The Save of My Life: My Journey Out of the Dark by Corey Hirsch, with Sean Patrick Conboy Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2022 $32.99 / 9781443461092 Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop * It must be hard to write a good topical hockey book these days. The goalposts, as it were, keep shifting on the zeitgeist as Canada’s…
Read more 1618 Goaltender, heal thyself
Love in Vile Places: Military Hospitals as the Site of Care and Nurture by Jo-Anne Fiske * For Remembrance Day 2022 we present a memoir by Jo-Anne Fiske of Fraser Lake, in BC’s north-central interior, of her father Humphrey William Fiske (1886-1959). At the time of his enlistment in Kelowna in 1916, the Norfolk-born Fiske…
Read more 1617 Love in vile places
The Tree Farm: The Evolution of Canada’s First Community Forest by Michelle Rhodes Vancouver: Page Two Books, 2021 $35.00 / 9781989025680 Reviewed by David Brownstein * Michelle Rhodes’s The Tree Farm celebrates what was once an anomaly. Whereas local community-directed forest management used to be rare in British Columbia, with each passing day, this model…
Read more 1613 A forest with a mission
Thirty-Three Years: The Unfiltered Memoir of a Cop by Rob G. Rothwell Victoria: FriesenPress, 2021 $24.49 / 9781039123427 Reviewed by Jaime Smith * There is no crime without laws. An inborn human drive to compete against others promotes individual greed, usually suppressed or diverted by shared ethical standards. Some always will ignore the law, resulting…
Read more 1611 A life with crime
Spíləx̣m: A Weaving of Recovery, Resilience, and Resurgence by Nicola I. Campbell Winnipeg: HighWater Press, 2021 $32.00 / 9781553799351 Reviewed by Linda Rogers * When my friend, author, singer and educator Karen Lee White went north to celebrate the life of a beloved elder, the family women braided her long silver hair. “That is your…
Read more 1610 A star map to higher ground
Making a Chaputs: The Teachings and Responsibilities of a Canoe Maker by Joe Martin and Alan Hoover Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum Press, 2022 $24.95 / 9780772680273 Reviewed by Isabel Nanton * With a Pacific coastline that stretches 25,725 km (15,985 miles), British Columbia has for eons relied on water transport and for centuries First…
Read more 1609 Nuu-chah-nulth high bow canoes
A Century in the North Peace: The Life and Times of Anne and John Callison by Erín Moure, with Anne Callison Montreal and Vancouver: Zat-So Productions, 2018 $22.79 / 9780986759529 Reviewed by Ken Favrholdt * Poet and translator Erin Moure with her 96-year-old aunt Anne Callison in 2018 wrote a remarkable, lovingly composed, and detailed…
Read more 1606 Peace River portraits
Don’t Call It A Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of NXIVM by Sarah Berman Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Viking), 2021 $24.95 / 9780735237896 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Be Afraid for Your Daughters: Parents lock the door, if you can, on predators bearing false promise of enlightenment What do…
Read more 1600 Parents, lock that door
Namwayut: We Are All One. A Pathway to Reconciliation by Chief Robert Joseph Vancouver: Page Two Books, 2022 $29.95 / 9781774580059 Reviewed by Linda Rogers * At last, the building, its outline terrorizing The Bay or Yalis, the community framed by open legs, both sides of the water which feeds the people, has come down….
Read more 1598 All together now
Two Pieces of Cloth: One Family’s Story of the Holocaust by Joe Gold Vancouver: Page Two Books, 2021 $21.95 / 9781989603826 Reviewed by Peter Hay * The vast literature of the Holocaust occupies various and distinct chambers in our latter-day imagination. First there are the historical documents which recorded or later reconstructed the names and…
Read more 1596 A many-coloured coat
Johnny of Maillardville by Marie-Laure Chevrier with illustrations by Michael Kluckner Vancouver: Midtown Press, 2021 $15.95/ 9781988242422 * Monsieur Maillardville: Un Pionnier Visionnaire par Marie-Laure Chevrier avec illustrations par Michael Kluckner Vancouver: Éditions du Pacifique Nord-Ouest, 2021 $15.95 / 9782925064121 Reviewed by Patricia E. Roy * …
Read more 1587 Monsieur Maillardville
305 Lost Buildings of Canada by Raymond Biesinger & Alex Bozikovic Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2022 $22.95 / 9781773102368 Reviewed by Martin Segger * What do we do about dead buildings? In our own time do they just sort of fade in community memory, like the guy in the office several cubicles down the hall…
Read more 1586 Touching down in the past
Beneath the Coal Dust: Historical Journeys Through the Elk Valley and Crowsnest Pass by Wayne Norton Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2022 $26.00 / 9781773860923 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Blowing the Dust Away: A historian digs out unique local stories that shed light on our national history Wayne Norton is a master of footnote history….
Read more 1583 Blowing the dust away
Tsqelmucwílc: The Kamloops Indian Residential School – Resistance and a Reckoning by Celia Haig-Brown, Garry Gottfriedson, Randy Fred, and the KIRS Survivors Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022 $22.95 / 9781551529059 Reviewed by Mary Ann Moore * Celia Haig-Brown’s Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School was the first book ever published in Canada about…
Read more 1581 Resistance and resilience
Snow Nomad: An Avalanche Memoir by Alan Dennis Victoria: FriesenPress, 2022 $25.99 / 9781039107984 Reviewed by Ron Dart * I have had an ongoing interest, the last few decades, in the life and philosophic vision of Dolores LaChapelle. LaChapelle’s early pioneering work with Arne Naess in deep ecology and her deep powder skiing insights were…
Read more 1556 Tales of the avalanche clan
Hollywood in the Klondike: Dawson City’s Great Film Find by Michael Gates Madeira Park, Harbour Publishing, 2022 $34.95 / 9781550179965 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * All that Flickered: The glitter of gold competed with the flicker of silent movies in 1890s Klondike You can almost taste the rotgut liquor and smell the sweat, cheap cigars…
Read more 1553 All that flickered
The Shuswap Country by Erskine Burnett, edited by Jim Cooperman and with a foreword by Mark Forsythe Salmon Arm: 55 Creative Group and Hucul Printing, 2022 $25.00 / 9780994990259 Reviewed by Sage Birchwater * The Shuswap Country is a history-buff’s delight waiting to pique your curiosity about life in the Shuswap during the 1930s and…
Read more 1552 Bard of the Shuswap
Up the Coast: One family’s wild life in the forests of British Columbia by Kathryn Willcock Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2022 $24.95 / 9781774390511 Reviewed by Dave Flawse * Kathryn Willcock’s rustic childhood summers spent in a remote British Columbia logging camp “with endless forests, a rugged coastline, and not much else,” provide the staple ingredients…
Read more 1548 Loggers, rhozzums, & grizzlies
The Rooming House: The West Coast in the Seventies by Michael Kluckner Vancouver: Midtown Press, 2022 $19.95 / 9781988242460 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Michael Kluckner has skillfully managed to capture the free spirit, free love era of the late sixties and early seventies in this captivating story of lost youth trying to find their…
Read more 1546 Kitsilano flashback
Peyakow: Reclaiming Cree Dignity by Darrel J. McLeod Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2021 $29.95 / 9781771622318 Reviewed by Heather Simeney MacLeod * Darrel McLeod attended the University of British Columbia where he obtained two degrees – a Bachelor of Arts in French Literature and another in Education. Prior to becoming a writer, McLeod worked…
Read more 1545 Cree identity in exile