Here on the Coast: Reflections from the Rainbelt by Howard White Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2021 $24.95 / 9781550179248 Reviewed by Howard Macdonald Stewart * Is this Howard White’s swan song? Probably not, but it would be a good one if it was. White has been an important player on the west coast literary scene…
Read more 1110 Cedar stumps and coastal rambles
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
No Ordinary Seaman: A Memoir by Gary H. Karlsen Victoria: First Choice Books, 2018 $22.95 / 9781775266907 Reviewed by Eric W. Sager * There are many paths into adulthood. One way is to leave home and go to sea. It is an old path, followed by many young men (and women too) through the ages,…
Read more 1084 The education of a seafarer
Watermelon Snow: Science, Art, and a Lone Polar Bear by Lynne Quarmby Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2020 $24.95 / 9780228003595 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * Books about climate change are prolific—and for all the alarming reasons that most of us accept. Watermelon Snow, by Lynne Quarmby, is essentially a book about climate change,…
Read more 1076 Reflections on an Arctic voyage
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
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
Converging Waters: The Beauty and Challenges of the Broughton Archipelago by Daniel Hillert (photos) and Gwen Curry (text) Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2020 $40.00 / 9781771601658 Reviewed by Alex Zimmerman * There’s something attractive about archipelagos. They are, by definition, surrounded by water and therefore have no hard boundaries. Nonetheless, islands grouped into an archipelago…
Read more 1012 Behold the Broughton Archipelago
Lure: Sustainable Seafood Recipes from the West Coast by Ned Bell with Valerie Howes Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2017 $29.99 / 9781773270876 Reviewed by Gillian Crowther * What is the bait for cooks? Ingredients? Recipes? What makes us cast our eyes over a cookbook? The cover? The title? The author? The search for inspiration? The…
Read more 1005 Ready, steady, halibut
Once Upon an Island: Hope and Hardship, Building a Log House and a Life on the North Coast of British Columbia by Suellen Guenther Victoria: Vargas Publishing, 2020 $29.95 / 9781771368421 Reviewed by Kate Braid * Once Upon An Island is the story of a young woman, Suellen Guenther, who in 1970 after a stint…
Read more #988 Making lives at Oona River
Gone Viking: A Travel Saga by Bill Arnott Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2020 $25.00 / 9781771604475 Reviewed by Howard Macdonald Stewart * Most of the stories in Bill Arnott’s Gone Viking describe travel around Britain and the North Atlantic world. A unifying theme is the imprint left on many of these places by those Scandinavian…
Read more #982 Notable Viking networks
The Brideship Wife by Leslie Howard Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2020 $24.99 / 9781508259350 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Leslie Howard’s fictional interpretation of an 1860s journey to the new world on board of one of the famous bride ships is one of the best of many I have read on this subject. The Brideship…
Read more #981 Voyage to Vancouver Island
Takaya: Lone Wolf by Cheryl Alexander, with a foreword by Carl Safina Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2020 $30.00 / 9781771603737 Reviewed by Luanne Armstrong * When I was a child, I lived far more intensely with animals than I did with people. As the somewhat feral daughter of homesteading farmers, I found animals were far…
Read more #972 Sea wolf of Discovery Island
The E.J. Hughes Book of Boats by Robert Amos Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2020 $22.00 / 9781771513364 Reviewed by Brian Harvey * For the British Columbia painter E.J. Hughes, who died in Duncan in 2007, the sea was never far away. Hughes wasn’t the only famous Canadian artist to include boats in his canvases — we’ll…
Read more #966 A torrent of collective memory
Carpe Fin: A Haida Manga by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2019 $29.95 / 9781771622240 Reviewed by Molly Clarkson * I can’t help but chuckle as I read through the reader reviews on goodreads of Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas’ Carpe Fin: A Haida Manga, two of which read: Exuberant art and a non-linear…
Read more #935 Haida cosmology transformed
A Garden of Thieves by Dean Unger Duncan: Village Lane Press, 2018 $24.00 / 9780981306421 * Blessed Be the Bones: A Garden of Thieves, Book II by Dean Unger Duncan: Village Lane Press, 2019 $24.00 / 9780981306452 Both books reviewed by Valerie Green To purchase copies of these books see here or call Dean Unger…
Read more #934 Murder on Texada Island
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
Sailing with Vancouver: A Modern Sea Dog, Antique Charts and a Voyage Through Time by Sam McKinney Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2018 (first published 2010) $20.00 / 9781771512640 Reviewed by Brian Harvey * I once got the urge to see all the apartments and houses where the British writer Malcolm Lowry had lived during his years…
Read more #912 Now that the coast is clear
Disappearing Minglewood Blues by M.C. Warrior Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue Publishing, 2020 $19.95 / 9781896949796 Reviewed by Colin Sanders * In Disappearing Minglewood Blues, a collection of poems written over several decades, M.C. Warrior gives voice to the mostly voiceless, often nameless, persons who toiled and laboured, navigating and negotiating, or falling victim to,…
Read more #908 Hooktenders & wildcat strikes
The Runaway Bride by Jody Hedlund Grand Rapids, Michigan: Bethany House Publishers, 2020 $15.99 (U.S.) / 9780764232961 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Jody Hedlund’s book The Runaway Bride tells the story of Arabella Lawrence who arrives in Victoria in September 1862 aboard the S.S. Tynemouth. Over the years, I have conducted a great deal of…
Read more #898 Back to the brideships
Down the Road: Journeys Through Small-town British Columbia by Rosemary Neering Vancouver: Whitecap Books, 2019 (first published 1992, reprinted 2003) $22.95 / 9781770503243 Reviewed by Diana E. French * Rosemary Neering is an accomplished author who began her writing career as a travel magazine contributor. Her visits to many rural areas of British Columbia were…
Read more #897 On the road with Rosemary