ESSAY: Mourning and Burial Rites in Ancient China: A Grief Process by Dorothy Dittrich * Death is part of life, as are the feelings of grief, sorrow and anxiety that follow the loss of a loved one. While coming to terms with death and coping with loss may be part of living, the feelings that…
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Things We Could Design: For More Than Human-Centered Worlds by Ron Wakkary Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (The MIT Press), 2021 $47.00 / 9780262542999 Reviewed by Thomas Girard * Ron Wakkary’s Things We Could Design: For More Than Human-Centered Worlds is a delightful book that brings us into an important conversation taking place in Vancouver,…
Read more 1333 Deep, beautiful, and a little quirky
ESSAY: Pray for the Paintress: the life of Sister Plautilla Nelli (1524-1588) by Bob Foulkes * Editor’s note: since 2019 The Ormsby Review has hosted the Graduate Liberal Studies Journal, home to many fine essays, memoirs, stories, and of course book reviews. We are delighted to have the GLS Journal under our roof and to…
Read more 1223 The painter & prioress of Florence
MEMOIR: Chennai, a place in between by Jane Frankish * It was the last week of October 2002 and we were homeless, jobless, and rootless. This is just the way it was when we entered Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu in Southern India. Our home for the previous eight years had been Kuching, the…
Read more 1218 Chennai, a place in between
ESSAY: Why I love Lucy Maud by Carol Volkart * When I first met Lucy Maud Montgomery in her journals a few months ago, she was a sparkling flirt of 14 tumbling off sleds in winter snowbanks, losing her hat and laughing, laughing, laughing. When I said goodbye to her recently, she was an anguished…
Read more 1183 Why I love Lucy Maud
ESSAY: Stanley Park: The Mirror and the Mask by Jordan Johnston * Stanley Park is a mirror that reflects the desires of those who look in it. On a map, this bright green peninsula stands apart from the city centre, as if held at arm’s length. Vancouver, like any other city, has poverty, and crime,…
Read more 1128 Stanley Park reflections
ESSAY: The Militant Mothers: Civil Disobedience in Raymur Housing Project by Meg Stainsby * The 1971 actions of the “Militant Mothers of Raymur” was one of the first direct action campaigns in Vancouver history. The successful, swift campaign ran from early January through late March. It has been documented and celebrated in newspaper and radio…
Read more 1093 The militant mothers of Raymur
Battleground Grandview: An Activist’s Memoir of the Grandview Community Plan, 2011-2016 by Jak King Vancouver, The Drive Press, 2020 $25.00 / 9780986778209 Reviewed by Jennifer Chutter * Planning for housing in Vancouver is a contentious issue due to conflicting ideas of where increased density should take place, what styles of housing are needed, and who…
Read more 1091 In praise of city neighbourhoods
SHORT STORY: Friendiversary by Jennifer Moss * Introduction. This story reimagines a thousand-year-old love affair. Peter Abelard, a philosopher and tutor, fell in love with his student, Heloise. They wrote reams of letters and poetry, and made love in all kinds of scandalous places from convent kitchens to Heloise’s uncle’s house. When they were inevitably…
Read more 1083 Friendiversary
Dominoes at the Crossroads by Kaie Kellough Montreal: Véhicule Press (Esplanade Books), 2020 $19.95 / 9781550655315 Reviewed by Natalie Lang * The time has long past when only one community’s work would be required to cure what ails us. — Zadie Smith, from Intimations: Six Essays (2020) In a time when uncertainty stands at the forefront…
Read more 1082 Black Canadian ancestry & identity
ESSAY: Remnants of Sumas Mountain by Natalie Lang For those who came before and those not yet arrived. * And forever before me gleams, The shining city of song, In the beautiful land of dreams. But when I would enter the gate Of that golden atmosphere, It is gone, and I wonder and wait For…
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ESSAY: Sacred Cows by Sheila O’Donoghue * At The Ormsby Review we are pleased to host Letters from the Pandemic: A 30th Anniversary Commemorative Public Writing Project of the Graduate Liberal Studies Program of Simon Fraser University. Since December 2020, we have uploaded 27 letters and essays described by program director Sasha Colby as “moving…
Read more Letters from the Pandemic 27: Sacred Cows
ESSAY: Anne Carson: Ambiguity, Uncertainty, Ecstasy by Bob Foulkes * On an otherwise ordinary day in 1965, a precocious, eccentric fifteen year-old discovered a book in the sales bin of a Coles bookstore, a serious tome by Willis Barnstone on Sappho the famous ancient Greek poet. The book was bilingual — ancient Greek and English,…
Read more 1067 The uncertainty of Anne Carson
MEMOIR: A country in transition: Russia, 1990-1995 by Max Wyman * But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them – from Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928) I’d been in love with Russia, off and on, since…
Read more 1035 A country in transition: Russia, 1990-95
ESSAY: Advanced Typography Workshops in Quarantine by Thomas Girard * In October 2020, Thomas Girard of the Graduate Liberal Studies programme at Simon Fraser University taught a course in Advanced Typography at a design school in Vancouver. Here, he provides a summary of that course with nods to the history — and ubiquity — of…
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Letters from the Pandemic by Sasha Colby * Editor’s note: we are pleased to introduce Letters from the Pandemic: A 30th Anniversary Commemorative Public Writing Project of the Graduate Liberal Studies Program of Simon Fraser University (SFU). Sasha Colby, Director of Graduate Liberal Studies, provides an introduction (below) to the Pandemic Letters project. The letters…
Read more Letters from the Pandemic: Welcome
Hammer & Nail: Notes of a Journeywoman by Kate Braid Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2020 $22.95 / 9781773860336 Reviewed by Jennifer Chutter * Kate Braid’s new memoir, Hammer & Nail: Notes of a Journeywoman, provides glimpses of her life as a carpenter, primarily in the Lower Mainland, during the 1970s and 1980s. Through a series…
Read more #978 Crazy about lumber
Show Me the Honey: Adventures of an Accidental Apiarist by Dave Doroghy, foreword by Rick Hansen Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2020 $25.00 / 9781771513227 Reviewed by Natalie Lang * Bees. Those black and yellow winged creatures buzzing about and smelling the roses; perhaps there is more to them than meets the eye. Do they hold the…
Read more #971 Aphorisms from an apiarist
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
The Call of the Rift Book 1: Flight by Jae Waller Toronto: ECW Press, 2018 $19.95 / 9781770413542 * The Call of the Rift Book 2: Veil by Jae Waller Toronto: ECW Press, 2020 $19.95 / 9781770415782 Both books reviewed by Natalie Lang Jae Waller’s The Call of the Rift series sees…
Read more #928 Jae Waller’s alt-historical fantasy