Two books reviewed by Harper Campbell: Standoff: Why Reconciliation Fails Indigenous People and How to Fix It by Bruce McIvor Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2021 $21.95 / 9780889714205 * Reconciliation and Indigenous Justice: A Search for Ways Forward by David Milward Black Point, NS, and Winnipeg, MB: Fernwood Publishing, 2022 $32.00 / 9781773635194 * This is…
Read more 1685 Vexation and reconciliation
Mea Culpa: A Plea of Innocence. A Memoir by Bruno Cocorocchio Victoria: FriesenPress, 2022 $24.49 / 9781039137462 Reviewed by Jane Frankish * The title of Bruno Cocorocchio’s memoir, Mea Culpa: A Plea of Innocence, has an immediate and jarring effect. It sets up a seemingly impossible concurrence of two states of being – “I am…
Read more 1670 An Italian childhood
11,000 Days at School: From Class Clown to High School Vice-Principal by Hugh Greer Vancouver: Granville Island Publishing, 2022 $22.95 / 9781989467541 Reviewed by Bill Engleson * There are moments that just seem well-timed. This was one of them. It was a Sunday morning. I had several issues on the go and was avoiding most…
Read more 1647 Hugh Greer’s career
Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia by Sean Carleton Vancouver: UBC Press, 2022 $89.95 / 9780774868075 Reviewed by Patrick A. Dunae * With its sardonic title, Lessons in Legitimacy exemplifies an activist genre of history that has emerged in Canada following the revelations and recommendations of the…
Read more 1624 Schools of thought
Spíləx̣m: A Weaving of Recovery, Resilience, and Resurgence by Nicola I. Campbell Winnipeg: HighWater Press, 2021 $32.00 / 9781553799351 Reviewed by Linda Rogers * When my friend, author, singer and educator Karen Lee White went north to celebrate the life of a beloved elder, the family women braided her long silver hair. “That is your…
Read more 1610 A star map to higher ground
Tsqelmucwílc: The Kamloops Indian Residential School – Resistance and a Reckoning by Celia Haig-Brown, Garry Gottfriedson, Randy Fred, and the KIRS Survivors Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022 $22.95 / 9781551529059 Reviewed by Mary Ann Moore * Celia Haig-Brown’s Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School was the first book ever published in Canada about…
Read more 1581 Resistance and resilience
Meet Me in Cairo: Tales of Hitchin’ in the ’60s by Jim Kerr Vancouver: Granville Island Publishing, 2022 $26.95 / 9781989467527 Reviewed by Howard Macdonald Stewart * Jim Kerr’s story of hitch hiking around North America, Europe, North Africa, and the Levant is truly a tale from another age. An era when one could count…
Read more 1574 From Kelowna to Casablanca
Literatures, Communities, and Learning: Conversations with Indigenous Writers by Aubrey Jean Hanson Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2021 $29.99 / 9781771124508 Reviewed by Harper Campbell * Indigenous literatures are relational. They are “moves” within existing relationships, calls to action, therapeutic texts, books that change the world simply by existing in a society that silences Indigenous…
Read more 1555 Affirming Indigenous learning
The Resistance Dilemma: Place-Based Movements and the Climate Crisis by George Hoberg Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (The MIT Press), 2021 $54.00 / 9780262543088 Reviewed by Stephen Bocking * The climate crisis demands that we break our fossil fuel habit. This implies an energy revolution, rewiring society to rely on renewable electricity. New technologies can…
Read more 1549 Clarifying climate policy
User experience & Sophocles by Thomas Girard * i. Ideas trapped within us We have ideas within us. They swim through our minds and sometimes move faster than we know what to do with them. A young guy approached me after the event last night and asked me what to do, with all of these…
Read more User experience & Sophocles
Inspiring Canadians: Forty Brilliant Canadians and their Visions for the Nation by Mark Bulgutch, with a foreword by Peter Mansbridge Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2022 $24.95 / 9781771623148 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * If Inspiring Canadians’ title doesn’t already mark this book as upbeat, both Mansbridge’s preface, centred on a touching anecdote from his…
Read more 1480 Forty visions of Canada
Global University Rankings and The Politics of Knowledge by Michelle Stack (editor) Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2021 $32.95 / 9781487523398 Reviewed by D.G. Marshall * Rankings. North American consumers are obsessed with rankings. We rank things — cars, putters, TVs, computers, lingerie, bicycles, hiking boots, lightbulbs. We rank food and drink — macaroni, beer,…
Read more 1396 The reputational arms race
Race, Culture, and Politics in Education: A Global Journey From South Africa by Kogila Moodley, with an afterword by Sonia Nieto Columbia University: Teachers College Press, 2020 $34.95 (U.S.) / 9780807764886 Reviewed by Isabel Nanton * A successful blend of personal memoir and insights culled from an extensive academic career, Kogila Moodley’s book, which forms…
Read more 1365 A journey from South Africa
Dreamers, Skeptics, and Healers: the Story of BC’s Medical School. The UBC Faculty of Medicine at 70 years by Wendy Cairns, John Cairns, David Ostrow, and Gavin Stuart Vancouver: Page Two Books, 2021 $50.00 / 9781989603895 Reviewed by Jaime Smith * As a graduate of the UBC medical school in 1976 and after training there…
Read more 1363 Beds and infrastructure at UBC
Royally Wronged: The Royal Society of Canada and Indigenous Peoples by Constance Backhouse, Cynthia E. Milton, Margaret Kovach, and Adele Perry (editors) Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021 $39.95 / 9780228009030 Reviewed by J.R. (Jim) Miller Disclosure: the reviewer is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada * In 2016, Dr. Cindy Blackstock…
Read more 1359 A shaky grasp at the Royal Society
Editor’s note: in January 2022, the University of British Columbia announced the acquisition of a rare copy of the first edition of the collected plays of William Shakespeare, known to scholars as the First Folio, published in 1623. One of 235 copies in existence, UBC’s copy is only the second in Canada, the other being…
Read more 1357 My kingdom for a … First Folio
St. Michael’s Residential School: Lament and Legacy by Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubenstein Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2020 $21.95 / 9781553806233 Reviewed by J.R. (Jim) Miller * In the summer of 1970 Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubinstein, recently married and just graduated from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, wanted to take some time off to…
Read more 1346 Four months at Alert Bay
In Sight: My Life in Science and Biotech by Julia Levy, with a foreword by Molly Shoichet Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020 $34.95 / 9781487508319 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * The reviewer is reading Julia Levy’s book on the bus to UBC and has just arrived at 41st and Dunbar when he gets to…
Read more 1343 Mystery at 41st and Dunbar
Five Little Indians by Michelle Good Toronto: HarperCollins Canada (Harper Perennial), 2020 $22.99 / 9781443459181 Reviewed by Harper Campbell * Teaching and healing have always been important aspects to Indigenous writing in Canada. Look at any famous Indigenous author, whether that be Pauline Johnson or Richard Wagamese, and you’ll find that teaching and healing are central…
Read more 1309 The object of Indigenous writing
Growing Dumb: An Autobiography of an English Education by Peter Quartermain Montreal and Vancouver: Zat-So Productions, 2021. Printed by Lulu.com. Also available in Vancouver through Massy Books and People’s Co-op Books $37.97 / 9780986759550 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * The most astonishing part of this book is what isn’t there. Oh, there is lots in…
Read more 1282 The reluctant academician