First published Sept. 29, 2017 REVIEW: Wolf Island by Ian McAllister (photographs) and Nicholas Read (text) Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2017. $19.95 9781459812642 Reviewed by Carol Anne Shaw * Wolf Island is a picture book co-created by photographer, author, and Pacific Wild founder Ian McAllister and author and former journalist Nicholas Read. It is one…
Read more #173 Always cry wolf
Some Useful Wild Plants: A Foraging Guide to Food and Medicine from Nature by Dan Jason Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2017 $16.95 / 9781550177916 Reviewed by Natasha Lyons First published Sept. 13, 2017 * Reviewing a book published before you were born is an interesting historical exercise. Dan Jason’s Some Useful Wild Plants: A Foraging…
Read more #169 A hero in the garden
The Summer Book: A Treasury of Warm Tales, Timeless Memories and Meditations on Nature by 24 BC writersby Mona Fertig (editor) Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue Publishing, 2017.$24.95 / 9781896949611 Reviewed by Howard Macdonald Stewart First published July 1, 2017 * Mona Fertig of Mother Tongue Publishing has gathered 24 warm and poignant summer stories…
Read more #146 Poignant ruminations of summer
The W̱SÁNEĆ and Their Neighbours: Diamond Jenness on the Coast Salish of Vancouver Island, 1935 by Diamond Jenness. Edited and with an introduction by Barnett Richling Oakville, Ontario: Rock’s Mills Press, 2017 $24.95. / 9781772440362 Reviewed by Chris Arnett Revised June 2020 * The overlooked ethnographic work of New Zealand-born Diamond Jenness (1886-1969) has been…
Read more #135 The W̱SÁNEĆ revisited
At Sea with the Marine Birds of the Raincoastby Caroline Fox Victoria: Rocky Mountain books, 2016$25.00 / 9781771601627 Reviewed by Sean MacPherson First published April 28, 2017 * In At Sea with the Marine Birds of the Raincoast, conservation biologist Caroline Fox crosses thousands of kilometres of open ocean to chart the distribution and long-distance…
Read more #126 Marine birds
Ecology of Salmonids in Estuaries Around the World: Adaptations, Habitats, and Conservation by Colin D. Levings Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016 $75.00 / 9780774831734 Reviewed by Bert Ionson First Published April 4, 2017 * Colin Levings’ encyclopedic treatment of how sea going salmon, trout and char make their transition from fresh to salt water (and the…
Read more #113 Why we need estuaries
Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America Catherine M. Cameron, Paul Kelton, and Alan C. Swedlund (editors) Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015 U.S. $29.95 / 9780816535545 Reviewed by Jody Decker First published March 18, 2017 * As a follow-up to Courtney Kirk’s review of Tom Swanky’s controversial The Smallpox War in Nuxalk Territory [See…
Read more #106 Devastation beyond germs
If we are not collectively mindful, Joni Mitchell will have no more rivers to skate away on. It’ll mostly be Canoes Only on the Rideau Canal. Ice hockey could be declared an Endangered Sport. The only ski resorts will be atop of the Alps; Whistler will be for golf. With a catastrophically narcissistic president in…
Read more #102 Hockey is an endangered sport
British Columbia’s Cariboo Chilcotin Coast: A Photographer’s Journey by Chris Harris 108 Mile Ranch: Chris Harris and Country Light Publishing, 2016 $39.95 / 9780986581847 Reviewed by Trevor Marc Hughes First published Feb. 24, 2017 * First photographer Ian McAllister helped identify and preserve The Great Bear Rainforest. Now photographer Chris Harris sees the Chilcotin Ark…
Read more #94 Empire of the Cariboo Chilcotin
J. Fenwick Lansdowne by Tristram Lansdowne (editor) Portland, OR: Pomegranate Communications, 2014 US $65.00 / 9780764966705 Reviewed by Briony Penn First published Feb. 7, 2017 * A fixture of Victoria’s artistic, cultural, and natural communities for five decades, James Fenwick Lansdowne (1937-2008) is now the subject of a book edited by his son Tristram, featuring…
Read more #81 Portraits of Fenwick Lansdowne
Crossing Home Ground: A Grassland Odyssey through Southern Interior British Columbia by David Pitt-Brooke Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2016 $32.95 / 9781550177749 Reviewed by Harold Rhenisch First published Jan. 25, 2017 * David Pitt-Brooke — naturalist, veterinarian, and writer — walked a thousand kilometres through the grasslands of the southern interior of British Columbia, from…
Read more #79 Emptying the grasslands
The First Signs: Unlocking the Mysteries of the World’s Oldest Symbols by Genevieve von Petzinger New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016 $36.0 (U.S.) / 9781476785493 Reviewed by Chris Arnett First published Dec. 2, 2016 * In The First Signs: Unlocking the Mysteries of the World’s Oldest Symbols, Genevieve von Petzinger explores the geometric images found…
Read more #57 Decoding European rock art
Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Our Children from an Oversanitized World by B. Brett Finlay and Marie-Claire Arrieta (Greystone) $19.95 Reviewed by Mark Forsythe First published October 17, 2016 Our kids need dirt and face licks from the family dog. We live in an obsessively clean world with antibiotic soaps, cleansers, antibiotic drugs and body…
Read more #27 Let them eat dirt
The Killer Whale Who Changed the World by Mark Leiren-Young Vancouver: Greystone Books with the David Suzuki Institute, 2016 $29.95 / 9781771641937 Reviewed by Daniel Francis First published Oct. 17, 2016 * My most memorable encounter with a killer whale occurred in 1987. Newly returned home after sixteen years living in eastern Canada, I thought…
Read more #26 A whale named Moby Doll
“Should any of you boys visit the Sandwich Islands, look up the burial place of my college mate.” Botanist John Goldie (1793-1886) reflecting on David Douglas’s grave First Published: April 04th, 2014 — compiled by Allan Twigg One of the most prominent of the roving fraternity of nineteenth-century plant hunters who scoured North America for…
Read more #7 How the Douglas fir was named