Wayi Wah!: Indigenous Pedagogies: An Act for Reconciliation and Anti-Racist Education by Jo Chrona Winnipeg: Portage & Main Press, 2022 $32.00 / 9781774920466 by Kenneth Favrholdt * Jo Chrona uses a rallying cry for her book: Wayi Wah! (Let’s go; it’s time!) It is time to make education a force in reconciliation. This is the…
Read more Educating educators
In Search of April Raintree (Fortieth Anniversary Edition) by Beatrice Mosionier Winnipeg: HighWater Press, 2023 $22.95 / 9781774920916 Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic * To familiarize myself with In Search of April Raintree, a book a publicist had kindly sent to me that also revealed a surprise gap in my reading history, I first read…
Read more 1960 ‘[T]ender and brutal … heartbreaking and hopeful’
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
Unsettled: Lord Selkirk’s Scottish Colonists and the Battle for Canada’s West, 1813-1816 by Robert Lower Toronto: ECW Press, 2023 $29.95 / 9781770417182 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Many of us learned about Lord Selkirk’s Red River Settlement in high school or college, but we’ve never read it so up close and personal as Robert Lower…
Read more 1954 Survival of the fittest Scots
The Morning Bell Brings the Broken Hearted by Jennifer Manuel Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2023 $24.95 / 9781771623193 Reviewed by Valerie Green * In The Morning Bell Brings the Broken Hearted, southern Vancouver Island author Jennifer Manuel has written an outstanding book full of compassion and hope. The former college, elementary, and high school…
Read more 1944 Determination and hope
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
Bloom Where You Are Planted: 50 Conversations with Inspiring British Columbians by Beka Shane Denter Victoria: Heritage House Publishing, 2022 $39.95 / 9781772034295 Reviewed by Valerie Green * This book by Beka Shane Denter is an inspirational collection of interviews in the form of Q&As with photographs, of a group of fifty (forty-nine women and…
Read more 1935 United through art
Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls by Jessica McDiarmid Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada [Doubleday Canada], 2020 $21.00 / 9780385687577 Reviewed by David Milward * Missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) remains a grave crisis in Canada….
Read more 1933 Calling a spade a spade
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
Time to Wonder – Volume 2. A Kid’s Guide to BC’s Regional Museums: Vancouver Island, Salt Spring, Alert Bay, and Haida Gwaii by S. Lesley Buxton and Sue Harper Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2022 $22.00 / 9781771605069 Reviewed by Valerie Green * In view of the recent closure of Point Ellice House and Gardens in…
Read more 1921 Treasures from the past
The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere by Paulette F.C. Steeves Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021 $30 (USD) / 9781496234704 Reviewed by Robert (Bob) Muckle * One of the most popular topics in archaeology of the americas is that often phrased as “the peopling of the americas,” which includes interest in the timing and…
Read more 1914 Indigenous archaeological perspective
Canada’s Place Names & How to Change Them by Lauren Beck Montreal: Concordia University Press, 2022 $34.95 / 9781988111391 Reviewed by Jeff Oliver * Is it possible to read a nation’s history through its place names? Lauren Beck’s new book Canada’s Place Names & How to Change Them makes a compelling case for it. This…
Read more 1910 What’s in a name?
The All + Flesh By Brandi Bird Toronto: House of Anansi, 2023 $16.99 / 9781487011826 Reviewed by Linda Rogers * We are all changed. Plague and pestilence have left many of us in a state of grief, our innocence lost, experience teaching us the perils of hubris. As usual, prayer translates to poetry as our…
Read more 1894 Notes on grief
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’
Voices from Bridge River: The Bridge River Hydroelectric Projects, the People Who Built Them, and the Lives They Touched by BC Hydro Power Pioneers with Kerry Gold Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2022 $29.95 / 9781773271071 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * With her caustic wit and outspoken opinions, local newspaper publisher Ma [Margaret] Murray put BC’s…
Read more 1874 Bridge River Gold
Shamus, The Urban Rez Dog, P. I. By Leslie Gentile Toronto: Cormorant/DCB, 2023 $14.95 / 9781770867079 Reviewed by Linda Rogers * Teacher, singer, and now writer Leslie Gentile’s second middle grade novel is Shamus, The Urban Rez Dog, P.I. There’s no doubt juvenile readers with an appetite for fiction to match Shamus shameless pursuit of…
Read more 1872 An ‘adventure-filled whodunnit’ (for kids)
You Have Been Referred: My Life in Applied Anthropology by Michael Robinson Calgary: Bayeux Arts, 2021 $21.95 / 9781988440705 Reviewed by Kirsten Bell * Many of my anthropological brethren jealously guard the boundaries of the discipline. Although there is no formal registration process for anthropologists, the standard view within most professional associations is that a…
Read more 1869 Fascinating life, flawed memoir
Ukrainian Scorpions: A Tale of Larceny and Greed by Grand Chief Ronald M. Derrickson Toronto: ECW Press, 2023 $28.95 / 9781770415676 Reviewed by Larry Hannant * Their proxy war in Ukraine against Russia floundering, the Western War Heads have been able to retain their mastery only on one crucial front line – propaganda. At least…
Read more 1868 An inconvenient tale of Ukraine
Sasquatch Discovered: The Biography of Dr. John Bindernagel by Terrance N. James, PhD. Surrey, B.C.: Hancock House, 2022 $26.95 / 9780888397515 Reviewed by Ken Favrholdt * Sasquatch seems to be everywhere in our daily lives, or mine anyways. My wife Linda recently purchased a block of “Sasquatch Trails” ice cream, a blend of chocolate and…
Read more 1859 A career tracking an elusive creature
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’