The Fierce: The Untold Story of the Teenager Who Took on the Worst War Criminal Living in America by Judy Piercey Cheltenham, UK: The History Press, 2023 £20.05 / 9781803991153 Reviewed by Peter Hay * The Holocaust was not a single event, confined to a singular city or country, nor was it caused by one…
Read more 1923 A complex path to justice
Almost Brown: A Mixed Race Family Memoir by Charlotte Gill Toronto: Penguin RandomHouse, 2023 $36 hardcover / 9780735243033 Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop * The author of various fiction and narrative non-fiction titles, including the tree-planting memoir Eating Dirt, Sunshine Coast-based Charlotte Gill is a gifted storyteller. Her new memoir explores how the author’s self-image and…
Read more 1905 Stuck in the middle with you
The All + Flesh By Brandi Bird Toronto: House of Anansi, 2023 $16.99 / 9781487011826 Reviewed by Linda Rogers * We are all changed. Plague and pestilence have left many of us in a state of grief, our innocence lost, experience teaching us the perils of hubris. As usual, prayer translates to poetry as our…
Read more 1894 Notes on grief
Capturing the Summit: Hamilton Mack Laing and the Mount Logan Expedition of 1925 by Trevor Marc Hughes Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2023 $24.95 / 9781553806806 Reviewed by Sage Birchwater * When naturalist/cinematographer Hamilton Mack Laing was commissioned by the National Museum of Canada to accompany the expedition making the first ascent of Mount Logan in 1925,…
Read more 1870 Mack Laing in Alaska
Interview channel update by Richard Mackie * Since January 2023 Trevor Hughes, interim non-fiction editor of The British Columbia Review, has branched out as Video Segment Producer and curator of our new Interview Channel, hosted by YouTube. So far, Trevor has uploaded thirteen interviews that capture in words a broad spectrum of British Columbian authors,…
Read more 1841 BC Review interviews update
Welcome Trevor and Brett by Richard Mackie * On behalf of the Board of the Ormsby Literary Society and our Advisory Board I’d like to welcome Trevor Marc Hughes and Brett Josef Grubisic as interim editors of The British Columbia Review for the year May 1, 2023 to May 1, 2024. The position was made possible…
Read more 1813 Welcome Trevor and Brett
Indigiqueerness: A Conversation About Storytelling by Joshua Whitehead, in dialogue with Angie Abdou Athabasca, Alberta: Athabasca University Press, 2023 $19.99 / 9781771993913 Reviewed by Mary Ann Moore * Joshua Whitehead doesn’t feel ashamed writing about sex he says. When he went home to “the rez,” he’d prefer helping the women in the kitchen where all…
Read more 1805 Nêhiyawêwin: being Cree
Ron Thom, Architect: The Life of a Creative Modernist by Adele Weder Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2022 $37.95 / 9781771643221 Reviewed by Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe * Ron Thom, reflecting in the early 1980s on his work as a creator of living and lived-in spaces averred, “any form of design or expression is locked in time. Whether it…
Read more 1790 Thom’s modernist masterpieces
Between Good and Evil: The Stolen Girls of Boko Haram by Mellissa Fung Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2023 $36.99 / 9781443456081 Reviewed by Isabel Nanton * Canadian Journalist Mellissa Fung has written an important book which amplifies her documentary Captive, the story of three Nigerian girls captured by Boko Haram (which translates as “Western education is…
Read more 1785 Lost in Sambisa Forest
Rare Merit: Women in Photography in Canada, 1840-1940 by Colleen Skidmore Vancouver: UBC Press, 2022 $39.95 / 9780774867054 Reviewed by Maria Tippett * Anyone who ever doubted the presence of female photographers in Canada from the middle of the nineteenth century ought to read Rare Merit: Women in Photography in Canada, 1840-1940. Colleen Skidmore begins…
Read more 1772 Daguerreotype to Kodak
E.J. Hughes: Canadian War Artist by Robert Amos Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2022 $35.00 / 9781771513852 Reviewed by Peter Clarke * Few artists have been so quintessentially identified with the West Coast as E.J. Hughes. At the time of his death in 2007 he had long been known as a reclusive figure living at Shawnigan Lake…
Read more 1760 E.J. Hughes: the formative years
Announcing the BC Review interview series by Richard Mackie * In November 2022, at the most recent board meeting of the Ormsby Literary Society, the chair, Byron Sheardown, suggested that we open a YouTube channel and start an interview series. Board member Trevor Marc Hughes jumped at the suggestion. “I’ve got filmmaking experience,” he said,…
Read more 1757 Announcing interview series
Anthony Thorn. For the Honour of Art: Essays and Opinions by Lyndon Grove, Ihor Holubizky, and Brent Raycroft (editors), with contributions by Anthony Thorn, Robert Amos, and Garry Gaudet Victoria: Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and Regina: the MacKenzie Gallery, 2022. Printed by Friesens, Altona, Manitoba $34.99 / 9780888853868 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski Note: interviews…
Read more 1749 Calling Anthony Thorn
Mother Tongue Publishing Limited: Trade Books and Limited Editions 1995-2021 Salt Spring Island, 2022 Available here for $10.00 including postage A special report by Phyllis Parham Reeve * Mona Fertig has retired. How can that be? For more than 40 years Mona has been a force of nature in BC’s literary community. First, there was…
Read more 1743 Mother Tongue bites its tongue
Long Time Dead: My Investigation into the Unsolved Murder of Ralph Wilson Snair by Susan McIver Victoria: FriesenPress, 2022 $14.99 / 9781039151123 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * The great advantage a fictional murder mystery has over a true crime saga is that in fiction the detective always gets his man. Oh, okay, there was that…
Read more 1735 The matter of Snair & Weasner
Our Love Affair with Dance by Karen McKinlay Kurnaedy Privately printed, 2022 (Ingram Distributors and Karen Kurnaedy) $24.99 / 9781778111402 Reviewed by Maria Tippett * In Our Love Affair with Dance Karen McKinlay Kurnaedy makes clear that Canadian historians have given dance, and especially modern dance, far too little attention. But this is just one…
Read more 1726 For the love of dance
14 Months on Franz Joseph Land by Mykhailo Ivanychuk, edited and translated by Gloria Atamanenko Summerland: Danny Evanishen/ Ethnic Enterprises, 2002 $20.00 / 9780973242812 Reviewed by Sage Birchwater Editor’s note: Contact Sage Birchwater by email at sagebirchwater@shaw.ca or on Facebook to buy a copy of 14 Months on Franz Joseph Land for $20.00 plus $5.00…
Read more 1715 Franz Josef Land to Tatla Lake
Feeling Feminism: Activism, Affect, and Canada’s Second Wave by Lara Campbell, Michael Dawson, and Catherine Gidney (editors) Vancouver: UBC Press, 2022 $34.95 / 9780774866507 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * Increasingly I feel myself becoming historical. The feeling comes with advancing age, enhanced by encountering the work of a younger generation of scholars such as Lara…
Read more 1713 Getting emotional
Deadly Triangle: The Famous Architect, His Wife, Their Chauffeur, and Murder Most Foul by Susan Goldenberg Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2022 $23.99 / 9781459750302 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Anyone who lives in British Columbia’s capital city or has visited the beautiful city of Victoria and admired the Parliament buildings and the world-famous Empress Hotel in…
Read more 1705 Scandal of the century
Our Homes on Indigenous Lands: Stories of My Ancestors Across Turtle Island by Mali Bain Surrey: Hancock House, 2022 $24.95 / 9780888397416 Reviewed by Ken Favrholdt * Our Homes on Indigenous Lands: Stories of My Ancestors Across Turtle Island is a deceptively lean book about family history but entails a broad canvas that spans over…
Read more 1704 Turtle Island chronicles