“Keeping the Books is a family history par excellence, the best of its genre that I have read, which traces the life of Alene Peck, a homesteader’s daughter in the Peace River district of British Columbia. It was a colourful life that Alene has chronicled and saved through a trove of letters, notes, and photographs that upon her death were bequeathed to her son, Ross Peck, who lives today in Skookumchuck, in BC’s Kootenays.” Kenneth Favrholdt reviews Keeping the Books: The life and times of a Peace River Homesteader’s Daughter, by Ross Peck (Cranbrook: Wild Horse Creek Press, 2025) $21.95 / 9781069794703
“By the time I got to Simon Fraser University in the early 1970s, Jim Harding had already left campus but his legacy lingered as SFU continued to fester with student unrest after the historic strike in 1967. That event labelled SFU a ‘radical’ campus and Harding was part of the cohort of students and faculty that openly challenged and defied the actions of the university administration. It was a bold, exciting, and educational moment. Harding was among the leaders.” Ron Verzuh reviews The Long Sixties: Stories from the New Left, by Jim Harding [ed.] (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2026) $29 / 9781773638034
“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
“There are more than 240 life histories of all the fishes calling the strait home for all or part of the year. Dick Beamish and Jeff Marliave are well-known scientists who have put this book together for you.” DC Reid reviews Fishes of the Strait of Georgia: More than 240 Life Stories, by Dick Beamish & Jeff Marliave (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2025) $80 / 9781990776830
“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.
“The book is primarily a record of the concept, strategies, and outcomes from an innovative government policy-development approach proposed by then-Premier Glen Clark. At the time Clark’s financially-strapped government was facing ‘an imminent economic crisis.’ The authors explain that Premier Clark was faced with almost 240,000 public employee contracts expiring on the same day, as well as two prior years of restraint.” Richard Fyfe reviews 35 Accords: Re-imagining British Columbia’s Public Sector Labour Relations
by Tony Penikett and John Calvert (Cambridge, UK: Ethics International Press, 2025) $57 / 9781837112791
“Nancy J. Turner has spent a career working with Indigenous teachers who have shared their traditional knowledge with her, but as she tells The British Columbia Review, not all is shared, some is private, but one thing is clear: that she is grateful for the teachings.” Trevor Marc Hughes presents an interview segment with ethnobotanist and author Nancy J. Turner.
“In BC, cartoonists like Len Norris, Roy Peterson, Bob Krieger, Dan Murphy, Raeside, and (more lately) Pia Guerra have demonstrated what a sharp wit can do with a sharp pencil. Nurtured for decades by daily spots on the local newspaper’s editorial/opinion page, these giants of jest created lasting and recognizable characters, styles, voices, values, and understandings of who we are.” John Belshaw reviews The Canada Handbook, by Adrian Raeside (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2025) $22.95 / 9781550179538
“The strength of West Coast Mission is the way that Lockhart has sensitively and wisely heeded and attempted to bring the best out of the varied communities he has focussed on. The weakness of the book is the vast variety of other forms of Christianity he has simply not sat with or listened to in the Vancouver area and they are many.” Ron Dart reviews West Coast Mission: The Changing Nature of Christianity in Vancouver, by Ross A. Lockhart (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024) $34.95 / 9780228022862
“Alisha Gauvreau, then a UVic Ph.D. candidate, served as field crew lead and investigator of the EkTb-9 site from 2015 to 2019 and subsequently published the results in the Journal of Archaeological Science. She and colleagues and members of the Heiltsuk Nation, including Housty, used a two-eyed seeing approach throughout the research process ‘to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing, and to see from the other eye with the strengths of Western ways of knowing, and to use both these eyes together for the benefit of all.'” Katy Dycus writes of impressive archaeological activity on Triquet Island, by Waterlogged co-author Alisha Gauvreau, archaeologist Elroy White, and community leader William Housty, on traditional Heiltsuk territory.
“Daphne Sleigh has made a good effort in addressing the Indigenous past of the region in this updated version of her book. Her preface not only expresses her delight in seeing her local history book having a new lease, but it also includes, and notes, changes in how Indigenous names are perceived since 1990 when the original book was self-published.” Trevor Marc Hughes reviews The People of the Harrison, by Daphne Sleigh (Harrison Mills: Fraser Heritage Society, 2021) (1st printing 1990) $24.95 / 9780973538519
“Besides launching you on a hobby that needs only a bus pass, a big book for a press, good cardboard, and a few standard household items to start, the guide takes you through the steps from rank amateur to friend-of-the-museum-curator.” Briony Penn reviews Pressed Plants: Making a Herbarium, by Linda P. J. Lipsen, with illustrations by Derek Tan (Victoria: Royal BC Museum Publications, 2023) $19.95 / 9780772680563
“After receiving his MAS degree, Gary embarked on what became a lifelong career as a records and archives professional with the BC government. He served as a Senior Records Analyst from 1985 to 1988, then becoming Manager of Advisory and Training Services for the BC Archives, a position he held from 1988 to 1991. From 1991 to 1998, he was Deputy Provincial Archivist and Director of the BC Archives. In 1998 Gary became Provincial Archivist, leading the institution through many years of growth and change.” Irene Zaffaroni and Laura Millar write about archivist Gary Mitchell, who passed away on February 9, 2026.
“The fact, indeed, that Bovey writes with a refreshingly personal sense of appreciation, points towards one of the salient features of this curated exhibition—namely, the fact that just as artists may have “visual voices,” Bovey herself has a distinctive voice. Part of that, of course, is implicit in the selections she makes, but part, too, is explicit in her personal comments.” Theo Dombrowski reviews Western Voices in Canadian Art, by Patricia Bovey (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2023) $49.95 / 9780887550478
“I had been helping Craig with his book. It also happened that my wife and I had plans to visit the Okanagan for a week in September which corresponded with the dates for the 2025 Okanagan Columbia run. I was very eager to be introduced to Chief Clarence and perhaps even hang out.” Richard Butler reflects on his time attending the 2025 Salmon Celebration.
“Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa begins with a conversation about her discovery and research into the one empirical example of an ancient practice, the raising of almost but not quite domestic animals who lived in isolation to protect them from inbreeding and physical damage, animals bred to provide the weft in essential weavings.” Linda Rogers reviews The Teachings of Mutton: A Coast Salish Woolly Dog, by Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa et al (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2025) $36.95 / 9781998526024
“A Perfect Day for a Walk by the Water is an excellent example of the mix of observation, reflection, interpretation, and rich language that brings Bill’s books onto the bestseller list time after time.” Marianne Scott reviews A Perfect Day for a Walk by the Water: Exploring Vancouver’s Shores, by Bill Arnott (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025) $24.95 / 9781834050201
“‘The authors of this book are the Kitwancool themselves…’ was the first line of the introduction when this book was first published in 1959. It was also, at that time, hugely significant. The line was written by Wilson Duff, the senior anthropologist at the British Columbia Provincial Museum, whose vision and patience had produced the book even though he made it clear that he was not the author. It was significant because, when First Nations voices told their own stories, usually they were not heard and they seldom appeared in print. In its time this book was, in the words of another Provincial Museum anthropologist, a ‘brilliant move.’ It was an example of reconciliation before its time.” Robin Fisher reviews Histories, Territories and Laws of the Kitwancool by Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs (edited and with an introduction by Wilson Duff)(Victoria: Royal BC Museum, second edition, 2022) $19.95 / 9780772680327
“In this intimate account, Comox Valley writer Joline Martin uniquely focuses on the draft resisters who came to Vancouver Island and became Canadians.” Ron Verzuh reviews War Resisters: Standing Against the Vietnam War, by Joline Martin (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2025) $26 / 9781773861685
“Each of the artists portrayed in the book–like a unique piece of wood, bone, or argillite they carve–teaches us something significant about their communities, their clans, and their personal histories.” Christine Añonuevo reviews Curve! Women Carvers on the Northwest Coast, curated by Dana Claxton and Curtis Collins (Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2024) $45 / 9781773272542
