Blue Portugal and Other Essays by Theresa Kishkan Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2022 $24.99 / 9781772125993 Reviewed by Michael Hayward * For forty-some-odd years, Theresa Kishkan and her husband, poet John Pass, have been living in a home that they built themselves early in their marriage, on a piece of land half-way up BC’s…
Read more 1533 On the edge of memoir
Icefields by Thomas Wharton, with a foreword by Suzette Mayr Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2021 (first published 1995) $23.95 / 9781774390368 Reviewed by Geoffrey D. Morrison * A reissued novel poses a special task for the reviewer, not least because many of the things people say about a book the first time around tend to remain…
Read more 1532 Some things that remain true
Mischief Making: Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Art, and the Seriousness of Play by Nicola Levell, with a foreword by Nobuhiro Kishigami Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021 $29.95 / 9780774867368 Reviewed by Victoria Wyatt * Haida artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas explains, “I am committed to the idea of human hybridity as a good thing: difference is a fertile…
Read more 1531 High end mischief
First Nations Wildfire Evacuations: A Guide for Communities and External Agencies by Tara K. McGee, Amy Cardinal Christianson, and First Nations Wildfire Evacuation Partnership Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021 $25.00 / 9780774880664 Reviewed by Kim Naqvi * This concise, clear guide for wildfire evacuations in First Nations communities is more than just practical, informative, and accessible…
Read more 1530 Fight fire with foresight
Hastings Mill: The Historic Times of a Vancouver Community by Lisa Anne Smith Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2021 $24.95 / 9781553806417 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * The history of Vancouver differs from that of Canada’s other major cities. It’s as though she jumped a couple of centuries to land at last on this side of the…
Read more 1529 Enter the Native Daughters
Cordage from the Ozette Village Archaeological Site: A Technological, Functional and Comparative Study by Dale R. Croes with Darby C. Stapp (editor) and Victoria Boozer (publications assistant) Richland, WA: Journal of Northwest Anthropology (JONA) Memoir Number 21, May 2021 $24.99 (U.S.) / 9798504397573 Reviewed by Andrea Laforet * Ozette, a village on Cape Alava on…
Read more 1528 The cords that bind
Emily Carr, Unvarnished: Autobiographical Sketches by Emily Carr by Kathryn Bridge (editor) Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum Press, 2021 $24.95 / 9780772679642 Reviewed by Colin Browne * Turbulence and Eruption: Emily Carr, Unvarnished There’s a scene in Kathryn Bridge’s wonderful collection, Unvarnished: Autobiographical Sketches by Emily Carr, that sticks in my mind. It’s June 1936….
Read more 1527 Turbulence and eruption
Best Canadian Stories 2021 by Diane Schoemperlen (editor) Windsor, ON: Biblioasis, 2021 $18.99 / 9781771964364 Reviewed by Carol Matthews * There’s a rumour that the short story is on the decline and that publishers, not to mention the public, prefer novels. And yet, here we have the 2021 edition of Best Canadian Short Stories. The…
Read more 1526 Our strongest suit
Off the Hook: The Essential West Coast Seafood Recipes by D.L. Acken and Aurelia Louvet Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2018 $22.00 / 9781771512763 Reviewed by Gillian Crowther * Off The Hook: The Essential West Coast Seafood Recipes is the perfect description of this little gem of a book. It does, however, put you on the hook…
Read more 1525 A seafood lover’s pantry
The Acid Room: The Psychedelic Trials and Tribulations of Hollywood Hospital by Jesse Donaldson and Erika Dyck Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2022 $18.00 / 9781772141863 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Acid Test in New West: LSD entered the world through the doors of a BC Hospital Before LSD guru Timothy Leary (“tune in, turn on and…
Read more 1524 LSD & Hollywood North
MEMOIR: Along the empty corridor of British Columbia by Richard Mackie * In January 1989, while researching in Winnipeg as part of my doctoral dissertation in Canadian history and historical geography, I had a vivid and unusual dream. My hosts, John and Katherine Selwood, had turned the sunroom at the back of their house in…
Read more 1523 Along the empty corridor of British Columbia
Perilous Passage by Arthur Mayse, with an introduction by Susan Mayse Montreal: Véhicule Press, 2021 (first published by William Morrow and Company, 1949) $14.99 / 9781550655841 Reviewed by Miranda Marini * Despite being a Canadian author and despite his vast contributions to the Canadian literary canon, Arthur Mayse remains a lesser-known author among Canadian literature…
Read more 1522 A vintage west coast thriller
The Perfect Family by Robyn Harding Toronto: Simon and Schuster Canada, 2021 $24.99 / 9781982176877 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * In front of the window overlooking my own quiet street, it is not at all difficult to imagine the suburban neighbourhood in which Robyn Harding’s The Perfect Family takes place. The Perfect Family is the…
Read more 1521 House of cards
Intertidal: Poems from the Littoral Zone by Zoe Dickinson Salt Spring Island: Raven Chapbooks, 2022 $20.00 / 9780973440898 Reviewed by Brian Day * Zoe Dickinson’s Intertidal, the winner of this year’s Raven Chapbooks Poetry Contest, speaks from the verges of the Juan de Fuca Strait. The voice of these poems patiently and reverently attends to…
Read more 1520 To move as the kelp moves
Words from the Dead: Relevant Readings in the Covid Age by Sean Arthur (Art) Joyce Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2022 $25.95 / 9781771714587 Reviewed by Christopher A. Shaw * Capturing the “Landscape of the Imagination” in the Age of Covid No matter where one stands on the Covid-19 pandemic, vaccines, and who’s responsible, the events of…
Read more 1519 Reading the Covid landscape
Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods by Lyndsie Bourgon Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2022 $34.95 / 9781771647199 Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic * For many readers, Tree Thieves will surprise, inform, disturb, alarm, and enlighten. This impressive, absorbing, and often riveting debut work of non-fiction introduces a serious issue, as well as cause…
Read more 1518 Brazen timber heists
A Lover’s Grimoire by Linda Quibell Grimoire: a book of magic devised to invoke supernatural entities such as angels, deities or demons * The Plague The first year of the plague we knew nothing being neither doctors nor priests nor midwives we did not know that eyes were infectious that mouths were a vector and…
Read more 1517 A lover’s grimoire
A Funny Kind of Paradise by Jo Owens Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Random House Canada), 2021 $22.95 / 9780735278820 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * An extended care facility in Victoria might seem a claustrophobic setting for a novel, particularly when a stroke has rendered speechless its narrator, Francesca, who inhabits a room with four…
Read more 1516 Memories and caregivers
Haunting British Columbia: Ghostly Tales from the Past by Mike McCardell Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2021 $34.95 / 9781550179552 Reviewed by Caileigh Broatch * A browse through the history section at a local bookstore often turns up its fair amount of dust. There are archives of articles, biographies of BC’s most famous, tales of extraordinary…
Read more 1515 Jock, the unreliable narrator
Connecting the Kootenays: The Kootenay Lake Ferries. A Hundred Years of Service, 1921-2020 by Michael A. Cone Nelson: Maa Press, 2022 $45.00 / 9781778350511 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Sternwheeler Majesty: A century of sailing the Kootenays on the “boats” that plied the region’s waterways My childhood memory of the bygone era of sternwheelers on…
Read more 1514 Sternwheeler majesty