First Published: April 08th, 2015 * Everything about Ian Thow was big. The investment adviser’s house was a $5.5-million waterfront mansion outside Victoria, with four bedrooms and seven bathrooms. There was a dock on the Saanich Inlet for his yacht, a seventeen-metre Sea Ray that would sleep six, and two smaller boats. The seven-acre property…
Read more #13 BC Crime Stories: The Big Con
First Published: February 17th, 2015 * They called him Crazy Eddie in the Okanagan Valley. Eddie Haymour complained constantly that powerful forces were conspiring against him, plotting to steal his land and his dreams, ruining his life. The provincial government, police, and bureaucrats were part of the conspiracy, he’d tell anyone who would listen. By…
Read more #12 BC Crime Stories: Rattlesnake Isl.
First Published: October 14th, 2014 Born in 1880 on a farm in Indiana, Alys McKey began flying in 1912 in Los Angeles after answering an ad: “Wanted: young lady to learn to fly for exhibition purposes.” The ad was created by Fred Bennett and John Bryant of the Bennett Aero Company. McKey became the first…
Read more #11 Pioneers: Alys McKey Bryant
First Published: August 11th, 2014 The following article about early aviation in B.C. is excerpted from a long article written by Frank H. Ellis and published in the British Columbia Historical Quarterly in October of 1939. It describes how and when William (“Billy”) M. Stark made Canadian aviation history. Before he gained renown as a…
Read more #10 Pioneers: Flying Billy Stark
David Thompson’s cartography, his endurance, his consistent respect for Aboriginal peoples, his pathfinding, his versatility in at least six languages and his prodigious literary legacy qualify him as the most under-celebrated hero in Canadian history. First Published: August 10th, 2015 The second in a planned three volumes of David Thompson’s writings, The Writings of David…
Read more #9 David Thompson
First Published: April 12th, 2015 B.C.’s maven of children’s literature, Judith Saltman, has designated Ann Blades’ self-illustrated Mary of Mile 18 (1971) as the “breakthrough” illustrated title by a B.C. writer for children. The published-from-Montreal story is based on Blades’ experiences as a novice teacher in northern B.C. Her second book in 1973 was similarly…
Read more #8 Ann Blades
“Should any of you boys visit the Sandwich Islands, look up the burial place of my college mate.” Botanist John Goldie (1793-1886) reflecting on David Douglas’s grave First Published: April 04th, 2014 One of the most prominent of the roving fraternity of nineteenth-century plant hunters who scoured North America for plant species new to Europe,…
Read more #7 How the Douglas fir was named
First Published: April 09th, 2015 In Shore to Shore: The Art of Ts’uts’umutl Luke Marston, Suzanne Fournier profiles First Nations artist, Luke Marston, who created the sculpture at Brockton Point (at left), and describes his journey to Portugal to research the work. The title “Shore to Shore” references Marston’s great-great-grandfather, Portuguese Joe Silvey, who sailed…
Read more #6 Suzanne Fournier
In 1872, a sturdy man, nearly 70, steps onto his front porch, jump rope in hand. He skips for a time, then heads inside to pen a note to his daughter away at school in England to chase away “the cobwebs of colonial training.” He is James Douglas, former governor of Vancouver Island and new…
Read more #5: James Douglas doted on Martha
First Published: April 08th, 2015 In 1902, when he was a nine-year old in Galt, Ontario, Hubert Reginald Evans began his career as a professional writer by composing a limerick in praise of Lipton’s tea for a contest. The now-forgotten verse earned him $1. Hubert Evans later became a professional writer in British Columbia for…
Read more #4 Hubert Evans
“Nanaimo was a mining hamlet of some forty-five buildings in 1857. The name was scarcely known outside Vancouver Island… The Beaver came along about every six months, the Otter more frequently, and an Express canoe occasionally… The chinks between the logs, through which the wind would sough with a shriek of triumph, were plastered up…
Read more #3 When Nanaimo was Colville
“At long last the people of Canada have suitably marked the spot where British history on the North-west Pacific Coast had its real beginnings” — H.N. Sage First published: January 20th, 2016 “It seemed as if the mists of time had rolled away and that we were back again with Captain Cook on the deck…
Read more #2 The Mecca of B.C. is Friendly Cove
Richard Mackie and BCBookLook are teaming up to provide a new vehicle for serious writing about B.C. The Ormsby Review will be named after Margaret Ormsby, the venerable historian who often met with Richard Mackie for tea and talk during her retirement near Vernon. First published September 16th, 2016 * Note: The Ormsby Review was…
Read more #1 Welcome to The Ormsby Review