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
Fluevog: 50 Years of Unique Soles for Unique Souls by John Fluevog Vancouver: LifeTree Media, 2019 $69.99 / 9781928055532 Reviewed by Elena Siemens * Founded by John Fluevog in Vancouver in 1985, Fluevog Shoes now has 27 stores in North America and Europe. Remarkably, Fluevogs have strong aftermarket value, selling on high-end arts and crafts,…
Read more #758 Fine shoes from the Fluemarket
The Making of Hominology: A Science Whose Time has Come by Dmitri Bayanov in association with Christopher Murphy, with a foreword by David Hancock and Jeff Meldrum Surrey: Hancock House Publishing, 2019 $19.95 / 9780888390110 Reviewed by John Gellard * Have you ever seen a Sasquatch? Have you heard one, or smelled one? Have you ever seen…
Read more #757 Carry on, Sasquatch
We All Need to Eat by Alex Leslie Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2018 $20.00 / 9781771664196 Reviewed by Vincent Ternida * The popular adage “all our cells are replaced every seven to ten years” led to the notion that as human beings, we become completely new people within that cycle. In the nine stories in Alex…
Read more #756 Lonesome in the City of Glass
Near Miss: Poems by Laura Matwichuk Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2019 $18.95 / 9780889713536 Reviewed by Heidi Greco * Worrier that I am, opening to the first pages of Near Miss, I find myself right at home, greeted by a list of dates, from 1700 through to 2012. My paranoid side recognizes these immediately as dates…
Read more #755 Seismophobia and quicksilver
In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Resilience by Helen Knott Regina: University of Regina Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9780889776449 Reviewed by Angie Tucker * Of Dane-Zaa (previously the Beaver people), Nehiyawak (Cree), and Métis ancestry, Helen Knott is a writer, poet, and Indigenous land rights activist from the Prophet River First Nation, situated between…
Read more #754 Hurt & healing at Prophet River
Gatecrasher by Susan Buis Picton, Ontario: Invisible Publishing, 2019 $17.95 / 9781988784267 Reviewed by Christopher Levenson * We do not have to wait long with Susan Buis’s first volume, Gatecrasher, to realize that we are in the presence of a formidably original poetic talent. Take the first four lines of the first poem, “Arrowslit:” Quarry…
Read more #753 Pungency and plate glass
Gold Creeks and Ghost Towns in British Columbia by N.L. (Bill) Barlee Surrey: Hancock House, 2018. First published serially by Canada West Publications, 1970-72; first published in a single volume by Hancock, 1980, reprinted 1984, 1988, etc. $29.95 / 9780888399885 Reviewed by Harold Rhenisch * The mainland of British Columbia was created hurriedly as a…
Read more #752 Updating Bill Barlee
When Trains Ruled the Rockies: My Life at the Banff Railway Station by Terry Gainer Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2019 $22.00 / 9781771603010 Reviewed by Rod Deakin-Drown * It’s clear, I think, that Terry Gainer’s heart of hearts belongs to the Canadian Pacific Railway Station in Banff, Alberta — especially in his memories of the…
Read more #751 A boyhood at Banff Station
Hunger Moon by Traci Skuce Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2020 $19.95 / 9781988732800 Reviewed by Heather Graham * Of the thirteen stories in Hunger Moon, twelve first appeared separately in various publications, in somewhat different form. What that different form might have been is never revealed, only that they were “earlier versions,” a description bound to…
Read more #750 Thirteen tales of youthful angst
A Literary Biography of Robin Blaser: Mechanic of Splendor by Miriam Nichols New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019 $39.99 (U.S.) / 9783030183264 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * The most astonishing section of this book comes when author Miriam Nichols describes Robin Blaser’s time as a teacher at Simon Fraser University. Perhaps it is because…
Read more #749 Robin Blaser in retrospect
Flying to Victory: Raymond Collishaw and the Western Desert Campaign, 1940-1941 by Mike Bechthold Norman, Oklahoma: Oklahoma University Press, 2017 $34.95 (U.S.) / 9780806155968 Reviewed by John Hinde * In his recent book, Flying to Victory: Raymond Collishaw and the Western Desert Campaign, 1940-1941, Mike Bechthold points out that “May 1941 marked a pivotal transitional…
Read more #748 Collishaw of the western desert