Southern Northwest Coast Indigenous Canoe Racing: A Brief History by Alan L. Hoover Victoria: NWC Canoe Publications, 2018 $14.95 / 9781775011903 Reviewed by Sanford Osler First published Jul. 2, 2018 * Once a year my local oceanfront park in North Vancouver fills with campers bringing dozens of long sleek wooden canoes to race over the…
Read more #333 Indigenous canoe racing
Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition by Paul Watson Toronto: Penguin Random House (McClelland & Stewart), 2017 $34.95 / 9780771096525 Reviewed by Walter O. Volovsek First published May 17, 2018 * Based in Coquitlam, B.C., the remarkable Paul Watson–not to confused with that Sea Shepherd captain also named Paul Watson who…
Read more #305 Finding the Erebus and Terror
The Cinderella Campaign: First Canadian Army and the Battles for the Channel Ports by Mark Zuehlke Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2017 $37.95 / 9781771620895 Reviewed by Norm Fennema First published April 30, 2018 * Prolific historian Mark Zuehlke describes how battle-hardened but “woefully understrength” Canadian soldiers chased retreating Germans north towards the Seine River in…
Read more #295 Cinderella Campaign revisited
All the Fine Young Eagles: In the Cockpit with Canada’s Second World War Fighter Pilots (updated and expanded second edition; first published by Stoddart, 1997) by David L. Bashow Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2016 $28.95 / 9781771621359 Reviewed by Howard Hisdal First published April 3, 2018 * In All the Fine Young Eagles, David…
Read more #280 From Beurling to Bashow
The Locomotive of War: Money, Empire, Power, and Guilt by Peter Clarke London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017 $40.00 / 9781408851654 Reviewed by Stan Markotich First published March 31, 2018 * Prominent British political historian Peter Clarke (born 1942) divides his time between Cambridge and the Gulf Islands. Married to Canadian cultural historian Maria Tippett, Clarke was…
Read more #278 Trotsky’s locomotive of steam
Morrison: The Long-lost Memoir of Canada’s Artillery Commander in the Great War. Major-General Sir Edward Morrison by Susan Raby-Dunne (editor) Victoria: Heritage House Publishing, 2017 $22.95 / 9781772032147 Reviewed by Michael Sasges First published March 15, 2019 * Edward Morrison was one of no more than fifty general officers who directed Canadian Corps battlefield activities…
Read more #264 From John McCrae to Morrison
The Spitfire Luck of Skeets Ogilvie: From the Battle of Britain to the Great Escape by Keith Ogilvie Victoria: Heritage House, 2017 $22.95 / 9781772032116 Reviewed by Michael Sasges First published Feb. 28, 2018 * The Spitfire Luck of Skeets Ogilvie tells the story of two Canadians who made an ordinary life together after some extraordinary…
Read more #255 Spitfire luck of Skeets Ogilvie
Fernie At War: 1914-1919 by Wayne Norton Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2017 $24.95 / 9781987915495 Reviewed by W. Keith Regular First published January 21, 2018 * Works of history are matters of scale, a broad perspective over extended time (macro), or narrowly focused investigation (micro). In this age of globalism and its repudiation, as the…
Read more #236 Fernie at War
First published Jan.16, 2018. Refuge in the Black Deck: The Story of Ordinary Seaman Nicola Peffers by Nicola Peffers Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press. $24.95. / 978-1-987915-43-3 Reviewed by Bonnie Reilly Schmidt * Readers are immediately immersed in life aboard an armed forces navy vessel in Refuge in the Black Deck: The Story of Ordinary Seaman…
Read more #232 All aboard for sea changes
Finding John Rae by Alice Jane Hamilton Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2017 $21.95 / 9781553804819 Reviewed by Dylan Burrows First published Jan. 11, 2018 * In Finding John Rae, Alice Jane Hamilton upends the standard narrative of mid-nineteenth century Arctic exploration, focussing not on the vainglorious search for the doomed Franklin Expedition but those left in…
Read more #231 The bane of the British Admiralty
Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition by Owen Beattie and John Geiger, with a foreword by Wade Davis and an introduction by Margaret Atwood Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2017 (first published by Western Producer Prairie Books, 1988; subsequent editions by Douglas & McIntyre, 1998, and Greystone, 2004 and 2014) $24.95 / 9781771641739 Reviewed…
Read more #223 Starvation Cove & Terror Bay
First published Nov. 24 REVIEW: Reluctant Warriors: Canadian Conscripts and the Great War by Patrick M. Dennis Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017. $39.95 9780774835978 Reviewed by Jim Kempling The ongoing centennial review of Canada’s involvement in the First World War continues with Reluctant Warriors: Canadian Conscripts and the Great War, by Patrick Dennis. After three years…
Read more #205 125,000 reluctant patriots
First published Nov. 5, 2017 A century since Vimy and Passchendaele: Two wars, two families, one message By Howard Macdonald Stewart * For Remembrance Day 2017 we offer a moving reflection by Howard Stewart on war’s impact on his family in the twentieth century. Howard touches on the personal and emotional repercussions on the families…
Read more #195 Remembrance Day, 2017
First published October 18, 2017 Just over a year ago, in “Welcome to the Ormsby Review” (September 16, 2016), Richard Mackie provided his memories of Margaret Ormsby, the B.C. historian after whom The Ormsby Review is named. Mostly these referenced his conversations in two fine, old living rooms in the Coldstream Valley, near Vernon, where…
Read more #184 Margaret Ormsby remembered
Blaise Cendrars Speaks…by Blaise Cendrars. Edited and with an introduction by Jim Christy, translated by David J. MacKinnon Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2016$24.95 / 9781771711906First published in Paris by Denoël, 1952 and 2016 Reviewed by Serge Alternês Review first published Oct. 16, 2017 * This upcoming Remembrance Day we might recall and commemorate Blaise Cendrars (1887-…
Read more #183 Modernist poet Blaise Cendrars
Essay: Refuge of a Scoundrel: Patriotism and William Bowser by Wayne Norton First published Oct. 13, 2017 * In this Ormsby Review exclusive, Wayne Norton reveals that in his brief term in office (1915-16), the Conservative Premier William Bowser fanned the flames of patriotism stoked by mounting Canadian war casualties and the German sinking of…
Read more #180 BC’s Great War internments
First published August 30, 2017REVIEW: War Torn Exchanges: The Lives and Letters of Nursing Sisters Laura Holland and Mildred Forbes by Andrea McKenzie (editor). Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016. $32.95 / 9780774832540 * REVIEW: Sister Soldiers of the Great War: The Nurses of the Canadian Army Medical Corps by Cynthia Toman Vancouver: UBC Press 2016. $34.95 / 9780774832144…
Read more #162 The sisters of war
S.C. Heal (1925-2017)An obituary by Alan Twigg First published August 15, 2017 * “In my opinion there is no finer interpreter of the marine scene in British Columbia.” — John M. MacFarlane, nautical historian As a columnist and contributor to specialty shipping magazines, the writer-turned-publisher S.C. Heal made a major contribution to the maritime literature…
Read more #155 S.C. Heal (1925-2017)
First published July 11, 2017 REVIEW: From the Klondike to Berlin: The Yukon in World War I. by Michael Gates Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2017. $24.95 / 978-1-55017-776-3 Reviewed by Jim Wood The outpouring of centenary books about aspects of Canada’s involvement in the Great War, 1914-1918, continues with From the Klondike to Berlin: The Yukon…
Read more #149 From Yukon to the Western Front
REVIEW: Engaging the Line: How the Great War Shaped the Canada-US Border by Brandon R. Dimmel Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016 $32.95 / 9780774832755 Reviewed by Keith Regular First published June 25, 2017 * The permeable nature of borders is of increasing intellectual interest, although the subject is yet to receive sustained attention. Since the crisis…
Read more #143 More than an imaginary line