“Other animal behaviours too live on in our everyday speech. Even if few of us have ever literally taken ‘the bull by the horns’ or ‘bought a pig in a poke’ (what is a poke in this instance? a bag or sack, nowadays an obsolete or dialect word, so the phrase means ‘to buy something without seeing or being able to test it’) most of us flounder at times or try ‘to feather our nests.’” Christopher Levenson urges us to contemplate the origin of such phrases as ‘free rein’ and ‘ride roughshod over’ in his A Word in Your Ear essay ‘Animals and Language.’
“Food is never merely sustenance; it is narrative layered with memory and meaning. In October 2025, I travelled to Rome and Oxford as part of Simon Fraser University’s Graduate Liberal Studies Program, culminating in a project that combined two themes: Italy in the ancient and modern imagination (with a focus on food history) and life writing (an exploration of how lives are represented across time, genre, and media). I deepened my understanding of the links between food writing, memory, and culture by studying the works of three contemporary authors. Ada Boni (1881-1973), codified Italian home cooking and idealized domesticity during Mussolini’s era; Elizabeth David (1913-1992), a wry aristocrat who sought to liberate postwar Britain from culinary blandness by introducing Mediterranean sensuality; and Patience Gray (1917-2005), an eccentric British artist who followed a vein of marble through Italy with her sculptor partner, documenting rural foodways for posterity. Melanie Monk presents her essay Minestrone and Women’s Lives: A Culinary Palimpsest of Lives Written, Tasted, Remembered.
“On Sunday, the 22nd, we were relaxing and having breakfast outside after a successful day previous in presenting my Tai Chi talk and demo (there’s an irony!), when we heard some anxious buzz from folks in the building that something was going on. At almost same moment, we saw clouds of heavy dark smoke drifting in just past our building and the big shade tree behind us, as if a house or store was on fire nearby.” Author and poet Trevor Carolan reports from Puerto Vallarta on his recent experience.
A memoir-in-essays, an “unabashedly queer view of life, loves, and the bringing up of the generation to come,” ranges widely and speaks candidly. —Carellin Brooks reviews Staying Power: On Queerness, Inheritances, and the Families We Choose, by Zena Sharman (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2026) $24.95 / 9781834050164
“I know this collection of work by these women is something readers will refer to time and time again, knowing each time they do, they will find something new to inspire them at exactly the moment they need it.” Valerie Green reviews Something Has Changed: An Anthology of Women’s Voices, by The Pen Pals Writers’ Collective (Nanaimo: Pen Pals Publishing, 2025) $20 / 97810694399505
“If the first part of the book hooked me with these bargain bites, the middle sections settled into a focus on some meatier topics. While remaining agnostic about parenting and pet ownership (he is neither a parent nor a current pet owner), there is a chapter on the costs of each, which provided fascinating reading. Always, he brings in the human element, relating conversations from folks he interviews.” Trish Bowering reviews Cheapskate in Lotusland: The Philosophy and Practice of Living Well on a Small Budget, by Steve Burgess (Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2026) $26.95 / 9781771624633
“I had been helping Craig with his book. It also happened that my wife and I had plans to visit the Okanagan for a week in September which corresponded with the dates for the 2025 Okanagan Columbia run. I was very eager to be introduced to Chief Clarence and perhaps even hang out.” Richard Butler reflects on his time attending the 2025 Salmon Celebration.
“Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa begins with a conversation about her discovery and research into the one empirical example of an ancient practice, the raising of almost but not quite domestic animals who lived in isolation to protect them from inbreeding and physical damage, animals bred to provide the weft in essential weavings.” Linda Rogers reviews The Teachings of Mutton: A Coast Salish Woolly Dog, by Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa et al (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2025) $36.95 / 9781998526024
“Think of all the books that live in our heads that never become books or only make it to a few chapters on paper before they’re abandoned due to life’s interruptions. That makes it all the more exciting when a completed, edited, published book takes its place on bookshelves both physical and digital and has your name on it.” In advance of the entry period for the 2026 SCWES Book Contest, Cathalynn Labonté-Smith starts off her latest essay with “any book that gets written is a miracle.”
“Little Brown Birds” and “Someone,” excerpts from Seventy-Two Seasons: A Memoir About Noticing, by M.A.C. Farrant (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2026) $22.95 / 9781553807438
“Apart from inveterate crossword puzzlers or Scrabblers, most of us get by with a tiny fraction of the words that could be available. In conversation people often say ‘you know what I mean?’ and for the most part we do, more or less, but for people such as teachers, lawyers, journalists, and writers, who use language professionally, ‘more or less’ isn’t good enough.” In the essay The world’s favourite second language, regular contributor Christopher Levenson asks the question: What is the language?
“This book offers expression and relief from the wounded land of immobilisation, where people must shrink their lives and selves to fit into hell. Redemption appears in unusual ways. The stories are not completely mired in torture or isolation. Overall, the atmosphere emanates a compassionate moonscape, revealing people trapped in numbing routines or chaos, getting through each day with no hope, yet most keep going.” Lee Reid reviews Off the Map: Vancouver writers with lived experiences of mental health issues by Betsy Warland, Seema Shah, and Kate Bird (eds.) (Vancouver: Bell Press, 2025) $22 / 9781738716784
“With the School Board now onside, the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts began classes in September 1925, squeezed into two rooms on the top floor of the Board office, a three-storey stone building at the corner of Dunsmuir and Hamilton streets. It operated as part of the city’s school system, though unlike regular public schools it charged an annual tuition of $50.” Daniel Francis contributes an essay about the series of historical events that took place in order to create what we now know as Emily Carr University, which had its centenary last year.
“It’s rare to find a holiday book that resists the expectation of comfort. Better Next Year is one such example. These stories sit with estrangement, failed reconciliations, uneasy rituals, and trauma.” Selena Mercuri reviews Better Next Year: An Anthology of Christmas Epiphanies, by JJ Lee (ed.) (New Westminster: Tidewater Press, 2023) $24.95 / 9781990160271
“One of the most compelling aspects of the collection is its counterculture energy. There is a clear rejection of the idea that Canada’s value lies in its utility to the United States, a challenge to a worldview that reduces national identity to geopolitical convenience. The essays ripple with a sense of defiance that is both invigorating and necessary, particularly in an era when political rhetoric often blurs the line between hyperbole and threat.” Jeffrey Stychin reviews Canada Is Not the 51st F**king State! Canadians Face Off Against Donald Trump’s Worst Idea Ever (New Westminster: Cosmic Cranium Press, 2025) $27.99 / 9781069072610
“In some respects, the school already had a number of carefully nurtured traditions tending in that direction. We played rugger rather than the more plebeian soccer. We competed with several minor public schools at cricket and rugger and, although twelve miles from the River Thames, entered one or two rowing eights in the Head of the River races.” Christopher Levenson recalls his schoolboy days in England in the next instalment of his memoir “Not One of the Boys.”
Pondering a world that “has taken an undue turn” and reflecting on his life of experiences as a Brown man, an author composes heartfelt and searing essays that challenge Canadian myths of inclusion. —Brett Josef Grubisic reviews Hide and Sikh: Letters from a Life in Brown Skin, by Sunny Dhillon (Hamilton: Wolsak & Wynn, 2025) $20.00 / 9781998408320
“In terms of the development of the disciplines of history and science, as well as the development of the arts and culture in British Columbia, the Okanagan region contributed enormously. Three eminent women come to mind: Margaret Anchoreta Orsmby (1909-1996), Joan Heriot (1911-2012), and Sveva Caetani (1917-1994).” Adriana A. Davies contributes the essay Extraordinary Women of the Okanagan to The British Columbia Review
“That pièce de résistance of mine was a bit outré, a bit de trop no doubt, more a jeu d’esprit than a tour de force. However, it does make the point that great herds of French words are roaming at large through the English language, often with totally different meanings from those they have in French. Etiquette for instance simply means a label in French. How many of these terms are current also in contemporary US or Canadian, Australian, or New Zealand English? I don’t know. I simply am not au courant.” Christopher Levenson contributes the essay On Permanent Loan to The British Columbia Review.
“Kean’s Canada Films was becoming a familiar brand to Vancouver moviegoers. A. D. responded to a limited market by diversifying his subject matter: local industries, the war effort, civic celebrations, and soft news items.” Dennis J. Duffy contributes the essay “The Famous Cowboy Artist”: A. D. Kean in Vancouver, 1913–1916
