The Animal in the Room By Meghan Kemp-Gee Toronto: Coach House Press, 2023 $23.95 / 9781552454602 Reviewed by Jane Frankish * In The Animal in the Room, Meghan Kemp-Gee develops a poetics of the Anthropocene. In fact, this collection of poetry can be seen as a compendium of reflections on the age of human impact. …
Read more 1911 A ‘strange convergence of animal and human personas’
Strong Winds and Widow Makers: Workers, Nature, and Environmental Conflict in Pacific Northwest Timber Country by Steven C. Beda Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2023 $24.95 (USD) / ISBN 9780252086823 Reviewed by Gordon Hak * The book title might suggest that there is little of interest here for British Columbia readers, who often do not…
Read more 1902 Knowing the forest
A Man and his River: A 25-year Love Affair with a Wild Island Waterway by D.C. Reid Surrey: Hancock House, 2022 $24.95 / 9780888397287 Reviewed by Matthew Downey * The Nitinat River, cutting through the thick jungle which separates the west coast of Vancouver Island from the majority of its inhabitants, is hardly the region’s…
Read more 1901 A hydro hagiography
Once upon a Time in the West: Essays on the Politics of Thought and Imagination by Jan Zwicky Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023 $29.95 / 9780228017097 Reviewed by Ron Dart * I lived for a couple of years in the young 1970s in northern Norway and Switzerland. I spent time in Norway with the mountain…
Read more 1897 Cultivating contemplation
Boomerangst By George M. Johnson Kamloops, BC: Pavilion Theatre, June 5-17, 2023 Reviewed by Wendy Weseen * I’m not a Boomer. I was cheated of that by being born a year before the end of WWII, not quite belonging to the age group that boomed at the war’s end and has been spoken of with…
Read more 1896 An Age of Aquarius eco-comedy
Mr. Mindbomb: Eco-Hero and Greenpeace Co-Founder Bob Hunter – A Life in Stories edited by Bobbi Hunter Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2023 $30 / 9781771606240 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * “A Life in Stories,” explains the subtitle, but it might also have been called a love story, one carefully selected and edited by Bob Hunter’s…
Read more 1893 Not just an environmental love story
Drawing Botany Home: A Rooted Life by Lyn Baldwin Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2023 $30.00 / 9781771605922 Reviewed by Nina Shoroplova * Lyn Baldwin, PhD, has lived a life at the “confluence of choice and change.” As have most of us. But as a botanist, an ecologist, and a philosopher, especially about her own life…
Read more 1892 ‘Plant aware, nature aware’
Instructions for a Flood: Reflections on Story, Geography and Connection by Adrienne Fitzpatrick Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2023 $24.00 / 9781773861128 Reviewed by Catherine Owen * Gentle memories. That’s the descriptor that first flowed over me at the close of reading this short, pared set of reflections on land, water, Indigeneity, history, time, people and…
Read more 1891 ‘Standing in the river’
False Creek By Jane Munro Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2022 $19.95 / 9781990776090 Reviewed by Jodi Lundgren * I happened to open False Creek after a few days’ immersion in Milton’s Renaissance epic, Paradise Lost, and was unexpectedly struck by continuities between the two works. No, Munro’s book is not a narrative poem, much…
Read more 1885 Poetic ‘intelligence, curiosity, wonderment, and humility’
The Wild By Owen Laukkanen Toronto: Underlined, 2021 $13.99 / 9780593179741 Reviewed by C.L. Shoemaker * YA fiction by mystery writer and Vancouver resident Owen Laukkanen, The Wild is a third-person dive into the thoughts and ideas of Dawn, a seventeen-year-old drug addict living with a drug dealer twice her age. When Dawn comes home…
Read more 1881 Grief, detox, murder, and wilderness tips
Sheltering in the Backrush: A History of Twin Islands by Jeanette Taylor Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2023 $24.95 / 9781990776113 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Jeanette Taylor begins her book with the words: “Twin Islands, a private retreat just off the entrance to Desolation Sound Marine Park, is a small place with a big…
Read more 1880 Small place, big story
Capturing the Summit: Hamilton Mack Laing and the Mount Logan Expedition of 1925 by Trevor Marc Hughes Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2023 $24.95 / 9781553806806 Reviewed by Sage Birchwater * When naturalist/cinematographer Hamilton Mack Laing was commissioned by the National Museum of Canada to accompany the expedition making the first ascent of Mount Logan in 1925,…
Read more 1870 Mack Laing in Alaska
Exploring Vancouver: Ten tours of the City and its Buildings (Fifth Edition) by Harold Kalman and Robin Ward Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2023 $29.95 / 9781990776274 Reviewed by Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe * Exploring Vancouver has evolved alongside the city. Once a series of First Nations settlements amidst a stupendous maritime setting, it became a lumber…
Read more 1858 ‘Obscure as much as to reveal’
Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2023 $26.00 / 9781039005273 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * Vancouver Island-born writer Michelle Min Sterling’s debut novel Camp Zero opens in a barren landscape on the shortest day of the year. It’s 2049, and the temperatures are rising. The United States is unbearably hot and the…
Read more 1855 A ‘careful and nuanced approach to dystopia’
The Power of Dreams: 27 Years Off-grid in a Wilderness Valley by Dave and Rosemary Neads Surrey: Hancock House Publishers, 2022 $24.95 / 9780888397188 Review by Phyllis Reeve * A couple built a house in the wilderness of Precipice Valley, on the ancient trade route linking BC’s Interior Plateau with the coast, and stayed for…
Read more 1837 A dose of planetary reality
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
Remnants: Reveries of a Mountain Dweller by Natalie Lang Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2023 $26.00 / 9781773861043 Reviewed by Paul Falardeau * Natalie Virginia Lang is a promising new writer from British Columbia’s Fraser Valley, where she lives in a reclaimed loft on her family’s property on Sumas Mountain. It is from this home base…
Read more 1794 Sense of place and self
Dig Deep: Connecting Archaeology, Oceans and Us by Nicole F. Smith, with photographs by Alexander Mackie and others Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2023 $21.95 / 9781459826083 Reviewed by Grant Keddie * Over my 50 years as a curator in Archaeology at the British Columbia Provincial Museum-Royal British Columbia Museum I received numerous requests from teachers…
Read more 1792 The 164,000-year classroom
Ghosthawk by Matt Rader Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2021 $18.95 / 9780889714045 Reviewed by Kelly Shepherd * In what is probably one of the earliest examples of ecopoetry (“Smokey the Bear Sutra,” 1969) the American poet and environmental philosopher Gary Snyder describes the presence of several “great centers of power” throughout the North American continent. The…
Read more 1771 Specific to the Okanagan
Scrubbing the Sky: Inside the Race to Cool the Planet by Paul McKendrick Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2023 $28.95 / 9781773272085 Reviewed by Douw Steyn * The strange “naked ape” we are has been on planet earth as a distinct species for about 200,000 years. Most of that time we spent migrating across all continents,…
Read more 1765 Cooling our jets