A Sound Education
In which a university student from the burbs changes jobs in the heart of Montreal during the year of the Olympic Games.— “A Sound Education,” by E.R. Brown
Tag: Canadian history
Using ideas as my maps
Essay collection relates the “great pleasure of strolling in great cities” and offers an appealing and illuminating “window into a wider world.” —Bill Paul reviews The Coincidence Problem: Selected Dispatches 1999-2022, by Stephen Osborne (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781551529653
Professional triumphs, adversities
“The book is also unique in that it provides first-person accounts from a socially and ethnically diverse group of professionals, including several chapters penned by women who openly share their lived experiences in a changing professional environment.” —Ryan Mitchell reviews The Role of Canadian City Managers, edited by Michael Fenn, Gordon McIntosh and David Siegel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023) $44.95 / 9781487552329
#199 What the Heckman
Heckman’s Canadian Pacific: A Photographic Journey by Ralph Beaumont, foreword by John Geiger Mississauga, ON: The Credit Valley Railway Company, 2015 $60.00 / 9780978440619 Reviewed by Walter Volovsek First published November 9, 2017 * The Canadian Pacific Railway’s in-house photographer Joseph William Heckman (1854-1937) worked between Nova Scotia and Vancouver Island for three decades, photographing…
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#197 Power to the people
Powering Up Canada A History of Power, Fuel, and Energy from 1600 by Ruth Sandwell (editor) Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016. $37.95 / 9780773547865 Reviewed by Dan Gallacher First published Nov. 7, 2017 Years ago I likened history to a diamond. Each time it is turned in the light, another facet is revealed….
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#196 Batten down the anthology
Spindrift: A Canadian Book of the Sea by Michael L. Hadley and Anita Hadley (editors), with illustrations by Matthew Wolferstan Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2017 $36.95 / 9781771621731 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski First published Nov. 6, 2017 * This is an anthology with something like a mission. In “Waypoints,” his foreword to this anthology, historian…
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#195 Remembrance Day, 2017
First published Nov. 5, 2017 A century since Vimy and Passchendaele: Two wars, two families, one message By Howard Macdonald Stewart * For Remembrance Day 2017 we offer a moving reflection by Howard Stewart on war’s impact on his family in the twentieth century. Howard touches on the personal and emotional repercussions on the families…
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#194 Lill Emerson: Raincoast educator
MEMOIR: Lill’s Story: Reminiscences of a Country Schoolteacher by Lillian Emerson Edited by Mary Novik and Ned Young First published Nov. 4, 2017 * We are delighted to present these memoirs of Lillian Emerson (1913-2003), a Vancouver Island teacher in the 1930s who became the mother of award-winning novelist Mary Novik. Born in Victoria to…
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#193 Nanaimo mayor rivals Dunsmuir
First published November 3, 2017 Mark Bate: Nanaimo’s First Mayor by Jan Peterson Victoria: Heritage House, 2017. $19.95. / 9781772031829 Reviewed by John R. Hinde While industrialist Robert Dunsmuir has long been recognized as the most important figure in nineteenth century Nanaimo, thanks in part to Terry Reksten’s The Dunsmuir Saga (Douglas & McIntyre, 1991),…
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#192 New Westminster at work
First published Nov. 1, 2017 REVIEW: Longshoring on the Fraser: Stories and History of ILWU Local 502 by Chris M.V. Madsen, Liam O’Flaherty, and Michelle La Vancouver: Granville Island Publishing, 2016. $29.95 / 9781926991832 Reviewed by Sean Cadigan * Longshoring on the Fraser tells “the story of ILWU [International Longshore and Warehouse Union] Local 502”…
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#183 Modernist poet Blaise Cendrars
Blaise Cendrars Speaks… by Blaise Cendrars. Edited and with an introduction by Jim Christy, translated by David J. MacKinnon Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2016 $24.95 / 9781771711906 First published in Paris by Denoël, 1952 and 2016 Reviewed by Serge Alternês Review first published Oct. 16, 2017 * This upcoming Remembrance Day we might recall and commemorate…
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#177 Monumental tasks
Commemorating Canada: History, Heritage, and Memory, 1850s-1990sby Cecilia Morgan Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016$26.95 / 9781442610613 Reviewed by Mike Starr First published October 4, 2017 * Cecilia Morgan’s Commemorating Canada is a good place to start when examining the role of historical commemoration in Canada. The book is part of the Themes in Canadian History…
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#175 Artist among the Songhees
Wanderings of an Artist Among the Indians of North America by Paul Kane, edited and with an introduction by Kenneth Lister Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum Press, 2016 $39.99 / 9780888545077 Reviewed by Grant Keddie First published October 3, 2017 * Between November 1846 and November 1847, the Irish-Canadian artist Paul Kane (1810-1871) visited the Columbia…
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#174 Lights, camera, action, debate
Tar Wars: Oil, Environment and Alberta’s Imageby Geo Takach Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press, 2017$34.95 / 9781772121407 Reviewed by Nichole Dusyk First published Sept. 29, 2017 * In the first pages of Tar Wars, Geo Takach of Royal Roads University repudiates his own title and coins the term “bit-sands” to refer to the three vast…
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#165 Alaska Highway before GPS
Beyond Mile Zero: The Vanishing Alaska Highway Lodge Community by Lily Gontard (text) and Mark Kelly (photographs) Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2017 $24.95 / 9781550177978 Reviewed by Heather Longworth Sjoblom First published September 6, 2017 * 2017 marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the construction of the Alaska Highway through British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska. Throughout…
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#163 When the rubber hit the road
British Columbia by the Road: Car Culture and the Making of a Modern Landscape by Ben Bradley Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017 $34.95 / 9780774834193 Reviewed by Daniel Francis * In 2013 a septet of Canadian historians calling themselves The Past Collective published a study which contradicted the hoary old cliche that Canadians do not know…
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#162 The sisters of war
First published August 30, 2017 REVIEW: War Torn Exchanges: The Lives and Letters of Nursing Sisters Laura Holland and Mildred Forbes by Andrea McKenzie (editor). Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016. $32.95 / 9780774832540 * REVIEW: Sister Soldiers of the Great War: The Nurses of the Canadian Army Medical Corps by Cynthia Toman Vancouver: UBC Press 2016. $34.95 / …
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#160 Keeping parliament current
First published August 28, 2017 REVIEW: Turning Parliament Inside Out: Practical Ideas for Reforming Canada’s Democracy by Michael Chong, Scott Simms, and Kennedy Stewart (editors) Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2017. $22.95 / 978-1-77162-137-3 Reviewed by Hamish Telford * By comparison, the current political climate in the United States makes Canada look like Nirvana, but…
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#156 Frostbitten on Canada’s Everest
REVIEW: Surviving Logan by Erik Bjarnason and Cathi Shaw Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, $28 2016 / 9781771601924 Reviewed by PearlAnn Reichwein First published August 16, 2017 * In Surviving Logan, Erik Bjarnason of North Vancouver and his cousin Cathi Shaw of Summerland have joined with Rocky Mountain Books to produce what reviewer PearlAnn Reichwein calls…
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#149 From Yukon to the Western Front
First published July 11, 2017 REVIEW: From the Klondike to Berlin: The Yukon in World War I. by Michael Gates Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2017. $24.95 / 978-1-55017-776-3 Reviewed by Jim Wood The outpouring of centenary books about aspects of Canada’s involvement in the Great War, 1914-1918, continues with From the Klondike to Berlin: The Yukon…
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