Some Useful Wild Plants: A Foraging Guide to Food and Medicine from Nature by Dan Jason Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2017 $16.95 / 9781550177916 Reviewed by Natasha Lyons First published Sept. 13, 2017 * Reviewing a book published before you were born is an interesting historical exercise. Dan Jason’s Some Useful Wild Plants: A Foraging…
Read more #169 A hero in the garden
Making Room: Forty Years of Room Magazine by Meghan Bell (editor) and curated by the Growing Room Collective: Meghan Bell, Terri Brandmueller, Candace Fertile, Taryn Hubbard, Chelene Knight, Lindsay Glauser Kwan, Cara Lang, Alissa McArthur, Navneet Nagra, Bonnie Nish, Rachel Thompson, Kayi Wong, and Lisa Xing Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2017 $24.95 / 9781987915402 Reviewed…
Read more #168 Forty years of making room
The White Angel by John MacLachlan Gray Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2017 $29.95 / 9781771621465 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy First published Sept. 8, 2017 * The challenges of writing historical fiction are manifold. Writers must capture both the exterior (surface and sociological details of a time they know only through research) and the interior…
Read more #167 Janet Smith & Wong Foon Sing
Entering Time: The Fungus Man Platters of Charles Edenshaw by Colin Browne Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2016 $19.95 / 9781772010398 Reviewed by Alan L. Hoover First published September 8, 2017 * Charles Edenshaw (c. 1867-1920) is perhaps the most recognized and acclaimed Northwest Coast Indigenous artist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An outstanding feature…
Read more #166 Three platters of Charles Edenshaw
Beyond Mile Zero: The Vanishing Alaska Highway Lodge Community by Lily Gontard (text) and Mark Kelly (photographs) Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2017 $24.95 / 9781550177978 Reviewed by Heather Longworth Sjoblom First published September 6, 2017 * 2017 marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the construction of the Alaska Highway through British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska. Throughout…
Read more #165 Alaska Highway before GPS
Cuba from the Inside by Alan Twigg First published September 5, 2017 * For anyone with an abiding love or interest in Cuba, there are many books about the place–more than ten of which are by British Columbians. For instance, when an American professor named Maurice Halperin met Che Guevara in Mexico, prior to Fidel…
Read more #164 Cuba from the inside
British Columbia by the Road: Car Culture and the Making of a Modern Landscape by Ben Bradley Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017 $34.95 / 9780774834193 Reviewed by Daniel Francis * In 2013 a septet of Canadian historians calling themselves The Past Collective published a study which contradicted the hoary old cliche that Canadians do not know…
Read more #163 When the rubber hit the road
First published August 30, 2017 REVIEW: War Torn Exchanges: The Lives and Letters of Nursing Sisters Laura Holland and Mildred Forbes by Andrea McKenzie (editor). Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016. $32.95 / 9780774832540 * REVIEW: Sister Soldiers of the Great War: The Nurses of the Canadian Army Medical Corps by Cynthia Toman Vancouver: UBC Press 2016. $34.95 / …
Read more #162 The sisters of war
First published August 30, 2017 REVIEW: The Most Dangerous Thing by Leanne Lieberman Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2017 $14.95 9781459811843 Reviewed by Carol Anne Shaw Sixteen-year-old Sydney lives in and out of the Fog — a word she uses to describe the smothering depression and anxiety that so often takes hold of her. But she’s trying;…
Read more #161 Loving in a fog
First published August 28, 2017 REVIEW: Turning Parliament Inside Out: Practical Ideas for Reforming Canada’s Democracy by Michael Chong, Scott Simms, and Kennedy Stewart (editors) Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2017. $22.95 / 978-1-77162-137-3 Reviewed by Hamish Telford * By comparison, the current political climate in the United States makes Canada look like Nirvana, but…
Read more #160 Keeping parliament current
Joan Skogan was one of a kind An obituary by Alan Twigg First published August 20, 2017 * Born in Comox on September 29, 1945, Joan Skogan knew joy and sorrow. An intrepid researcher and a conscientious writer, she will be much missed by those who knew her fascinating, passionate nature. Joan Skogan could be…
Read more #159 Joan Skogan was one of a kind
First Published August 19, 2017 REVIEW: Infidels and the Damn Churches: Irreligion and Religion in Settler British Columbia by Lynne Marks Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017. $34.95 / 9780774833462 Reviewed by Chelsea Horton * More British Columbians self-identify as secular than do the populations of any other province in Canada today. And, historian Lynne Marks illustrates…
Read more #158 A province of non-believers
First published Aug. 16, 2017 REVIEW: All the World’s a Stage: The Story of Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach By Jayne Seagrave Victoria: Heritage House, 2017. $29.95 / 9781772031768 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * In All the World’s a Stage, Jayne Seagrave has provided a history of Bard on the Beach, Vancouver’s well-known outdoor Shakespeare…
Read more #157 From stage to page
First published August 16, 2017 REVIEW: Surviving Logan by Erik Bjarnason and Cathi Shaw Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, $28 2016 / 9781771601924 Reviewed by PearlAnn Reichwein * In Surviving Logan, Erik Bjarnason of North Vancouver and his cousin Cathi Shaw of Summerland have joined with Rocky Mountain Books to produce what reviewer PearlAnn Reichwein…
Read more #156 Frostbitten on Canada’s Everest
S.C. Heal (1925-2017) An obituary by Alan Twigg First published August 15, 2017 * “In my opinion there is no finer interpreter of the marine scene in British Columbia.” — John M. MacFarlane, nautical historian As a columnist and contributor to specialty shipping magazines, the writer-turned-publisher S.C. Heal made a major contribution to the maritime…
Read more #155 S.C. Heal (1925-2017)
Jim Wong-Chu (1949-2017) An obituary by Alan Twigg First published Aug. 15, 2017 * Chinese Canadians weren’t granted the federal vote in Canada until 1947 and they first voted provincially in 1949–the year Jim Wong-Chu was born in Hong Kong on January 28th. Jim Wong-Chu was brought to Canada, aged four, in 1953 where he…
Read more #154 Jim Wong-Chu (1949-2017)
David Watmough (1926-2017) An obituary by Alan Twigg First published August 14, 2017 * “I hope my work is myopically ‘westcoast’ and persistently graceful in language.” — David Watmough “That rarest of birds on the literary scene, the natural storyteller.” — Robert Fulford QUICK REFERENCE ENTRY: Homosexuals in British Columbia can now express themselves openly…
Read more #153 David Watmough (1926-2017)
Victoria’s Most Haunted: Ghost Stories from BC’s Historic Capital City by Ian Gibbs Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2017 $19.95 / 9781771512138 Reviewed by Peter Grant First published August 13, 2017 * The standard general histories of the Victoria, most of them by popular (non-academic) historians, are now almost half a century old. These are: Derek Pethick’s…
Read more #152 Getting spidey in Victoria
Chilcotin Chronicles: Stories of Adventure and Intrigue from British Columbia’s Central Interior by Sage Birchwater Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2017 $26.95 / 9781987915334 Reviewed by Lorraine Weir First published August 10, 2017 * Sage Birchwater credits playwright Gwen Pharis Ringwood with urging him to keep a record of his travels on the Chilcotin Plateau –…
Read more #151 Taking care of stories
First published July 12, 2017 REVIEW: Walking to Camelot: A Pilgrimage through the Heart of Rural England by John A. Cherrington Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2016. $22.95 / 978-1-927958-62-9 Reviewed by John Gellard John Cherrrington takes a 365-mile hike through southern England on public footpaths. * From Figure 1 comes John Cherrington’s Walking to Camelot, an…
Read more #150 Camelot and the waste land