Ranch Tales: Stories from the Frontier by Ken Mather Victoria: Heritage House, 2019 $19.95 / 9781772031881 Reviewed by Warren Elofson * Ken Mather’s Ranch Tales is a readable and interesting account of ranching in what is now British Columbia from the establishment of the Alkali Lake Ranch in 1861 to the twentieth century. Mather provides…
Read more #652 Mather’s ranch tales
Island Craft: Your Guide to the Breweries of Vancouver Island by Jon C. Stott Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2019 $25.00 / 9781771512923 Reviewed by Ian J.M. Kennedy * Jon Stott knows and likes his beer. This comes out loud and clear in his twentieth book, Island Craft: Your Guide to the Breweries of Vancouver Island. It…
Read more #651 Goodbye ladies and escorts
Love in Vile Places: Military Hospitals as the Site of Care and Nurture by Jo-Anne Fiske * For Remembrance Day 2019 we present a memoir by Jo-Anne Fiske of François 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 #650 Love in vile places
The Return of the Shadow by Kunio Yamagishi London: Austin Macauley, 2018 £6.16 (U.K) $25.95 (Cdn) / 9781786937155 / Please order from your local bookstore or through Book Depository who offer free worldwide shipping. Reviewed by Patricia E. Roy * In July 2019, The Return of the Shadow, by Comox Valley writer Kunio Yamagishi, was shortlisted…
Read more #645 The journeys of Eizo Osada
The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation by David B. MacDonald Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9781487522698 Reviewed by David Milward * When one hears the word “genocide,” it is easy to instantly think of the Holocaust and then not take it any further than that. As…
Read more #644 The Canadian genocide
The Codfish Dream: Chronicles of a West Coast Fishing Guide by David Giblin Victoria: Heritage House, 2018 $19.95 / 9781772032420 Reviewed by Kenneth Campbell * In The Codfish Dream: Chronicles of a West Coast Fishing Guide, David Giblin compresses fifteen years of experience as a sports fishing guide into one remarkable summer, resulting in an…
Read more #641 Big Bay fishing stories
Captain Cook’s Final Voyage: The Untold Story from the Journals of James Burney and Henry Roberts by James K. Barnett (editor), with a foreword by Richard Neville and an introduction by Glyn Williams Pullman, WA: Washington University Press, 2017 $34.95 (U.S.) / 9780874223576 Reviewed by Robin Inglis * This handsome volume is a welcome addition…
Read more #636 Stopover at Nootka Sound
A Voluntary Crucifixion by David J. MacKinnon Montréal: Guernica Editions, 2019 $25.00 / 9781771832724 Reviewed by Jim Christy * If you’ve ever heard of David MacKinnon, where have you been? Certainly not around the literary scene anywhere in Canada, including his native British Columbia, even though he is arguably one of the best writers in the…
Read more #635 Go east, young man
Sam Steele: A Biography by Rod Macleod Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2018 $35.99 / 9781772123791 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * There’s a CBC Heritage Minute about Sam Steele. You may have seen it. A stern, moustachioed Mountie sits at his rough wooden desk, staring down an excitable American prospector who wants to wear pistols…
Read more #628 Myths, Mounties, and Métis
Captured by Fire: Surviving British Columbia’s New Wildfire Reality by Chris Czajkowski and Fred Reid Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2019 $24.95 / 9781550178852 Reviewed by Sage Birchwater * The wildfires of 2017 are still fresh in the minds of the people who experienced them in the Central Interior of British Columbia. Across the broad landscape…
Read more #626 Fire on the Chilcotin Plateau
Moved by the State: Forced Relocation and Making a Good Life in Postwar Canada by Tina Loo Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019 $29.95 / 9780774861014 Reviewed by LiLynn Wan * Moved by the State is a comparative history of forced relocation and development in five regions in Canada from the 1950s to the 1970s. In some…
Read more #619 Government knows best
Floating City by Kerri Sakamoto Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2018; Penguin Random House, 2019 $21.00 / 9780345809896 Reviewed by Grahame Ware * “One swallow doth not a summer make” – Shakespeare, from Aristotle Kerri Sakamoto’s flight south to warmer climes after the publication of One Hundred Million Hearts (Penguin, 2005) has been a multi-year migration. And…
Read more #615 A floating city sinks
Photo essay: Revolving W and Flying Pigs: A Neon Journal by Keith McKellar (Laughing Hand), with an introduction by Robert Amos Victoria: BoneYard Ink Books, 2018 $50.00 / 9781775357704 Orders: direct from www.laughinghand.com A photo essay by Keith McKellar and Robert Amos * In December 2018 we published a review (Ormsby Review #449) by Grahame…
Read more #614 Waterfront industry & memory
Green Gold: The Epic True Story of Victorian Plant Hunter John Jeffrey by Gabriel Hemery £15 (U.K.) / 9781789650242 London: Unbound, 2019 Reviewed by Michael Layland * Had I not been familiar with the protagonist, John Jeffrey, I doubt if I would have taken the trouble to acquire and read Green Gold. The artwork of…
Read more #613 The baffling fate of John Jeffrey
The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family by Lindsay Wong Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018 $19.95 / 9781551527369 Reviewed by Imogene Lim First published January 17, 2019 * Editor’s note: this review was first published in The Ormsby Review in January 2019. Somehow it disappeared when material…
Read more #612 Chinese ghosts, Chinese identity
Honouring the Strength of Indian Women: Plays, Stories, Poetry by Vera Manuel (author) and Michelle Coupal, Deanna Reder, Joanne Arnott, Emalene A. Manuel (editors) Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9780887558368 Reviewed by Diana French * Vera Manuel (1949-2010), actor, playwright, poet, drama therapist, and healer has been honoured with an anthology of…
Read more #610 Secwépemc playwright honoured
New Ground: A Memoir of Art and Activism in BC’s Interior by Ann Kujundzic, with a foreword by Mary Schendlinger Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9781773860015 Reviewed by Luanne Armstrong * I love memoirs like this. And really, we need so many more of them. So many stories still remain to be told,…
Read more #608 Kootenay art and activism
Along the E&N: A Journey Back to the Historic Hotels of Vancouver Island by Glen Mofford Victoria: TouchWood Press, 2019 $22.00 / 9781771512879 Reviewed by Ian J.M. Kennedy * For 125 years, beginning in 1886, the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway served as Vancouver Island’s main railway line running from Victoria to Courtenay, with branch lines…
Read more #605 Island hotels & beer parlours
Our Coloured Past: The Arrow Lakes in the Age of Colour Photography by Kyle Kusch Nakusp: Arrow Lakes Historical Society, 2019 $30.00 / 9780969423683 Reviewed by Duff Sutherland * In Our Coloured Past: The Arrow Lakes in the Age of Colour Photography, Kyle Kusch presents 350 colour photographs from the collection of Nakusp’s Arrow Lakes…
Read more #604 BC Hydro’s destructive legacy
The Nature of Canada by Colin M. Coates and Graeme Wynn (editors) Vancouver: UBC Press [On Point Press],2019 $29.95 / 9780774890366 Reviewed by Jenny Clayton * A collaborative effort by some of the leading scholars in the field, The Nature of Canada offers a fresh look at Canadian environmental history. Wishing to showcase research supported…
Read more #603 Deep time to time slipping away