FREE AT BC FERRIES GIFT SHOPS • 44 PAGES BC ROBUST BOOKWORLD

PUBLICATION MAIL AGREEMENT #40010086 VOL. 29 • NO. 3 • AUTUMN 2015

Paul Yee How Chinese labourers in 19th century B.C. fought for their dignity. THE P.29 BUZZ on Robin Stevenson

A mother’s zeal clashes with her children’s need for Gerry freedom in the teen novel, David R. Bracewell The Summer We Boyd

Annie Oakley Fighting PHOTO

of the Saved the Bees. for the Chilcotin environment. SAWCHUK P.13 See page 31 P.9 LAURA MINERS’ STRIKE P.18 HOW TO GROW A FARM P.21 FLOUR POWER P.22 2 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 OPINION TOPSELLERS* Let them eat canned beans

BCRaziel Reid Food banks, argues Graham Riches, are part Everything Feels like the Movies (Arsenal Pulp Press $15.95) of the problem, not the solution to food poverty. Vici Johnstone This Place a Stranger: Canadian Women N ARTICLE IN OUR SUM- Travelling Alone (Caitlin Press $24.95) mer issue to publi- Shelley Adams cize journalist An- Whitewater Cooks with Passion A (Sandhill Book Marketing $34.95) drew MacLeod’s A Better Place on Earth—an exposé of Nelly Arcan Breakneck (Anvil Press $20) the growing differential be- Sylvia Olsen tween wealth and poverty in Knitting Stories: Personal Essays B.C.—resulted in numerous and Seven Coast Salish-inspired Knitting Patterns responses, all appreciative. (Sono Nis Press $28.95) One of the respondents was food Kevin Paul and social policy expert Graham Study Smarter, Not Harder - 4th Edn. Riches, of Qualicum Beach, whose new (Self Counsel Press $21.95) book, First World Hunger Revisited: Susan Musgrave Food Charity or the Right to Food? & Esperanca Melo (Palgrave Macmillan $36.99), has also More Blueberries lambasted the neo-liberal agenda of (Orca Book Publishers $9.95) wealthy governments, of all political stripes, for embracing charity as the LESTER Alain Deneault primary response to domestic hunger. Canada: A New Tax Haven

Graham Riches is professor emeritus DAVID (Talonbooks $29.95) BY

and former director of the School of Social Lisa Kivirist Work at UBC. He taught at the Univer- & John Ivanko sity of Northern B.C. from 1994 to 1998 Homemade for Sale: and UBC from 1998 to 2008. His other ILLUSTRATION How to Set Up and Market a Food books are Food Banks and the Welfare taxes and the minimalist state. In First World Hunger Revisited, Business from Your Home Kitchen Crisis (CCSD, 1986); Unemployment and “As leading US food policy expert Riches explains why first world politi- (New Society Publishers $22.95) Welfare (co-editor, Garamond, 1990) and Janet Poppendieck argues, food char- cal parties should revisit the right to Johann Wolfgang First World Hunger: Food Security and ity’s primary function is one of “sym- food, which Canada ratified at the UN von Goethe Welfare Politics (ed, Macmillan, 1997). bolic value” … “relieving us of guilt and in 1976, and think through its practical Goethe’s Poems ✫ discomfort about hunger,” while serv- application for addressing food poverty. (Ronsdale Press $18.95) “THE SAD FACT IS,” WROTE GRAHAM RICHES in ing as a moral safety valve as hunger “Make the moral, legal and political The Guardian in December, marches on. case for its entrenchment in domestic Paulette Regan 2014, “that in Canada, with “Food banks are part of the law,” he has written, “and set an inter- Unsettling the Settler Within: its 30-year track record of problem, not the solution to national standard for first world wealthy Indian Residential Schools, Truth increasingly corporatized food poverty. societies. The point is this: charity is Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada (UBC Press $34.95) food charity, recent national “Tellingly, Canada’s na- never the answer to food poverty. data shows that one in eight tionally institutionalised food “In the words of Louise Arbour, Peter Johnson households or 3.9 million in- bank network lacks empirical former Canadian supreme court justice & John Walls dividuals (11.6% of the popu- evidence that food charity is and UN high commissioner for human To the Lighthouse: An Explorer’s Guide to lation) are still experiencing an effective response to sys- rights: “There will always be a place for the Island LIghthouses of Southwestern BC food insecurity.” temic food insecurity. Food charity, but charitable responses are (Heritage Group of Publishers $19.95) To combat increased hun- Graham Riches banks consistently run out not an effective, principled or sustain- George Bowering ger at home, Riches opposes of food, distribution is tightly able substitute for enforceable human the long-term institutionalisation of rationed, pressures mount to source The World, I Guess rights guarantees.” (New Star Books $18) food banking because it diminishes food, eligibility criteria are vague, vol- We need to change the conversation, political appetite for progressive reform. unteer fatigue grows, and the stigma of Riches maintains, to the right to food. Helen McAllister & “The long-term entrenchment of food aid keeps many away... Riches lives in Qualicum Beach Jennifer Heath the Canadian food charity indus- Meanwhile income inadequacy where he conceived First World Hun- Down to Earth: Cold Climate try,” he writes, “has fostered the de- (wages and benefits), the key determi- ger Revisited, co-edited with Tiina Gardens and their Keepers politicisation of hunger and its social nant of food poverty, remains unad- Silvasti and written with authors (Oolichan Books $29.95) construction as a matter primarily for dressed. Strikingly, 62% of the food from around the world. community and corporate charity, and insecure have jobs of some kind. It examines responses to domestic Roy Henry Vickers not a human rights question demand- “So what’s to be done? Even Food hunger and income poverty in twelve & Robert Budd ing the urgent attention of the state. Banks Canada now acknowledges that rich ‘food-secure’ societies and emerg- Orca Chief (Harbour $19.95) “Today, Canadian public perception food charity is unable to address food ing economies: Australia, Brazil, Can- Robert Budd of food charity is that it should take insecurity over the long term; and as ada, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong, New Ted Harrison Collected care of domestic hunger. Governments Finnish food policy expert Tiina Silvas- Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, (D&M $19.95) can look the other way. ti says: “In spite of goodwill, charitable the UK and the USA. 9781137298720 “Ergo, public policy neglect, an food aid is nothing more than a gift. It increasingly broken social safety net is not a collective right or entitlement We welcome readers’ responses to books * The current topselling titles from major BC publishing companies, in no particular order. fed by punitive welfare reforms, the that can be claimed by a hungry person and articles in BCBW. See LETTERS sec- continuing neo-liberal mantra of lower or by a family in need of food.” tion on p. 41. Write to [email protected]

Publication Mail Agreement #40010086 Contributors: Beverly Cramp, John Moore, Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Joan Givner, Mark Forsythe, Alex Van Tol, BC BC BookWorld, 3516 W. 13th Ave., Cherie Thiessen, Keven Drews, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6R 2S3 Caroline Woodward. Writing not otherwise credited is by staff. We gratefully acknowledge the unobtrusive BOOKWORLD Produced with the sponsorship of Design: Get-to-the-Point Graphics assistance of Canada Council, a continuous partner since Pacific BookWorld News Society. 1988, and creativeBC, a provincial partner since 2014. Publications Mail Registration No. 7800. Consultants: BC BookWorld ISSN: 1701-5405 AUTUMN 2015 Christine Rondeau, Sharon Jackson Advertising & editorial: Photographers: Barry Peterson, Laura Sawchuk Vol. 29 • No. 3 BC BookWorld, 3516 W. 13th Ave., Proofreaders: Wendy Atkinson, Tara Twigg Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6R 2S3 Deliveries: Ken Reid, Acculogix Publisher/Writer: Alan Twigg Tel/Fax: 604-736-4011 In-Kind Supporters: Email: [email protected] All BC BookWorld reviews are posted at Simon Fraser University Library; Editor/Production: David Lester Annual subscription: $25 www.abcbookworld.com Vancouver Public Library; UBC Library.

3 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015

4 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 PEOPLE George Bowering RECOVERING WRITE-AHOLIC

FTER A NEAR-FATAL CARDIAC ARREST in April, George Bowering was rushed to Vancouver AGeneral Hospital and in- duced into a coma for twelve days. By June, despite his broken ribs and broken sternum, the rehab department said Bowering was in better shape post-incident than most other 79-year- olds without an incident. “On the second assessment day they asked George if he could jump,” said his wife, Jean Baird. “He jumped. They said they’d never had another before who was able to jump.”

Cover image from The New Arcadia: Tahiti’s Cursed Myth — a tourist poses with the local belles There is more to Tahiti than Paul Gauguin

HE INITIAL REASON century Otaheite became twenty- Monique Layton first-century Tahiti. Consequently George Bowering: Back to Nat Bailey became interested Layton has self-published The in French Polynesia New Arcadia: Tahiti’s Cursed The walker was returned in early was escapism. Hav- Myth (FriesenPress $21.95). June and he began using a cane, im- Ting spent about five months in Based on historical records, proving his muscle tone. By the end of hospital and nine months in rehab sailors’ journals, Ma’ohi epic June he was back at Nat Bailey watch- following a serious accident, she poetry, European paintings, folk- ing Vancouver Canadians baseball and had started to research and write loric events, the film industry, and with tickets to the jazz festival. And he an ethnography of hospital life— novels by modern Tahitian writ- was working on a new novel. a tad depressing but within her ers, The New Arcadia follows the Indefatigable, Bowering has four wheelhouse as an anthropologist. passage from Otaheite’s paradisal new books due this fall and he’s sent a “Then one day, straight out of way of life through the disastrous long, personal letter to Premier Christy the antipodal part of my brain,” she encounters with European civiliza- Clark asking her to support a federal says “came up the word Tahiti...” tion, ending with French Polyne- plan for a new grasslands national All she knew about it was the cliché of French artist Paul Gauguin sia’s modern prospects. park in the mountains of the South palm trees, beaches, dancing vahines. exoticized Tahiti in such paintings People (navigators, missionaries, Okanagan where he grew up. “I started reading,” says, “and soon fell as Sacred Spring, Sweet Dreams. whalers, slavers) and events (deadly “I love the valley,” he wrote to her, in love, totally in love, like a teenager. I epidemics, atomic testing, and now “and I hate to see its desecration.” was in a pretty weakened condition, it’s the archipelago as she’d like, but she tourism), all have contributed over time Our fiction reviewer John Moore true, but it was definitely love.” intends to return. to creating the modern Tahitian quan- assesses Ten Women, Bowering’s She went twice (2012 and 2014) “The Tahitian reality is often grim,” dary: trying to recover an idealized past new collection of short stories on page and even practised speaking French she says, “but the mirage somehow and losing the benefits of modern life, 19. Bowering has more than a hundred with a Tahitian accent once she heard endures. or continuing as a cog in the French books to his name. it spoken on the islands. Due to lim- As an anthropologist, she wanted administrative system and losing her ited mobility, she can’t see as much of to show how and why eighteenth- soul. 978-1-4620-3649

Wayne Gretzky From cerebral palsy with Cam Tait to celebrities

CAM TAIT’S JOURNEY

CAM TAIT WAS INITIALLY UNABLE TO SPEAK, sit up or move his arms or legs. In Cam Tait: Disabled? Hell No! I’m a Sit-Down Comic (Harbour $24.95), co-written by Cam Tait Sandy Shreve and Jim Taylor, we read how Tait, an Edmonton Journal sportswriter, Having been given her father’s overcame cerebral palsy to para- 1936 diary from his days as Back to Jack sail, play golf and hang out with the an overseas deckhand on a likes of Wayne Gretzky and cruise Canadian Steamships freighter alongside Rick Hansen for his at age 21, Sandy Shreve has Man in Motion tour. Tait benefited spun the ‘found words’ into Waiting for the Albatross (Oolichan from a radical new type of physical $19.95). “Although I’ve fiddled and tinkered with Dad’s diary,” she therapy that required unwavering says, “the poems I’ve written remain true to the experiences he commitment by Tait, his parents described and retain his voice.” The diary contains a wealth of sea- and his 116-person-strong group of going jargon and imagery, historical references, and the thoughts volunteers. Gradually he learned to of a young man making his way in the world. Leaving from Halifax, speak, move his hands, maneuver a Jack Shreve spent five months sailing from Halifax, down the wheelchair—and write. Atlantic, through the Panama Canal, and across the wide Pacific 978-1-55017-697-1 to New Zealand and Australia before returning home. 978-0889823044

5 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 “the“the truesttruest lifelife toto livelive isis oneone craftedcrafted byby youryour ownown hands”hands”

The Urban Farmer Permaculture Growing Food for Profit on for the Rest of Us Leased and Borrowed Land Abundant Living CURTIS STONE on Less than an Acre US/Can $29.95 JENNI BLACKMORE PB ISBN: 978-0-86571-801-2 US/Can $19.95 PB ISBN: 978-0-86571-810-4 Farming is taking root in our cities. With only a small capital investment, and without the need Not every aspiring permaculturist has access to 5 to own land, you can become part of this growing gently sloping acres of rich, loamy soil. Jenni Blackmore movement. The Urban Farmer will help you learn presents a personal account of practicing permaculture the crops, techniques and business strategies in adverse conditions. The book describes how to you need to make a good living growing food retrofit even the smallest homestead, illustrating the intensively right in your own backyard fundamental principles of this sometimes confusing (or someone else’s). concept in a humorous, reader-friendly way.

Dude Making a Difference Soil Sisters The Ethical Meat Handbook Craft Distilling Bamboo Bikes, Dumpster Dives A Toolkit for Women Farmers Complete home butchery, charcuterie Making Liquor Legally at Home and Other Extreme Adventures LISA KIVIRIST and cooking for the conscious omnivore VICTORIA REDHED MILLER Across America US/Can $24.95 MEREDITH LEIGH US/Can $24.95 ROB GREENFIELD PB ISBN: 978-0-86571-805-0 US/Can $29.95 PB ISBN: 978-0-86571-804-3 US/Can $19.95 The first practical, hands-on guide PB ISBN: 978-0-86571-792-3 How to distill your own premium alcohol PB ISBN: 978-086571-807-4 for female farmers Small-scale meat processing and preservation safely and legally – a guide for How far would you go to save the planet? for the home cook independent spirits One man’s cross-country journey to radical sustainability

Fixing Fashion The Heart of Sustainability Healing Ecology Drinking Molotov Rethinking the Way We Make, Restoring Ecological Balance Finding the Human in Nature Cocktails with Gandhi Market and Buy Our Clothes from the Inside Out ANDREAS WEBER MARK BOYLE MICHAEL LAVERGNE ANDRES EDWARDS US/Can $21.95 US/Can $19.95 US/Can $18.95 US/Can $19.95 PB ISBN: 978-0-86751-799-2 PB ISBN: 978-0-86571-813-5 PB ISBN: 978-0-86571-800-5 PB ISBN: 978-0-86571-762-6 Understanding our place in the web of life Get ready for the new three R’s: Is global fashion a wolf in sheep’s clothing? A thriving life and livable future for Resist, Revolt, Rewild An industry insider takes a hard look at the our planet starts with you apparel trade new society PUBLISHERS www.newsociety.com

TOOLS FOR A WORLD OF CHANGE c BOOKS TO BUILD A NEW SOCIETY

6 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 PEOPLE

Once upon a more innocent time, Tomas Ilves Fests abound (left) took over management of The Literary Storefront from THIS YEAR’S HEADLINER founder Mona Fertig (right). from back east for Now Ilves is the president the Whistler Writers of Estonia. Festival, October 16- 18, will be Lawrence Hill, author of The Book of Negroes, which won the Rog- Lawrence Hill ers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writ- ers’ Prize and CBC Radio’s Canada Reads. Two years ago the big, imported star was faux intellectual Jian Gho- meshi who, it turned out, didn’t write his own editorials. Lawrence Hill, on the other hand, is the real deal. His new novel The Illegal tells the story of a marathon runner who flees from a repressive government and is forced into hiding. ✫ HAVING BROUGHT Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children to the screen, Deepa Mehta is working on a script based Shilpi Somaya Gowda on Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s first novel Secret Daughter, a page-turner about what happens when a white San Francisco family raises a brown-skinned child from Mumbai. It was Toronto-based marketing via Costco and Chapters that vaulted Gowda’s book into prominence, even HISTORY though she is from San Diego. With an MBA from Stanford, Gowda is a OF publisher’s dream- come-true—so she’ll be front and centre at the Vancouver The Writers Festival, Oc- tober 20-25. ✫ THE CHERIE SMITH JCC Sean Michaels Jewish Book Festival Literary in Vancouver, Nov. 21-26, has Sean Michaels, winner of the 2014 Giller Prize for Us Conductors, a debut novel inspired by the life of Léon Theremin, inventor of the musical instrument Storefront When Mandy Bath left her home on July 12, 2012, called the theremin. Sean Michaels, she had no idea that only an hour later, her house and community would who first gained prominence as a LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI. be destroyed. A massive landslide caused by snow melt and heavy Montreal-based music critic and blog- rains hit the tiny hamlet of Johnsons ger, also performs as an improv artist. Edward Albee. Tennessee Wil- For more info see ads on pages 15, Landing [no apostrophe is correct] 16, 18 liams. Earle Birney. George Faludy. mid-morning that day, killing four Brian Moore. Margaret Atwood. Mandy Bath people and decimating the tight- knit lakeside community. Disaster Audrey Thomas. All appeared at DRAKE’S WAKE in Paradise: The Landslides in Mona Fertig’s Literary Storefront Johnson’s Landing (Harbour $22.95), tells a story of “survival, grief and As an amateur historian, Laird L. Nel- son of Everson, Washington has claimed in Vancouver from 1978 to 1984. recovery” as residents try to heal and eventually rebuild. Bath came to to have solved the mystery as to where live in Johnsons Landing, the site of a former steamboat landing, in 1993. exactly the English privateer Francis Trevor Carolan has produced Since her home was destroyed in 2012, she now lives in Kaslo, B.C., Drake landed on the Northwest Coast with her husband Christopher Klassen. 978-1-55017-695-7 of America in his 194-page expose, Port a richly illustrated history, The of the Dragon: The Lost Harbor of Sir Francis Drake ($14.95). “Drake Literary Storefront: The Glory never landed in California, Years (Mother Tongue $29.95), to Oregon, or British Colum- bia,” Nelson writes, “he enshrine the community centre for landed in three different bays in Northwest Wash- posterity. It’s an intriguing tribute, ington State, within N 48°. Bellingham Bay only missing the true story about is his lost North American harbor, the time Al Purdy urinated in the over 100 miles from the sink. One of Fertig’s two locations PHOTO open Pacific.” in Gastown will be added to the 9780692282847 SMITH forthcoming Literary Map of B.C. Francis 978-1896949529 Drake MARGARET Mandy Bath revisits the site of her former home.

7 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 )ȂȂȂȂȂȂȂ]]]BEES! The latest buzz from BC authors featuring some brilliant books about bees! A worker honey bee’s wings beat more than 400 times per second. This is what makes bees buzz, “A beautiful, sometimes painful, and but it also allows them ultimately important book about how to to fly fast. live in a world that frequently doesn’t make sense. I loved every page and know it is one of those stories that will stay with me forever.” —Susan Juby, author

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Small steps toward big changes.

THE FOOTPRINTS SERIES IS FULL OF BOOKS TO BUZZ ABOUT!

8 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 ENVIRONMENT

Meredith Boyd, in the middle, with her friends Annika (left) and Jessie (right), participat- ing in the bird count at Brooks Point on GREEN South Pender Island.

CCORDING TO DAVID R. BOYD, in a different government taking power it’s important to stop in October, Canada can be expected to and realize that many continue its dark and dastardly deeds environmental problems at the crucial Paris negotiations on have been successfully climate change in December.” Aidentified and combated in the past In Cleaner, Greener, Healthier, Boyd fifty years. compares Canada’s environmental That’s the rationale for The Opti- policies with those of the European mistic Environmentalist: Progress- VISIONS Union, Australia and the U.S. and ing Toward a Greener Future (ECW diagnoses why Canada has fallen be- $19.95) in which he inspires hopeful- DAVID R. BOYD EXPRESSES GREEN OPTIMISM IN hind, focussing on how the health of a ness, particularly for young people, by population is inextricably linked to the citing how many billions of hectares of one book but alleges Canada’s climate environment—a subject he researched land and water have been protected by for an earlier book, Dodging the Toxic the creation of new parks. Bullet: How to Protect Yourself from Ev- Gray whales and bald eagles are policies are second-rate in another. There eryday Environmental Health Hazards no longer in dire danger of extinction. (Greystone, 2010). Progress has been made on protecting are also two new books about Ian McTag- Boyd maintains that implement- the ozone layer and renewable energy ing the recommendations in Clean- from wind, water and sun has entered gart-Cowan, father of Canadian ecology. er, Greener, Healthier would prevent the mainstream dialogue. Dozens of thousands of premature deaths, toxic chemicals have been banned. avoid hundreds of thousands of Meanwhile Boyd is realistic about preventable illnesses, and save Canada’s environmental challenges billions of dollars in unnecessary and concludes Canada has devolved health care expenditures. from being a world leader to having He concludes Cleaner, Greener, second-rate standards in Cleaner, Healthier by prescribing legal remedies Greener, Healthier: A Prescription that will enable Canada to regain its for Stronger Environmental Laws former leadership role within the and Policies (UBC Press $34.95). global community without harming Like Nero who fiddled while Rome the economy. burned, Prime Minister Stephen Harp- Boyd first explored the differences er can be objectively viewed as part of and similarities between U.S. and the problem, not part of the solution, Canadian environmental laws in Un- particularly now that Canada and natural Law: Rethinking Canadian En- Japan have publicly stalled the rate vironmental Law and Policy (UBC Press, of environmental progress among G7 2003) with a foreword by Thomas R. countries at the G7 summit in 2015. Berger. In that book Boyd similarly “Canada’s position at the G7 sum- prescribed the changes that he be- mit on long-term decarbonization of the lieved Canada must make to achieve economy is nothing more than grand- a sustainable future. Shortlisted for standing,” says Boyd. “While the world the Donald Smiley Prize from the Ca- is already shifting towards a clean, re- Ian McTaggart-Cowan (1910–2010) nadian Political Science Association, newable future (demonstrated by rapid it was hailed as a “monumental work” growth in wind, solar, and geothermal negotiations about environmental is- of malicious interference firsthand in by David Suzuki and Robert F. Ken- energy), the Canadian government has sues. While once upon a time we were 2005 while working in the Privy Council nedy, Jr. praised its “clarity, authorial been doggedly prioritizing the interests leaders, in the Trudeau-Mulroney era, Office at Prime Minister Paul Martin’s grace and welcome concern.” Suzuki of the fossil fuel industry. we are now widely recognized as in- request. [Prior to the G8 summit in subsequently provided the foreword “This is terrible public policy and ternational environmental reprobates. Gleneagles, Scotland, Canada was also for Dodging the Toxic Bullet (Greystone will cause substantial economic, social, “Media reports of Canada’s role in reluctant to commit to strong climate Books, 2010). and environmental losses for Canada. watering down the recent G7 commit- change and foreign aid commitments, At the time of writing Unnatural Law Canada has a long and sorry track ments are consistent with our lousy according to Boyd.] in 2003, Boyd was a senior associate record of obstructing international reputation, and I witnessed this kind “Unless the federal election results continued on page 10

9 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 ENVIRONMENT

British Columbia Probate Kit NEW A pioneer of community mapping, 4th Edition EDITION Briony Penn of Salt Spring Island is a by Mary-Jane Wilson, LAWYER writer, artist and lecturer who holds a Ph.D. in geography from Edinburgh • Everything you need to University. 9781771600705 probate an estate without ✫ hiring a lawyer! COINCIDENTALLY, HARBOUR PUBLISHING HAS released Ian McTaggart-Cowan: The • Updated to include the new rules Legacy of a Pioneering Biologist, and forms that went into effect Educator and Conservationist (Har- July 2015. bour, $49.95), co-edited by R. Wayne • Restructured format and ordering Campbell with Ronald D. Jakimchuk and Dennis A. Demarchi, slightly in for easier understanding. David R. Boyd with daughter advance of Penn’s book. Meredith holding key rack on $39.95 Guide & Forms + CD- Ian McTaggart-Cowan died on April Pender Island. ROM 18, 2010, at the age of 99. The co- written biography from Campbell et al. continued from page 9 was commenced as a project to mark Representing Yourself in Court with the University of Victoria’s POLIS by Devlin Farmer his hoped-for 100th birthday. Project on Ecological Governance and McTaggart-Cowan’s milestones were • Hiring a lawyer can be costly adjunct professor with SFU’s graduate many: he was the founder of the first and unnecessary in certain Environmental Resource Management Canadian university wildlife depart- Program. By 2007, he had added a circumstances. ment and his early work in Canada’s stint as a Trudeau Scholar at UBC’s national parks became the basis for • Save money by handling small Institute for Resources, Environment wildlife conservation and environmen- claims and disputes on your own. and Sustainability. As of 2015, Boyd tal education. retains his SFU affiliation and lives on McTaggart-Cowan addressed issues • Represent your interests in court Pender Island. with the greatest chances of from climate change to endangered As an environmental lawyer, Boyd species before these topics were on the success. has advised the governments of Sweden public’s radar. $21.95 Paperback + Download Kit and Canada and served as executive di- Born in Edinburgh, Scotland in rector of the Sierra Legal Defence Fund. 1910, McTaggart-Cowan came to Two of his recent books in particu- Canada in 1913. He taught in the Avoid Small Business Hell lar, The Environmental Rights Revolu- by Jack Borden zoology department of UBC from 1945 tion: A Global Study of Constitutions, to 1975, serving as head of the faculty • There are dozens of trip wires and Human Rights, and the Environment from 1953 to 1964. pitfalls that send you to ‘Small (UBC Press, 2011) and The Right to At UBC, where McTaggart-Cowan a Healthy Environment: Revitalizing Business Hell’. became dean of Graduate Studies Canada’s Constitution (UBC Press, from 1964 to 1975, he served as an • The author’s proven program of 2012) have been influential in the inspiration for David Suzuki’s populist entrepreneurial excellence guides drafting of environmental provisions approach to science and environmen- you through the steps to start for new constitutions in Iceland and tal activism. McTaggart-Cowan’s two Tunisia. They also inspired the David and operate a small business. widely-seen programs on national Suzuki Foundation’s Blue Dot cam- television in the 1960s, The Living Sea • Avoid the challenges while paign to secure legal recognition of the and The Web of Life, prompted Suzuki quicly becoming profitable and right to a healthy environment for all to create The Nature of Things. Canadians. McTaggart-Cowan was similarly a sustainable. Optimistic: 978-1-77041-238-5 $14.95 Paperback + Cleaner: 978-0-7748-3047-8 scientific forefather for prolific natural- ✫ ist and bird expert R. Wayne Campbell, Download Kit one of the editors of The Birds of British LIKE TWO WOMEN WEARING THE SAME NEW dress to a wedding, publishers can Columbia (UBC Press 2001). 978-1-55017-623-0. Learning to Commit release books on the same subject at ✫ by Avrum Nadigel the same time. It doesn’t matter who J. FENWICK LANSDOWNE (POMEGRANATE $65) • The fear of commitment to a brought the dress first. The wedding is an intimate look at Lansdowne’s life must go forward. partner is common. and artwork from the 1970s onward, Replete with photographs from vari- including more than 160 full-colour • Overcome your hesitation and ous stages of Ian McTaggart Cowan’s reproductions and 15 photographs. set yourself on the best pos- remarkable life, Briony Penn’s The It features images from Rare Birds of sible course to a successful Real Thing: The Natural China (Art Gallery of Greater History of Ian McTag- relationship. Victoria, 1998), the result of gart Cowan (Rocky Lansdowne’s trip to China • Develop a harmonious relation- Mountain Books in 1984 during which he ship, resolve conflicts and build $30) is touted met with noted orni- strong bonds. as the first of- thologists to identify ficial biography $18.95 Paperback rare birds for paint- of “the father ing. of Canadian A foreword by Greening Your Hospitality Business ecology.” Au- Graeme Gibson thorized by leads to essays by by Jill Doucette and J.C. Scott McTaggart Tristram Lans- • Businesses are becoming more Cowan’s downe, Tony family, it environmentally conscious. Angell, Patricia was com- Feheley, Robert • Achieve excellence by ensuring pleted with Genn, Robert Mc- your food & hospitality business the support Cracken Peck and is environmentally sound and of the Univer- Nicholas Tuele. sity of Victoria. sustainable. 978-0-7649-6670-5 • Create the best experience possible for your guests with new emerging practices. $16.95 Paperback + Download Kit Briony Penn has chosen the unhyphenated spelling of McTaggart Cowan’s www.self-counsel.com surname; Harbour Publishing’s book has opted for the hyphenated 1-800-663-3007 version. The revered scientist used both spellings.

10 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 Contemporary. Innovative. Beautiful. Books.

· Jeff Wall North & West Aaron Peck A stunning selection of photo- graphs from one of Canada’s most celebrated contemporary artists. $25.00 October Co-published with the Audain Art Museum

· Masterworks from the Audain Art Museum, Whistler Ian M. Thom A sumptuous celebration of the remarkable permanent collection of B.C. art at Whistler’s new Audain Art Museum. $45.00 October

· Anna Banana 45 Years of Fooling Around with A. Banana Michelle Jacques Discover one of the country’s most intriguing, influential and unheralded artists in this ground- breaking retrospective. $40.00 September Co-published with Art Gallery of Greater Victoria

· Francisco Kripacz Interior Design Arthur Erickson Arthur Erickson’s posthumous tribute to his muse and partner, the flamboyant, controversial, one-of-a- kind designer—Francisco Kripacz. $50.00 October

· A Sense of Place Art at Vancouver International Airport Robin Laurence A spectacular overview of one of the world’s most acclaimed collections of Northwest Coast aboriginal art. $24.95 September

· Heaven, Hell and Somewhere in Between Portuguese Popular Art Anthony Alan Shelton A dazzling compilation of popular artworks that captures the playful, subversive culture of Portugal. $45.00 September Co-published with UBC Museum of Anthropology

Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books and internationally www.figure1pub.com by Publishers Group West.

11 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 Talonbooks Fall 2015

Scree The Collected Earlier Poems, 1962-1991 Fred Wah Fred Wah’s career has spanned six decades and a range of Lardeau (1965) formal styles and preoccupations. Scree collects Wah’s Mountain (1967) concrete and sound poetry of the 1960s, his landscape- Among (1972) centric work of the 1970s, and his ethnicity-oriented Tree (1972) poems of the 1980s. Wah was a founding member of the Earth (1974) avant-garde TISH group, which helped turn Canadian Pictograms from the Interior of B.C. (1975) poetry, in the West in particular, to a focus on language. Loki Is Buried at Smoky Creek (1980) He has said that his “writing has been sustained, primarily, Owner’s Manual (1981) by two interests: racial hybridity and the local.” Breathin’ My Name with a Sigh (1981) Most of Wah’s early work is out of print. This collection Grasp the Sparrow’s Tail (1982) allows readers to (re)discover 13 of his early books. Waiting for Saskatchewan (1985) The volume contains: Rooftops (1988) So Far (1991) $45.00 CAN / 592 pages / Literary Collections: Memoir / 978-0-88922-947-1

Writing the Okanagan George Bowering George Bowering was born in Penticton, where his great-grandfather Willis Brinson lived, and Bowering has never been all that far from the Okanagan Valley in his heart and imagination. Early in the twenty-first century, he was made a permanent citizen of Oliver. Bowering has family up and down the Valley, and he goes there as often as he can. He has been asked during his many visits to Okanagan bookstores over the years to publish a collection of his writing about the Valley. Writing the Okanagan draws on forty books Bowering has published since 1960 – poetry, fiction, history, and some forms he may have invented. Selections from Delsing (1961) and Sticks & Stones (1962) are here, as is “Driving to Kelowna” from The Silver Wire (1966). Other Okanagan towns, among them Rock Creek, Peachland, Vernon, Ka- mloops, Princeton, and Osoyoos, inspire selections from work published through the 1970s and on to 2013. Fairview, the old mining site near Oliver, is the focus of an excerpt from Caprice (1987, 2010), one volume in Bowering’s trilogy of historical novels. “Desert Elm” takes as its two main subjects the Okanagan Valley and his father, who, as Bower- ing did, grew up there. With the addition of some previously unpublished works, the reader will find the wonder of the Okanagan here, in both prose and poetry.

“A lyricism that is spring-sweet and without boast or threat … Bowering has poured all his considerable power into one vessel, and he must be read.” – Globe and Mail

$24.95 CAN / 400 pages / Literary Collections: Memoir / 978-0-88922-941-9

Cerulean Blue Jabber Sila Drew Hayden Taylor Marcus Youssef Chantal Bilodeau A struggling blues band is When anti-Muslim graffiti Sila is first in The Arctic Cycle invited to participate in a appears on the walls of her – eight plays that examine benefit concert for a Native school, Fatima, an Egyptian- the impact of climate change community in conflict with born girl who wears a hijab, on the eight countries of the governmental authorities transfers to a new school. Arctic – and it poignantly Cast of ten women and There, she starts an unlikely addresses this issue. ten men. friendship with a boy who has ISBN 978-0-88922-956-3 a reputation for anger issues. ISBN 978-0-88922-952-5 Drama / $17.95 / 128 pp Drama / $18.95 / 144 pp ISBN 978-0-88922-950-1 Drama / $16.95 / 96 pp

Tales of the Emperor The United States of Wind Cosmophilia Jack Winter A Travelogue Rahat Kurd In a non-linear, mixed narrative, Daniel Canty Cosmophilia means love of Tales of the Emperor takes the Mixing road narrative and ornament. The central poems reader to a momentous period philosophical memoir, are drawn from the poet’s in Chinese history. The book The United States of Wind memories of time spent is based on the life of Qin follows Daniel Canty, wind with her family in Kashmir Shi Huang (c. 260-210 B.C.), seeker. Aboard a Ford Ranger and, in particular, from the “First Emperor,” he who fitted with a weathervane and contemplations of traditional unified China, gave it his name. wind cone, he surrenders to Kashmiri handicrafts. ISBN 978-0-88922-944-0 air currents. ISBN 978-0-88922-946-4 Fiction / $19.95 / 224 pp ISBN 978-0-88922-942-6 Poetry / $16.95 / 96 pp Fiction / $16.95 / 192 pp

Impeccable Regret Prairie Harbour Rom Com Judith Fitzgerald Garry Thomas Morse Dina Del Bucchia & In the words of Arthur Miller, Morse continues the long- Daniel Zomparelli “all one can do is hope poem tradition with strength These collaboratively written to end up with the right and energy, exploring poems engage with romantic regrets.” Impeccable Regret notions of inner landscape comedy films and the pop travels terrain demonstrating and a “harbour” for the culture, celebrities, and that culture has replaced mind. narrative tropes associated nature as humanity’s defining ISBN 978-0-88922-940-2 with them. context. Poetry / $18.95 / 176 pp ISBN 978-0-88922-960-0 ISBN 978-0-88922-949-5 Poetry / $17.95 / 128 pp Poetry / $16.95 / 80 pp

Talonbooks 278 East 1st Ave. tel. (604)-444-4889 Vancouver, BC fax. (604)-444-4119 Canada, V56 1A6 www.talonbooks.com

12 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 CHILCOTIN

Staff Gerry Bracewell Pick has been described as the “Annie Oakley” of the Chilcotin. TheThe PridePride ofof TatlayokoTatlayoko

IN ADDITION TO BEING A RANCH HAND AND SPEND- ing 50 years guiding visitors through the wilderness, Gerry Bracewell helped create the area’s early school system, she wrote articles for the Williams Lake Tribune, she ran her own ranch and she raised four children. In 2004, she was inducted into the BC Cowboy Hall of Fame as a Pioneer Rancher. The claim has been made that Gerry Bracewell was the first accredited female hunting guide in B.C. Now Gerry Bracewell, age 92 is making her mark with her mem- oirs, Gerry Get Your Gun: My Life as a Hunting Guide and Other Adventures (Caitlin $24.95).

ERRY BRACEWELL WAS BORN ETHEL LOVELL IN the northern Alberta farm country where she was raised. She came to Vancouver as a 16-year-old in 1938, getting a job as a nanny and housekeeper. One day she Gand another nanny her age decided to attend a dance in Vancouver’s Moose Hall. While riding in the streetcar, they hatched out a scheme not to give out their real names at the dance. Ethel said she would be Gerry, and Elsa decided on the name Jacquie. The names stuck. She spent the following summer working on a ranch at Big Creek [where she took a “selfie” at the time—see next page]. She told Jacquie about all the fun she had in ranching country. When Bracewell returned to the Chilcotin to work for KB Moore in Tatlayoko, Jacquie followed her lead and checked out Big Creek for herself. Bracewell mar- ried KB Moore’s son, Bev, and Jacquie married lo- cal cowboy and rancher, Duane Witte. Bracewell’s mentor, KB Moore, trained her tand she became the first fe- male hunting guide in the province. Since then she has had more than her share of hard-core adven- tures—such as encounters with grizzly bears in the Gerry Bracewell on the porch of her home and high alpine while leading a (left) at a friend’s cabin. half-broke packhorse on a rugged trail. When she was pregnant with her first child, she had to make a January sleigh ride through a foot-and-a-half of snow, from Tatlayoko Valley to Tatla Lake, to meet the doctor who had driven 225 kilometres west from Williams Lake to deliver her breech-birth first child. Her community occupied a broad footprint from Tatla Lake to West Branch, Kleena Kleene, Tatlayoko Valley, Eagle Lake and the Upper Chilko River—landscape so foreign to most British Columbians that it might as well have been the moon. Everyone helped one another, in- continued on page 15

13 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 Celebrating 47 Years of Publishing in Canada

Kah-LaN The Adventurous Sea Otter

B.C. BESTSELLER

KAREN AUTIO Illustrated by Sheena Lott

Kah-Lan the Adventurous The Klondike Gold Rush Sea Otter Steamers Knitting Stories Life Cycle of a Lie Sylvia Olsen Karen Autio A History of Yukon River Steam Personal Essays and Seven Coast Illustrated by Sheena Lott Navigation Salish–inspired Knitting Patterns Have you ever told a lie, then Robert D. Turner Th e heroic travels of two dynamic Sylvia Olsen told another to cover up the and realistic sea otter characters fi rst? Is failing to correct a During the Klondike Gold Rush, Master storyteller and expert knitter are a wonderful introduction to sea misunderstanding lying at all? sternwheeled steamboats were the Sylvia Olsen’s essay collection otters, and to the human activities A complex novel of love, gender key mode of transportation. Th is is both personal and political, that threaten them. Warm and relations, friendship, betrayal, book tells the dramatic story of historical and practical. Includes appealing illustrations by Sheena truth, and lies. these amazing boats, the people seven stunning Coast Salish- Lott and a triumphant ending will who built and ran them, and the inspired knitting patterns. TEEN FICTION • Ages 12+ inspire readers to learn more about services they gave to a vast, lonely, 978-1-55039-233-3 • $14.95 these remarkable animals. frenzied, challenging frontier. NON-FICTION/ESSAYS 978-1-55039-232-6 • $28.95 Also available as an ebook JUVENILE FICTION • Ages 7–10 978-1-55039-242-5 978-1-55039-244-9 • $9.95 hardcover • $49.95 Also available as an ebook 600+ photos

Ting Ting The Lost Diary Kristie Hammond Shack Island Summer The Moment Julie White Penny Chamberlain Kristie Hammond Ting is a happy 8-year-old in In the fourth Hillcroft Farm It’s the summer of 1969, the When a devastating train China when Tiananmen Square novel, Julie White skillfully summer of fl ower children and accident results in the loss of his forces her family to a new life intertwines a tale from the early the fi rst moon landing. 12-year- leg, James cannot imagine ever in faraway Vancouver, Canada. days of women in international old Pepper knows she’s adopted leading a ‘normal’ life again. Suddenly everything is strange competition with Faye’s journey and decides this summer will be As James struggles to adapt to and diffi cult. What will it take back to the show ring after a an excellent time to fi nd out who his new life, he’s helped by true for Ting to belong? nasty accident. Gripping! her birth family is, along with friends he didn’t know he had. 3Asian/Pacifi c American Award for exploring ESP, dreams, friendship JUVENILE FICTION • Ages 9–12 Literature (Honor Title) and infatuation. JUVENILE FICTION • Ages 8–12 978-1-55039-234-0 • $9.95 978-1-55039-235-7 • $9.95 JUVENILE FICTION • Ages 8–12 Also available as an ebook 978-1-55039-210-4 • $9.95 JUVENILE FICTION • Ages 9–13 Also available as an ebook 978-1-55039-175-6 • $10.95 Also available as an ebook Also available as an ebook

Tilly Sabotage Vancouver Island’s Karen Autio Esquimalt & Nanaimo A Story of Hope and Resilience Prove It, Josh Monique Gray Smith Railway Jenny Watson German spies? Sabotage plots? Internment camps? Believe it or The CPR Via Rail and A powerful, loosely autobiographi- Josh is 11, dyslexic, and suff ering not, this is northwestern Ontario in Shortline Years, 1949–2013 cal story of a young Indigenous at his new school on Vancouver 1915. Th e danger hits close to home Robert D. Turner & woman coming of age in Canada Island. Sailing is his escape, until for siblings Saara and John Mäki in Donald F. MacLachlan in the 1980s. Gray Smith illumi- he’s goaded into a bet: lose a this exciting story, the last in Autio’s nates her people’s history—forced 3Winner of the Canadian Railroad sailing race and he reads aloud on popular historical fi ction trilogy. displacement, residential schools, Historical Association’s Book Award Literacy Day! tuberculosis hospitals, the Sixties 3 Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award (Nominee) ISBN 978-1-55039-212-8 3Silver Birch Express Award (Nominee) Scoop—with insight and humour. softcover • $39.95 3 Arthur Ellis Best Juvenile/Young Adult 3 Winner of the 2014 CODE Burt Award for JUVENILE FICTION • Ages 8–12 Crime Book (Finalist) 978-1-55039-213-5 978-1-55039-211-1 First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature hardcover • $49.95 $9.95 978-1-55039-209-8 • $19.95 JUVENILE FICTION • Ages 9–12 978-1-55039-208-1 • $10.95 .475+ photos Also available as an ebook Also available as an ebook Also available as an ebook Sono Nis Press • 1-800-370-5228 • www.sononis.com • [email protected]

14 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 CHILCOTIN continued from page 13 “Gerry and Alf barely knew each cluding elders, bachelors, families with other at the time, but four months later newborns, families with teens, wealthy they were man and wife.” ranchers, dirt-poor bush hippies, First Eventually the Bracewells cre- Nations, loggers, trappers, stump farm- ated Alpine Wilderness Lodge, nestled ers, lodge owners, professionals of all against the south end of Potato Moun- stripes and retirees. Age was no barrier, tain, south of Tatlayoko Lake, in race was not an issue, social status was Tatlayoko Valley, four hours west of insignificant. Williams Lake; east of Mt. Waddington. Everyone mixed. Bracewell lat- The Bracewell family obtained the lease er become friends with her fellow for building their family-run lodge on Williams Lake Tribune contributor, a 360-acre property in 1976, the year Sage Birchwater, even though they they sold their Circle X Ranch. The couldn’t have been fur- following spring, in 1977, ther apart politically. they started developing “She was right wing con- Gerry and Alf the property. It wasn’t servative,” he says, “and until the winter of 1982- I was a bleeding heart barely knew 83 that the plans for the lefty. She was building main lodge were drawn a great lodge, and I was each other at up by Kevin Bracewell. raising goats on my trap- Work began the follow- line and having babies the time, but ing spring, once the frost born at home. But these came out of the ground differences were minor. after breakup. We had bigger things in four months It took three years to common. Our abiding finish the lodge, carved love for the Chilcotin later they were out of the wilderness was perhaps our biggest by hand. Logs and tim- bond.” man and wife. bers milled on site by Alf Sage Birchwater has Bracewell’s sawmill. Now, commented on Gerry Get two husbands, four chil- Your Gun: dren, nine grandchildren, “Gerry Bracewell has always courted and two great grandchildren later, a strong sense of destiny. When she Gerry Bracewell’s Gerry Get Your Gun was a 31-year-old single mom, she felt reveals a powerful tale of one of the compelled to drive her pickup truck to toughest, gender-busting pioneers in the end of the dirt road at Anahim Lake B.C.’s backcountry. It depicts Brace- and rent two horses to take her and her well’s adventures as she perseveres two young sons to the construction site and pioneers through the harsh life of on the Bella Coola Hill. ranching. Snippets of her book were “It was September, 1953, and two written when she had spare time. bulldozers were coming from opposite “I’m overwhelmed that the book is directions pushing a road through the finally out,” she recently confessed. Coast Mountains. They were on the “That’s the best word I can think of verge of meeting, and Gerry wanted to at the moment. I didn’t think it would be there to record this historic moment happen because I was always such a for all posterity with her fixed-lens busy person. I’d do it piecemeal. I’d windup 8mm movie camera. write what I could then I’d have to “When she got there with her two go out and milk the cow or feed the sons, Marty and Barry, the fateful chickens, then I’d come back and write meeting of the Cats was still two weeks a bit more.” away, but Gerry was undaunted. She Gerry Bracewell, having lived in the took some spectacular footage of the Chilcotin Valley for over 75 years, can construction activity in the mountain still be found at her Alpine Wilderness landscape and left her camera with one Lodge in Tatlayoko Valley, her resort of the Cat drivers, Alf Bracewell, to and guiding outfit. www.bracewell.com capture the moment when it occurred. 978-1-927575-71-0

Gerry Bracewell takes a selfie, Big Creek,1939

15 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 Over 30 writers including:

AYELET TSABARI Winner: 2015 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature DAN BAR-EL Photo: John Londono, 2013 SEAN MICHAELS Winner: 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize

ALEJANDRO FRID LEAH GOLDSTEIN

The British Columbia Historical Federation is the provincial voice of over 100 historical societies and museums in all corners of BC. Join us and become part of a collective voice that encourages interest in the history of British Columbia through research, Fernie B.C presentation, and support. Plan to attend our Annual Conference in Revelstoke,

TO 2015 NOVEMBER 3 8 May 27-29, 2016. 5–day and 3–day intensive writing workshops at the Alpine Lodge. Learn more at www.bchistory.ca 3–Day Workshops 5–Day Workshops Poetry; Tom Wayman Fiction/Non-fiction; Mark Kusnir Fiction/Non-fiction; TBA Screenwriting; Patricia Harris Seeley Finding Your Voice; Keith Liggett Alpine Lodge A Gathering of Words in Fernie A classic large timber and stone lodge at the foot of Fernie Workshop tuition is $350 (3–day) and $750 (5–day). Tuition Alpine Resort. Alpine Lodge is removed from the many includes workshops, breakfast and lunch each day and the distractions of a busy life, but only minutes from Fernie itself. Gathering dinner on Saturday evening. The Alpine Lodge has The perfect location for workshops. a limited number of single or shared rooms for participants at a very low cost. Other lodging is available in Fernie. Space is limited in each section to 8 to 10 participants KEITH LIGGETT OTHER FINDING YOUR VOICE WORKSHOPS MARK KUSNIR October 2-4, 2015

FICTION/NON-FICTION 19 Authors - Readings, Workshops, Gala, Breakfast with Authors PATRICIA HARRIS SEELEY SCREENWRITING

Tickets via website or at Tanner's Books in TOM WAYMAN Sidney or Munro's POETRY Books in Victoria

For a schedule please visit the website or call the Director, Keith Liggett at 250.423.6132. www.agatheringofwords.ca sidneyliteraryfestival.ca [email protected] www.facebook.com/gatheringofwords

16 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 VANCOUVER ISLAND

tree platform, to “blow the old year to the four winds,” PAINFULLY SHY, BENIGNLY GOOD-NATURED, AND but the explosion did not go off because the dynamite was frozen. embarrassed by facial disfigurement In his wooden castle, Tibbs entertained visitors who came to listen to his gramophone and drink cocoa, dating back to a childhood injury in and he often went to Tofino to collect mail and to “have some music, as there are two or three damsels England, Fred Tibbs was one of To- here who play very nicely.” He attended community events and dances—though he never danced—and fino’s best-known eccentrics. he also took up a new job. Rowing his skiff around the harbour, he tended the navigation lights, coal- He settled at Long Bay (Long Beach) in 1908, and oil lanterns mounted on tripods on wooden floats. later moved to his Dream Isle, off Tofino, where he Every second day when the lanterns required refill- clear-cut the island and erected a three-story ing, Tibbs would tie up to the floats and clamber on to fuel the lights. wooden castle. In early July 1921, Francis Garrard noted that Most famously, Tibbs left only one tree in Tibbs had been blasting rock on his island; “he had Staff the centre of the island, an enormous spruce got badly powdered and had been quite ill from the effects.” Immediately after this, on July 4, the that he topped at 100 feet. Every morning Clayoquot Hotel went up in flames. Along with every Pick Fred Tibbs would climb to the platform with other available man, Tibbs rushed over to Stubbs his cornet and serenade Tofino with tunes. Island to assist in fighting the fire. The following Here’s an excerpt from Raincoast Chron- day he went out to tend the lights, but after land- ing on one of the floats, his skiff drifted away. He icles 23 (Harbour $24.95), a collection of stories and dived in to swim after the boat. history culled from forty years worth of West Coast Not realizing what had occurred, a Tla-o-qui- titles from Harbour Publishing. aht man who saw the empty skiff towed the boat to Opitsat. Tibbs turned and made for the near- Edited by Peter Robson, this ‘best of’ compendium est land, on Stubbs Island. Perhaps overexer- could easily compete for the title of The Least Boring tion, combined with the effects of the dynamite Book Ever Published in B.C. powder, had weakened him, for although he was usually a powerful swimmer, the effort proved too much. “He made the spit alright,” Bill Sharp recalled. “He crawled up on the sand and lay there.” A Japanese fisherman alerted the authorities; the telegram sent from the Clayoquot police to their superiors in Victoria read “Frederick Gerald Tibbs found exhausted on beach at Clayoquot by Jap fisherman early this morning.” Tibbs could not be revived. FRED TIBBS “When the Doctor arrived…,” wrote Francis Garrard, “Tibbs was already dead…it was a very sad affair.” The gravestone for Frederick ECCENTRIC PIONEER Gerald Tibbs stands in the old Tofino cem- etery, on Morpheus Island. The Garrard and Arnet families reached EEN ON PHYSICAL EXERCISE, FRED TIBBS eventually housed a piano and a phonograph, an agreement about his unusual will. Olive took a plunge in the breakers with a garden alongside featuring trellised Garrard relinquished her share of the inheri- at Long Bay every morning, roses, a loveseat and a sunken well. tance, his castle home, to the Arnets, and followed by an energetic run Tibbs lived on the ground floor; the upper Dream Isle became Arnet Island. A group round and round a huge tree levels remained unfinished and accessible only of men went over to the island shortly after Kstump on the beach. Locals shook their heads. by ladder. When Tibbs enlisted for World War Tibbs’s death to cut down the 100-foot-high Tibbs gave his return address as “Tidal Wave One, joining the Canadian Forestry Corps, he “tree rig,” deeming it unsafe, and as time Ranch.” He did no ranching there, but built a sounded one final blast on his cornet from his passed the clear-cut island slowly greened little cabin out of driftwood. treetop platform, saying goodbye to his island over. A president of the Clayoquot Conservative domain. He told no one he was going, simply A few others attempted to live on the Association, Tibbs bought a 2 ½-acre island in boarded up the windows of his wooden castle island, renting out Tibbs’s castle, but the the Tofino harbour which he chris- and left. place became associated with bad luck tened Dream Isle, painting the name On one window, up in the tower, and sudden death. According to Anthony in huge white letters on the rocks. he painted a picture of a beautiful Guppy, after several unfortunate fatalities Tibbs set about clear-cutting the princess; some say she looked like and mishaps there, the “strange little cas- entire island, blasting out stumps. Olive Garrard. No one knew at the tle remained unoccupied for a long time… He had a fondness for using large time, but Tibbs harboured secret People began to believe it was haunted. It amounts of dynamite; loud explo- romantic attachments, not only to became a sort of game for young people sions from Dream Isle became com- Olive but also to Alma Arnet. Some to go over there, get inside, and make the monplace. Ignoring [fellow settler] thought he also fancied Winnie most hair-raising ghostly noises.” Jacob Arnet’s kindly suggestion Dixson. “Oh, he tried all of us, all The year after Tibbs died, Alma Arnet that he leave at least some trees for the different girls,” Winnie later married; Olive Garrard also married in wind protection, Tibbs left only one commented. “I didn’t have much in- 1923. Had Tibbs lived a bit longer, per- tree in the centre of the island, an terest… I had about 300 chickens.” haps he would have reconsidered his will. enormous spruce that he topped at Tibbs had made his will before In 2015, Tibbs Island was listed for sale 100 feet. setting off to war, leaving the island for $698,000. He removed every limb, leav- “and everything thereon, excepting ✫ ing a tall, standing spar. Up this the house and ten feet of land on EXCERPTED FROM TOFINO AND CLAYOQUOT he built a sturdy ladder, almost either side of the house site,” to Sound: A History (Harbour, 2014), by a small scaffold, mounting all the Alma Arnet, “because she is the Margaret Horsfield and Ian Kennedy. ARCHIVES ARCHIVES

way, step by step, to the top, where nicest girl I know.” And he left the Previously Horsfield had compiled BC BC , he constructed a narrow platform. , house and contents, except for his Voices from the Sound: Chronicles of According to local legend, he would gramophone, to Olive Garrard, Clayoquot Sound and Tofino 1899-1929 MUSEUM MUSEUM climb to the platform every morning “because it was built for her.” If BC BC

(Salal Books, 2008), based on long- with his cornet and serenade Tofino Olive married, the house should forgotten letters, diaries and memoirs.

Come ROYAL ROYAL with lively tunes, in particular go to Alma “if she is still single.” 978-1-55017-681-0 THE to the Cookhouse Door, Boys THE

. Returning intact from the war OF OF

Tibbs gradually built his dream in 1919, Tibbs resettled on his is- Fred Tibbs built a home, a wooden castle, three sto- land and resumed his land-clear- ladder up this spruce COURTESY COURTESY reys high, complete with a crenellat- ing, his gardening and his risky tree. He would regularly 03431 ed tower and battlements. Painted 03427 experiments with explosives. On climb the tree and sit on the - - F F red, white and blue and held to the New Year’s Eve in 1919, he tried narrow platform at the top. Frederick Gerald Tibbs IMAGE rocks with steel guywires, the castle IMAGE to explode dynamite from his

17 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 OKANAGAN

100+ writers, 89 events, thousands of readers like you.

REIMAGINE YOUR WORLD OCTOBER 20 - 25, 2015 ON GRANVILLE ISLAND

Rika Ruebsaat and Jon Bartlett are mining the Princeton archives.

PHOTO: KEVIN KELLY PHOTO: When reds bled PHOTO: DAVID J. BALDWIN J. DAVID PHOTO: PHOTO: DANNY PALMERLEE PHOTO: Couple recalls how kidnapping, Ku Klux Klan and police brutality were used to stymie Shauna Singh Baldwin Craig Davidson Patrick deWitt Dirty Thirties miners’ strike in Princeton.

AUSE, IF YOU WILL, TO of Trade who kidnapped Evans, and bundled him onto a train out of town. consider the value of Evans soon returned. The labour PHOTO: JAY GRABIEC JAY PHOTO: strife was heightened by the federal

PHOTO: CHARLIE HOPKINSON PHOTO: your local archives. government’s creation of a Relief Camp PHOTO: MARK RAYNES-ROBERTS PHOTO: P All over B.C. there are repositories north of town that had also attracted of history that are used by researchers organizers from the Canadian Labour Sarah Dunant Roxane Gay Camilla Gibb and authors such as long-time part- Defence League. The local newspaper, ners Jon Bartlett and Rika Ruebsaat The Princeton Star, predictably sided who are board members of the Princ- with its advertising base, the business eton and District Museum and community. Archives (PDMA). Bartlett and Ruebsaat PHOTO: KATE NEIL KATE PHOTO:

PHOTO: MARK FRIED PHOTO: As musicians they’ve gleaned the gist of the tense released seven albums of Staff standoff between the town’s mostly traditional Canadian establishment and the heritage songs, and they would-be unionists from the have produced two books local archives that afforded Paula Hawkins Elizabeth Hay Lawrence Hill pertaining to Princeton and Pick access to the Depression-era the Similkameen Valley. issues of The Princeton Star. The first was Dead Horse on The strife served to strengthen the Tulameen: Settler Verse from BC’s the resolve of the undeniably heroic Similkameen Valley (Canadian Folk Slim Evans who led the On–to–Ottawa Workshop, 2011), a collection of ver- Trek of homeless and unemployed PHOTO:PINK MONKEY MONKEY PHOTO:PINK

PHOTO: JEFFREY SKEMP PHOTO: nacular verses from the pages of the Canadians protesting the relief camps local presses.

PHOTO: DELGADO PHOTOGRAPHY DELGADO PHOTO: and their conditions. The second is Soviet Princeton: The Princeton and District Museum Slim Evans and the 1932-33 Miners’ and Archives started from a log cabin June Hutton Marlon James Susan Juby Strike (New Star $19), recalling the in 1958. The town erected the exist- most turbulent period of the town’s ing building as a centennial project in history when aggrieved coal miners 1967. Livery stables and a farm imple- brought labour organizer Slim Evans ment shed were added to the museum to town to help them protest a 10% in 1985. Its Joe Pollard Wing was built pay cut during the Great Depression. in 1999 to house 40,000 fossils and PHOTO: DEXTER CHEW PHOTO:

PHOTO: SHARONA JACOBS PHOTO: ✫ minerals. The museum boasts a First SOVIET PRINCETON REVISITS THE VOLATILE Peoples basket display, a complete winter of 1932-33 when coal miners Princeton newspaper collection from felt they had no recourse other than to 1900; approximately 10,000 photo- Wab Kinew Kelly Link Elaine Lui import labour organizer Arthur “Slim” graphs from 1880 to present; more Evans from the Workers Unity League than 200 audiotape recordings (inter- to help them unionize. When miners views with Princeton pioneers); historic from two of the three coal mines in the maps, mining reports from 1858; some area responded to Evans’ leadership, 83 Notman Studios glass plate photos town fathers predictably (late 1800s-early 1900s); denounced “outside agi- A PUBLIC INVITATION and an 1880s cabin tators” and the “Commu- which housed John Fall BC BookWorld PHOTO: KEVIN KELLY PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOGRAPHY KEVIN KELLY PHOTO: nist menace.” In fact, the Allison’s daughter Lily will soon be making most menacing forces The Literary Map of B.C. and her family. Denise Mina Nino Ricci Simon Winchester were the mounted police 978-1-5542010-9-9 If anyone has a suggestion who charged into picket ✫ or a photo for a place that PRINCETON AND DISTRICT MU- lines, members of the ought to be designated as a seum and Archives, at Tickets on sale September 8 Ku Klux Klan in British Literary Landmark in B.C., Vancouver Tix vancouvertix.com or 604 629 8849 Columbia who assaulted let us know. You can send 167 Vermilion Avenue, WRITERSFEST.BC.CA and threatened workers, your photo—and your reasons is one of 150 locations and a gang led by the for designating the site—to that will be included in [email protected] president of the Board The Literary Map of B.C.

18 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 review FICTION GEORGE BOWERING AT THE MIL- passivity that listens, records lennium, and thinks about what women the Cana- say and do: e.g. the ostensible 1 dian gov- GOES FOUR-FOR-FOUR narrator may be handcuffed ernment provides the play-by-play to a chair, blindfolded and decided to John Moore sexually teased to obsession create the post of Parliamen- by a female poet he met at a tary Poet Laureate. In 2002 ering’s new collection, Ten Globe & Mail in- with good reason. reading, but the author is try- George Bowering became Women, (Anvil Press $20) terview when he This is a rarity in ing to figure out what makes the first poet to be honoured says, “I have been reading admitted to having such collections; both of these characters rev to with the title. For me, Bower- Dickens again. He seems to- on occasion read a an elegantly struc- the red-line. ing remains a poet, first, last tally different when you come story and thought, tured book with [I’ve attended lots of po- and always.His newest collec- back after all these years.” “I wish I’d written a central theme etry readings and never once tion of poetry is The World, I Bowering, who will be turn- that” only to dis- general enough to been taken home, blindfolded, Guess (New Star $18). ing 80 in December, has pub- cover he did. JOHN let the author run chained to a chair by a gor- CURRENTLY lished about one hundred If he makes it MOORE totally amok while geous female poet and re- active in books in just about every to 90 or a century, maintaining a sat- quired to identify her body lobbying genre, so you could probably he’ll probably say the same isfying sense of unity overall. parts by their scent. What am the provin- say the same about him. about his tenth collection of Most short fiction collec- I doing wrong, George?] 2 cial gov- He said as much in a 2012 short stories, Ten Women, and tions consist of stories linked Within this loose structure, ernment to only by their having been Bowering goes on a tear like a assist the pre-published in literary cowboy in a cathouse. “Profes- federal government in creat- magazines, duly listed on sor Minaccia,” the only story ing a major national park for the inside front page like not titled by a woman’s famil- the south Okanagan, Bow- film credits; mini-CVs to iar first name, owes something ering has drawn from forty impress other writers to Elmore Leonard’s novel, books he has published since and perhaps more Gold Coast, about a woman 1960 for a new anthology of prestigious poten- forced into respectably chaste his varied writing about his tial publishers. The widowhood by her deceased beloved homelands, Writing randomness of the husband’s mob cronies. Bow- the Okanagan (Talon $24.95). contents usually ering’s version is more liter- A MAGIC- helps to explain ate, less lurid, but equally powered why these vol- unflinching about the power ring from umes sell poorly. that hard men in dark cars, ancient Ten Women men who don’t read Proust, 3 Rome consists of ten sto- can exert on our lives. surfaces ries, each bearing The Canadian literary com- amid the a woman’s name munity comes in for some fine Poets’ Club at thirteen-year- as a title. Each sto- ass-kicking in “Dodie”, about old Harry’s school in Bower- ry explores some a female SPCA worker who ing’s juvenile novel Attack aspect of the infi- stalks poets who have made of the Toga Gang (Dancing nitely variable fas- careers out of using images of Cat $12.95) giving rise to ma- cination one gender innocent animal agony to give levolence from a centuries-old, of our species exerts their work shock power. Pos- secret organization known as on the other. sibly Patrick Lane will cringe the Toga Club. Bowering is old- reading this one. I EXPECT fashioned enough Grammarians will love the all three to be shamelessly wildly funny “Ichiko,” in which of those straight and sensibly a performance artist achieves 4 new leaves The Love Whose fame by inserting neglected books Current Acronym We apostrophes in iconic corpo- this fall Can’t Decode in young- rate logos, only to discover in will be er, more flexible hands. a biker bar that punctuation worth a gander, when they The point of view in can be the real thief of time. appear. For now, I’ve been these stories is consistent- Writing has the distinction reading his latest fiction. ly male, but leavened by of being one of the few occupa- The narrator of one of an objective authorial tions at which you can be 80 the stories in Bow- years old and be at the top of your game. Play on, George. Women 9781772140316 World 978-1-55420-096-2 Okanagan 978-0-88922-941-9 Attack 978-1-77086-442-9

John Moore regularly writes for B.C. BookWorld from Garibaldi Highlands.

Archive photo of George Bowering

19 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 FALL into a GOOD BOOK with

Available in bookstores this autumn www.douglas-mcintyre.com

“This compelling book is a marvelous tribute to an extraordinary explorer and the lands and peoples who made him great.” —Wade Davis WHITE ESKIMO

KNUD RASMUSSEN’S FEARLESS JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF THE ARCTIC

STEPHEN R. BOWN AUTHOR OF The Last Viking

THE HORRORS AFTER THE SANDS WHITE ESKIMO YOU WILL WEAR A WHITE SHIRT An A to Z of Funny Thoughts Energy and Ecological Knud Rasmussen’s Fearless Journey From the Northern Bush on Awful Things Security for Canadians into the Heart of the Arctic to the Halls of Power Comedian Charles Demers takes Political economist Gordon Laxer Historian Stephen R. Bown Senator Nick Sibbeston’s a darkly mirthful approach to some puts forward a bold plan to address presents the first full-scale autobiography details his life very bad things, from adolescence climate change and provide biography of the Danish explorer both as a residential school to the end of the world. energy security for Canadians. who immersed himself in the survivor and one of the North’s HUMOUR $24.95 PB 6"×9" ENVIRONMENT / POLITICS culture and lives of the Inuit. most influential leaders. 224PP ISBN 978-1-77162-031-4 $24.95 PB 6"×9" 288PP HISTORY $34.95 HC 6"×9" BIOGRAPHY $32.95 HC 6"×9" ISBN 978-1-77162-100-7 368PP ISBN 978-1-77162-001-7 336PP ISBN 978-1-77162-055-0

THAT’S WHY I’M A JOURNALIST THE SHADOWS WE OF MYTHS AND STICKS HAPPY HENS & FRESH EGGS Top Canadian Reporters Tell Their MISTAKE FOR LOVE Hockey Facts, Fictions Keeping Chickens in the Kitchen Most Unforgettable Stories Stories and Coincidences Garden, with 100 Recipes Mark Bulgutch emphasizes the Dark and humorous short stories A lively collection of little- Signe Langford advocates for the importance of quality news media in set in BC’s West Kootenays from known hockey trivia by Kevin backyard flock with simple recipes, this compendium of career highlights multiple award-winning author Gibson, TSN’s one-man Research, anecdotes and advice on keeping from prominent Canadian journalists. and poet Tom Wayman. Stats and Info Department. hens in the kitchen garden. BIOGRAPHY $32.95 HC 6"×9" SHORT FICTION $24.95 PB 6"×9" SPORTS $19.95 PB 5"×8" HOME & GARDEN $22.95 PB 6"×9" 336PP ISBN 978-1-77162-083-3 312PP ISBN 978-1-77162-095-6 192PP ISBN 978-1-77162-074-1 192PP ISBN 978-1-77162-097-0

MY FATHER’S SON THROUGH BLOOD AND SWEAT FORGOTTEN VICTORY ARTHUR ERICKSON A Remembrance Trek Across Sicily’s First Canadian Army and the An Architect’s Life A classic wartime memoir from World War II Battlegrounds Cruel Winter of 1944-45 Farley Mowat, one of Canada’s Now Available in Paperback! most treasured writers. Popular historian Mark Zuehlke Now Available in Paperback! David Stouck’s award-winning MEMOIR / CANADIANA recounts a touching march Mark Zuehlke details how the portrait of the fascinating $19.95 PB 5"×73⁄4" 304PP conducted in remembrance of Canadian Army paved the way for life of Arthur Erickson, one ISBN 978-1-77100-087-1 Operation Husky in World War II. an Allied victory in Europe with of Canada’s best-known and MEMOIR / HISTORY $36.95 an attack against the Rhineland. most influential architects. HC 6"×91⁄4" 232PP HISTORY $27.95 PB 6"×91⁄4" ISBN 978-1-77162-009-3 BIOGRAPHY $24.95 PB 6"×9" 512PP ISBN 978-1-77162-105-2 472PP ISBN 978-1-77162-099-4

MADEIRA PARK OFFICE PO Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0 FOR TRADE All Douglas & McIntyre titles are available from University of Toronto Press

20 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 Fairy Tales win big Flour power in far-off Yangtai

Bringing pedal-powered milling technology from hinese Fairy Tale Feasts: Roberts Creek to a South Sudanese village A Literary Cookbook (Tradewind $24.95) was a triple winner at the interna- HRIS HERGESHEIMER WAS ied journalism at Langara College. A proponent tional Gourmand Cookbook hand-milling flour at of multimedia, he likes incorporating photos, Awards held this year in Sechelt’s Farmer’s Mar- video, audio and text to tell stories and create Yangtai, the most northern major city in ket when he came up conversations. Hergesheimer is a self-described C China, but who could accept them? with a simple idea: build world traveller and adventure motorcyclist who So when B.C. publisher Michael Katz a bicycle-based mill. It lives in Vancouver. 9781927575864 learned his Tradewind title Chinese Fairy Tale would speed up the mill- Feasts had won three Gourmand awards, he ing process and give his FOOD BOOKS ABOUT HOW WE had a good problem on his hands. arms and hands a well-deserved rest. CAN MAKE THE MOST OF IT, Who could accept the prizes on behalf of CHis subsequent invention produced flour AND FEEL GOOD DOING IT. co-authors Paul Yee (text), Judy Chan (reci- in a fraction of the time. His brother, Josh pes) and Shaoli Wang (illustrations)? Hergesheimer, a journalist, shared his vision A VEGAN FOR TEN YEARS, CARLA KELLY HAS FOLLOWED Through a professor at UBC, he managed and enthusiasm. They imagined how their bi- Vegan Al Fresco: Happy & Healthy Recipes for to hook up with an agreeable English teacher cycle mill could benefit people half a world away. Picnics, Barbecues & Outdoor Dining with True at Yangtai University, Peggy Macdonald from The Flour Peddlar (Caitlin $24.95) recounts to your Roots: Vegan Recipes to Comfort and Nova Scotia, who happily accepted the task how the brothers realized their high hopes for low Nourish You (Arsenal $26.95), a collection that of attending the banquet. tech, transporting Chris’ pedal-powered milling provides inventive ways to produce root vegeta- Launched earlier this year at Dr. Sun technology from Roberts Creek to a woman’s bles—roots, tubers and rhizomes. Having cooked Yat Sen Gardens in Vancouver, Chinese cooperative in the South Sudanese village of at hotels around the world, she has written two Fairy Tale Feasts won for best book for Panlang. other titles along the way, Quick and Easy Bake Chinese cuisine in the world as well as best During their trek, there were challenges and Sale and Quick and Easy Vegan Slow Cooking, cookbook from Canada and best children’s obstacles, from the outbreak of war, to broken and she operates a website called The Year of munchiesmunchies food book. down vehicles, to encounters with wild animals. the Vegan. 9781551525327 ScorpionScorpion Veteran author Paul Yee of Toronto More than just an inspiring travelogue, The ✫ provided original stories as well as his inter- Flour Peddlar offers insights into local food sys- ALISA GORDANEER’S FOURTH COLLECTION OF POETRY, pretations of Chinese folklore. Each story is tem trends and the benefits of alternative food Still Hungry (Signature Editions $14.95) ex- Even for people who don’t read or like cookbooks, Jeffrey Alford’s Chicken followed by a recipe for a traditional Chinese movements. plores the complicated relationship that con- dish. When not peddling locally milled flour, Chris temporary foodies have with food, hunger and LOOKOUT in the Mango Tree (D&M $26.95) is a fascinating, fish-out-of-water story Born in China, Shaoli Wang graduated Hergesheimer is a research, policy and project desire. The poems reflect on a society where food from the Department of Fine Arts of Qingdao management consultant specializing in issues abundance and starvation co-exist; a world in about a food writer who left his Toronto marriage and now lives in the remote, Normal College, specializing in children’s around food and farming. He obtained a Master which we ‘Instagram’ our meals and then resist book illustration. She immigrated to Canada of Arts in sociology from SFU, and is a Ph.D. eating to pay penance for having eaten at all. rural village of Kravan in northeastern Thailand with his Thai partner named in 1995 and now lives in Coquitlam. candidate in UBC’s Faculty of Land and Food Food is not just about eating and survival. It .. Pea, who is “better with a slingshot than anyone I have ever seen.” Subtitled Judy Chan teaches at Eric Hamber Systems. Hergesheimer, who still lives in Roberts plays an essential role in our well-being. Beyond Secondary in Vancouver. The book has an Creek, is also the director of research education conjuring the many metaphors of food, Alisa Gor- Food and Life in a Thai-Khmer Village, the book is described by Alford as an introduction by Jane Yolen. 978-1-896580-68-5 and a co-teacher of research methodology at the daneer of Victoria has taught at UBC, University .. Boucher Institute of Naturopathic Medicine. He of Victoria, Camosun College and Royal Roads exercise in “culinary anthropology.” It highlights Pea’s cooking instructions has conducted research for a number of orga- University. She has also worked as a newspaper FOOD nizations, including the University of Northern editor for both Victoria’s Monday Magazine and for a myriad of creatures and free food that she finds by foraging near their B.C., the B.C. Association of Farmers’ Markets Detroit’s Metro Times. ✫ 978-1927426-64-7 and FarmFolk CityFolk. to shop, cook, and eat with chicken, to scrambled eggs, Khmer village, 19 km. north of the Cambodian border—including grasshoppers, Josh Hergesheimer is a writer and photogra- MANY NORTH AMERICANS WASTE 40 PERCENT OF THE zero waste.” Savvy shop- rice and lentils, Wight pro- pher whose work has appeared in the Vancouver food they purchase. It’s like throwing away a pers learn how to interpret vides advice for healthy and snakes, red ant eggs, crabs, shrimp, tree leaves and scorpions (eaten raw). Sun, The Georgia Straight, This Magazine, Al- bag full of groceries every week. Besides being “best-before” dates, store food delicious dishes that don’t cost Jazeera International, The Globe & Mail and The a waste of money, this waste contributes to so it lasts longer and turn left- the moon. Processed foods and She also raises crickets, frogs, fish, ducks, chickens and pigs. Alford claims Vancouver Observer. He earned a Master of Arts global warming. Cinda Chavich’s Waste Not, overs into meals you want to eat. refined sugar are avoided as much at the University of Sussex, a Master of Science Want Not Cookbook (Touchwood $22.95) of- Cinda Chavich of Victoria is a as possible, but there is room for Kravan food is neither Thai food nor Cambodian food. 978-1-77162-060-4 from the London School of Economics and stud- fers over 140 recipes that will “show you how freelance journalist and photog- comfort foods that can be made and rapher whose writing has been enjoyed in moderation. published in Maclean’s, Canadian There is also a nod to the trend Cat Smiley Living, The Globe and Mail, Wine of global cuisine, with a number of OFF GRID ROAD KILL Spectator, Wine Access, Canadian recipes that call for ethnic ingredi- Geographic and Chatelaine. Her ents that are often inexpensive and The Lasqueti Island Cook Book (Anniekathysue $25) Peggy Macdonald accepts 3 Gourmand Awards for Tradewind Books in Yangtai six cookbooks include The Girl readily available. is a trove of recipes, photos, writing, and artwork edited Can’t Cook and The Guy Can’t Wight also suggests places to by Kathy Schultz, Sue Wheeler and Annie Car- Cook. 9781771511117 shop for those who don’t wish to ruthers. The recipes were created by local residents, ✫ spend five bucks for an organic, free with many using local ingredients, including bullfrog The allure of a WITH THE PRICE OF LIVING IN VANCOUVER trade, conversation-worthy cum- legs and road kill deer (lots of rosemary). 978-0-9948027-0-5 rising to the point where few book- quat-carrot-whatchamacallit status More info: www.cookingandcommunitylasqueti-island.com bestselling cookbook stores can afford to exist, Emily symbol at places like Choices and Wight, a graduate of UBC’s cre- Whole Foods. 9781551525792 fter Shelley Adams’ fourth recipe col- ative writing program, has generat- ✫ lection, Whitewater Cooks with Pas- ed a food blog called Well Fed, Flat FOOD WRITER FOR THE VICTORIA TIMES Weight Loss eating Asion (Alicon/Sandhill $34.95) topped Broke. Self-described as someone since 1997, Eric Akis has doubled the BC Bestsellers List longer than any other who is “almost always broke, but as a food consultant and recipe de- histler-based Cat Smiley’s The title, distributor Nancy Wise of Sandhill Books practically never hungry,” Wight veloper for the Thrifty Foods super- was asked to explain Adams’ unprecedented Planet Friendly Diet: Your 21-day has subsequently concocted her market chain owned by Sobeys. He success as a self-publisher. “At the heart of it first book, Well Fed, Flat Broke: previously worked as a trained chef WGuide to Sustainable Weight Loss all are the recipes themselves,” Wise said, “and Recipes for Modest Budgets and and pastry chef for fifteen years and Optimal Health (New Society $29.95) the ultimate power of word-of-mouth… They Messy Kitchens (Arsenal $24.95) before turning his hand to journal- presents a diet that is meat, dairy, wheat and become the “go to” cookbooks when people are for those who want to eat well on ism. He has lived in six Canadian gluten-free, and comes with a weekly shopping entertaining. I know some people who have a limited budget. It offers recipes provinces. His new book is The cooked every recipe out of each of the first list to ensure zero-waste. Her recipes use fresh, organized by ingredient so read- Great Rotisserie Chicken Cook- three books. They swear by them… There’s ers can prepare meals based on book: More than 100 Delicious everyday ingredients that cost less than $5 also allure in her lifestyle. The books are full items they have on hand. From Ways to Enjoy Storebought and and are under 500 calories and take only 20 of photos showing a lifestyle that some of us

orecchiette with white beans Homecooked Chicken (Random minutes to prepare. 9780865718111 might envy.” 978-0-9811424 -2-5 Chris Hergesheimer conducts a bike mill workshop for the Panlang women’s cooperative. and sausage, to Salvadoran roast House $24.95). 978-0-449-01640-4 Kathy Schultz, Sue Wheeler and Annie Carruthers

22 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 23 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 New Titles From Oolichan Books

Fernie, B.C. - www.oolichan.com - [email protected]

November’s Radio WaitingW for the Steve Noyes AlbatrossA 978-0-88982-311-2 SandyS Shreve Fiction - 256 pages 978-0-88982-304-49 Paperback • $19.95 PPoetry - 86 pages The Fire November’s Radio, is a strange, PPaperback • $17.95 Extinguisher satiric book concerning the “Poignant,“ salty, full of danger, making of a holographic film Miranda Pearson theset poems always manage in China and the intrigue tto dock at our hearts. The 978-0-88982-308-2 around a new anti-anxiety experiencee of reading it is a lot, Poetry - 112 pages drug. It is a literary novel with I imagine, like being there.” Paperback • $17.95 comic leanings, crisply written, and full of surprising scenes. ~ Jane Eaton Hamilton

“These are poems you enter New & Selected and never quite leave. They The Trees of are alive to the things people Poems Calan Gray don’t say, the complications of a view, the strength and W.H. New fragility of our bodies. They commemorate the pres- Danial Neil 978-0-88982-310-5 ent and admit how difficult it is to live in it. Above all, 978-0-88982-297-9 Poetry - 248 pages these are poems that describe our ‘flammable lives’ with Fiction - 268 pages Paperback • $21.95 shrewdness and grace.” Paperback • $19.95 W. H. (Bill) New became one ~ Helen Mort Calan Gray talks to trees. of our most inspiring and They speak back to him, he innovative Canadian poets Win Books from Oolichan hears the language of trees. with the publication of ten They become his sanctuary volumes of poetry over a span against a violent father who Visit www.oolichan.com and enter of twenty years. The variety wishes to commit him to an our contest to win a selection of and intensity of experience in institution for expressing such titles, a set for yourself and one for these ten books is remarkable delusions. It is 1964, and your local library. and the experimentation with the world is a harsh place for form often extraordinary. those who are different.

NEW FROM AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR NEW from the TanyaTanya LloydLloyd KyiKyi Royal BC Museum

Aliens Among Us Invasive Animals and Plants in British Columbia

Written by Alex Van Tol Illustrated by Mike Deas For children aged 8 – 12

What would you do if you came face to face with a Large Yellow Waxwing, Wild Turkey or Weather Loach? Who would you call if Common Wall Lizards or Giant Hogweed crept into your backyard?

Alex Van Tol can help. In Aliens Among Us, she identifies more than 50 species of alien animals and plants that have established themselves in British Columbia. With the help of colour photographs and Mike Deas’ illuminating illustrations, Van Tol exposes the invaders, then explains paperback, $19.95 how they got here and what they’re 978-0-7726-6853-0 doing to the local environment. 7.5 x 9, 128 pages Who knew science could be so much fun? Colour photographs For this readable and alarmingly and illustrations informative book, Van Tol has harvested the knowledge of museum biologists Discover the amazing world of genetics— to arm young people with the tools then use the DNA clues to solve a mystery. they need to stop the spread of these unwanted aliens. Sample chapter at www.annickpress.com 675 Belleville Street, Order from Heritage Group Distribution Ages 11–14 / 120 pages Victoria BC, V8W 9W2 hgdistribution.com | 1-800-665-3302 978-1-55451-773-2 pb / 978-1-55451-774-9 hc To learn more about Royal BC Museum publications, | annick press | www.annickpress.com | available from your favourite bookseller go to royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/publications

24 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 Pig Girl by review Late Colleen Company Murphy, by Jordan FICTION GG Award– Tannahill, winning GG Award– author winning of The author of December Age of Man GOING COASTAL Minority: (L’homme Three Solo de Plays décembre) R.J. McMillen’s detective series stresses Read A Play. It’s Good For You. coastal climes and cultural connections. Available from www.playwrightscanada.com or wherever books are sold. Black Tide Rising mostly notably the Nuu-chah-nulth by R.J. McMillen carver, Sanford Williams, are real (TouchWood $14.95) Read. Play. Perform. people (he granted McMillen consent for him to appear in the novel.) BY CHERIE THEISSEN “I realized that if I continued to ignore all the knowledge and richness ITH THE COMINGS AND GOINGS that other cultures offer,” says McMil- of four unsavoury villains, len, “my life would be much poorer.” WNootka Island’s Friendly In both her mysteries we are in- Cove is not living up to troduced to Walker, a First Nations THETHE TICKTICK RRIDERIDER its name in R.J. (Rachel) McMillen’s protagonist who helps Connor solve the second crime novel. murders. He’s a loner, someone who Here, on the west coast of Vancouver was severely disabled years before. (It Island, Chief Maquinna and Captain happened when he fell off a roof while WILLIAM STREET James Cook had the first documented he was being chased by Connor for a on-land contact between Europeans robbery.) or decades, cowboys known as 'tick riders' have pa- and coastal First Nations. Now Walker mostly lives in accor- trolled the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent cattle car- Now this spooky beach is almost dance with the old ways, living off the rying 'fever ticks' from crossing. In former B.C. deserted except for a lighthouse and land and sea, embracing the mythology rancher William Street’s first novel, The Tick Rider, a self-elected First Nations caretaker and spirituality of his ancestors, and F the protagonist is a Texas cowboy who works for the named Ray Williams and his wife Terry somehow showing up whenever Connor who greet the tourists who arrive on the heads into western waters and finds the Texas Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, along the MV Uchuck III from Gold River. himself embroiled in crime. Rio Grande near El Paso, as a tick rider. When retired cop Dan Connor ar- “While the plot may be that of a All the main characters are introduced on the same day in May rives in his converted fish packer, thriller, the story is also about the of 2009, in various locations in Mexico and Texas. Dreamspeaker,* he’s hop- conflicts between two cul- The tick rider falls in love with the daughter of a successful ing to revisit some happy tures—represented by Dan Mexican rancher whose land lies along the river. Their lives are childhood memories of and Walker—and different complicated by drug smuggling when a cartel boss and his hench- fishing in the area with his lifestyles,” McMillen says. father, visiting the light- It’s also a tale rich in the men want to set up a new drug crossing plaza along the river in house and its long-time supernatural. Justice can Coahuila. keepers, Gene and Mary be meted out in different Dorman. It has been 30 ways and nature is always William Street managed Elkhorn ranch years since he saw them, a palpable force.” at Lake Windermere from 1951 to 1962. as a child of ten. McMillen gives us the He and his wife own a cabin at Bliss But as soon as he ar- bad guys from the get- rives, he learns that Mar- go. So the suspense that Landing, north of Powell River. It’s his grethe, the wife of the as- arises from not knowing first novel, preceded by a memoir that sistant lighthouse keeper, the criminals and their recalls his first job on a farm near R.J. McMillen has gone missing. designs, so often the driv- Briscoe, B.C. Was she mentally unstable? Was ing force in mysteries, is missing from there a bear attack? Black Tide Rising. The risk of foul play has to be con- Conversely, there is also a mys- Available at sidered when Dan Connor finds blood terious fourth man, who remains an Indigo Chapters, near a mysteriously defaced totem pole. unknown figure. Possibly his identity and iUniverse in soft cover Who the hell would want to carve up will be divulged as the series continues. or ebook formats. a Nuu-chah-nulth totem? Surely not Regardless, readers will find the rain, Ray and Terry’s son Sanford, himself a the squalls, the currents, and the tang 978-1-4917-5502-0 (sc) $25 carver, who is visiting his parents from of the sea stay with them after putting 978-1-4917-5502-3 (ebook) $6.29 his home in Campbell River. the book down. Short-staffed and under the gun to ✫ solve the case, Dan Connor’s old boss TABLES WILL BE TURNED IN THE THIRD MYSTERY is soon deputizing the retiree who had in the series, Green River Falling, in been looking forward to his get-together which Walker will be asking Dan for in Kyuquot with the new romance in help in finding a friend of his who is a his life. suspect in a series of murders. These Soon there is news of a body found murders will occur along the proposed near Kyuquot, identified as a missing route of the northern pipeline. troubled native youth from Gold River. “The quest takes them from Haida The 14-year-old kid often ran away to Gwaii to Prince Rupert,” says McMil- Nootka Island, the traditional territory len, “and onto the revived ghost town of his people. So did the currents take of Kitsault. It will challenge them both his body from Nootka to where it was on three levels: physical, mental and found? spiritual.” 9781771511230 ✫ The story of one family’s experience of the early days of IT’S CLEAR THE AUTHOR KNOWS THE AREA, Cherie Thiessen reviews the waters and the people tucked into fiction from Pender Island. settlement on the far West Coast remote coastal areas. R.J. McMillen of Canada, brought vividly to life *Dreamspeaker is also the name of a 1977 and her husband have explored B.C.’s through firsthand accounts, Claude Jutra film featuring George Clutesi, coastal waters for the past 30 years that won 7 Canadian Film Awards. It was writ- colourful photos, documents on a 36-ft. sailboat they built, called ten by Anne Cameron of Tahsis, who released and letters. Maquinna. Her insider knowledge and Dreamspeaker as a novel in 1979. Laurence 190 pgs. • ISBN 978-0-9880387-2-1 • $45 experiences bring a confidence and Yeadon-Jones and Anne Yeadon-Jones [see Who’s Who entry page 40] sailed across the Available from authenticity that add a documentary Atlantic from England in 1985 in their 36-foot [email protected] dimension to the book. sail boat named Dreamspeaker and have since Even some of McMillen’s characters, published their Dreamspeaker sailing guides.

25 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 10 Women (stories) Seep The Revolving City Vancouver Vanishes by W. Mark Giles narratives of demolition & revival by George Bowering Seep limns the tension between land by Wayde Compton & by Caroline Adderson, John Atkin, Kerry Gold, 10 Women is a collection of ten development and landscape, trauma and Renée Sarojini Saklikar, eds. nostalgia, dysfunction and intimacy in a Evelyn Lau, Eve Lazarus, John Mackie, Elise and new stories from one of Canada’s The Revolving City: 51 Poems and the Stories Behind narrative of twenty-fi rst century Canada. Stephen Partridge, and Bren Simmers, with an pre-eminent writers. These ten Them is a vibrant and diverse collection from “Giles’ Seep is a wickedly wonderful account introduction by Michael Kluckner characters remind us that for every a who’s who of the west coast poetry scene. of how our senses of self and of place can be Based on the popular Facebook Page, Vancouver fetish there’s a partner. The poems address the theme of disconnection interrelated ... making for a complicated world Vanishes is a collection of essays and photographs that 192 pages | $20 can/usa in an urban environment from a variety of and illuminating fi ction.”—Tom Wayman together form a lament for, and celebration of, the 978-1-77214-031-6 | Stories | September positions, concerns, and cultural perspectives. 224 pages | $20 can/usa vanishing character homes and apartments in the city. 160 pages | $18 can/usa 978-1-77214-012-5 | Novel | Available Now! 224 pages | $25 can/usa | 978-1-77214-034-7 978-1-77214-032-3 | Poetry | Available Now! Essays, Poems, Photographs | November

Traversing Leonard M Is Dead: Rogues, Rascals, and Scalawags a collaborative novel by Craig Savel Too: More Ne’er-Do-Wells Winner of the 37th Annual by Michael V. Smith, Madeline Sonik, Through the Ages 3-Day Novel Contest Annette Lapointe, Brian Kaufman, by Jim Christy Traversing Leonard is a short, wacky and Mary Ann Never before have as many outrageous and out-sized novel about an eccentric physics prof M Is Dead is a collaborative novel about a characters appeared in one place at the same time. who takes a journey to 1950s New York transgender performance artist known only as Words like rogues, rascals, rapscallions, reprobates and via a quantum time machine. M. Through fi ve narrative threads, M is Dead rodomontades don’t completely describe these 96 pages | $16 can / $14 usa explores gender identity, loss, the notion of individuals; they are more than each or any combina- 978-1-77214-033-0 | Novel | September tion thereof. They are scalawags. [email protected] | www.anvilpress.com friendship, and the idea of “self.” 160 pages | $20 can/usa 224 pages | $20 can/usa 978-1-77214-030-9 | Novel | November 978-1-77214-017-0 | Non-Fiction | September

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Seven prize categories for fiction, poetry, children, illustrated, non-fiction, regional, and booksellers’ choice. Submission deadline is December 1, 2015.

32nd annual April 2016 Nominations open for lifetime achievement award, The Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence. Submission deadline is January 31, 2016.

For submission details visit www.bcbookprizes.ca

DYED IN THE GREEN photo by Mark Mushet BY GEORGE MERCER Book One (of six) in the Annual Non-Fiction Contest first mystery-suspense $1500 in prizes available, plus publication! $34.95 entry fee includes 1 year of EVENT series about Canadian 5,000 word limit national park wardens. Deadline April 15, 2016 Reading Service for Writers ISBN 978-0-9879754-0-9 • $19.99 If you are a new writer, or a writer with a troublesome manuscript, it may be just what you need. www.georgemercer.com Available at Independent Bookstores across Canada. Visit eventmagazine.ca Also available as an ebook from Amazon and Kobo. The best little literary magazine in Canada.

26 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 review FICTION

neighbours, who accepted THREE the explanations with some suspicion but no action. Dani, Courtney and Jess SISTERS wouldn’t have wanted action anyway. It would probably have led to still more foster homes, and another separa- Mom is dead; tion from one another, which Dad’s a drunk; would have devastated them. If only they could have guys are bad; hung on a little longer. Dani was responsible and dreams are sunk could have taken care of them and she was almost of age. Those Girls by Chevy Stevens Jess was a serious, dreamy (St. Martin’s Press / adolescent. But then there Raincoast Books $21.99) was Courtney—sexy, beauti- ful, Courtney, who ran around with the boys, drank, partied O FAR, THE GREATEST and frequently stayed out all danger facing the night. Sthree teenage sis- Then Courteney took up ters in Those Girls, with the wrong man and her after their mother has died, father found out. You could has been their father when Chevy Stevens will appear at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference, October 24-26. say that everything that sub- he reappears on one of his sequently happened was her infrequent trips back from the Columbia’s interior. They could re- neighbours would fault. Alberta oilrigs. Five years earlier they lost lax when their fa- look in on them, The girls lost more than But the world can turn into their home when their mother ther was off on the those girls must their home when they drove an exceptionally nasty place was killed and their father rigs. They could have been excel- away in the old truck with the when you’re young, female, took off, presumably on a five- work hard on the lent liars, as no one gun under the seat. They lost and prone to making very fool- month binge. neighbour’s ranch followed up after their dreams. ish decisions. Each sister was sent to a on the weekends CHERIE seeing the bruises, Dani had dreamt of a se- Dainelle (Dani) is almost separate foster home until and make scant the black eyes and rene home and a marriage to 18, Courtney is 16½, and their father staggered home money stretch for THEISSEN the various injuries her steady beau, Corey, and Jess is about to have her 15th and somehow managed to get food. They could the girls suffered now she had to break up with birthday. them back. The sisters were steal the odd egg, or some whenever their father returned him and invent a reason. They live in an old ranch- happily re-united, but unhap- makeup. They could go about home; not the teachers, not Jess had her precious cam- hand’s house in a small town pily their father was still a their lives. anyone from foster care ser- era and was going to travel called Littlefield in BritishPULP brutal drunk. IT UPWhile occasionally THIS the vices, andFALL! not even those continued on page 29

TRUE TO YOUR ROOTS DECOLONIZE YOUR DIET CASTRO: SUITE FRANÇAISE: Carla Kelly Luz Calvo & A GRAPHIC NOVEL A GRAPHIC NOVEL Catriona Rueda Esquibel Reinhard Kleist Emmanuel Moynot Ugly vegetables, unite! Delicious meat-free recipes in Indigenous Mexican-American cooking: delectable An epic graphic novel on the life of the 20th century’s A stirring graphic novel based on the extraordinary which roots, tubers, and rhizomes take centre stage. recipes for physical and spiritual well-being. most charismatic and divisive characters. bestselling book about Jews in France during WWII. $26.95 $26.95 $22.95 $21.95 978-1-55152-588-4 978-1-55152-592-1 978-1-55152-594-5 978-1-55152-596-9

MOUTHQUAKE A SUPERIOR MAN ALLITERASIAN FOUCAULT AGAINST HIMSELF Daniel Allen Cox Paul Yee Lin, Cho, Wong-Chu, eds. François Caillat; Ricepaper By the author of Shuck: A novel about a boy with a Paul Yee’s first novel for adults: a Chinese man on an An anthology celebrating magazine’s 20th David Homel, trans. A provocative collection of essays on Michel Foucault stutter, and the tangled barbs of repressed memory. epic search in the 19th-century British Columbia. anniversary, including work by Joy Kogawa, SKY Lee, and more. that reframes his legacy. $15.95 $21.95 $21.95 $17.95 978-1-55152-604-1 978-1-55152-590-7 978-1-55152-620-1 978-1-55152-602-7

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27 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 Soviet Princeton Twenty Seven Stings Slim Evans and the 1932–33 Julie Emerson Illustrated by Miners’ Strike Roxanna Bikadoroff Jon Bartlett & Rika Ruebsaat Seventeen poems inspired by the cultural When mine owners slashed wages in histories and military strategies that have Princeton, B.C., the miners called in led us into wars throughout history, from notorious labour activist Slim Evans, who sixth century BCE China to Alexander the led the newly formed union in a dramatic Great to contemporary American months-long battle against the owners, drone warfare. the police, the local board of trade, and the KKK.

Available November 2015. Available November 2015.

Around the World The World, I Guess on Minimum Wage George Bowering Andrew Struthers “A book about the writing life that manages to be affable, astute, and “Struthers breaks new literary pathways cohesive ...George Bowering’s candour is into the genre of travel memoir. Almost beguiling. He gives you a good time with crazily clever...A true trip of the his writing, you feel comfortable, even body, mind and soul.” chummy, in his presence; he’s playful, but — Vancouver Sun then he nails you with some hard truths.” — Vancouver Sun

Andrew Struthers will be reading George Bowering will be appearing at the from Around the World at WORD 2015 Vancouver International Writer’s Vancouver on Sunday, Sep. 27. Fest, which runs Oct. 20–25.

New Star Books Incendiary Poetry & Prose Since 1974 newstarbooks.com | [email protected] | @newstarbooks

People love this book, but not everyone

Oil industry strategists want you to think of Prince Rupert as an “industrial port” or better yet, not think of it at all. Much of the construction needed for a huge oil train terminal at the mouth of the Skeena River has been quietly completed. But the people who live here are sharing their true city which can’t include oil tankers; the harbour, the people, the culture/s, the salmon, and the whales.

“The Salmon Recipes is not so much a cookbook, although it is an excellent one, as a luscious visual and mental experience.” — DOLORES BROTEN, THE WATERSHED SENTINEL

“Both a sweet and gentle reminder that salmon, not oil, made the Pacific northwest’s distinct cultures.” — ANDREW NIKIFORUK, TYEE

Available at local bookstores (Heritage Group Distribution) or online from www.SaveOurSkeenaSalmon.org

28 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 review FICTION A Superior Man by Paul Yee a dead body floating on the (Arsenal Pulp Press $21.95) Fraser River and bury the corpse. Hok wants to return to China to show his success Marilyn Bowering’s To All SEARCHING FOR MARY and achievements; Sam wants Appearances A Lady in 1989 to go to China to find his roots. was a rarity—an adult novel Paul Yee does a wonderful set in B.C. with Chinese char- Paul Yee’s debut adult novel is absorbing and realistic. job describing the striking acters as protagonists. More features of the Fraser River, than twenty-five years later, after its completion to avenge toria, Peter falls Amusements the majestic yet dangerous Lily Chow, one of the leading the deaths of so many Chi- overboard into the and delights com- landscapes at Hell’s Gate, and authorities on the Chinese in nese labourers, as well as the river. Hok cannot mence through the arid and dusty setting of B.C., is enthusiastic about the maiming of many who were swim. He is aston- the conversations Lytton at the confluence of the authenticity and storytelling in then left stranded. ished and ashamed and interactions Fraser and Thompson Rivers. Paul Yee’s first novel for adults, Hence Paul Yee’s title A Su- when a white man between these two The Chinatowns in Yale A Superior Man, that ema- perior Man describes someone saves his son from characters as they and Lytton present a remark- nates from the world of Chinese who is resourceful, ambitious drowning. LILY travel together. able contrast to that of Victo- labourers in the 19th century. and courageous—but not Needing a guide CHOW Hok becomes jeal- ria. In Yale, Chinatown was without problems. upon their arrival ous when he notices peaceful and orderly. In Yale, ANG HOK, PAUL YEE’S Hoks wife Mary left their in Yale, Hok reluctantly ac- Peter is becoming increasingly the reader is introduced to a protagonist, is in- three-year-old son Peter with cepts the recommendation of attached to Sam because “no clever prostitute, named God- troduced as a body- him and disappeared, hoping Soohoo, owner of a brothel, to father should look weak in front dess, who sent men from her guard in a frenzied he would take Peter to China. hire Lewd Bing Sam, a First of his son,” but Hok admires bed beaming with satisfaction. Y Hok believes his son should Nations man with Chinese Sam for being able to perform gambling hall amid the chaos Details of colourful sex and of Victoria’s Chinatown in remain with his mother in or- ancestry who speaks differ- correctly the rituals of showing other sexual encounters — 1885. There were “hordes of der to protect him “from spite- ent Chinese dialects. Sam respect to the Chinese who were including the sexual activities jobless railway men jammed ful stepmothers and humilia- agrees to help Hok and won’t buried in a cemetery, and recit- of other prostitutes, Chinese, into town… [They] ate in cook- tion in China.” Determined to charge a guiding fee on the ing the names of ancestors in First Nations, and whites and houses and vowed to pay later find Mary and deliver Peter to condition that Hok carry his five generations of his Chinese the sexual desires among … [They] lacked passage mon- her, he sets off for Lytton on merchandise. Even though family. Chinese men — are boldly and ey… [They were] kicked out of the Fraser River. Hok believes, “a man with For his part, Hok can hard- frankly presented. their lodgings and napped in On the journey from Vic- self-respect doesn’t ly remember the names of his Yee is also adept at describ- back alleys.” Shouting gam- porter for a mix- extended family members, ing First Nations people, their blers plead for the fan tan blood,” he has no let alone the earlier genera- love of children, especially beads to favour them, yelling choice. tions. The two men retrieve among the female elders, and at the dealers, disputing their the hardship and sufferings winnings with Boss Long (the of the Chinese labourers who cheating owner), leading to bore the brunt of the chal- a riot. lenges in railway construction. Taller than most men, Yang To tell more would be to Hok never feared a fight. Once ruin the plot. a bandit in his home vil- Throughout the narra- lage, Hok wanted to go to the tive, Paul Yee has appropri- States but landed a job as a ately used colloquial dialects, labourer in the CPR construc- slang, and proverbs to reveal tion gangs. From 1881-1885, the ways of thinking and he worked at different jobs, expressions of the Chinese smuggling Chinese labourers old-timers. Many of the Chi- to the States and selling liquor nese proverbs such as “falling at construction campsites. leaves land on the roots” or “at With winnings from gambling, low door bend down” project he had amassed a handsome the dreams and tolerance of bankroll, enough to buy his the sojourners respectfully. ticket home with extra money Besides historical authen- to purchase gifts for family ticity, this novel is replete with members. Chinese culture as indicated He was also literate, savvy by the rituals of preparing and bold. Hok wrote and a dead body for burial and carved out names in Chinese planning a funeral, and by characters on markers for the filial piety and moral val- casualties in makeshift cem- ues of Chinese families. A eteries; he understood that Superior Man is a delightful, giving a Chinese name for a captivating, and lively novel child required the knowledge that is especially welcome for and understanding of the its rare depiction of the fragile traditional naming systems relationship between the Chi- of Chinese families; and he Chinese work gang nese sojourners and the First for the Great Northern once ventured to blow up a Nations people. 978-1-55152-590-7 bridge supported by trestles, Railway, circa 1909 with a fellow-worker, soon Lily Chow lives in Victoria.

People do very bad things identities. Dani becomes Dallas, Courtney becomes THOSE GIRLS Crystal and Jess becomes Jamie. continued from page 27 in Chevy Stevens’ books. Nine months later, it all unravels into another and be a photographer. Until her camera was ripped nightmare. from her hands and smashed on the ground along ✫ with her future. dren and Family Development (foster care services) CHEVY STEVENS, RENE UNISCHEWSKI’S PEN NAME, NOT Courtney had been going to hit the big city and don’t get high marks. And kindly Sergeant Gibbs in surprisingly, was inspired by Stephen King. She break into the music world. She had the voice, the Littlefield should have sent Courteney to the hospital lives on Vancouver Island with her husband and looks and the guitar. Until she had to sell the guitar when he saw the burn on her face. daughter, having made a very successful transition for money to help the sisters get away and use her Balanced with all the evil and ineptitude, how- from a realtor to a writer of thrillers, penning Still good looks for more nefarious purposes. ever, there are heroes. There’s the pub owner in Cash Missing in 2010, which won the International Thriller People do very bad things in Chevy Stevens’ Creek, Allen, and his son, Owen, who help “those Award for Best First Novel, and was a New York books. Once again, the foster parents, the fathers girls” when they are again running away—this time Times bestseller. Her books have been published in and the strangers in Those Girls are often despicable. from an even worse situation than the first time. more than 30 countries. 978-1-250-03458-8 Or incredibly inept. Patrick and his wife, Karen, give the Campbell The Cash Creek police and the Ministry of Chil- sisters a new lease on life in Vancouver, with new Cherie Thiessen reviews fiction from Pender Island.

29 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 Uncharted Waters Uncharted Waters The Explorations of José Narváez (1768–1840) The Explorations of José Narváez (1768–1840) Jim McDowell

The first complete biography of the overlooked Spanish mariner who explored much of the Pacific Northwest Coast, mapped the entire Salish Sea, including Vancouver harbour, one year before Captain Vancouver arrived, and then contributed to the formation of Mexico. With 40 b&w photos and maps.

JIM McDOWELL 978-1-55380-434-5 (PRINT) 978-1-55380-435-2 (EBOOK) 300 pp $24.95

Live Souls Hannah & the Wild Woods Citizens and Volunteers of Civil War Spain Carol Anne Shaw Serge Alternês & Alec Wainman In the third novel in the series, Hannah is on the This memoir by a medical volunteer in the Spanish West Coast cleaning up refuse from the Japanese Civil War, along with 240 of his b&w photos, was long tsunami of 2011 when a mysterious Japanese girl with a secret past as a spirit fox appears, longing Citizensitizens andand VVoolunteersolu of Civil War Spain thought to be lost. Now recovered, it gives a stirring SERGE ALLTTERTERNÊS & ALEC WWAAINMAN account of the opening act of WWII. for mortality. 978-1-55380-440-6 (PRINT) 978-1-55380-437-6 (PRINT) / 978-1-55380-438-3 (EBOOK) 978-1-55380-441-3 (EBOOK) 276 pp $11.95 325 pp 7-3/4 X 8-7/8 $24.95

The De Cosmos Enigma Hope’s Journey Gordon Hawkins Jean Rae Baxter A fascinating account of B.C.’s second premier, The fifth novel in the “Forging a Nation” series the man who did much to unify the two Pacific sees Hope Cobman in 1791 searching for her colonies and bring B.C. into Confederation — father and brothers who fought for the British. but who is now largely forgotten. Little does she know she must help them THE 978-1-55380-353-9 (PRINT) recover from the wounds of war. ENIGMA 978-1-55380-354-6 (EBOOK) 978-1-55380-446-8 (PRINT) GORDON HAWKINS 170 pp $17.95 978-1-55380-447-5 (EBOOK) 238 pp $11.95

FootstepsF ttt Footsteps of the Past The Journal of the past Philip Resnick Lois Donovan These poems reflect on the modern human Kami, a 13-year-old Japanese-Canadian girl, is condition, probing its cultural and political thrown back in time to 1929 where she meets her underpinnings with cool detachment and hero, Emily Murphy of the “Famous Five,” and unrelenting honesty. discovers racism even among those who are most 978-1-55380-431-4 (PRINT) progressive. 978-1-55380-432-1 (EBOOK) 978-1-55380-350-8 (PRINT) PHILIP RESNICK 116 pp $15.95 978-1-55380-351-5 (EBOOK) 204 pp $11.95

The Arrow of Time Eco Warrior Bruce Meyer Philip Roy In these poems, Meyer explores how a random The seventh volume in the “Submarine Outlaw”

element — love, beauty or desire — changes the series follows Alfred in his homemade submarine flow of events, allowing us to gain small victo- to the Southern Ocean where he joins Paul ries in life’s challenges. Watson of the Sea Shepherd Society in fighting 978-1-55380-428-4 (PRINT) off the Japanese whalers. 978-1-55380-429-1 (EBOOK) 978-1-55380-347-8 (PRINT) 112 pp $15.95 978-1-55380-348-5 (EBOOK) 234 pp $11.95

Goethe’s Goethe’s Poems Mouse Pet Poems Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Story: Philip Roy / Art: Andrea Torrey Balsara Translated by Graham Good The third volume in the “Happy the Pocket Mouse” series tells how Happy informs John that he wants Following on from his best-selling translation a most unusual pet, and then decides that the pet of Rilke’s poems, Graham Good offers a splendid STORY BY Philip Roy ART BY Andrea Torrey Balsara needs a pet. What or who will it be? rendering into English of the poems of Germany’s Shakespeare. 978-1-55380-443-7 (HC) FULL COLOUR Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 978-1-55380-356-0 (PRINT) TRANSLATED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 32 pp 9 X 9 $12.95 Graham Good 978-1-55380-357-7 (EBOOK) 186 pp $18.95

Available from your favourite bookstore or order from PGC/Raincoast Ronsdale Press Visit our website: www.ronsdalepress.com

30 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 review TEENLIT BUMBLING TRUTHS

Robin Stevenson’s 18th book in less than a decade combines family tension and humour to illuminate the plight of bees.

The Summer We Saved nature—stops talking altogether. the Bees by Robin Stevenson After a brief performance (Orca $9.95) tour of Vancouver, where the family stays with friends from Jade’s university days, the van HERE’S NOTHING LIKE JAM- breaks down in Chilliwack, leav- ming a stocky, unwill- ing the group stranded, broke Ting pre-teen boy into and camped out on a friendly a bumblebee costume stranger’s lawn. On the heels of to generate first-rate literary their Vancouver gig, Wolf draws tension. the line on dressing up like a Especially when said boy is bee, and defends Whisper from being strong-armed into stag- having to do so as well. ing public performances in the As his mother presses single- interests of communicating a mindedly on with the perfor- dire eco-political message. mances, Wolf begins to doubt Oh, it’s dire, all both her informa- right. The bees are tion (maybe things dying, and nobody aren’t as bad as Jade seems able to stop it. claims?) and her mo- Twelve-year-old Wolf tives (why does she Everett, protagonist care more about the of Robin Steven- bees than about us?). son’s The Summer ALEX Whisper is unwell, We Saved the Bees VAN TOL nobody is happy, and knows all about it; he Jade doesn’t even did a website project on it last hear Wolf when he tries to tell year. What Wolf didn’t anticipate her it’s not working. was his activist mother explod- The tension mounts until ing his project into a summer- finally Wolf, Violet and Ty hatch long guerrilla-theatre-fest in an a plan to better protect the attempt to spread a distinctly twins from their mother’s blind alarmist message across the crusade: they will catch the country. Greyhound to Nelson, and ferry As an environmental activ- the twins to the safety of their ist, Wolf’s mum Jade thinks it’s paternal grandmother. What up to her family—her boyfriend they aren’t banking on is their Curtis, Wolf, his step-sister grandmother’s unwillingness to Violet, and twin half-sisters be a co-conspirator in their plot. Whisper and Saffron—to save ✫ the bees. And it’s not like Wolf WHILE THE BOOK—ROBIN STEVENSON’S can argue; while he’s ticked at eighteenth since her first book having been pulled out of school in 2007—is anchored in the and crammed into a stinky, bees’ plight, the award-winning biodiesel-powered van with five author acknowledges it’s less other people for weeks on end, about the bees than it is about his problems pale in compari- families, and how we can lose son to the epic crop failure and sight of what’s happening right widespread starvation that his now because we’re so focused on mother is prophesying. our fears about the future. Or so he keeps telling himself. “I think it’s easy to under- As the family’s trip hitches and estimate how much a parent’s stalls its way across British Co- world view can affect a child,” lumbia, the emotional toll erodes says Stevenson. “Kids need to Wolf’s belief that they’re actually feel safe, secure, and protected— doing the right thing. His friends not protected from the world back home think his mother’s or from learning, but protected a crazy zealot; the van breaks from being overwhelmed by the down almost as soon as the tires concerns and fears of the adults hit the road; 14-year-old Violet in their lives.” seethes under what she sees as It’s important to foster a PHOTO a prison sentence (not even her sense of hopefulness and op- tagalong boyfriend, Ty, can skip timism about our children’s SAWCHUK Robin Stevenson her out of her funk); and six- future and the future of their

LAURA year-old Whisper—a quiet kid by continued on page 32

31 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 A forensic librarian reads between the lines to solve a mystery. review TEENLIT

“A lush, atmospheric The Way Back by Carrie Mac (Orca $9.95) children by a B.C. author, a New York novel that Times bestseller and winner of the Wil- combines liam C. Morris YA Debut Award. Hart- literary detective Carrie Mac’s experiences in the Down- man’s 596-page sequel Shadow Scale work, romance town Eastside continue to fuel her continues to follow the half-dragon, and international work. Homelessness, addiction, teen half-human Seraphina as she struggles flair.” pregnancy and crime are the backdrop to unite the kingdom of Goredd by first looking for half-breed brethren. • for her latest novel, The Way Back, in Born in Kentucky in 1972, Rachel KIRKUS which Colby Wyatt is alone, homeless REVIEW and addicted to meth. Taken in by her Hartman is a cellist and former book- friend Gigi’s grandma, she joins the seller with a degree in comparative lit- family business, a pawnshop where erature. She has lived in Philadelphia, Colby, Gigi and Gigi’s brother keep Chicago, St. Louis, England and Japan WATERMARK: The truth beneath the surface by Sari Sikstrom the shelves stocked by breaking into prior to arriving with her family to live 978-1497398740 • $10 • www.sarisikstrom.com • www.amazon.ca houses and stealing things. When in Vancouver in 2003. 978-0-38566-860-6 Colby discovers she’s pregnant, she Ten Ships That Rocked the World swears she’ll get clean, keep the baby by Gillian Richardson (Annick $14.95) and have a real family. Checking into rehab, Colby is determined to make things work and save Gigi at the same Former teacher- time, but sometimes no matter how librarian Gillian much you want something, it doesn’t Richardson of work out. Carrie Mac’s previous book Shuswap Lake, was The Opposite of Tidy from Penguin near Sorrento, Books. She has now released eleven B.C., won the 2010 titles in ten years. 9781459807150 Science Writing Award from the Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman American Institute We have a (Doubleday $23) Gillian Richardson huge inventory of of Physics for her book Kaboom! Explosions of All Kinds. FIRST NATIONS titles, Rachel Hartman’s first fantasy novel Richardson’s latest book, Ten Ships plus virtually every local Seraphina (Doubleday 2012) was a That Rocked the World is a fascinat- history written in B.C. finalist for the Sheila A. Egoff Chil- ing introduction for young readers to: Please visit me at dren’s Literature Prize awarded to the ancient treasure ships from China; 1818 Quebec St. (by appointment only), best non-illustrated book written for Vasco da Gama’s Sao Gabriel; convicts Vancouver, near Main, near the Olympic taken from England to Australia on the Village. Text or email for an appointment Lady Penrhyn; the USS Susquehanna [email protected] that sailed to Japan in the 1800s; the Civil War submersible H.L. Hunley; the Komagata Maru that brought Sikhs as would-be immigrants to British Colum- bia; the SS Exodus 1947 that played a key role in the creation of Israel; the OUT NOW FROM  Granma hired by Fidel Castro that led BAYEUX ARTS to his overthrow of the dictator Batista in Cuba (even though the voyage of the Granma resulted in a botched landing); A BITTERSWEET TALE the Rainbow Warrior that was essential OF LOVE for the creation of Greenpeace and the _IJ oil tanker Sirius Star that was hijacked 33 between a Cree woman and off the east coast of Africa. DGHVFHQGDQWRIWKH¿UVW Ten Ships That Rocked the World is woman to arrive, disguised illustrated by Kim Rosen. Rachel Hartman as a man, to work for the 978-1-55451-444-1 Hudson’s Bay Company from the Orkney Islands, woven into a web of legends, ancient continued from page 31

ĥĥĥĥ_ wisdom, politics, intrigue, BEES and redemption. world, she says, rather than constantly wringing our hands about the mess ,6%1 that surrounds us. DISTRIBUTED BY LPG AND UNIVERSITY Conflicted, tender, and frustrated as hell, Wolf is a truly likable character CHICAGO PRESS DISTRIBUTION OF whose heart and values are squarely in the right place. Peppered with real facts about bee depopulation—how there are no bees in one part of China and workers have to hand-pollinate plants; how the pesticides our current monoculture practices demand are decimating bee populations—the book gently educates while at the same time raising key ethical questions. Stella Leventoyannis Harvey Does the threat of crop failure trump the wellbeing of a family? Is it better to save the bees, or to restore some balance to the family in order to ease The Brink Whisper’s anxiety? Sure, the twins look adorable in their bee costumes, but of Freedom Wolf feels that forcing them to hand out flyers to strangers on the street is not worth Whisper’s meltdowns. Wolf just wishes his mother could see it, too. But she’s too far gone, her head firmly in the clouds of her singular mission. “I think adults and kids will take different things away from this book,” says Stevenson. “I hope adults will be thinking and talking about how we When a well-meaning Canadian aid worker can support kids who are interested in activism without letting adult agendas in Greece takes a refugee boy into her care, she become the driving force.” finds herself jailed and accused of kidnapping. Perfect for a class novel study, The Summer We Saved the Bees will spark Harvey’s new novel balances the politics conversations about family relationships as well as how to live with a lighter of the moment with rich, deep character footprint. But it will also open the door to talking about environmental con- development. cerns in a way that supports hopefulness and a belief in human ingenuity and resilience, rather than simply adding to the fast-growing epidemic of childhood anxiety. 9781459808348

Alex Van Tol’s latest book is Aliens Among Us: Invasive www.signature-editions.com - 978-1927426-76-0 $22.95 - EBook: 978-1927426-77-7 $9.95 Animals and Plants In B.C. (Royal B.C. Museum).

32 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 ART Jack Akroyd

SWIMMING AGAINST THE TIDE OF A BACKWATER

n March of 1996, Jack Akroyd had a massive heart attack Iwhile riding home on the bus from a movie. He was seventy-five years old. Peter Busby’s The Life and Art of Jack Akroyd (Mother Tongue $35.95) brings Akroyd’s work back to life. A half century ago, Vancouver wasn’t especially kind to avant-garde artists. Busby describes it as a “defensive, narrow-minded and cheap” provincial backwater. Yet Vancouver provided Akroyd with a supportive group of fellow artists liv- ing in the Kitsilano area in the early 1960s including sculptors Paul Huba, Elek Imredy and David Marshall, photographer Jack Dale and painters George Fertig and Frank Molnar. As former Vancouver Sun arts critic Max Wyman notes, we are left with a glimpse of Akroyd’s corner of this backwater “…and a glimpse, too, of A photo-conceptual work called Monologue by Jeff Wall (240.0 x 282.3 cm) 2013. the groundwork that was being laid for the creative powerhouse the city Wall-to-wall Wall was to become.” 978-1-896949-43-7 “His work encompasses the heroic and the banal, the kitsch and the lyrical, the epic and the miniature.” — Melissa Denes, The Guardian

OMETIMES REGARDED ArtsNews named him one of the A retrospective of Wall’s work, Jeff internationally as one of world’s 10 Best Living Artists and he Wall Photographs 1978-2004, featured the world’s leading con- was touted as “Canada’s most famous 50 works at the Tate Modern art mu- temporary artists, Jef- living artist” by The Globe & Mail news- seum in London in 2005. frey David ‘Jeff’ Wall paper in 1999. His art has resulted in Now Jeff Wall: North & West (Fig- is a photo-conceptualist exhibitions at MoMa in New York and ure 1 $25), a book-length catalogue to Sborn in Vancouver in 1946. Wall has the Art Institute of Chicago. accompany the inaugural exhibition at called Vancouver home for all but four Wall will reputedly spend up to a Whistler’s Audain Art Museum in No- years of his life. Wall studied at UBC year composing a single photographic vember, 2015, explores the themes of and the Courtauld Institute in England tableaux--see example above--but history and memory with text by Aaron where he was exposed to the work of many of his huge, backlit Cibachrome Peck. In a nutshell, “Urban landscapes Degas, Manet and Gericault. He then transparencies (photographs) of con- constantly change but the remnants of taught at the Nova Scotia College of Art trived scenes, indoor and outdoor, the past remain and history’s influence for a year before returning to Vancou- leave the average Joe and Jill scratch- never ends.” Nearly all the images were Detail of Jack Akroyd’s ver to teach at SFU (1976-1987) and ing their heads, wondering what the created in and around Vancouver. First Nations Art Show at the Bay UBC (1987-1999). fuss is about. 978-1-927958-48-3 (gouache on paper) 1969. Graphic internment romance

rtist and heritage expert Michael Kluckner has turned a new page for his first graphic novel, Toshiko (Midtown $19.95). Set during World War II, Toshiko Yesaki and her cousin have been sent to B.C.’s inte- rior from ‘Japtown’ in Vancouver due to the internment of Japanese Canadians. They go to school and also work on Calhoun Farm near Aan unfriendly town [Salmon Arm] where most residents view them as enemies. But one of Toshiko’s classmates is curious and sympathetic about the exile of Japanese- Canadians, and romance develops. “Remember Romeo and Juliet in the first term?” she says, during one of their secret meetings. “That’s us.” The scandal of this rela- tionship between Toshiko and a local boy, nicknamed Cowboy, who doubles as the novel’s narrator, pushes the couple out of B.C.’s interior and back to Vancouver when his racist father objects. The two love-struck teenage runaways know they will be forced to face the racial, moral and social realities of wartime Canada but they head to the coast anyway. Klckner notes there was a Calhoun Farm, on Carlin Road, in the Tappen Valley, near Shuswap Lake, where Henry and Hilda Calhoun welcomed Japanese Canadian families during the internment. Most were the extended family of Kumazo Nagata of Mayne Island. Kluckner’s teenage characters are fictional, but Cowboy’s side of the story is partly inspired by an acquaintance, born in 1934, who Panel from the graphic novel Toshiko by Michael Kluckner worked on the Calhoun Farm in 1952. 978-0-9881101-7-5

33 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 WWW.LIBROSLIBERTAD.CA ★ WWW.LIBROSLIBERTAD.CA ★ WWW.LIBROSLIBERTAD.CA ★ WWW.LIBROSLIBERTAD.CA EXCITING NEW FALL BOOKS! ★ ★ THE LITERARY STOREFRONT: The Glory Years Vancouver’s Literary Centre 1978-1985 Trevor Carolan | Foreword by Jean Barman 978-1-896949-52-9 | 7 x 9 | 252 pages | 130 b&w photos | $29.95 “Lively, full of anecdotes, Carolan’s commentary clarifies that the Storefront was a forerunner for so much that followed. It fills a memory gap in Vancouver’s literary history.” ––DAPHNE MARLATT “The pioneer work of Mona Fertig and the Storefront greatly inspired Simon Fraser University’s work.”–ANN COWAN, FOUNDER OF THE SFU WRITING AND PUBLISHING PROGRAM

Founded by poet Mona Fertig, the legendary Literary Storefront ZDV&DQDGD·VÀUVWQRQSURÀWOLWHUDU\FHQWUHDQGÁRXULVKHGLQ 9DQFRXYHU·VFRORXUIXO*DVWRZQGLVWULFW7KH6WRUHIURQWKRXVHGWKHUHJLRQDORIÀFHVRI 7KH:ULWHUV· Union of Canada, The League of Canadian Poets, an editing & printing company, and was the birthplace RI WKH)HGHUDWLRQRI %&:ULWHUV5LFKLQVWRULHV&DURODQ·VPDVWHUIXODFFRXQWEULQJVDOLYHWKHSDVVLRQV origins, achievements and tribulations of this visionary literary institution. Margaret Atwood, Lawrence EROTOKRITOS Ferlinghetti, Joy Kogawa, Stephen Spender, Edward Albee, Dorothy Livesay, Douglas Coupland, Eliza- $20 [For Collectors of Rare Books] beth Smart, and Tom Ilves, now President of Estonia are some of the hundreds of writers who passed Poetry by Vitsentzos Kornaros. CARESSING MYTHS through its doors. A must read for lovers of BC and CanLit! Poems by Dina Georgantopoulos. Translated by Manolis Transcribed by Manolis ISBN: 9781926763378 ISBN: 9781926763361 LAUNCHES: October 10, Vancouver, 303 East 8th, 7:00 pm November 7, Salt Spring Island with Theresa Kishkan-Lions’ Club, 7:30 pm

B BDI=:GIDC

PATRIN Theresa Kishkan 978-1-896949-51-2 | 5.5 x 7.75 | 142 pages | $17.95 “A jewel of a novella!” “Follow Patrin on her delicate trail into the heart of old Europe, where time is one with experience--and experience is a satisfying feast for the senses.”–PAULINE HOLDSTOCK,

Patrin Szkandery, a young woman living in Victoria BC in the 1970s, restores an ancient quilt and travels to Czechoslovakia to trace her Roma history over the unsettling terrain of central Europe in the years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

LAUNCH: September 19, Sunshine Coast Arts Centre, Sechelt, 7pm $20 $20 HEAR ME OUT HOURS OF THE STARS Poems by Tzoutzi Mantzourani. Translated by Manolis Poetry by Dimitris Liantinis. Translated by Manolis ISBN: 9781926763408 ISBN: 9781926763415 mothertonguepublishing.com Heritage Group Distribution 1- 800-665-3302 WWW.LIBROSLIBERTAD.CA ★ WWW.LIBROSLIBERTAD.CA ★ WWW.LIBROSLIBERTAD.CA ★ WWW.LIBROSLIBERTAD.CA

Cleaner, Greener, Healthier A Prescription for Stronger Canadian Environmental Laws and Policies David Boyd

Award-winning author David Boyd prescribes an antidote to the environmental hazards threatening the health of Canadians.

Boyd provides a clear and convincing David Boyd’s remarkably set of recommendations for smarter insightful book reveals our environmental policies that could government’s abdication of its save thousands of lives and billions responsibility to protect human ““of dollars every year. If politicians and health from environmental policymakers adopted Boyd’s advice, threats ... Boyd lays out a Canada would be a much cleaner, compelling blueprint for enabling greener, healthier country. Canada to catch up with world – David Suzuki leaders in environmental health. – Maude Barlow

www.ubcpress.ca stay connected thought that counts

34 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 THEATRE Money is our underlying great divide

Co-written and co-performed by two friends, Winners and Losers has been described by the New York Times as “a frisky theatrical symposium” and “articulate, funny and breezily charming.”

Marcus Youssef and James Long performing Winners and Losers at the Soho Rep in New York City, 2014.

IKE SO MANY FRIENDS, ages of women who resemble his wife. immigrant, he comes from a privileged Marcus could inherit. The audience is James and Marcus Okay, so these guys definitely aren’t background. His father helped him buy left wondering whether such a promise as smart as they think they are. Or a house. was ever made in ‘real life,’ and whether are certain they have are we supposed to admire them for James wears $200 jeans but he or not this act of generosity arising from L rents. James’ father was an ex-cop guilt will ever come to pass. interesting conversations. being so brave? The awkwardness of a faux wres- who called his wife Shithead in front of We have to ask ourselves: If the They invent a parlour game tling skirmish contrasts with the con- his sons. Marcus has cocktail smarts, promise to share the wealth has not in which they toss out sub- ceit that their dialogue is unrehearsed, enabling him to schmooze at parties been seriously made off-stage, and if so we start to look askance. But our at the American consulate, whereas this promise is therefore a theatrical jects at random and judge inclination to distance ourselves from James tells a story about hanging out contrivance, does that make Winners them as winners or losers. this onslaught of male posturing sud- with First Nations guys in a bar, almost and Losers into a phoney play? denly evaporates as soon as our debat- getting into a fight, thereby boasting This intrigue—even if it’s inadver- Mother Teresa, Marilyn Monroe, ers start to talk seriously and candidly about his street smarts. tent on their part—sets our minds Sylvia Plath, Pamela Anderson. Mi- about money. We want to accept James’ argument racing in new directions. What is going crowave ovens, Mexico, Canada. Win- It’s at this point that Winners and that privileged Marcus works with to happen to this relationship between ner or loser? Losers shifts into a higher COPE out of residual James and Marcus now that it has As both are well-connected theatre gear, and none too soon. guilt. But then Marcus been redefined in terms of class war- professionals, they decide to transform The late Jane Rule, What is going to points out that the com- fare? If play ends with the two friends their two-man debating game into a a novelist and moralist, bined income for James’ estranged from one another, and angry, two-man play called Winners and Los- used to say that money happen to this household is $120,000 could that be for real? ers (Talonbooks $16.95) during which is something that peo- per year. This informa- We are most grateful when they they will appear to debate the pros and ple should discuss more relationship... tion pops the bubble of retain this adversarial distance dur- cons of, well, just about anything. openly, more often. It’s the staged conflict. ing the curtain call, rather than hug- After drawing a chalk rectangle, the a huge part of life and now that it has Obviously both men ging one another and grinning at the actors and co-authors Marcus Youssef yet, in many households, are leading comfortable audience. But how much of the verbal and James Long, casually dressed, it’s kept secret. In keep- been redefined lives compared to most boxing is bogus? simulate off-the-cuff debates on a bare ing with the mandate of people in the Downtown It ends up being a fascinating, dis- stage, sitting across from each other at James Long’s company, in terms of Eastside community in turbing and original experience. a table, using that table for a ping pong Theatre Replacement—to which the play was pre- It is easy to imagine a second act for game to seven points, then removing build performances that class warfare? sented during the PuSh Winners and Losers, introducing wives it entirely. react to contemporary Festival (in the revamped and children, during which one of the They accept one topic per night from existence—Winners and Woodward’s complex), friends is forced to consider saving the the audience to appear spontaneous. Losers is ground-break- but anyone who has the other from financial ruin. Lack of a conventional plot makes the ing when these two friends honestly smarts to successfully earn a full-time More importantly, Winners and audience nervous. As they barge ahead debate their economic differences. living as an artist is, when one stops Losers forces us to imagine ourselves into world politics and history, we begin Both men live on the east side of to consider the number of people who having similarly invasive encounters to worry these two guys might not be Vancouver. Both are married with two would like to do so, a relative aristocrat. with our own friends. quite as smart as they like to think children. One drives a Mazda, the other Our truth-daring creative types are You know who your friends are, they are. a Toyota. They appear to be theatrical doing quite nicely, flying off to festivals, sings Chrissie Hynde. They’re the ones Their opinions are just not that brethren. But their economic differ- etc., so their attempts to claim the higher who want you to go far. So who are interesting. Stephen Harper is called ences lead them to make accusatory moral ground over one another are argu- your real friends? And why don’t more a winner, without any debate. Being attacks. ably contrived. But, for that matter, on people decide to share their assets? guys, they each open a beer and their Marcus’s father has been the vice- a larger demographic scale, most people Rather than lend money to friends, banter turns into a proverbial pissing president of a Canadian bank. Even who can afford to live in Vancouver are why not give? contest. They attack one another’s in- though Marcus likes to shop for clothes part of an elite constituency. The further away we get from the tegrity. Who is more inventive? at Value Village, and he works as a Forced to admit that he comes from performance, the more the content of They try to outdo each other with community activist for COPE, his fam- a monied background, Marcus agrees Winners and Losers enriches our lives. confessional candour, discussing ily has easy access to airplane tickets to give James some of his inheritance. If you see this play you will want to their masturbation techniques. One and he is going to inherit lots of dough. Unfortunately it is not specified how talk about it immediately. It’s a winner. says he likes to masturbate using im- Although he is the son of an Egyptian much will be given, or how much money 978-0-88922-932-7

35 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 Queen of the review Godforsaken Mix Hart POETRY Prairie summers don’t last forever...

“Mix Hart is a stunning new voice in young adult fiction, with memorable characters and 438 DAYS IN SPACE a fine balance of wry humour and complex themes for mature A round-up of recent and forthcoming poetry titles audiences.” — Beverley Brenna N SHERYDA WARRENER’S SECOND John Pass’ Forecast: Selected Early

$15.95 | Ages 13+ poetry collection Floating is Ev- Poems, 1970-1990 (Harbour $18.95) ISBN 9781771870634 erything (Nightwood $18.95), a includes out-of-print poems that ru- Represented by Ampersand Inc. | Distributed by University of Toronto Press retired cosmonaut returns from minate around the potential of travel, a record-breaking 438 days in an orchard he cares for, evolving rela- Ispace and attempts to re-immerse him- tionships, house-building, becoming a self in the world; Morrissey and Cindy poet, husband and father. Pass’ Stum- Available in bookstores October 1st | www.thistledownpress.com Sherman make cameo appearances; bling in the Bloom (Oolichan, 2005) won and influence and personal lineage are a Governor General’s Award. He lives traced back to the Vikings. Warrener’s on the Sunshine Coast. 978-1-55017-731-2 work has previously been shortlisted ✫ for the Robert Kroetsch Award for In- Having lived for several years in Lar- novative Poetry. She teaches at UBC. issa and Thessaloniki, Greece, Russell 978-088971-315-4 Thornton has included poems set in ✫ the eastern Mediterranean for his sixth Cosmophila by Vancouver’s Rahat collection, The Hundred Lives (Quat- Kurd (Talon $16.95) is drawn tro $18).Some of his previous from the poet’s memories of time work has appeared in Greek spent with her family in Kash- translation in the anthologies Foreign Language Poems on A LONG WALK FROM THE PRAIRIES mir and contemplations of tra- Revised Edition ditional Kashmiri handicrafts, Thessaloniki (Kedros, Athens, family history, and Islamic 1997), Into a Foreign Tongue imagery, and reflections on liv- Goes Our Grief: Poems On or ing and walking in Vancouver After Cavafy (Bilieto, Peania, Philip Resnick through the end of a marriage. 2000) and Thessalonki: A City Rahat Kurd has studied Arabic, Urdu, in Literature (Metaixmio, Athens, 2002). Farsi, Spanish, German and French. 978-1-927443-68-2 She was a finalist for the Gwendolyn ✫ MacEwen Poetry Prize in 2014. Cur- Footsteps of the Past (Ronsdale

BETH ROWLES SCOTT rently Kurd is working on a memoir $15.95) by Philip Resnick is a medita- about the making of Muslim culture tion on the modern human condition. in North America. 9780889229464 Resnick uses critical political insights ✫ and cultural and philosophical Road to Recovery Pinch Me ͲZĞǀŝƐĞĚĚŝƟŽŶ Born in Victoria, Elizabeth ideas to reflect on the wounds Following Your A Long Walk from the Prairies Ross completed an MFA in cre- that chronic illness and disabil- Motor Vehicle Accident ĞƚŚZŽǁůĞƐ^ĐŽƩ ative writing at UBC and has ity instill. He even references Lawrence Matrick MD The memoir of an educator been a poetry editor of PRISM “Je suis Charlie.” 978-1-55380-431-4 A Psychiatrist’s guide to help who, in 1977, became the only International. Her first book of ✫ motor vehicle accident (MVA) female principal of a secondary poetry, Kingdom (Palimpsest Make It True: Poetry from ǀŝĐƟŵƐĐŽƉĞǁŝƚŚƚŚĞƐƚƌĞƐƐŽĨ ƐĐŚŽŽůŝŶ͘/ŶϭϵϵϯƐŚĞĐŽͲ Press $18.95), takes a confes- Cascadia (Leaf Press $30) con- the medical and legal processes founded ACCES, a NGO that Elizabeth Ross ahead, providing the reader helps thousands of Kenyans to sional approach in which she tains writing from Cascadia, the bioregion lying west of the continental ǁŝƚŚŚŽƉĞĂŶĚŽƉƟŵŝƐŵ͘ ĂĐƋƵŝƌĞĂŶĞĚƵĐĂƟŽŶ͘ asks questions and argues with the answers. In Prayer, Ross asks for all divide and spanning from Mt. Logan in Ψϭϲ͘ϵϱͬƉĂƉĞƌďĂĐŬ Ψϭϵ͘ϵϱͬƉĂƉĞƌďĂĐŬ things a ‘good girl’ should aspire to Canada to the north and Cape Men- 978-1-926991-42-9 978-1-926991-76-4 be: “Raise me to cook a healthy diet. docino in California to the south. Edited ϱ͘ϱdžϴ͘ϱŝŶ͘ʹϭϰϰƉĂŐĞƐ ϲdžϵŝŶ͘ʹϮϭϰƉĂŐĞƐ To write thank you letters. To set and by Paul Nelson, with George Stanley, e-book 978-1-926991-78-8 e-book 978-1-926991-77-1 unset the table. Carry things. Fetch Barry McKinnon and Nadine Maestas, ǁǁǁ͘ůĂǁƌĞŶĐĞŵĂƚƌŝĐŬ͘ĐŽŵ ǁǁǁ͘ĂĐĐĞƐŬĞŶLJĂ͘ŽƌŐ things….” She continues her wish list the collection is an attempt to take back Order from your local bookstore or online to include avoiding boyfriends with long poetry culture from the trance cast by hair, to learn how to teach pop, consumer and indus- www.granvilleislandpublishing.com herself and how to respect try-generated culture. New Authors are always welcome! others, but ends with the 978-1-926655-81-9 cryptical, “Teach me ✫ [email protected] how to tell a lie.” Mayne Island’s Tel: 604-688-0320 Toll Free: 1-877-688-0320 Follow @GIPLbooks 978-1-926794-24-2 Julie Emer- ✫ son’s Twenty Michael Turner’s Seven Stings Kingsway (Arse- (New Star nal Pulp $14.95) $18) is a suite I Want Threshold is being re-is- of poems that by Joseph A. Dandurand An encounter with the Hebridean bard sued for a 20th pursue aspects Mairi MacLeod anniversary edi- of war, the rules "I am here / this pen to paper / tion that includes of warfare; the proves it yet again." So writes Joseph by Marilyn Bowering a new essay and roles of women as Dandurand, First Nations man in The words of Threshold are plain, as pawns or inspira- mid life, survivor, man recovering, photographs by the bare and pregnant as the stones of a father, lover, man still standing. author. First published tions; battles, and ruined croft. Marilyn Bowering unites Dandurand writes out of deep love in 1995, Kingsway is a the use of poisons her voice with the life and words of and commitment to the land, to his collection of linked po- and bees as weap- a silenced, exiled female poet who ancestors, to his people, to his kids, ems that revolve around ons. Illustrated by speaks across three centuries. Xan who grow up without abuse. Vancouver’s oldest thor- Roxanna Bikadoroff. Shian’s photographs face this world oughfare. 9781554201075 150 pp | 978-1-926655-79-6 | $20.00 of extremes and change with a 9781551526263 Cover art timeless and contemporary eye. by Brandon Gabriel photographs by Xan Shian leafpress.ca 64 pp 978-1-926655-88-8 $20.00 publishing poetry leafpress.ca only publishing poetry only Sheryda Warrener

36 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 William Deverell

Marie Annharte Baker Stephen Osborne Mary Schendlinger

BRITISH COLUMBIA lish literature and a diploma in fine is for Annharte Baker arts. Födi lives in Vancouver where he A is the facilitator and mentor for Dream Workshop, a program designed to un- Marie Annharte Baker is the inaugu- leash the creative energies of children. ral winner of the $5000 Blue Metropolis 978-1-927018-29-3 First People’s Literary Prize, mainly for her 2012 poetry collection, Indigena Awry (New Star, 2012). Born in 1942, G is for Geist she was raised as a neglected child in Winnipeg. Her alcoholic mother Who’s Who Co-founder of Pulp Press in 1971, disappeared when she was nine. After Stephen Osborne became the found- studying at universities in Brandon, the first book to examine the grammar influenced Canada’s ing editor and publisher of Geist Vancouver and Minneapolis (centre of of this language, covering all aspects hydro-electric de- Magazine in 1990. Osborne and editor the American Indian Movement), she of linguistic structure – phonology, velopment and ex- Mary Schendlinger have now handed split from an abusive husband and morphology, and syntax. Eung-Do (Ed) pansion and led to over the reins to publisher and editor- turned to social work and activism. A Cook was born in Seosan, Chung-Nam the introduction of in-chief Michal Kozlowski who first former Vancouverite, Annharte Baker Province, Korea, in 1935. He received greater government worked at Geist in 2006. Geist has is Anishinabe from the Little Saskatch- his PhD in linguistics from the Univer- controls. Evenden won some two dozen awards, including ewan First Nations. sity of Alberta. 978-0-7748-2516-0 is a co-leader of The (three times) Magazine of the Year for Matthew Evenden Water History Proj- Western Canada. ect which looks at B is for Baron D is for Deverell the many ways humans interact with the hydrological environment. H is for Hauka The big day need not In the sixth crime novel in William De- 9781442626256 cost big bucks. Yes, verell’s series featuring defence lawyer Donald J. Hauka’s Virginia, a sensible, Arthur Beauchamp, Sing a Worried Pizza 911 (Dun- affordable, quickly- Song (ECW Press $24.95), we revisit F is for Födi durn $11.99), the planned wedding is the one time in Beauchamp’s career third in Hauka’s possible. In his Wed- when he restlessly decided to switch Magical monsters, talking animals Mister Jinnah mys- ding Bliss on a Bud- sides and serve as a prosecutor. When and enchanted mythology abound in tery series, takes get (Self-Counsel a young man was charged with mur- the stories and art of daydreaming politically incorrect Ethan Baron $14.95), Province dering a clown, Beauchamp was con- specialist Lee Edward Födi. For his newspaper report- columnist Ethan fident he could prove Randolph Skyler sixth fantasy title, and his fifth as the er Hakeem Jinnah Donald J. Hauka Baron guides couples on how to create was guilty. Meanwhile his own personal chronicler of the adventures from Vancouver to a great event without a great budget. life was coming apart... Beauchamp of Kendra Kandlestar, he Tanzania as he investigates another Baron’s work has taken him to crime cannot forget this case, not even years describes how wizards of grisly crime. A burnt, dismembered scenes, courtrooms, carnivals and later when he’s happily remarried and Een are on quests to find body has been found in a pizza war zones—all ideal training grounds retired to Garibaldi Island on the West Arazeen, “a mythical state oven, and Jinnah’s quest for the for writing a book about weddings. Coast. 978-1-77041-245-3 of peace and wonder,” in story’s truth leads to encounters He now teaches at Langara College in Kendra Kandlestar and with “bikers, drugs lords, shadowy Vancouver. 9781770402225 is for Evenden the Search for Arazeen assassins, and a mysterious, beauti- E (Simply Read $9.95). ful woman.” But the heroine Ken- Pizza 911 is based on C is for Cook Following World War II, Canada became dra Kandlestar is the 2002 Gemini-nomi- a world leader in hydro-electricity pro- on the search for nated made-for-TV mov- Tsilhqú t’í n is a complex northern duction. Only Norway produced more something very dif- ie of the same name, Athabaskan tonal language comprised per capita and only the U.S. generated ferent—her long-lost also written by Hauka. of 47 consonants and six vowels. Also more in terms of total output. Allied family. 9781459728073 known as Chilcotin, it is spoken by the Power: Mobilizing Hydro-electricity Born in Oliver, people of the Chilco River (Tsilhqó x) in during Canada’s Second World War Lee Edward Födi B.C.’s interior. A Tsilhqút’í n Grammar (UTP $32.95) by UBC’s Matthew Ev- studied at UBC and Lee Edward Födi continued on page 38 (UBC $165) by Eung-Do (Ed) Cook is enden explores how the climate of war has a degree in Eng-

37 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 BOOKSTORES

Valley in Abbotsford. Described by poet Lionel Kearns as “a film-maker by day, I is for Isabella a poet by night,” Konyves has released a new poetry collection, Perfect An- An Independent Bookseller in Vancouver for 45 years! The Red Bicycle (Kids Can $18.95) by swers to Silent Questions (Ekstasis Jude Isabella follows the journey of $23.95). 978-1-77171-107-4 Big Red, Leo’s cherished bicycle, as it RALPH WHITE - JEWELED HIGHWAY makes its way from North America to THURS, OCT 1 I 6:30-8PM I FREE Africa. Leo is too big for his bike and L is for Levine BOOK LAUNCH AT BANYEN donates it to a char- ity that ships it to It’s a common misconception that ma- Alisetta, a young girl rine creatures, like fish, shrimp and “Ralph White is one of those rare men who in Burkina Faso. Ali- seahorses, live silently in the sea. These has said yes to life far more than he has setta can now travel water-dwellers actually make “some retreated into safety.” — Thomas Moore much more quickly of the most interesting sounds you’ve to her family’s farm never heard,” according to the co-au- 3608 West 4th Ave. Vancouver, BC 604-732-7912 banyen.com and to the market. thors of What Sound Does a Seahorse The next owner of Jude Isabella Make? (Ronsdale $18.95). Thanks to Big Red is Haridata, Shar Levine, Leslie Johnstone and a young woman who uses it to deliver Aran Mooney, readers can learn more medicine and carry sick people to the about these critters and scan QR codes hospital. The Red Bicycle reveals how to access audio and video recordings something as simple as a bicycle can of the surprising noises made under- have a powerful impact on lives half a water. Also included are interactive world away. Illustrated by Simone Shin. science projects that illustrate various Jude Isabella of Victoria was a managing aspects of sound, such as waves and editor of YES Magazine, a science maga- frequencies. 978-1-55380-359-1 zine for kids, for twelve years. 78-1-77138-023-2 J is for Judson

Gillian Judson’s Engaging Imagina- tion in Ecological Education (Pacific Educational $29.95) illustrates how to connect students to the natural world Gillian Judson and encourage them to care about a more sustainable, ecologically secure planet. Tzoutzi Matzourani With her Ph.D. from SFU, where she now teaches, Judson is a director of the Imaginative Education Research M is for Matzourani Group and coordinator of the Imagi- native Ecological Education program. Three months after asking her lover 978-1-926966-75-5 to leave, Tzoutzi Matzourani is tor- mented by his absence. Craziness took hold of them when they were together; K is for Konyves now an equal craziness pervades her passionate longing for him to reappear. Born in Budapest, Her reminiscences and pleadings are Tom Konyves es- addressed directly to him in Hear Me caped Hungary in Out: Letters to My Ex-Lover (Libros 1956 and settled in Libertad $20), translated by Manolis PHOTO Montreal where he Aligizakis. The urgency of Matzoura- published a Dadaist ni’s poetic bereavements reveals how ALBANESE magazine and oper- sexual desire can seem like a form of ated his own small illness, a cruel intoxication. Love lifts ROBERT Tom Konyves press as one of the us; love debases us. And nothing else original “Vehicule matters. Tzoutzi Matzourani lives in Poets.” Since 2006, Konyves has been Athens; Aligizakis is a publisher in teaching at the University of the Fraser White Rock. 978-1-926763-40-8 community-minded but globally connected

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38 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 who’s who BRITISH COLUMBIA

tural changes from one spring to the next and subsequently left Hastings- N is for Nozick Sunrise in favour of the natural, wooded environment of the Squamish area. Nicole Nozick is 978-0-88971-310-9 the new executive director of the Van- couver Writers Fes- T is for Takeda tival, taking over from Camilla Tibbs Louise Takeda is who has become the a research affili- executive director of ate with the POLIS Nicole Nozick the Richmond Gate- Project on Ecologi- way Theatre. Nozick cal Governance. Her holds a B.A. in English from University Master’s degree in of Cape Town, and a Post-Graduate environment and Diploma in Journalism from Tel Aviv development fo- University. Most recently, she was di- Louise Takeda cused on land use rector of the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish planning in Haida Book Festival. Gwaii. In her book, Islands Spirit Rising: Reclaiming the Forests of Haida Gwaii (UBC Press $95) Takeda O is for Olga examines how the local indigenous environmental community faced the A spiritual mem- multi-national forest industry and oir in poetic prose, political bodies to gain control of forest Susan McCaslin’s resources. 9780774827652 Into the Mystic: My Years with Olga (Inanna $24.95) fo- Mix Hart: writer, visual artist and fi tness junkie UBC cuses on McCaslin’s U is for spiritual mentor, reasons and effects Students of the Olga Park (1891- of climate change; Susan McCaslin School of Library, 1985), who self-pub- hot issues like the R is for Roberts Archival, and Infor- lished several titles about her mystical oil sands, fracking, As a University of Victoria instructor, mation Studies at experiences “grounded in and moving greenhouse gases; Jillian Roberts first co-wrote School UBC have created a out from the Christian tradition.” Mc- future sources of Children with HIV/AIDS (Detselig, digital archive called Caslin mixes Park’s life story with her energy and answers: 1999) with Kathleen Cairns. She has The Bud Osborn Col- own, through a series of vignettes and what’s vampire pow- since created an app called Facts of lection to honour the poems written by the author and by Shaker Paleja er, and why does it Life and written a book for ages 3-to-6, Bud Osborn work of Downtown Park, with some of Park’s spiritually- suck? Using brightly Where Do Babies Come From?: Our Eastside activist and inspired illustrations. The text explores coloured pages filled with charts, First Talk About Birth (Orca $19.95), poet Bud Osborn who died in 2014 at the relation of time to eternity, the na- graphs and diagrams, Power Up! is illustrated by Cindy Revell. It’s the age 66. The Osborn poems are accom- ture and emergence of consciousness designed to appeal to visual learners first book in her Just Enough series to panied by images by Richard Tetrault, and mystical experiences. and reluctant readers. 978-1-55451-726-8 and in collaboration with designers Into the Mystic was launched at the include topics such as death, cultural David Lester and David Bircham. The Canadian Memorial Centre for Peace diversity, and parental separation or Bud Osborn Collection archive can be in Vancouver. For further info, visit Q is for Queen divorce. Jillian Roberts’ work special- izes in medically fragile children. found on the UBC School of Library, Ar- ABCBookWorld.com 978-177133-188-3 9781459809420 chival, and Information Studies website. Queen of the Godforsaken (Thistle- A short film about Osborn can be seen down $14.95) by Mix Hart of Kelowna on the BCBookLook news site. is a coming-of-age debut novel in which P is for Paleja UBC Library has simultaneously Lydia moves with her family from Van- S is for Simmers mounted a permanent exhibit to hon- The first non-fiction book for kids aged couver to an isolated farmhouse in our the life and work of 9-12 by Vancouver actor and writer Batoche, Saskatchewan, in the 1980s. Bren Simmers’ book- George Woodcock, a Shaker Paleja, Native Americans: Her father has difficulty finding steady length poem Hastings- project kickstarted by a A Visual Exploration (Annick Press, employment and her mother becomes Sunrise (Nightwood fundraising campaign 2013) was chosen for the White Ravens suicidal. They start drinking and fight- $18.95) is a tribute to the organized by BC Book- Collection at the International Youth ing. To make things worse, Lydia can’t neighbourhood of Vancou- World. Library in Munich, Germany. Paleja’s relate to her classmates. She finally ver in which she lived from latest kid’s book is Power Up!: A Vi- gets to know a handsome, hockey- 2010-2013. It reflects her sual Exploration of Energy (Annick mad farm boy, Brady, and two elderly attempts to find home in Bren Simmers Press $19.95), illustrated by Glenda Francophone neighbours. Lydia learns a city where she couldn’t reads at the Whistler Tse, which covers topics such as how to adapt by looking after her sister and afford to own one. She Writers Festival on October 17 sources of energy are harnessed; the her parents. 978-1-771870-63-4 tracked seasonal and cul-

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Barbara Nickel explores winds of the Canadian west, Nicaragua, Cape- town and the Middle Coming to Hignell Book Printing is a smart move. Our customers tell us that we do an East in A Boy Asked the exceptional job of handling the little things that make a big difference in their publishing program. Wind (for ages 7-10). We consistently produce high quality books because our experienced production team is as demanding and meticulous as our customers. Whether you want 100 books or 2500 books we have the equipment and expertise to handle your next book printing job. Tell us what you need Gillian Newland. In October, Nickel and we’ll execute. Superior service, beautiful books, on time, on budget. will be appearing at the Yarrow Library, We would love to help you. V is for van Eijk the Chilliwack Library and the Vancou- Please contact Dave Friesen at: [email protected] or 1.204.784.1049 ver Writers Festival. 9780889954809 www.hignell.mb.ca Having studied the Lillooet (Lil’wat) language for forty years, Jan van Eijk has transcribed and translated nar- is for Yeadon-Jones ratives from Lillooet elders for These Y Are Our Legends (University of Regina Press $24.95), due in November. Along with English translations, a glossary and grammar, he presents texts with transcriptions that can be used by lin- guists or Lillooet speakers. Illustrated by Marie Abraham, the First Nations’ title is Nilh Izá Sptákwlhkalh. 9780889773967

Anne and Laurence Yeadon-Jones W is for Wyatt Veteran writers Anne and Laurence 20 plus Yeadon-Jones have continued sail- A woman holding a ing into the publishing realm with Yoka’s sign that asks “Are their seventh Dreamspeaker Guide Literary Pick varieties you content to be titled Puget Sound: A Boater’s Guide for Autumn: nothing?” is our (Harbour $49.95) with a new format What's guide as we make designed to be read on an iPad, Tablet the Buzz? our way through and eBook. In Puget Sound the authors Keeping Bees Street Symphony travel from Port Townsend to Olympia, in Flight (Coteau $18.95), Ra- Lake Washington and Hood Canal. by Merrie-Ellen Rachel Wyatt chel Wyatt’s collec- Illustrations highlight the shoreline Wilcox tion of short stories. plans of selected marinas and boat (Orca Footprints) It’s a series of interconnected tales that anchorages. Dreamspeaker Guides is takes us from “Café Society,” to “The an imprint of Dreamspeaker Publishing Companion’s Tale,” to “Aquarium.” Ltd., established in 2005. While still With her biting humour, Wyatt creates living in England, the couple coinci- a thought-provoking cast of characters, dentally named their 36-foot sailboat many of them seniors, who are not Dreamspeaker in the same year Anne content to be overlooked or ignored. Cameron published a novel with that 9781550506181 title in 1978. 978-0-9739865-1-8

X is for Correction Z is for Zuberi

Fortunately we goofed. At the end of Dan Zuberi’s Schooling the Next Gen- an article on Yarrow on page 42 of the eration (University of Toronto $32.95), #5 - 1046 Mason St. Victoria, B.C. V8T 1A3 BC BookWorld summer issue, author chronicles ten East Vancouver elemen- (just off Cook Street) • Tel: 1-250-384-0905 Robert Martens was identified as a tary schools located in neighbourhoods Hand sorted for premium quality • Full selection of exotic teas physician married to author Barbara with diverse populations and lower • B.C. honey and Belgian chocolates • Mail orders welcome Nickel. He is neither. So this clarifica- income levels. The book focuses on the tion affords an opportunity to let the challenges that principals, teachers, www.yokascoffee.com world know Nickel has a new picture parents and students face, and Zuberi book this fall, A Boy Asked the Wind also explores how they are overcoming (Red Deer Press $19.95), illustrated by those difficulties. 9781442626843

40 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 LETTERS QUICKIES rated Lucerne into the novel Tay John Hunter hunter and his story ‘The Woman Who Got A COMMUNITY BULLETIN BOARD FOR INDEPENDENTS I always look forward to pouring on at Jasper Station’ is set at Lucerne. through the pages of your publication He also wrote about nearby Red Pass, QUICKIES is an affordable advertising vehicle for writers, artists & events. while I am on a B.C. ferry coming and BC (also disappeared), Mount Robson, For info on how to be included: [email protected] going to Vancouver from Nanaimo. I BC and other places in that area, learn so much about the which has generally been amazing number of B.C. neglected by historians of writers, we have such a the province. wealth. Given the size of Ben Bradley the photo of Aislinn Hunter Toronto, ON on the cover for the BC Book Prizes, I was disap- pointed not to find a good Ryga landmark article on her book. I still I’ve heard about the literary love the publication and al- landmarks program and I’ve A guide for individuals and Captain Joe & organizations working with ways take it home to use as talked about it with the Aboriginal Peoples, including the Grateful Jake Indian, Inuit and Métis Peoples. a resource. George Ryga Society people Skai Fowler by Emily Madill Ian Niamath in Summerland. We’d like Contemporary Working Effectively with Abstract Painter Confidence boosting books for kids. Aboriginal Peoples® Nanaimo to contribute and be associ- Everyone deserves ISBN 978-0981257907•$11.95 each AVAILABLE: by Bob Joseph [As mentioned in the article, we previ- ated with an Okanagan campaign. beauty in their life. Amazon, Barnes & Noble & Chapters ISBN 978-0-9781628-2-5 • $49.99 ously ran a full-page review of her novel. Our collections person, Barbara Jo www.skaiart.com emilymadill.com www.ictinc.ca You can find it on the ABCBookWorld May, would likely be our main per- ABSTRACT ART KIDLIT TRAINING GUIDE reference site. — Ed.] son involved and we were thinking of approaching the OK College librar- ian as well, as they have campuses Pride before a fall throughout the Okanagan. With humour Political and outrage, intrigue, BC BookWorld’s recent piece on Steph Hall Cotton, a racial former prejudice Andrew MacLeod’s new book, A Bet- Okanagan Regional Library Gulf Islander, and ruthless skewers the ambition ter Place on Earth, rang some loud growth of neo- prevail after bells. For the past two decades my conservatism the death of in Canadian Alexander pride in being a British Columbian Order of Canada politics. the Great at age 33, has waned dramatically. It’s a truth I have been enjoying BC BookWorld in 323 B.C. Rhymes for the Times that feels disloyal to relatives who for more than twenty years now. I can’t Erotokritos by Vitzentzos Kornaros Rants in Iambic Pentameter were original settlers of the province, imagine how people in B.C. could Transcribed by Manolis by H. Barry Cotton Shadow of the Lion: The only longhand book of its kind–a but the truth is that Canada’s west- ever manage without it. About a year 978-1-4602-6768-4 • HC: $24.99 Blood on the Moon long poem 500 years old–transcribed 978-1-4602-6769-1 • PB: $10.99 ern Eden is now well past its glory. by an 11-year-old boy. by W. Ruth Kozak ago I was delighted to hear that the 978-1-4602-6770-7 • eBook: $2.99 ISBN 978-0992715519 • $36.95 I hope your Opinion piece attracts publisher of BC BookWorld was ac- ISBN 978-1-926763-36-1 • $5,000 www.friesenpress.com/bookstore libroslibertad.ca www.amazon.ca mediaaria-cdm.com/w-ruth-kozak those readers who continue to wear corded the Order of Canada. Since their blinkers so fiercely. With any then I have been expecting some sort EPIC POEM POLITICAL POETRY HISTORICAL NOVEL luck, MacLeod’s words will give them of announcement in the paper, but sight again, something they’ll need there has been nothing. Have you on the steep pitch of the downward been erring on the side of modesty? slide... Please fill us in. I think loyal read-

A.S. Penne ers—like me—deserve to know. Graphic Sechelt novel of Cecily May the year Naramata finalist. FOREWORD News comes first REVIEWS

Whenever I go to Vancouver, I always Part memoir and guidebook on 35 years coaching girls’ and An all-ages picture book poking pick up a copy of BC BookWorld on women’s soccer. The Listener fun at the Jumbo Municipality. the ferry to read. Your newspaper not Foot Notes by David Lester The Town of Nothing only informs but also helps writers Telling Stories of Girls’ Soccer “A dense and fiercely intelligent work... by K.L. Kivi all in a lyrical and stirring tone.” and publishers to promote their books. by Laurie Ricou — Publishers Weekly (NY) illustrated by Amber Santos I appreciate that BC BookWorld is not ISBN 978-0-88982-314-3 • $12.95 ISBN 9781894037488 • $19.95 ISBN 978-0-9685302-6-9 • $15 oolichan.com amazon.ca www.maapress.ca a forum for literary debate so much as GIRLS’ SOCCER GRAPHIC NOVEL KIDLIT/POLITICS it is a vehicle for letting the public know what books exist about their so- ciety. My sincere appreciation to you and your staff. Lily Chow Victoria Subscribe to BC BookWorld

O’Hagan landmark BC BookWorld publisher Alan To receive the next Name ...... Saw your item in the new BC Histori- Twigg receiving the Order of 4 issues by mail, send a cheque for $25 cal News about the need for a literary Canada from Governor General Apt/Box# ...... map of B.C. One suggestion is the area David Johnston at Rideau Hall. around the summit of the Yellowhead Street...... REPLY TO: Pass, which is where Howard Send letters or emails to: 3516 West 13th Ave. O’Hagan spent his teenage years. He BC BookWorld, 3516 W. 13th Ave., City...... Vancouver, B.C. V6R 2S3 grew up in Lucerne, B.C., which has Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 or pay via PayPal at Prov...... Postal Code...... disappeared today but was effectively [email protected] www.bcbookworld.com the ‘twin’ of Jasper, AB. He incorpo- Letters may be edited for clarity & length.

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41 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 OBITS

upon a radiotelephone for its com- munications. Holley Rubinsky Their New Society book publishing imprint evolved from the Movement for a New Society, a radical anti-Viet- 1943-2015 nam war organization in Philadelphia that published materials to support HOLLEY RUBINSKY RESIDED IN KASLO, B.C. peace. After the Plants co-edited and for more than thirty years prior to her published Healing the Wounds: The death at age 72, due to cancer, on Promise of Ecofeminism in 1989, Kip August 1. Born in Los Angeles on May and Jude opened a Canadian office 18, 1943, Rubinsky was predeceased of NSP, and began publishing books by her second husband, Yuri Rubinsky, focused on sustainability. After pur- whom she met in Banff, where she also chasing the whole company in 1996, befriended writers Alistair McLeod, they ran the publishing house until it Sandra Birdsell and W.O. Mitchell. She was bought by Douglas & McIntyre in Kip and 2008. In that time, they shepherded is survived by her daughter Robin Bal- Jude Plant lard, who lives in Switzerland. over 275 new books into the public Her second novel, At First I Hope realm. for Rescue (Vintage, 1998) was nomi- They continued active involvement nated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. with New Society Publishers for four The title story in Rapid Transits and years. Then, when Douglas & McIntyre Other Stories (Polestar, 1991) won the was forced to almost declare bankrupt- $10,000 McClelland & Stewart Journey cy in 2013, Chris and Judith reached Prize and the National Magazine Award out to their former partner, Carol Gold Medal for Fiction (first published Newell, and, together, bought back by Malahat Review). the publishing company, relatively Set in the interior unscathed. Once again New Society of B.C., Rubinsky’s is headquartered on Gabriola Island. novel Beyond This Prior to publishing, Kip Plant had Point (M&S, 2006) lived in the South Pacific and worked examined the lives Christopher Plant as an editor at The Institute for Pacific of five women deal- Studies. He edited New Hebrides: The ing with unavoid- Road to Independence (Institute for Pa- Holley Rubinsky able change. It was 1950-2015 cific Studies, 1977) and Rotuma: Split followed by her short story collection, Island (Institute for Pacific Studies, South of Elfrida (Brindle & Glass, 2013). B.C. LOST ONE OF ITS BRAVEST AND MOST lished on recycled paper in Canada. 1978.) He also translated from French Rubinsky first visited Canada in essential publishers, Christoper Together they consistently regarded the book, Kanakė: The Melanesian 1970 and immigrated in 1976. From (Kip) Plant of Gabriola Island, when organizing for a post-carbon future Way (Editions du Pacifique, 1979) and 2006 to 2008, she was the host of The he died on June 26 in Nanaimo after to be the single most urgent task for published his MA thesis from SFU, Writers’ Show for writers and readers, courageously living with Progressive humankind. PEACESAT: Communications and De- produced by Kootenay Coop Radio Supranuclear Palsy and Multiple The Plants started by publishing velopment in the Pacific Islands (1982). CJLY in Nelson. With her M.Ed from System Atrophy for nine years. As the The New Catalyst magazine, a quar- For New Society, he also co-edited U.C.L.A., Rubinsky also hosted literary publisher and co-founder of New So- terly bioregional journal, from 1985 Home! A Bioregional Reader (1990), retreats and enjoyed teaching children ciety Publishers (Canada), Plant and until 1992. Begun at the start of the Turtle Talk: Voices for a Sustainable with disabilities at the local school. As his wife Judith (Jude) were decades computer era, The New Catalyst office Future (1990), Green Business: Hope a young woman she gained a single- ahead of their time, pioneering ‘bio- was located 20 kilometres from the or Hoax? (1991) and Putting Power in engine private pilot’s license. Later in regionalism’ in the early 1970s, then nearest town, used power generated its Place: Create Community Control! life she practiced Mahayana Buddhism leading the way for books to be pub- from the nearby creek and depended (1992). as taught by the Dalai Lama. Her final publisher, Ruth Linka, Waupun prison, a maximum security poetry, I. Another. The Space Between: commented upon Rubinsky’s death: “I prison in Wisconsin. Selected Poems (Talon 2004), was fol- was honoured to work with Holley at Griffin proceeded to self-publish lowed by a chapbook, Homages (Pooka Brindle & Glass, first to publish South five more books, including an auto- Press 2009). of Elfrida and then later when she biographical work, Once a Priest, in Influenced by three teachers at King edited for us. In South of Elfrida Hol- which he recalled marching as a young, Edward High School, Reid began to ley wrote about women on the move, Cleveland-based Catholic priest from read Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, physically and emotionally, and even Selma, Alabama to Montgomery with leading him to the works of Rimbaud, though community and her home were Martin Luther King. Baudelaire, William Carlos Williams, clearly important to her, I will always Griffin left the priesthood in 1968 Ezra Pound, Irving Layton and Ray- remember Holley as a person open to obtain a Masters degree in social mond Souster. UBC professors Jake to others, to new experiences and to work at the University of Wisconsin- Zilber and Tony Friedsen encouraged travelling in every sense of the word.” Milwaukee. Elected to Milwaukee’s city Reid during an undergraduate writers’ council in 1972, he and his family came workshop. to B.C. in 1988. Having been officially Jamie Reid’s formative experiences Ed Griffin named a Civic Treasure by Surrey in with TISH at UBC led to him being 2012, Ed Griffin died at age 78 in July influenced by local writers such as 1937-2015 of 2015 from complications arising George Bowering, Frank Davey, Fred from a stroke. Wah, Gladys Hindmarch and Lionel FORMER PRIEST ED GRIFFIN FOUNDED THE Kearns. In turn, he came to know and Surrey International Writers’ Confer- respect other Vancouver poets that ence in 1993 after attending a writers’ Jamie Reid included John Newlove, Gerry Gilbert, conference in Seattle. He subsequently bill bissett, Peter Trower, Barry McKin- helped establish a Surrey Creative Jamie Reid had non, Maxine Gadd, Judith Copithorne Writing Diploma Program. 1941-2015 and many others. Poets who came to A former U.S. city councillor and the guts to exchange Vancouver and influenced him have social worker, he first published a novel JAMIE REID WAS A MEMBER OF THE ORIGINAL poetry for politics. included Robert Duncan, Robert based on his life, Beyond the Vows, five-member editorial board of TISH, Creeley, Jack Spicer, Al Purdy, Milton about a priest named JP Lacey who is the Vancouver poetry newsletter at Acorn and Louis Dudek. “All of these deeply troubled by social injustice. It UBC, in 1961. He became a co-orga- mainly in central Canada, where he poets gave something to me,” he said, was followed by a novel about the fate nizer (with many others), and a spokes- had been born in Timmins in 1941. “showed me something about life and of three hundred convicts released onto person for, the first Vancouver Human Until 1987, Reid renounced and left about poetry.” Adak Island in The Aleutians, Prisoners Be-In in Stanley Park, in 1967. That behind the somewhat insular concerns Jamie Reid died at home on June of the Williwaw (Trafford, 2000), reflect- year he also visited the Okanagan Val- of former literary friends who mostly 25. According to his wife, Carol, “his ing Griffin’s abiding concern for prison ley and produced poems that appeared turned to university teaching jobs. last day was filled with happiness and reform. It was written after Griffin had in his first book, The Man Whose Path Jamie Reid returned to the West healing energy, and he was vibrant.” been visiting Matsqui Prison to encour- Was On Fire (Talon 1968). Reid became Coast with an open mind in 1987, A gathering of appreciation was age inmates to become better writers. thereafter, in his own words, “a fierce producing a biography of Diana Krall held at the the Wise Hall in Vancou- He had undertaken similar work at communist for almost twenty years,” in 2002. A cumulative collection of ver in August.

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43 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015 NEW RELEASES Fall 2015

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FORECAST A ROCK FELL ON THE MOON Selected Early Poems (1970–1990) Dad and the Great Yukon Silver Ore Heist A selection of early poems by Governor Now Available in Paperback! General’s Award-winning poet John Alicia Priest draws on documents, interviews Pass, featuring experimental poetry that and her own experiences to piece together foreshadows his later expansive work. the story of her father’s infamous heist. POETRY $18.95 PAPERBACK 6"×9" MEMOIR $24.95 PAPERBACK 6"×9" 144PP ISBN 978-1-55017-731-2 264PP ISBN 978-1-55017-733-6

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44 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2015