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#677 The lurid lure of lucre

Searching for Pitt Lake Gold: Facts and Fantasy in the Legend of Slumach by Fred Braches Victoria: Heritage House, 2019 $9.95 / 9781772032765 Reviewed by Harold Rhenisch * Searching for Pitt Lake Gold stands in a long series of popular adventure books that celebrate gold, wilderness, and British Columbia’s adventurous colonial past. This is one…
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#676 A trip down memory lane

Memory by Philippe Tortell, Mark Turin, and Margot Young (editors) Vancouver: UBC Press (Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies), 2018 $24.95 / 9781775276609 Reviewed by Forrest Pass * Historians think we know memory. “Social memory” — how communities, governments, and private interests understand and give the past meaning — is a well-established focus in my…
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#675 Stump to dump at Mesachie Lake

The Last Whistle: Hillcrest Lumber Company Ltd. 1917-2018 by Cecil Ashley Self-published, 2018 $29.95 / 9780228500735 Available from Cecil Ashley  email address: cecil.ashley@gmail.com and at Volume 1 Bookstore, Duncan Reviewed by Robert Griffin * Cecil Ashley has produced an amazing book that is clearly a labour of love. The Hillcrest Lumber Company represents a major…
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#674 Emily Carr in France

Emily Carr. Fresh Seeing: French Modernism and the West Coast by Kiriko Watanabe, Kathryn Bridge, Robin Laurence, and Michael Polay Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2019, in collaboration with the Audain Art Museum $40.00 / 9781773270913 Reviewed by Robert Amos * Many people have a prejudice about Emily Carr. Crazy lady with a monkey, they say,…
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#673 Catalyst of creative fantasy

Susan Benson: Art, Design and Craft on Stage by Patricia Flood Richmond Hill, ON: Firefly Books, 2019 $35.00 / 9780228101772 Reviewed by Celia Duthie * Susan Benson has had a charmed career. For over forty years, as a theatre designer and costumer for stage productions in England and North America, she has been a mistress…
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#672 Coastal escapes and departures

Throw Mama from the Boat and Other Ferry Tales by PJ Reece Gibsons: Rolling West Productions, 2018 $16.95 / 9780995323537 Reviewed by Caileigh Broatch * PJ Reece’s book Throw Mama from the Boat: and other Ferry Tales promises to excite and explore with wild imagination from the word go. This is a collection of thirteen neatly…
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#671 Connect the dots

The Great Happiness: Stories and Comics by M.A.C. Farrant Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2019 $14.95 / 9781772012217 Reviewed by Valerie Green * I’ve learned through the years that book covers can be deceiving. Such was the case with M.A.C. Farrant’s book The Great Happiness, which shows a young girl, some flowers, and a small bird. It enticed…
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#670 Novelty at Langham Court

The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected by Edwin Wong Victoria: FriesenPress Publishers, 2019 $19.79 / 9781525537561 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * The most interesting observation in this book on tragedy by local author Edwin Wong concerns Hamlet. Hamlet’s problem, says Wong, is that he is obsessed with certainty and can’t…
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#669 A Mennonite memoryfest

Every Little Scrap and Wonder: A Small-Town Childhood by Carla Funk Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2019 $29.95 / 9781771644662 Reviewed by Candace Fertile * With exquisite detail, Carla Funk brings alive her childhood in Vanderhoof, BC, and by doing so sets off in me a memoryfest of my own, an experience that is likely to happen…
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#668 Eating local on Vancouver Island

Cedar + Salt: Vancouver Island Recipes from Forest, Farm, Field, and Sea by D.L. Acken and Emily Lycopolus Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2019 $45.00 / 9781771512947 Reviewed by Harvey De Roo * Is it that books published on the Pacific Northwest coast are particularly beautiful, or just any book with the photos of Danielle Acken and…
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#667 Canoeing to London

Around the World in a Dugout Canoe by John M. MacFarlane and Lynn J. Salmon Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2019 $29.95 / 9781550178791 Reviewed by Mark Forsythe  * There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea — Joseph Conrad The Tilikum is legendary in B.C.’s maritime history, and her captain…
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#666 Life of a gifted teacher

Invisible Generations: Living between Indigenous and White in the Fraser Valley by Jean Barman Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9781773860053 Reviewed by Duff Sutherland * In the early 1990s, a mutual friend introduced the historian Jean Barman to a retired teacher from the Fraser Valley, Irene Kelleher. Of Indigenous and European heritage, Kelleher…
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#665 Poems of grief and acceptance

Salt and Ashes by Adrienne Drobnies Winnipeg: Signature Editions, 2019 $17.95 / 9781773240480 Reviewed by John Swanson * Adrienne Drobnies’ Salt and Ashes is a powerful, intimate book, a journey marked by a legacy of early pain and power inflicted — the old suffering, then the new; the loss of a beloved husband, the grief,…
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#664 Bring cash and raincoat

The Survival Guide to British Columbia by Ian Ferguson Victoria: Heritage House, 2019 $19.95 / 9781772032840 Reviewed by Patricia E. Roy * The Survival Guide to British Columbia offers some useful information about the province but it is unlike a Boy Scout handbook or a Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture publication. Ian Ferguson seeks…
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#663 Canadians in Bomber Command

Four Who Dared: Inspiring Stories of Canadian Airmen in the Second World War by Kenneth B. Cothliff Victoria: Heritage House, 2019 $22.95 / 9781772032949 Reviewed by Sylvia Crooks * We are losing our Canadian veterans of the Second World War so quickly, now that they are in their nineties and beyond. How grateful we must…
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#662 A young woman’s journey

The Brightest Thing by Ruth Daniell Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $18.00 / 9781987915907 Reviewed by Myshara Herbert-McMyn * New from Ruth Daniell of Kelowna is The Brightest Thing, a book that tells the journey of a nameless young woman through four sections of beautifully written poetry structured around fairy tales. Fairy tales, of course,…
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#661 No direction home

Nothing to Write Home About: British Family Correspondence and the Settler Colonial Everyday in British Columbia by Laura Ishiguro Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019 $34.95 / 9780774838443 Reviewed by Robert Hogg * In Nothing to Write Home About, Laura Ishiguro presents us with an opportunity to enlarge our ideas of nineteenth century colonial life, inviting us…
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#660 For the love of the North Pacific

The New Beachcomber’s Guide to the Pacific Northwest by J. Duane Sept Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2019 $32.95 / 9781550178371 (first published in 1999 by Harbour as The Beachcomber’s Guide to Seashore Life in the Pacific Northwest; reprinted 2002; second edition 2009; third edition 2019) * Seaside Treasures: A Guidebook for Little Beachcombers by Sarah…
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#659 Move over Bridget Jones

A One-Handed Novel by Kim Clark Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin, 2018 $24.00 / 9781987915624 Reviewed by Margot Fedoruk * What is the difference between desirability and disability? Author Kim Clark explores these ideas and more in her fast-paced and farcical work of fiction, A One-Handed Novel. The book’s main character, Melanie Farrell, is a forty-something, face-planting,…
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#658 Plain words in a plain wrapper

A Mysterious Humming Noise: New Poems by Howard White Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2019 $18.00 / 9781772141412 Reviewed by Linda Rogers * Let’s start with the cover. None of your “art-whatever” declarations of sacred intent, pretty pictures promising verbal home decoration: this is a kitchen cover promising kitchen music, including a toe tapper, a fiddle, and…
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