MEMOIR: On the road with Sir Kenneth by Grahame Ware * Recently we published Grahame Ware’s review of Horn Swoggled: A Play by Armstrong playwright Ken Smedley: see The Ormsby Review no. 762 (March 5, 2020). In a follow-up email, Grahame described his intense and productive artistic friendship with Smedley in the mid-1990s, when the…
Read more #778 On the road with Sir Kenneth
Waterlogged: Examples and Procedures for Northwest Coast Archaeologists by Kathryn Bernick (editor) Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 2019 $32.95 (U.S.) / 9780874223668 Publisher’s note: Canadian residents can obtain WSU titles online via Indigo and other bookstores. Canadian bookstores can purchase WSU books through Ingram. Reviewed by Bob Muckle * Any archaeologist working in British…
Read more #777 Beyond the bias of stone
Kelly Black reviews two books: Henry & Self: An English Gentlewoman at the Edge of Empire by Kathryn Bridge Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum Press, 2019 (first published by Sono Nis Press, 1996) $22.95 / 9780772672612 * By Snowshoe, Buckboard and Steamer: Women of the British Columbia Frontier by Kathryn Bridge Victoria: Royal British Columbia…
Read more #776 Five women at the edge of empire
There Are Not Enough Sad Songs by Marita Dachsel Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2019 $19.99 / 9781772124521 * The Broken Face by Russell Thornton Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2018 $18.95 / 9781550178449 Both books reviewed by John Carroll …
Read more #775 Life’s transience and fragility
Chicanery, Civility & Celebrations: Tales of Early Rossland by Ron Shearer Rossland: Rossland Heritage Commission, 2019 $24.95 / 9780228502852 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Golden City Yarns: A Tireless Researcher Digs Out a B.C. Mining Mecca’s Raucous Past, by Ron Verzuh Kootenay history buffs have long savoured the storytelling talents of Ron Shearer, a retired…
Read more #774 Golden City yarns
Agency by William Gibson Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Berkley Books), 2020 $37.00 / 9781101986936 Reviewed by John Belshaw * Fully articulated alternative histories have been around for at least a century. In addition to attempts on the part of scholarly historians to change up the past, there are plenty of storylines in fiction that…
Read more #773 Past imperfect
Bawaajigan: Stories of Power by Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler and Christine Miskonoodinkwe Smith (editors) Toronto: Exile Editions, 2019 $21.95 / 9781550968415 Reviewed by Savana Alphonse with Rebecca Fredrickson * Bawaajigan: Stories of Power is a collection of short stories written by seventeen Indigenous authors from Turtle Island, today known as Canada. The stories here serve…
Read more #772 Echoes of spirits dreaming
Lampedusa by Steven Price Toronto: Penguin Random House (McClelland & Stewart), 2019 $32.00 / 9780771071683 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * From its jacket photo, which rivets the eye to the top of a stunning gilded inner courtyard in Rome, even as that sky is blocked from the reader, to the epilogue and to the narrative…
Read more #771 A tale of rubble and splendour
The Kissing Fence by B.A. Thomas-Peter Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2020 $24.95 / 9781773860237 Reviewed by William New * This novel tells the connected stories of two boys. One grows up in the 1950s, but his entire life is damaged when he is forced away from his Doukhobor home and placed in a Kootenay residential…
Read more 770 Fractured fidelities
Design for Living: West Coast Modern Homes Revisited by Darrin Morrison, Greg Bellerby, Kiriko Watanabe, Adele Weder, Barry Downs, Hilary Letwin, and Alan Bell West Vancouver: West Vancouver Art Museum, 2019 (catalogue of an exhibition held at the West Vancouver Art Museum, 2019) $30.00 / 9781989236024 Reviewed by Martin Segger * This is the book…
Read more #769 Celebrating West Coast Modern
The Wild Heavens by Sarah Louise Butler Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2020 $22.95 / 9781771622585 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * From chickadees to lynxes, cedars to lichen, rubber boas to salmon, the other-than human world permeates Sarah Louise Butler’s The Wild Heavens. In this stimulating debut, the natural world is more than a backdrop;…
Read more #768 A tale of a winter’s day
Jennifer Chutter reviews 2 books: 111 Places in Vancouver That You Must Not Miss by Dave Doroghy and Graeme Menzies Cologne and New York: Emons Verlag, 2019 $26.90 / 9783740804947 * The Vancouver Sketchbook: Lush Landscapes, Vibrant Streetscapes, Soaring Skyline by T.K. Justin Ng Vancouver: Whitecap, 2019 $29.95 / 9781770503250 * …
Read more #767 The Vancouver patchwork
In Formless Circumstance: Poems from the Road and Home by Trevor Carolan Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2019 $23.95 / 9781771713306 Reviewed by Paul Falardeau * “All busy in the sunlight/ the flecks did float and dance/ and I was tumbled up with them/ in formless circumstance.” So sings the late, great Leonard Cohen, Canada’s poet of…
Read more #766 Home truths and away truths
Mountain Blues by Sean Arthur Joyce Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2018 $19.95 / 9781988732305 Reviewed by Caroline Woodward * “Well, I’m a reporter just new in town. Looking for work.” So begins Roy Breen’s introduction to life in El Dorado, a small village in the West Kootenays. Breen’s words are also his introduction to his new…
Read more #765 A tale of the West Kootenay
The Hot Springs Cove Story: The Beginnings of Maquinna Marine Provincial Park by Michael Kaehn Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2019 $24.95 / 9781550178609 Reviewed by Mike Starr * Ivan Clarke and his wife Mabel donated the land beside Hot Springs Cove to the Province of British Columbia to create Maquinna Provincial Park. This book, which…
Read more #764 Refuge at Hot Springs Cove
On the Arts by Naomi Beth Wakan Brunswick, Maine: Shanti Arts Publishing, 2020 $17.95 (U.S.) / 9781951651091 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * Every man is at liberty to understand nothing about anything. So said Montaigne. Or at least Naomi Wakan says that he said it, and I am not going to contradict her. He certainly…
Read more #763 Beach glass on a bed of seaweed
Horn Swoggled: A Play by Ken Smedley Vernon: Rich Fog Micro Publishing, 2019 $25.00 / 9781988707211 This book is available via Canada Post from Ken Smedley, PO Box 323, Armstrong, BC, V0E 1B0 for $25, which includes postage and handling Reviewed by Grahame Ware * First, a word or two about the playwright. Born in…
Read more #762 Bard Smedley of Armstrong
River of Lies by R.M. Greenaway Toronto: Dundurn, 2020 $17.99 / 9781459741539 Reviewed by Valerie Green * River of Lies is the fifth book in the B.C. Blues Crime Series by R.M. Greenaway, but it was the first one in the series I had read. Although the same characters appear in all the books, the…
Read more #761 Murder & misgivings in North Van
Direct Action Gets the Goods: A Graphic History of the Strike in Canada c0-authored by the Graphic History Collective, with Althea Balmes, Gord Hill, Orion Keresztesi, and David Lester Toronto: Between the Lines, 2019 $14.95 / 9781771134170 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Follow the Black Cat: How to bring history back to people who flunked…
Read more #760 Follow the faithful black cat
Learning to Die: Wisdom in the Age of Climate Crisis by Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky Regina: University of Regina Press, 2018 $19.95 / 9780889775633 Reviewed by Luanne Armstrong * I am always a little leery about academics and philosophers writing about humans grappling with ideas about the non-human world. There’s always a distance there…
Read more #759 Rewilding the human mind