People, Power, and Progress: The Story of John Hart Dam and the Campbell River Power Projects by Daniel Stoffman Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2017 $24.95 / 9781927958384 Reviewed by James Hull Co-published with the BC Hydro Power Pioneers. First published Dec. 11, 2017 * The John Hart Dam and generating station opened in December of…
Read more #218 One dammed river before another
First published Dec. 4, 2017. Chasing Smoke. A Wildfire Memoir by Aaron Williams Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2017. $22.95 / 9781550178050 Reviewed by Dan Gallacher The threat of terrorism is over-rated. ‘First responders’ were everywhere in 2017 dealing with hurricanes, earthquakes and forest fires. Aaron Williams’ Chasing Smoke: A Wildfire Memoir (Harbour $22.95)…
Read more #213 The forest smokeaters
Powering Up Canada A History of Power, Fuel, and Energy from 1600 by Ruth Sandwell (editor) Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016. $37.95 / 9780773547865 Reviewed by Dan Gallacher First published Nov. 7, 2017 Years ago I likened history to a diamond. Each time it is turned in the light, another facet is revealed….
Read more #197 Power to the people
First published Nov. 1, 2017 REVIEW: Longshoring on the Fraser: Stories and History of ILWU Local 502 by Chris M.V. Madsen, Liam O’Flaherty, and Michelle La Vancouver: Granville Island Publishing, 2016. $29.95 / 9781926991832 Reviewed by Sean Cadigan * Longshoring on the Fraser tells “the story of ILWU [International Longshore and Warehouse Union] Local 502”…
Read more #192 New Westminster at work
First published October 30, 2017 REVIEW: Enterprising Nature: Economics, Markets, and Finance in Global Biodiversity Politics by Jessica Dempsey Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. £19.99 (U.K.). / 978-1-118-64060-9 Reviewed by Juliane Collard * In Enterprising Nature: Economics, Markets, and Finance in Global Biodiversity Politics, UBC geographer Jessica Dempsey considers the problem of biodiversity loss in the modern…
Read more #191 Biodiversity in the boardroom
Unbuilt Environments: Tracing Postwar Development in Northwest British Columbia by Jonathan Peyton Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017 $32.95 / 9780774833059 Reviewed by Wade Davis First published October 23, 2017 * My father came of age in the 1930s, son of a doctor in the lead zinc mining town of Kimberly in the East Kootenays. To reach…
Read more #186 Northern industrial follies
Beckoned by the Sea: Women at Work on the Cascadian Coast by Sylvia Taylor Victoria: Heritage House, 2017. $19.95 / 9781772031799 Reviewed by Molly Clarkson First published October 16, 2017 * Sylvia Taylor’s Beckoned by the Sea: Women at Work on the Cascadian Coast brings together the stories of twenty-four women whose career paths brought…
Read more #182 Reckoning the beckoned
Essay: Refuge of a Scoundrel: Patriotism and William Bowser by Wayne Norton First published Oct. 13, 2017 * In this Ormsby Review exclusive, Wayne Norton reveals that in his brief term in office (1915-16), the Conservative Premier William Bowser fanned the flames of patriotism stoked by mounting Canadian war casualties and the German sinking of…
Read more #180 BC’s Great War internments
Tar Wars: Oil, Environment and Alberta’s Image by Geo Takach Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press, 2017 $34.95 / 9781772121407 Reviewed by Nichole Dusyk First published Sept. 29, 2017 * In the first pages of Tar Wars, Geo Takach of Royal Roads University repudiates his own title and coins the term “bit-sands” to refer to the…
Read more #174 Lights, camera, action, debate
Canadian Countercultures and the Environment Colin M. Coates (editor) Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2016 $34.95 / 9781552388143 Reviewed by Lauren Harding First published September 17, 2017 * I read the last pages of Colin Coates’s edited collection while lying on Vancouver’s infamous Wreck Beach. Around me fresh University of British Columbia undergraduates gawked at…
Read more #170 Midwifery, bongos & blue boxes
Beyond Mile Zero: The Vanishing Alaska Highway Lodge Community by Lily Gontard (text) and Mark Kelly (photographs) Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2017 $24.95 / 9781550177978 Reviewed by Heather Longworth Sjoblom First published September 6, 2017 * 2017 marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the construction of the Alaska Highway through British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska. Throughout…
Read more #165 Alaska Highway before GPS
First published June 15, 2017 REVIEW: The Promise of Paradise: Utopian Communities in British Columbia By Andrew Scott Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2017. $24.95 / 978-1-55017-771-8 Reviewed by Keith Norbury Five centuries ago, when Thomas More conceived of a fictional perfect society, he named it Utopia, from a Greek word meaning “nowhere.” Three-and-half centuries later,…
Read more #139 Perfection is hard work
Fred Herzog: Modern Color texts by David Campany, Hans-Michael Koetzle, Jeff Wall Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2016 €38.00 / 9783775741811 Reviewed by Bill Jeffries First published May 22, 2017 * Fred Herzog, who is 87 years old in 2017, had to wait until 2011 for a substantial book (Fred Herzog Photographs, Douglas & McIntyre) illustrating…
Read more #128 Fred Herzog’s genius
ESSAY: Chief Tetlenitsa’s Apples: Commercializing Indigenous Horticulture in British Columbia, 1907-1916 by Michael Sasges First published April 25, 2017 * In 1916, orchardist Chief John Tetlenitsa of Spences Bridge took a wagon of 40 boxes of apples into Merritt, the new town in the Nicola Valley, only to have the Chief Constable seize the apples…
Read more #124 Banning Indigenous apples, 1916
A Great Old Tramp: Letters from a Canadian Sojourner in British Columbia, 1873-1875 by Greg Stott First published April 22, 2017 * Editor’s note, December 9, 2022: The SS Pacific, on which George Skippon met his death in November 1875, has been found! See this CTV news story and a CTV video here. Editor’s foreword:…
Read more #123 Out of this world: George Skippon in BC, 1873-1875
A River Captured: The Columbia River Treaty and Catastrophic Change by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2016 $20 / 9781771601788 Reviewed by John Gellard First published April 20, 2017 * Previously, in her Harnessing The Power: Voices from Two Rivers of the Peace and Columbia (Douglas & McIntyre, 2012), Meg Stanley assessed the…
Read more #122 River-as-machine vs ecosytem
Gold Rush Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Nellie Cashman by Thora Kerr Illing Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2016 $18.95 / 9781771511599 Reviewed by Charlene Porsild First published April 11, 2017 * Thora Illing’s Gold Rush Queen retells the life and times of Nellie Cashman, a beautiful, Irish-American businesswoman, entrepreneur, philanthropist, champion dog musher and lifelong spinster…
Read more #118 Grubstake angel
Great Fortune Dream: The Struggles and Triumphs of Chinese Settlers in Canada, 1858-1966 by David Chuenyan Lai and Ding Guo Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2016 $26.95 / 9781987915037 Reviewed by Tzu-I Chung First published March 27, 2107 * In Great Fortune Dream, David Chuenyan Lai and Ding Guo tell of the struggles and triumphs of…
Read more #109 From exclusion to equality
Hell’s History: The United Steelworkers’ Fight to Prevent Workplace Deaths and Injuries from the 1992 Westray Mine Disaster through 2016 by Tom Sandborn Vancouver: United Steelworkers, 2016 9780995843707 Out of print in hard copy but free digital copy available here. Reviewed by Ron Verzuh First published Mar. 1, 2017 * Tom Sandborn’s Hell’s History opens…
Read more #97 Getting away with murder
People of the Saltwater: An Ethnography of Git lax m’oon by Charles R. Menzies Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2016 $45.00 (U.S.) / 9780803288089 Reviewed by Robert Muckle First published Feb. 22, 2017 * A pinch of sea salt goes with the territory… In People of the Saltwater, UBC anthropologist Charles Menzies provides an…
Read more #92 Of salmon, herring and abalone