ESSAY: Tragic Legacies: The Residential School System in Canada (1876-1998) by Lily Chow * Editor’s note: Today, September 30, 2021, is the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. “The day honours the lost children and Survivors of residential schools, their families and communities,” states a Government of Canada website. “Public commemoration of…
Read more 1237 Tragic legacies of colonialism
Angie Tucker reviews four books: Pemmican Wars (A Girl Called Echo, volume 1) by Katherena Vermette, illustrated by Scott B. Henderson, colour by Donovan Yaciuk Winnipeg: Highwater Press, 2017 $19.95 / 9781553796787 * Red River Resistance (A Girl Called Echo, volume 2) by Katherena Vermette, illustrated by Scott B. Henderson, colour by Donovan Yaciuk Winnipeg:…
Read more 1228 Echoes of Rupert’s Land
Brotherhood to Nationhood: George Manuel and the Making of the Modern Indian Movement by Peter McFarlane with Doreen Manuel, with a foreword by Pamela Palmater Toronto: Between the Lines Books, 2020 (second edition; first published 1993) $32.95 / 9781771135108 Reviewed by Sarah Nickel * Indigenous women “were every part of organizing [because] the women are…
Read more 1212 Considering George Manuel
Graeme Wynn reviews four books: The Imperilled Ocean: Human Stories From a Changing Sea by Laura Trethewey Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2020 $22.95 / 9781773101156 * Passion and Persistence: Fifty Years of the Sierra Club in British Columbia by Diane Pinch Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2019 $12.99 / 9781550178814 * Hope Matters: Why Changing the…
Read more 1202 Hothouse Earth: The future is now
Flying to Extremes: Memories of a Northern Bush Pilot by Dominique Prinet Surrey: Hancock House, 2021 $19.95 / 9780888397553 Reviewed by Heather Longworth Sjoblom * “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. I regret to have to report that our plane is completely covered in ice and we are inexorably descending toward the tundra. In…
Read more 1196 Minus 65° F on Borden Island
Able to Lead: Disablement, Radicalism, and the Political Life of E.T. Kingsley by Ravi Malhotra and Benjamin Isitt Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021 $34.95 / 9780774865777 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * “Impossibilist” Crusader: E.T. Kingsley led the Socialist Party of Canada and edited the Western Clarion Eugene Thornton “E.T.” Kingsley (1856-1929) was a sharp-tongued orator in…
Read more 1195 A serious thinker of the labour left
The Fire-Dwellers by Margaret Laurence Toronto: Penguin Random House (Penguin Modern Classics, Emblem Editions), 2017 $19.95 / 9780735252837 First published by McClelland & Stewart, 1969 Reviewed by Harper Campbell * To read Margaret Laurence’s The Fire-Dwellers (1969) is to see a very different Vancouver from the one that exists today. Well, “see” isn’t really the right…
Read more 1194 Return of The Fire-Dwellers
The Age of Fentanyl: Ending the Opioid Epidemic by Brodie Ramin Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2020 $22.99 / 9781459746701 Reviewed by Jeffrey Stychin * This book is not for the faint of heart, despite its clinical examination of the devastating world of opiate addiction. Brodie Ramin’s heartfelt compassion extends through every chapter. The Age of Fentanyl…
Read more 1188 Facing the fentanyl crisis
The New Race: Selected Writings, 1901-1904 by William H.H. Johnson, afterword by Jade Ferguson Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, forthcoming 2022 $19.99 / 9781771124140 Reviewed by Frank Mackey * My only excuse for writing this account of a book yet unpublished is that I grew tired of waiting for it. The request had come…
Read more 1186 Excuses: a preemptive review
Balancing Bountiful: What I Learned about Feminism from my Polygamist Grandmothers by Mary Jane Blackmore Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2020 $24.95 / 978177386-0046 Reviewed by Lynne Bowen * People who live in British Columbia have become familiar with the names Blackmore and Bountiful over the past three decades. And so my motivation for choosing to…
Read more 1185 Mountain colony of polygamy
ESSAY: Why I love Lucy Maud by Carol Volkart * When I first met Lucy Maud Montgomery in her journals a few months ago, she was a sparkling flirt of 14 tumbling off sleds in winter snowbanks, losing her hat and laughing, laughing, laughing. When I said goodbye to her recently, she was an anguished…
Read more 1183 Why I love Lucy Maud
The Object’s the Thing: The Writings of Yorke Edwards, A Pioneer of Heritage Interpretation in Canada by Richard Kool and Robert A. Cannings (editors) Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum Press, 2021 $24.95 / 9780772678515 * Craigdarroch Castle in 21 Treasures by Moira Dann, with an afterword by Bruce Davies Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2021 $20.00 /…
Read more 1179 History galleries & robber barons
The Ku Klux Klan in Canada by Allan Bartley Halifax, NS: Formac Publishing, 2020 $24.95 / 9781459506138 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * In the mid-1920s Canada was a hotbed for KKK recruiters . . . and they’re still here. For almost a century, the racist and often violent Ku Klux Klan has found a home…
Read more 1167 Hate mongering in Canada
Little Resilience: The Ryerson Poetry Chap-Books by Eli MacLaren Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020 $37.95 / 9780228003496 Reviewed by Carole Gerson * We have long needed this book! For 35 years, from 1925 to 1960, Canadian poets writing in English were sustained by the Ryerson Poetry Chap-Book series, which issued some 200 booklets…
Read more 1166 Canadian poetry: the untold story
Sisters of the Ice: The True Story of How St. Roch and North Star of Herschel Island Protected Canadian Arctic Sovereignty by R. Bruce Macdonald Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2021 $19.95 / 9781550179286 Reviewed by Hector Williams * Nearly six decades ago I worked in Canada’s North with various government agencies like the CBC Northern…
Read more 1160 Canadian arctic guardians
Inequality in Canada: The History and Politics of an Idea by Eric W. Sager Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021 $37.95 / 9780228005803 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Political economists from the 1770s to the 21st century analyze Canadian inequality and ponder how to address it. Most of us know Stephen Leacock as Canada’s foremost humorist…
Read more 1159 Fighting Canadian inequality
Under the Midnight Sun: Journey with the Sahtu Dene by Mary-Anne Neal Victoria: Reciprocity Publishing, 2021 $21.95 / 9781928114338 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Under the Midnight Sun is a beautiful memoir of a spiritual journey written by Victoria educator Mary-Anne Neal. It tells the story of an adventure she undertook as a teenager to…
Read more 1155 Journeys with the Sahtu Dene
Heard Amid the Guns: True Stories from the Western Front, 1914-1918 by Jacqueline Larson Carmichael Victoria: Heritage House, 2020 $26.95 / 9781772033373 Reviewed by Alan Livingstone MacLeod * Jacqueline Larson Carmichael’s Heard Amid the Guns is a book inspired by her two granddads, each a soldier of the First World War who survived. The author…
Read more 1150 Personalities of the Western Front
A History of My Brief Body: A Memoir by Billy-Ray Belcourt Toronto: Penguin Random House (Hamish Hamilton), 2020 $25.00 / 9780735237780 Reviewed by David Milward * The term Two-Spirit is used in many contemporary Indigenous communities to describe Indigenous persons whose personalities and spirits may have both feminine and masculine aspects. Many Indigenous people suggest…
Read more 1144 Belcourt’s Two-Spirit journey
Resilience Through Writing: A Bibliographic Guide to Indigenous-Authored Publications in the Pacific Northwest before 1960 by Robert E. Walls, edited by Darby C. Stapp Richland, WA: Journal of Northwestern Anthropology, Memoir 20, January 2021 $34.95 (U.S.) / 9798566579900 Reviewed by John Lutz * The very quotable English essayist Charles Lamb wrote that bibliographies are “books…
Read more 1137 Resurrecting Indigenous voices