“Although he isn’t related to George Vancouver’s former botanist and surgeon aboard the HMS Discovery, Archibald Menzies experienced extraordinary times, times that Graeme Menzies felt had to be shared. The result was the book Bones: The Life and Adventures of Doctor Archibald Menzies, in which Graeme Menzies tells of how the doctor used reason and his senses, as well as his familiarity of the Scottish clan system, to understand what he found as the lone scientist on board that British vessel of exploration.” Trevor Marc Hughes presents an interview segment featuring Vancouver author and historian Graeme Menzies.
“[Leavitt] has created a life-affirming, deeply affectionate, intermittently humorous evocation of grief that reminds us that the ones we love are still with us, if we remember them.” Jessica Poon reviews Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love, by Sarah Leavitt (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024) $27.95 / 9781551529516
“Henry Yu is a history professor at The University of British Columbia. He tells The British Columbia Review about how his path to becoming an historian was shaped by the exclusion and challenges of his Chinese Canadian ancestors in BC.” Trevor Marc Hughes presents an interview segment with historian and UBC professor Henry Yu
“…Mather devotes the majority of the book to recounting the lives of the inhabitants of the house. This is both haunting and compelling. While all the families had ‘privileged lives’ based on their economic and social standing, they were subject to the joys and sorrows of ordinary living. Adriana A. Davies reviews Coldstream Lake House: A storied landmark of the Okanagan, by Ken Mather (Surrey: Hancock House, 2024) $24.95 / 9780888397690
“300 Mason Jars: Preserving History is a book to be treasured. Beautifully presented in colour, the delightful poems and contents of the mason jars can be savoured and preserved for years to come.” Valerie Green reviews 300 Mason Jars: Preserving History, by Joanne Thomson (Victoria: Heritage House, 2024) $34.95 / 9781772935162
“Blanchet’s writing epitomises the provincial stereotype as the home of aspirant eccentrics, philosophically ponderous lumberjacks, and hopeless romantics seeking to carve out a small, domesticated presence in the dense rainforest. Blanchet’s representation of British Columbia, in which urban settlement is an exception to the cultural status quo, still resonates today…” Matthew Downey reviews The Curve of Time: New, Expanded Edition, by M. Wylie Blanchet (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $19.95 / 9781990776786
“This is Taylor’s third architectural biography. His previous two were The Spencer Mansion: A House, A Home and an Art Gallery and The Birdcages: British Columbia First Legislative Buildings 1859-1857. In terms of its topic, the book nestles between two previous volumes, Peter Cotton’s architectural exploration of the two Cary Castles that preceded the present 1958 Government House, Vice Regal Mansions of British Columbia, and Government House: The Ceremonial Home of All British Columbians by Rosemary Neering and Tony Owen which primarily focuses on the current house. Martin Segger reviews Between Heaven and Balmoral: A History of Cary Castle, British Columbia’s First Government House 1860-1899, by Robert Ratcliffe Taylor (Victoria: Friesen Press, 2024) $17.49 / 9781039184534
“From the sexual imagery of butterflies, to the confused and chaotic state of mind brought on by natural landscape and creatures found in them, to the exploration of potential structure shown in consequential panels, Shadbolt appears to have been an artist who not only absorbed the natural world in the place called British Columbia but also attempted to describe the state of mind it created within him.” Trevor Marc Hughes reviews Jack Shadbolt: In His Words by Susan M. Mertens (ed.) (Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2024) $40 / 9781773272559
“Díaz literally projects herself into the biography, frequently adding her own experiences to information about Fortes she presents. If the reader is aware of the facts known about Fortes, they do not come to know him any better or more than before she produced this biography. It is a memoir of her search, her overlay of her daily lived experiences onto the life of a man dead now more than one hundred years.” Searching for Serafim: The Life and Legacy of Serafim “Joe” Fortes, by Ruby Smith Díaz (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025) $21.95 / 9781551529752
“Andruff is proud of his own successes and those of his family since their arrival in Canada as refugees in the 1920s. He is not boastful. Rather, Andruff’s goal is to demonstrate the struggles and achievements of refugees.” Duff Sutherland reviews The Russian Refugees: A Family’s First Century in Canada, by Michael Andruff (Vancouver: Heritage House, 2022) $26.95 / 9781772034196
“Lazarus researched hundreds of historic documents related to the disaster, retrieved personal letters from the families of those who had been on the ship, and investigated the reports of the inquiries held into the catastrophe.” Ian Kennedy reviews Beneath Dark Waters: The Legacy of the Empress of Ireland Shipwreck by Eve Lazarus (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025) $26.95 / 9781551529738
“Gumboots in the Straits is a book of poignant nostalgia, even romance, evoking the BC coast as experienced by men now in their 70s and 80s. It was a special time and place of beauty, serenity, opportunity, and adventure for those attracted to the sea, boats, and closeness to nature.” Tom Koppel reviews Gumboots in the Straits: Nautical Adventures from Sointula to the Salish Sea, edited by Lou Allison with Jane Wilde (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2024) $26 / 9781773861548
“But Archibald – author Graeme Menzies uses his given name rather than his surname – is vocally against the plundering and abuse of the First Nations his ships encountered. In fact, he befriended them during his two round-the-world voyages that brought him to the west coast of Vancouver Island.” Ron Verzuh reviews Bones: The Life and Adventures of Doctor Archibald Menzies, by Graeme Menzies (Dunbeath, Scotland: Whittles Publishing, 2024) $23.95 / 9781849955911
“Mynett has dug deeply into HBC logs and personal journals to bring us this story of harsh competition and survival in a land of often unbearable cold and danger.” Ron Verzuh reviews A Gentlemen of Considerable Talent: William Brown and the Fur Trade, 1811-1827, by Geoff Mynett (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2024) $26 / 9781773861524
“McAlpine’s memoir is a cogent, salubrious reminder that our accolades and impressive achievements are, more often than not, seldom the reason why anyone likes or trusts us. Initially, McAlpine keeps his recovery and his doctorly life neatly compartmentalized.” Jessica Poon reviews Prescription: Ice Cream: A Doctor’s Journey to Discover What Matters, by Alastair McAlpine (Johannesburg: Pan MacMillan South Africa, 2024) $37.50 / 9781770108042
“Their book, a collection of case studies, reveals the parallel experience of Indigenous women living on the Canadian prairie in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the ‘nuance and diversity in their everyday lives, in how they responded to, resisted, and refused settler colonial intrusion, and in the ways they persisted in the face of the many transitions that infringed on their traditional ways of life.'” Linda Rogers reviews Métis Matriarchs: Agents of Transition by Cheryl Troupe and Doris Jeanne MacKinnon (eds.) (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2024) $34.95 / 9781779400116
“It’s all BC coastal lore – this is Harbour Publishing and Howard White after all. Yet each volume is very different from the other. And the many authors involved amount to a virtual who’s who of the coast’s contemporary non-fiction writers.” Howard Macdonald Stewart reviews Raincoast Chronicle: Fifth Five, by Howard White [ed.] (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $60 / 9781990776939
“What Todd has written and photographed is a riveting, honest book which Bruce Kirkby aptly states in his introduction – examines ‘mortality, meaning and connection’ with a ‘ruthless honesty (which) reminds me at times of Anthony Bourdain on two wheels.'” Isabel Nanton reviews Inside the Belly of an Elephant: A Motorcycle Journey of Loss, Legacy and Ultimate Freedom by Todd Lawson (Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2023) $30 / 9781771605755
“Not one single gravestone stands to mark my family. It is as though they didn’t exist.” —In “The Blood in the Stone” Deborah Lane excavates family history and imagines life as it might have been.
“Ann-Lee Switzer discovered the stories in the BC Archives of the Royal BC Museum in Victoria. Five previously unpublished stories have been added to the collection first published in 2007. Nearly thirty of Carr’s original illustrations are also included.” Mary Ann Moore reviews This And That: The Lost Stories of Emily Carr (Revised and Updated) by Emily Carr, Ann-Lee Switzer (ed.) (Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2024) $26 / 9781771514484
