Could Be: New Poems by George Bowering Vancouver: New Star Books, 2021 $18.00 / 9781554201785 Reviewed by Karl Siegler * George Bowering, Canada’s first Poet Laureate and author of over 100 books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, could be dead. In April of 2015, standing in front of the Point Grey Library in Vancouver, B.C.,…
Read more 1201 Must be Bowering
INTERVIEW: Marion Quednau with The Ormsby Review Marion Quednau has won numerous awards for both her fiction and her poetry, including a National Magazine Award, and the People’s Choice Award when shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize. Her fiction has received critical acclaim, the SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award, when the late Mordecai Richler…
Read more 1200 Interview with Marion Quednau
Not on My Watch: How a Renegade Whale Biologist Took on Governments and Industry to Save Wild Salmon by Alexandra Morton Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Vintage Canada), 2021 $35.00 / 9780735279667 Reviewed by Stephen Bocking * In the late 1980s Alexandra Morton encountered the first signs that salmon farms, newcomers to the Broughton Archipelago, were…
Read more 1199 Settler viruses & wild salmon
Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline Toronto: Penguin Random House (Vintage Canada), 2019 $21.00 / 9780735277205 Reviewed by David Milward * Cherie Dimaline, a member of the Georgian Bay Metis community in Ontario, has emerged as a leading writer of Indigenous fiction. One of her novels, The Marrow Thieves, has won multiple awards including the…
Read more 1198 Land, colonialism, & temptation
Wanda by Barbara Lambert Madeira Park & Amsterdam: Fish Gotta Swim Editions, 2021 $20.00 / 9780978005474 Reviewed by David Stouck * Most of the fiction written by Barbara Lambert has been set outside of Canada. Her prize-winning stories, collected as A Message for Mr. Lazarus (2000), take place largely in Costa Rica, her full-length novel,…
Read more 1197 The orchardist’s daughter
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