Voices of Komagata Maru: Imperial Surveillance and Workers from Punjab in Bengal by Suchetana Chattopadhyay New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2018; New York: Columbia University Press, 2019 $35.00 (U.S.) / 9788193401583 Reviewed by Larry Hannant * Many Canadians became aware of the name Komagata Maru only in 2016, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, still in his…
Read more #685 Tracking the Komagata Maru
Advocates and activists by Graeme Wynn, with Jennifer Bonnell An extract from The Nature of Canada, edited by Colin M. Coates and Graeme Wynn (Vancouver: On Point Press, an imprint of UBC Press, 2019) * Jenny Clayton has reviewed The Nature of Canada for the Ormsby Review — see #603, Deep time to time slipping…
Read more #683 Nature’s advocates and activists
E.J. Hughes Paints British Columbia by Robert Amos Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2019 $35.00 / 9781771513104 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * How can I “review” a book that renders me breathless even before I open it? It takes a while to get past the cover, vibrating as it does with colour. This is the Fraser Valley…
Read more #679 Hughes across the Strait
Asa Johal and Terminal Forest Products: How a Sikh Immigrant Created BC’s Largest Independent Lumber Company by Jinder Oujla-Chalmers Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2019 $28.95 / 9781550178890 Reviewed by Gurpreet Singh * Asa Johal and Terminal Forest Products is a special interest book for those who wish to learn more about British Columbia’s forest industry,…
Read more #678 A life of lumber and sawmills
Searching for Pitt Lake Gold: Facts and Fantasy in the Legend of Slumach by Fred Braches Victoria: Heritage House, 2019 $9.95 / 9781772032765 Reviewed by Harold Rhenisch * Searching for Pitt Lake Gold stands in a long series of popular adventure books that celebrate gold, wilderness, and British Columbia’s adventurous colonial past. This is one…
Read more #677 The lurid lure of lucre
The Last Whistle: Hillcrest Lumber Company Ltd. 1917-2018 by Cecil Ashley Self-published, 2018 $29.95 / 9780228500735 Available from Cecil Ashley email address: cecil.ashley@gmail.com and at Volume 1 Bookstore, Duncan Reviewed by Robert Griffin * Cecil Ashley has produced an amazing book that is clearly a labour of love. The Hillcrest Lumber Company represents a major…
Read more #675 Stump to dump at Mesachie Lake
Emily Carr. Fresh Seeing: French Modernism and the West Coast by Kiriko Watanabe, Kathryn Bridge, Robin Laurence, and Michael Polay Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2019, in collaboration with the Audain Art Museum $40.00 / 9781773270913 Reviewed by Robert Amos * Many people have a prejudice about Emily Carr. Crazy lady with a monkey, they say,…
Read more #674 Emily Carr in France
Around the World in a Dugout Canoe by John M. MacFarlane and Lynn J. Salmon Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2019 $29.95 / 9781550178791 Reviewed by Mark Forsythe * There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea — Joseph Conrad The Tilikum is legendary in B.C.’s maritime history, and her captain…
Read more #667 Canoeing to London
Invisible Generations: Living between Indigenous and White in the Fraser Valley by Jean Barman Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9781773860053 Reviewed by Duff Sutherland * In the early 1990s, a mutual friend introduced the historian Jean Barman to a retired teacher from the Fraser Valley, Irene Kelleher. Of Indigenous and European heritage, Kelleher…
Read more #666 Life of a gifted teacher
Nothing to Write Home About: British Family Correspondence and the Settler Colonial Everyday in British Columbia by Laura Ishiguro Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019 $34.95 / 9780774838443 Reviewed by Robert Hogg * In Nothing to Write Home About, Laura Ishiguro presents us with an opportunity to enlarge our ideas of nineteenth century colonial life, inviting us…
Read more #661 No direction home
The Lieutenant Governors of British Columbia by Jenny Clayton, with a foreword by Janet Austin Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2019 $26.95 / 9781550178647 Reviewed by Patrick A. Dunae * The Office of the Lieutenant Governor is perhaps best known to the public for its pageantry. But it has an important constitutional function. It was created…
Read more #657 Government House calling
Implicating the System: Judicial Discourses in the Sentencing of Indigenous Women by Elspeth Kaiser-Derrick Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019 $34.95 / 9780887558283 Reviewed by David Milward * The crisis of Indigenous over-incarceration in Canada remains an ongoing issue of national importance. Statistical estimates as of 2016 are that Indigenous inmates amount to 27% of…
Read more #655 The Gladue rights revolution
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