Geography of British Columbia: People and Landscapes in Transition (fourth edition) by Brett McGillivray Vancouver: UBC Press, 2020 $55.00 / 9780774864329 Reviewed by Ken Favrholdt * Brett McGillivray’s Geography of British Columbia: People and Landscapes in Transition has withstood the test of time since its first edition in 2000, which I reviewed for BC Studies…
Read more 1305 McGillivray’s essential geography
Ron Verzuh reviews two books: Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe: Four Weeks that Shaped a Pandemic by Bonnie Henry and Lynn Henry Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Allen Lane), 2021 $26.95 / 9780735241855 * Soap and Water and Common Sense: The Definitive Guide to Viruses, Bacteria, Parasites, and Disease by Bonnie Henry Toronto: House…
Read more 1303 Bonnie Henry: writer
Linda Rogers reviews two books: Indian in the Cabinet: Speaking Truth to Power by Jody Wilson-Raybould Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2021 $34.99 / 9781443465366 * From Where I Stand: Rebuilding Indigenous Nations for a Stronger Canada by Jody Wilson-Raybould Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9780774880534 * CHARACTER, a drama with some bad actors and some…
Read more 1302 Lessons from the Big House
Erebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time by Michael Palin Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Vintage Canada), 2019 $23.00 / 9780735274297 Reviewed by Walter Volovsek * Editor’s note. A vigilant reader of The Ormsby Review might be startled to see Michael Palin’s Erebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages,…
Read more 1301 Goosebumps & unbroken ice
Richard Wagamese Selected: What Comes from Spirit by Richard Wagamese, with an introduction by Drew Hayden Taylor Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2021 $24.95 / 9781771622752 Reviewed by Paul Falardeau * When he died at 61, Richard Wagamese still had a lot to say, though he had already said so much. The Ojibwe author was…
Read more 1298 A tribute to Richard Wagamese
Vancouver Vice: Crime and Spectacle in the City’s West End by Aaron Chapman Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021 $27.95 / 9781551528694 Reviewed by Grahame Ware * Aaron Chapman begins Vancouver Vice by using the West End Sex Workers Memorial (dedicated in 2016) as a point of reference and meditation regarding the whole dynamics of sexual…
Read more 1295 Chapman’s high-rise history
Pandemic Spotlight: Canadian Doctors at the Front of the Covid-19 Fight by Ian Hanomansing Madeira Park: Douglas and McIntyre, 2021 $22.95 / 9781771622929 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * For nearly two years we have existed in a time warp. When I see a reference to something which happened in April, and now it is October,…
Read more 1285 From anonymity to spotlight
The Fight for History: 75 Years of Forgetting, Remembering, and Remaking Canada’s Second World War by Tim Cook Toronto: Penguin Random House (Allen Lane), 2020 $25.00 / 9780735238374 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Editor’s note: On previous Remembrance Days at The Ormsby Review we’ve published moving and personal essays and reflections by Michael Sasges, Howard…
Read more 1280 To end all wars … again
The York Factory Express: Fort Vancouver to Hudson Bay, 1826-1849 by Nancy Marguerite Anderson Vancouver: Ronsdale Books, 2021 $24.95 / 9781553805786 Reviewed by Walter Volovsek * The York Factory Express was an enterprise for transporting Hudson’s Bay Company records, correspondence, and external mail along a water-based route that spanned the continent. This aquatic highway linked…
Read more 1278 Across the continent before GPS
One Man in His Time… A Memoir by Michael Audain Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2021 $36.95 / 9781771623001 Reviewed by Maria Tippett * No conventional memoir, One Man in his time. . . allows Michael Audain to roll out his life story in a randomly selected collection of “tales” and “anecdotes” that resemble fireside…
Read more 1275 The making of an art collector
Mining Country: A History of Canada’s Mines and Miners by John Sandlos and Arn Keeling Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, 2021 $29.95 / 9781459413535 Reviewed by Robert G. McCandless * The introduction to this attractive book says Canada’s mining history is “curiously neglected,” then steps into that gap to present two hundred years of history….
Read more 1273 Ancient craft, long history
Lost Kootenays: A History in Pictures by Greg Nesteroff and Eric Brighton Lunenburg, NS: MacIntyre Purcell Publishing, 2021 $29.95 / 9781772761641 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh Editor’s note: the full photo captions below are taken directly from Lost Kootenays. * Kootenay Home: A prize collection of historic images shares the Kootenays’ rugged past Growing up in…
Read more 1269 A choice Kootenay collection
ESSAY: An “Odd-Man” at Government House, Victoria by Robert Ratcliffe Taylor * For most people, reading another person’s diary is a furtive and shameful act. For historians, however, studying the private journal of a long-dead person can be a valuable and exciting, if occasionally puzzling, endeavour. In 1870, Robert Colston was both the official government…
Read more 1267 Footman at Government House
Joseph William McKay: A Métis Business Leader in Colonial British Columbia by Greg N. Fraser Victoria: Heritage House, 2021 $22.95 / 9781772033403 Reviewed by John R. Hinde * By coincidence, Greg N. Fraser’s biography, Joseph William McKay: A Métis Business Leader in Colonial British Columbia, arrived on my desk the same day that the Tk’emlups…
Read more 1252 J.W. McKay & the Métis mystery
Victoria Then & Now: Postcards from the Past by Nick Russell Victoria: Old Goat Press, 2021 (new edition; first published 2014). Contact russcomm@telus.net $18.95 / 9780987788917 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Capital Memories: Old postcards and modern-day images of Victoria sketch social and architectural history When I was sowing my wild oats I would send…
Read more 1249 Capital memories
ORMSBY REVIEW PRESS: Frederick Paget Norbury, Chapter Three: Letters, 1887 by Brenda Callaghan * Editor’s note: we are pleased to present Chapter 3 of Brenda Callaghan’s hitherto unpublished biography, Frederick Paget Norbury, Remittance Man or Gentleman Immigrant? The Story of an Englishman in Canada. Earlier in 2021 we published the Introduction, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2….
Read more 1244 Golden City to Tobacco Plains
Rough Road to the North: A Vagabond on the Great Northern Highway by Jim Christy Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2019 (first published in Toronto by Doubleday, 1980) $17.95 (U.S.) / 9781627310826 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold Robert Service…
Read more 1241 Ramblers and tatterdemalions
Becoming Vancouver: A History by Daniel Francis Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2021 $36.95 / 9781550179163 Reviewed by Patricia E. Roy * Daniel Francis, a native of Vancouver, rues Vancouver’s apparent loss of its history and hopes that knowledge of the past may avoid handing it over “to the forces of global consumerism” (p. 5). This…
Read more 1240 Stumps, sawmills & speculation
David Brownstein reviews two books: Highballer: True Tales from a Treeplanting Life by Greg Nolan Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2019 $26.95 / 9781550178685 * Slashburner: Hot Times in the British Columbia Woods by Nicholas Raeside Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2020 $24.95 / 9781550178982 * After a brief eclipse by pipelines, British Columbia’s forests are again…
Read more 1239 Fire and seedlings
Unsettling Native Art Histories on the Northwest Coast by Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse and Aldona Jonaitis (editors) Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020 $39.95 (U.S.) / 9780295747132 Reviewed by Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa * A few years ago, a First Nations man told me a story of two masks. The original, held in a museum, had been lent to…
Read more 1238 Decolonizing Northwest Coast art