Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten by Stephen Collis Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2018 $24.95 / 9781772012071 Reviewed by Sharon Thesen * Literary friendships are the source of more compositional energy than we usually give them credit for. As Stephen Collis reminds us in this deeply engaging book-length essay set within his friendship…
Read more #515 Fulford Harbour’s silent poet
21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality by Bob Joseph Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2018 $19.95 / 9780995266520 * Talking Back to the Indian Act: Critical Readings in Settler Colonial Histories by Mary-Ellen Kelm and Keith D. Smith (editors) Toronto: University of Toronto Press,…
Read more #514 Consider the Indian Act
City in Colour: Rediscovered Stories of Victoria’s Multicultural Past by May Q. Wong Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2018 $22.00 / 9781771512855 Reviewed by Tom Koppel * When I was a kid, my father took me on a brief visit to Victoria. Part of the attraction, for him, was that he’d heard the city described as the…
Read more #513 Victoria’s secret: diversity
Growing Up in Wild Horse Canyon by Karen Autio, illustrated by Loraine Kemp Vancouver: Crwth Press, 2018 $25.95 / 9781775331902 Reviewed by Ken Mather * At the heart of Growing up in Wild Horse Canyon is the beautifully illustrated story of the life of a Ponderosa Pine from a seed in the year 1780 to…
Read more #512 A Ponderosa Pine time capsule
Gold Rush Manliness: Race and Gender on the Pacific Slope by Christopher Herbert Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018 $30.00 (U.S.) / 9780295744131 Reviewed by Robert Hogg * Christopher Herbert has added to the considerable literature on gender in colonial societies, and of frontier masculinities in particular, as well as to the historiography of race,…
Read more #511 Gold, gamblers, greenhorns
Bite Me! Musings on Monsters and Mayhem by Joe Rosenblatt Erin, Ontario: Porcupine’s Quill, 2019 $16.95 / 9780889844247 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * The day after Joe Rosenblatt died, his last book arrived in pre-publication digital format. I don’t want to write an elegy; others are doing that. It turns out I don’t need to;…
Read more #510 Joe’s monsters and critters
No Dog Barked: Who Killed the MacLauchlans? by Rod Drown and Ken McIntosh New Westminster: Archives New West, 2018 $30.00 / 9781775095217 Reviewed by Don Hauka * In the early hours of March 21, 1966, Dr. Henry MacLauchlan and his wife Margaret Ann were murdered in their tiny bungalow at 912 Fifth Street in New…
Read more #509 Let sleeping dogs stir
A Violent Streak by Stephanie Warner Markham, Ontario: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2018 $15.00 / 9781554554461 Reviewed by Elee Kraljii Gardiner * The epigraph that opens Stephanie Warner’s debut collection of poetry, A Violent Streak, is a definition of the word “speed.” Given that the dominant themes and places of this group of poems have to…
Read more #508 Sex, speed, and moonshine
The Hundred-Year Trek: A History of Student Life at UBC by Sheldon Goldfarb, with a preface by the Right Honourable Kim Campbell Victoria: Heritage House, 2017 $32.95 / 9781772032239 Reviewed by Herbert Rosengarten * When UBC, then situated in a few buildings at Vancouver General Hospital, opened its doors in 1915, fewer than 400 students…
Read more #507 What rhymes with alma mater
Towards a New Ethnohistory: Community-Engaged Scholarship among the People of the River by Keith Thor Carlson, John Sutton Lutz, David Schaepe, and Albert “Sonny” McHalsie (Naxaxalhts’i) (editors) Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2018 $27.95 / 9780887558177 Reviewed by Tyler McCreary * Towards a New Ethnohistory, a new collection edited by Keith Carlson, John Lutz, David…
Read more #506 Scribes of the Stó:lō Nation
A Lamb by P.W. Bridgman Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2018 $23.95 / 9781771712736 Reviewed by David Stouck * I first encountered P.W. Bridgman (a pen name) when he reviewed a collection of Ethel Wilson’s letters for the Globe and Mail. Ethel Wilson would certainly have delighted in A Lamb, his newly published book of poetry. Herein…
Read more #505 Ethel Wilson would approve
Joe Rosenblatt (1933-2019) An obituary by Alan Twigg * “Joe was one of the most generous and kind artists [of any genre] I ever met, a truly lovely person, and a real genius.” — Phyllis Reeve “Poetry provides an environment for people to share their feral fantasies, although very rarely do wild phantasms morph into…
Read more #504 Joe Rosenblatt (1933-2019)
Sea Trial: Sailing After My Father by Brian Harvey Toronto: ECW Press, 2019 $21.95 / 9781770414778 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * On October 2, 2019, Brian Harvey’s Sea Trial was announced as one of five finalists for the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Awards for nonfiction. The winner will be announced in Ottawa on October 19th…
Read more #503 Brain surgery at Zero Rock
Patrick Lane (1939-2019) An obituary by Alan Twigg * Patrick Lane was born on March 26, 1939 in the Kootenay mountain town of Sheep Creek, near Nelson, and grew up in the B.C. Interior, primarily in Vernon. His father, an ex-miner, had moved to the dry Interior because he was suffering from silicosis. Lane couldn’t…
Read more #502 Patrick Lane (1939-2019)
MEMOIR: My Private Chinatown by Grahame Ware * The literature of remembrance turns the lost world of objects into emblems of a bygone culture. What is lost can be repossessed through memory and writing, for it is in the vagaries of consciousness in retracing lost dreams that possession can best be established. Writing about memories…
Read more #501 My Private Chinatown
Big Lonely Doug: The Story of One of Canada’s Last Great Trees by Harley Rustad Toronto: House of Anansi Press (Walrus Books), 2018 $22.95 / 9781487003111 Reviewed by Mark Forsythe * An immense, solitary Douglas fir stands inside a vast clear-cut. Sun-bleached slash stretches in all directions; the tree’s shadow reaches for a nearby second…
Read more #500 A tall tale from Port Renfrew
Growing Together: Conversations with Seniors and Youth by Lee Reid Nelson: Nelson CARES Society Press, 2018 $25.00 / 9781775399308 See http://www.growinghomestories.com/ Available at Nelson CARES, 709A Vernon St., Nelson, B.C., V1L 4G3 Reviewed by Luanne Armstrong * What a good idea! Get teens and elders together to talk. Ask teens to take notes and record…
Read more #499 Joining generations in Nelson
Exposed by Eileen Curteis Terrace: CCB Publishing, 2018 $44.06 (via Amazon) / 9781771433594 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * A poem named “Simplicity” begins: “There’s nothing complex/ about the rain.” I ponder the significance of that statement, which seems to me debatable. Then a personality named Simplicity enters the poem to tell us the “soft drizzle”…
Read more #498 Poems of faith and simplicity
George Garrett: Intrepid Reporter by George Garrett Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2019 $26.95 / 9781550178661 Reviewed by Michael Sasges * George Garrett: Intrepid Reporter is important reading for anyone interested in Vancouver politics and journalism in the last fifty years of the previous century. As a reporter for radio station CKNW from 1956 to 1999,…
Read more #497 Vancouver’s master broadcaster
Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire by Renisa Mawani Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2018 $27.95 (U.S.) / 9780822370352 Reviewed by Hugh Johnston * Renisa Mawani writes a thoroughly academic prose, not intended for a casual audience. Even so, her book will have fans, especially among…
Read more #496 Too much sail, not enough ballast