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
Sun Dogs and Yellowcake: Gunnar Mines — A Canadian Story by Patricia Sandberg Surrey: Crackingstone Press, 2016 $24.99 / 9780995202306 Reviewed by Ormsby Review staff First published Feb. 18, 2017 * Sun Dogs and Yellowcake chronicles the short existence of Gunnar Mines, Saskatchewan, between 1952 and the closing of the mine in 1963. Patricia Sandberg…
Read more #90 Yellowcake & mass destruction
The Peace in Peril: The Real Cost of the Site C Dam by Christopher Pollon (text) and Ben Nelms (photos) Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2016 $24.95 / 9781550177800 Reviewed by John Gellard First published Feb. 11, 2017 * The 100 kilometres of the Peace River Valley between Hudson’s Hope and Fort St John has rich alluvial…
Read more #85 Flooding a Garden of Eden
Ootsa Lake Odyssey: George and Else Seel — A Pioneer Life on the Headwaters of the Nechako Watershed by Jay Sherwood Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2016 $24.95 / 9781987915211 Reviewed by Sage Birchwater First published Jan. 18, 2017 * Ootsa Lake Odyssey follows the lives of George and Else Seel, who worked in the Nechako…
Read more #75 Nechako before the flood
The Fur Trade Gamble: North West Company on the Pacific Slope, 1800-1820 by Lloyd Keith and John C. Jackson Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 2016 US $27.95 / 9780874223408 Reviewed by Jamie Morton First published Jan. 15, 2017 * Although often addressed over the last two centuries, the story of the early expansion of…
Read more #73 North West Company on the Pacific
The Sustainability Dilemma: Essays on British Columbia Forest and Environmental History by Robert Griffin and Richard A. Rajala Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum Press, 2016 $34.95 / 9780772669742 Reviewed by Graeme Wynn First published Dec. 28, 2016 * In The Sustainability Dilemma, Robert Griffin and Richard Rajala explore contested issues, policies, and campaigns concerning the…
Read more #69 BC forestry politics and policy
No News is Bad News: Canada’s Media Collapse — and What Comes Next by Ian Gill, foreword by Margo Goodhand Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2016 $18.95 / 9781771642682 Reviewed by David N. Wright First published Dec. 21, 2016 * Ian Gill’s No News is Bad News. Canada’s Media Collapse — And What Comes Next is a…
Read more #66 No country for old media
ESSAY: From Jalna to timber baron: reflections on the life of H.R. MacMillan by Ron Dart First published Dec. 16, 2016 * For good or ill, Harvey Reginald (H.R.) MacMillan (1885-1976) is a name synonymous with the forestry business in British Columbia. Those with a flagging or limited memory will have some minimal sense of…
Read more #64 From Jalna to timber baron
The Recorded History of the Liard Basin 1790-1910: Where British Columbia joins the Yukon and N.W.T. by Anthony Kenyon Fort Nelson: Fort Nelson News, 2016 $60.00 / 9781771364140 Reviewed by George Szasz First published Dec. 7, 2016 * Anthony Kenyon, born and raised in England, graduated in medicine at Cambridge University (1958 and married in 1959…
Read more #60 The fur trade and textual analysis
Cowboys of the Americas by Luis Fabini (photographs) and Wade Davis (text) Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2016 $50.00 / 9781771641166 Reviewed by Ken Mather First published Nov. 27, 2016 * Cowboys of the Americas dwells on the distant origins – southern Spain and Spanish America – of the vaqueros or cowmen of the grasslands of the…
Read more #51 Cow men, cowboys, vaqueros
Brewing Revolution: Pioneering the Craft Beer Movement by Frank Appleton Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2016 $24.95 / 9781550177824 Reviewed by Joe Wiebe First published No. 28, 2016 * In 1978 the back-to-the-land magazine Harrowsmith published a subversive how-to article, “The Underground Brewmaster.” It was written by Frank Appleton of Edgewood, formerly a supervisor at O’Keefe…
Read more #49 Talk is cheap, beer is better
Pioneer merchant Louis Oppenheim: not Oppenheimer by Bonnie Ellen Campbell First published Nov. 14, 2016 * Editor’s note: Bonnie Campbell assumed she was English. As a young adult she was surprised to learn that her grandmother was the daughter of a Prussian-Jewish merchant Louis Oppenheim, of Yale, and his wife Nukwa (Hannah) of Spuzzum, daughter…
Read more #42 Nukwa and the merchant of Yale
All for the Greed of Gold: Will Woodin’s Klondike Adventure by Catherine Spude (editor) Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 2016 US $27.95 / 978-0874223354 Reviewed by Robert G. McCandless First published November 9, 2016 * Our history of the past 100 years seems so dominated by wars and their consequences that we have forgotten…
Read more #40 Windy Arm, Tutchi, Tagish Lake
Tod Inlet: A Healing Place by Gwen Curry Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2015 $25.00 / 9781771600767 Reviewed by Peter Grant First published November 4, 2016 * Shortlisted for the 2016 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, Gwen Curry’s first book, Tod Inlet: A Healing Place, joins a burgeoning, British Columbian literature of place—once more an environmental vision…
Read more #36 Eelgrass, cement, serenity
Letters from Mahonia Ranche, 1888–1895 by Fred Braches First published October 31, 2016 * At the age of 23, Murdoch Kirby immigrated to British Columbia from England with his friend Charles Sprott. They homesteaded at Glenwood in south Langley at the end of today’s 216th Street near the U.S. border, each on a quarter section…
Read more #34 Mahonia Ranche, Whannock
Bob Bouchette’s last story, 1938 by Janet Nicol First published October 21, 2016 * Long before Allan Fotheringham or Eric Nicol, Vancouver’s most popular columnist was Bob Bouchette. The prolific non-conformist Bob Bouchette wrote literally thousands of columns, usually around 700 words each, mostly for The Vancouver Sun. His six-part series on the abysmal conditions…
Read more #30 Bob Bouchette, everyman scribe
Arts of the Dreamer: Dane-zaa Communities Remember Charlie Yahey by Robin Ridington First published September 24, 2016 * First Nations literature, as indeed all literature, begins with oral narrative. Writing has never entirely replaced orality as a narrative genre, even in cultures that have produced written documents for millenia. For many First Nations, oral literature…
Read more #20 Master orator Charlie Yahey
ESSAY: The Reddest Rose: Trade Unionist Harvey Murphy by Ron Vurzuh First Published: September 22nd, 2016 * Harvey Murphy is not a name that echoes loudly throughout the annals of 20th-century British Columbia labour history. In fact, the tireless trade union organizer, negotiator, and active Communist Party of Canada (CPC) bureaucrat has almost disappeared from…
Read more #19 The Reddest Rose