Lost Lagoon / lost in thought: prose poems by Betsy Warland Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2020 $20.00 / 9781773860251 Reviewed by Adrienne Drobnies * As I write this now into a third month of being at home during the Covid-19 pandemic, I think what could be more agreeable than to go for a stroll around…
Read more #838 Finding hope in Lost Lagoon
My Favourite Crime: Essays and Journalism from Around the World by Deni Ellis Béchard Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2019 $24.95 / 9781772012323 Reviewed by Howard Macdonald Stewart * Deni Béchard’s My Favourite Crime is a powerful collection of writing. The book’s cover blurb, not something I usually put much faith in, contains much truth: this really is…
Read more #837 The global frame of Deni Béchard
Chinatown Through a Wide Lens: The Hidden Photographs of Yucho Chow by Catherine B. Clement, translated by Winnie L. Cheung Vancouver: Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia, 2020 $70.00 / 9780993659331 Reviewed by May Q. Wong * Chinatown’s photographer was not just for Chinese. This substantial coffee-table book of photographs tells not one, but…
Read more #836 Yucho Chow’s wide & diverse lens
My yt mama by Mercedes Eng Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2020 $16.95 / 9781772012552 Reviewed by Grace Lau * As I read through Mercedes Eng’s poetry collection, my yt mama, I found myself in a liminal space that is rarely explored in the stories in mainstream culture. How many stories about “yt mamas” and Chinese fathers do…
Read more #835 Songs for crossover Mamas
Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds by Yvonne Blomer (editor) Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2020 $22.95 / 9781773860220 Reviewed by John Swanson * Sweet Water is an important and timely book, about fresh water in all its many forms — lakes, ponds, rivers, creeks and streams, wetlands, marshes, and ground water, the water under the…
Read more #833 A fresh water poetry anthology
Itineraries: An Intellectual Odyssey by Philip Resnick Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2020 $21.95 / 9781553806028 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * Philip Resnick is an old-fashioned Canadian nationalist. I don’t mean harking back to the National Policy of Sir John A. Not that old-fashioned. More the nationalism of the 1970s, the Waffle Movement in the NDP, the…
Read more #832 Marx, Malthus, and Meech Lake
Robert Service: The True Adventures of Yukon’s Favourite Bard by Elle Andra-Warner Victoria: Heritage House, 2020 (first published as Robert Service: A Great Canadian Poet’s Romance with the North, Altitude Publishing, 2004) $9.95 / 9781772033311 Reviewed by William R. Morrison * As an experiment in the lasting influence of poetry in this country, I thought…
Read more #831 Don’t mention the Yukon Poet
Girls Like Me by Kristin Butcher Victoria: Orca Books, 2019 $9.95 / 9781459820555 Reviewed by Carol Anne Shaw Trigger warning: rape, sexual coercion, miscarriage * Kristin Butcher of Campbell River has written more than twenty books for young people, and has been shortlisted for a variety of Canadian literary awards during her career. She writes…
Read more #830 Sweeping rape under the rug
Footprints of a Foodie by Tanya dePape Victoria: FriesenPress Publishers, 2019 $30.99 / 9781525548307 Reviewed by Natalie Lang * Have you ever felt the need to uproot your life, visit a far off place, and reboot your perspective? Vancouver Island clinical counsellor Tanya dePape, in the wake of a divorce and several failed attempts at…
Read more #829 A pre-Covid foodie flyabout
The Cure for Hate: A Former White Supremacist’s Journey from Violent Extremism to Radical Compassion by Tony McAleer, with a foreword by Daisy Khan Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019 $22.95 / 9781551527697 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Fighting Hatred: How a Vancouver Skinhead Reinvented Himself As a Canadian living in the United States, I am…
Read more #828 Compassion in a dangerous time
Inside View: The Eye Behind the Lens by Michael G. Varga and Roxanne Davies Victoria: Island Blue (Printorum), 2018 $20.00 / 9781790697366 Reviewed by Timothy Lewis This book is available through Amazon.ca * The perception one gets through the lens of a television camera often allows the viewer to gain perspective on something they would…
Read more #826 Lights, action, Michael Varga
Moments of Glad Grace: A Memoir by Alison Wearing Toronto: ECW Press, 2020 $16.99 / 9781770415133 Reviewed by Graeme Wynn * This splendid memoir recalls the week that Alison Wearing spent researching family history with her father in Dublin. It is, on the face of it, a beautifully-crafted, bitter-sweet story of an excellent adventure. Anxious…
Read more #825 Alison’s excellent adventure
Turtle Island: The Story of North America’s First People by Eldon Yellowhorn and Kathy Lowinger Toronto: Annick Press, 2017 $16.95 / 9781554519439 * What the Eagle Sees: Indigenous Stories of Rebellion and Renewal by Eldon Yellowhorn and Kathy Lowinger Toronto: Annick Press, 2019 $16.95 / 9781773213286 Both books reviewed by Kristina Hannis * Congratulations to…
Read more #824 From Bonavista to Turtle Island
Civilian Internment in Canada: Histories & Legacies by Rhonda L. Hinther and Jim Mochoruk (editors) Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2020 $31.95 / 9780887558450 * The Stories Were Not Told: Canada’s First World War Internment Camps by Sandra Semchuk Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2019 $34.99 / 9781772123784 * Harry Livingstone’s Forgotten Men: Canadians and…
Read more #823 Canadian internment legacies
Rain City: Vancouver Reflections by John Moore Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2020 $20.00 / 9781772141399 Reviewed by Grahame Ware * On the inside front pages of Rain City: Vancouver Reflections, John Moore brandishes a quote from Paul St. Pierre: “A journalist is a reporter who can’t hold a steady job.” The instability of journalism and feature…
Read more #821 The hidden pulse of Vancouver
Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back: Poems for a Dark Time by Tom Wayman Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2020 $18.95 / 9781550179125 Reviewed by Emma Rhodes * Award-winning Canadian author Tom Wayman has returned with another poetry collection in Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back: Poems for a Dark Time. His audience, he…
Read more #820 Calgary and the world awry
Epidemics and the Modern World by Mitchell L. Hammond Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020 $54.95 / 9781487593735 Reviewed by Jody Decker * This textbook by a history professor at the University of Victoria, Mitchell Hammond, focuses on epidemics of infectious diseases which, he argues, have left the greatest impact on the modern world, even…
Read more #819 Pandemics past and present
The War Widow by Tara Moss Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2020 $34.00 / 9781443461207 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Tara Moss has created another excellent piece of crime fiction with The War Widow. The style of this book, although perhaps a little far-fetched in places, is reminiscent of old movies set in the 1940s like Casablanca,…
Read more #818 Shoulder pads & red lipstick
Actress by Anne Enright Toronto: Penguin Random House, 2020 $29.95 / 9780771005916 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * There are not many more “Irish” novelists than Booker Prize winning novelist Anne Enright. Still, her connections to British Columbia, and Vancouver Island in particular, though slender, are abiding. In a recent talk at an event in Dublin,…
Read more #817 Bad corsets and the wrong shoes
Treed: Walking in Canada’s Urban Forests by Ariel Gordon Hamilton, ON: Wolsak & Wynn, 2019 $20.00 / 9781928088752 Reviewed by Jaime Yard * It took me an inordinately long time to read Ariel Gordon’s Treed. This does not mean that it isn’t a good book. In truth, I think the pace may have been set…
Read more #816 Walking through the pandemic