interview segment featuring Vancouver author and historian Graeme Menzies.
“With the budget and size of the current gallery, it had become difficult to adequately show the collection and avoid being just a storehouse. Hence, the wise decision to have a rotating exhibition for the next five years, so that the public can appreciate the depth and breadth of the collection.” Christina Johnson-Dean reviews the exhibition A View from Here: Re-Imagining the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria Collections curated by Steven McNeil and Heng Wu.
“Henry Yu is a history professor at The University of British Columbia. He tells The British Columbia Review about how his path to becoming an historian was shaped by the exclusion and challenges of his Chinese Canadian ancestors in BC.” Trevor Marc Hughes presents an interview segment with historian and UBC professor Henry Yu
“…Mather devotes the majority of the book to recounting the lives of the inhabitants of the house. This is both haunting and compelling. While all the families had ‘privileged lives’ based on their economic and social standing, they were subject to the joys and sorrows of ordinary living. Adriana A. Davies reviews Coldstream Lake House: A storied landmark of the Okanagan, by Ken Mather (Surrey: Hancock House, 2024) $24.95 / 9780888397690
“Adam Jones’s book can help each of us in reaching a principled position, in articulating it, and in understanding why others might rationally have arrived at and articulated a different view.” Richard Butler reviews Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (4th ed.), by Adam Jones (New York: Routledge, 2024) $61.99 / 9781032028101
“300 Mason Jars: Preserving History is a book to be treasured. Beautifully presented in colour, the delightful poems and contents of the mason jars can be savoured and preserved for years to come.” Valerie Green reviews 300 Mason Jars: Preserving History, by Joanne Thomson (Victoria: Heritage House, 2024) $34.95 / 9781772935162
“The Stories That Shape Us is a gift for readers at any stage of historical or personal exploration. It speaks to the quiet strength of every family story and the importance of listening before it’s too late. It urges us to view immigration as a policy and a lived reality. Moreover, it reminds us that history is not just something that happens—it is something we carry.” Amy Tucker reviews Lost Legacies: Learning from Ancestral Stories for Inspiration and Policy-Making Today, by Margaret V. Ostrowski (Montreal West: DC Books, 2024) $21.95 / 9781927599624
“The more we are immersed in the life, activism, and writings of Tommy Douglas and Milton Acorn, the more we will be walked into a unique Canadian synthesis of faith, literature, and politics that has still much to commend it.” Ron Dart contributes an essay on the work of the late poet and storyteller, Milton Acorn.
“Many might think of Rodger Touchie as the publisher at Heritage House based in Victoria, but he is also a published history writer. Some of his titles include Bear Child: The Life and Times of Jerry Potts, Edward S. Curtis: Above the Medicine Line, and Vancouver Island: Portrait of a Past…” Trevor Marc Hughes presents an interview segment with publisher, and writer of BC history titles, Rodger Touchie.
“Messamore doesn’t predict such potential outcomes. Her job, and she does it well, is to reveal the historical facts about early 20th-century elections. But we may be seeing parallels to our political past in the run-up to our April 28 federal election. Will Mark Carney be Mackenzie King and Pierre Poilievre Arthur Meighan?” Ron Verzuh reviews Times of Transformation: The 1921 Canadian General Election, by Barbara J. Messamore (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2025) $19.56 / 9780774870597
“Blanchet’s writing epitomises the provincial stereotype as the home of aspirant eccentrics, philosophically ponderous lumberjacks, and hopeless romantics seeking to carve out a small, domesticated presence in the dense rainforest. Blanchet’s representation of British Columbia, in which urban settlement is an exception to the cultural status quo, still resonates today…” Matthew Downey reviews The Curve of Time: New, Expanded Edition, by M. Wylie Blanchet (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $19.95 / 9781990776786
“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
