Masters and Servants: The Hudson’s Bay Company and its North American Workforce, 1668-1786 by Scott P. Stephen Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2019 $44.99 / 9781772123371 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Radishes and Gooseberries: Meet some of the people who are missing from your high school history textbook… “Radishes and Gooseberries!” Our high school social…
Read more #937 Radishes and Gooseberries
Dead Crow & the Spirit Engine by Art (Sean Arthur) Joyce New Denver: Chameleonfire Editions, 2020 $20.00 / 9780995240148 Reviewed by Roger C. Lewis * This poem is a fascinating exercise in the bending, blending, and merging of genres while at the same time assaulting the empty pretensions of narcissistic nihilism in today’s grossly politicized…
Read more #936 Crow mythology and archetype
Carpe Fin: A Haida Manga by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2019 $29.95 / 9781771622240 Reviewed by Molly Clarkson * I can’t help but chuckle as I read through the reader reviews on goodreads of Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas’ Carpe Fin: A Haida Manga, two of which read: Exuberant art and a non-linear…
Read more #935 Haida cosmology transformed
A Garden of Thieves by Dean Unger Duncan: Village Lane Press, 2018 $24.00 / 9780981306421 * Blessed Be the Bones: A Garden of Thieves, Book II by Dean Unger Duncan: Village Lane Press, 2019 $24.00 / 9780981306452 Both books reviewed by Valerie Green To purchase copies of these books see here or call Dean Unger…
Read more #934 Murder on Texada Island
Legacy of Trees: Purposeful Wandering in Vancouver’s Stanley Park by Nina Shoroplova Victoria: Heritage House, 2020 $29.95 / 9781772033038 Reviewed by David Tracey * Consider the following thought experiment: the first alien space crew has just landed on Earth (mark your 2020 bingo card). They must quickly discover what our planet is all about. So…
Read more #933 Stanley Park trees
Farm the City: A Toolkit for Setting up a Successful Urban Farm by Michael Ableman Gabriola: New Society, 2020 $19.95 / 9780865719392 Reviewed by Rose Morrison * While Michael Ableman’s Farm the City: A Toolkit for Setting up a Successful Urban Farm is written as a primer for those wishing to start an in-town farm,…
Read more #932 Ableman’s urban agriculture
Woo, The Monkey Who Inspired Emily Carr: A Biography by Grant Hayter-Menzies, with a foreword by Anita Kunz Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2019 $9.99 / 9781771622141 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * What, ultimately, does a statue represent? A statue is allegory at its most literal. A statue can never be the very person it…
Read more #931 Carr, captivity, creativity
Everything is Relevant: Writings on Art and Life, 1991-2018 by Ken Lum, with an introduction by Kitty Scott Montreal: Concordia University Press, 2020 $64.95 / 9781988111001 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * Where on earth is he? The Vancouver Art Gallery is staging an interview with Vancouver-born art star Ken Lum. It’s May 2020, deep into…
Read more #930 The relevance of Ken Lum
Kiskajeyi — I Am Ready: A Hermeneutic Exploration of Mi’kmaq komqwejwi’kasikl Poetry by Michelle Sylliboy, edited by Michael Calvert Nanoose Bay: Rebel Mountain Press, 2019 $19.95 / 9781775301929 Reviewed by Paul Falardeau * On a first approach to Mi’kmaq poet Michelle Sylliboy’s work, one might quickly notice her interdisciplinary approach to interacting with the world…
Read more #929 Sylliboy’s hieroglyphic poetry
The Call of the Rift Book 1: Flight by Jae Waller Toronto: ECW Press, 2018 $19.95 / 9781770413542 * The Call of the Rift Book 2: Veil by Jae Waller Toronto: ECW Press, 2020 $19.95 / 9781770415782 Both books reviewed by Natalie Lang Jae Waller’s The Call of the Rift series sees…
Read more #928 Jae Waller’s alt-historical fantasy
Runecaster Book 1: The Stone of Sorrow by Brooke Carter Victoria: Orca Book Publishers $14.95 / 9781459824393 Reviewed by Myshara Herbert-McMyn * The Stone of Sorrow concerns magic, myth, and adventure. Each page I turned of this YA (young adult) novel meant more mystery and surprise. I wasn’t sure how much Icelandic and Norse mythology…
Read more #927 A runecaster’s apprenticeship
The Last High by Daniel Kalla Toronto: Simon & Schuster Canada, 2020 $22.00 / 9781501196980 Reviewed by Benjamin Matthews * Daniel Kalla’s The Last High begins with a murder, or rather a bunch of murders. We get a firsthand view of the murders through the eyes of Alexa, a 16-year-old girl who watches in bliss…
Read more #926 Crisis on the front line
On Forgetting a Language by Isabella Wang London, ON: Baseline Press, 2019 [out of print] / 9781928066477 Reviewed by Michael Turner * This ten-poem unpaginated chapbook arrived in my mailbox last week, an hors de commerce copy because its numbered run of 80 is now in the hands of its readers. I chose the book…
Read more #925 The process of forgetting
A Song from Faraway by Deni Ellis Béchard Fredericton: Goose Lane, 2020 $22.95 / 9781773101545 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * Novel? Collection of short stories? A Song from Faraway is, in a conventional sense, neither of these. Or both. And this isn’t the only lack of convention in Deni Ellis Béchard’s new book. Pieced together…
Read more #924 Fractured angles & pools of time
When Emily was Small by Lauren Soloy Toronto: Penguin Random House, 2020 (Tundra Books) $21.99 / 9780735266063 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * Lauren Soloy is both author and illustrator of this lovely adaptation of Emily Carr’s “White Currants” from The Book of Small (1942), which Doris Shadbolt, in the introduction to The Emily Carr Omnibus,…
Read more #923 Return to the Book of Small
View from the Tower, Tin Pushers and Pilots on the BC Coast by Grant B. Evans Crofton: Osborne Bay Books, 2019; first published 2016 $19.95 / 9780994906571 Reviewed by Matthew Downey * View from the Tower is about as rich and dramatic a memoir as one could reasonably expect to come from a former air…
Read more #922 In the hot seat at Port Hardy
Tiff: A Life of Timothy Findley by Sherrill Grace Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2020 $39.99 / 9781771124539 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * In 1993, towards the end of his life, the noted author Timothy Findley gave a talk at Duthie’s bookstore in Vancouver on one of his favourite topics: censorship. Only this time…
Read more #921 The death and life of Tiff Findley
We Two Alone by Jack Wang Toronto: Anansi, 2020 $19.95 / 9781487007461 Reviewed by William New * Jack Wang is a welcome new voice in Canadian letters. I say ‘new,’ because We Two Alone is his first book of stories; but in fact he has been an active writer for several years. Since 2015 he…
Read more #920 Rogue reverberating
Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity by Darryl Leroux Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019 $27.95 / 9780887558467 Reviewed by David Milward * The arrival of Europeans on the shores of the Americas centuries ago made certain results inevitable. The colonization of Indigenous peoples, with its attendant atrocities and exploitation, certainly constitute a great many…
Read more #919 The Métis & the race-shifters
Congratulations to the winners of the 2020 BC and Yukon Book Prizes, for books published in 2019, announced at an online event on September 19th. And especially to the reviewers at The Ormsby Review who so willingly assessed the winners and shortlisted books, all of them published in 2019. Congratulations, as well, to the authors…
Read more #918 Congratulations BC Book Prizes winners, 2020!