“Opposition on the Coast”: The Hudson’s Bay Company, American Coasters, the Russian-American Company, and Native Traders on the Northwest Coast, 1825-1846 Edited and introduced by James R. Gibson Toronto: The Champlain Society, 2019 $99.00 / 9780772764416 Reviewed by Peter Grant * A game of monopoly: The Bay, of department store fame, was once the terror…
Read more 1370 A game of monopoly
Boswell Beginnings and Beyond by Tom Wishart, Janice Baker, and Lynn Campbell (editors) Boswell: Boswell Historical Society, 2021 (new edition; first published by the Boswell Ladies’ Club, 1986) $35.00 / 9781771369947 Available at local bookstores or from Lynn Campbell: lynncampbell1508@gmail.com Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Surviving the Ravages of Time: A remote BC town dodges…
Read more 1369 Home & work on Kootenay Lake
Imagined Truths: Myths from a Draft-Dodging Poet by Richard Lemm New Westminster: Tidewater Press, 2021 $21.95 / 9781990160066 Reviewed by Heidi Greco * Puzzled. That’s the feeling I occasionally had while reading this far-reaching memoir. It’s far-reaching not only in the years it covers — from the 1950s to today — but also in the…
Read more 1366 More than an essay on Canada
Dreamers, Skeptics, and Healers: the Story of BC’s Medical School. The UBC Faculty of Medicine at 70 years by Wendy Cairns, John Cairns, David Ostrow, and Gavin Stuart Vancouver: Page Two Books, 2021 $50.00 / 9781989603895 Reviewed by Jaime Smith * As a graduate of the UBC medical school in 1976 and after training there…
Read more 1363 Beds and infrastructure at UBC
A Liberal-Labour Lady: The Times and Life of Mary Ellen Spear Smith by Veronica Strong-Boag Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021 $89.95 / 9780774867245 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * Who? Mary Ellen Spear Smith (1863-1933) was British Columbia’s first female Member of the Legislative Assembly. She was also the first female cabinet minister and the first female…
Read more 1362 Seamstress to cabinet minister
The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Empire by Stephen R. Bown Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Anchor Canada), 2021 $24.95 / 9780385694094 Reviewed by Daniel Francis * When I finished graduate school in the mid-1970s and rejoined the work force I got a job researching the history of the fur trade…
Read more 1361 A cabal of merchant adventurers
Vile Spirits by John MacLachlan Gray Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2021 $29.95 / 9781771622776 Reviewed by W.H. New * Straight out: I loved this book. It’s lively and fast-paced, it sparkles with satire, and it’s chock full of arresting characters (and a few who get away). Vile Spirits is marketed as a mystery, and…
Read more 1360 Spirited Vancouver
Royally Wronged: The Royal Society of Canada and Indigenous Peoples by Constance Backhouse, Cynthia E. Milton, Margaret Kovach, and Adele Perry (editors) Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021 $39.95 / 9780228009030 Reviewed by J.R. (Jim) Miller Disclosure: the reviewer is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada * In 2016, Dr. Cindy Blackstock…
Read more 1359 A shaky grasp at the Royal Society
A Journey Back to Nature: A History of Strathcona Provincial Park by Catherine Marie Gilbert Victoria: Heritage House, 2021 $26.95 / 9781772033588 Reviewed by Matthew Downey * The past year in British Columbia has seen activism and protests centred on the forest industry and controversies over the logging of old growth rainforest. In such a…
Read more 1350 Making & taking Strathcona Park
St. Michael’s Residential School: Lament and Legacy by Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubenstein Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2020 $21.95 / 9781553806233 Reviewed by J.R. (Jim) Miller * In the summer of 1970 Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubinstein, recently married and just graduated from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, wanted to take some time off to…
Read more 1346 Four months at Alert Bay
Indigenous Repatriation Handbook Prepared by Jisgang Nika Collison, Sdaahl K̲’awaas Lucy Bell, Lou-ann Neel Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum Press, 2019 $29.95 / 9780772673176 Reviewed by Mark Turin * Anthropologist Aaron Glass remarked that use of the prefix ‘re’ in words such as repatriation, revitalization, rejuvenation, revival, and resurgence points to the undoing of some…
Read more 1345 Museum repatriation and renewal
North Delta History and Heritage: including Annieville, Upper and Lower Sunbury, Annacis Island, Part of East Delta, and Burns Bog by John Macdonald (editor) Delta: Delta Heritage Society, 2020 (4th printing, 2021) $20.00 / 9781777161705 Reviewed by Ken Favrholdt * North Delta History and Heritage is a great example of what a group of historically-minded volunteers…
Read more 1344 Rambles in North Delta
In Sight: My Life in Science and Biotech by Julia Levy, with a foreword by Molly Shoichet Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020 $34.95 / 9781487508319 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * The reviewer is reading Julia Levy’s book on the bus to UBC and has just arrived at 41st and Dunbar when he gets to…
Read more 1343 Mystery at 41st and Dunbar
The Devil’s Trick: How Canada Fought the Vietnam War by John Boyko Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Knopf Canada), 2021 $32.00 / 9780735278004 Reviewed by Howard Macdonald Stewart * Six Easy Pieces. John Boyko has written a compelling, largely anecdotal history of Canada’s involvement in the Americans’ long years of war in Indochina. It consists…
Read more 1340 Canada and Vietnam revisited
So Much More Than Art: Indigenous Miniatures of the Pacific Northwest by Jack Davy Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021 $89.95 / 9780774866552 Reviewed by Alan L. Hoover * In this book Jack Davy discusses the making of miniature objects: model canoes, houses, totem poles, masks, by First Nations artists on the Northwest Coast of BC, Alaska,…
Read more 1334 In praise of the miniature
Paradise Won: The Struggle to Create Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve by Elizabeth May Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2020 (2nd edition; first published by McClelland & Stewart, 1990) $25.00 / 9781771604581 Reviewed by Ron Dart * Editor’s note: earlier in 2021 we published a review by Ron Verzuh of Paradise Won: The Struggle to Create…
Read more 1329 Return to Moresby Island
Flourishing and Free: More Stories of Trail-blazing Women of Vancouver Island by Haley Healey Victoria: Heritage House, 2021 $9.95 / 9781772033533 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Flourishing and Free is a sequel to author Haley Healey’s best-selling book On Their Own Terms: True Stories of Trailblazing Women of Vancouver Island. In her new book she…
Read more 1318 A spectrum of Island women
Murders on the Skeena: True Crime in the Old Canadian West, 1884-1914 by Geoff Mynett Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2021 $24.95 / 9781773860671 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Not a Hollywood murder: move aside Deadwood and make room for BC’s wild north When people exist on the extreme edges of a place, unexpected yet sometimes…
Read more 1316 Colonial law vs Gitxsan tradition
On Borrowed Time: North America’s Next Big Earthquake by Gregor Craigie Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2021 $22.95 / 9781773102061 Reviewed by Brian Harvey * What does it mean to be unsettled? Roget’s Thesaurus offers some synonyms — unstable, displaced, even deranged — and to me the word sits somewhere between “uneasy” and “totally freaked out.”…
Read more 1314 Shear, rattle, and roll
Distilleries of Vancouver Island: A Guided Tour of West Coast Craft and Artisan Spirits by Marianne Scott Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2021 $25.00 / 9781771513326 Reviewed by Joe Wiebe * Published earlier this year, Marianne Scott’s Distilleries of Vancouver Island is essential reading for anyone who might enjoy a wee dram of Island whiskey, a sip…
Read more 1313 Island spirits and cocktails