ORMSBY REVIEW PRESS: Frederick Paget Norbury, Chapter Two: Push and Pull: Tommy Norbury and Emigration by Brenda Callaghan * Editor’s note: we are pleased to present Chapter 2 of Brenda Callaghan’s hitherto unpublished biography, Frederick Paget Norbury, Remittance Man or Gentleman Immigrant? The Story of an Englishman in Canada. Earlier in 2021 we published the…
Read more 1104 The call of the Kootenay
Outside In: A Political Memoir by Libby Davies Toronto: Between The Lines, 2019 $26.95 / 9781771134453 Reviewed by Alex Netherton * Libby Davies’ Outside In is an extraordinary political memoir that chronicles and reflects upon her life and political career first as an urban activist and then eventually as the Deputy Leader of the NDP…
Read more 1096 A master of urban politics
As if They Were the Enemy: The Dispossession of Japanese Canadians on Saltspring Island by Brian Smallshaw Victoria: University of Victoria, 2020 $24.95 / 9781550586671 (available at UVic bookstore for $24.95 plus shipping costs, or direct from b@pixelmap.ca for $26.00 including postage) Reviewed by Marie Elliott * Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December…
Read more 1095 Iniquity on the Gulf Islands
Gwich’in K’yuu Gwiidandài’ Tthak Ejuk Gòonlih: Our Whole Gwich’in Way of Life Has Changed: Stories from the People of the Land by Leslie McCartney and Gwich’in Tribal Council Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2020 $99.99 / 9781772124828 Reviewed by Daniel Sims * “Publish or perish” is an axiom of professional academics, especially those employed by…
Read more 1086 The voice of Gwich’in Elders
Hearing More Voices: English-Canadian Women in Print and on the Air, 1914-1960 by Peggy Lynn Kelly and Carole Gerson Ottawa: Borealis Press, 2020 $24.95 / 9781896133713 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * As a library school student in the mid 1970s I was told that Anne of Green Gables could not be considered a Canadian classic;…
Read more 1085 A balanced cultural herstory
Paradise Won: The Struggle to Create Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve by Elizabeth May Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2020 (second edition; first published by McClelland & Stewart, 1990) $25.00 / 9781771604581 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Anyone who has visited Haida Gwaii will instantly relate to Elizabeth May’s remembrance of one of the most significant…
Read more 1074 Elizabeth May & Gwaii Haanas
Beverley McLachlin: The Legacy of a Supreme Court Chief Justice by Ian Greene and Peter McCormick Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 2019 $29.95 / 9781459414402 * Truth Be Told: The Story of My Life and My Fight for Equality by Beverley McLachlin Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2020 $24.95 / 9781982104979 Both books reviewed by May…
Read more 1059 Tribute to Beverley McLachlin
Umingmak: Stuart Hodgson and the Birth of the Modern Arctic by Jake Ootes New Westminster: Tidewater Press, 2020 $29.95 / 9781777010102 Reviewed by Dylan Burrows * “Going North” is an expression laden with expectation. Uninvited guests, Canadians trespass upon occupied Indigenous lands; they enact their desires on territory they imagine as uninhabited. In Umingmak: Stuart…
Read more 1055 Hodgson of the Arctic
Toshiko by Michael Kluckner Vancouver: Midtown Press, 2020 (new and revised edition; first published 2015) $19.95 / 9780988110175 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * A graphic novel about the wartime treatment of Japanese Canadians? Well, why not? After all, my earliest reading about the Japanese was in comic strips and the weekend newspapers. Terry and the…
Read more 1049 A wartime internment romance
Taken by the Muse: On the Path to Becoming a Filmmaker by Anne Wheeler Edmonton: Newest Press, 2020 $20.95 / 9781774390016 Reviewed by Lynne Bowen * A train has stopped on a prairie siding. A passenger watches through the window as several children play shinny on a frozen water-filled ditch beside the tracks. It is…
Read more 1046 Featuring Anne Wheeler
A Bounded Land: Reflections on Settler Colonialism in Canada by Cole Harris Vancouver: UBC Press, 2020 $39.95 / 9780774864411 Reviewed by Barry Gough * Canada is usually described as an unbounded land, limited only by political borders with foreign states and physically by its seas and coasts. Here the distinguished historical geographer, Cole Harris, retired…
Read more 1041 A country of bounded spaces
ORMSBY REVIEW PRESS: Frederick Paget Norbury, Chapter One: The Historical Background: The East Kootenay in the late Nineteenth Century by Brenda Callaghan * Editor’s note: we are pleased to present Chapter 1 of Brenda Callaghan’s hitherto unpublished biography, Frederick Paget Norbury, Remittance Man or Gentleman Immigrant? The Story of an Englishman in Canada, the introduction…
Read more 1040 East Kootenay off-grid, old-style
All Fracked Up! The costs of LNG to British Columbia by Alice de Wolff and Delores Broten (editors) Comox: Watershed Sentinel Books, 2020 $30.00 / 9780995328655 Reviewed by John Gellard * “What are you reading?” asked a highly educated neighbour. “A book about fracking,” “What’s fracking?” “How do you heat your house?” “With natural gas.”…
Read more 1038 Welcome to the sacrifice zone
Doing Politics Differently? Women Premiers in Canada’s Provinces and Territories by Sylvia Bashevkin (editor) Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019 $34.95 / 9780774860819 Reviewed by Barbara J. Messamore * Do women “do politics differently?” Not so much. That said, it is not at all clear that we need even ask the question “is it worth electing more…
Read more 1034 Women trailblazing in politics
Transatlantic Upper Canada: Portraits in Literature, Land, and British-Indigenous Relations by Kevin Hutchings Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020 $37.95 / 9780228001294 Reviewed by Graeme Wynn * Kevin Hutchings, the holder of a University Research Chair in the Department of English at the University of Northern British Columbia, begins this book with a very…
Read more 1023 On the Road to Damascus
Stanley’s Dream: The Medical Expedition to Easter Island by Jacalyn Duffin Montréal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019 $39.95 / 9780773557109 Reviewed by Colin Levings * Stanley’s Dream, Jacalyn Duffin’s book on the 1964-65 Medical Expedition to Easter Island (METEI) is an intriguing detailed compendium, retrospective analysis, and overall fascinating story of one of Canada’s…
Read more 1021 Canadian science on Easter Island
The Clean Body: A Modern History by Peter Ward Montréal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019 $37.95 / 9780773559387 Reviewed by John Douglas Belshaw * This review is late. Very late. It took McGill-Queen’s a staggeringly long time to get the book into my sanitized hands — due in part to pandemic understaffing at a…
Read more 1020 Dishing the dirt on soap
Railway Nation: Tales of Canadian Pacific, the World’s Greatest Travel System by David Laurence Jones Victoria: Heritage House, 2020 $34.95 / 9781772033496 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Riding the Rails into Canada’s History: Illustrated anecdotes offer famous and lesser-known stories about the CPR. We can still hear the distant call of a diesel engine’s whistle…
Read more 1013 Coast to coast with the CPR
Kwanlin Dün: Dǎ Kwǎndur Ghày Ghàkwadîndur – Our Story in Our Words by Kwanlin Dün First Nation Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2020 $50.00 / 9781773270784 Reviewed by Daniel Sims * Editor’s note: The West Coast Book Prize Society announced on April 8, 2021, that Kwanlin Dün: Dǎ Kwǎndur Ghày Ghàkwadîndur – Our Story in Our Words,…
Read more 1009 Reclaiming Indigenous history
The Diary of Dukesang Wong: A Voice from Gold Mountain by Dukesang Wong, edited by David McIlwraith, translated by Wanda Joy Hoe Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2020 $18.95 / 9781772012583 Reviewed by May Q. Wong * Editor’s note: The West Coast Book Prize Society announced on April 8, 2021, that The Diary of Dukesang Wong: A Voice from…
Read more 1008 Mighty land, small laws