The Flora and Fauna of Coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, Expanded Edition by Collin Varner Victoria: Heritage House, 2021 $39.95 / 9781772033564 Reviewed by Jocie Brooks * Glossy colour photos of stone sheep, chinook salmon, salal berries and a black-capped chickadee grace the cover of Collin Varner’s The Flora and Fauna of Coastal…
Read more 1372 A riotous mix of species
Pebble Swing by Isabella Wang Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2021 $18.95 / 9780889714069 Reviewed by Grace Lau * The dedication at the beginning of Pebble Swing contains a quote about love, and with every re-read, I still marvel at how love spills so generously from the pages. To be clear, the vessels are sometimes pain and…
Read more 1371 Winter in Gastown
“Opposition on the Coast”: The Hudson’s Bay Company, American Coasters, the Russian-American Company, and Native Traders on the Northwest Coast, 1825-1846 Edited and introduced by James R. Gibson Toronto: The Champlain Society, 2019 $99.00 / 9780772764416 Reviewed by Peter Grant * A game of monopoly: The Bay, of department store fame, was once the terror…
Read more 1370 A game of monopoly
Boswell Beginnings and Beyond by Tom Wishart, Janice Baker, and Lynn Campbell (editors) Boswell: Boswell Historical Society, 2021 (new edition; first published by the Boswell Ladies’ Club, 1986) $35.00 / 9781771369947 Available at local bookstores or from Lynn Campbell: lynncampbell1508@gmail.com Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Surviving the Ravages of Time: A remote BC town dodges…
Read more 1369 Home & work on Kootenay Lake
Nothing Could Be Further from the Truth by Christopher Evans Toronto: House of Anansi, 2022 $22.99 / 9781487010331 Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic * Nothing Could Be Further from the Truth manages a neat trick, the kind of move that could inspire many an author to mutter “I’d give my eye teeth for that.” The…
Read more 1368 Across seventeen stories
The Cine Star Salon: a novel by Leah Ranada Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2021 $21.95 / 9781774390320 Reviewed by W.H. New * This first novel by Leah Ranada is a contemporary version of an old trope, the growing-up-and-away novel, where the protagonist has to find out how to be herself, stop depending on others, deal with…
Read more 1367 Philippine style
Imagined Truths: Myths from a Draft-Dodging Poet by Richard Lemm New Westminster: Tidewater Press, 2021 $21.95 / 9781990160066 Reviewed by Heidi Greco * Puzzled. That’s the feeling I occasionally had while reading this far-reaching memoir. It’s far-reaching not only in the years it covers — from the 1950s to today — but also in the…
Read more 1366 More than an essay on Canada
Race, Culture, and Politics in Education: A Global Journey From South Africa by Kogila Moodley, with an afterword by Sonia Nieto Columbia University: Teachers College Press, 2020 $34.95 (U.S.) / 9780807764886 Reviewed by Isabel Nanton * A successful blend of personal memoir and insights culled from an extensive academic career, Kogila Moodley’s book, which forms…
Read more 1365 A journey from South Africa
Fake It So Real by Susan Sanford Blades Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2020 $21.95 / 9780889713888 Reviewed by Carol Matthews * “I sometimes call it, like, a punk rock Alice Munro,” Susan Sanford Blades said about her debut novel Fake It So Real in an interview with Capital Daily. While it does focus on some of…
Read more 1364 Vodka, bubble bath, blue lines
Dreamers, Skeptics, and Healers: the Story of BC’s Medical School. The UBC Faculty of Medicine at 70 years by Wendy Cairns, John Cairns, David Ostrow, and Gavin Stuart Vancouver: Page Two Books, 2021 $50.00 / 9781989603895 Reviewed by Jaime Smith * As a graduate of the UBC medical school in 1976 and after training there…
Read more 1363 Beds and infrastructure at UBC
A Liberal-Labour Lady: The Times and Life of Mary Ellen Spear Smith by Veronica Strong-Boag Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021 $89.95 / 9780774867245 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * Who? Mary Ellen Spear Smith (1863-1933) was British Columbia’s first female Member of the Legislative Assembly. She was also the first female cabinet minister and the first female…
Read more 1362 Seamstress to cabinet minister
The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Empire by Stephen R. Bown Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Anchor Canada), 2021 $24.95 / 9780385694094 Reviewed by Daniel Francis * When I finished graduate school in the mid-1970s and rejoined the work force I got a job researching the history of the fur trade…
Read more 1361 A cabal of merchant adventurers
Vile Spirits by John MacLachlan Gray Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2021 $29.95 / 9781771622776 Reviewed by W.H. New * Straight out: I loved this book. It’s lively and fast-paced, it sparkles with satire, and it’s chock full of arresting characters (and a few who get away). Vile Spirits is marketed as a mystery, and…
Read more 1360 Spirited Vancouver
Royally Wronged: The Royal Society of Canada and Indigenous Peoples by Constance Backhouse, Cynthia E. Milton, Margaret Kovach, and Adele Perry (editors) Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021 $39.95 / 9780228009030 Reviewed by J.R. (Jim) Miller Disclosure: the reviewer is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada * In 2016, Dr. Cindy Blackstock…
Read more 1359 A shaky grasp at the Royal Society
Not of Reason: A Recipe for Outrunning Sadness by Rita Moir Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2021 $22.95 / 9781773860633 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Author Rita Moir’s Memoir Not of Reason connected with me on many levels. It is an impeccable combination of sorrow and humour when life is at its lowest. The author relates…
Read more 1358 Dying in the natural order
Editor’s note: in January 2022, the University of British Columbia announced the acquisition of a rare copy of the first edition of the collected plays of William Shakespeare, known to scholars as the First Folio, published in 1623. One of 235 copies in existence, UBC’s copy is only the second in Canada, the other being…
Read more 1357 My kingdom for a … First Folio
Binge: 60 Stories to Make Your Head Feel Different by Douglas Coupland Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada, 2021 $29.95 / 9781039000520 Reviewed by Peter Babiak * In a Guardian essay commemorating thirty years anniversary of Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, Douglas Coupland explained why he wrote the book. “I disliked being classified as…
Read more 1356 Snippets of a consumer society
Half Brothers and Other Stories: a novella and four fictions by Bill Stenson Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue Publishing, 2021 $23.95 / 9781896949857 Reviewed by W.H. New * Bill Stenson has done something remarkable with these stories: he’s mastered a plain style, one so accessible that you think you’re listening to someone speak. It’s an…
Read more 1355 Cowichan plain
Finding Nothing: The Vangardes, 1959-1975 by Gregory Betts Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021 $85.00 / 9781487505318 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Vancouver Poetry Rocked in the 1960s. An Already Lively Poetry Scene Got a Jolt With the Arrival of the Americans I’m a poetry fan. Whitman, Neruda, Frost, Akhmatova, Shakespeare, Atwood. Yes, Margaret Atwood…
Read more 1354 Vancouver avant-garde poets
Nowadays and Lonelier: Stories by Carmella Gray-Cosgrove Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021 $19.95 / 9781551528717 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * The term “survivalist” conjures images of open fires, rugged hunters, and makeshift tents. Yet, as Carmella Gray-Cosgrove demonstrates in her debut short story collection, Nowadays and Lonelier, there are many different faces to survival in…
Read more 1353 Opioids & war memorials