Vancouver Noir by Sam Wiebe (editor) Brooklyn, NY: Akashic Books, 2018 $23.95 / 9781617756597 Reviewed by Paul Falardeau * Vancouver is a beautiful city, one you might expect is a good place to find some world-class, city-adjacent hikes, the best smoked salmon, and some of the finest sinsemilla you could ever hope to smoke. It’s…
Read more #620 Vancouver beyond the postcards
The Grizzlies of Grouse Mountain: The True Adventures of Coola and Grinder by Shelley Hrdlitschka and Rae Schidlo, illustrated by Linda Sharp Victoria: Heritage House, 2019 $19.95 / 9781772032772 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * Grizzly bear! Ursus arctos ! Or is it, more correctly, Ursus arctos horribilis? The first is the species name, the second…
Read more #616 Captive mountain grizzlies
Photo essay: Revolving W and Flying Pigs: A Neon Journal by Keith McKellar (Laughing Hand), with an introduction by Robert Amos Victoria: BoneYard Ink Books, 2018 $50.00 / 9781775357704 Orders: direct from www.laughinghand.com A photo essay by Keith McKellar and Robert Amos * In December 2018 we published a review (Ormsby Review #449) by Grahame…
Read more #614 Waterfront industry & memory
The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family by Lindsay Wong Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018 $19.95 / 9781551527369 Reviewed by Imogene Lim First published January 17, 2019 * Editor’s note: this review was first published in The Ormsby Review in January 2019. Somehow it disappeared when material…
Read more #612 Chinese ghosts, Chinese identity
The Three Pleasures by Terry Watada Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2017 $24.99 / 9781772140958 Reviewed by Michael Kluckner * One of the touchstones of Canadian historical fiction is Obasan, Joy Kogawa’s gentle, autobiographical 1981 story of a Japanese-Canadian childhood disrupted by the racism of the Second World War years in British Columbia. With its cast of…
Read more #601 Notice to all Japanese Persons
At the Wilderness Edge: The Rise of the Antidevelopment Movement on Canada’s West Coast by J.I. (Jack) Little Montréal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019 $29.95 / 9780773556409 Reviewed by John Douglas Belshaw * Bear with me, please. Shouldn’t “Wilderness” be in the possessive? At the Wilderness’s Edge maybe? If so, this is a shocking…
Read more #593 Wilderness campaigns & cultures
In His Steps: The Life and Times of Wilberforce Cooper, Vancouver’s Skid Road Priest by Peter J. Cooper Victoria: FriesenPress Publishers, 2019 $27.68 / 9781525544545 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * St. James’s Anglican Church presides over Vancouver’s Downtown East Side — presides over but does not loom over. Described as simultaneously Byzantine, Gothic Revival, and…
Read more #590 Mission to skid row
Drawbridge: Drawing Alongside My Brother’s Schizophrenia by Joan Boxall Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9781773860022 Reviewed by Janet Nicol * A memoir told in ten lyrical essays, Drawbridge: Drawing Alongside My Brother’s Schizophrenia is Joan Boxall’s moving tribute to her brother, Stephen Corcoran. In the early 2000s, Joan became co-trustee of Stephen following…
Read more #584 Brother artist at the edge
The Co-op Revolution: Vancouver’s Search For Food Alternatives by Jan DeGrass, with a foreword by Rick Scott Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9781987915952 * Grocery Story: The Promise of Food Co-ops in the Age of Grocery Giants by Jon Steinman Gabriola: New Society Publishers, 2019 $19.99 / 9780865719071 * Both books reviewed by…
Read more #563 BC’s community food co-ops
105 Hikes in and around Southwestern British Columbia by Stephen Hui, foreword by Cease Wyss (T’uy’t’tanat) Vancouver: Greystone, 2018 $24.95 / 9781771642866 * The Glorious Mountains of Vancouver’s North Shore: A Peakbagger’s Guide by David Crerar, Harry Crerar, and Bill Maurer Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2018 $40.00 / 9781771602419 Both books reviewed by Ron Dart…
Read more #558 Go climb a mountain!
Eppich House II: The Story of an Arthur Erickson Masterwork by Greg Bellerby, with an introduction by Michelangelo Sabatino Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2019 $45.00 / 9781773270470 Reviewed by Martin Segger * This is the second volume in a series edited by Geoffrey Erickson and authorized by the Erickson family. (The first was Francisco Kirpacz:…
Read more #555 Arthur Erickson’s steel house
Vancouverism by Larry Beasley, with a prologue by Frances Bula Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019 $39.95 / 9780774890311 Reviewed by Michael Kluckner * Anyone looking for evidence of Vancouver’s essential weirdness could consider these two events: in 2005, a mayor named Sam Sullivan personally trademarked the term “EcoDensity” for a style of highrise development; and, five years later,…
Read more #550 From sawmills to EcoDensity
The Glorious Mountains of Vancouver’s North Shore: A Peakbagger’s Guide by David Crerar, Harry Crerar, and Bill Maurer Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2018 $40.00 / 9781771602419 Reviewed by Glenn Woodsworth * From various points in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, it is possible to look north to mountains that have had just a handful of…
Read more #549 Peak satisfaction
First published April 30, 2019. The Co-op Revolution: Vancouver’s Search For Food Alternatives by Jan DeGrass, with a foreword by Rick Scott Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9781987915952 Grocery Story: The Promise of Food Co-ops in the Age of Grocery Giants by Jon Steinman Gabriola: New Society Publishers, 2019 $19.99 / 9780865719071…
Read more #541 Co-opting the food chain
First published April 29, 2019 Wayson Choy (1939-2019) An obituary by Alan Twigg * At age 80, Wayson Choy died at home on April 28, 2019. Wayson Choy was born on April 20, 1939 in Vancouver as the only son of two working parents. His mother was a meat-cutter and sausage stuffer; he was told…
Read more #540 Wayson Choy (1939-2019)
From the Heart of it All: Ten Years of Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside by Heidi Greco (editor) Vancouver: Otter Press, 2018 $18.00 / 9780994821942 Reviewed by Yvonne Blomer First published April 20, 2019 * For ten years (2008-2018), the Thursdays Writing Collective was an important part of Vancouver’s literary scene. At its goodbye party…
Read more #533 Downtown Eastside Scribes
Blamed and Broken: The Mounties and the Death of Robert Dziekanski by Curt Petrovich Toronto: Dundurn, 2019 $20.99 / 9781459742932 Reviewed by Bonnie Reilly Schmidt First published April 19, 2019 * On October 14, 2007, Robert Dziekanski arrived in Vancouver on a flight from Poland to begin a new life in Canada. In Blamed and…
Read more #532 The death of Robert Dziekanski
MEMOIR: My Private Italy by Grahame Ware * We are delighted to present “My Private Italy,” the second instalment of Grahame Ware’s social history memoir, a larger project with the working title In the Moonshadows of My iMac. The first instalment, “My Private Chinatown,” was published in the Ormsby Review #501 (March 08th, 2019). In “My Private…
Read more #530 My private Italy
Chinatown Ghosts: The Poems and Photographs of Jim Wong-Chu by Jim Wong-Chu Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018 $19.95 / 9781551527482 Reviewed by LiLynn Wan First published April 13, 2019 * When Chinatown Ghosts was first published in 1986, Jim Wong-Chu broke a silence in Canadian literature. This slim volume of poetry was one of the…
Read more #529 Poems & portraits of Chinatown
All the Oceans: Designing by the Seat of My Pants by Ron Holland, with a foreword by Rupert Murdoch Vancouver: Ron Holland Design 2018, distributed in Canada by Georgetown Publications $45.00 / 9781775096801 Reviewed by Marianne Scott First published Apr. 6, 2019 * Eminent yacht designer Ron Holland, born in Aukland, New Zealand, in 1947,…
Read more #525 Ron Holland makes a splash