Surrey: A City of Stories by K. Jane Watt Surrey: City of Surrey Heritage Services (Fenton Street Publishing), 2017 $25.00 / 9780973910919 Reviewed by Janet Mary Nicol First published March 16, 2018 * This visually rich book provides a satisfying history of the City of Surrey, the fastest growing in Metro Vancouver, with B.C.’s second…
Read more #265 Surrey gets proper billing
Morrison: The Long-lost Memoir of Canada’s Artillery Commander in the Great War. Major-General Sir Edward Morrison by Susan Raby-Dunne (editor) Victoria: Heritage House Publishing, 2017 $22.95 / 9781772032147 Reviewed by Michael Sasges First published March 15, 2019 * Edward Morrison was one of no more than fifty general officers who directed Canadian Corps battlefield activities…
Read more #264 From John McCrae to Morrison
Georgia Straight: A 50th Anniversary Celebration by Doug Sarti and Dan McLeod, with an introduction by Bob Geldof and essays by Mike Harcourt, Paul Watson, and Bif Naked Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2017 $40.00 / 9781771602525 Reviewed by Ron Dart First published Mar. 10, 2018 * In February 1967, the name Georgia Straight was hatched…
Read more #263 Georgia Straight honoured
The Last House at Bridge River: The Archaeology of an Aboriginal Household in British Columbia During the Fur Trade Period by Anna Marie Prentiss (editor) Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2017 $59.00 (U.S) / 9781607815433 Reviewed by Bob Muckle First published March 9, 2018 * Editor’s note: While the coastal Indigenous people of…
Read more #262 Lillooet pithouses revisited
Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi: Teachings from Long Ago Person Found by Richard J. Hebda, Sheila Greer, and Alexander Mackie (editors) Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum, 2017 $49.95 / 9780772666994 Reviewed by Tom Koppel First published March 7, 2018 * It was back in August of 1999, in the northwest corner of British Columbia, in the traditional territory of…
Read more #261 Tatshenshini Man
Ryga Award announcement, 2018 This year’s Ryga Award winner for Social Awareness goes to Georgia Straight journalist Travis Lupick for Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City’s Struggle with Addiction. First published March 6, 2018 * “I hope that Fighting for Space receiving this award encourages discussion of Canada’s overdose…
Read more #260 Travis’s travail wins Ryga
Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws: Yerí7 Stsq̓ey̓s-kucw by Marianne Ignace and Ronald Ignace Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2017 $39.95 / 9780773551305 Reviewed by Sarah A. Nickel First published March 5, 2018 * Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws: Yerí7 Stsq̓ey̓s-kucw (McGill-Queen’s University Press), by Marianne Ignace and Ronald Ignace, is a long-awaited study of…
Read more #259 Celebrate Secwépemc Shuswap
The Reconciliation Manifesto: Recovering the Land, Rebuilding the Economy by Arthur Manuel and Grand Chief Ronald Derrickson, with a preface by Naomi Klein Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, 2017 $22.95 / 9781459409613 Reviewed by J.R. (Jim) Miller First published March 4, 2018 * In the conversation about reconciliation that Canadians are having at the…
Read more #258 We stole it fair and square
Prime Ministerial Power in Canada: Its Origins under Macdonald, Laurier, and Borden by Patrice Dutil Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017 $34.95 / 9780774834742 Reviewed by Barbara J. Messamore First published March 2, 2018 * Patrice Dutil seeks to lay to rest the pervasive notion that the prime minister’s office has become increasingly “presidential” in recent decades,…
Read more #257 Macdonald, Laurier, Borden
ESSAY: I’m not your man: Norman Bethune & women by Larry Hannant First published Feb. 28, 2018 * Doctor, medical innovator, propagandist, artist, political activist — Norman Bethune is nothing if not multitalented. The same complexity marks his character. The accounts of friends and acquaintances portray a man whose personality was multifaceted and contradictory, at once…
Read more #256 Bethune: I’m not your man
The Spitfire Luck of Skeets Ogilvie: From the Battle of Britain to the Great Escape by Keith Ogilvie Victoria: Heritage House, 2017 $22.95 / 9781772032116 Reviewed by Michael Sasges First published Feb. 28, 2018 * The Spitfire Luck of Skeets Ogilvie tells the story of two Canadians who made an ordinary life together after some extraordinary…
Read more #255 Spitfire luck of Skeets Ogilvie
Euclid’s Orchard and Other Essays by Theresa Kishkan Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue Publishing, 2017 $22.95 / 9781896949635 Reviewed by Catriona Sandilands First published Feb. 27, 2018 * My kitchen, on this wet, early January afternoon, is saturated with the smell of apples slowly reducing to become apple butter. In the almost-forgotten autumn, my daughter…
Read more #254 Theresa Kishkan’s orchard
Surveying the Great Divide: The Alberta/BC Boundary Survey, 1913-1917 by Jay Sherwood Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2017 $29.95 / 9781987915525 Reviewed by Robert Allen First published Feb. 25, 2018 * Retired teacher-librarian at Vanderhoof and past president of the Nechako Valley Historical Society, Jay Sherwood has provided nine indispensable – and overdue — histories and…
Read more #253 The divide of mountains and wine
First published Feb. 24, 2018. Lace Up: A History of Skates in Canada by Jean-Marie Leduc, with Sean Graham & Julie Leger Victoria: Heritage House Publishing Company, 2017. $19.95 / 9781772032277 Reviewed by David Mills * A photo near the start of Lace-Up: A History of Skates in Canada will be familiar to many Canadians….
Read more #252 We came, we saw, we skated
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Random House Canada), 2018 $34.95 / 9780345816023 Reviewed by Ron Dart First published Feb. 23, 2018 * Controversial University of Toronto psychologist and cultural critic Jordan Peterson, condemned by Maclean’s as “the stupid man’s smart person,” has spoken to…
Read more #251 The stupid man’s smart person?
First published Feb. 22, 2018. The Campbell Revolution? Power, Politics, and Policy in British Columbia J.R. (Jason) Lacharite and Tracy Summerville (editors) Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2017. $34.95 / 9780773551039 Reviewed by Hamish Telford Duplicitous in terms of his First Nations policies, Gordon Campbell was likewise self-serving when it came to the arts;…
Read more #250 Gordon Campbell, a reckoning
Binning House by Matthew Soules (text) and Michael Perlmutter (photography) Novato, California: ORO Editions, 2017 UBC SALA/West Coast Modern House Series $24.95 (U.S.) / 9871939621665 Reviewed by Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe First published Feb. 19, 2018 * Architecture critic Adele Weder is now trying to preserve the much-admired house that was built and designed by Bert Binning…
Read more #249 West Vancouver modern
Journey to Kaho’olawe by Hans Winkler and Cease Wyss (T’uy’t’tanat) Vancouver: Grunt Gallery, 2017 $20.00 / 9781988708027 Reviewed by Chris Arnett First published Feb. 13, 2018 * Stories of BC-Hawaiian connections have a certain allure to those of us in the temperate rainforest in that by some past association we may have something in common…
Read more #248 Kaho’olawe; 8th Hawaiian island
Vertical Horizons: The History of Okanagan Helicopters by Douglas M. Grant Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2017 $39.95 / 9781550178135 Reviewed by Wayne Wilson First published Feb. 12, 2018 * Helicopters have been and remain a romantic and unlikely marriage of technology and human aspiration; and it is really only in the last few decades…
Read more #247 High risks, high expectations
The heroism of the outsider: Alan Twigg interviews Ernest Hekkanen and Margrith Schraner First published February 11, 2018 * Novelist Bill Gaston once dubbed Ernest Hekkanen Canadian literature’s “most resolute maverick.” For twenty years he and his long-time partner Margrith Schraner resolutely published a lively and sophisticated literary periodical, New Orphic Review, without any government…
Read more #246 The heroism of the outsider