BOOK REVIEWS

Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellersy a boxed set of three volumes: A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World (by Robert Bringhurst); Nine Visits to the Mythworld (by Ghandlofthe Qayahl Llaanas); Being in Being: The Collected Works of a Master Haida Mythteller (by Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay)

Robert Bringhurst, Editor and Translator Vancouver: Douglas and Mclntyre, 2002.1,146 pp. Illus., photographs, maps. $150.00 cloth

TERRY GLAVIN, Mayne Island, BC

HE IDEA OF a story being as other Northwest Coast peoples: "The sharp as a knife, which is the world is as sharp as a knife." It's a peculiar T title of Robert Bringhurst's thing to say. The world appears anything astonishing introduction to the works of but knife-edged. It is broad and flat, as classical Haida poets, is a useful propo­ far as the eye can see. In one folktale, a sition to consider in order to make sense careless son points this out to his father of all the fuss and argument that has and stamps on the ground to repudiate accompanied it and the publication of what he imagines to be a pointless its two sister titles. aphorism. A splinter pierces his foot, The idea derives from what might be which causes him to die soon afterwards. called a maxim, which was once well known A story, too, can be as sharp as a knife. among the Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit, and It might wound, or reveal what only a

BC STUDIES, no. 138^39 181 Summer/Autumn 2003 182 BC STUDIES

knife will disclose below the surface of book at the Smithsonian Institution in a thing, or it might puncture old ideas, Washington, D.C., which contained the some fatally. The point is that a story, long-lost first page of Skaay's epic, along even a story we all thought we knew with a full copy of the original transcripts well, can contain meaning that is utterly of Skaay's recitation of the work to the unaccounted for by conventional methods, linguist John Reed Swanton in 1900. in the same way that the careless son This chance find allowed Bringhurst to dismisses wise counsel in the folktale. extricate from the known sources the This, then, is the point Bringhurst entire, unabridged version of Skaay's makes so brilliantly and thoroughly in Raven Travelling (Poem of the Elders). this trilogy, and it is also the thing that The second in the trilogy is a collection has gotten him into such trouble. What of the works of the blind Haida poet Bringhurst reveals in the works of Haida Ghandl, Nine Visits to the Mythworld. myth tellers such as Skaay and Ghandl is Ghandl, of the Eagle Clan, was born at meaning and substance that cannot be Sea Lion Town (Qaysun Llanagaay) on accounted for by standard anthropo­ the outer west coast of the Queen logical methodology. While his most Charlottes' archipelago. His "missionary vociferous detractors may stamp their name" was Walter McGregor. feet, Bringhurst ably defends the propo­ The third in the trilogy, Being in Being, sition that the Haida texts he has is a collection of the works of Skaay, also translated are examples of a literature of of the Eagle Clan, from the village of great complexity and power. Ttaanu, a village in the southerly portions Further, he considers Skaay and of the Haida archipelago, in what is now Ghandl to have been great artists in their the South Moresby National Park Reserve. own right, whose works should stand Clearly, there's a lot more going on with the great classics of epic literature. here than the mere recitation of time- Bringhurst studied linguistics under worn "legends." There's also more to all Noam Chomsky in the 1960s and has this than a "poetic" codification of worked as a professional translator of Aboriginal customary laws. What's Greek and Arabic. He is considered going on here, Bringhurst asserts, is epic North America's leading authority on poetry that ranks with Beowulf The typography, but he is first and foremost Iliad, and The Ramayana. a poet, perhaps best known for his Bringhurst is not the first to make collections The Beauty of Their Weapons such comparisons. John Reed Swanton, and The Calling. Bringhurst began the young linguist whose 1900-01 translating Haida texts after developing sessions with Skaay and Ghandl pro­ an intense interest in Haida art and vided the raw material for Bringhurst's culture, having authored a study of the trilogy, also saw classic poetry in the oral works of Haida sculptor Bill Reid, The traditions he was recording. It was like Black Canoe, and co-authored, with "constructing a nation's literature," Reid, Raven Steals the Light. Swanton wrote, "or rather like Homer Among the many contributions collecting and arranging a literature Bringhurst makes with A Story as Sharp already constructed" (A Story Sharp As as a Knife is a translation of the five move­ A Knife, p. 175.) ments of Skaay's Raven Travelling, in While the discipline of anthropology 1,400 lines. It is the result of Bringhurst's quickly evolved in directions that would chance discovery of a frayed binder that leave no room for such characterizations, had been mislabelled as a letterpress Bringhurst, a full century after Swanton, Book Reviews 183

is happy to revive that train of thought. making has drawn attention away It has been a terrible mistake to dismiss from the utterly breathtaking works of mythtellers such as Skaay and Ghandl as the very poets that Bringhurst laboured mere "informants," Bringhurst says. They more than a decade to redeem and were great poets, masters of their art, and introduce to the wider world. they deserve to be recognized as such. Bringhurst is not the only con­ This isn't the sort of thing one easily temporary poet or linguist to see works asserts, especially among anthropologists: of great art within the "Swanton texts." even the eminent Alfred Kroeber insisted The American poet Gary Snyder, for in­ that there was no "poetry" or "philosophy" stance, subjected S wanton's version of to be found among North America's Skaay's He Who Hunted Birds in His Aboriginal cultures. And so judgments are Fathers Village to a book-length treat­ rendered. They began in 1999, shortly after ment after first encountering the text as A Story as Sharp as a Knife was first published. an undergraduate in the early 1950s. Also, The book was initially greeted with Dell Hymes was drawn to Swanton's enthusiastic reviews in such newspapers translations and the verse structure of the as the Globe and Mail, the Montreal Haida texts, noting - significantly, for Gazette, and the National Post. It was Bringhurst's purposes - that literary texts short-listed for the Governor-General's should be understood as "open" documents Award for Non-Fiction. In spite of the that might lend themselves to many differing response, or perhaps because of it, certain translations and interpretations. Haida political leaders began to complain Also, happily, Ghandl's Nine Visits to publicly that Bringhurst had not asked the Mythworld made it to the Canadian their permission to use Haida stories. A short list of the Griffin Poetry Prize in linguist who works with official Haida 2001 - a belated recognition of the poetic approval created a Web site devoted solely merit of works recited a century earlier. to disseminating his own 8,200-word It would be hard not to see poetry in, condemnation of Bringhurst's book. say, the lines from Ghandl's "Those Who Adverse judgments in the academic Stay a Long Way Out to Sea": press have continued, most recently with Then they set off, they say. an attack on A Story as Sharp as a Knife After they travelled a ways, that appeared in the September 2002 a wren sang to one side of them. issue of the University of Washington's They could see that it punctured Pacific Northwest Quarterly. a blue hole through the heart "It's like an infection, and it's still of the one that had passed closest to it there," Bringhurst observed in a recent y they say. conversation. "I don't expect it will go away in my lifetime. I have violated Similarly, Skaay's rendering of "Raven protocol on every front. I have no PhD. Travelling" is obviously much more than I have no faculty position. I did not ask a mere rote-memorized recital of an permission from the Haida." origin myth: It is not as though Bringhurst is without supporters among academics. After a time, at the toe of the Islands, His efforts have been lauded by there was one rock awash. several anthropologists and linguists, He flew there to sit. including Dell Hymes, Hugh Brody, Like sea-cucumbers, gods lay across it. Regna Darnell, and Victor Golla. But Putting their mouths against it, side the tragedy is that all the rumpus- by side. 184 BC STUDIES

The newborn gods were sleeping, out equivalent to Swanton's salary and the along the reef salary earned by Swanton's interpreter, Their heads and tails in all directions. Henry Moody, of Skidegate. The en­ deavour was, in every respect, beneficial The three-volume Masterworks of the to everybody involved. Classical Haida Mythtellers boxed set "What is at work here is something comes with a useful twenty-three-page rather more troubling," Bringhurst says: interview with Bringhurst conducted by "It has been the fate of almost all of Thérèse Rigaud, in which Bringhurst North America's aboriginal literature to makes the case that Haida is a literary remain hidden away in obscure mono­ language, like classical Chinese or graphs and in unpublished field notes" classical Greek, and that the sagas of (interview with Robert Bringhurst, mythtellers such as Ghandl and Skaay March 2002). "Instead of being read side must be recognized for the great literature by side with the works of Herodotus, that they are. aboriginal literature is largely ignored," Bringhurst insists that there is no Bringhurst says, conceding that he "cultural appropriation" at work here, and cannot fully explain why this is so. "I indeed, the Haida mythtellers S wanton think this remains an unanswered engaged were willing participants in a question," he said. "It is a question one project they fully understood. They were should at least keep on asking." also paid on an hourly rate in amounts

The Heavens are Changing: Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions and Tsimshian Christianity Susan Neylan

Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003. xvii, 401 pp. Illus., tables, maps. $75.00 cloth

J.R. MILLER, University of Saskatchewan

RITING IN Moon of Winter­ towards Christianity among supposedly time: Missionaries and the converted Aboriginal people in Moon of WIndians of Canada in En­ Wintertime was an important first step counter since 1534 (University of Toronto in modifying historical analysis of mis- Press, 1984, 250) of seventeenth-century sionization, a process of revision that had Jesuit missions to the Huron, John been under way for over a decade in fur Webster Grant quoted a Huron man as trade studies and was emerging in exam­ saying to a missionary, "You must know inations of Indian policy about the time that we have a 'yes' that means 'no'." Grant Grant published his landmark volume. was explaining the apparent reluctance Since then historians' consideration of of First Nations converts to embrace all what "conversion" truly meant among of Christian doctrine or to give up Aboriginal peoples has advanced signi­ Aboriginal practices completely. His intro­ ficantly. The process of revising and duction of the notion of ambivalence deepening understanding has also been Book Reviews 185

noticeable in studies of evangelism on closer examination of one of them - the Northwest Coast. To mention only Anglican Arthur Wellington Clah. The one important work that contributed to volume concludes with a series of topical the process of extending scholarly under­ examinations of prophets and revivals, standing of what Christian missionaries of everyday practices ("The Politics of did and how they were received, Clarence Everyday Life"), and of the implications Bolt's Thomas Crosby and the Tsimshian: of Tsimshian-Christian contentions over Small Shoes for Feet Too Large (UBC Press, the organization of domestic space and 1992) explained that some Tsimshian public sites such as the potlatch and recruited Methodist missionary Thomas totem poles. Crosby for their own purposes and that Throughout, Neylan strives to keep his flock withdrew support from him the focus as much as possible on the when he ceased to be effective in rep­ Native "converts." This is a noteworthy resenting their interests on the emerging achievement because the plenitude of land question. Over the past twenty missionary sources and the challenge of years, then, the study of Christian interpreting Native evidence for a non- missions to Aboriginal peoples has Native researcher push such an in­ evolved to yield a more complex, more vestigator towards seeing the process nuanced understanding of Aboriginal from the evangelists' perspective. She is responses to Christianity. perceptive and imaginative in trying Susan Neylan's The Heavens are always to see the words, reactions, and Changing: Nineteenth-Century Protestant emotions of the Native people she is Missions and Tsimshian Christianity\ a studying from a Tsimshian cultural revision of her UBC doctoral dissertation, perspective as well as from a Christian continues this advance in scholarly Euro-Canadian viewpoint. So, for understanding of the impact of the mis- example, The Heavens are Changing sionization process. A central argument reinterprets the familiar encounter of this uncommonly perceptive and between Tsimshian Legeex (Legaic) and persuasive work organized around the Church Missionary Society evangelist concepts of "syncretism, convergence, William Duncan over the operation of and dualism" (15) is that "religious his mission school during the winter encounters between Natives and mis­ feasting season. In the traditional sionaries were dialogic meetings" (270) literature, a potentially violent chief is in which each of the parties influenced faced down by a calm missionary, re­ the other. Focusing on "the cultural sulting in the Indian's defeat and eventual brokers and 'middlemen,'" (22) Neylan conversion to a model Christian life (as takes the position that "Christianity ... a carpenter, no less). Neylan probes was indeed an 'authentic' Native ex­ deeper. Using Tsimshian accounts of the perience" (26). To make her case, Neylan same encounter, she explains that it was examines the spiritual topography of Legeex's responsibility as leader of a Tsimshian society and the missionaries' feasting society to ensure the safety of outlook and arrival in Tsimshian territory Tsimshian involved in the winter obser­ before proceeding to an examination, vances. The ringing of the school bell first, of the process of "proselytizing was a menace that needed to be stopped from within" and then converting because it could distract those involved women and families. A general chapter in powerful ceremonies. "This was done on Native missionaries, an important to ensure the spiritual safety of the and revealing group, is followed by a initiates undergoing important trans- l86 BC STUDIES

formations" (98). The author provides In such a fine study, there is little about similar bicultural readings, such as her which to complain. However, sometimes depiction of the equally famous "reli­ the author's pursuit of a bicultural reading gious excitement" at Metlakatla that of an event or phenomenon seems challenged Duncan's regime (192-7). The strained. Seeing flag poles as substitutes result of such readings is to enrich and for totem poles (263-4) is a bit of stretch, deepen the reader's understanding of although the following reading of what was taking place in the encounter gravestones as substitutes for totem between missionary and Native. poles seems more plausible. Also un­ The volume's many insights and inter­ fortunate is Neylan's neglect of some pretations are unified by an approach that secondary literature that might have might be summarized as Death to Di­ enriched her understanding of the chotomies! (At times one is reminded of missionary processes she was examining. Joy Parr's critique of "binary oppositions" For example, although the volume is and "analytical dualism" in The Gender of noteworthy for its thorough canvass of Breadwinners: Womeny Meny and Change relevant theoretical and monographic in Two Industrial Towns 1880-1950 [Uni­ literature, material on Methodist missions versity of Toronto Press, 1990].) Tradi­ among the Ojibwa in nineteenth- tionally understood polarities in the century Ontario is overlooked. The liter­ encounter of Tsimshian and Christian ature on Upper Canadian non-Native messenger are invariably shown by and Native missionaries, including in Neylan to have been more complex, more particular Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby, ambivalent - and consequently more Sacred Feathers), might have been im­ interesting - than was previously thought. portant background for understanding So, for example, on the complicated the ministrations of English-born but issues of the land question and Canadian Ontario-trained Thomas Crosby among government attempts to assert sov­ the Tsimshian. This neglect seems all the ereignty over the Tsimshian, Christianized stranger given Neylan's heavy and appro­ Tsimshian did not always react in the priate reliance on Grant's Moon of same manner. "Christian Tsimshian Wintertime and William Westfall's Two aligned with [non-Native] Christians on Worlds: The Protestant Culture of Nine­ some issues, and stood unified with their teenth-Century Ontario (McGill-Queen's Aboriginal relations against the church University Press, 1989). on others" (275). The complexity of Minor cavils aside, The Heavens are Tsimshian Christianity and the ir­ Changing is an important work of reinter- relevance of dichotomies is perhaps best pretation that advances the historiography symbolized in one of the closing images of the missionization process substantially. in The Heavens are Changing. Neylan tells Moreover, its relevance transcends the of a Tsimshian chief who spoke on the Northwest Coast and British Columbia. land question. "As the chief spoke, he The sophistication of its method and the held a Bible in his left hand and an eagle sensitivity of the author's interpretation feather, a Native symbol of peace, in his represent a model that could well be right hand. He told the chiefs and elders applied to many other regions where in attendance that one was not stronger indigenous peoples and Christianity got than the other" (276). The image nicely caught up, to use John Webster Grant's captures the dialogic, inclusive quality of formulation, in encounter. Tsimshian Christianity that the book explains so well. Book Reviews 187

The Intemperate Rainforest: Nature, Culture and Power on Canada's West Coast Bruce Braun Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. xiv, 347 pp. Illus., maps. US$74.95 cloth / US$24.95 paper

H.V. NELLES, York University

HAT IS IT THAT MAKES Clayoquot Sound provide him with a dancers yearn to sing or point of departure for a series of extended W painters to write? Why are meditations on the social construction of academics fundamentally unhappy nature in a West Coast setting. Braun within their disciplines? Inside each aca­ takes us back from the white heat of demician there seems to be an alter ego clashing interests and passions to the struggling to get out. Scratch a historian, intellectual realm in which ideas that it is said, and you will find a novelist; shape differing perceptions are created. economists are humourists manqué. On He is mainly interested in the way facts the evidence of this book, geographers come to be accepted, how the normal gets would really rather be philosophers. to be that way, how different perceptions When I was asked to review a book of reality take shape and condition entitled The Intemperate Rainforest, I behaviour. Essentially he argues that we expected it would be about trees. But can't see the forest for the metaphors. Bruce Braun's book is really about words, A discourse on the social construction and also paintings, photographs, adver­ of nature opens the book. The five tisements, posters, diagrams, and (oc­ chapters that follow in one way or casionally) maps. Had the book been another illustrate the proposition, ad­ about trees, I would have been notionally vanced in the introduction (11), that within the boundaries of my competence. "nature is socially produced, in the sense But as it concerns itself primarily with that what we see as 'natural' internalizes the philosophical conception of the not only ecological relations but social West Coast forest, I must confess as a relations too." "Producing Marginality," reader to have spent much of my time connects functionalist ideas about the lost in the epistemological woods. I forest as a tree farm to George Dawson's came away with a vague sense that nineteenth-century Geological Survey something useful and important had reports that severed Native peoples from been said, but I could not be certain of their habitat through inventory science. this, specify it precisely, or shake off the "Saving Clayoquot" unpacks the vocabulary uneasiness that perhaps amidst all the of environmentalism, especially photo­ verbal cleverness I'd been had. graphic imagery that contrasts indigeneity In the beginning was the word and with modernity. Environmentalism too, words make forests. In this geography he argues, denies Native peoples a of the mind, Braun sets out to map the modern place in nature. "Landscapes of conceptual grid overlaying the physical Loss and Mourning" uses a sea kayak contours of the West Coast. The recent adventure tour as a point of departure for violent confrontations over logging in an examination of the images, expectations, i88 BC STUDIES and desires that sustain tourism. Again he its ecological and cultural context, finds that both forestry and contemporary adventure travel abstracts another Native peoples have no legitimate place in (Viewscapes') from their ongoing his­ the picture. "BC Seeing/Seeing BC" torical construction and places them in provides a critical reading of Emily Carr's the mythic time of the premodern." I paintings of totems and trees. Here he is was out of my depth on the philosophical at pains to avoid essentialism or reducing issues: I have a nagging suspicion that, her work to a single meaning. Finally, from time to time, Braun may have been "Picturing the Forest Crisis" uses two ap­ as well. When geographers do phil­ parent satellite images of the Vancouver osophy, someone other than a historian Island forest cover to expose the intel­ is needed to judge. lectual genealogy of the idea of nature as The baroque prose is compounded by equilibrium. Where does all this lead? To a predilection for postmodernist word the conclusion that the "forest" is a play. But the bigger problem is that at construction of words and historical times meaning itself is foregone for concepts, that "there is no site outside cul­ effect. For page after page, words are ture and language from which to fix once shot off like fireworks, bright bursts of and for all nature's truth or to adjudicate verbiage fly off in all directions, se­ competing epistemological and political condary sparkles of learned references claims" (259), and that "there are many shower down in cascades: Bachelard, forests, not one; there are myriad ways in Bal, Bar thes, Baudillard, Bell, Benjamin, which the physical worlds of the west Benton, Berkhofer, Berman, Bhabha, coast are imbued with meaning and Bordieu, Butler - to speak only of the intelligibility, not a single unassailable B's. Amidst all of the crackling verbal truth that once found will show us the pyrotechnics, it is often difficult to know way forward" (260). what, if anything, is being said. Then, It must be said that this is a dense, just as suddenly, Braun is back among difficult, sometimes exasperating book, us offering some thoughtful and com­ but every now and then persistence is prehensible commentary as he readies rewarded with illuminating aperçus. On himself to fire off another "lit. crit." the same page (143) that the reader is rocket. forced to struggle through semantic There can be no doubt but that a fertile sludge such as "despite its supposed and critical mind is at work in these distance from an intrusive mass tourism, pages. Braun subjects everything in his in its demarcation of the premodern and gaze to a relentless interrogation. He has identification of this space with essential a discerning eye and is skilled at revealing and timeless forms, the critique of juxtaposition that transcends irony. He Western modernity as colonizing that is also a sympathetic critic. He takes no lies at its core doubles back as colonialism s pleasure in exploding environmental most paradigmatic form, a sort of romanticism; he instinctively shields environmental orientalism that images Native discourse from his withering in­ modernity's Other as fixed and im­ tellect. When he finds his voice, dis­ mutable," Braun tosses off a sparkling ciplines his prose, takes his audience into gem of insight that suddenly makes clear his confidence, and leaves this trail of what he has been trying to say for several references behind, Bruce Braun will pages: "Whereas industrial forestry undoubtedly temper our thinking about abstracts one commodity (timber) from nature in important ways. Book Reviews 189

Women and the White Mans God: Gender and Race in the Canadian Mission Field Myra Rutherdale Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002. 224 pp. $85.00 cloth / $29.95 paper

MARGARET VAN DIE Queens University

HOUGH THE ENCOUNTER between to which discourse actually reflected missionaries and Aboriginals reality. Gender differences, she notes, Tcontinues to fascinate, the tables were tested and amended in the mission have dramatically turned. Where once field, as middle-class women found missionaries saw it as part of their task themselves performing unconventional to explain Aboriginal culture to a White tasks, learning to endure isolation, and society, in today's scholarly discourse it living off the food provided by the land. is the missionary who has become "the A pervasive theme is that, as a result, other." Challenging the Eurocentric the boundaries of gender constantly missions approach common among an shifted, without, however, undermining earlier generation, historians have drawn the close bonding between women on poststructuralist and postmodernist encouraged by the strain of mission work. theory to reinterpret the missionary en­ Though Rutherdale is careful to avoid deavour within the wider text of imperial any hint of glorifying the experiences of relations and gender identities. In the her subjects, there are times when the process, their subjects' idealism and sheer strength of their stories, the level religious motivation-have frequently of their commitment to the needs of been dismissed or subordinated to more Aboriginal women and children, tran­ fashionable postcolonial discourses. A scends her carefully crafted analytical welcome corrective, therefore, is this framework. A similar stretching of the balanced examination of 132 British and theoretical boundaries takes place, with Canadian women who were part of the equally insightful results, when she Church of England's mission frontier in examines the nature and impact of cross- northern British Columbia, the Yukon, cultural contact. Discourse analysis of and the Canadian Arctic from i860 to missionary writings, with only "one side 1940. Why the women were attracted to talking," can easily lead to its own cultural mission work, how they described their imperialism. This is mitigated here, new circumstances, and how they however, by the fact that a small number interacted with the various Aboriginal of the missionaries were themselves cultures they encountered are the focus Aboriginal, and by the author's own of this study. interest in depicting how, in unexpected While the emphasis is on the per­ ways, White and Aboriginal women ceptions and experiences of the mis­ found themselves drawn more closely to sionaries and much of the resulting one another. The missionary experience, analysis of their preconceived ideas about as she points out, was filled with am­ empire, race, culture, gender, and ev­ biguities, such as Aboriginal women's angelical religion is predictable, Rutherdale auxiliaries supporting mission work in goes further to probe as well the extent China, and with such unpredictable out- 190 BC STUDIES comes as Aboriginal women eventually therefore, to know if the god these white assuming the title - once a missionary Anglican women brought to the North self-designation - of "mothers of the was more amenable to such indigenization church." than was the religion preached by their In ways often overlooked by post- male counterparts. A related question, colonial historians, Aboriginal women touched on in the concluding chapter, is and men, far from being passive "con­ the extent to which missionaries were verts" of all-powerful missionaries, able to mitigate some of the enormous played vital, active roles in slowly problems caused by European settlement reshaping Christianity to reflect their by opening opportunities for Aboriginal own culture. While Rutherdale sees this agency. Here one needs to listen carefully as an example of syncretism and a sign to Aboriginal women's voices, and while of failure on the part of the missionaries, these are not the subject of this book, historians of missions such as Andrew Rutherdale's careful and nuanced reading Walls have concluded that, on the of missionary discourse does much to contrary, such indigenization (to use provide a new, more fluid, and less their term) can be seen as the ultimate dichotomized approach to the study of sign of success. It would be helpful, women, colonization, and missions.

Too Small to See, Too Big to Ignore: Child Health and Well-being in British Columbia Michael V. Hayes and Leslie T. Foster Canadian Western Geographical Series 35, Victoria: Western Geographical Press, 2002. xvi, 278 pp. $30.00 paper

VERONICA STRONG-BOAG, University of British Columbia

S THE MOST RECENT Statistics as the contributions to this volume re­ Canada reports tell us, poverty peatedly make clear, comes second best A continues to stalk British Co­ to efforts at remedy when life has already lumbia's youngest citizens. Their dis­ gone badly awry for the province's tress, with outcomes measured pitilessly youngsters. in shortfalls in nutrition, education, and As it sorts through the findings and health, is directly associated with the low the fallout of the 1990s in particular, this income of their parents. The irony of the volume provides essential reading for contracting out of services at BC anyone interested in the well-being of Children's Hospital (2003) is obvious: Canadians. It is an important counterpart the offspring of low-waged workers are to the valuable volume, Vulnerable disproportionately susceptible to the Children: Findings from Canadas National poor health such institutions are de­ Longitudinal Survey of Children and signed to counter. Prevention, however, Youth (2002), edited by J. Douglas Willms. Book Reviews 191

SFU geography professor Michael Hayes strengthens "social cohesion" and furthers sets the critical tone of the BC collection "community development" (99). Chapter in his introduction: "It behooves us as 6, "Patterns and Trends in Children in guardians of children to be mindful of the Care of the Province of British seeing them, and how we see them, Columbia: Ecological, Policy, and within the organization of social policy, Cultural Perspectives" by L.T. Foster given their inherent lack of competitive and M. Wright, tells a much less happy political advantage"(i). Contributions story: poverty produces children-in-care, from "public servants, academics, and but the 1990s saw a diminished political representatives from non-governmental will to increase "employment, educational agencies" (3) make very clear the con­ opportunities, housing assistance, and sequences of Canadians' failure to invest child care" (134) that would have allowed in early well-being. In his "Developing more families to retain their offspring. an Ecology of Children's Health: Recent In their "Contradictions in Child International Trends Linking Children's Welfare," Fay Weller and Brian Wharf Rights to Determinants of Health," suggest what hard times have meant for Phillip Cook locates that failure within many mothers: "isolation, hopelessness, the wider context of global disparities. distrust, and poverty" (141). Canada signed the UN Convention on The system's relentless focus on indi­ the Rights of the Child, but it has no vidual fault, even under NDP admini­ reason to take leadership for granted. strations, has undermined recognition of Cuts to international aid and domestic collective jeopardy and common citi­ transfer payments have undermined child zenship. C. Morton, British Columbia's health and augmented social disparities. first children's commissioner, 1996-99, a Michael J. Guralnick next explores post lost in the BC Liberals' continuing "Contemporary Issues in Early Inter­ retreat from responsibility, contributed vention." His review of family-centred Chapter 8, "Learning from the Past: theory and practice demonstrates the Improving Child-Serving Systems."This benefits of early, and often intensive (as earnest effort, delivered somewhat with children with autism), intervention curiously in the third person, single- and inclusive social practices. Chapter mindedly defends efforts to implement 4, "Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: A the recommendations of the inquiry into Literature Review and a Summary of the death of Matthew Vaudreuil by BC Trends" by L.T. Foster, W.J. Kierans, Judge Thomas Gove in 1995. Academics and J. Macdonald, points to promising Rebecca N. Warburton and William P. developments. The incidence of SIDS is Warburton are less defensive in "Toward falling, even among First Nations popu­ Evidence-Based Child Policy: What lations who here, as in many other areas, Money Can't Buy," as they come down suffer disproportionately. Jessica Ball, in favour of pilot programs and quality Alan Pence, and Allison Benner then control, notably with regard to Head consider the question of "Quality Child Start initiatives. In Chapter 10, "Knowing Care and Community Development: the Constituency: Youth - Their Health What Is the Connection?" Drawing on and Behaviour," Roger S. Tonkin and capacity-building initiatives with First Aileen Murphy consider the diversity Nations groups in western Canada and revealed by the Adolescent Health a wide-ranging review of programs in Survey administered to BC students in the majority and minority world, the 1992 and 1998. Like several authors here, authors affirm how quality childcare they emphasize how much young people 192 BC STUDIES appreciated being consulted. Marlene M. Liberal government elected in 2002: Moretti, Roy Holland, and Ken Moore The assumption made by the next review treatment prospects for the powerful people making public same age group in "Youth at Risk: policy appears to be that everyone Systemic Intervention from an Attach­ has basically the same life ment Perspective." Here, too, evidence chances, and therefore is entitled is available on what works with many only to minimal assistance from youngsters, but the political will is not the public. Poverty, in this view, there. In Chapter 12, Joseph H. Michalski appears to be simply the conse­ turns to "Family Dynamics, Labour quences of bad life choices. Market Attachment, and 'At-Risk' Disparities in life chances are Children." Good jobs, he still needs to underplayed, ignored, or used for remind readers, are the best guarantees iconic value - overcoming the of good health in children, as in adults. odds of poverty is presented as These authors confirm what we have the norm of hard work and long known: the solution to children in successful entrepreneurialship, distress is not simple. Individual com­ not the minor miracle that it is. mitment, whether from children, parents, or social workers and health professionals, (276) is not sufficient. The problems that This assessment, while very true, is also produce Matthew and Verna Vaudreuil, insufficient. It lets all citizens, and the both victims of Canada's failure to New Democratic Party when in power, nurture young citizens, are not solvable off too easily. With conspicuous ex­ without a collective willingness to ceptions, too many of us have failed the address the disparities between the haves province's children. Too Small to See, Too and the have-nots. In his Epilogue, Big to Ignore reminds us of this tragedy. Michael Hayes offers little cause for Now we need a substantive discussion optimism as he reviews the record of the of why this is so.

A World Apart: The Crowsnest Communities of Alberta and British Columbia Wayne Norton and Tom Langford, Editors Kamloops: Plateau Press, 2002. ix, 202 pp. Illus. $23.95 paper

DUFF SUTHERLAND Selkirk College

/I WORLD APART, edited by Wayne authors collectively reveal how the fj Norton and Tom Langford, is a Canadian Pacific and Great Northern jL «A. solid collection of essays and Railways spearheaded the European memoirs about the experience of living settler history of the region through the and working in the Crowsnest Pass construction of lines to mine and haul communities of Alberta and British the Pass's vast coal deposits. Beginning Columbia in the twentieth century. The in the 1890s, mines opened while towns, Book Reviews 193

sawmills, farms, and ranches also emerged they played in their families' survival. as part of a regional economy. This "his­ Mining accidents and disasters left tory" also created class-conscious com­ behind widows and fatherless children, munities of workers and their families, wives looked after households and farms who were drawn to the Pass primarily while husbands mined, women took the from the British Isles and Central and few low-paying service jobs available to Eastern Europe. These were people them in mining towns to help their whose backgrounds and experiences in families, and women and children walked the mines led them to embrace a demo­ sometimes violent picket lines. At the cratic and often radical unionism, elect same time, families needed boys to leave socialist and working-class politicians school early to mine while "female like Charlie O'Brien and Tom Uphill, students could [not] escape the family support local volunteers to fight fascism and social tensions of frequent strikes in Spain in the 1930s, and, in towns such and disputes at the collieries" (34). as Blairmore and Natal, to name a Growing up in Fernie, Mary Giuliano boulevard and a park after Tim Buck and remembers that she worked in the family Karl Marx, respectively. More broadly, vegetable garden and, as the eldest child, these actions reflected, as Tom Langford helped her father add an extension to describes, the culture of the coal camps, their house. Other articles discuss the "an alternative vision of community in importance of music, dances, May Day, the Crowsnest, a vision that stressed sports, and religious revivals to these equality rather than hierarchy, solidarity communities. One has to admire the rather than self-interest and democracy independence and autonomy of miners rather than corporate oligarchy" (148). It who played soccer at a very high level was these shared values and experiences, for Fernie United without coaches. A the editors argue, that made the Crowsnest final important dimension of Part One communities of Alberta and British is the immigrant experience. Most Columbia "a world apart" until the late immigrants who stayed appeared to have 1950s. By then, the majority of the Pass's fond memories of their experience in the underground coal mines had closed as Pass, but we also learn about a desperately the CPR shifted from steam to diesel unhappy mother who died young, locomotives and the forces of "modernity" parents who eventually lived apart, created more integrated provincial discrimination at work, and prejudice societies. towards immigrant children. The great strength of this collection Part Two examines the political eco­ of writing and photographs is the way nomy of the Pass. As Robert McDonald its contributors - a combination of points out in his excellent chapter on the academic and local historians, current popular working class MLA, Tom Uphill, and former residents - vividly document "it was coal mining that dominated the the working lives and experiences of the economic and social landscape" (101). people of the Pass in the first half of the This meant that mining accidents and twentieth century. In Part One, entitled disasters in the Pass were community "Society and Culture," a dozen articles and regional disasters, communities and memoirs document family and boomed and busted with coal industry, community life. An important theme and miner union locals were among the that emerges is the particular impact most important political and social that the mining economy had on women institutions in the region. Although and children, and the important role that there is surprisingly little here about 194 BC STUDIES

working underground and class conflict, explosion; the photographs of union the experience of work clearly radicalized parades in which the entire community miners who supported the One Big appears to be in the parade; and the Union, developed "deep historical links" miner who, until his death in 1999, to the Communist Party of Canada, and continued to demand that the company maintained a critical stance towards the provide him, as a retiree, coal to heat his leadership of the United Mine Workers home as per "his collective agreement." of America. The writers in this part of A World Apart is a good book that the book also provide evidence that Pass deserves a wide readership in British miners never saw themselves as "a world Columbia. Aside from the work of Allan apart" from the broader working-class Seager and another collection edited by movement: they joined campaigns Wayne Norton with Naomi Miller,1 the against regressive labour laws across Crowsnest Pass has not figured much in Canada, sent money to striking workers historical writing about British Columbia. outside the region, and supported This neglect may have reinforced the progressive causes around the world. In feeling of the writers that the Pass was the end, however, what lingers in the "A World Apart." My sense is that lives mind from these articles and memoirs of the people of the Pass shared many is a strong historical sense of the people similarities with those of other working and their lives: the miner David Murray, people in the resource industries of who survived the initial explosion at British Columbia in the twentieth Hillcrest in 1914 but died trying rescue century. This suggests that we need a his three sons; the picketing miners' new synthesis of the labour and working- wives and children in Corbin in 1932 class history of this province. whom the Mounties cleared with a 1 bulldozer; the photograph of men and Wayne Norton and Naomi Miller, eds., The boys about to enter Number Two Mine Forgotten Side of the Border: British Columbia s Elk Valley and Crowsnest Pass (Kamloops: at Coal Creek before the terrible 1902 Plateau Press, 1998).

Tales of Ghosts: First Nations Art in British Columbia, 1922-61 Ronald W. Hawker Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002. 248 pp. $27.95 paper

MEGAN A. SMETZER, Vancouver, BC

HE HISTORIOGRAPHIC trends in the in British Columbia, iç22-6iy takes a re­ scholarly literature pertaining to freshing and much needed new approach TFirst Nations material and visual to twentieth-century First Nations art culture have leaned primarily towards in British Columbia. By focusing on the stylistic analysis, connoisseurship, and virtually ignored mid-twentieth century tracing the rise, decline, and "renaissance" and using discourse analysis, Hawker of this production. Ronald Hawker's reveals a wide range of objects and book, Tales of Ghosts: First Nations Art situations that challenge the validity of Book Reviews 195

the "renaissance" narrative. Through the Hawker proposes that, while colonial close examination of several "repre­ power relationships enforced a certain sentational projects," Hawker analyzes reading of these events, the First the shifting, and often contested, Nations involved were not entirely meanings attributed to material culture victims and had multiple reasons for both inside and outside of First Nations participating in the sale of objects. For communities. Hawker argues that, example, he interprets the relocation of "during this era, Northwest Coast Kwakwaka'wakw poles as a way for objects functioned in a complex and certain families to gain a wider audience multifaceted manner, at once asserting for lineage and ownership concerns. the integrity and meaningfulness of First Hawker names the ambivalent reading Nations identities and resisting the of these events the "modernist paradox," intent and effects of assimilation" (5). in which a culture appears to disappear Hawker challenges the modernist even though its members continue to trajectory that relegated First Nations exist. peoples to a timeless past by offering an The second portion of the book examination of the ways in which First examines the shift in the 1940s and 1950s Nations objects were used to create a (as a result of the Depression) from provincial and national identity through Canadian assimilationist policies to the institutionalization of indigenous those of integration, along with asso­ "culture." The well-known events sur­ ciated projects initiated to combat First rounding the raid of the 1922 Cranmer Nations poverty and other social ills. potlatch serve as the author's starting Concerned individuals such as George point. He suggests that the reconfiguration Raley and his Indian Arts and Crafts of potlatch regalia from contemporary Board, and Alice Ravenhill's British ceremonial use to ethnographic artefacts Columbia Indian Arts and Welfare in museums enabled local and federal Society believed that using recognizable governments to frame First Nations and aspects of First Nations culture would their objects as pre-history, and place facilitate the assimilation of First them at the beginning of a narrative Nations into dominant social structures about Canada's national history. Hawker and, at the same time, educate the non- illustrates other aspects of this theme First Nations public. Raley and Ravenhill through a series of events that took place focused on the commodification of First during the 1920s, including the relocation Nations art, both the creation of objects of Kwakwaka'wakw poles to Stanley based on older Northwest Coast art forms Park, the relocation of Gitxsan poles and the encouragement of new forms. along the Canadian National Railways Hawker points out not only the ways line, and the National Gallery of Art's in which these paternalistic projects 1927 Exhibition of Canadian West Coast masked the often horrific realities of Arty Native and Modern. These events, First Nations lives but also how they in turn, erased local Salish histories and were used by some First Nations as a replaced them with a more generalized means for resisting assimilationist notion of "totem pole people," corn- policies. Artists such as Mathias Joe, modified First Nations objects for Mungo Martin, and George Clutesi tourists, and used First Nations objects used government-sanctioned events to as a basis to create a unique "Canadian highlight their Aboriginality and to artistic style" (61). make public statements about political 196 BC STUDIES

issues such as land claims and identity. ownership in exchange for copies of Moreover, in contesting Peter McNair's poles. Throughout the book, Hawker argument that mid-twentieth-century reinforces the complexity of these objects represented a decline and Martine situations, underlining the conflicts over Reid's belief that these objects had no control and the multiplicity of meanings. cultural meaning, Hawker suggests that The major criticism of this book is shifting cultural practices gave these its lack of contemporary First Nations objects cross-cultural value and meaning voices. While Hawker successfully in ways that were just as important as utilizes published First Nations sources, were those displayed and recognized in he states that his narrative would become nineteenth-century masterpieces. too complicated with the inclusion of Finally, Hawker discusses the institu­ reminiscences about the past. On the one tionalization of Northwest Coast objects hand, Hawker's decision seems practical, in the 1950s and 1960s. He focuses on but on the other, research on First Nations the totem pole salvage expeditions should always be complicated by con­ sponsored by the University of British temporary voices. As Hawker himself Columbia and the British Columbia notes: "these objects and images, and the Provincial Museum. The relocation of ideas they represent continue to exert a poles from abandoned villages to museum strong influence on the world we share" collections placed an institutional value (179). It has rightly become an ethical on the objects and contributed to their responsibility to work collaboratively reinterpretation as art. Hawker uses the with First Nations individuals and com­ specific case of Gitanyow (Kitwancool) munities. This criticism aside, Hawker's to illustrate how this First Nations com­ book is a valuable and significantly new munity strategically used institutional approach to the material and visual practices to record histories of land production of the Northwest Coast.

Beaten Down: A History of Interpersonal Violence in the West David Peterson del Mar Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002. 312 pp. $40.00 cloth

JIM PHILLIPS, University of Toronto

AVID PETERSON DEL MAR'S first contacts between Native societies work on violence against and European traders and settlers to the D wives is well known to social middle of the twentieth century. The and legal historians, and in this im­ organization is largely chronological, portant, innovative, and provocative new taking the reader from the violence asso­ book, he has broadened his approach to ciated with the process of colonization examine interpersonal violence more to the 1930s, although there is necessarily generally. Beaten Down is a history of such a strong thematic element to many violence in eastern Oregon, Washington, chapters, especially the first, which is on and British Columbia (the region he colonization. The volume is also expli­ calls the North Pacific Slope), from the citly comparative in a number of places, Book Reviews 197 especially with regard to assessments of violence was an integral part of the the levels and acceptability of extra-legal colonization process at the level of inter­ violence between Canada and the actions between settlers and their agents United States. and Aboriginal peoples. Indian agents, Three points are crucial to under­ missionaries, and individual settlers used standing the content, method, and violence and saw it as a legitimate aspect arguments in this book. First, it is about of their land acquisition and acculturation individual acts of interpersonal violence, missions. It also shows that the nature a phenomenon to which del Mar believes of Native violence changed, essentially historians have paid too little attention. from a phenomenon directed at outsiders They have preferred, he argues, to study to one aimed at others within the same the collective violence of the riot, the group. The chapter that follows, on strike, and the vigilante movement, violence among settlers, argues that it while ignoring most individual acts of was an endemic aspect of how social and violence. While he probably exaggerates racial hierarchies were forged and re­ historians* lack of interest in individual inforced. My only quibble about these violence (he himself concedes the con­ chapters is that the line that Del Mar siderable recent interest in homicide), he insists on between individual and col­ is nonetheless right to suggest that the lective violence is not always sustainable: area deserves a good deal more attention. if enough settlers and missionaries Second, del Mar largely eschews the use believed in and used violence in their of broad indicators of violence (such as campaigns for Aboriginal subordination, criminal justice statistics or debates over and did so with the shared understanding corporal punishment), preferring to try that this was a necessary and legitimate to capture its meaning through more activity, then to some extent what is qualitative evidence. Statistical work is being described is a form of collective employed to suggest general trends, but violence, albeit one carried out through it often serves as a background and multiple individual agency. Chapters 4 context for a more cultural history. through 6 are more particular studies of Third, del Mar insists, surely correctly, violence, marginality, and race in the that interpersonal violence is much more major cities of the region after the turn than the product of individual or social of the century. The first of these is pathology and draws its meaning from especially good at capturing the ways in the particularities of time and place. It which violence was attributed to out­ is also - a point that del Mar demonstrates siders and the marginal in a period of very effectively - a complex phenomenon. high immigration, although that did not While he notes that he is "primarily mean that all immigrants and ethnic interested in exploring the relationship groups were considered violent. The between power and interpersonal violence" Chinese, for example, were castigated (9), he also shows that that violence has, for their supposed moral threat rather at different times, been a product of than for any physical danger they posed. power and a means of producing and In short, Del Mar is successful in sustaining it as well as clear evidence of revealing the contours of the uses of individual or group powerlessness and a violence and attitudes towards it in a form of resistance. variety of different locales within the Within this framework, there is much region and at a variety of different times. to admire in Beaten Down.The first sub­ In some ways, the book can be divided stantive chapter argues successfully that into two distinct halves. The first three 198 BC STUDIES

chapters represent a chronology of violence continued to decline after 1900, violence in the nineteenth century, with although there are suggestions, in the the principal message of Chapter 3 being introduction and in the epilogue, that that, largely judged by homicide rates, change did take place and that violence by the late nineteenth century, violence became a less significant part of everyday had declined. The three chapters that life over time. The author would perhaps follow are more particular case studies concede this critique: his is not intended set in the twentieth century. While they to be a "complete history" for he is "more take the story down to the Second interested in using time and place to World War, they are less concerned with explore the nuances" of the relationship chronology and tend more to capture the between violence and power (9). The nature of interpersonal violence and the book certainly succeeds admirably in concerns of the respectable about its that ambition. prevalence. It is less clear when and why

Facing History: Portraits from Vancouver Karen Love Vancouver: Presentation House Gallery and Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002.160 pp. Illus. $29.95 paper

NEIL SUTHERLAND, University of British Columbia

m \ ACING HISTORY: Portraits from back cover, John Helcermanas's close-up r^ Vancouver grew out of an photograph of boxer Elio lus; in between, JL exhibition at North Vancouver's photos, sketches, sculptures, and paintings Presentation House Gallery, curated by of dozens of visitors or residents of the book's editor, Karen Love. In her Vancouver between the years 1950 and introductory essay, Love explains that 2001. Foncie Pulice's "Electric" camera Facing History "cannot be a portrait of captured some as they walked along Vancouver, not in the comprehensive Granville shopping or on a date. News­ way we imagine such a thing. Rather it paper photographers Bill Cunningham, is a visual cacophony of possibilities, a Colin Price, Brian Kent, and Glenn fulsome beginning hinting variously at Baglo caught, respectively, a rueful the specifics of each unique individual young man in handcuffs, Terry Fox on and the complex world of histories and the Marathon of Hope, Mr. Peanut environments which we (as readers) filing his nomination papers, and Pierre think might have influenced his or her Trudeau autographing a photo of himself workTfo). for a youngster. In one intriguing news What makes up this particular "caco­ photograph, Jim Ryan captured Premier phony"? The front cover displays one- W.A.C. Bennett in the midst of a crowd half of Jin-Me Yoon's diptych portraying of children. One is bemused to see clearly the child Hanum Yoon-Henderson; the in the background the men's entrance to Book Reviews 199 a beer parlour. (The text does not explain, surrounding portraiture and the identity but surely not, "Okay, kids, the drinks of subjects. He explains, for example, are on me!") that from "the early Renaissance onward, More formality characterizes other the portrait is expected both to create portraits. Fred Douglas, Chick Rice, an acceptably accurate likeness and to Diane Evans, and Robert Minden posed reveal its subject's inner life" (142). or found their subjects in studios or at Further, photographic portraits "are the such outdoor locations as a backyard, images of someone not present - the Exhibition Park, or the beach at White mark therefore of absence, as true of a Rock. In Marian Penner Bancroft's in­ portrait in a gallery as of the photo of a stallations, Allyson Clay's portrait loved one tucked in a traveller's notebook" performances, and such multimedia (146). Moreover, "it is within time, and compositions as JefF Wall's light boxes therefore inescapably within memory ... and Colette Whiten's embroidery em­ that photographic portraits draw us. bedded in glass beads, photographers And what do we sketch within them but moved beyond the boundaries of tradi­ some form of ourselves, individual and tional portraits or action shots. Roy collective entwined, momentary and Kiyooka makes three appearances: as a impressive" (147).Thus, "when given the photographer (especially of a series on time and the place, we will choose to a street festival), as the subject of a contemplate a portrait from - not of - portrait by Fred Douglas, and as the Vancouver and therein we will indivi­ subject of an essay by poet Robin Blaser. dually create identities for the city we A commentary accompanies some collectively call home" (ibid.). portraits. Jerry Pethick explains his flash Despite their complex arguments, portrait "Simulation - Self-Portrait with neither Love's nor Sherrin's essay lays Abdomen of an Ant." Paul Wong out a coherent enough overarching describes the origin and fate of three theme, or set of specific claims, against frames taken from a series of anti-racism which to evaluate Facing History. On the television spots. The best essays, such as other hand, Doris Shadbolt's comment, Sarah Milroy's on Fred Douglas's photo­ appearing on the fly, gets it exactly right. graph of Doris Shadbolt or Sandra As she says, the book "comes across less Semchuk's on her composite "Ukrainians as an additive assemblage of individually Vote to go Their Own Way" provide a arresting images than as a loosely woven modest commentary on, or extension of, visual fabric evocative in its collective the picture. Others perhaps strive too understatedness." hard for effect. Of Alvin Armstrong's Some books only reveal their treasures television still photograph, "An Aspect - such as Bennett with the kids outside of Crime," Colin Browne suggests it a pub or the page displaying a pair of "might just be the kind of Ur-photograph photos, one of a sterile high school class­ that lined the metaphysical nest of room and the other of a crowd of en­ photo-conceptualism in this querulous, thusiastic teens at an Elvis Presley concert uncertain, prolific place"(68). - through repeated skimming and In a concluding essay entitled "Visible browsing. In the best sense of these and Unknowable," art critic Bob Sherrin terms, Facing History is such a book. reflects on some of the theoretical issues Skim and browse. 200 BC STUDIES

Launching History: The Saga of Burrard Dry Dock Francis Mansbridge Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2002.150 pp. Illus. $39.95 cloth

ANDREW HILDRED, University of British Columbia

N 1894, ON THE SHORES of False sounding "Alfred'' to the Scot-friendly Creek, Alfred "Andy" Wallace "Andy" says much about the Wallaces' cus­ I began what would become the tomers, his workforce, and Vancouver's largest shipbuilding conglomerate on early business elite (10). the West Coast of Canada. Specializing While the corporate history of Burrard in wooden fishing boats, Wallace soon Dry Dock is intimately tied to the diversified into wooden tugs. By 1906 he Wallace family, Mansbridge recognizes had moved his shipyards from False the importance of other contributors. Creek to North Vancouver. Here the His book includes highlighted excerpts shipyards remained in operation until from personal interviews and both com­ 1992. The company went on to employ pany and union sources. These are three generations of Wallaces before it presented as "local colour" outside of was sold to corporate interests in the early Mansbridge's formal narrative. But once 1970s. Francis Mansbridge's Launching again, these human stories make the History: The Saga of Burrard Dry Dock is book interesting. For example, when a popular account of Wallace's shipyard. corporate giant Versatile Manufacturing Mansbridge and Harbour Publishing assumed control in 1978, Mansbridge have chosen a timely subject, as the foreshadows some of the problems of the former shipyards in North Vancouver are new ownership, which was more con­ currently being transformed from their cerned with the bottom line than with industrial origins into mixed commercial building good ships. The new owners and residential use. Launching History brought in a personnel director, "an serves as a reminder of what was once American, a Vietnam pilot shot down an integral part of the North Vancouver three times in Vietnam in his helicopter. waterfront and a significant contributor He was on the BC Lions Grey Cup team to British Columbia's economic diversity. in 1964" (162). The union president at the Drawing on a diverse and extensive col­ time remembered their first meeting. lection of company records, personal inter­ Luckily, he had been forewarned that the views, an unpublished corporate history, new personnel director would try to and a published union account by former "break his hand" when they were intro­ shipyard workers, Mansbridge has duced. The new personnel director repre­ woven together a history of "significant sented the company's hard-line approach ships and the men and women who to labour and the unions in the shipyards. made them possible"(xi). These human Corporate histories often have little stories combined with the corporate his­ to say about unions and organized tory of Burrard Dry Dock provide an labour. Bradford Mitchell's Every Kind interesting insight into local community. ofShipwork: A History of Todd Shipyards For example, Alfred Wallace's decision Corporation IÇ16-1981 (1981), almost 200 to change his name from the English- pages into the text, briefly mentions a Book Reviews 201

union, and then only to note that com­ scope of this narrative" (xi). In a book pany profits were lower due to a prolonged that purports to be about the ships and strike. Todd Shipyards Corporation was the men and women who built them, I a contemporary of Wallace and Burrard would argue, the union movement is Dry Dock and also a competitor with integral to this story. Although he shipbuilding and repair yards in Seattle recognizes the biases inherent in the and Tacoma. In the American Northeast, company sources, Mansbridge often where Todd s head office was located, Todd resorts to presenting the company view. gained a reputation for ruthlessly opposing For example, he repeatedly cites the the organizing efforts of the Industrial company line that wages on the West Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Coast were too high for the shipyard to Workers of America (IUMSWA). David remain competitive. Given Mansbridge's Palmer's Organizing the Shipyards: Union use of union sources, I would have liked Strategy in Three Northeast Ports, içjj- some further discussion of the union and 1945 (1998) provides a useful account of its place in the shipyards. the IUMSWA. The official corporate In the end, Mansbridge and Harbour history of Todd Shipyards avoids the Publishing have produced a very well topic of unionization among its workers. written and well illustrated popular Mansbridge has taken a slightly history of the Burrard Dry Dock company. different approach to unionization. He Hundreds of photographs grace this quotes frequently from union sources. book and add to its visual appeal. I He conducted personal interviews with would highly recommend Launching present and past union leaders, and he History not only to those fascinated by repeatedly draws from a union-pub­ ships and maritime history but also to lished book: A History of Shipbuilding in those interested in local and community British Columbia (1977). And yet, in his histories. Launching History'will serve as introduction, Mansbridge claims that a longtime reminder of this province's the union movement is "outside the shipbuilding past - a history that seems almost already forgotten.

British Columbiay the Pacific Province: Geographical Essays Colin J.B.Wood, Editor Victoria: Western Geographical Press, 2002. 358 pp. Illus., maps. $32.00 paper

KENNETH G. BREALEY, University College of the Fraser Valley

NTIL RECENTLY, geographers Koroscil's edited 1991 British Columbia: looking for a reasonably com­ Geographical Essays in Honour of A. U prehensive, but decidedly cur­ McPherson was geographically uneven rent, introductory text or compilation of and narrowly focused, while Charles essays having a regional and/or thematic Forward's 1989 British Columbia: Its focus on the geography of British Columbia Resources and People was, even by the had little with which to work. Paul early 1990s, increasingly dated. This was 202 BC STUDIES a serious omission, especially since almost I also found these four chapters to be every department of geography in this among the strongest in the collection. province has "the geography of British That said, the overall quality of these Columbia" as one of its core introductory chapters is very good. They all display courses! Now, however, this lacuna has sound scholarship and are free of jargon. been nicely filled by two new contri­ Tabular and graphic support is thorough butions. First off the mark in 2000, and and is displayed with a consistent style. reviewed in BC Studies 132, was Brett Both in content and legibility, the carto­ McGillivray's Geography of British graphy, in particular, is a huge im­ Columbia: People and Landscapes in provement. I found no typographical Transition. Second, in 2002, and reviewed errors, which, coupled with the above, here, is this, the thirty-sixth publication reflects a careful editorial hand. In add­ of the University of Victoria's long- ition to the usual primary or secondary running Western Geographical series references, most chapters direct the and, thus, a work that adopts a rather reader to relevant Internet sites - an im­ different, and in places more con­ portant addition that reflects a growing ceptually demanding, framework than scholarly reliance on digital sources. does McGillivray's. If only because we have long needed Indeed, in terms of overall form and a book like this, my quibbles with the style, this edited compilation is virtually collection are correspondingly few. a carbon copy of Forward's text. Seven While there is an introductory chapter, of the book's nineteen chapters - landforms its discussion of the regional makeup of and natural hazards (Foster), biogeo- the province remains fairly standard and climatics (Edgell), land-based recreation does not always seem relevant to many (Downie), climate (Tuller), marine-based of the following chapters, in which the recreation (Dearden), the Chinese com­ approach is largely thematic or topical. munity (Lai), and agriculture (the editor) The ordering of the chapters is also - are effectively revisions of earlier curious. Doubtless the province is chapters by the same authors in Forward's moving, if fitfully, away from a resource- collection; another eight - historical based economy; however, chapters on cartography (Keller), water (Smith), forestry, mining, fishing, and energy are tourism (Rollins), minerals (Harris), at the end of the compilation, while energy (Newcomb), forestry (Vyse), chapters on tourism and Native land fisheries (the editor and Corpé), and claims come much earlier. I'd have regionalism (the editor) - are also reversed this order to make the causal revisions but are written by different geographical and temporal aspects of authors. New in this compilation are provincial change and continuity over chapters on provincial geopolitics the past fifteen years more explicit. In (Thomas), the space economy (the either case, a brief editorial preface editor), land-use planning (the editor, would have helped. In addition, the book Corpé and Jackson), and Native land lacks an index, which lessens its utility claims (Duerden). Whether because as a quick reference guide. they mostly dovetailed with my own It is on this view, perhaps, that some interests, because they dealt with topics comparisons with McGillivray's text are only addressed piecemeal in Forward, or in order. Instructors teaching the geo­ because they deal with a truly post­ graphy of British Columbia at an intro­ modern set of geographical challenges, ductory level, and who need a relatively Book Reviews 203 accessible text, more Spartan (and thus from British Columbia (such as in more readily grasped) graphic and resource and environmental studies, tabular support, and a length that is just recreation or political geography, and about right for a thirteen-week course, planning) - will get more out of this are probably best served by McGillivray. compilation. The nice thing is that we Those seeking a somewhat "thicker" text now have a choice. While it may not - whether for use in a more directed have been intended as such, I found this course on the geography of British book a most welcome update of Forward s Columbia or in more advanced courses text, and one that will be welcomed by in other subdisciplines seeking more scholars and instructors both within and theoretically informed "case studies" without geography.

Regulating Lives: Historical Essays on the State, Society, the Individual, and the Law John McLaren, Robert Menzies, and Dorothy E. Chunn, Editors Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002. 314 pp. $85.00 cloth / $29.95 paper

CATHERINE CARSTAIRS, University of British Columbia

EGULATING LIVES adds to a were forced to tell their experiences of rapidly growing body of work sexual abuse at least twice in the in Canadian legal history and presence of the accused and were in the history of moral regulation. The interrogated about their sexual histories, collection should be of great interest to while the man accused was generally historians of the family, gender, race only cross-examined once. Convictions relations, and the state, and several of were far from assured, which reinforced the individual chapters are excellent. the idea that incest was an atypical act Dorothy Chunn's provocative chapter rather than an effect of unequal power examines the impact of the crimin­ relations within the family. Most of the alization of incest between 1890 and 1940, families involved in these cases were and questions the use of the criminal law poor. The poor, of course, had fewer to regulate the "private." Chunn points options than did the rich for dealing out that the criminalization of incest was with such problems privately. Incest, part of the late nineteenth-century move Chunn concludes, is rooted in structural towards regulating all sexual activity inequalities, and the criminal law is outside of heterosexual marriage through limited in its ability to deal with such the law rather than through the family, problems. the church, and other community inst­ John McLaren's chapter, "The State, itutions. Using case files, she shows that Child Snatching and the Law: The going to court was an ordeal for the Seizure and Indoctrination of Sons of children and young women who accused Freedom Children in British Columbia, their fathers and brothers of incest. They 1950-60," tells the complex story of the 204 BC STUDIES

efforts made by various provincial disreputable. Mawani shows that moral governments to persuade and to force reformers were concerned with con­ Doukhobor parents to educate their structing normative heterosexualities for children in public schools from the 1920s men well as for women and that men, as to the 1950s. This chapter raises questions well as women, could be villains in the about the extent to which civil liberties anti-venereal drama. for ethnic minorities improved in the The remaining chapters are not as post-Second World War period. McLaren strong as those just mentioned. Michaela includes detailed discussions of Doukhobor Freund provides an engagingly written leadership and the impact of political piece on venereal disease; Robert Adamoski changes in British Columbia and in explores the shift from the older insti­ Canada. Although his chapter is a tutional model of charity to the new difficult read, McLaren shows where the "scientific" social work in the late nine­ power to make decisions resided, why teenth and early twentieth centuries; decisions were made, and what impact Gerry Ferguson writes on the early they had on the people involved. history of asylums in British Columbia; Robert Menzies focuses on the depor­ Mimi Ajzenstadt examines the impact tation of sixty-five male mental patients of prohibition and temperance on racial to China in 1935. He shows that asylum and ethnic minorities; and Jay Nelson superintendents in British Columbia contributes an analysis of fur-trade had fought for the deportation of men­ marriage that relies primarily on pre­ tally ill Chinese men as early as 1899. viously published secondary literature. The chapter demonstrates that Chinese My one real criticism is that Regulating men in BC asylums received little Lives lacks an overall focus - both treatment, were occasionally attacked by topically and theoretically. The intro­ White patients and even attendants, and duction starts with an accessible account were often extremely isolated because of of the differences between theories of their poor command of English. This is social control, moral regulation, and gov- the first work of which I am aware to ernmentality. The editors indicate that deal explicitly with racial minorities they hope that the collection will (1) within the asylum, and it provides a debate the theoretical merits of social valuable addition to the asylum literature control, moral regulation, and govern- as well as to the literature on deportation. mentality and (2) compare regulation in The most influential literature on British Columbia to the rest of Canada, anti-venereal campaigns in Canada has and/or other White settler societies. argued that women, particularly working- Unfortunately, most of the authors class women, were blamed for the spread neither address these theoretical debates of the disease. By contrast, Renisa nor make many explicit comparisons to Mawani argues that the efforts to control other places. Despite this weakness, venereal disease between 1914 and 1935 Regulating Lives provides a very solid were directed at all Canadians: men and addition to the history of regulation in women, rich and poor, moral and British Columbia. Book Reviews 205

Invisible Genealogies: A History of Americanist Anthropology Regna Darnell Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. 373 pp. US$24.95 paper

MICHAEL ASCH University of Victoria

T IS FREQUENTLY asserted that con­ is to be on the history of a culture or on temporary anthropology is dis­ the psychological/philosophical impact I tinctive in that it represents a of language and culture on shaping radical, self-conscious departure from its "worldview." While each analytic is earlier traditions. While accepting that relevant to establishing links that make this orientation has been of value the genealogy visible, Darnell's case for particularly in exposing the baggage of continuity is best established through earlier iterations of key themes, Regna her analysis of work on the role of lan­ Darnell demurs with respect to its guage and culture in shaping worldview boldest claims for, as she sees it, the field and on the writing of life histories. This today represents less a radical shift than is supported by her sensitive portrayal a historical development of themes that of the role of non-social scientistic ways first emerged at the beginning of the of reporting on cultural life (e.g., discipline itself. It is due to "rhetoric" through poetic forms of discourse) - a alone that this genealogy has been role that has existed virtually from the rendered "invisible." Hence the title, outset of the field. Invisible Genealogies. Invisible Genealogies is not oriented While this focus provides its theme, towards regional ethnography, except in Invisible Genealogies is not, in fact, a the large sense that one dimension of treatise directed solely at making this Americanist anthropology, as Darnell particular point; rather, in demon­ defines it, involves a regional focus on strating these links between then and the indigenous peoples of North America. now, Darnell creates a lens through which Thus, in the text, reference to the culture she writes a history of what she describes or language of any First Nation is as key features of the Americanist provided largely in order to illustrate a tradition in anthropology. This tradition, general point concerning the theoretical as Darnell describes it, was founded by orientations of the anthropologist whose Boas and developed through the work research is under discussion. None­ of his students, Kroeber and Sapir, as theless, for those interested in anthro­ well as their close associates, particularly pological work in British Columbia, this Whorf and Parsons. In her reading, this focus provides an important aspect of tradition is dominated by two linked the text. Depictions of First Nations, analytical dynamics. The first involves particularly Northwest Coast peoples the pull between a focus on exploring such as the Kwakwaka'wakw, have, for culture as a collective expression and a better or for worse, played a significant focus on examining how the person­ role in the anthropology of individuals alities of individuals shape and are whose work Darnell addresses (and, shaped by culture. The second involves thus, in the anthropology of those who the extent to which the focus of research follow in that tradition). In particular, 2o6 BC STUDIES

one can, by implication, trace the link history of anthropology lies in its between the theoretical concerns of exploration of the development of the anthropologists and the manner in interpretivist and humanist strains in which, for example, the cultural life of Americanist anthropology and, parti­ First Nations in British Columbia has cularly, the intimate connection between been represented as well as the frame those strains and that aspect of "anthro­ within which particular institutions, such pological linguistics" concerned with the as the potlatch, have been interpreted. social and cultural dimensions of language. In laying out the case in Invisible This makes much sense as Darnell is one Genealogies, Darnell makes an important of the leading authorities on both the contribution to the developing field of history of and research into that area of the history of anthropology. However, I study. For a reader more interested in the would suggest that this work, despite the impact of anthropology on the study of subtitle, is not "A History of Americanist First Nations, Invisible Genealogies pro­ Anthropology" as such. There are many vides insights into how issues generated strains that have remained unexplored, within anthropological discourse have such as the work of Steward and the coloured the ways in which First Nations neo-evolutionists as well as that of in British Columbia and elsewhere in Eggan and others from the Chicago North America are represented. As such, School who, I think, are properly it provides a glimpse into the intimate considered Americanists within the connection between a chosen intellectual terms of her definition. I believe that this orientation and what gets emphasized in book's particular contribution to the anthropological description.

Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionaryy 1840-1865 Peter E. Palmquist and Thomas R. Kailbourn Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. 679 pp. Illus. US$125.00 cloth

BRIAN W. DIPPIE

University ofVictoriay BC

T^IONEER PHOTOGRAPHERS of the Far involved in the photographic profession l-^West is the finest reference work in the years 1840 through 31 December JL I have ever read, with the em­ 1865 who worked in the present United phasis on read. The clear, precise, mainly States west of (and overlapping) the biographical entries - some 1,100 of continental divide, in Mexico, Central them arranged in alphabetical order - America, and Hawaii, and in British are a tribute to Peter Palmquist and Columbia - a generous definition of the Thomas Kailbourn's scholarship, literary "Far West" that should appeal to a wide skills, and sheer perseverance in seeing audience of academics, collectors, and a project of this magnitude through to local history buffs. In addition, it covers completion. Their book covers all those moving panoramas - a popular form of Book Reviews 20 J entertainment that often involved some graphers and their establishments, and photographic preparation and that served with examples of their craft. Of the five as precursors to motion pictures. Palmquist appendices, perhaps the most useful is and Kailbourn follow each individual broken down by geographical area. profiled through to the end of his or her California, of course, leads the way - 791 (nearly forty women are included) life. photographers were lured to the "Golden Many of the entries are short since a State" - while British Columbia boasts single newspaper mention might be the thirty-five photographers, a few of only reference available. Undoubtedly, whom were travellers who made photo­ subsequent research stimulated by this graphs en route to the Coast. Two of the book will flesh out a few of these figures. better-known figures in BC history, The longer entries - up to seven pages Richard H. Carr and Amor de Cosmos, for the most significant photographers merit substantial entries but do not - turn names into people and provide appear in the geographical appendix assessments of their professional accom­ under British Columbia because their plishments. They also reveal the pro­ photographic careers predated their digious research in primary and secondary residency in Victoria. Carr is showcased sources undergirding the entire enterprise. because his San Francisco daguerreian Several features facilitate this bio­ gallery, opened 25 January 1849, was "the graphical dictionary's usefulness as a first recorded establishment of that kind reference work. Each entry begins with in the Pacific West"; his daughter Emily, basic data: birth, death, and a synopsis described rather wonderfully as "a writer of when and where the subject worked and artist of some renown," is here in the Far West. Sources are cited in full relegated to a footnote (154-5). in the accompanying notes, collections Individuals and libraries with an containing examples of the photo­ interest in Western cultural history will grapher's work are listed, and boldface find Pioneer Photographers of the Far West serves to cross-reference individuals an indispensable reference tool. It is a work with entries of their own. The book is of meticulous scholarship that also, from illustrated with images of the photo- entry to entry, offers a fascinating read.

From the Baltic to Russian America, 1829-1836 Alix O'Grady Kingston, ON: Limestone Press, 2002. 304 pp. Maps. $28.00 paper

BRUCE M. WATSON, Vancouver Community College

LIX O'GRADY'S From the Baltic in particular. O'Grady, a native of Riga, to Russian Americay 1829-1836 Latvia, brings to life the historical A should be of interest to BC conditions during seven years in the life historians concerned with the broader of Elisabeth von Wrangell, the wife of aspects of the Pacific Slopes fur trade in Russian American Company (RAC) general and of Russian colonial history administrator Baron Ferdinand von 2o8 BC STUDIES

Wrangell.The book covers their journey death of their daughter, and, with the to, stay at, and journey from Russian exception of one letter addressed to her America, a Russian outpost para­ mother, her writing ceases. Instead, doxically dominated by Baltic Germans background information such as a letter and Finns. The book focuses on the life from the baron to her parents, extensive of Elisabeth, part of which is told by the entries from Ferdinand's diary, and later baroness, the rest through the journals comments by Hudson's Bay Company and letters of others. officers, and others predominate this The first section of the book, spoken section. Of particular interest to Pacific mostly in the voice of Elisabeth, covers Slopes scholars is the baron's description eighteen months of the von Wrangells' of the treatment of Native and mixed- trip through Russia, Siberia, and across blood peoples and their obligations. The the North Pacific to the Russian- third part of the book, about the voyage American colonies to Sitka (Novo- home, is presented almost entirely through Arkhangersk). The educated feminine the baron's writings and is followed by voice remains strong throughout the illustrations, a bibliography, and a glossary. description of this trip by coach from This publication is one of many put St. Petersburg to Irkutsk, riverboat to out by Richard Pierce's Limestone Press Yakutsk, horseback to Okhotsk, and championing the history of Russian finally to Sitka (Novo-Arkhangel'sk) by America. He has spent years translating boat. The Wrangells follow the standard original and published Russian sources. route covered by Russians and Western From the Baltic builds on Pierce's re­ European RAC employees alike (some of search and is enhanced by O'Grady's whom went on to join other companies translations of letters. Her writing is on the Northwest Coast) on their way clear and engaging, and the story to Alaska and the reverse route of many remains vital due to her careful treat­ others (such as George Simpson and ment of context. John DeWolfe). Particularly interesting The book's shortcomings are few and are Elisabeth's decidedly feminine can be overlooked because of the overall observations about her two visits over value of the work. More maps could have the border to China as they may throw been provided of the Russian-Siberian light on the realities and difficulties of journey. Further, some errors of pagin­ the Russia-China trade. ation in the index could perhaps be The second part of the book covers corrected in the next printing. In short, the baron's five-year-term administration Alix O'Grady's From the Baltic to Russian of the RAC at Sitka. During this period, America, 1829-1836 is a welcome addition Elisabeth's voice grows silent after the to Pacific Slopes research. Book Reviews 209

Stan Douglas: Every Building on 100 West Hastings Reid Shier, Editor Vancouver: Contemporary Art Gallery/Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002. 119 pp. Illus. (some col.). Col. poster insert. $22.95 paper

JILL WADE British Columbia Open University

VERY BUILDING on 100 West white border, reveals an urban waste­ Hastings is a panorama by land. Without doubt, Douglas, who con­ Vancouver's acclaimed film and sistently bridges the divide between art video artist Stan Douglas. Without exag­ and social issues in his work, imposes geration, it is a marvellous and monu­ this impression of emptiness on the viewer. mental photograph of the façade of Reid Shier, the editor of Stan Douglas: buildings across the street from the old Every Building on 100 West Hastings, has Woodward's building in Vancouver's transferred the idea of a wasteland to the Downtown Eastside. As a recent ac­ content of the book. With its cover quisition of the Vancouver Art Gallery, illustration of a section of the pho­ it joins works by many other photo-con- tograph and with its pocket insert of the ceptualists, including the internationally whole image, this slender paperback is renowned JefF Wall. Arguably, the first of all a catalogue published in late photo-conceptual link between issues in 2002 for an exhibition of Douglas's work art and society, so critical in Douglas's at Vancouver's Contemporary Art panorama, is traceable not only to Wall's Gallery. Yet, by another measure, the photographs but to the earliest work of book is a collection of essays by several Iain Baxter, who taught in the mid-1960s authors who use the panorama's message in the University of British Columbia's to make sense of today's social crisis in Fine Arts Department. the Downtown Eastside. Shier es­ While a representation of the south tablishes the idea of abandonment in his side of the 100-block of West Hastings, introduction: in the 1990s, many artists the photograph is in fact a contrived and gallery owners, including Shier image quite unlike the panoramas of the himself, fled when the drug culture took street shot earlier in the twentieth hold of the Downtown Eastside. century. No people and no traffic move The image of a wasteland engages all along Hastings Street. Strategically the essayists of Stan Douglas: Every illuminated rooms on three storeys are Building on 100 West Hastings. The vacant, and other windows and doors are geographers Jeff Sommers and Nick boarded up. Significantly, the 66- Blomley characterize today's social crisis centimetre-by-426.9-cenimetre chro- in "the worst block in Vancouver" and the mogenic print is multiperspective: there Downtown Eastside as a conflict between is no vanishing point. (Douglas con­ impoverished residents and gentrifying verted twenty-one photographs into a "settlers" aiming to "reconquer" what they single, almost seamless image using perceive to be a "waste land." In building digital and high-resolution scanning their argument, Sommers and Blomley technology.) The powerful, constructed apply the concept of stigmatization, image, surrounded by an unusually broad, based upon local and theoretical dis- 2IO BC STUDIES

courses about "the ghetto," and "the myth Eastside, the art historian Denise Blake of the 'new urban frontier/" developed by Oleksijczuk, whose scholarly interest is Neil Smith to explain gentrification in the early British panorama, analyzes the the United States. Elsewhere in the book, formal "haunted spaces" of Douglas's Smith and Jeff Derksen, both cultural print and ties them to the shocking geographers, use the "new urban frontier" disappearance of over sixty Vancouver thesis to address the globalization of gen­ women since 1978. Additionally, Smith trification and its implications for cities and Derksen warn of the potential for like Vancouver. The argument for "re- strife accompanying gentrification. Is conquest" is compelling and will inspire the empty Woodward's building, they debate. Still, given the wealth of original ask, another flashpoint in the global evidence and the availability of some conflict between local residents and interpretive literature, Sommers and capitalist "gentrifiers"? Blomley could enrich that argument by Unlike the social commentators and substantiating more fully the slow decline activists of other times, Douglas, Shier, of the Downtown Eastside and by diff­ and the essayists offer no explicit erentiating more clearly the "reconquest" political solutions to the tragedy of the of today from all the instances of Downtown Eastside. Yet the concurrence "resettlement" since contact. The chal­ of the exhibition of Douglas's panorama lenge for historians will be to square the and the publication of this catalogue "new urban frontier" thesis with the old with the Woodward's squat and the 2002 one of Frederick Jackson Turner, Vancouver civic election is at least an To underline the violence associated implicit solution. with the wasteland of the Downtown

Chasing the Comet: A Scottish Canadian Life Patricia Koretchuk Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2002. 261 pp. $29.95 paper

MICHAEL VANCE Saint Mary's University

LTHOUGH HIS NAME does not ap­ migration to Canada in the last century, pear in the tide, this book follows and much of the evidence is fragmentary Athe eventful career of David and understudied. As a consequence, Cadlow, who was born in Dundrennan, Chasing the Comet does offer a seldom- Ayrshire, but spent most of his life con­ heard perspective on the Scottish immi­ tributing to the development of agri­ grant and settlement experience. It culture in British Columbia. Written as would, however, be most fruitfully read a first-person narrative, Chasing the in conjunction with Marjory Harper's Comet highlights Cadlow's life experience broader examination of early twentieth- - an experience that spans almost the century migration, Emigration from entire twentieth century. There are very Scotland between the Wars: Opportunity few first-hand accounts of Scottish im- or Exile? (1998). As Harper's study Book Reviews 211 indicates, Scottish migrants tended, like societies. Indeed, David Cadlow met his Cadlow, to be from the Lowlands rather future wife, Peggy McMillan, at a than the Highlands; however, unlike Scottish dance in Vernon in 1933 (113). Cadlow, they tended to originate in Although the marriage lasted over fifty urban industrial cities rather than in years, very little space is given to dis­ rural agricultural communities. cussion of domestic life, thus reflecting For David Cadlow, the early training broader Scottish patriarchal attitudes. It on his father's Scottish farm accounted is Cadlow's career that seems to matter for success in a career that involved ex­ most to the narrator. perience working at McGill's Macdonald So far, Chasing the Comet is the only College farm in Quebec in the 1920s, male account in the "Life Writing" series eking out a living at mixed farming in published by Wilfrid Laurier University the BC Interior during the early days of Press. The other titles in the series clearly the Depression, and accepting a series reflect the feminist goal of promoting of farm manager positions from the "life writing" as both an object of study 1930s to the 1960s. In all of these con­ and as a practice. "Life writing," in this texts, what he identifies as his Scottish context, gives voice to the marginalized, training is always present, helping and Chasing the Comet does not fit easily Cadlow to solve problems, whether with into this framework. The text is compli­ crops, livestock, or labourers. The nar­ cated by Patricia Koretchuk's decision to rative also connects David Cadlow's combine her own editorial comments emigrant and settlement experience to and Cadlow's orally recorded memories the coincidental development of British into a first-person narrative. If a White Columbia's institutions. In particular, a writer were to adopt the voice of a Salish large section of the text is devoted to cannery worker in order to recount her detailing Cadlow's contributions to the life, the problem would be obvious. Colony Farm attached to the Essondale While Koretchuk acknowledges what Asylum in Coquitlam. The shift in she is doing, she does not resolve the treatment of the mentally ill from work issue of appropriation that her text therapy in the 1930s to reliance on raises. Indeed, the unresolved tension sedation in the 1960s clearly disturbed between the point of view of the writer Cadlow, but most of the narrative and the subject of this book is clearly focuses on farming practices (189). In displayed in an interview with both of addition, the importance of broader them, which is published on the Wilfrid Scottish social connections is high­ Laurier University Press Web site. lighted as a key factor in allowing Cadlow According to Koretchuk, the book is to obtain positions of responsibility and "like a good novel, it... informs and gives influence. For example, the narrative at­ insight into the humor and drama of the tributes his hiring at Macdonald College human condition ... [It] offers readers to his Scottish accent and connections the opportunity to escape to a no less (27). Moreover, the broader Scottish personally challenging, but simpler community often appears in the text time." But, David Cadlow asserts, "It is with frequent references to Scottish my life. I can hold it in my hand." 212 BC STUDIES

The Last Island: A Naturalist's Sojourn on Triangle Island Alison Watt Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2002.192 pp. Illus., $34.95 cloth

PHILLIP TEECE Greater Victoria Public Library (retired)

NE OF THE SALIENT features of its very great ecological importance. She British Columbia's geography describes the precarious situation that O is its myriad coastal islands. she and her colleague discovered among Among the wildest and most remote of the large puffin colony, whose continued these, the ecological reserve Triangle strength - or otherwise - has been the Island lies in the open Pacific Ocean major focus of their research. Other thirty miles west of Cape Scott at populations at risk there include S teller's Vancouver Island's northern tip. sealions and more than half the entire The Last Island'is a naturalist's journal planet's population of Cassin's auklets. of her personal association with this wild In this remote location, unique features place - an association that has spanned of behaviour and evolution have begun more than twenty years. Biologist Alison to arise: "these islands might have puzzled Watt spent her first sojourn on the island even Darwin" (92). Watt draws attention as a seabird research assistant in 1980, to another kind of evolution - in our an experience that, while in many ways own behaviour: Triangle Island now exceedingly harsh, initiated her sub­ shelters a protected rookery of (typically) sequent long-term fascination with about 800 sea lions; however, as recently Triangle Island. She emphasizes the as the 1950s, the federal Department of rather grim context of the adventure by Fisheries sponsored a machine-gunning recounting something of the island's "cull" that killed 2,000 of these animals. history. An early (1909-10) attempt at In The Last Island, Alison Watt at­ operating a major human-operated tempts — with very great success - a lighthouse on the island was doomed to difficult synthesis: scientific information failure by the severity of conditions. At with personal reminiscence. As a pers­ a later point in the book, Watt tells us onal journal, the book is eloquent, even how the ruggedness of this environment poetic. The loneliness of long months cost the life of her colleague Anne Vallée. spent on this isolated island, the diffi­ An even deeper context is provided culties (and triumphs) of having only as Watt examines the archaeological one human companion in such a wild evidence of the Yutinuk, a Kwakiud people place, and the growing attachment to the who "moved easily among these islands island's stormy beauty unfold evocatively in canoes hewn from the massive cedars on the pages of this daily record. I was of Vancouver Island" (59). By contrast, fascinated by Watt's observation re­ in our technological age, contact with garding the battle to concentrate after Triangle Island (chiefly by chartered months in the wild solitude: "Each day I helicopter) seems to have become a more spent more and more time thinking about cumbersome and uncertain process. less and less" (133). The present attraction of the island In subsequent years, the death of her for Watt and other biologists arises from colleague Anne in a cliff-climbing Book Reviews 213 accident has given the island a darker Forty-seven spontaneous watercolour tone for Watt. Perhaps partly in light of sketches from her island notebooks show that accident (Watt does not explicitly the topography of the island and the make this connection), British Columbia flora and bird-life of the place with a Parks has established a new policy degree of feeling that I doubt any requiring that parties of researchers on photographer could capture. Triangle Island comprise not fewer than The Last Island is an important new three persons. BC book. Every public and academic I've composed this review in such a library should own it, and readers with way as to save the best part for last: this a concern for one of British Columbia's book would be worth its price for Alison most beautiful and fragile ecological re­ Watt's stunning illustrations alone. serves will want it on their private shelves.