Bloom Where You Are Planted: 50 Conversations with Inspiring British Columbians by Beka Shane Denter Victoria: Heritage House Publishing, 2022 $39.95 / 9781772034295 Reviewed by Valerie Green * This book by Beka Shane Denter is an inspirational collection of interviews in the form of Q&As with photographs, of a group of fifty (forty-nine women and…
Read more 1935 United through art
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
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
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
A Dancer’s Pilgrimage by Lolla Devindisch Salt Spring Island: Rainbow Publishers & Invocation Press, 2022 $20.00 / 9781778160301 Reviewed by Wendy Judith Cutler * I was born beside the smouldering flames of the Mexican volcano Popocatépetl (p. 9). This was how eight-year-old Lolla Devindisch began her memoir at the time. Decades later she returned to her…
Read more 1707 From Popocatépetl to Salt Spring
Falling into Flight: A Memoir of Life and Dance by Kaija Pepper Winnipeg: Signature Editions, 2020 $19.95 / 9781773240831 Reviewed by Maria Tippett * In the early 1930s two dancers from British Columbia were invited to join the corps de ballet of Basil’s famous Ballets Russes. The offer came with one condition: Patricia Meyers from…
Read more 1062 Pepper’s ballet and dance
MEMOIR: A country in transition: Russia, 1990-1995 by Max Wyman * But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them – from Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928) I’d been in love with Russia, off and on, since…
Read more 1035 A country in transition: Russia, 1990-95
Susan Benson: Art, Design and Craft on Stage by Patricia Flood Richmond Hill, ON: Firefly Books, 2019 $35.00 / 9780228101772 Reviewed by Celia Duthie * Susan Benson has had a charmed career. For over forty years, as a theatre designer and costumer for stage productions in England and North America, she has been a mistress…
Read more #673 Catalyst of creative fantasy
ESSAY: Theatre in Vancouver Today: A Paradox by Carol Volkart First published July 8, 2017 * Everything about the Pacific Theatre is modest — from the low-ceilinged lobby with its island of couches around a coffee table, to its urns of self-serve coffee (regular or decaf), to its 128-seat alley-style theatre where a spectator who…
Read more #148 Pacific Theatre almost homeless