A Journey Back to Nature: A History of Strathcona Provincial Park by Catherine Marie Gilbert Victoria: Heritage House, 2021 $26.95 / 9781772033588 Reviewed by Matthew Downey * The past year in British Columbia has seen activism and protests centred on the forest industry and controversies over the logging of old growth rainforest. In such a…
Read more 1350 Making & taking Strathcona Park
The Unsuitable Bride by Pamela McGarry Gibsons: Well Hall Press, 2021 $20.00 / 9781777513405 Available on Amazon or, for $20 plus postage, by contacting mcgarrypamela@gmail.com Reviewed by Valerie Green * Pamela McGarry’s novel The Unsuitable Bride was not quite what I had expected. It tells the story of Nina Tolhurst, born in Calcutta to English…
Read more 1349 The very essence of India
White Lie by Clint Burnham Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2021 $18.00 / 9781772141740 Reviewed by Peter Babiak * One of my favourite lines of literary theory is from the mystical German Jewish essayist, Walter Benjamin. A perspicacious man who recognized just how much literary works are indebted to the economic and technological conditions that form their…
Read more 1348 Baffling thrums of reasoning
Best Canadian Poetry 2021 by Souvankham Thammavongsa (editor; series editor Anita Lahey) Windsor, ON: Biblioasis, 2021 $22.95 / 9781771964395 Reviewed by Heidi Greco * Year-end lists often have a way of dragging themselves into the new year. Witness the slowest of all these accolades, the Academy Awards, with their Oscars for best films. They’re not…
Read more 1347 Pandemic poets: year one
St. Michael’s Residential School: Lament and Legacy by Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubenstein Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2020 $21.95 / 9781553806233 Reviewed by J.R. (Jim) Miller * In the summer of 1970 Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubinstein, recently married and just graduated from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, wanted to take some time off to…
Read more 1346 Four months at Alert Bay
Indigenous Repatriation Handbook Prepared by Jisgang Nika Collison, Sdaahl K̲’awaas Lucy Bell, Lou-ann Neel Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum Press, 2019 $29.95 / 9780772673176 Reviewed by Mark Turin * Anthropologist Aaron Glass remarked that use of the prefix ‘re’ in words such as repatriation, revitalization, rejuvenation, revival, and resurgence points to the undoing of some…
Read more 1345 Museum repatriation and renewal
North Delta History and Heritage: including Annieville, Upper and Lower Sunbury, Annacis Island, Part of East Delta, and Burns Bog by John Macdonald (editor) Delta: Delta Heritage Society, 2020 (4th printing, 2021) $20.00 / 9781777161705 Reviewed by Ken Favrholdt * North Delta History and Heritage is a great example of what a group of historically-minded volunteers…
Read more 1344 Rambles in North Delta
In Sight: My Life in Science and Biotech by Julia Levy, with a foreword by Molly Shoichet Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020 $34.95 / 9781487508319 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * The reviewer is reading Julia Levy’s book on the bus to UBC and has just arrived at 41st and Dunbar when he gets to…
Read more 1343 Mystery at 41st and Dunbar
Bramah and the Beggar Boy by Renée Sarojini Saklikar Gibsons: Nightwood Editions (blewointment), 2021 $26.95 / 9780889714021 Reviewed by John Lent * Renée Sarojini Saklikar’s Bramah and the Beggar Boy is a stunning achievement, a magnificent piece of writing. Like Ursula K. Leguin’s EarthSea Trilogy or Haruki Murakami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, or John…
Read more 1342 A wild and enclosed garden
Coding Democracy: How Hackers are Disrupting Power, Surveillance, and Authoritarianism by Maureen Webb, with a foreword by Cory Doctorow Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (The MIT Press), 2021 $23.95 / 9780262542289 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * An Unsafe Online World: What happens if do-evil computer nerds overrun do-good ones in the struggle to save democracy?…
Read more 1341 An unsafe online world
The Devil’s Trick: How Canada Fought the Vietnam War by John Boyko Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Knopf Canada), 2021 $32.00 / 9780735278004 Reviewed by Howard Macdonald Stewart * Six Easy Pieces. John Boyko has written a compelling, largely anecdotal history of Canada’s involvement in the Americans’ long years of war in Indochina. It consists…
Read more 1340 Canada and Vietnam revisited
Among Silent Echoes: A Memoir of Trauma and Resilience by Phyllis Dyson Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2021 $24.95 / 9781773860640 Reviewed by Lee Reid * “My mother had needed help, not bullets” (p. 21). With Phyllis Dyson’s book, Among Silent Echoes, it is not immediately evident why Phyllis, at age 45, decides to explore the…
Read more 1339 When belonging goes bad
The Errant Husband by Elizabeth Haynes Regina: Radiant Press, 2021 $25.00 / 9781989274583 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * This debut novel treats the reader to a third-person narrative of a female quest with Jungian undertones. The Errant Husband scrutinizes gender relations as it dissects the anatomy of a marriage against the backdrop of historical and…
Read more 1338 Waiting for Hernando & Wally
The Most Precious Substance on Earth by Shashi Bhat Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (McClelland and Stewart), 2021 $24.95 / 9780771094965 Reviewed by Myshara Herbert-McMyn * Shashi Bhat, editor-in-chief of EVENT magazine and winner of the Writers’ Trust / McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, presents a standout piece of fiction in her novel The Most…
Read more 1337 Oboes and animal crackers
The Royals Next Door by Karina Halle Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Berkley), 2021 $22.00 / 9780593334195 Reviewed by Miranda Marini * Set on Salt Spring Island, “a small yet eccentric haven between Vancouver Island and the mainland [of British Columbia]” (p. 5), Karina Halle’s The Royals Next Door begins with the unpleasant image of…
Read more 1336 Salt Spring shack and mansion
INTERVIEW: Russell Thornton with The Ormsby Review In “Greek Fire,” one of the poems in Russell Thornton’s astonishing new collection, the central image is of fire burning through water: “water is a bridge / for a fire to come into the world.” This image also illuminates the driving force that animates the poems in Answer to Blue…
Read more 1335 Interview with Russell Thornton
So Much More Than Art: Indigenous Miniatures of the Pacific Northwest by Jack Davy Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021 $89.95 / 9780774866552 Reviewed by Alan L. Hoover * In this book Jack Davy discusses the making of miniature objects: model canoes, houses, totem poles, masks, by First Nations artists on the Northwest Coast of BC, Alaska,…
Read more 1334 In praise of the miniature
Things We Could Design: For More Than Human-Centered Worlds by Ron Wakkary Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (The MIT Press), 2021 $47.00 / 9780262542999 Reviewed by Thomas Girard * Ron Wakkary’s Things We Could Design: For More Than Human-Centered Worlds is a delightful book that brings us into an important conversation taking place in Vancouver,…
Read more 1333 Deep, beautiful, and a little quirky
Harking by George Mercer North Saanich: George Mercer, 2021; printed by Friesens, Altona, Manitoba $19.99 / 9780987975485 Reviewed by Valerie Green * George Mercer’s book Harking is described as a book for young adults. I am sure, however, it will appeal to people of all ages who enjoy and respect the wilderness. Set in Jasper…
Read more 1332 Harking: growing up in Jasper
All Is Well by Katherine Walker Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, 2021 $24.95 / 9781771872157 Reviewed by Heather Graham * Christine Wright, the protagonist of Katherine Walker’s novel All Is Well, is a recently ordained priest in the Anglican Church of Canada with fifteen years of military service to her credit, some of it in Special Forces….
Read more 1331 Reverend Wright & the wrongdoers