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
Holden After and Before: Love Letter for a Son Lost to Overdose by Tara McGuire Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022 $24.95 / 9781551528939 Reviewed by Colin James Sanders * Human beings, not unlike other creatures, contend with the death of loved ones, navigating grief and mourning in varying ways. Tara McGuire of Vancouver channeled her…
Read more 1702 Fragments of grief & mourning
Out of Hiding: Holocaust Literature of British Columbia by Alan Twigg (editor) Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2022 $24.95 / 9781553806622 Reviewed by Norman Ravvin * Historiographic, creative and commemorative responses to the Holocaust continue to appear in impressive and challenging ways some 75 years after the end of the Second World War. Alan Twigg’s Out of…
Read more 1690 Refuge in British Columbia
From Denmark to the Cariboo: The Epic Journey of the Lindhard Sisters by Linda Peterat Victoria: Heritage House Publishing, 2022 $26.95 / 9781772033939 Reviewed by Richard Thomas Wright * If one visits today’s centre of the Cariboo gold fields in Barkerville it would be easy to come away with the understanding that Williams creek and…
Read more 1683 The Cariboo sisters
Hemingway’s Widow: The Life and Legacy of Mary Welsh Hemingway by Timothy Christian Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2022 $42.95 / 9781459750548 Reviewed by Peter Hay * Few books survive to become classics; their fame is most oft interred with the authors’ bones. Even fewer writers lead interesting enough lives to create a whole industry of biographies,…
Read more 1679 Mary Welsh’s inheritance
The Bob Dylan Albums 2nd Edition by Anthony Varesi Montreal: Guernica Editions, 2022 $34.95 / 9781771837590 Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop * In the autumn of 1964, a precocious Bob Dylan — who had just released his fourth studio album at age twenty-three — told a writer from The New Yorker that he was moving on…
Read more 1675 A catalogue for the ages
Glory and Exile: Haida History Robes of Jut-ke-Nay Hazel Wilson by Robert Kardosh, Robin Laurence, Kūn Jaad Dana Simeon Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2022 $50.00 / 9781773271170 Reviewed by Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa * It is always fruitful to go on a journey with a quest and a good book about the destination. The book should tell…
Read more 1673 Hazel Wilson’s Haida robes
Until We Meet Again: Scouting for the CPR’s Crowsnest Line, 1891 by Jan Krijff (translator) and Karen Green (research) Vancouver: Granville Island Publishing, 2023 $24.95 / 9781989467466 Reviewed by Walter Volovsek * I was quite delighted to receive this book to review, as it connects by various tangents to my previous work in constructing walking…
Read more 1668 Long-distance romance, 1891
Of Sunken Islands and Pestilence: Restoring the Voice of Edward Taylor Fletcher to Nineteenth-Century Canadian Literature by James Gifford (editor) Athabasca, Alberta: Athabasca University Press, 2022. $34.99 / 9781771993449 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * Here’s a forgotten Canadian poet. Edward Taylor Fletcher. Also a surveyor, an immigrant from England, a cholera survivor, and a onetime volunteer…
Read more 1666 A gesture to Fletcher
Her Courage Rises: 50 Trailblazing Women of British Columbia & the Yukon by Haley Healey (text) and Kimiko Fraser (illustrations) Victoria: Heritage House, 2022 $22.95 / 9781772034257 Reviewed by Veronica Strong-Boag * In the last half century, women’s history has been a success story in Canada, as in other lands. Whether judged in terms of…
Read more 1662 Missed opportunities
SS Pacific found! by Richard Mackie In April 2017 we posted a story by historian Greg Stott about the short life and BC career of George Skippon (ca. 1833-1875), a farmer, labourer, and worker on CPR surveys who was one of about 275 people to perish in the wreck of the American steamer Pacific, outbound…
Read more 1660 SS Pacific found?
Talking to the Storykeepers: Tales from the Chilcotin Plateau by Sage Birchwater Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2022 $26.00 / 9781773860800 Reviewed by Richard T. Wright * The Cariboo-Chilcotin-Coast region in the central-west portion of the province of BC is a land renowned for broad grasslands, magnificent mountains, fast glacial rivers, salmon, caribou, vast cattle ranches,…
Read more 1654 Chilcotin master chronicler
The Longest Suicide: The Authorized Biography of Art Bergmann by Jason Schneider, with a foreword by Michael Turner Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2022 $24.95 / 9781772141962 Reviewed by Catherine Owen * As I turn the shiny pages of this necessary biography of Canada’s enfant terrible, or “punk poet laureate” as he’s more often billed, songwriter and…
Read more 1653 Minding a vital musician
Out of the Fire: Metalworkers along the Salish Sea by Pirjo Raits. Photographs by Dale Roth and Michele Ramberg Victoria: Heritage House, 2022 $39.95 / 9781772033434 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * The cover image of a book entitled Out of the Fire might be expected to be aflame with oranges and red. Not this one: even…
Read more 1621 Noise, heat, smoke, & smell
Love in Vile Places: Military Hospitals as the Site of Care and Nurture by Jo-Anne Fiske * For Remembrance Day 2022 we present a memoir by Jo-Anne Fiske of Fraser 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 1617 Love in vile places
A Century in the North Peace: The Life and Times of Anne and John Callison by Erín Moure, with Anne Callison Montreal and Vancouver: Zat-So Productions, 2018 $22.79 / 9780986759529 Reviewed by Ken Favrholdt * Poet and translator Erin Moure with her 96-year-old aunt Anne Callison in 2018 wrote a remarkable, lovingly composed, and detailed…
Read more 1606 Peace River portraits
Don’t Call It A Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of NXIVM by Sarah Berman Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Viking), 2021 $24.95 / 9780735237896 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Be Afraid for Your Daughters: Parents lock the door, if you can, on predators bearing false promise of enlightenment What do…
Read more 1600 Parents, lock that door
Lost in the Valley of Death: A Story of Obsession and Danger in the Himalayas by Harley Rustad Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Knopf Canada), 2022 $34.00 / 9780735279469 Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop * For some readers, stories like this one are a tempting invitation to satire. There is, after all, much fodder for lampoonery…
Read more 1597 Get lost, young man
Johnny of Maillardville by Marie-Laure Chevrier with illustrations by Michael Kluckner Vancouver: Midtown Press, 2021 $15.95/ 9781988242422 * Monsieur Maillardville: Un Pionnier Visionnaire par Marie-Laure Chevrier avec illustrations par Michael Kluckner Vancouver: Éditions du Pacifique Nord-Ouest, 2021 $15.95 / 9782925064121 Reviewed by Patricia E. Roy * …
Read more 1587 Monsieur Maillardville