Graffiti, Canadian Style by Ernest Hekkanen First published in The Ormsby Review, April 9, 2019 * It was twenty years ago, in 1999, that Ernest Hekkanen wrote this diatribe about why Vancouver public art is so godawful, why Canada’s granting agencies can be foolish or corrupt, and why he rejected a contract from a respected…
Read more #527 Canadian graffiti
Black Star by Maureen Medved Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2018 $20.00 / 9781772141122 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski First published Apr. 7, 2019 * Encountering the barbed and dazzling shards that make up the word world of Black Star, a reader might feel on uneven ground. And for good reason. This is a novel that jolts, jars,…
Read more #526 Lies, tenure, and dark energy
All the Oceans: Designing by the Seat of My Pants by Ron Holland, with a foreword by Rupert Murdoch Vancouver: Ron Holland Design, 2018 $45.00 / 9781775096801 Reviewed by Marianne Scott First published Apr. 6, 2019 * Eminent yacht designer Ron Holland, born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1947, moved to San Francisco in 1969,…
Read more #525 Ron Holland makes a splash
James Cook: The Voyages by William Frame with Laura Walker Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018 $49.95 / 9780773552869 Reviewed by Robin Fisher First published April 5, 2019 * Every time I receive a new “cook book” to review I open it up in the hope that the author(s) will have something new to…
Read more #524 Just another Cook book?
Inner Ranges: An Anthology of Mountain Thoughts and Mountain People by Geoff Powter, with a foreword by Chris Bonnington Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2018 $22.00 / 9781771602877 Reviewed by Stephen Slemon First published April 4, 2019 * Canadian mountaineering writing would have struggled to find its public voice, were it not for Geoff Powter. For…
Read more #523 Powter’s alpine passages
Upend by Kevin Spenst Victoria: Frog Hollow Press, 2018 $15.00 / 9781926948652 Reviewed by David Stouck First published April 1, 2019 * In Vancouver’s poetry scene Kevin Spenst was probably first noted for his inventive forms of self-advertising. To promote an early chapbook titled Fast Fictions (2007) he printed and distributed a map of where…
Read more #522 Nurse log and a Great Blue Heron
Beyond Forgetting: Celebrating 100 Years of Al Purdy by Howard White and Emma Skagen (editors), with a foreword by Steven Heighton Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2018 $22.95 / 9781550178463 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb First published Mar. 31, 2019 * A book of poems about a poet. What a notion. But actually poets often write about…
Read more #521 The Al Purdy Poets’ Society
The Afrikaner by Arianna Dagnino Montreal: Guernica Editions, 2019 $20.00 / 9781771833578 Reviewed by Alan Twigg * In Arianna Dagnino’s The Afrikaner, a brave and resilient woman ventures to the Kalahari Desert to find her place in Rainbow Nation. The novel arises from the author’s five-year stint as a journalist in South Africa during the…
Read more #520 Somewhere inside the rainbow
1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike by the Graphic History Collective and David Lester, with an introduction by James Naylor Toronto: Between the Lines Books, 2019 $19.95 / 9781771134200 Reviewed by Janet Mary Nicol First published March 29, 2019 * Editor’s note: In September 2020, 1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg…
Read more #519 Back to Bloody Saturday
What Forever Feels Like: A Memoir of Johnsons Landing by Ellen Burt New Denver: Maa Press, 2018 $23.00 / 9781999554804 Reviewed by Lee Reid First published March 28, 2019 * The old magic of “once upon a time” can ambush us, especially when we see the loves and challenges of our own lives mirrored in…
Read more #518 Matriarchs of Johnsons Landing
Ocean Falls: After the Whistle. Recollections and Reflections of Life in a Coastal Company Town by R. Brian McDaniel Victoria: Printorium Print Works, 2018 $40.00 / 9781999420703 Reviewed by Howard Macdonald Stewart * The story of a town that no longer exists is destined to be poignant, at least in places. The fact that it’s…
Read more #517 Spotlight on the Rain People
Being Ts’elxwéyeqw: First Peoples’ Voices and History from the Chilliwack-Fraser Valley, British Columbia by the Ts’elxwéyeqw Tribe (producers) and David M. Schaepe (editor) Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2018 $94.95 / 9781550178180 Reviewed Charles R. Menzies * Being Ts’elxwéyeqw is one of a growing genre of First Nations controlled and published reference books. Edited by UBC-trained…
Read more #516 Chilliwack to Ts’elxwéyeqw
Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten by Stephen Collis Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2018 $24.95 / 9781772012071 Reviewed by Sharon Thesen * Literary friendships are the source of more compositional energy than we usually give them credit for. As Stephen Collis reminds us in this deeply engaging book-length essay set within his friendship…
Read more #515 Fulford Harbour’s silent poet
21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality by Bob Joseph Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2018 $19.95 / 9780995266520 * Talking Back to the Indian Act: Critical Readings in Settler Colonial Histories by Mary-Ellen Kelm and Keith D. Smith (editors) Toronto: University of Toronto Press,…
Read more #514 Consider the Indian Act
City in Colour: Rediscovered Stories of Victoria’s Multicultural Past by May Q. Wong Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2018 $22.00 / 9781771512855 Reviewed by Tom Koppel * When I was a kid, my father took me on a brief visit to Victoria. Part of the attraction, for him, was that he’d heard the city described as the…
Read more #513 Victoria’s secret: diversity
Growing Up in Wild Horse Canyon by Karen Autio, illustrated by Loraine Kemp Vancouver: Crwth Press, 2018 $25.95 / 9781775331902 Reviewed by Ken Mather * At the heart of Growing up in Wild Horse Canyon is the beautifully illustrated story of the life of a Ponderosa Pine from a seed in the year 1780 to…
Read more #512 A Ponderosa Pine time capsule
Gold Rush Manliness: Race and Gender on the Pacific Slope by Christopher Herbert Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018 $30.00 (U.S.) / 9780295744131 Reviewed by Robert Hogg * Christopher Herbert has added to the considerable literature on gender in colonial societies, and of frontier masculinities in particular, as well as to the historiography of race,…
Read more #511 Gold, gamblers, greenhorns
Bite Me! Musings on Monsters and Mayhem by Joe Rosenblatt Erin, Ontario: Porcupine’s Quill, 2019 $16.95 / 9780889844247 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * The day after Joe Rosenblatt died, his last book arrived in pre-publication digital format. I don’t want to write an elegy; others are doing that. It turns out I don’t need to;…
Read more #510 Joe’s monsters and critters
No Dog Barked: Who Killed the MacLauchlans? by Rod Drown and Ken McIntosh New Westminster: Archives New West, 2018 $30.00 / 9781775095217 Reviewed by Don Hauka * In the early hours of March 21, 1966, Dr. Henry MacLauchlan and his wife Margaret Ann were murdered in their tiny bungalow at 912 Fifth Street in New…
Read more #509 Let sleeping dogs stir
A Violent Streak by Stephanie Warner Markham, Ontario: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2018 $15.00 / 9781554554461 Reviewed by Elee Kraljii Gardiner * The epigraph that opens Stephanie Warner’s debut collection of poetry, A Violent Streak, is a definition of the word “speed.” Given that the dominant themes and places of this group of poems have to…
Read more #508 Sex, speed, and moonshine