Rough Road to the North: A Vagabond on the Great Northern Highway by Jim Christy Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2019 (first published in Toronto by Doubleday, 1980) $17.95 (U.S.) / 9781627310826 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold Robert Service…
Read more 1241 Ramblers and tatterdemalions
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
Flying to Extremes: Memories of a Northern Bush Pilot by Dominique Prinet Surrey: Hancock House, 2021 $19.95 / 9780888397553 Reviewed by Heather Longworth Sjoblom * “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. I regret to have to report that our plane is completely covered in ice and we are inexorably descending toward the tundra. In…
Read more 1196 Minus 65° F on Borden Island
The List of Last Chances by Christina Myers Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2021 $22.95 / 9781773860596 Reviewed by Myshara Herbert-McMyn * The List of Last Chances by Christina Myers is a wild adventure across the endless and fascinating country of Canada. Our two protagonists—Ruthie and Kay—are hilarious in their encounters and differing experiences. While Ruthie…
Read more 1176 Road trip of change and chance
Under the Midnight Sun: Journey with the Sahtu Dene by Mary-Anne Neal Victoria: Reciprocity Publishing, 2021 $21.95 / 9781928114338 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Under the Midnight Sun is a beautiful memoir of a spiritual journey written by Victoria educator Mary-Anne Neal. It tells the story of an adventure she undertook as a teenager to…
Read more 1155 Journeys with the Sahtu Dene
Then Now by Daphne Marlatt Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2021 $16.95 / 9781772012873 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * The generation of Marlatt’s parents, and of my own, took the British Empire for granted. Government agencies were as feckless then as now (note the book’s title), but one got on with one’s job in business or the civil service…
Read more 1153 Home on leave from Penang
Letters from the Pandemic 32: Hidden in Plane Sight by Keith Shapland * In 1969 when I was seven, Robin Shapland, my father, a Boeing engineer, hid me in the trunk of our 1967 Impala so that he could sneak me past security at the gate and onto Boeing Field in Seattle so that we could…
Read more Letters from the Pandemic 32: Hidden in Plane Sight
This One Wild Life: A Mother-Daughter Wilderness Memoir by Angie Abdou Toronto: ECW Press, 2021 $21.95 / 9781770416000 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * Having recently experienced a large number of contemporary memoirs, I have found myself researching and mulling over the characteristics of the genre. How does a memoir differ from an autobiography? The memoir…
Read more 1112 Mulling on memoir & motherhood
New Yorkers: A City and its People in Our Time by Craig Taylor Toronto: Penguin Random House (Doubleday Canada), 2021 $39.95 / 9780385681636 Reviewed by Brian Harvey * My one visit to New York was on August 11, 1977 and it lasted two hours. I remember suffocating heat, a sense of vertigo from all those…
Read more 1109 Stories in the voice of New York
Improbable Journeys: From Crossing the Himalayas on Horseback to a Career in Obstetrics and Gynaecology by Dr. Bernard A.O. Binns and Ron Smith Oakville, ON: Rock’s Mills Press, 2020 $29.95 / 9781772441932 Reviewed by May Q. Wong * Editor’s note: for a subsequent review of Improbable Journeys by John Kenwright, see The Ormsby Review, June…
Read more 1089 A lifetime of care and medicine
Magdalena, River of Dreams: A Story of Colombia by Wade Davis Toronto: Penguin Random House (Knopf Canada), 2020 $24.95 / 9780735278943 Reviewed by Howard Macdonald Stewart * Another river. I was bowled over years ago by Wade Davis’s One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest (1997), a remarkable book about his youthful…
Read more 1087 The soul & graveyard of Colombia
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
Lonely Planet Vancouver and Victoria (8th edition) by John Lee & Brendan Sainsbury London: Carlton, 2020 $21.99 (US) / 9781787013612 Reviewed by Lauren Harding * Every time I open the familiar blue cover of a Lonely Planet book, I feel a wave of warm nostalgia. I came of age at the time nearly twenty years…
Read more 1081 A pre-pandemic Lonely Planet
Not Yet Imagined: A Study of Hubble Space Telescope Operations by Christopher Gainor Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of Communications, NASA History Division, 2020 9781626830615 free eBook (PDF) available here Reviewed by John Hutchings * This is a scholarly but very readable tome that describes — in some 450 pages — the…
Read more 1080 Across the universe with Hubble
The Rat People: A Journey through Beijing’s Forbidden Underground by Patrick Saint-Paul, translated by David Homel Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020 $19.95 / 9781551528038 Reviewed by May Q Wong * In The Rat People: A Journey through Beijing’s Forbidden Underground, veteran foreign correspondent Patrick Saint-Paul exposes how Beijing’s, and indeed China’s, explosive growth has been…
Read more 1077 Life beneath the streets
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
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
Road Trips: Journeys in the Unspoiled World by Trevor Carolan Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue Publishing, 2020 $21.95 / 9781896949802 Reviewed by Brian Harvey * People writing about travel are like musicians playing a well-known piece. Both are interpreters, offering us their take on something that many have already seen or heard. Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata,…
Read more 1033 On the road with Trevor Carolan
The Fraser: River of Life and Legend by Carol Blacklaws and Rick Blacklaws White Rock: Image West Productions, 2020 $39.95 / 9780994817518 Reviewed by Peter Grant * Of those who raft (and swim) the Mighty Fraser In this album, appealingly balanced between text and pictures, Rick Blacklaws’ photos capture the Fraser River’s fabulous landscapes, especially…
Read more 1027 Tribute to the Fraser River
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