Grounded by Granite: a memoir by Patti Shales Lefkos SilverStar Mountain: Loon Island Press, 2023 $27.62 / 9781999229825 Reviewed by: Valerie Green * Before I read Patti Shales Lefkos’ book Grounded by Granite, I decided to research the area known as the Canadian Shield in Ontario. That is where the author’s memoir takes place, and…
Read more 1973 Out-of-doors at the Canadian Shield
Uncontrolled Flight by Frances Peck Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2023 $25.95 / 9781774390757 Reviewed by Caileigh Broatch * Frances Peck has once again written a story that will grip British Columbian’s fears and hearts. Her debut novel, The Broken Places, envisioned fall-out from the big earthquake predicted to hit the Vancouver area. Uncontrolled Flight’s catalyst is…
Read more 1964 Literary thriller, ‘by all accounts … thrilling’
Tracking Giants: Big Trees, Tiny Triumphs, and Misadventures in the Forest by Amanda Lewis Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2023 $24.95 / 781771646734 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * As I write from our province’s southern Interior, amidst the worst air quality in the world, I find I must state the obvious. The lessons Amanda Lewis accrues in…
Read more 1963 A quest for Champions
The Rangitangs: Life on the Edge – A Humorous Look at Coastal Loggers Float-camp Life from the 1920s to 1950s by Mike Whalen Self-published by Mike Whalen, 2023 $40.00 (soft cover) / 978173885723 Reviewed by Matthew Downey * Inspired by the cartoon collection from which it draws its name, The Rangitangs: Life on the Edge is…
Read more 1961 Logging camp life
Sapphire and the Hollow Bone by Diana Hayes Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2023 $23.95 / 9781771715192 Reviewed by gillian harding-russell * Meditative and elegiac in its imagery and moods and finding resonances in mythology, Diana Hayes’ Sapphire and the Hollow Bone is imbued with the colour blue. Whether such details as the cherished gift of a “star…
Read more 1958 Shades and perplexities of blue
Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast by John Vaillant Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2023 $38.00 / 9780735273160 Reviewed by Trevor Marc Hughes * John Vaillant opens his book with a quote from the fire chief of Fort McMurray, Alberta: “No one’s ever seen anything like this…this is rewriting the book.” We are soon…
Read more 1956 The fire dragon
Rains, At Times Heavy by Debi Goodwin Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2023 $25.00 / 9781773861227 Reviewed by Trish Bowering * These days, it’s near impossible to escape the news of extreme weather. In Death Valley, the temperatures recently topped 50 degrees Celsius. In our forests, fire has transformed so much of the landscape, smoke obscuring…
Read more 1949 A personal quest amid weather extremes
Do You Eat the Red Ones Last? Canada’s Not-so-clandestine War to Expropriate Indigenous Lands and Resources by Marc G. Stevenson Victoria: FriesenPress, 2022 $18.99 / 9781525585838 Reviewed by Ken Favrholdt * First, a word about the title to this book. It came from a 1980s meeting, as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans co-chair emptied…
Read more 1941 Confronting antipathy towards Indigenous Canadians
Wrack Line by M.W. Jaeggle Regina: University of Regina Press, 2023 $19.95 /9780889779532 Reviewed by Joe Enns * Wrack Line, M.W. Jaeggle’s debut book of poetry, examines life in consideration of transitions and liminal distances “as crucial as the space / between prayer beads.” Jaeggle uses the wrack line—the area of seashore where organic material and…
Read more 1934 Isolation, grief, poetics, birdsong
Stikine Odyssey: From Adventure to Activism with The Great River by Peter Rowlands Victoria: FriesenPress, 2023 $24.49 / 9781775238348 Reviewed by Trevor Marc Hughes * What is it that draws adventurers to the Stikine River? For me, in 2012, it was a desire to see this beautiful, and integral, landscape in northern British Columbia before…
Read more 1922 Irresistible Stikine
Girlfriend on Mars By Deborah Willis Toronto: Hamish Hamilton, 2023 $34.00 / 9780670069583 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * With a nod and wink, Vancouver’s Deborah Willis titles her story about a preposterously engineered mission to terraform Mars Girlfriend on Mars. The wonderfully lightweight word “Girlfriend” plays with the discrepancy between the gravity of a real…
Read more 1919 Mars, mirth, metadata
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 CreekBy 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 less an…
Read more 1885 Poetic ‘intelligence, curiosity, wonderment, and humility’