The Bomb in the Wilderness: Photography and the Nuclear Era in Canada by John O’Brian Vancouver: UBC Press, 2020 $32.95 / 9780774863889 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Seeing past the mushroom cloud: A deeply passionate study of how photography has shaped our view of the Bomb. * Years ago on a visit to China, an…
Read more #976 Seeing past the mushroom cloud
ESSAY: Remembering John Foster Paton Nash by Michael Sasges For Remembrance Day 2020, Michael Sasges presents the life of Nicola Valley rancher John Foster Paton Nash (1866-1916). John Nash’s name is on three Great War memorials. The first is at his school in England, King William’s College on the Isle of Man; the second is…
Read more #961 From Quilchena to Flanders
View from the Tower, Tin Pushers and Pilots on the BC Coast by Grant B. Evans Crofton: Osborne Bay Books, 2019; first published 2016 $19.95 / 9780994906571 Reviewed by Matthew Downey * View from the Tower is about as rich and dramatic a memoir as one could reasonably expect to come from a former air…
Read more #922 In the hot seat at Port Hardy
Civilian Internment in Canada: Histories & Legacies by Rhonda L. Hinther and Jim Mochoruk (editors) Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2020 $31.95 / 9780887558450 * The Stories Were Not Told: Canada’s First World War Internment Camps by Sandra Semchuk Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2019 $34.99 / 9781772123784 * Harry Livingstone’s Forgotten Men: Canadians and…
Read more #823 Canadian internment legacies
Secrets in the Shadows by Heige S. Boehm Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2019 $14.95 / 9781553805724 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Secrets in The Shadows is the story of two boyhood friends, Michael and Wolfgang (Wolfie), growing up in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. But it is also so much more. Author Heige S. Boehm has…
Read more #810 Pawns in the Hitler Youth
Perseverance: The Life of William Fernie, the Man Who Caught Billy Miner by Ron Hatch Kamloops: Thompson Rivers History and Historical Society, 2019 $24.95 / 9780991689910 Available by email from trhhs2012@gmail.com, from Kamloops Chapters, and from Amazon.ca Reviewed by Wayne Norton * Bill Miner attracts a remarkable amount of interest from students of Kamloops history….
Read more #806 The Empire strikes back
Flying to Victory: Raymond Collishaw and the Western Desert Campaign, 1940-1941 by Mike Bechthold Norman, Oklahoma: Oklahoma University Press, 2017 $34.95 (U.S.) / 9780806155968 Reviewed by John Hinde * In his recent book, Flying to Victory: Raymond Collishaw and the Western Desert Campaign, 1940-1941, Mike Bechthold points out that “May 1941 marked a pivotal transitional…
Read more #748 Collishaw of the western desert
Agent Jack: The True Story of MI5’s Secret Nazi Hunter by Robert Hutton London: St. Martin’s Press, 2019. Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books Reviewed by Julian Wake * When I first read Eric Roberts’ Salt Spring Saga, someone here on Salt Spring — my home — told me that he had been an important…
Read more #745 The secret spy of Salt Spring
The River Battles: Canada’s Final Campaign in World War II Italy by Mark Zuehlke Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2019 $37.95 / 9781771622356 Reviewed by Richard Lonsdale * Twenty-five years ago there were very few popular book-length histories of the Canadians in the Italian Campaign of World War II. We can thank award-winning author Mark…
Read more #737 Canada vs Germany in Italy
The Empire on the Western Front: The British 62nd and Canadian 4th Divisions in Battle by Geoffrey Jackson Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019 $34.95 / 9780774860154 Reviewed by James D. Barrett * Geoffrey Jackson’s readable study of the performance of the 62nd Division British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the 4th Canadian Division (CEF) hits the mark…
Read more #721 Five British Columbia battalions
Once Well Beloved: Remembering a British Columbia Great War Sacrifice by Michael Sasges Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum Press, 2019 $17.95 / 9780772672551 Reviewed by Sylvia Crooks * The national trauma of the First World War, even though it was fought over one hundred years ago, is still deeply felt today. Michael Sasges’ Once Well…
Read more #699 Reply to a cenotaph
Four Who Dared: Inspiring Stories of Canadian Airmen in the Second World War by Kenneth B. Cothliff Victoria: Heritage House, 2019 $22.95 / 9781772032949 Reviewed by Sylvia Crooks * We are losing our Canadian veterans of the Second World War so quickly, now that they are in their nineties and beyond. How grateful we must…
Read more #663 Canadians in Bomber Command
Love in Vile Places: Military Hospitals as the Site of Care and Nurture by Jo-Anne Fiske * For Remembrance Day 2019 we present a memoir by Jo-Anne Fiske of François Lake, in BC’s north-central interior, of her father Humphrey William Fiske (1886-1959). At the time of his enlistment in Kelowna in 1916, the Norfolk-born Fiske…
Read more #650 Love in vile places
In His Steps: The Life and Times of Wilberforce Cooper, Vancouver’s Skid Road Priest by Peter J. Cooper Victoria: FriesenPress Publishers, 2019 $27.68 / 9781525544545 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * St. James’s Anglican Church presides over Vancouver’s Downtown East Side — presides over but does not loom over. Described as simultaneously Byzantine, Gothic Revival, and…
Read more #590 Mission to skid row
Harold Rhenisch reviews two books: Through the Whirlpool: Swept Up in the Nazi Apocalypse by Karl Koerber CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2019 $15.85 / 9781718958524 * In Other Words: A German-Canadian Story by Norbert Ruebsaat CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017 $16.20 / 9781547129027 * …
Read more #565 The Germans are here
From Rinks to Regiments: Hockey Hall-of-Famers and the Great War by Alan Livingstone MacLeod Victoria: Heritage House: 2018 $19.95 / 9781772032680 Reviewed by Wayne Norton First published Feb. 15, 2019 * In describing the stellar hockey careers of the men who are the subject matter of his new book, Alan Livingstone MacLeod somehow manages to…
Read more #488 Snipers, rockets, and howitzers
A Piece of the Continent by Paul Nicholson Victoria: Paul Nicholson, 2018 $24.50 / 9781775192305 Available from Amazon.ca and from the author Reviewed by Valerie Green First published January 19, 2019 * It is obvious from the first page of Paul Nicholson’s book that he is passionate about the two topics he covers in A…
Read more #469 From Passchendaele to Paris
Codename Project 9: How a Small British Columbia City Helped Create the Atomic Bomb by Ron Verzuh CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018 $13.08 / 9781720820703 Reviewed by Michael Sasges First published Nov. 22, 2018 * Codename Project 9 is a small book that engenders reflections on some big history. Since 1945, journalists and scholars…
Read more #429 Trail, the bomb, and Blaylock
ESSAY: A century since Vimy and Passchendaele: Two wars, two families, one message by Howard Macdonald Stewart First published Nov. 11, 2018 * For Remembrance Day 2018 we offer a moving reflection by Howard Stewart — reprinted from Ormsby no. 195 (November 11, 2017) on this centenary of 11.11.18 — on war’s impact on his…
Read more #420 Why the red poppies matter
First published Aug. 30, 2018. Claiming the Land: British Columbia and the Making of a New El Dorado by Daniel Marshall Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2018. $24.95 / 9781553805021 Reviewed by Harold Rhenisch * “The history of British Columbia is brief,” wrote W.A. Bailie-Grohman. “Gold made it and gold unmade it.” In Claiming the Land, Daniel Marshall…
Read more #360 Gold made British Columbia