Flying to Extremes: Memories of a Northern Bush Pilot by Dominique Prinet Surrey: Hancock House, 2021 $19.95 / 9780888397553 Reviewed by Heather Longworth Sjoblom * “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. I regret to have to report that our plane is completely covered in ice and we are inexorably descending toward the tundra. In…
Read more 1196 Minus 65° F on Borden Island
Able to Lead: Disablement, Radicalism, and the Political Life of E.T. Kingsley by Ravi Malhotra and Benjamin Isitt Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021 $34.95 / 9780774865777 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * “Impossibilist” Crusader: E.T. Kingsley led the Socialist Party of Canada and edited the Western Clarion Eugene Thornton “E.T.” Kingsley (1856-1929) was a sharp-tongued orator in…
Read more 1195 A serious thinker of the labour left
The Fire-Dwellers by Margaret Laurence Toronto: Penguin Random House (Penguin Modern Classics, Emblem Editions), 2017 $19.95 / 9780735252837 First published by McClelland & Stewart, 1969 Reviewed by Harper Campbell * To read Margaret Laurence’s The Fire-Dwellers (1969) is to see a very different Vancouver from the one that exists today. Well, “see” isn’t really the right…
Read more 1194 Return of The Fire-Dwellers
In Action with Destroyers 1939-1945: the Wartime Memoirs of Commander J.A.J. Dennis, DSC, RN by J.A.J. Dennis (author) and Anthony Cumming (editor) Barnsley, South Yorkshire, UK: Pen and Sword Maritime, 2017 £19.99 (U.K.) / 9781526718495 Reviewed by Michael L. Hadley * BC books and authors offer a rich palette of local and international perspectives. They…
Read more 1193 From Scapa Flow to Lord Byng
Deep and Sheltered Waters: The History of Tod Inlet by David R. Gray, with a foreword by Nancy J. Turner and Robert D. Turner Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum Press, 2020 $29.95 / 9780772672568 Reviewed by Matthew Downey * With Deep and Sheltered Waters: The History of Tod Inlet, David Gray provides an account, both…
Read more 1192 The histories of Tod Inlet
Painted Fences by Sara Cassidy, illustrated by Sydney Barnes Victoria: Heritage House, 2021 $19.95 / 9781772033519 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Sara Cassidy’s children’s book Painted Fences is an excellent way of offering a delightful story within a story for young children ages 8 to 12. At the same time it teaches them about the…
Read more 1191 A walk into the past
Chinatown Stories, Volume 3 by Brooke Xiang and Tyler Mark (editors) Vancouver: Chinatown Today, 2020 $25.00 / 25611607 (ISSN) Note: a digital version of this book can be seen here; hard copies may be purchased at Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden and at About Boutique Reviewed by LiLynn Wan * In this third volume of…
Read more 1190 Resilient Vancouver Chinatown
Strangers by Rob Taylor Windsor, ON: Biblioasis, 2021 $19.95 / 9781771964197 Reviewed by Christopher Levenson * Decades ago I came across the statement that “a poet is someone to whom significant things happen.” At the time this seemed to me the height of neo-Romantic pretension, elevating poets as sensitive souls set apart from the rest…
Read more 1189 The special in the ordinary
The Age of Fentanyl: Ending the Opioid Epidemic by Brodie Ramin Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2020 $22.99 / 9781459746701 Reviewed by Jeffrey Stychin * This book is not for the faint of heart, despite its clinical examination of the devastating world of opiate addiction. Brodie Ramin’s heartfelt compassion extends through every chapter. The Age of Fentanyl…
Read more 1188 Facing the fentanyl crisis
Abject Eroticism in Northern Renaissance Art: The Witches and Femmes Fatales of Hans Baldung Grien by Yvonne Owens London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020 $108.00 (U.S.) / 9781784537296 Reviewed by Linda Rogers * Art scholar and feminist Yvonne Owens has turned her gaze to the Northern Renaissance artist, Hans Baldung Grien, who adopted the orthodoxies of…
Read more 1187 Renaissance art & misogyny
The New Race: Selected Writings, 1901-1904 by William H.H. Johnson, afterword by Jade Ferguson Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, forthcoming 2022 $19.99 / 9781771124140 Reviewed by Frank Mackey * My only excuse for writing this account of a book yet unpublished is that I grew tired of waiting for it. The request had come…
Read more 1186 Excuses: a preemptive review
Balancing Bountiful: What I Learned about Feminism from my Polygamist Grandmothers by Mary Jane Blackmore Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2020 $24.95 / 978177386-0046 Reviewed by Lynne Bowen * People who live in British Columbia have become familiar with the names Blackmore and Bountiful over the past three decades. And so my motivation for choosing to…
Read more 1185 Mountain colony of polygamy
Night Watch: The Vet Suite by Gillian Wigmore Picton, ON: Invisible Publishing, 2021 $19.95 / 9781988784588 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * Veterinarians are absurdly villainized, unsung heroes. After my Australian Shepherd suffered THC poisoning, my respect and appreciation for veterinarians has only grown. Mercifully, Gillian Wigmore, daughter of a veterinarian, has written three novellas combined…
Read more 1184 Veterinary grace & suite
ESSAY: Why I love Lucy Maud by Carol Volkart * When I first met Lucy Maud Montgomery in her journals a few months ago, she was a sparkling flirt of 14 tumbling off sleds in winter snowbanks, losing her hat and laughing, laughing, laughing. When I said goodbye to her recently, she was an anguished…
Read more 1183 Why I love Lucy Maud
Lucky Jack Road: A Stella Mosconi Mystery by J.G. Toews Oakville, ON: Mosaic Press, 2020 $19.99 / 9781771615082 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * This, the second in the Stella Mosconi Mystery series, invites delving into mystery subgenres. Lucky Jack Road has the hallmarks of a cozy mystery: the amateur detective, typically female, practises her sleuthing…
Read more 1182 Death on Elephant Mountain
A Brief View from the Coastal Suite by Karen Hofmann Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2021 $21.95 / 9781774390177 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * If, come the apocalypse, some powers wanted to recreate the style and design of white, urban life in Canada in general and Vancouver in particular, they would find material aplenty in Karen Hofmann’s…
Read more 1181 Getting & spending in Lotusland
Ormsby’s annual fundraiser by Richard Mackie * Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Readers of The Ormsby Review, On behalf of The Ormsby Literary Society, its Board of Directors, and our Advisory Board (listed below), we must appeal to our readership for financial assistance. We are most grateful to the 96 donors who contributed to our 2020…
Read more 1180 Ormsby’s annual Fundraiser
The Object’s the Thing: The Writings of Yorke Edwards, A Pioneer of Heritage Interpretation in Canada by Richard Kool and Robert A. Cannings (editors) Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum Press, 2021 $24.95 / 9780772678515 * Craigdarroch Castle in 21 Treasures by Moira Dann, with an afterword by Bruce Davies Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2021 $20.00 /…
Read more 1179 History galleries & robber barons
Waymaking by Moonlight: New and Selected Poems by Bill Yake Anacortes, WA: Empty Bowl Press, 2020 $20.00 (U.S.) / 9781734187342 Reviewed by Ron Smith * I’ve just finished reading Bill Yake’s Waymaking by Moonlight: New and Selected Poems. As I reflect on the complexity and insight of his vision, I’m left wondering why I’ve never…
Read more 1178 The intelligence of deer trails
obittersweet: Life Lessons from Obituaries by Tamara Macpherson Vukusic Oakville, ON: Mosaic Press, 2020 $24.95 / 9781771615280 Reviewed by Carol Matthews * As a long-time reader of obituaries, I was delighted to receive a copy of Tamara Macpherson Vukusic’s collection of essays which is aptly titled obittersweet. Describing her Sunday morning ritual “with coffee in…
Read more 1177 Paint those final portraits