“Catharsis in the Alice Munro tragedy is limited and imperfect. But I hope that analyzing her life as though it were art will throw some light on us as fellow imperfect beings.” — “Alice Munro’s Tragedy of Secrets and Silence,” an essay by Holly Hendrigan.
As Luba, a child in a remote Doukhobor community located in southern British Columbia, hides in a root cellar, she is flooded with memories of the harrowing events that led to her captivity. “The Invisible Child,” a short story by Denise Evdokimoff.
“On lonely nights, I called my mother. She never asked what I was doing on the nights I didn’t call her, just when I was coming home. And she never called me, just reminded me how long it had been since we spoke.” —Mothers and daughters, past and present are sorted through In the short story “The Princess of Stubble Fields,” by Kate Smith.
In “Poets’ Pastime Paradise,” an “essay in play format about poetry” that’s set in a cemetery at midnight, author Sarah Freel corrals modernist poets, an American rapper, and a poetess named Reiko to versify while they debate over literary politics.
In which a university student from the burbs changes jobs in the heart of Montreal during the year of the Olympic Games.— “A Sound Education,” by E.R. Brown
“Not one single gravestone stands to mark my family. It is as though they didn’t exist.” —In “The Blood in the Stone” Deborah Lane excavates family history and imagines life as it might have been.
2024 donors to the British Columbia Review, a thank you from Richard Mackie.
“Going to Seed is prefaced with an introduction that effectively situates the reader around Neville’s central thesis— consider what ‘being constantly occupied’ does to both an individual’s quality of life and the collective health of a community, society, and natural environment.” Natalie Virginia Lang reviews Going to Seed: Essays on Idleness, Nature, & Sustainable Work, by Kate J. Neville (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2024) $30.95 / 9781779400000
“…understanding how everything in a way has life. Inanimate objects, human made things, people of course, and everything else as well. This is how Marks extends her ideas. It’s an incremental change of many philosophical ideas.” Thomas Girard reviews The Fold: From Your Body to the Cosmos, by Laura U. Marks (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2024) $29.95 USD / 9781478030119
“I’m writing this in part to address the request from readers of my other typography texts to write about Bringhurst, or perhaps pursue a retrospective. Both of these requests are solid and probably long overdue, so in this I attempt to take a first look at this pursuit.” Thomas Girard reviews two earlier books by Robert Bringhurst of Quadra Island, bringing readers a discussion on these influential titles: The Elements of Typographic Style & The Solid Form of Language.
“As I pull off the road and down the drive toward my home on Sumas Mountain, where I will take a walk in the woods, there is one thinker’s phrase that nags as I come to terms with the reality of this doublethink, doublespeak, society. Thoreau’s prophetic statement in an 1860 letter to Harrison Blake, is all too relevant– ‘What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?’ Author and essayist Natalie Virginia Lang writes the timely essay “Living with Oil?”
Warland is convinced that as writers, “we must learn to live with profound vulnerability.” In doing this, we are filling in the lack of stories that others have been too afraid to tell. We become more resilient in ourselves as we learn from ourselves—our fears and identities—and we can start to tell authentic narratives that our world, culturally and socially, so desperately needs.” —Natalie Virginia Lang reviews Breathing the Page: Reading the Act of Writing, by Betsy Warland (Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2023) $24.95 / 9781770867031
“This type of book is Pinterest before Pinterest, a way of gathering inspiration when it was primarily an arduous task. The physicality is something that can never be discounted, and I imagine the authors of the future will continue to always refer to books like this, as nothing quite replaces the ah-ha experience of leafing through it and coming to know to things in an unexplainable way, like a dream guiding you in the middle of the night.” Thomas Girard reviews Pretty Pictures by Marian Bantjes (New York: Metropolis Books, 2013) $99.00 / 9781938922220
“Christina Myers’ new memoir Halfway Home is a raw and riotous account of what it can be like for a woman to move through her life.” Natalie Virginia Lang reviews Halfway Home: Thoughts from Midlife by Christina Myers (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2024) $23.99 / 9781487012441
Canadian scholar and essayist Thomas Girard takes us into the future of typography, asking “How does typography play a role in what’s coming? There’s no better way, in my mind, than to talk to the experts.” Thomas Girard writes the essay Where we jump forward to…
“Why would a woman become a soldier, specifically a male soldier?” Phyllis Reeve reviews Sisters in Arms: Female Warriors from Antiquity to the New Millennium by Julie Wheelwright (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2020) $32.50 / 9781472838001
“…although educational institutions promote diversity in their course offerings, content, culture, and student body, the reality is that diversity among the leadership in these institutions is rare.” Natalie Virginia Lang reviews Diversity Leadership in Education: Embedding Practices of Social Justice edited by Catherine McGregor and Shailoo Bedi (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024) $44.95 / 9780228019251
“Today, typography can be approached in many different ways whereas at many times in history there was simply a single story and single entry point. ” Thomas Girard writes Where We Enter, a third essay in his series for The British Columbia Review on the subject of typography.
“Yet there are very few communities like mine, where people choose to drop anchor or tie up rather than mow the lawn.” Meg Stainsby’s essay Afloat will take you into the liminal world of the water dweller.
“Talking about specifics of typeface choices in a world where even typographic choices like serifs, italics, and double spacing can seem daunting enough, is a challenge.” Where is type going?
An Essay by Thomas Girard.
The second in a series of essays on the subject of typography.