BOOK REVIEWS

Bill Reid and the Haida red cedar dugout canoe became a part Martine J. Reid, ed. of Native culture. She does, however, use visual and written evidence Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, from eighteenth-century European 2011. 152 pp. $29.95 paper. explorers, along with models of , to show that the curved bow, vertical stern, and the painted imagery that Cambridge University we associate with the twenty-first century dugout canoe was in place long ost people identify Northwest before Contact. Moreover, if anyone MCoast Aboriginal culture with wonders if the numerous diseases that the , most notably with the decimated Native peoples from the late dramatic Thunderbird-winged carvings eighteenth century on put an end to of the Kwakwaka’wakw peoples. In canoe building, Reid offers nineteenth- and the Haida Canoe, Martine century photographs of canoe-strewn Reid and co-authors James Raffan West Coast villages to show that and Michael Robinson set out to put canoe-making was evident during that the canoe, not the totem pole, at the century. This was not the case, however, forefront of Northwest Coast Native in the next century. While the Peters culture. The canoe was not, of course, family of the Ditdaht peoples, the only a means of transportation. It could Davidson family in , and form part of a dowry. It was a tool in the Hunt family in Victoria continued warfare. It represented the owner’s to make canoes during the first half of wealth and abundance. And, among the twentieth century, the canoes they many other things, it was a vehicle for made were less for their own use than connecting Aboriginal peoples to their for sale to private and public collections. myths and rituals. Martine Reid’s introductory essays The book’s editor and principal sets the stage for her discussion of Bill author, Martine Reid, begins her Reid’s now famous canoe, the Lootaas. story in 7000 bce when archaeological More than fifteen metres in length, evidence suggests that Northwest Coast the Lootaas was made during the mid- peoples built sea-faring vessels. Reid 1980s in the village of Skidegate on does not indicate when the western Haida Gwaii. The Lootaas had its bc studies, no. 75, Autumn 12 113 114 bc studies debut at Expo ’86. Three years later References it was paddled up the Seine from Rouen to Paris to honour the French Maria Tippett, Bill Reid: The Making of anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and an Indian. Toronto: Random House, to mark the bicentennial anniversary of 2003. the French Revolution. In 1998 it carried Reid’s ashes to his mother’s village of Tanu. And today the Lootaas is stored in a boathouse in Skidegate. The Cannibal Spirit Martine Reid offers several Harry Whitehead photographs of Reid, adze in hand, Toronto: Hamish Hamilton, 2012. carving the Lootaas. Sadly, Reid, who was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, 295 pp. $32.00 cloth. performed a largely supervisory role. Judith Berman The author also insists that, for Bill Reid, the ovoid, which was derived from the shape of a canoe, formed the basis of Aboriginal art. This does not arry Whitehead’s novel The take into account the artist’s long-held HCannibal Spirit fictionalizes one view that the form line, not the ovoid, of the most important figures in the was the dominant element in Northwest history of BC anthropology, Franz Coast art. Boas’s long-time collaborator George More generally, Martine Reid Hunt. With many points of reference and her co-authors fail to address to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the difficulties that the former cbc the book is a compelling read and a announcer had being accepted into the serious attempt to address issues of Haida community. Part of the problem, colonialism, modernity, and the relation as I argue in my own biography of Bill of ethnography to both. It is at the same Reid, was that Reid was clearly seen time problematic from the standpoint as an outsider. Moreover, he employed of biography, history, ethnography, and, non-Aboriginal artists to carve the ultimately, its own literary purpose. Lootaas. (This prompted the Haida History in several senses is one of its carver Garry Edenshaw [Guujaaw] to themes. Hunt’s viewpoint alternates leave the project in a huff.) Things did with that of Harry Cadwallader, in real not improve when Bill Reid commented life his white brother-in-law but here to a Globe and Mail (29 March 1986) portrayed as his son-in-law. Both men reporter: “Haida time is nobody giving “travel backward” (106) into their pasts a damn about anything.” as they journey into the “darkness” of As Bill Reid well knew, works such the BC wilderness, Cadwallader sent to as the Lootaas were created as a result find Hunt as Marlow was sent to find of the tensions that existed between his Kurtz, each man seeking resolution for Aboriginal and white sensibilities, and his personal crisis. between the white and the Aboriginal The novel addresses history on a larger worlds. Any discussion of his work and scale as well, with Hunt represented as, life should surely take this into account among other things, a man navigating if it wishes to give an objective account between the assumptions of colonialism of the context in which his finest work and anthropology to document was created. the equal and distinct character of Book Reviews 115 indigenous history. As one of the book’s Tlingit principles of matrilineality and Kwakwaka’wakw characters says, Hunt moiety exogamy. It moreover changes put their stories in books “for white Hunt’s principal Tlingit crest from people to see … we is real and forever, Raven to Killer Whale and confuses same as them, important as they in life” the hereditary crest with the shaman’s (55). initiating spirit. If indigenous history Whitehead has made an effort to is as “real” and as “important” as that imagine indigenous characters that of the colonists, these changes are are as “important” and as “real” as his akin to conflating the Tudors and the white ones, and his research has some Bourbons, depicting the Union Jack as depth to it. He has, however, exercised the French flag, or presenting the clan considerable licence with the historical tartan as a Christian symbol. subject matter (noted generally in his Finally, there is Whitehead’s acknowledgments). He did not attempt manufacture of a “darkness” in Hunt to capture the real-life Hunt’s voice that attaches to him the same lurid or, for that matter, the human being, images promoted by the book’s colonial despite the preservation of hundreds antagonists. At the beginning of the of Hunt’s letters to Boas, some of fictional Hunt’s journey he decapitates which Whitehead has clearly read. his son’s corpse and bears the rotting (The obscenities Whitehead puts in head away with him; at the other end, Hunt’s mouth have no place either in deep in the forest, he becomes a killer, traditional Kwak’wala or, according to head-hunter, and “Cannibal Spirit” for descendants who remember him, in his real, “despite [my] half-white blood … English usage.) more savage than … you can know” The story radically alters the (167-68). chronology of Hunt’s life, compressing A fictional protagonist based on into a single year Hunt’s 1900 prosecution Hunt might have served Whitehead under the Indian Act; a 1903 trip to better in some ways, but would leave the New York to work with Boas; Indian book’s contradictions at its core. Taking Agent Halliday’s 1922 confiscation of so much liberty with real indigenous Kwakwaka’wakw dance regalia; and history undermines the proposition last, but in Whitehead’s narrative the that it matters, and capitalizing on precipitating event, the 1925 death of stereotypes that equate Aboriginal life George’s eldest son David. David’s six with savagery and darkness likewise siblings who survived to adulthood ensures that the novel cannot transcend are reduced to a single sister, excising what it attempts to critique. the forebears of many contemporary Kwakwaka’wakw. The treatment of ethnography is similarly cavalier. For example, a central thread that features the real-life Tlingit notable Sheiksh (“Shaiks”), based on Tlingit clan history recorded by Ronald Olson (likely taken from Social Structure and Social Life of the Tlingit in Alaska, 1967), alters Sheiksh’s moiety and clan affiliation as well as his genealogical connection to Hunt, thereby violating 116 bc studies

Resilience, Reciprocity and dissecting how from Ecological Economics: Northwest northern California to southern Alaska exploited a common pool of resources Coast Sustainability for the collective good. Ronald Trosper He devotes over half the book to revealing how First Nations societal London and New York: Routledge, regulations protected their resources 2009. 188 pp. $130.00 cloth. from overexploitation. Generosity and Jude Isabella reciprocity are key protective elements employed by the potlatch, a societal University of Victoria ritual providing rules around land proprietorship. Only good resource n this brief and densely packed managers could keep the wealth Itreatise on why and how the (salmon) flowing to the community. Aboriginal economy of the Northwest For anyone who enjoys economists’ Coast worked so well, Ronald Trosper preoccupation with game theory, dives into science fiction/fantasy Trosper casts the potlatch system into territory: he reimagines the clash of the “prisoner’s dilemma.” Through two competing economic systems, the potlatch, First Nations solved with one system focused on the group, the dilemma in the case of fisheries: the other on the individual. It’s a “leaders of the groups with access compelling “What if…” scenario with to the fishery were required to give a happy ending. away wealth through feasts. This In Resilience, Reciprocity and Ecological requirement, applied to the prisoner’s Economics, Trosper – an economist well- dilemma story, is that the fishermen versed in anthropological literature – is share their catch” (53). part of an academic effort in the natural It’s Trosper’s trip into the alternative and social sciences to investigate how universe, however, that imparts a past human cultures lived successfully sense of moving towards creating within local ecosystems without a resilient society. In the chapter destroying them. Trosper spent much entitled “An Alternative History of of his research time with the Nisga’a Industrialization of the Northwest First Nation. Coast,” he creates a counter-factual Formerly a University of British history of how two disparate groups Columbia professor and a member with different economic systems could of the Confederated Salish and have interacted. In trotting through Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian how canneries, mining, or lumber Reservation in Montana, Trosper first industries might have functioned pierces an enduring myth that stalls under an Aboriginal economic system, any conversation about how some Trosper, as an economist, paints a human cultures lived within nature’s picture for readers – an illuminating boundaries – the myth of the Noble picture illustrating how any economy Savage. The myth was debunked can have a conservation ethic by almost one hundred years ago, and invoking societal norms that consider again by anthropologist Ter Ellingson the group (present and future) and not in his 2001 book The Myth of the Noble just the individual. Savage. Trosper further eviscerates the myth’s “spin game” by methodically Book Reviews 117

Voyages: To the New World shores of North America, east and and Beyond west, respectively. He then proceeds into the great age of discovery, notably Gordon Miller introducing the search for breadfruit : Douglas and McIntyre, at Tahiti; moving on to portray vessels 2011. 200 pp. 90 colour illus. from San Blas that sailed to establish $55.00 cloth. San Diego, San Francisco, and Nootka; advancing to show Spanish vessels in Barry Gough high Alaskan latitudes; and venturing Victoria to show merchant shipping in the sea otter trade, sailing Hawaiian waters or passing through a harbour full of his is a book about ships, large junks in Whampoa Roads, Pearl River, Tand small, and of their experiences Canton. – mainly in the line of exploration and But Gordon Miller’s love is the discovery. From the mid-fifteenth to the collectivity of sailing ships that added mid-nineteenth centuries the world’s so much to European knowledge of the oceans and distant annexes were sailed Northwest Coast of North America in by enterprising mariners on commercial the late eighteenth century. He gives and naval ventures. The global reach of pride of place to Spanish ships, such Europe was soon achieved, and trades as Francisco de Eliza’s San Carlos and in essential and exotic commodities José María Narváez’s Santa Saturnina. brought into existence a worldwide These vessels, and others, made an commercial network that underpinned incomplete examination of the Strait diplomatic struggles and, in many of Juan de Fuca then pointed the way instances, wars and testy rivalries for into the Strait of Georgia, identifying control of distant shores and hitherto or confirming Haro Strait and Rosario unknown peoples. Much has been Strait (the outside passages, so to made of the Mediterranean, the Baltic, speak, of the San Juan Islands). and the Indian Ocean as locales for Diminishing food supplies and hostile the unity of peoples on their littorals First Nations deterred further progress, to establish, say, in the first instance, a and it was not until the triumphant Mediterranean civilization. year 1792 that Galiano and Valdes With this book we are taken to and Vancouver and Broughton made broader seas, where more adventurous their fuller examinations, disproving mariners with better ships found an claims to a North West Passage in opportunity in their individual lines of these latitudes, something that was work. Gordon Miller, marine artist of confirmed by Alexander Mackenzie, unique artistic skills, happily matched first across the continent the following with an unbending determination year. The Americans make their to ensure that what he paints has appearance, notably in the form of authenticity, has selected watercraft Robert Grey’s Columbia Rediviva, and from the great ages, beginning with there is a lovely view of the launch the Norse, moving through the age of the Adventure at Meares Island in of the Hanseatic League, progressing early 1792. Miller has painstakingly through to the vessels of Columbus, detailed these explorations under sail, and advancing to the ships that and then we get an indication of the brought Cartier and Drake to the future, and of steam power, with several 118 bc studies views of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Angus McDonald of the Great Beaver, one lying off of Fort Rupert, Divide: The Uncommon Life of a northern Vancouver Island, that place of such evanescent commercial activity Fur Trader, 1816-1889 but long-standing residence of the Steve A. Anderson Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation. Always for those who study the age of sail there Coeur d’Alene ID: Museum of is regret, even remorse, that so little North Idaho, 2011. 232 pp. was done to preserve these and other $19.95 paper. ships for posterity. But Gordon Miller Deidre Simmons has two concluding views that are, in their own way, testimonies to a world Victoria that we have lost. One is the clipper Thermopylae (rival to the Cutty Sark), he Hudson’s Bay Company which, at one time, called Victoria T(hbc) has been a source for home port. The other is the Pamir, last North American historians since the seen on the Northwest Coast in 1946. late nineteenth century. From the With this the age of sail had closed, beginnings of its adventures in the fur except for the yachting age, which was trade, the hbc’s head office in London, to succeed it. Sailing for commercial England, sent out writing supplies reasons or navigating for scientific and laid down rules for keeping post results had given way to new passions account books and journals at each of still with us. their remote posts. These post journals With concern for accuracy matched and related correspondence were then with artistic beauty and discerning sent back to London each year with the proportion, Gordon Miller’s paintings returning fur cargoes. Not all of the are a delight to view. This book is a correspondence, journals, and account tribute to a life of hard and dedicated books made their way back to the work. His paintings grace many fine hbc’s headquarters/offices in London. collections and are housed in many Some were lost (overturned canoes, museums. In addition, you will find his unsuccessful expeditions, ships sunk at paintings reproduced in many a book on sea, mishaps at fur trade posts). Others Northwest Coast history, an enduring have turned up in various museums, tribute to their accuracy and compelling archives, and rare bookshops, deposited attraction. by family members who found them sometimes generations later. I have documented many such stories in my book Keepers of the Record. One such treasure, the “Memoranda” book of Angus McDonald, is in the University of Montana library (mss 344). It may have been one of several kept by McDonald during over thirty years as post master, clerk, and chief trader of the hbc, but it is the only one known to have survived. It is not an officialhbc document, but it is written in one of the standard books sent out by the company Book Reviews 119 for the documenting of the daily post 1980s. He is the retired manager of Fort routine. The handwritten manuscript Nisqually Living History Museum. has been transcribed by Steve Anderson This book provides a uniquely personal and excerpted in his biography, Angus perspective to the history of the Pacific McDonald of the Great Divide: The Northwest, and with the accompanying Uncommon Life of a Fur Trader. The information provided by Anderson, “Memoranda” contains narratives of his adds to a general knowledge of fur exploits, observations, and adventures, trade history and the relevance of the plus stories and poems, including stories hbc in the area. There have been other told by his Métis wife, Catherine, and personal diaries published, and the written down by McDonald. Anderson hbca post journals contain the details has chronicled the life of McDonald of day-to-day life in the trading posts, based on his comprehensive research in but there are no such journals for the the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives years that McDonald served at Fort (hbca) located in , and in Colvile or Fort Connah (or Flathead). many archives in the Pacific Northwest McDonald does not report on the fort and , using passages activities – supposedly he included from McDonald’s writing to enhance those in other books that are now lost the story and to provide personal – and the “Memoranda” is more of a glimpses of this man’s approach to life personal record. Records such as this in unsettled territory at the end of the are rare among fur traders for this time nineteenth century. period. McDonald was born in Scotland in 1816 and received formal schooling References including studies in the classics, philosophy, and literature. He joined Deidre Simmons, Keepers of the the hbc in 1838 as a general servant Record: The History of the Hudson’s with his first posting in York Factory. Bay Company Archives. Montreal He was twenty-two, a rugged Scot, tall and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s and strong with an inquisitive nature, a University Press, 2007. bright intellect, and quick wit. He was soon sent west to Fort Colvile (now in Washington State), and had other The Private Journal of Captain postings throughout the Columbia District where he hunted and traded G.H. Richards: The Vancouver furs, clerked at and managed fur trade Island Survey (1860-1862) posts for the Company, and lived Linda Dorricott and Deidre a lifestyle more akin to that of the Cullon, eds. Aboriginal people he interacted with on a daily basis. McDonald resigned Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2012. from the Company at the age of fifty-six 272 pp. $24.95 paper. as the fur trade was waning in 1872. He never returned to his homeland Barry Gough and died in 1889 near Fort Connah in Victoria Montana. Anderson has been researching aptain (later Admiral Sir) George and writing stories on the Pacific CHenry Richards, Royal Navy, Northwest’s fur trade since the early is one of the great personages of 120 bc studies that unique era in modern history landing intemperately on the disputed known as Pax Britannica – a period San Juan Islands. As the book under when “Britain Ruled the Waves” and review shows, he had an important role sometimes, as I have often said, “Waved in the survey of Vancouver Island and the Rules.” During the long quietude coastal mainland British Columbia, between incarcerating Napoleon at particularly the former, and by the time St. Helena in 1815 and going to war his work was completed most of the against Imperial Germany in 1914, major harbours and ports of Vancouver the peacetime missions of the navy Island had been charted. And, given the were extensive, indeed global. The life size of the Island and the difficulties of Richards shows this global reach. of navigation, this achievement Although he is better remembered in was prodigious. Surveying was the British Columbia, it should also be harbinger of commerce, and at the time mentioned that he is well known as that Richards was in these waters the a naval figure in New Zealand, the challenges of promoting change were Falkland Islands, in Montevideo, and mighty, the colonies being largely out in British hydrographic circles. Indeed, of the mainstream of world commerce so capable was he as a hydrographic and affairs. It must be kept in mind surveyor and commander of ships that, during these years, the Hudson’s that he became hydrographer of the Bay Company (hbc) was losing its navy in 1864, the highest mark in his monopolistic dominance, San Francisco line of work. He was at the top of his and Sitka were the main ports of call in profession. western North America, the Panama He was an aquatic globetrotter. He Canal was only a dream – as was a had been to the Pacific in hms Sulphur, Canadian transcontinental railway – taken an active share in the China war and no docking facilities existed at the of 1839-42, and boosted his reputation nascent naval base of Esquimalt. And if as a seagoing fighter. He surveyed this were not enough, a great squabble the southeast coast of South America had developed between the Colony of and was promoted to commander for Vancouver Island and the Colony of gallantry in storming the forts on the British Columbia as to primacy in trade River Parana. He surveyed in New and commercial futures. Zealand waters during the Maori Richards arrived in the steam Wars and then went to the High sloop hms Plumper at Esquimalt on Arctic to search for Captain Sir John 9 November 1857. That vessel proved Franklin. He was a man of tremendous too small and defective for this part of physical strength, and although he the world, and the paddle sloop Hecate apparently suffered a hand injury, was sent out to replace it, arriving 23 perhaps in the Parana affair, he made December 1860. Richards was in charge one of the most extraordinary sledging of the survey until he sailed for home journeys on record when searching for in the Hecate, leaving his understudy Franklin. But his monument lies in the Master Daniel Pender in charge. At the waters and shores of British Columbia, close of the Hecate’s commission, early where he directed a massive survey in 1863, Pender was placed in command under tremendous pressure, with the of the Beaver, hired from the hbc, and aggressive Americans then searching continued until 1870. Richards’ first out the goldfields of the Fraser and duty was to complete the survey of the Cariboo, and the Army Strait of Juan de Fuca, and recently, Book Reviews 121 in reviewing the particulars of this, also born on Vancouver Island, was I was again reminded of the heroic called “Esquimalt.” As for place names, and important nature of that work. Richards followed the injunction of Richards headed up an important team Admiral Francis Beaufort, a former of surveyors to complete this work, the hydrographer, that Native names were details of which found their way into to be kept wherever possible and that the a chart of the strait and early sailing application of politicians and statesmen directions. On his recommendation, was to be kept in line. But some places two lighthouses were ordered erected did not have Native names that could on the British side of the strait, one be called up, and, accordingly, we find at Race Rocks and the other, Fisgard, Thormanby Islands in Malaspina Strait, at the entrance to Esquimalt harbour. named after the racehorse who won the Richards had the pleasure of seeing these 1860 Derby; Merry Island, named for lights illuminated, and they proved of the racehorse’s owner, J.C. Merry; inestimable value to navigation, as did Buccaneer Bay, named for a faltering their partners on the American shore. contestant in the derby; and Tattenham Richards, while here, was appointed a Ledge, named for that well-known turn second commissioner to Captain James in the course that comes just before Prevost, the UK representative, to fix, the horses run down the straight for with his US counterpart, the actual the winning post. These legacies come position of the 49th parallel where it from the time when Richards was on reached Pacific tidewater. Richards survey. He encouraged the continuance later placed a marker on Point Roberts of Spanish place names on this coast. for the same purpose. When reading these journals we are The private journal here under review reminded of the clear-headed nature begins in February 1860 and recounts of the commander, how he was able the various voyages and passages, to direct a team of commissioned and particularly those pertaining to the non-commissioned subordinates, how 1860 survey season. Among various he was a great leader of men, and how places featured are Haro Strait, Burrard he was able to keep up morale, prevent Inlet, Nanaimo, Johnstone Strait, and desertion, and maintain strict discipline Nootka. Details of the 1861 and 1862 afloat and on shore. survey seasons continued, much like Many of these details, and others those of the 1860 season, though in besides, are given in this book, though different locales – pressing north to the the reader is left to fill in many new mission station of Metlakatla, for particulars and to do some additional instance, and revisiting Fort Rupert, research to supplement the narrative and Vancouver Island, then in sad decline. the sparse (and sometimes incomplete) Social commentary about First Nations footnotes. It is to be regretted that peppers the Richards narrative, though the editors are not more fully versed this was not a preoccupation with in the particulars of the colonial him. He was a surveyor, and he kept histories of Vancouver Island and to his task. Mrs. Richards had joined British Columbia. Perhaps the greatest him, courtesy of an agreement with matter of omission is any discussion of the Admiralty, and their first son was the “Report of Captain Richards on named “Vancouver,” after the explorer the Harbours of Vancouver’s Island (not the city, then unfounded). Mr. and British Columbia, 23 October and Mrs. Daniel Pender’s first son, 1858.” Richards made this report to 122 bc studies

Governor James Douglas, and the whole his case helping lay submarine cables was reprinted, with supplementary across the North Atlantic. In his time, correspondence, in the Parliamentary he sailed the seven seas. Further, he Papers, Part II for 1858, dealing with knew all about triangulation, lunars, British Columbia (and Vancouver chronometers and how to regulate Island). Richards recommended that them; the drawing of draft plans; if Vancouver Island was not to be part the engraving of charts; and how of British Columbia, then a site for knowledge was best disseminated in the a seaport for British Columbia could Victorian world. He had the capacity, be located just above Annacis Island, too, to keep his political superiors on sixteen kilometres below Fort Langley their toes so that they were careful what on the Fraser River. This sparked they said about the workaday world of a battle royal between Victoria and plumbing the depths of the oceans and what became New Westminster as to shoals and of finding reefs and rocks primacy for commercial growth. This that posed hazards to shipping. The can be found in the press and Colonial account he gives of how the Plumper Office records. New Westminster ended up on the south side of the Strait Municipal Council thanked Richards of Juan de Fuca rather than on the for bringing the nine-hundred-ton north shore, where Richards thought Hecate to the wharves, thus dispelling he was, is a testament to the fact that arguments from Victoria that the Fraser these were (and are) dangerous waters, was unnavigable. But Richards kept with tricky tides and currents, prone to private his own views, as this entry for storms and blanketing fog. As Richards 1 November 1862 reveals: “The Town was reminded, he inhabited the natural of NWr has increased somewhat, but world, with all its wonders, surprises, there are not the same unerring signs and difficulties. Such is the life of the of prosperity as at Victoria. A miserable mariner. contracted jealous feeling pervades This printing of the Richards journal all classes, military included, and a of the early years of the 1860s, though wretched kind of repining that they by no means the complete story of cannot alter their geographical position, Richards on the Northwest Coast, a desire to quarrel with everyone who is welcome. In a footnote the editors comes from Victoria, or says a word in point out that Phillip and Helen Akrigg its favour.” The contrast between the knew that this journal existed and was two places was great, he observed, and in private hands in England. I made he noted that the miners coming south several requests to them in my attempts for the winter got on to the first ferry to run down all important and relevant bound for Victoria. He added wryly, documentation in the course of my “The misfortune of New Westminster research for Gunboat Frontier: British is that Vancouver Id with its beautiful Maritime Authority and Northwest Coast harbours and pleasant resting places Indians, 1846-1890 (ubc Press, 1984). exists” (226). Naively, I had thought that scholars In later years, Richards became a would share their findings. I was to be pillar of the scientific world, a fellow sadly disappointed. This experience was of the Royal Society and a fellow of the only case of keep-away that I have the Royal Geographical Society. Like ever experienced as a historian; I expect many a great hydrographer he later went I am not alone. In the circumstances, into the private world of commerce, in I was obliged to devote more time to Book Reviews 123 reading the in-letters of Richards to the the Tweedsmuir and Chilcotin areas Admiralty and the hydrographer as well a half century earlier. He cut out an as to James Douglas. And, on reflection, inscription written onto a tree in an 1876 I am assured that the external views camp and brought it back to the Royal Richards expressed are the more British Columbia Museum, and I had important and the more valuable to the opportunity to view this special telling the story, particularly with artefact. regard to such subjects as Indian policy, When we think of surveying the commercial development, and making route for Canada’s first transcontinental navigation safer by the preparation of railway we usually picture the charts and Sailing Directions (published difficulties of getting through the by the Admiralty). A person of great Rockies or Major Rogers finding a humanity, Richards knew both sides of pass through the Selkirks. Most people the Pax Britannica – how to be tough don’t realize that equally important and and yet how to extend responsibilities difficult was the search for a seaport on of trusteeship to First Nations. The the Pacific Ocean. That is the subject of belligerent and the humanitarian went James Sirois’s latest book, Searching for a hand in hand, and we come away from Seaport. Throughout the 1870s, the cpr his pages thinking that he has given us sent several survey parties to examine a window on a world perhaps now lost every possible harbour and inlet from but one whose features are discernable – the US boundary to the mouth of the features that continue to pose problems Skeena River. The surveyors were that are not so different from those of trying to find a route that would yesteryear. And every mariner, every connect with one of the possible passes yachtsman, owes a debt to George through the Rockies, provide a feasible Henry Richards. railway grade through the Coast Range, and reach the ocean at a suitable seaport that had sufficient land to accommodate a large city. Through excerpts from the Searching for a Seaport: With the journals kept by the surveyors, Sirois chronicles the incredible hardships 1870s cpr Explorer Surveyors on and near-starvation most survey crews the Coast of British Columbia endured. James Sirois, with a foreword As Sirois points out: “The cpr by Barry Gough project in BC should have begun with a consensus of the only places on the BC Hagensborg, BC: Skookum Press, coast where a world-class harbour could 2011. 200 pp. $34.95 cloth. be developed” (159). He also contends that: “There were arguably, at that time, Jay Sherwood only two mainland locations in coastal Vancouver, BC BC with the potential of developing into a world-class harbour. One was hile researching Surveying Burrard Inlet and the other, up until WCentral British Columbia I 1879, was the disregarded northern learned that, in the 1920s, Frank possibility of Port Simpson” (159). The Swannell several times found evidence geography of the BC coast was not as of the cpr( ) well understood as were the possible surveys that had been made through routes through the . 124 bc studies

A closer examination of the potential important part of the construction of seaports before examining the Rockies the Canadian Pacific Railway. would have enabled the cpr to eliminate many of the surveys they did in the 1870s. As the men worked in the field searching for the best technical route, Nature’s Northwest: engineers and politicians lobbied for their preferred location, while the The North Pacific Slope in the Canadian government looked at the Twentieth Century route with an eye to its neighbour across William G. Robbins and the border. Katrine Barber In the end, the selection of the cpr route across the Prairies and through Tucson, AZ: The University of British Columbia to the Pacific seaport Arizona Press, 2011. 286 pp. was based more on political than on $24.95 paper. technical considerations. Sirois writes: “to the complete astonishment of Richard A. Rajala many, and the total horror of others, University of Victoria the Syndicate, on the basis of their own agenda, scrapped Fleming’s [i.e., n Nature’s Northwest, William G. Sandford Fleming, chief engineer] IRobbins and Katrine Barber have ten years of transcontinental rail synthesized a wealth of scholarship on engineering with 1,160 miles of location the Greater Northwest, encompassing surveys through the western interior Idaho, Oregon, Washington, western – to say nothing of the millions spent Montana, and southern British and the many lives that were lost” (175). Columbia. The authors track social, Fortunately for British Columbia, the economic, political, cultural, and political choice included Burrard Inlet environmental themes in a three-part as the seaport. narrative that pays due attention to Sirois’s book includes several the significance of the 49th parallel photographs taken by Charles while at the same time capturing the Horetzky, one of the surveyors, and transcendent forces of settlement hand-drawn maps made by the author. and global capitalism. The resulting The author draws on his knowledge of treatment emphasizes the dispossession the area and includes some personal of American Indians and BC First photographs of locations visited by cpr Nations from their homelands, the surveyors. He provides an extensive emergence and recent crumbling of bibliography and footnotes but no resource economies, a consequent index. The book would have benefitted demographic shift disadvantaging rural had it been better edited and had its communities in relation to metropolitan information been organized more centres, and a trajectory of political carefully. The first quarter of the book, change from government activism which is largely background, could have to post-1970s neoliberalism. Lines of been compressed. Some of the source inequality have sharpened, then, as material is not properly referenced. early twentieth-century promotional Despite these drawbacks, Searching for a exuberance over the region’s abundance Seaport is an informative and absorbing has given way to degraded environments account of a little known but vitally and “an eroded social cohesiveness” at Book Reviews 125 the end of the millennium (11). programs; however, more attention The narrative begins by to Canadian federalism would have documenting early twentieth-century encouraged an assessment of the On- transcontinental railway construction, to- Trek and 1938’s Bloody resource exploitation for global Sunday in Vancouver. markets, anti-Asian policies, and the Part 3 treats the evolution of the post- determination of governments to push industrial Greater Northwest. Concerns Natives/First Nations to the margins. about the transition to a peacetime Big Bill Haywood, the “quintessential economy faded in the American states turn-of-the century western radical,” thanks to federal investment in Cold personifies proletarian opposition to War military facilities, while the timber capitalist exploitation, with workers industry boomed on both sides of the and radical ideologies crossing a border in an era of consolidation. Pacific permeable border freely (36). But Northwest agricultural production reform enthusiasm, the authors make soared as well, mechanization clear, did not extend to Aboriginal triggering a demographic shift from peoples whose seasonal participation the countryside to cities, where African in the resource economy and resistance Americans who had moved west for to assimilationist policies such as defence work faced discrimination in residential schooling and the potlatch housing and access to public facilities. law illustrate their adjustment to “the For Native Americans, the Cold War larger society on their own terms” (50). logic of liberating repressed peoples Part 2, spanning the world wars, produced the policy of “termination,” extends the discussion of class conflict designed to end federal trusteeship. and Aboriginal issues. By the mid- Introduced with catastrophic 1920s militant industrial unionism had consequences for the Klamath tribes of been quashed and nativism gave rise to Oregon, but in the end rejected by tribes enthusiasm for the Ku Klux Klan, albeit in western Washington, termination with less strength in British Columbia had the “ironic effect of strengthening than elsewhere. An intervening and tribal identity” (139). The goal of very rewarding chapter on regional fuller integration motivated postwar culture between 1900 and 1930 ranges Canadian policy as well, but 1951 in topic from the art of changes to the Indian Act did nothing and Charles Russell to the collectors to correct the marginal economic of Aboriginal artefacts and stories position of increasingly restive BC such as those offered by James Teit and First Nations or to resolve the land title Montana’s Lucullus McWhorter, whose question. efforts at documenting Native cultures Robbins and Barber bring their often contributed to narratives that considerable expertise to a splendid relegated Native people “to a distant chapter on postwar environmental and romantic past” yet also contributed change, highlighting the “dam-building to historical understanding (92). juggernaut” that knowingly sacrificed Resuming the narrative with a chapter salmon and Native fishing sites to devoted to the wrenching changes the perceived social and economic brought about by the Great Depression benefits of hydroelectric power, flood and Second World War, Robbins and control, and irrigation – a logic of high Barber provide an insightful analysis of modernity that carried over to British Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal relief Columbia under W.A.C. Bennett’s 126 bc studies

Two Rivers Policy. In explaining how diverse population poses challenges, the main stem of the Fraser River the authors see a strong commitment to remains free-flowing, the authors the environment among newcomers and credit Canadian policy-makers for established residents alike, presenting listening to fisheries biologists, a them as the source of a “collective sense perspective that obscures Ottawa’s of commonwealth” with the potential tendency to let BC politicians have to give rise to healthier policy (232). their way when push came to shove Robbins and Barber deserve praise with regard to industrializing rivers. for writing a transnational regional The following chapter on modern history of great thematic reach and environmental politics does refer to coherence. While the decision to federal-provincial conflict, although restrict the analysis to southern British the transition from the election of Dave Columbia might have been justified – Barrett’s ndp government in 1972 to the and I have called for a fuller engagement Forest Practices Code of the early 1990s with the historiography of the province might have been better contextualized at a couple of points – the strengths of by paying some attention to Jeremy this ambitious project far outweigh any Wilson’s Talk and Log: Wilderness shortcomings. I would not hesitate to Politics in British Columbia (1998). make this the core text in a course on The account is strong, however, in BC-Pacific Northwest history. placing Aboriginal peoples at the forefront of environmental issues and in documenting the fight over treaty Seeing Reds: The Red Scare of fishing rights in the American states, the impact of the Calder and Sparrow 1918-1919, Canada’s First cases in British Columbia, and the Bill War on Terror Bennett government’s continued denial Daniel Francis of Aboriginal title. After a wide-ranging discussion of Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, regional culture over the 1930-2000 2010. 280 pp. Illus. $27.95 cloth. period, Robbins and Barber turn to a sobering epilogue. At the end of Duff Sutherland the millennium rural economies are Selkirk College in disarray as resource communities experience the arrival of affluent n Seeing Reds: The Red Scare of 1918- retirees and pleasure-seekers. Growing I1919, Canada’s First War on Terror, urban centres exhibit a “veneer of Daniel Francis provides an overview wealth” that masks the struggles of of the response of the Canadian state an underclass of marginally employed and elite to the postwar labour revolt. service workers (218). The new economy Although he writes for a popular is one of deepening inequality, then, audience, Francis makes extensive use reflecting the forces of globalization and of the wealth of academic writing and neoliberal politics. The border matters, research produced on the topic over however; despite the deterioration the past generation. He also nicely of the Canadian welfare state, its sets the events in Canada within the provisions still compare favourably broader context of the worldwide social, to the American model. Meanwhile, political, and economic upheaval in the although the region’s increasingly aftermath of the First World War. Book Reviews 127

Francis concludes that working dissent – a campaign that continued people wanted change in Canada until 1920 and included the suppression after the First World War but that of radical unions and parties; the there was not a widespread desire for deportation and jailing of leftists; violent revolution. Viewed in this widespread censorship, including light, the government and employer the banning of foreign-language demonization and repression of newspapers; the use of police and working-class organizations, leaders, militia forces to break up strikes and and dissent during and after the protests; and the mainstream media’s war reveals the fragility of liberal demonization of “Reds” as dangerous freedoms and democracy in Canada. and ruthless terrorists. Looking back over the past century, According to Francis, the full- Francis concludes that, “when faced blown repression of the scare began in with perceived threats to security … the summer of 1918, when Canadian the Canadian government, with the workers were in outright revolt. A support of the press and much of the strike wave rolled across the country, public, has responded … with Robert radicals led the union movement, Borden’s stern hand of repression”(246). there was an explosion of anger at the While parts of these conclusions may be killing of the labour organizer and debated, Seeing Reds is nonetheless an draft resister Ginger Goodwin, and engaging and useful work that deserves many were following the successes of a wide readership. the Bolsheviks in Russia. The scare As his title suggests, Francis finds culminated with state and employer the roots of Canada’s “Red Scare” in actions – organized by the Citizens’ the events of the First World War. Committee of 1000 – to break the Working-class came to Winnipeg General Strike, which deeply resent the Borden government’s the elite feared was part of a broader handling of the war effort, which conspiracy to overthrow the “system.” saw industrialists profit on munitions For the government and industrialist contracts, a soaring cost of living, “scaremongers,” this conspiracy could high casualty rates devastate working be traced back to, among other events, families, the imposition of conscription the Western Labour Conference in of manpower but not wealth, and the Calgary in March 1919, at which internment of immigrant workers as radical union leaders had endorsed the dangerous “foreigners.” By war’s end, formation of the revolutionary One many working-class Canadians felt the Big Union. Francis determines that country had to change; their radical the scare wound down after the courts union and political leaders saw the found the Winnipeg strike leaders revolutions unfolding in Germany and guilty of seditious conspiracy at the Russia as models for this change. end of the famous “show trials” of 1920, Certainly the Borden government, which were prosecuted by members of along with many business leaders the city’s elite. and a large part of the middle class, All of this is written in a clear and saw the growing discontent sweeping compelling way. One problem, though, the country as the beginnings of a with viewing this critical period in revolution. In response, the government Canadian history as a passing episode used its wartime powers to crush (a “scare”) is that it underestimates working-class protests, strikes, and how long the repression went on. In 128 bc studies

British Columbia, one can see all of the Regiment (bcr), Duke of Connaught’s same techniques of state and employer Own, a Vancouver-based armoured repression present in the breaking of the reconnaissance regiment of the Wobbly-led logger strikes of 1923-24. Canadian Forces Primary Reserve. At the same time, it is hard to disagree This pictorial history features a truly with the examples Francis presents in impressive array of visual images and his conclusion of other moments when first-hand accounts to tell the story of the Canadian government responded Vancouver’s oldest militia regiment. with repression to perceived threats Maps and primary documents provide to the stability of the state – from the a backdrop for the battles, campaigns, Communist Party activism of the 1930s and exercises that have characterized to the current “war on terror.” This does the bcr’s existence – events that span reveal the fragile nature of freedom from formation of the regiment in 1894 of expression and the rule of law in to its active participation in the Boer Canada. However, one could argue that War, two world wars, UN peacekeeping Canada’s elite, rather than episodically, efforts, and the war in Afghanistan. has always and continuously taken As a regimental history, Swift threats to its interests seriously. One and Strong is a welcome successor feels, too, that the Strike Bulletin editor to Douglas E. Harker’s The Dukes Abe Heap’s call at the end of the war for (1974), the unit’s first regimental a “better day” does represent an ongoing history. Harker’s earlier work was a desire and efforts by many to build a concise operational history that also significantly different Canada. detailed the bcr’s many transitions and reorganizations over the years. From its founding as an independent company of British Columbia’s Brigade of Garrison Swift and Strong: A Pictorial Artillery, in 1899 the regiment was History of the British Columbia converted to a rifle regiment, then an Regiment (Duke of overseas battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First Connaught’s Own) World War, followed by conversion to Ron Leblanc, Keith Maxwell, an armoured role during the Second Dwayne Snow, Kelly Deschênes World War and continuing to this day. The serving and retired members Vancouver: The British Columbia of the regiment who produced Swift Regiment (Duke of Connaught’s and Strong, however, have gone well Own) Museum Society, 2011. beyond Harker’s earlier work, not only 353 pp., Illus. $50.00 cloth. in chronological terms by continuing the regiment’s history to the present James Wood day but also in the highly visual style University of Victoria of the present volume and in its more personalized focus on the memoirs, aving dedicated Swift and journals, biographies, and letters of HStrong “to all Dukes, past, the Dukes in peacetime and at war. present and future,” the authors Swift and Strong tells the regiment’s of this outstanding volume have history in its own words, the emphasis successfully commemorated the life being on first-hand accounts and high- and times of the British Columbia quality photographic images. The result Book Reviews 129 will appeal to those with an interest in recent win by the bcr’s Corporal military history, Vancouver’s cultural Ryan Stacy in 2010. Cross-border heritage, and/or the social significance training exercises between the bcr of the militia in a Canadian city. Above and units of the US National Guard all, this book will have its greatest in Washington State continue today, significance to families of serving or much as they did when the first of former members of the BC Regiment. these visits took place in the 1890s. This book’s vast range of Traditions such as the St. Julian Dinner photographic material details not only continue on an annual basis, with the the war history of the bcr but also its regiment commemorating the tragic role in the Vancouver community. In losses it suffered during the 2nd Battle these photos, the regiment’s history of Ypres in 1915. Meanwhile, new is set against the backdrop of city traditions continue to be formed, with landmarks, such as the old Imperial Chapter 10 of this book devoted to the Opera House, or defining moments in experiences of Dukes who have served Vancouver’s history, like the send-offs in Afghanistan. given to its soldiers in 1899, 1914, and Swift and Strong imparts a sense 1939. On page 156, one sees the famous of this being a regiment that is not “Wait for me, Daddy” photograph of only aware but also justifiably proud a young boy reaching for his father’s of its history. For example, in 2006 a hand as the regiment marched off team of Dukes climbed Mount Hart- to war in 1939, this being one of the McHarg and Mount Worthington, iconic images of Canada’s Second two Rocky Mountain peaks named for World War. Cap badges, medals, and commanding officers of the regiment decorations are effectively displayed, who were killed overseas. At the along with a wealth of information on summits they built stone cairns in their both the recipients and the actions for honour, this being just one example which these decorations were awarded. of the unit’s spirit. Swift and Strong A special section is reverently devoted is another one. This is a beautifully to the five Dukes who have been presented and detailed history of the recipients of the Victoria Cross. Dukes and a highly personalized In many respects, Swift and Strong portrait of Vancouver’s citizen soldiers, parallels the redirection of regimental past and present. histories in recent years from a narrow focus on operations overseas to a consideration of the social and cultural aspects of the military service in Canada. For example, while the BC Regiment was once known for being “more English than the English,” in terms of both its ethnic composition and its traditions, today the regiment is proud that the number of visible minorities in its ranks is ten times that of the Canadian Forces average (270). Rifleman Sam Perry’s 1904 victory in the prestigious Basely marksmanship championship is set against another 130 bc studies

The Chuck Davis History of the recycling bin. Neither book made Metropolitan Vancouver Chuck rich; they were, by all accounts, labours of love. But they did two Chuck Davis things: first, they confirmed Chuck’s Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, reputation as an archival packrat of 2011. 592 pp. $49.95 cloth. the first order; second, they established an environment in which Metro could John Douglas Belshaw thrive. To be sure, Metro is not going to Langara College make Chuck any more wealthy than did its predecessors. He’s beyond that now, though not beyond the reach of praise. veryone who has spent any time It’s probably best to say what this Eresearching Vancouver history book is not. It’s not an encyclopaedia seems to have a Chuck Davis story. nor is it exhaustive. There are no cross- Here’s mine. It’s about 1980, I’m a callow references, the index is limited and not-easily-impressed grad student incomplete, and there are plenty of doing work on some arcane heritage tax redundancies (the Woodward’s story law and someone suggests I call Chuck may be found in its near entirety on because, of course, he knows everybody. three separate occasions). There are also I get his answering machine – for the the inevitable gaps that every reader will record, this was my very first encounter find, based on her or his special interest. with such a contraption, which qualifies Nor is the book rigid in its focus on the Chuck as an early adopter. What comes : Chuck was an whispering down the line initially is aficionado of comic strips and he makes car traffic, distant voices, maybe some mention of the first appearance in a construction noises, then “Hear that? Vancouver newspaper of his favourite That’s the sound of the city. And syndicated American strips, including this? This is the sound of me, Chuck Pogo (not exactly a Vancouver event). Davis. Leave a message.” Playful and This is essentially a chronology of intimately connected to the city he factoids. There’s none of the analysis loved, even on his answering machine, and little of the in-depth scrutiny found there was something incorrigibly in Greater Vancouver, and Metro has a original and authentic about Chuck. personal touch that makes it very un- That’s a fact and it’s a fun fact as encyclopaedic. The book is organized well. Which was Chuck’s stock in chronologically so there is a sense that trade and the overarching theme of this is a comprehensive day-by-day his latest, last, and legacy project. His account of everything. But it’s not. original Vancouver Book is long out of Historians will want to know how print and obsolete, though its successor, the book handles the treacherous The Greater Vancouver Book (a bigger, terrain of colonialism, sexualities, better “urban encyclopedia”) might still patriarchy, class. Does it address them be hunted to ground. Neither volume, head on or does it perpetuate a vision however, are precise palimpsests for of the past in which differential power Metro. The earlier incarnations were, is normalized? Yes and no. Chuck frankly, cheaply produced, and it has recognized oppression and he had the taken no small effort to ensure that my good sense to flag in the past what copy of Greater is not mistaken for an were, if not turning points, certainly abused phone directory destined for pivotal moments, some of which may Book Reviews 131 surprise the careful reader. For example, Chilliwack’s Chinatowns: minimum wage legislation in 1924 had A History the effect of throwing out of work large numbers of Chinese-Vancouverites Chad Reimer and was thus a systemic and oblique Vancouver: Chinese Canadian His- instrument of discrimination (135). At torical Society of British Columbia, the same time, the pre-contact history Gold Mountain Stories, 2011. of the region is given only passing 211 pp. $21.49 cloth. attention, and old chestnuts like “first White child born in Vancouver” or “first Lilynn Wan religious service on Burrard Inlet persist (while neither umpteenth Stó:lō child born nor millionth Aboriginal spiritual event are enumerated). But it’s a book riting about immigrants has about “facts,” and it is how one defines Wlong been central to Canadian “facts” that determines much of what historical scholarship. Today, the goes in between the hard covers. history of immigration also constitutes One can be critical, but that would an essential element of the popular be both curmudgeonly and churlish and imagination in Canada and, in turn, it would miss the point. Chuck (and of our sense of national identity. Chad those kind and decent people who put Reimer’s Chilliwack’s Chinatowns is their shoulders to the wheel to ensure a particularly interesting monograph that this book would survive Chuck’s because it speaks to both academic death) set out to produce an assemblage and popular audiences: it employs of information meant to excite interest academic rigour in its extensive use in the city, and in that Metropolitan and presentation of archival material Vancouver succeeds with panache. It and is also written in a narrative honours and it takes to task and it does that is highly accessible to a popular so in a way that is both delightful and readership. Reimer offers a detailed and personable. Every now and again Chuck thorough account of the brief existence has a walk-on role in his own prose, of Chilliwack’s two Chinatowns in the as when he says “my favourite story early part of the twentieth century, about” or “I well remember.” It is like a from the labourers who cleared land long lunch with a charming storyteller, in the 1880s to enable non-Native someone who adores the subject matter, settlement in the Chilliwack region to who loves the smell of microfilm in the controversial fires that permanently the morning, and who wants nothing destroyed both communities in the more than to please the audience by 1920s and 1930s. demonstrating that, at the end of the Taking what Franca Iacovetta day, it’s a wonderful world. describes as the “cohesive community” approach, Reimer unearths rich accounts of everyday experiences and evidence of the diversity of immigrant life. In his stories, the fluidity of racial and ethnic hierarchies is revealed through descriptions of the interactions and networks that existed among the residents of early Chilliwack. 132 bc studies

Chilliwack’s Chinatowns follows the The Kelowna Story: conventional master narrative of An Okanagan History Chinese immigration that begins with the gold rush and ends with Sharron J. Simpson stories of the victory of integration Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, into mainstream Canadian society. 2011. 308 pp. $36.95 cloth. It focuses too heavily on men and the merchant elite in reconstructing David Dendy these communities and is framed Okanagan College in the unproblematized language of contemporary liberal multiculturalism. harron Simpson’s The Kelowna Nonetheless, Reimer’s work makes some SStory intends to provide for the valuable contributions. His regional people of Kelowna, most of whom are and rural focus offers a useful balance recent arrivals, “a collective memory” to the existing literature on Chinese (9) of the origin and development of and non-European immigrants more their community. Overall, Simpson generally, which tends to concentrate has accomplished this in a reasonably on urban communities. This rural focus balanced manner, largely through also reveals the essential connections summarizing and consolidating existing between peripheral regions like published material. Chilliwack and core urban regions like She covers the main events of a Vancouver, particularly in the discussion hundred and fifty years of Kelowna’s of market gardening. As Reimer points history, from the establishment of out, the surviving documents favour the Okanagan Mission by Oblate the experiences of the merchant elite, missionaries in 1859 to the Okanagan and their stories constitute the bulk Mountain Fire that destroyed 239 of this history. However, the most houses in 2003. However, the episodic engaging and analytical parts of this nature of this coverage means that book are found in chapters 10 and 11. continuity is somewhat lacking. For These chapters are based on court example, early buildings in Kelowna’s records and provide insight into the downtown are described, but the reader experiences of the labouring classes, does not discover when they got electric who were the demographic majority power, piped water, or sewer service. of the Chinatown community in And it is a little disappointing that Chilliwack at this time. Simpson, who served on Kelowna’s Chilliwack’s Chinatowns offers an city council, does not use her first- interesting local history and a wealth hand knowledge to give a little of of primary document material. It is the “behind-the-scenes” story of the an excellent resource for students explosive development of Kelowna and scholars of race, ethnicity, and since 1970, when it changed from being immigration in Canada, and it will an agriculturally based community to serve as a basis for further interpretation being a major urban centre. and analysis. Simpson’s main focus is on the “development” of the infrastructure of buildings and transportation rather than on people and society. Even the photographs reflect this. Many Book Reviews 133 buildings get more than one photo, or 1890s, as Simpson has it (72). And some even double-page spreads, while there things are simply wrong. The early are very few images of people. There rancher A.B. Knox did not eventually are no photos of the founding settler, sell out to his nemesis Tom Ellis (36) Father Pandosy; or of the first mayor; but, rather, to a syndicate of property or of villains such as outlaw Boyd James developers. Furthermore, Simpson and murderous police chief David cannot resist embellishing stories, as Murdoch, whose stories are all told in with her assertion that “early settlers considerable detail. patrolled the lakeshore, musket in The coverage is somewhat uneven. hand, to protect their families” from the The First World War is hardly lake monster Ogopogo (56). And the mentioned, and the coverage of the killer Boyd James was not Jesse James’s 1920s is quite thin. Native people get nephew (106). Since Simpson does not only a vague page and a half, with provide source citations, it is difficult no mention of their actual habitation for readers to verify which “factual” and activities within Kelowna. The statements in the book may be trusted. Chinese, who made up over 10 percent of Kelowna’s population in 1930, get short shrift, receiving only scattered The Legendary Betty Frank: mentions. And while the outlying communities of Okanagan Mission, The Cariboo’s Alpine Queen Rutland, and Glenmore feature in Betty Frank and Sage regular vignettes, East Kelowna doesn’t Birchwater even make the index. The book is attractively produced Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2011. and presented. Unfortunately, while 272 pp. $24.95 paper. editorial care has been taken with grammar, style, and the spelling of Judy Campbell names, the book is peppered with factual Barkerville National Historic Site errors that undermine confidence in its accuracy. Some are simply careless and s a young girl, Betty Cox (Frank) should have been caught in the editing: Ahad some very non-traditional the Similkameen Valley is not to the east ideas of what she wanted to be when of the Okanagan (25) and Rock Creek she grew up. She dreamed of riding is not to the west of Osoyoos (31). The horses, mushing dogs, and guiding apple variety is Golden Delicious, not hunters in the northern wilderness. Yellow Delicious (258). The Kelowna This autobiographic tale captures Cannery produced No. 2, No. 3, and No. the life of a woman who successfully 10 (= one gallon) cans, not “two-, three-, flaunted authority and overturned and ten-gallon sizes” (103). Some errors gender stereotypes while living a life come from an overly casual approach to of adventure that would give Indiana history. Simpson says that “gas lamps … Jones heart failure. lit every house and shop” in 1904 (81); Betty was born in 1931 to Dutch however, despite historical clichés about immigrant parents in the the Edwardian era, Kelowna never had Country of northern Alberta. Driven gas lighting. She means coal-oil lamps. off the farm by hard times, the family “Kelowna Pride” was a brand of cut joined the hundreds on the move, tobacco produced in the 1920s not the taking whatever work, legal or illegal, 134 bc studies that could be found. They finally come that the uniqueness of Betty’s story to rest on a small island north of Powell becomes even more apparent. She did River, which was home base while not become a wife, supporting her Betty’s father fished and logged up and husband’s ambitions. In Betty’s life, down the coast. her ideas and dreams always shaped Here Betty, the oldest of five the family’s future. Her guiding and children, honed the skills she would trapping income was supplemented by need to achieve her ambitions. Her Gordon’s logging, but neither economic father gave her a .22 rifle when she nor family stresses could keep Betty out was just ten, and she soon learned to of the mountains. hunt. She played on the shifting log These are very much Betty’s stories, booms, camped out on their island, and told in her own voice. Sage Birchwater, rowed small boats through dangerous who is noted for his sensitive portrayal tides. She learned to be resourceful of the life of the Tsilhqot’in woman and self-reliant, surviving tuberculosis known as Chiwid, manages to organize and gangrene and even protecting the the convoluted narrative threads of neighbour’s children and goats from a “the only person … who can tell five roving cougar. different stories at the same time” (11) But young Betty was a “holy terror” into a coherent whole. The book bumps (21) at school. She was a charismatic along in approximate chronological troublemaker who led other students order through the various phases of on rebellious forays into the woods, Betty’s life, one hair-raising adventure physically challenged every new after another. student, and drove her teachers to This is Cariboo history at its grittiest, distraction. an unfiltered look at a lifestyle that Ironically, she became a schoolteacher, is now all but lost even in Betty’s one of the few acceptable routes available remote mountains. It is a chronicle for a single woman to get a foothold in of rural people, living at the margins the north. After teaching in several of mainstream BC society, with few northern communities, she took a post resources except what they can glean in Alkali Lake west of Williams Lake. from the land. To survive, they hunt, Here, she learned to ride, operated a fish, cut shakes, and trap. They rely on guest ranch, and eventually started horses, dogs, beat-up vehicles, and each working on her real dream – to become other. The book documents their lives a big game guide and outfitter. The with a level of detail found in few other gutsy Betty thought nothing of learning sources, and this is perhaps its greatest a new trade on the fly, by trial and error, value. The stories, often hilarious, or, more correctly in this wilderness sometimes scary, and occasionally setting, by the “do-or-die” method. sad, paint a picture of a life lived to She fell through the ice on Quesnel the fullest and of childhood dreams Lake with her entire dog team, fended realized beyond expectations. off bears in her remote trapping cabin, and packed moose carcasses down mountains in the dead of night. It was also here in the Cariboo that she met her future husband and father of her five children, Gordon Frank. It is at this stage of her narrative Book Reviews 135

Return to Northern British country, and on central Vancouver Columbia: A Photojournal of Island before heading back to northern British Columbia for one last season in Frank Swannell, 1929-39 1939. Jay Sherwood Swannell’s peregrinations show the different kinds of work that Victoria: Royal British Columbia surveyors undertook during the 1930s Museum, 2010. 196 pp. Illus. $39.95 and the different kinds of conditions paper. they encountered. Several chapters Ben Bradley emphasize the dramatic changes that air travel brought to the practice of Queen’s University surveying. Aerial photography made surveying faster and cheaper, while his is the third and f inal airplanes made it easier to move survey Tinstalment in Jay Sherwood’s crews around the country and to keep series about the work of provincial them supplied. Swannell had much less land surveyor Frank Swannell. It need for packers and boatmen than in describes Swannell’s activities during previous years, and this may explain the 1930s, including several seasons why there are far fewer images of First spent in areas of northern British Nations people in this book than there Columbia that he had visited before the were in the previous two: air travel freed First World War – hence the “return” surveyors from reliance on the people in the title. Like the two previous who lived on the lands they examined. books, it focuses on Swannell’s work This series provides a valuable look in the field. Each chapter is organized at surveying in British Columbia from around a summer’s fieldwork and draws the perspective of the men who worked heavily on Swannell’s diaries, maps, “on the ground.” It is also a useful and photographs as well as on those resource for historians interested in made by his compatriots. The chapters some of the province’s lesser-known are illustrated with many superbly corners. However, the sustained focus reproduced photographs. on fieldwork results in Swannell and In spite of its title, Return to Northern his surveys appearing detached from British Columbia is not as focused on a the broader social, economic, and particular region of British Columbia as environmental history of British were the previous books. The narrative Columbia. This final book in the jumps around the province, just like series would have benefitted from Swannell did, for surveyors took more reflection on Swannell’s overall employment wherever they could get it significance to the province, and the during the Depression. After working short chapter about his retirement years in the from 1929 could have provided a venue for this. to 1931, Swannell was unable to find Sherwood shows that Swannell lived work in 1932 or 1933; hence, there are no to see mines, mills, roads, and utility chapters covering those years. In 1934 he lines built in areas of the province that signed on with the , had once seemed impenetrable. He even and his participation lent the fanciful attended the 1952 opening of the Kenney outing a veneer of scientific legitimacy. Dam, which flooded extensive sections He then worked on the headwaters of the valley that he of the Skeena River, in the Big Bend had surveyed prior to the First World 136 bc studies

War. Here, surely, was an opportunity appeal of any trial court judgment to consider the land surveyors’ role in had to remain within that same court, facilitating these kinds of developments, before the collective colleagues of the an opportunity to locate them in “the trial judge who rendered the appealed big picture.” Given the amount of work judgment. that Sherwood has put into tracing One century later, making 2010 its Swannell’s travels and travails, this historical annus mirabilis, the British reader would have appreciated his Columbia Court of Appeal has been thoughts on the matter. quadruply served: by The First Hundred Years, by a special 2009 issue of BC Studies, by a documentary film entitled The British Columbia Court Though the Heavens Fall (out of the Justice Education Society of British of Appeal: The First Hundred Columbia), and by published notes Years, 1910-2010 and articles scattered through volume Christopher Moore 68 (2010) of The Advocate (British Columbia), offering an excellent Vancouver: ubc Press, 2010, for historical summary by Hamar Foster, The Osgoode Society for Canadian some scintillating alphabetical doggerel Legal History. 304 pp. $85.00 cloth. by retired justice Martin Taylor, and other commemorative notes organized DeLloyd J. Guth and edited by Christopher Harvey. University of Let the record show that this Court of Appeal has made a commendable effort law court has an inner life, at creating its historical identity. A beyond the many outside lives that The First Hundred Years pioneers two it can rescue, ruin, remedy, and reward. novelties for law court history: it is a When it is an appellate court, the urge team effort on the part of a law student to converge as group judgment replaces committee of researchers-writers; and the isolation of the solo trial judge; but it puts its narrative into one chapter per in all cases the goal is to speak with one decade, 1910 to 2010, to supply the reader voice for maximum authority and future with individual judicial biographies predictability in law. and then a brief sketch of one “typical” Provincial courts of appeal in Canada case. Each biography offers a one-page are recent statutory creatures. They have quickie formula of birth, education, law taken most of the twentieth century to practice, bench service, death: in short, settle jurisdictionally alongside the a series of obituary notices, lacking the Federal Court of Appeal and the more substantive depth of a Dictionary Court Martial Appeal Court, none of of Canadian Biography entry, with which is constitutionally embedded nary a mention of specific judgments and all of which operate beneath and that might define and measure the are answerable to the Supreme Court judge’s abilities. British Columbia, of Canada. British Columbia was the perhaps uniquely among Canadian third province (after [1867] and provinces, has produced an amazing Manitoba [1906]) to grow a separate number of biographical portraits in oral appellate court out of its trial court, by history collections, books, articles, and statute in 1909 and with its first sitting obituaries – a culture of personalities and in 1910. Prior to this, in Canada, an individualism – that The First Hundred Book Reviews 137

Years commendably and thoroughly twenty-two years in practice (all but collects, cites, and, for this cohort of one in Vancouver). justices, summarizes. But it does so If the actors on the bench came in a two-dimensionally flat manner from the same backgrounds, and the that avoids any prosopographical actors at the bar are ignored, one synthesizing of the characteristics of can understand why the Court of this cohort in order to show why and Appeal’s judgments privileged narrow how the same sorts of people shaped legal formalism, at least before the British Columbia’s rule of law. 1980s. The First Hundred Years’ first From its earliest days, after An Act “typical” case, involving the Komagata Constituting a Court of Appeal and Maru (1913), is featured for effectively Declaring its Jurisdiction (sbc 1907, shutting Canada’s doors to South Asian c. 10), the Court of Appeal had more immigrants until at least 1947, while than the normal share of characters. By entrenching judicial authority for non- the time of its first sitting in Victoria, reviewable parliamentary supremacy. In 4 January 1910, the court had survived its second decade, in the Gonzalves case the bitter public vindictiveness dividing (1924), the Court of Appeal confirmed its two most prominent jurists: Gordon the eviction of settlers from the Stanley Hunter, a “bon-vivant,” and Archer Park reserve – settlers who had claimed Martin, an “irascible” loner (to borrow a prescriptive right to residence since words from David Ricardo Williams). 1874. Then, in 1933, the Richards and There was the austerely prejudiced Woolridge case forged anti-labour law Roman Catholic (Cornelius Hawkins into a weapon for BC employers, at O’Halloran), the absentee Gordon least until Justice Ivan Rand’s “formula” Sloan (who made a cottage industry after the Second World War. For its first of chairing public policy commissions half-century, this Court of Appeal was instead of judging), and, at least well very much in tune with the politically into the 1980s, a preponderance of conservative anglophile elites who Scottish-named justices. In the twenty- conducted provincial business out of first century the court achieved gender the Vancouver Club (established 1889). parity, a policy that began with Chief Indeed, most were members. Justice Nathan Nemetz, no doubt The 1940s are represented by a lurid urged by his wife Belle, and expanded divorce case that, admittedly, “broke no under the current chief justice of new ground and created no important British Columbia, Lance Finch. The precedent” (95), just a lot of media First Hundred Years offers a one-page attention, as did the chosen negligence numerical group portrait for each case for the 1950s. In the latter, the decade’s justices: for the first decade, court again sided with a corporation eight out of ten came from Ontario, against a citizen, refusing to apply the all were identified with one of the two widely accepted Donoghue duty-of- political parties and averaged nineteen care principle to a publisher for a false years in law practice before appointment, story (Guay v. Sun Publishing Company and most had undergraduate but [1951]) after the trial judge had awarded no law school degrees. And for the damages to Mrs. Guay. The Supreme most recent decade, the majority are Court of Canada agreed with the Court from British Columbia, and all have of Appeal. law school degrees, no registered The Court of Appeal’s second half- political affiliations, and average over century saw a quantum leap in legal 138 bc studies learning among its justices and in why, historically, the Court of Appeal opening itself to a greater diversity of has resolved key issues of criminal social issues needing legal definition law sentencing, labour union status, and resolution. The 1960s case is R. v. civil liberties, Aboriginal claims, and White and Bob (1964), the first of many corporate-commercial law. This special Aboriginal claims for enforcement of issue, taken together with The First land title rights against assertions of Hundred Years, offers us a memorable Crown sovereignty. In 1975, the court map of how this court has become a upheld capital punishment, as did the leader in litigation-based law-making Supreme Court of Canada (1977), while in Canada. Parliament was abolishing it (June 1976)! But the times were changing the court’s slavish devotion to strict Indigenous Peoples in Liberal constructionist legalism, which received its first jolt from Justice William Democratic States: McIntyre, who chose a rights-based A Comparative Study of jurisprudence (pre-Charter, based Conflict and Accommodation in in the Canadian Bill of Rights 1960) and a pro-judicial review challenge to Canada and India equally strict parliamentary supremacy. Haresamudram Srikanth The book’s leading case for the 1980s is Boulder, CO: Bauu Press, 2010. 243 another divorce case, in which Justice Peter Seaton cleared the way for legal pp. Maps and tables. clarity regarding equal division of $24.95 paper. property in the Rutherford v. Rutherford Hugh Johnston case. We end with another negligence case in the 1990s and then with the Barbeau case (2003) regarding same-sex marriage and Section 15 equality rights he author is a professor of in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Tpolitical science in Shillong, the Freedoms (1982). capital of the tiny hill state of Magalaya Idiosyncratic as this law court history in the tribal area of Northeastern India. is, the narrative hangs together largely This is a state whose population, by because of the richness of biographical official figures, consists of over 85 resources and, for the last half-century, percent scheduled tribes – indigenous the systematic oral history interviewing people whose status is recognized in of surviving actors by the researcher- Indian national legislation. It is one writer committee’s coordinator, of several states in Northeastern India Christopher Moore. However, if you that has been carved out of greater want any sort of thematic, topical Assam since the 1960s in response analysis of the Court of Appeal’s legal to vigorous agitation by their tribal significance, then you must return peoples. Srikanth is a student of the to BC Studies’ Summer 2009 special politics of this region, and, in an area issue, “The British Columbia Court of over thirty major tribal groups – of Appeal, 1910-2010.” Guest edited by racially, linguistically, and culturally the province’s celebrity legal historians diverse – he has a complex subject. (John McLaren, Hamar Foster, and In 2005, Srikanth extended his Wes Pue), the volume targets how and research to Canada thanks to a Shastri Book Reviews 139

Indo-Canadian Institute Fellowship. accepts his notion of 1867 or thereabouts His project has been comparative, as the end of the colonial period in involving a search for lessons that Canada, then his judgment that First Canada and India could share in Nations in British Columbia suffered developing progressive policies to meet much more under colonial rule than did the demands of indigenous peoples. As the hill communities of Northeastern he explains it, these are peoples who – India is both striking and convincing. contrary to past expectations – have When one comes to the last forty not disappeared but have survived the years, to developments since the 1960s, onslaught of the market economy and Srikanth shows the global context of the invasion of external values and who the agitation of indigenous peoples have increasingly made their presence and of the accommodating responses felt over the last half-century. He of various governments. In this book, conducted his research in Vancouver he is more optimistic about what is at Simon Fraser University and the happening in British Columbia – University of British Columbia, where, in the negotiation of treaty rights to complement his earlier studies in and in progress towards indigenous India, he focused on policies affecting self-government – than he is about First Nations peoples. Indigenous Peoples what is happening in Northeastern in Liberal Democratic States is the result, India. Neither story has run its course, and he has signalled his purpose by however, so it would be interesting to publishing with an American press have his reassessment after another ten that specializes in activist research on or fifteen years. indigenous issues, both American and global. Reflecting his research opportunities, Cultural Grammars of Nation, Srikanth has attempted to narrow his Canada-India comparison to British Diaspora, and Indigeneity in Columbia and the hill regions of Canada Northeastern India. But because, in Christine Kim, Sophie McCall, each country, major policy directions and Melina Baum Singer, eds. and decisions have come from the national centre as well as the outlying Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier region, he has devoted considerable University Press, 2012. 284 pp. space to broader national pictures. He $49.95 paper. has also taken a historical view, whose starting point is the nineteenth century. Gabrielle Legault Here, he emphasizes the break between University of British Columbia the colonial and postcolonial periods, which has a clearer, more definitive meaning in India than in Canada. ultural Grammars of Nation, This is a weakness of his chronological CDiaspora, and Indigeneity in Canada framework. And because he has had is a valuable contribution to an emerging much to master in the course of his discourse within the field of indigenous Canadian research, one cannot take his studies. It furthers a multidisciplinary account as authoritative in every detail. dialogue by exploring the relationships There are slips that will be obvious between transnationalism, diaspora, to many readers. Nonetheless, if one and indigeneity in Canada, while 140 bc studies interrogating the value of postcolonial Writing from the context of Métis theory as a lens for working through identity politics, Sophie McCall argues these topics. With the objective of that applications of diaspora theory risk “[making] discernible the language promoting generalizations that ignore rules governing our critical choices the diversity inherent in indigenous and the conceptual frameworks we experiences. Because not all indigenous mobilize, consciously or not” (9), peoples have been displaced, indigenous Cultural Grammars challenges existing relationships to land are complexly notions of nation, home, nostalgia, and mediated, constantly changing, and authenticity, and it explores the linkages never static. between the respective histories that “Breaking the Framework of shape transnational and indigenous Representational Violence” is identities. particularly relevant to indigenous Chapters focused on indigenous experiences in British Columbia. Julia experiences indicate a contemporary Emberley explores representations of movement from positions of resistance violence towards Aboriginal women to positive transformation and in the Pickton Trial, questioning “how reconciliation. “Canadian Indian testimonial practices might contribute Literary Nationalism?,” written to a fundamental transformation in collaboratively by Kristina Fagan, how Indigenous women’s bodies are Daniel Health Justice, Keavy Martin, viewed as objects of violence” (66). Sam McKegney, Deanna Reder, and Similar to other chapters in this book, Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, Emberley challenges the meaning critiques various aspects of indigenous of decolonization by focusing on literary nationalism, questioning how consolidation, healing, and positive indigenous literary nationalists can transformation. continue to assert sovereignty, yet Deena Rymhs’s “Word Warriors” honour the diversity that exists within has a similar tone as she explores the their nations while working within a deracination of indigenous peoples broader system that considers viability incarcerated throughout Canada who equal to ideological homogeneity. deploy pan-indigenous identities to Renate Eigenbrod’s analysis of engage in processes of cultural renewal Wagamese’s fictional work highlights and colonial resistance. Rymhs argues a broad literary shift from narratives that the stance of the texts created by of dispossession to writing about the these Word Warriors are “postnational” transformation and adaptation of as they advocate intertribal identities, indigenous values to new contexts. put forth notions of sovereignty, and Much of Cultural Grammars engage international communities. investigates diaspora in order to Rymhs explains that, “in adapting the understand transnational mobility meaning of warrior to address their and indigenous deracination (physical present, immediate contexts, and to relocation and cultural dislocation). encompass their personal healing The archetypal Jewish diaspora is and political activism from prison, reconceptualized not only as “an Indigenous prisoners invent new interpretative device for literary and ‘cultural grammars’ of their own” (237). cultural analysis, but also a powerful Cultural Grammars is highly organizing prism that excludes sophisticated, intensely theoretical, particular identity formations” (99). and, due to the specificity of some of Book Reviews 141 the literary analysis, can be difficult to foreword also briefly acknowledges apply across disciplines; however, these the “ethnocentric prejudice” (14) that concerns are perhaps inevitable when at times characterized Carr’s journal engaging in complex conversations and letters. Especially in relation to involving multiple overlapping this complex issue, it would have been discourses. While the audience may valuable to have had more critical appear narrow, there are moments of analysis of the journal and its wider insight in each chapter that encourage historical context in the foreword. a broad array of readers to reflect Nonetheless, Bridge offers a lively and on the nomenclature and theoretical careful introduction to the journal, and frameworks employed in their own work. she opens the door for fruitful future analysis of this and other matters. Overall, Sister and I is a delight for Sister and I: From Victoria academic and non-academic readers. There is charm and immediacy in to London the scanned journal, complete with Emily Carr, with a foreword by misspellings and worn pages that Kathryn Bridge underline the materiality and visuality of Carr’s writing. The combination of Victoria: Royal British Columbia text and image also highlights her gift Museum, 2011. 112 pp. $24.95 cloth. for incisive and witty observation of both the mundane and the unusual. Laura Ishiguro For scholars interested in transborder University Campus Suffolk histories of British Columbia, the journal offers an example of the kind n 1910, the writer and artist Emily of personal links forged between the ICarr travelled with her sister Alice province and Canada, the Atlantic from Victoria, British Columbia, to world, and Britain in the early twentieth London, England. Crossing Canada century. Sister and I also includes by train, then the Atlantic Ocean material for scholars concerned with a by steamer, the women encountered range of topics, including siblinghood porcupines, antique shop swindles, and travel writing. It raises intriguing and seasickness on their six-week questions, too, about the idea of a journey to Europe. Sister and I narrates “funny book,” as Carr called it, and the their adventures and misadventures ways in which historical humour can through a full-colour, high-resolution shape our experiences as readers and scanned reproduction of Carr’s journal researchers. of the trip. The left-hand pages contain Although it has much for scholars, colourful descriptions and stories, while then, Sister and I will appeal to a much the right-hand pages feature caricatured wider audience, including adults and drawings of the women on their travels. children. In this sense, it is perhaps The book also includes a foreword best described as a short, engaging, by Kathryn Bridge as well as a useful amusing, and informative read for glossary of misspelled and rare words. anyone interested in Emily Carr, Bridge does an excellent job of situating early twentieth-century Canada, or the journal within the context of Carr’s trans-Atlantic travel narratives. I life. Although primarily a positive read Sister and I on a flight between exploration of her life and work, the British Columbia and England, so 142 bc studies it particularly resonated with me high-fired ceramics played in the studio as I reflected on the changes and pottery movement. Thrown gives the continuities in travellers’ experiences of potters themselves an opportunity to place, distance, and companionship. I discuss their work and to consider the was only disappointed when the journal milieu in which it was created, either in ended abruptly with the sisters’ arrival St-Ives or British Columbia. And the in London – what felt like only the book’s large format allows for generous beginning of their adventures. But of illustrations of pots, potteries, and course the archive has its limitations as potters. (Hornby Island potter Wayne well as its joys, and Carr’s “funny book” Ngan gets a two-page colour spread offers both in colourful and thought- lounging in an open-air bathtub.) provoking form. Divide and rule has become the mantra of most exhibition catalogue editors – dividing the responsibilities Thrown: British Columbia’s and ruling out nothing. This can lead to an uneven and dated publication. For Apprentices of Bernard Leach example, many of the chapters – Doris and Their Contemporaries Shadbolt’s informative essay on Wayne Scott Watson, editor Ngan, not to mention the insightful musings of Read, Leach, and Yanagi – Vancouver: Morris and Helen were published many years ago. More Belkin Art Gallery, 2011. 304 pp. recent essays, penned by the province’s $60.00 cloth. most celebrated potters, are uneven in length and quality. The printed Maria Tippett correspondence between them is not Cambridge University suitable to the large format. Lengthy footnotes might have been incorporated hrown, British Columbia’s into the text. And difficult-to-see TApprentices of Bernard Leach and snapshot illustrations of every item their Contemporaries has its origins in exhibited in the 2004 exhibition do an an exhibition at the Morris and Helen injustice to the work. Belkin Art Gallery at the University of Even so, there is much to learn from British Columbia. Although every item this anthology. Thrown makes it clear in the 2004 exhibition appears in this that Bernard Leach and his English new volume, Thrown is much more than and Japanese contemporaries were an exhibition catalogue. It pays homage not the only sources of inspiration for to the influential English potter and nascent potters in British Columbia. writer Bernard Leach. It chronicles Long before the first potter apprenticed the experiences of those BC potters with Leach, the University of British who apprenticed, during the 1950s and Columbia’s Extension Department 1960s, with Leach at his pottery in St- was offering classes in pottery making. Ives and/or with Reg Dixon and David Vancouver’s New Design Gallery Lambert at the Vancouver School of was showing pottery alongside non- Art. It offers excerpts from the writings objective paintings. By the early 1960s, of the Japanese and English art critics public institutions like the Greater Sōetsu Yanagi and Herbert Read. There Victoria Art Gallery and the Vancouver is a learned discussion on the techniques Art Gallery included potters in their of pottery making and the role that exhibition programs. And by the 1970s, Book Reviews 143 pottery societies and pottery magazines the term “film noir” to describe a new – The Western Potter and Craft Contacts generation of American crime films – appeared alongside such commercial only recently allowed into France after outlets as the House of Ceramics. the war. This new wave of films, which By the late 1970s, however, the included The Maltese Falcon (1941), The momentum had gone out of the studio Glass Key (1942), and Double Indemnity pottery movement. Michael Henry’s (1944), featured claustrophobic urban “aching back” forced him to quit settings, morally conflicted heroes, and making pots in 1973 (117). Before the ruthless but attractive women motivated end of the decade, Glenn Lewis and by expediency and greed. A product of Gathie Falk had moved from pottery their time, these films expressed the making into fine art. Following his anxiety and disillusionment of those apprenticeship with Bernard Leach, who had lived through both the Great Ian Steele set up his studio in Nanoose Depression and the Second World War. Bay, and later in Britain. Frank’s use of the term “film noir” For many potters, Bernard Leach’s fits the timeline of Vancouver Noir example of making functional pots perfectly, occurring at almost the for everyday use at modest prices exact median point of the thirty-year was difficult to sustain in a society period covered. Diane Purvey and in which concerns for aesthetic and John Belshaw examine the city during individual expression – and reward the mid-twentieth century using the – took precedence over the modest cinematic conventions pioneered in film lifestyle of the unknown craftsman and noir. Together, they shine a light into craftswoman. Nevertheless Charmian the dark corners of an all-but-forgotten Johnson and Wayne Ngan, along with era, illuminating Vancouver’s seedy a few others, continue to make pots. nightlife, urban strife, street violence, And, thanks to Scott Watson, curator cynical political manoeuvring, and of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art creeping paranoia about outsiders. Gallery, much of what they and their Much like a ride on the Giant Dipper contemporaries produced has been made rollercoaster at Happyland (the 1930s available to a new generation of British precursor to Playland), Vancouver Noir Columbians through this volume. is chock full of informative thrills, spills, and chills. We meet underworld figures such as racketeer Joe Celona. Vancouver Noir: 1930-1960 We learn about self-appointed moral crusaders such as the former Vancouver Diane Purvey and mayor Gerry McGeer and his right- John Belshaw hand man, Chief Constable Colonel W.W. Foster. We see the work of Vancouver: Anvil Press Publishers, photojournalist Ray Munro, a former 2011. 224 pp. $25.00 paper. Province reporter consumed with Vanessa Colantonio righteous anger over shady politics and double-dealings. Vancouver Noir Vancouver also features a large cast of more surreal characters, ranging from the n the August 1946 issue of the “mysterious brunette in a veil” at the 1955 IFrench cinema studies journal L’ écran Tupper Inquiry into police corruption français, French critic Nino Frank used to the “Burrard Bridge Monster.” 144 bc studies

Vancouver Noir is unique among we are not the first to feel these fears, Vancouver history books in its detailed nor will we be the last. coverage of the city mid-century: no other book covers this period so comprehensively. Painting this underreported period in Vancouver Fred Herzog: Photographs history with a “noir” brushstroke has Fred Herzog, with contri- its merits. The stark black-and-white butions by Douglas Coupland, news and police photographs of the Sarah Milroy, and Jeff Wall period evoke a city that used tawdry surface glitz to hide its dangers and Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, decay. Descriptions of the pessimistic 2011. 224 pp. $60.00 cloth. mood of the Depression and war years are also spot on. Bill Jeffries However, Purvey and Belshaw’s Simon Fraser University book falters somewhat when using noir elements (a hardboiled, detective ancouver photographer Fred narrative) to describe the more complex VHerzog has rapidly emerged from postwar climate in the city. By the photographic obscurity over the past late 1950s, the classic film noir era was decade and now, after almost sixty years drawing to a close with films likeTouch of picturing the Vancouver scene, finally of Evil (1958), Odds Against Tomorrow has the book that he, and his images, (1959), and Blast of Silence (1961), deserve. Herzog has reportedly taken with their shades-of-grey modernist over 100,000 photographs since 1953, subtext. In Vancouver, as in many other mainly Kodachrome slides. It is his use North American cities, people were of colour slide film that distinguishes leaving the mean streets downtown his urban street photography from that to look for homes in sparsely settled of other documentarians of the postwar neighbourhoods in the suburbs. The era. Herzog was not actually the first to landscape downtown, meanwhile, adopt Kodachrome. Its initial use came was being transformed into a form in the period from 1938 to 1948, when more familiar to us today, with the several Farm Security Administration building of new office towers, high-rise photographers in the United States apartments, and underground malls. documented the rural American scene The dynamics between subcultures in colour. By the 1950s and 1960s, slide such as youth, new immigrant groups, shows were easy to make, but making and settled ethnic communities were good Kodachrome prints was an issue also changing. People were settling until Cibachrome was perfected in the down as the collective psychological late 1970s. trauma that informed the noir period A decade ago the Vancouver Art subsided. Gallery (vag) Acquisition Committee, This is not to say that the old fears do and subsequently its curators, was not still haunt us: the mysterious “other” alerted to Fred Herzog’s existence. This stalking us in the night, authorities who led to the 2007 vag Herzog exhibition, punish criminals with one hand, then with its catalogue going into three pocket the proceeds of the crime with printings, and then to the Equinox the other. Vancouver Noir: 1930-1960 Gallery’s representing Herzog’s work. reassures us, somewhat uneasily, that The success of his exhibitions, as well as Book Reviews 145 catalogue and print sales, paved the way colour medium” (2)). All four essays for Fred Herzog: Photographs, which is illuminate Herzog’s world, but it is Jeff beautiful enough to be a reasonable sub- Wall’s essay that stands out because of stitute for, and alternative to, owning its critique of Vancouver as it is today. the prints themselves. Speaking of the evolution of the city The roughly 180 images here are the that is his home, he says: “what re- largest representation of Herzog in print placed those objects of affection are to date, and all but twenty-eight, by my objects that cannot elicit that kind of count, are of Vancouver; the others show feeling because they do not contain it” us the Herzogian eye in Mexico, San (21). Wall thinks that now, because of Francisco, Saint John’s, and Portland, the change in the makeup of the city, among other places. The comparisons we probably can’t have a photogra- between cities are intriguing, with pher like Fred Herzog. For Wall, there similarities seen through Herzog’s was “until 1970 … something called ‘eye’ revealing continuities and the old Vancouver,” with “wide streets differences between places often being free of heavy automobile traffic” (21), not as great as one might expect. that emptiness was one of the minor Photographically, Herzog falls between miracles of this city, then on the cusp of the Pictorialist practice of the pre-war becoming the developer’s dream world period and the “New Topographics” that it has been ever since. Herzog’s that emerged in the 1970s; his key af- images of Greater Vancouver need to finity is with the American documen- be seen. The subtext of Photographs is tary photographers who worked for the that there is a crying need for the digi- Farm Security Administration (fsa). If tization of all Herzog’s pictures that he John Vanderpant was both Vancouver’s deems worthy of reproduction. Those best Pictorialist and its best proto- images are our most significant trove of modernist (think of Charles Sheeler’s local photographic colour and a publicly photographs), Herzog, by contrast, is accessible catalogue of his images would linked to, in addition to the fsa, New provide an extraordinary public bene- Yorkers like Sid Grossman and Dan fit, giving Vancouverites something to Weiner, the Chicago School (Yashiro discuss far into the future. The appe- Ishimoto, Harry Callahan), and Walker tite for the “selected-so-far” Herzog Evans and Ralph Steiner and their ways images seems insatiable; the question of using a camera to capture and carve is, what about the rest of his photo- urban space. graphs? Digitization is the only way to Photographs contains essays by realize Douglas Coupland’s contention Douglas Coupland (Vancouver was that Herzog is “a man who … set out filthy back then), Jeff Wall (the city to document transient moments with was wonderful back then, and the cur- the expectation that they contained the rent city of glass is terrible), Sarah eternal” (26). The world Herzog pic- Milroy (framed by the insight that tured is now largely gone, replaced by Herzog “views humanity with an eye a taller “city of glass,” to use Coupland’s that is unsentimental yet deeply affec- own phrase, so whatever was imagined tionate – a delicate balance of salt and to be eternal has proven to be anything sweet” (7)), and Claudia Gochmann but. Hence the serious need for a digi- (“Herzog’s work exists between the tization project that matches Herzog’s two poles of classic documentary pro- seriousness about the state of the world. ject and emerging possibilities of the 146 bc studies

At the World’s Edge: Curt Lang’s At the World’s Edge is a labour of Vancouver, 1937-1998 love that involved years of research and fact checking. Claudia Cornwall Claudia Cornwall, with herself was present for some of the foreword by David Beers and adventuring that emerged from Lang’s introduction by Greg Lang hydra-headed quests. Her research was aided by her husband’s having been a Salt Spring Island, BC: Mother business associate and friend of Lang’s. Tongue Publishing, 2011. 228 pp. In business, Lang had brilliant ideas. $29.95 paper. Profit would have pleased him, but Bill Jeffries acting like a normal businessperson was not possible, and the serious profits for Simon Fraser University his companies only materialized after his death – one firm was sold to Boeing he historical photography for $14 million. Tsection of the Vancouver Public If you’ve never heard of Curt Lang Library (vpl) is one of Vancouver’s it may just be that you travelled in unexplored treasure troves. Among different circles. There is teenage Curt, many other gems, it holds the prints at the beach with Al Purdy in 1954; and negatives produced by seven soon after, he and Purdy are visiting photographers under the auspices of a Malcolm Lowry in Dollarton and 1972 Local Initiatives Programme (lip) Purdy is having his poems assessed by Grant called “The Leonard Frank Lowry; then he and Purdy are hitch- Memorial Society.” Of the seven, Curt hiking to Montreal to start a grand Lang was either the most prolific or tour of Europe, where they will stay the most generous in handing over in Paris and Mallorca; a few months the fruits of his photographic labours: later he’s in Montreal working in a the vpl has 8,400 Curt Lang negatives hospital emergency ward. All this by from the project. That quantity would age eighteen. Then came the years of be a life’s work for many photographers, running a log salvage business up and including Lang’s photographic mentor, down the BC coast, commercial fishing, Fred Douglas; for Lang, it was perhaps the and running a fish-buying boat that had smallest component in a life lived large. well over a million dollars in cash on Lang is a serious candidate as board – in 1960s dollars – for purchases. Vancouver’s Renaissance Man of the Cornwall’s book lucidly covers 1960 to 1990 period. High culture, those and many other adventures and however, wasn’t handed to him on a misadventures and has a generous Vancouver platter, so he sought it out. sampling of Lang’s photographs. The Claudia Cornwall’s biography reads a locations of many have now been bit like a Russian novel in which the identified through the efforts of Lang’s protagonist’s search for a life in art brother, Greg, and of Gordon Cornwall. continually leads to new adventures. Technologies such as “street view” are One could posit that Lang’s life started Curt Lang’s types of technology; in in idealism and ended in a capitalism the 1970s he began imagining and that was, at best, marginally successful. creating new ways of using software and In lieu of fortune, and even fame, he had computers to address opportunities in what British Columbia offered between the business world. His understanding 1960 and 1990: adventures. of both basic and applied science, Book Reviews 147 when combined with everything else Columbia, but the action will almost that he undertook, is what qualifies always unfold in the hinterland, not him as a Renaissance Man. I can’t in the province’s largest city. Indeed, think of anyone else who did the Robert Altman’s American entry That physical, mental, corporate, creative, Cold Day in the Park (1969) might still and cultural work that Lang did: his be the best-known Vancouver-centred life seemingly recapitulates the history motion picture ever lensed (and it’s not of this province in the late twentieth all that good, either). century, evolving from manual labour, The above summation would seem to resource extraction, to art, and to to suggest that the Lower Mainland software. Cornwall’s book tells that is even more a hewer of wood and a story as well as it can be told. It sheds drawer of water than either Toronto or new light on the history of BC business, Montreal, but that’s not necessarily the especially where it overlapped with case. In all three cities catering to US Beatnik life. producers – especially US TV producers – is what keeps the local artisans and technicians gainfully employed. What’s Bruce McDonald’s more, as each edition of the Vancouver International Film Festival amply Hard Core Logo demonstrates, independent features Paul McEwan are made here every year, but very few of these films will commercially Toronto: travel as far as Granville, never mind Press, 2011. 131 pp. $16.95 paper. Yonge or Ste-Catherine (obviously, Mark Harris I’m talking metaphorically here as big city main drags are no longer the University of British Columbia primary locus of film viewing anywhere in Canada). Essentially, these home- lthough it’s one of the three grown products are confined to the Amajor production sites in Canada, film festival circuit, where they attract surprisingly few memorable movies rather less attention than, say, Iranian have actually been made in Vancouver. neorealist dramas. Even lonely Winnipeg has fared All of which brings us, via a circuitous better in this regard, with cinematic route, to the cultural significance of mythologizer Guy Maddin alternately Hard Core Logo. Technically, a road mocking and celebrating his home town movie about a defunct punk band’s in film after film. As for Toronto, it has doomed attempt to resurrect itself in served as the backdrop, acknowledged the mid-1990s, the action theoretically or unacknowledged, for most of Atom sprawls between the West Coast Egoyan’s and David Cronenberg’s and Winnipeg, although, in reality, most feted productions, while the just about everything was shot in fabric of Montreal is more or less Vancouver and environs. The source inseparable from the oeuvre of Gilles novelist (Michael Turner) might be Carle, Pierre Falardeau, Alain Forcier, a native British Columbian, but the Denys Arcand, and dozens of other director (Bruce McDonald) was born cinéastes. Occasionally, a Canadian in Ontario. By these narrow auteurist cult hit (The Grey Fox; My American standards, Hard Core Logo should be Cousin) will be associated with British considered as, at best, a pan-Canadian 148 bc studies production. Ironically, even with the tile even though he’s actually a this provincial chauvinism in mind, fictional character. McEwan elaborates Hard Core Logo might still qualify as on this metafictional conceit in a the quintessential Vancouver fiction manner that permits him to reflect on feature (this distinction is vital since, the trajectory of the director’s career in the more esoteric fields of animation, while simultaneously reconfirming documentary, and experimental cinema, the film’s inscription in the subgenre the Lower Mainland has been far more of mockumentary and providing an successful). opportunity to remember the big Vancouver has a habit of dealing names in Vancouver’s punk past with with its pivotal moments long after spare elegance. That he used jargon in the fact, if at all. Thus, those seeking this instance is not coincidental since cinematic representations of the city’s this is something that McEwan rarely famous flirtation with the Summer does, employing it only when it leads to of Love are pretty much stuck the greater clarity, not less. early works of Larry Kent and Sandy If only all scholarly film writers Wilson’s My American Boyfriend (1989). thought this way. Without in any way To appropriate an early title by Milan being vulgar or excessively populist, Kundera, onscreen life seems to be Bruce McDonald’s Hard Core Logo is elsewhere in this neck of the woods. also informative and entertaining. This As for Paul McEwan, the author westernmost addition to the University of the monograph under discussion, of Toronto’s admirable Canadian the only data I have on him is that Cinema Series might well be the most he teaches at Muhlenberg College readable yet (and I mean this in the best (presumably the one located in possible way). Allentown, Pennsylvania). In other words, I don’t know whether he’s a Vancouverite, a British Columbian, or even a Canadian (which could be a Brian Jungen blessing; this review is regional enough as it is). Daina Augaitis What I can say is this: he takes his Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, responsibilities seriously. Too often 2010. 176 pp. $40.00 cloth. books of this kind turn into vanity projects for authors who are famous for Geoffrey Carr other things – Barry Gifford’s Brando University of British Columbia Rides Alone comes to mind, in this regard – but McEwan analyzes McDonald’s film in a manner that expertly mingles he book provides an overview rigour, order, comprehensiveness, and Tof the career of the artist Brian accessibility. Jungen, and it consists of essays by Typical of this approach is the Daina Augaitis and four other notable author’s appropriation of the concept curators – Cuauhtémoc Medina, Ralph of “star text.” In Hard Core Logo, Rugoff, Kitty Scott, and Trevor Smith. Bruce McDonald plays a documentary The text also includes the transcription filmmaker named Bruce McDonald, of a recording of a series of discussions in whose past work is identical to that 2005 between Brian Jungen and British of the man whose name rides above artist Simon Starling, in addition to 373 Book Reviews 149 full-colour images of Jungen’s work. world. In light of massive wealth loss Without doubt, this monograph will and the subsequent rise in protest be of use to general readers, students, movements, critical essays on playful and academics studying Jungen, an reconfigurations of consumer products “art star” whose rise is confirmed by seem to offer less of an incisive critique his winning numerous prestigious on globalization than they once did. prizes and by exhibiting at the National Second, the authors’ interest in Gallery of Canada, the Smithsonian’s exploring hybrid cultural identities National Museum of the American – significantly, Jungen was born in Indian, and the Tate Modern. Both Dawson Creek to a Dane-Zaa mother the critical essays and the interview and Swiss father – is complicated by material help to convey the profound a recent turn in Canada towards a tensions and ambiguities that form politics of recognition of indigenous part of Jungen’s inventive art. The cultures. The Indian Residential School artist cleverly transforms ready-made Settlement Agreement of 2007, the consumer goods into evocative objects official apology by Prime Minister – Nike Air Jordans into Northwest Stephen Harper in 2008, and the Coast indigenous masks, ikea file ongoing investigations of the Truth and boxes into birdhouses, plastic serving Reconciliation Commission of Canada, trays into minimalist . In with varying degrees of sincerity, the process, Jungen’s hybrid forms signal a struggle to understand the reveal the fraught relationship between scope and consequences of the official consumer culture, flows of global subversion of indigenous cultures. In capital, and the idolatry of the star this new context, the monograph’s system – conflating, for example, the occasional applause for cultural iconic brand of a slam-dunking Michael hybridity feels somewhat out of step as Jordan and the exploitation of cheap the hybridization of culture, especially labour in sweatshops abroad. Perhaps in a colonial setting, always emerges more notably, Jungen’s work also throws unevenly. This sense is echoed in recent into high relief the connections between critical literature concerning cultural the commodification of art and the hybrids. In fairness to the artist, his fetishization of indigenous identities, notion of hybridity (naturally occurring display cultures, and ritual objects. in plant species) differs in meaning This is a paperback edition of an from the cultural hybrids described in earlier hardcover edition published several places in the text, underscoring in 2005, which has the unfortunate the value of Jungen’s contribution in the consequence of preceding two major discussion section. historical events that have shifted the At some point in the text it would critical terrain in no small way. First, the have been helpful for one of the global economic meltdown beginning curators to substantively explore the in 2008 revealed much more pernicious role of museums and publications, of features of globalized capitalism than which this book is one, in sustaining a the fetishistic consumption of material fetishistic appetite for the consumption goods – that is, opaque financial of indigenous artefacts and art. The instruments (subprime mortgages, white cube (those official, sacred credit default swaps, derivatives) that spaces of art display and viewing) and have since undermined the stability art monographs seemingly share some of national economies across the uncanny similarities with Northwest 150 bc studies

Coast treasure boxes, in which the totemic power of ritual objects was traditionally preserved. One final critique: the design of the book is for the most part effective, though in places images of artworks mentioned in the text are either too difficult to find or were not included. Considering the abundance of illustrations, this problem could have been avoided. Despite these concerns, the text offers valuable formal and critical evaluations of Jungen’s work. In tandem, the contributions of the curators, the discussions between the artist and Simon Starling, and the collection of illustrations provide readers with a solid grounding in Jungen’s practice, both his already iconic Prototypes mask series and his more recent explorations into modern architectural design, shelters for animals, and minimalist sculpture. This monograph should be included in the collection of every academic library.