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PRIZESPRIZES ISIS BC Livesay Prize winner Mercedes Eng BOOKWORLD FULL COVERAGE 23-27 Karen Charleson VOL. 32 • NO. 2 • Summer 2018 Karen Charleson has been a member through marriage of the House of Kinquashtakumtith for 40 years, resulting in her novel, Through Different Eyes.Eyes. See page 4

Karen and Steve Charleson

KARENKAREN CHARLESONCHARLESON’S’S DIFFERENTDIFFERENT EYESEYES

PERSEVERANCE FICTION: FICTION: MEMOIR: When the rats Sexual exploitation One woman’s take over and the machinations horror during the Vancouver. of power. Cultural Revolution. Kevin Maureen Katherine Chong PAGE 37 Medved PAGE 34 Luo PAGE 19

PUBLICATION MAIL AGREEMENT RANCH IN THE SLOCAN 17 • INSECTS OF THE NORTHWEST 13 #40010086 BeautifulVISITING British OUR ROOTS Columbia

Alan Caswell Collier, Relief Stiff An Artist’s Letters from Depression-Era British Columbia The Birds of Vancouver Island’s West Coast Peter Peter Adrian Dorst Aspiring artist Alan Caswell Collier’s letters, sketches, and This regional guide to the 360 species of birds recorded on paintings recall in vivid detail life in Canada’s relief camps and the wild west coast of Vancouver Island will inform, delight, the crisis of youth unemployment during the Great Depression. and surprise amateur and professional birders alike.

March 2018 / 89 b&w photos & illus. April 2018 / 130 b&w photos 978-0-7748-3498-8 / jacketed hardcover 978-0-7748-9010-6 / jacketed hardcover

Breaching the Peace The Site C Dam and a Valley’s Stand against Big Hydro Sarah Cox Award-winning journalist Sarah Cox recounts the prolonged battle, led by farmers and First Nations, to stop the cripplingly expensive and environmentally irresponsible Site C dam.

May 2018 / 978-0-7748-9026-7 / paperback

FREE ubcpress.ca on Canadian orders over $40 SHIPPING online at ubcpress.ca thought that counts

caitlin press WHERE URBANfall MEETS RURAL TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD2017 SIDE

Writers exploring the impact of resource development on local communities, Indigenous cultures and our XZMKQW][8IKQÅKWKMIV

GREAT SUMMER READS COMING IN FALL 2018

Adventure, Love & Resilience Women of the Comox Valley

DANCING IN GUMBOOTS Edited by Lou Allison with Jane Wilde

2 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 PEOPLE TOPSELLERS*

Andrew Struthers BCThe Sacred Herb / The Devil’s Weed (New Star $19) Shelley Adams Whitewater Cooks: More Beautiful Food (Sandhill Book Marketing $34.95) Angela Crocker Declutter Your Data: Take Charge of Your Data and Organize Your Digital Life (Self-Counsel Press $16.95) Monique Gray Smith Pauline Daniel and Jack Speaking Our Truth: A Journey of Reconciliation (Orca Books $29.95)

BY BEVERLY CRAMP of precious moments was heightened. One Tuesday evening, Jack’s par- AULINE DANIEL WAS ents sent him a selfie and let him know always impatient to Tuesday’s they were on the way to get him. He hold her grandson kissed the phone. Jack. “I asked too Eventually Jack notices his Buba is often and probably writing down things. “Are you going to P came on too strong,” anti-aging write a book about all the funny things she writes in Tuesdays with Jack I say, Buba?” Amber Dawn (Granville Island $18.95). “Well, who would read it?” she says. She wanted to be with him more formula “Oh, just anybody. I’ll sell them at Amber Dawn than with his parents. But the other my lemonade stand.” Sodom Road Exit Buba’s Facebook readers told her (Arsenal Pulp Press $21.95) grandmother had come all the way from England to help her daughter. to go home, he dawdles, so she tells him she should consider following Jack’s Robert Amos Eventually her son and daughter-in- it’s time to clean up. “I can hear,” he advice. E. J. Hughes Paints Vancouver Island law agreed that Daniel could babysit says, “but I’m not listening.” The result is modest but true reflec- (TouchWood $35) one day a week. Jack was very observant at age five, tions from an observant grandmother Sarah Cox She began spending Tuesdays with with no filter. He often examined his who happens to live in the Kootenays. Breaching the Peace: Jack when he was still an infant. Buba closely, noticing her face, her Of course, there are billions of The Site C Dam and a Valley’s In her memoir, Tuesdays with Jack, words, and her laughter. grandmothers—and probably more Stand against Big Hydro (UBC Press $24.95) Daniel recalls how this routine con- “Buba, you look old.” than a few grandfathers—who might tinued as he entered kindergarten. It “Old?” she replied. “No, I think I’m have considered a similar memoir. Maureen Medved was around this time that she began beautiful.” But, as Daniel will be the first to tell Black Star (Anvil Press $20) Facebooking her friends, sharing funny “Yes, you’re beautiful, Buba,” he you, there is only one Jack. or wise things her grandson had done said, “but you look old.” Now the unexpected bonus of grand- Theo Dombrowski and said, even when he was too honest. ✫ parenting—when she feels free, totally Popular Day Hikes 4: Vancouver Island “How strong are your muscles, DANIEL DISCOVERED SHE WAS SPENDING present and having fun—has motivated (Heritage House $15) Buba?” he asked. “quality time” with Jack in a way that Daniel to share Tuesdays with Jack at Joel Solomon She proudly flexed her bicep. she hadn’t done with her son. lemonade stands and beyond. The Clean Money Revolution “What’s that floppy bit?” Freed from the anxiety of constant “Grandparenting,” she says, “is an (New Society $29.99) As she is getting her grandson ready parenting, she felt as if her appreciation anti-aging formula.” 978-1-9269918-18-2-5 Joanna Streetly Wild Fierce Life: Dangerous Moments on the Outer Coast n his memoir, Neither Married the same room with his wife. (Caitlin Press $22.95) nor Single: When Your Part- Blown kisses Similarly, when Kirkpatrick’s wife Claire Richard Wagamese Iner has Alzheimer’s or Other eventually went into a care facility, their Indian Horse Dementia (Brush Educational $16.95) intimate relationship dwindled. At first, they (D&M $21.95) West Vancouver psychotherapist David had designated date nights at the facility’s Rod Mickleburgh Kirkpatrick describes how his marital own Burr Place Bistro. He recalls that upon On the Line: A History of the relationship was affected by his wife’s leaving, “I nod to her on the way out, then British Columbia Labour Movement illness. turn back to kiss her on the top of her head (Harbour $44.95) As well, he shares intimate stories from from behind before letting myself out. Deni Ellis Béchard other husbands and wives about dealing Walking to the bus stop, I feel refreshed, & Natasha Kanapé Fontaine with partners stricken by Alzheimer’s. even upbeat. Now that was a real date! Kuei, My Friend: A Conversation on Graham, one of his patients (whose I tell myself. But more importantly, I am Race and Reconciliation wife Yvonne had the disease) told him, hoping that this evening made a difference (Talonbooks $19.95) “I hadn’t slept in the same bedroom with Yvonne for many to Claire, too.” Romance eventually disappeared but he David Starr years… right from the time she woke up in the night and continued his visits. The King’s Shilling turned over and said, ‘Who the hell are you?’ and I said, David Kirkpatrick has practiced as a psychotherapist (Ronsdale Press $11.95) ‘It’s just me, Yvonne. It’s Graham.’ ‘Get out of my house!’ and psychiatrist in Ashland, Oregon and Vancouver. He And I said, ‘Well, I’ll just go in the other room, Yvonne.’ published a previous memoir, In Praise of Strong Women: The patient abandoned the idea of ever again sleeping in A Psychiatrist’s Memoir. 978-1-550597-28-8

Publication Mail Agreement Contributors: John Moore, Joan Givner, #40010086 Mark Forsythe, Alex Van Tol, David Conn, Return undeliverable Canadian Cherie Thiessen, Jeremy Twigg, BC addresses to: BC BookWorld, Caroline Woodward. We gratefully acknowledge the unobtrusive 926 West 15th Ave., Writing not otherwise credited is by staff. assistance of Canada Council, a continuous partner since BOOKWORLD Vancouver, BC Canada V5Z 1R9 Design: Get-to-the-Point Graphics 1988, and creativeBC, a provincial partner since 2014. Summer 2018 Produced with the sponsorship of Consultants: Pacific BookWorld News Society. Christine Rondeau, Sharon Jackson Volume 32 • Number 2 Publications Mail Photographers: Registration No. 7800. Barry Peterson, Laura Sawchuk Publisher/Writer: BC BookWorld ISSN: 1701-5405 In-Kind Supporters: Simon Fraser University Library; Proofreaders: Vancouver Public Library; UBC Library. Alan Twigg Wendy Atkinson, Tara Twigg David Starr Advertising & editorial: Editor/Production: BC BookWorld, 926 West 15th Ave., David Lester Vancouver, BC Canada V5Z 1R9 Deliveries: Ken Reid, Acculogix * The current topselling titles from major Associate Editor: Tel: 604-736-4011 BC publishing companies, in no particular order. [email protected] All BC BookWorld reviews are posted at We acknowledge the financial support of the Government Beverly Cramp Annual subscription: $25 www.abcbookworld.com of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage

3 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 review COVER

Through Different Eyes sponded, “and the storyline by Karen Charleson smoothly paced. Despite its (Signature $19.95) somewhat dated aspects, Charleson does a beautiful job of constructing this nar- N 1901, GOVERNOR JAMES rative to render sympatheti- Douglas’s multi-tal- cally a story she has observed ented daughter Martha closely.” Douglas Harris pub- Charleson succeeds in lished History and Folk- return making the reader care about Ilore of the Cowichan Indians. every individual she portrays. Her grandmother was Cree. OF THE NATIVE This story of dignity and per- Ten years later Pauline severance rings true on every Johnson came along and page by continuously convey- published Legends of Van- Set on Northern Vancouver Island, ing how people feel. Cumula- couver—stories that should tively, it stands as a testament have been co-credited to Mary Through Different Eyes is a moving to how it’s the women in Kit- Capilano (Lixwelut) and Chief sum who preserve and foster Joe Capilano (Su-a-pu-luck). and memorable novel that is fueled community. The breakthrough novel ✫ about First Nations people in by compassion and wisdom. KAREN CHARLESON HAS PUBLISHED Canada was Hubert Evans’ three science textbooks with remarkable Mist on the River McGraw-Hill Ryerson and has in 1954, set in the Kispiox The author has lived in had numerous articles and area and Prince Rupert. Evans Hesquiaht territories for over essays appear in such diverse and his wife, both Quakers, 40 years. A mother of six, as publications as Canadian Geo- had lived for years as the only well as a grandmother, she graphic, The Globe and Mail, whites among the people he operates Hooksum Outdoor the Vancouver Sun, and Ca- was writing about. All the In- School with her husband, nadian Literature. Karen holds digenous main characters are Sean, near Tofino. an MA in Integrated Studies sympathetically and realisti- “No one locally seems from Athabasca University. cally portrayed. to have any problem with “I am fully expecting to Conversely, Margaret Cra- Through Different Eyes, Charl- get some kind of flak at some ven’s knowledge was super- son told BC BookWorld. “In point about writing about ficial for her 1967 novel, I fact, I can’t help but feel Indigenous people and com- Heard the Owl Call My Name, humbled and honoured by the munities without being Indige- set in remote Kingcombe In- numbers of local people who nous myself,” says Charleson. let, but the story resonated are buying, reading and saying “I’d like to say that I am ready as a breakthrough movie in good things about the book. for that attitude or argument, 1973, attempting to depict By local, I am talking about but I will deal with it when it First Nations culture. Based all the areas of Vancouver comes. I am confident in what on a true story, a missionary Island where Nuu-chah-nulth I know, and confident as a chooses to die in Kingcombe people live.” member of my own family, so Village. He increasingly re- ✫ I will be fine.” alizes the sophistication of EVERYONE KNOWS EVERYONE’S ✫ Kwakwaka’wakw society dur- business in Kitsum. It’s hard IN AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLESON ing its disintegration due for sixteen-year-old Brenda in November 2017, in Ha- mainly to liquor and residen- Joe to keep her pregnancy Shilth-Sa (Canada’s oldest tial schools. secret, but she can at least First Nations Paper, published More realistic depictions of withhold the identity of the in Port Alberni by the Nuu- life within First Nations com- father. Before she can un- Chah-Nulth Tribal Council), munities have followed—in- dertake the arduous trip to reporter Shayne Morrow cluding fiction by Lee Maracle Campbell River to give birth, asked Charleson about the and Jeannette Armstrong, her favourite aunt, Monica, genesis of Through Different PHOTO plus George Ryga’s landmark comes for Christmas. Eyes. play The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. University-educated and “I was thinking of two very There are now more than 256 beautiful, Monica, 27, was concrete things as I wrote CHARLESON

Indigenous B.C. authors in- the star pupil at Kitsum Ele- IAN the novel,” she said. “One, I cluded on the ABCBookWorld mentary when it wanted to tell a positive story reference site. opened in 1967. about ‘ordinary’ daily life as Now comes one of the best Eight years later it is lived by the people who 21st century novels about when the forest have known this area as home B.C. Indigenous life, Karen company made a For over 40 years, Karen Charleson has for countless generations here Charleson’s hitherto unher- road connecting been a member through marriage of the on the West Coast. alded Through Different Kitsum to Port House of Kinquashtakumtlth. “The other was to show the Eyes, depicting village life Hope, Monica enduring strength and central atop Vancouver Island in the was able to at- to her humble Brenda confides to Monica importance of family. I do not mid-1980s. tend high school Kitsum roots, that the father of her out-of- specifically name Nuu-chah- Set in the fictitious towns of an hour from her taking a low- wedlock child—unbeknownst nulth or any First Nation in remote Kitsum and Port Hope home. paying job at to him—is the handsome loner the novel, but I think that (population 1,000), this story Monica got the local school Michael Clydesdale from the anyone who reads it will mainly depicts the emotional out. She climbed in order to help raucously partying Clydesdale easily be able to recognize lives of women in the Joe fam- the social ladder her sister, Ruby family, Monica takes it upon Nuu-chah-nulth attitudes, ily, beset by two unplanned of Vancouver. Joe, look after herself to confront him. perspectives, and ways of do- pregnancies. She became exotic arm-candy her daughter Brenda. Monica To divulge more is to say ing things in the community “I was tired of trying to for her white partner, Saul, and Ruby have been especially too much. Published by Signa- and family.” ‘explain’ to people what life who considered himself to be close ever since they lost both ture, an imprint in Winnipeg, There are now more than was like on the West Coast in one of the few anthropologists parents in a car accident on Charleson credits six months 2,000 books pertaining to a small native community,” who truly understood Native the treacherous road to Port working with an editor, West Indigenous cultures of B.C. says Charleson. “I thought I peoples. Saul wants them to Hope. Coast poet Garry Thomas on the ABCBookWorld public might be able to show people move to Ottawa. Charleson’s classic Thom- Morse, for bringing her novel reference site. Although it’s a something of the wealth of But Monica decides to ditch as Hardyesque “return of the to fruition. debut novel, Through Different family and community that Saul, quit her office job at native” scenario has very un- “The writing is flawless,” Eyes easily ranks among the lives here.” Indian Affairs, and return expected consequences. After critic David Stouck has re- best. 978-1-77324-006-0

4 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 Let’s dive in! 9781459815063 • 9781459804678 9781459815063 9781459809543 9781459813335 9781459813212 “Evokes a poignancy “Enchanting, “Th e warm excitement “Reminds you of the as deep as the sea." engaging, and restful.” of discovering nature.” rhythm of the waves —Kit Pearson, author —Publishers Weekly —Resource Links of the Pacifi c Ocean.” starred review —Eco Parent 9781459810525 9781459815711 9781459814356 9781459812673 “Compelling.” “A charming tale.” “A gripping “Nature never goes —Publishers Weekly —CM Magazine adventure.” out of style.” — —Quill & Quire School Library Journal

Find these and other great BC books at your local independent bookstor e.

5 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 West Coast ABCs Summertime Jocey Asnong Ahoy, away we go! Join bestselling children’s book illustrator Jocey Asnong on another colourful and the reading journey as she highlights the West Coast region of Canada in this playful alphabet book. is breezy. RMB | Rocky Mountain Books | $12 bb

The Glorious Mountains of Mountain Footsteps Family Walks and Hikes of Family Walks and Hikes of Vancouver’s North Shore Hikes in the East Kootenay of Southeastern Vancouver Island Vancouver Island A Peakbagger’s Guide British Columbia — 4th Edition Volume 1: Victoria to Nanaimo Volume 2: Nanaimo North to Strathcona Park David Crerar, Harry Crerar, Bill Maurer Janice Strong Theo Dombrowski Theo Dombrowski A new full-colour guidebook for outdoor This completely revised and updated edition The first book in this new series assembles The second book in this highly anticipated enthusiasts interested in exploring the includes enhanced colour maps and beautiful an impressive variety of walks and hikes for new series features guided wanderings for dynamic and inspiring peaks and trails of the photos which will breathe new life into the visitors and locals looking for unique, guided all abilities in the area between northern coast-mountain landscape. outdoor experience. wanderings between Victoria and Nanaimo. Nanaimo and Strathcona Park. RMB | Rocky Mountain Books | $40 pb RMB | Rocky Mountain Books | $30 pb RMB | Rocky Mountain Books | $20 pb RMB | Rocky Mountain Books | $20 pb

It Begins in Betrayal One Good Thing Anna, Like Thunder Sailing with Vancouver A Lane Winslow Mystery (#4) Rebecca Hendry Peggy Herring A Modern Sea Dog, Antique Charts Iona Whishaw Spring, 1977. Twelve-year-old Delilah moves When the Russian trading ship carrying and a Voyage Through Time “Relentlessly exciting from start to finish." with her mother to eclectic Old Town, young Anna Petrovna Bulygina runs aground Sam McKinney —Kirkus Reviews Yellowknife to be reunited with her father. off the PNW coast, she is taken hostage by In the 1790s Captain George Vancouver and Unhappy at first, she is surprised to find the Quileute. A historical novel based on the When Inspector Darling is arrested in London his crew charted the intricate coastline of that her new community offers a sense of incredible true story of a woman who, after and facing the hangman, Lane Winslow BC. In this classic travelogue, Sam McKinney belonging she’s never felt. Great read for living amongst local Indigenous peoples for a rushes back to England to save him. Back retraces Vancouver’s voyages from Puget teens and adults. year, refused to be “rescued.” in Nelson, Constable Ames chases down a Sound to Haida Gwaii in his sailboat 200 murderer in Nelson. Brindle & Glass | $22 pb | $9.99 epub Brindle & Glass | $22 pb | $9.99 epub years later. TouchWood Editions | $16.95 pb | $7.99 epub TouchWood Editions | $20 pb | $8.99

The Flora and Fauna of Coastal British Trail North Ghostly Campfire Stories of Birding for Kids Columbia and the Pacific Northwest The Okanagan Trail of 1858–68 and Its Western Canada A Guide to Finding, Identifying, and Collin Varner Origins in British Columbia and Washington Barbara Smith Photographing Birds in Your Area Ken Mather Damon Calderwood and Donald E. Waite Comprehensive and easy to use, with a Readers will delight in these bone-chilling tales beautiful design and stunning photography, The historic stretch of Highway 97 gathered from true accounts and unexplained This action-packed guide teaches kids the fun, this is a must-have guide for nature linking Brewster, WA, to Kamloops, BC, happenings in the Canadian West. Perfect for safe, and educational way to observe birds in enthusiasts interested in the ecosystems of is profiled in this fascinating study of family camping trips or quiet nights at home. their natural habitat. Includes project ideas, the Cascadia region. one of the northwest region’s oldest Heritage House | $12.95 pb | $9.99 ebook species lists, and a glossary of bird terms. Heritage House | $39.95 pb transportation routes. Heritage House | $14.95 pb Heritage House | $22.95 pb | $17.99 ebook

HERITAGE GROUP heritagehouse.ca rmbooks.com touchwoodeditions.com DISTRIBUTION

1.800.665.3302 • [email protected] • hgdistribution.com

6 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 review NATURE

Best Places to Bird in British The 2011 checklist of B.C. Columbia by Russell Cannings Naturalist and geographer Briony Penn birds is at 506, but that figure and Richard Cannings includes all recognized sub- (Greystone Books $22.95) reviews Best Places to Bird which highlights species and all exotics with 275 B.C. bird species—more than half of B.C.’s established breeding popula- tions. To spot them would re- BY BRIONY PENN species—viewable from thirty locations. quire some expert sleuthing of F YOU ARE NEW TO BIRDING this province in remote areas. In their desire to (and maybe even an close to the ferry terminal in and want a guide for One small question I had select sites close to albatross), and en- Bella Bella, for a start—while exploring the hot bird- concerned authorship. The roads, the Cannings ter sheltered chan- supporting local Indigenous ing spots of B.C., then book has two authors, but I have left out the hot nels off Fitz Hugh ecotourism. Best Places to Bird in wasn’t always clear who was birding spots on the Sound, where you I would have substituted IBritish Columbia—with some writing—Cannings Senior or central and north can stop off at places Hakai for Triangle Island, if slight reservations—is your Junior. The context some- coast. This conspic- like Hakai Protected for no other reason than the book. times answered the question, uous absence also Area. $6,000 price tag to charter Not surprising, given that but it felt more like Senior reveals my bias as BRIONY In a day, you can a boat to get to spectacular the primary author is listed than Junior. a coastal natural- view birds on ex- Triangle is a little unrealistic. as Russell Cannings, third PENN And, as I reflected on the ist. The ferries, after posed white sandy ✫ generation of the famous many road trips required, I all, are the coastal highways. beaches, sheltered lagoons, BEST PLACES TO BIRD IN BRITISH Cannings naturalist family had one recurring concern. Accessible to the public, ferry rocky shorelines, river estu- Columbia is billed as featuring from the Okanagan. Co-au- If the Best Places to Bird in travel offers great birding aries, and upland bogs. Add “local experts, insider knowl- thor is Russell’s dad Richard British Columbia is to attract opportunities, especially in in a night in Waglisla (Bella edge and specialty birds,” and (Dick) Cannings—pretty busy beginners, it isn’t going to spring and fall. Bella), Klemtu, or Hartley Bay, that is what it delivers in an these days in Ottawa as Mem- work for the non-car-owning The ferries weave in and and you can observe some old school “birder” approach. ber of Parliament for South millennials. The millennials out between open sounds, phenomenal congregations of As with all the Cannings’ fam- Okanagan-West Kootenay, I know are going to be a little like Queen Charlotte Sound, migrating and nesting birds— ily books, the natural history advocating for protection of suspicious of conservation- where you can glimpse pe- the coastal sandhill cranes accounts are based on deep further nature areas across ists incongruously charging lagic (open ocean) seabirds calling from their nesting sites and long-term relationships the country. around in fossil-fuelled cars to with the birds and the land- I couldn’t find much fault tick off birds without consider- scape. with the selection of the top ing their own impact on these I counted up the number of thirty best places to bird in same birds from a climate species in the excellent index British Columbia. change perspective. A short at around 275, which means The sites are distributed discussion of automobile im- that at these thirty spots you geographically so that they pact could easily have gone in can see well over half of B.C.’s catch both the most acces- the Bird Ethics section. birds with a high degree of sible southern hotspots (where Personally, I would love reliability and, with a few most readers live) and rep- to hear more from millennial exceptions, from easy places resentatives of the northern birders sharing their passion to access. ecological regions. for the diversity of birds in Locations and routes are HOT B.C. through a twenty-first laid out clearly for car travel century lens. How are we going and all—other than Triangle to keep the connection to our Island, which is off limits to fellow avian cousins within a just about everyone—can be sharing economy and a fossil- reached easily by roads with birding spots fuel free world? This might be some gentle degrees of hik- the subject for another book. ing, like Cathedral Provincial If anyone is up to that Park, south of Princeton and challenge, it is the Cannings Keremeos. family. 9781771641661 Cannings and Cannings confess their personal bias for Okanagan

sites since they are long-term grassland dwellers, hailing originally from a Penticton Briony Penn’s The Real orchard, but their choice is Tufted Puffins Thing: The Natural History of justified because these criti- forage offshore Ian McTaggart Cowan won PHOTO cal transition zones include and nest on the Roderick Haig-Brown

SINGH remote islands.

birds from both southern and Regional Prize in 2016. She

northern ranges. LIAM lives on Salt Spring Island.

Tracking the Rhinoceros Auklet and five other seabirds

e now know that seabirds ac- • Six seabird species nest in old growth count for less than 6% of the forests; the most threatened species of which 316 species of birds in B.C. is the Marbled Murrelet. There are more than 5.6 mil- This info is all lovingly and extensively PHOTO W lion seabirds nesting in 542 colonies in B.C. provided in Seabird Colonies of Brit- • Five species account for 97% of breeding ish Columbia: A Century of Changes

JAKIMCHUK seabirds in B.C. They are the Fork-tailed storm- (Biodiversity Centre for Wildlife Studies . D petrel, Leach’s storm-petrel, Ancient Murrelet, $40) by a trio of authors with 127 years of Cassin’s Auklet and Rhinoceros Auklet. combined seabird experience: Michael S. RONALD R. Wayne Campbell locates a Black Oystercatch nest • About 22% of all breeding B.C. seabirds Rodway, R. Wayne Campbell and Moira with two eggs on Arbutus Island. are found on Triangle Island. J.F. Lemon. www.wildlifebc.org

7 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 8 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 review NATURE

Breaching the Peace: The Site C Dam and a Valley’s Stand against Big Hydro by Sarah Cox (UBC Press $24.95)

BY JOHN GELLARD

REACHING THE Peace by Sarah Cox is an impor- tant book about the Site C Dam. BThat title yields a cascade of kaleidoscopic connotations— insights into this complex history of a river being broken up, of communities being di- vided , of ‘breach of the peace’ lawsuits, and of byzantine machinations by BC Hydro. Paddle for the Peace The Peace River rises in flotilla reaches Bear the Rocky Mountain Trench Flat, July 2016. in northern British Columbia, 58 degrees north latitude, trending south, it drains a watershed the size of Ireland. PHOTO 50 km west of Hudson’s Hope, the river turns east GELLARD through the Peace Canyon, a migration route as old as the JOHN dinosaurs. At Hudson’s Hope DISTU RBINGFirst: Demand for power the canyon opens into a wide in B.C. is flat. Site C power, alluvial valley stretching 83 worth $30 a megawatt/hour km to Fort St John, then on the on the spot market, may cost into Alberta, ending at the $100 a megawatt/hour to Athabasca Delta. produce. At Fort St John, the 1100 Second: The cost of solar megawatt Site C Dam is being because of debris and slough- power is decreasing but the built. The price is the flooding ing banks. PEACE government is not encourag- of thousands of hectares of 20 km downstream is the Site C has been controversial ing development. rich bottom land. The res- 700 megawatt Peace Canyon Third: B.C.’s total wind ervoir would stretch back to Dam holding back “Dinosaur ever since it was announced capacity is 16,000 megawatts. Hudson’s Hope. Lake.” Dinosaur remains are The Meikle project near Daw- ✫ 50 metres under water. in 2010. Sarah Cox son Creek can power 54,000 THE CONTROVERSIAL SITE C DAM Then the valley widens into homes. must be seen against a back- a “Garden of Eden.” The river has examined why. Fourth: B.C.’s potential ground of previous “breaches” meanders between banks of geothermal capacity is 5,500 of the Peace, where the river alluvial Class 1 topsoil. Farms conquer” tactic. get a glimpse of the land- megawatts. has been converted from a life on the north bank facing the The farms have a symbi- slides—“tension cracks”—that Fifth: Unused downstream supporting ecosystem into a sun could produce fruit and otic relationship with the wild could well drive the cost over benefits from the Columbia machine. vegetables to feed a million land. The forests are hunting the current $12 billion. In River Treaty would equal Site The first “breach,” near people. On the slopes, Class grounds especially for First 1793, Alexander Mackenzie C capacity. For that we flooded Hudson’s Hope, is the 3,000 2-5 soils yield hay. It’s 83 km Nations. Forested islands al- noted an abundance of bison the Arrow Lakes. megawatt WAC Bennett Dam. to Fort St John where the 60 low ungulates to breed and and wildlife here. Hydro has Sixth: There is room for A sterile reservoir has replaced metre Site C Dam will rise to migrate out of reach of preda- clear cut the area for a rock additional turbines in the a living river system. drown 100 km of valley if you tors. The fish are still fit to eat. debris dump. On New Year’s Revelstoke and Mica Dams. Cox writes, “The lattice of include the Moberly and Half- Just upstream from the Eve, 2015, Ken Boon and oth- Seventh: There’s the rivers and forests ...had been way Rivers. Boons’ place is Watson ers occupied RMF and were standby Burrard Thermal of a wild, dizzying beauty... The farmland is not being Slough, a 20 hectare wetland visited by David Suzuki and Generating Plant in Port Rivers like the Finlay and the fully developed because farm- called “one of the world’s Grand Chief Stewart Phillip. Moody: 950 megawatts. Parsnip were used as high- ers threatened by flooding birding hotspots” with 130 Hydro hit the occupiers with a Eighth: Consider ‘pumped ways ...When the Bennett have hesitated to make the nesting bird species including $420 million SLAPP (Strategic storage.’ Pump the water up Dam opened up [in 1968]... investment. trumpeter swans, as well as Lawsuit Against Public Par- when demand is low, and some people had to flee so ✫ rare “outlier” plant species. ticipation) suit for this ‘breach use the power when demand quickly that they lost [every- KEN AND ARLENE BOON’S FARM AT Hydro began to clear cut here, of the peace’. is high. thing]” Bear Flat is well developed. but was persuaded to leave ✫ Why not pursue these al- “Oh it was beautiful,” says Arlene’s grandfather built Watson Slough alone. SARAH COX DESCRIBES THE HEROISM ternatives? The focus has Elizabeth, West Moberly First their house. Highway 29 from ✫ of dozens of Peace supporters. shifted to Site C. After the Nations. “A nice big wide val- Fort St John curves downhill A TUFA SEEP IS A ‘MAGICAL’ PHE- A perfect symbol is a life-size BCUC report, why has the ley. Big beautiful timber... You around the farm and sepa- nomenon whereby mineral inflatable white elephant seen new NDP government chosen could run for miles. Lots of ani- rates the alluvial bottom land laden water seeps over long on the canvassing circuit. Site C? mals... Now there’s nothing.” from the slope. The highway distances and emerges to cre- Marc Eliesen, head of BC Former Hydro head, Marc The Bennett Dam is there is being rerouted by Hydro ate unique mineral formations Hydro in the 1990s, said, “Site Eliesen said, “[after the BCUC to generate electricity, but through the farmhouse site. that support rare plants and C is dead.” He called it a “white report]...no sensible rational does Williston Lake not pro- There is constant noise from animals. About seven tufa elephant.” person could take any other vide some benefits? Fishing? drilling by “The landlord from seeps will be lost. It’s all very well to oppose decision than to terminate Site Afraid not. The bull trout, full Hell.” Resisters are carrying on Rocky Mountain Site C, but the main ques- C... a slam dunk.” of methyl mercury, are unfit a “yellow stakes” fundraising Fort (RMF) is on the tion must be answered. Hope springs eternal. “I’m to eat. The caribou are almost campaign. south bank, by the Where else are we go- planting a garden and order- extirpated. The West Moberly Other convoluted dealings Moberly River, just ing to get the 1,100 ing seeds,” said Arlene Boon. and the Saulteau First Nations between the Boons and Hydro upstream from the megawatts to “keep “Once more unto the breach, have a captive breeding pro- included expropriation and an dam site. The Ped- the lights on” as dear friends, once more.” gram. The diseased moose are eviction notice for Christmas, ersens’ farm high on Christy Clark said, —Shakespeare, Henry V. disappearing. The Tsay Keh 2016, then a reprieve and a the north bank has an pushing the project 9780774890267 Dene who live by the “lake” lease-back deal. Some farm- excellent view of to “the point of no still do not have hydro power. ers proposed bargaining col- it. You can see return”? John Gellard’s articles have The Williston reservoir is lectively in land sales. Hydro’s the machines Cox provides appeared in The Globe & Mail Sarah Cox not much good for recreation refusal is seen as a “divide and working and answers: and The Watershed Sentinel.

9 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 New Ekstasis ink from the deep well of the imagination

The Social Life of String These Elegies LEN GASPARINI D.C. REID Shared Motion: ISBN 978-1-77171-271-2 ISBN 978-1-77171-277-4 Science & Poetry 74 pages Poetry 124 pages $23.95 $23.95 Spirituality DVORA LEVIN ISBN 978-1-77171-281-1 Memoir 68 pages $23.95 Homeless Memorial Star with a JOHN LA GRECA Thousand Moons 150 Fragments for ENGLISH/CHINESE EDITION ISBN 978-1-77171-275-0 Francis Bacon Poetry 132 pages ANDREW PARKIN LARRY TREMBLAY $23.95 ISBN 978-1-77171-269-9 Poetry 127 pages ISBN 978-1-77171-202-6 $23.95 Poetry 177 pages $23.95

Reflections on Water Words for the SURJEET KALSEY Traveler ISBN 978-1-77171-285-9 Poetry 102 pages HUGHES CORRIVEAU $23.95 ISBN 978-1-77171-289-7 Memoir 76 pages $23.95

Daring Touch LOUISE COTNOIR A Fragile Grace ISBN 978-1-77171-259-0 ELIZABETH CUNNINGHAM Poetry 136 pages ISBN 978-1-77171-269-9 $23.95 Poetry 129 pages Wabakin $23.95 CE´LYNE FORTIN ISBN 978-1-77171-253-8 Poetry 90 Pages $23.95

Song of the Open Sea The False Mirror JOANNE MORENCY BLAINE GREENWOOD Climbing Knocknarea ISBN 978-1-77171-261-3 ISBN 978-1-77171-251-4 Poetry 88 pages LESLEY CHOYCE Poetry 98 pages $23.95 $23.95 ISBN 978-1-77171-243-9 Poetry 56 pages $23.95

NIGHT CLOSED AROUND KEGAN DOYLE Persian Pony Bothism ISBN 978-1-77171-223-1 MICHAEL MCCLURE TANYA EVANSON Fiction 160 pages ISBN 978-1-77171-249-1 $25.95 Poetry 118 pages ISBN 978-1-77171-219-4 $19.95 Poetry 56 pages $23.95

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10 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 review NATURE

Listening to the Bees terms that “evokes personal by Mark L. Winston & resonance” is “hibernalcum, Renée Sarojini Saklikar (Nightwood Editions $22.95) a place of abode in which a creature seeks refuge.” There are photos and il- BY MARY ANN MOORE lustrations throughout the book as well as an appendix of terms related to Winston’s ARK L . WIN- published research papers. ston, one of TO BEE OR NOT RENÉE SAROJINI SAKLIKAR IS A Alongside Saklikar’s poem the world’s mentor and instructor for “Hibernacula” is a photograph leading ex- SFU’s writing and publishing M of the poet sitting on the back perts on bees program who spent time with of a garden bench surrounded and pollination, writes in one TO BEE Winston’s original research by blooms and structures in of his essays: documents. She writes: the form of large-winged bees. “Science with its reliance “My poetics lean to lan- ✫ on data and objectivity, may Poetry that gives you hives guage as material, and the SAKLIKAR TITLES A POEM “A MOISHE seem the least poetic of pro- quest is to marry song, chants, (To Mark)” which ends: “into fessions, but scientists and served stingless bees. House where Winston and his spells and incantations with the bee yard / you brought poets have at least one thing In recent years, he has research students were the syntactical wordplay, me—and so we whispered / in common: we share a love of become an informal advisor Swarm Team. embroidering the po- let the song reside in us words and exploration.” to Hives for Humanity (H4H) He continues to learn how ems I make with numeric forever.” Winston’s extensive re- in Vancouver’s Downtown bees provide a model for how patterns, such search includes graduate stud- Eastside. to be in the world: “collabora- as my obsession ies at the University of Kansas For twenty years, begin- tive and communicative, lis- with both hexa- where he analyzed the mouth- ning in 1980, an abandoned tening deeply to others, being gons and any- parts (“labiomaxillary com- building at the edge of SFU present in the moment.” thing to do with plex”) of long-tongued bees. downtown became the Bee ✫ the number six, Now Winston and Renée and the ten-syllable Sarojini Saklikar, poet laure- line, whose movement Mark L. Winston ate for the City of Surrey, have sometimes leads to says of collaborating created a “call-and-response form poetic structures...” with Saklikar, “her poetry has rhythm,” mixing Winston’s In each form, she allows deepened my own thinking essays with Saklikar’s poems, “lyricism to exist within and about the science I’ve done for Listening to the Bees. alongside the language of over the last forty-five years.” And, yes, they have in- science” with less description 978-0-88971-346-8 cluded a poem entitled “La- and more sound. biomaxillary.” “Scientific language,” says Mary Ann Moore is a poet, and ✫ Winston, “becomes poetry for writing mentor in Nanaimo. IN FRENCH GUIANA ON THE me through the sheer joy of Her last book was Fishing for north-east coast of South Renée Sarojini Saklikar and Mark Winston will be at the jargon’s sound and rhythm.” Mermaids (Leaf Press) She America, Mark Winston ob- Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts, Aug. 16-19. For instance, one of the blogs at apoetsnanaimo.ca “Intimate, affectionate, JOHN loud and clear.” VAILLANT

“Fascinating.” VANCOUVER SUN

“ Like reading through your best friend’s diary.” NELSON STAR Karen McDiarmid

11 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 NATURE Wake up and smell the smoke

SING COMPUTER MODELS Sinoski, B.C. was part of a global crisis based on a conserva- in fire management. Some 4,700 fire- tive rate of tempera- fighters and associated personnel from ture increase for the across Canada fought the fires—with planet, fire ecologists help from experts for Mexico, Austra- U predicted the extent of lia, New Zealand and the U.S., as well the worst wildfire season in B.C. his- as inmates from four B.C. jails who tory last year was not supposed to received token payment for ancillary happen until 2050. support jobs. “It represents a new normal,” says ecologist Robert Gray in British Columbia Burning: The Worst Wildfire Season in B.C. History (MacIntyre Purcell $19.95) by Bethany Lindsay, “and is part of a global trend of increasing PHOTO mega-fires… we’re going to see a lot more fire.” In 2017, B.C. declared CARRUTHERS

a state of emergency when more than 200 separate LAUREEN forest fires were raging. Not just people suffer: A forest fi re worker in Smoke drifted all the way Williams Lake feeds an apple to a donkey. to Saskatchewan. Last year more than 65,000 people we’re evacu- There’s a twelve percent increase ated from their homes. in lightning strikes for every degree of It was the weather and fuel con- warming; almost 40% of forest fires in ditions that made last year unprec- B.C. are started by lightning. edented, not the number of blazes. British Columbia Burning provides There were 1,339 wildfires in total, an overall chronicle of the devastation but that’s actually much lower than that was wrought by wildfires on more the ten-year-average of 1,844 fires per than 1.2 million hectares in 2017, as year. It was the third lowest total in the well as the resiliency of those who were past decade. forced to flee, and the courage of those As outlined in British Columbia who enabled them to return. Burning, with photos gathered by Kelly 978-1-77276-090-3

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12 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 NATURE

Half of India’s MAKING 1.5 million monkeys are urban SUNLIGHT

“Though an old man, I am a young gardener.” Using this quote from Thomas Jefferson, Lee Reich opens his entertaining guide to gardening, prais- ing the lifelong learning that awaits all those who are captivated by the co- lours, flavours and aromas of gardens. The Ever Curious Gar- dener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden (New Society $18.99) is aimed at those who want to move past ‘back-of- the-seed-pack’ planting by injecting a little scientific knowledge into their grow- ing practices. Readers learn such tid- bits as mixing old-fash- Wild in the streets ioned incandescent bulbs with fluorescent tubes is From Miami to Berlin to Dundas to Helsinki best for artificial lighting because the most effective E HAVE LARGELY BANISHED WILD LIFE FROM SUBURBIA BEYOND Swimming with Seals (Orca $19.95) invents a scenario whereby colours are red and blue. hummingbirds and robins. In North America, they are united by their mutual love of swimming. When the girl To put it succinctly, red most homeowners and tenants alike abhor rac- can frolic with the seals and her mother in the ocean, the pain promotes longer stems and coons. The occasional squirrel is okay, but snakes of separation is healed. 9781459813212 larger leaves. Blue has the and wolves and bears are definitely verboten. ✫ opposite effect, promot- W There are feral chickens in Miami and Berlin HAVING GAINED A CHRISTIE HARRIS PRIZE NOMINATION FOR

ing compact growth. Too has wild boars, but most cities won’t allow you to keep a goat. Wolf Island, Great Bear Rainforest photographer Ian McCal- An attitude to treat wildlife as invaders, akin to rats, has led to lister and animal rights activist Nicholas Read—author of much red makes for spin- alienation from nature in general. That’s why Michelle Mulders’ City Critters: Wildlife in the Urban Jungle—have teamed up for dly plants; too much blue Going Wild: Helping Nature Thrive in Cities (Orca $19.95) two books for young readers (age 5-8). The Seal Garden (Orca makes for stunted plants. makes the case for more biodiversity in urban areas. $19.95) uses photos and text to demonstrate how seals take Other colours do simi- Mulders encourages kids to build garden boxes in parking refuge from storms and predators in The Great Bear Sea; and lar things but less so. As lots, or grow edible mushrooms in the bathroom, or perhaps A Bear’s Life (Orca $19.95) visually depicts a year in the lives fluorescent lights are rich put vegetable scraps into a vermicomposter to feed worms that of black bears, grizzly bears, and spirit bears as they catch fish, in blue and incandescent will help in the garden. eat berries, climb trees and take long naps. bulbs are rich in red, the Composting is good for the soul and the soil. Kids like Adeline A Bear’s Life: 9781459812703; Seal Garden: 978-1-4598-1267-3 combination gives a good Tiffanie Suwana in Jakarta have to approximation of sunlight. lead the way. To counteract constant “The combination even flooding, at age ten she invited 150 friends to plant mangrove trees to keep Five things to drive you buggy looks sunny,” writes Reich. the soil from washing away. They have Lee Reich provides in- since formed an organization in Indo- Who knew 2. Some people might want to know that sightful and practical guid- nesia called Sawabat Alam (Friends of beetles the white foamy ‘spit’ we often see on for- ance on growing a garden. Nature). also pol- est plant stems conceals a nymph that sucks He has a PhD in horticul- linate plants? up plant fluids and grows to become a stocky Kids in Dundas, Ontario worked ture. 978-0865718821 with their parents and teachers to rip With their long adult called the meadow spittlebug. up pavement and build an interpretive antennae and often wetland outside their classroom. In colourful bodies, Adelaide, Australia, kids helped plant golden flower long-horn three million native trees. Elks are now beetles, like bees, visit as common in Helsinki as deer are in flowers to feed on pollen and parts of Victoria. Let the moose loose. nectar. They are “really a stand Let the grass amass. out,” says Dr. Robert Cannings Going Wild is all about helping na- in A Field Guide to Insects of the ture make a comeback, making room Pacific Northwest (Harbour $7.95). for wilderness amid the concrete. Cannings, the older brother of twin nat- uralists Richard and Sydney Cannings, 9781459812871 ✫ has produced a durable, water-resistant 5. The lady beetle, more compendium describing fifty of the most NATURE IS NOT ONLY GOOD FOR OUR BODIES; commonly called the it can have a profound healing effect. common species such as silverfish, wing- 4. Snow lady bug, has another Maggie de Vries has dramatized that less and slender, that live in buildings and 3. We learn scorpionflies way to warn would-be (pictured) fact with an unusual story about a nibble on paper and cloth. 978-1-55017-834-0 that the exqui- predators: its bright girl who is based on her niece. The sitely shaped (but walk and hop colours indicate that on snow and are girl’s mother—Maggie de Vries’ sister, 1. Those wonderful sounds associated unfortunately named) it tastes awful. usually seen in the Sarah—went missing from the Down- with summer, which are made by chlorochroa stink bug is winter and early spring town Eastside in 1988. crickets, katydids, and grasshop- vegetarian. Other stink bug as they soak up heat from De Vries’ has already written an pers happen when these insects species may eat insects but all the sun with their dark colour- WERNER award-winning non-fiction book about communicate noisily by rubbing are experts at creating smelly ing. They have wings but they don’t her own search for Sarah, but this time their wings, or legs and wings, chemicals to ward off predators. fly. The male scorpionfly uses his EIGELSREITER she has crafted a fanciful picture book, together. Given this way of The green stink bug has a gradual wings to hold the female while mat- illustrated by Janice Kun, for ages 4-8. communicating, it shouldn’t metamorphosis and its nymph stage ing; it’s not known for what purpose

While mother and daughter never got be surprising that their looks almost like the adult, except the female scorpionfly has wings. PHOTO to know each other in real life, de Vries’ ears are on their front legs. that its wings aren’t fully grown.

13 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 D LOCA A L your with Start voyage BC books E B R C

S

E N

L E CTI O selection

Discover Read LocaLocall BC selections and other BC reads in BC Ferries PassagesPassages Gift ShopsShops andand atat youryour llocal bookstore. Explore ReadLocalBC.ca for more BC titles, glimpsespses behind the scenes, interviewinte s, event listings,ings,, excerpts, and recommended reads. ReadLocalBC.ca @ReadLocalBC

                 

These exemplary titles are on

Selected by Alan Twigg Indian Horse by Property Values Richard Wagamese (D&M $21.95) by Charles Demers (Arsenal Pulp Press $17.95) Indian Horse is now the basis for a feature film. It tells the story of Saul If you’re sick of hearing upper class Indian Horse whose last binge almost twits bellyaching about the housing killed him, and now he’s a reluctant crisis, you might want to laugh about resident in a treatment centre for it instead. Charles Demers’ shrewd alcoholics, surrounded by people he’s send-up of the lengths some folks sure will never understand him. But will go to manipulate the market--as Saul wants peace, and he grudgingly if they are being clever poker players- comes to see that he’ll find it only -is an ascerbic morality tale disguised through telling his story, including as a crime novel. Demers’ wisdom his northern Ojibway experiences about politics and his deep apprecia- as residential school student who tion of Lower Mainland history is as excelled at hockey. engaging as his widely acknowledged Fault Lines: humour. Understanding the Power of Earthquakes Imprint: A Memoir of Trauma in by Johanna Wagstaffe the Third Generation by Claire (Orca $24.95) Sicherman (Caitlin $22.95) CBC meteorologist and seismologist Sicherman grew up reading Anne Johanna Wagstaffe takes you through Frank and watching Schindler’s her own journey of understanding List, not knowing that most of her the earth beneath our feet, includ- ancestors were murdered in the ing her grandmother’s memories of Holocaust. Sicherman’s grandpar- surviving a 6.8 earthquake that struck ents didn’t talk about their trauma. Western Australia. Kids will learn the Her mother grew up in Communist science behind what makes the earth Czechoslovakia unaware she was rumble, as well as read stories from Jewish. Now a mother herself, Sicher- other kids who have experienced the man explores the intergenerational wonder and terror of an earthquake transmission of trauma, how genes in other parts of the globe. can carry memories.

14 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 review MEMOIR Maleea Acker Carleigh Baker CLIMB EVERY Yvonne Blomer MOUNTAIN Deborah Campbell Tenille Campbell

Terror and elation on the rocks David Chariandy of mountains and marriage Charles Demers End of the Rope: Mountains, Marriage, friend of his, another climber whose and Motherhood by Jan Redford dream is to climb Everest and beyond. Dawn Dumont (Penguin Random House $32.00) August 16 -19, 2018 Halfway through her memoir, Red- ford turns a corner and becomes a www.writersfestival.ca Kim Fu mostly conventional, unhappily mar- tel: 604.885.9631 ITH HER SUBTITLE, MOUN- ried woman and mother. The couple John MacLachlan Gray tains, Marriage and live hand-to-mouth until he becomes a toll free:1.800.565.9631 Jan Motherhood, full-time logger, something he swore he Sheena Kamal Redford alerts us to would never be. Year after year, Redford W End the fact that the keeps planning to attend university. In- Ausma Zehanat Khan of the Rope merges two subjects—fe- stead, she has her second child within rocity and domesticity. an already hopeless marriage, falling, Linden As an unhappy young girl, Redford falling, falling. MacIntyre threw herself against a rock face in frus- When the marriage finally ends, tration with her father, climbed it, and Redford makes it to university where Clem Martini unleashed an unbalanced, dangerous she starts learning the ropes of the energy that propelled her to make risky writing game, earning an MA in creative Olivier Martini decisions and walk on the wild side. writing. The department doesn’t just She was tough, promiscuous, street teach paragraphs and commas; it’s also James Maskalyk smart and largely poor, living the an incubation tank for those who want rough and tumble life of a to learn how to climb in the Carol Off rock climber, doing what she hierarchy. needed to do in order to en- “It is quite possible I’ve Philip Kevin Paul able the peripatetic life of an taken more writing programs adventurer: tree planting, than any other writer in the Michael Redhill waitressing, guiding, and liv- Lower Mainland,” she blogs. ing on unemployment insur- “After I handed over my the- ance. Since age eleven, she sis, I made the secretary Renée Sarojini Saklikar kept angst-ridden journals. CHERIE swear she would hang up on Redford’s narrative re- me if I ever tried to sign up Edward Struzik visits her youth as a hard THEISSEN for another course.” core tobacco-chewing, beer-drinking Now Redford has married again, to Jennifer Robson adventurer who skis; who mountain another risk taker—a stuntman—and bikes; and who ‘white water kayaks.’ she is climbing, climbing, living the Kim Thúy Her favourite adrenalin rush is strap- precarious life of a freelance writer, ping on her climbing harness and hel- getting published from Toronto, viewed Katherena Vermette met, sorting her ropes and getting her as a pinnacle by many. fingers bloody. “I’ve always managed to find trouble, Aaron Williams In her early twenties, as a gal in a even in the most innocuous of places guy’s world, time and time again she or situations,” she writes on her blog. freezes at the tough end of the rope as “Most of my adventures are more fun Tom Wilson the lead, the one most at risk. Inner to write about than to live through.” voices eventually urge her out of her 978-0-345-81231-5 Mark Winston terror zone and she carries on, but fear of falling is always lurking. Cherie Theissen is a with So, what drives her to prove freelance writer herself to the rest of the and outdoors- Sean Eckford world? Her often drunk woman on father put her down? Pender Vicki Gabereau Her physically short Island. stature? How does Kathryn Gretsinger this explain why she is drawn to men with dangerous pas- Daniel Heath Justice sions? Climbing can be Andreas Schroeder fatal. Ultimately someone who could and have been the love of her life is killed Simon Paradis in a climbing ac- cident in Alaska. Joe Stanton After her lov- er’s death, Redford marries a close

Illustration by Carol La Fave

Jan Redford lives in Squamish

15 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 $YDLODEOHQRZDW\RXUORFDOERRNVWRUH

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16 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 review MEMOIR “The ranch sits, miraculously, at a particular intersection of time and space. So, at a slightly different scale, does the rest of our earth. Both share the same miracle.” COLE HARRIs

This hay barn on the Harris ranch (1972) adjoined an internment camp for Japanese Canadians during WW II.

MEANWHILE BACK AT

Cole Harris HARRIS FAMILY PHOTO

Ranch in the Slocan: THEhe was enamoured of new husbandRANCH got closer and closer the economy... parents built a cabin beside A Biography of a Kootenay freedoms. to the Slocan, the estate got “Moreover, a socialist spirit a small lake and spent sum- Farm, 1896-2017 Upon a return to England smaller and smaller. need be in the air...that spirit mers on the family property. by Cole Harris (Harbour $24.95) in 1892, he realized, “I could “When they finally reached which was infused in Christ’s Cole’s father left to become never fit in such stodgy sur- it at the end of a jarring wagon life and teaching.” an academic but Cole’s uncle roundings... I longed to be ride from the wharf at New Joe Harris consequently Sandy stayed behind to work BY MARK FORSYTHE back in Canada.” Denver on an improbable, created the Useful People’s the ranch. Sandy resented this Dodging stodgy, Joe cut end-of-winter road, it became Party and he compared hu- division of labour, which made STEEMED UBC GEOG- short his agricultural school- a log cabin stinking of pota- mans to cabbages who need- for painful complications later. rapher Cole Har- ing and bought land (with toes in a tiny mountainside ed, “sound heads and tender The old ranch house fell ris has written family money) in the Cowichan clearing.” hearts.” He tried, “with a into disrepair and was invaded extensively about Valley where he hired Chinese Margaret stayed, became fanatical edge softened by by pack rats. Much of it was European settle- workers, “half-breeds” and an a farm wife and mother, but kindness and humour to torn down, but the original Ement in Canada and colonial- intemperate deserter from the Bosun Ranch never became convince whoever would listen cabin was preserved and re- ism’s impact on Indigenous Royal Navy named Bosun. commercially successful. Its that greed should give way to stored by Cole Harris. peoples. Efforts to turn a bog into a orchards were too cooperation and we As Ranch in the Slocan de- His family memoir is dif- farm proved futile. Members of distant from mar- should all work for scribes the later construction ferent. the Fabian Society suggested kets, the dairy oper- the common good of a low impact clay house in Drawing on letters, records, the Slocan Valley where “op- ation was too small in wisely managed the 1970s, we’re introduced to photos and family stories, portunities were boundless” and the land had societies.” various American, countercul- Harris describes the transfor- due to a mining boom. After limited agricultural ✫ tural back-to-the-landers and mation of his grandfather Jo- deciding New Denver would capacity. An inheri- DURING WW II, AFTER draft evaders who came north seph Colebrook Harris from likely become a supply centre tance financed con- Japanese Canadians with remarkable skills and an upper-middle class gentle- for the mining industry, Joe struction of an 18- MARK were forcibly sent in- “prescriptions for change.” man to a socialist-leaning Slo- bought land southwest of the room ranch house, FORSYTHE land, part of Bosun These immigrants became can Valley rancher following town. but the need to gen- Ranch was leased crucial to Cole Harris’ projects his arrival in Canada in the “I became the owner of 245 erate income increased as to the Security Commission. and also greatly contributed late 1800s. acres of very mountainous family money dwindled. About 50 elderly Japanese Ca- to the development of Slocan As a younger son in a deep- land,” he recalled, “less than In 1898, Joe prospected two nadian men lived in the ranch Lake communities. ly religious industrial family in 20 acres of which was really mineral claims on his property house while families stayed in Ranch in the Slocan is a Calne, Wiltshire, athletic Jo- fit for cultivation.” and discovered galena ore, a basic camp houses in the Far tribute to a very particular seph Colebrook Harris didn’t Joe moved into a spartan source for lead and silver. He Field. Many internees worked B.C. landscape and its power display much aptitude for the cabin with more workers, in- sold one to an English syndi- at the local hospital and busi- to shape lives. The author family’s meat processing busi- cluding Bosun. They pasted cate for $7,000. Initially the nesses. Joe’s family came to hopes his own children will ness when it was one of the over cracks with newspapers Bosun Mine performed well, respect and admire them, as use the land creatively. largest of its kind in England. to keep the winter out, bought but by the 1930s it was played did many in New Denver who Harris probes with the At age 18 he was shipped two Clydesdales, cleared tim- out and had closed. were initially fearful. rigour of a scholar, but by this off to Guelph Agricultural Col- ber, hauled firewood, planted Harris describes it as “an Over time, he concluded, “it book’s end, we see how the lege in Ontario to learn how to vegetables and eventually industrial slice through the became increasingly clear that natural environment of the be a farmer but, as a mediocre grew 1,000 fruit trees amid the middle of my grandfather’s the appreciation and accom- Slocan has also shaped the student, he found the college mountain wilderness. It be- farm.” modation of a good measure soul of its chronicler. dull. As someone who made came known as Bosun Ranch. Gradually, Joe fused his of diversity were built into the 987-1-55017-823-4 friends easily, he journeyed ✫ religious beliefs with socialist nature of Canada.” One can by train to the West Coast JOE VISITED ENGLAND AND MAR- ideals. “He thought that capi- argue this naïve viewpoint Former CBC radio host of Al- for summer visits. In British ried Margaret, a cultured talism produced inequality failed to assess the plight of manac and long-time BCBW Columbia, as he helped out Scottish woman. Cole Harris and poverty, and in the inter- the people he magnanimously contributor Mark Forsythe re- on farms, fished, played tennis writes: “Years later she told est of social justice, govern- befriended. mains active in numerous his- and attended dinner parties, my mother that as she and her ment should centrally manage Eventually, Cole Harris’ torical and community groups.

17 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 LITERARY PRESS GROUP

SUMMER READING FROM The Things She’ll Be Leaving Behind THE MEMBERS OF THE Vanessa Farnsworth

Stories of women trying to get their footings, LITERARY PRESS GROUP preserve their sanity, and survive in circum- stances they never thought they would find themselves in. Filled with burnt-at-the- edges dialogue, contemporary humour, and compelling pacing. A fantastical menagerie. An ISBN: 978-1-77187-157-0 Available as an ebook exquisite sensory experience.

The Fairy Tale Museum Susannah M. Smith Angelina of the Stones Amanda Hale

Invisible Publishing The characters inAngela of the Stones fly 978-1-988784-06-9 | Fiction from the roof into the arms of an unfaithful husband; marvel at the new world of cell-phone crazy teenagers; rant about Obama’s handshake with Raúl Castro. A corpse travels the length of Cuba and back A lyrical glimpse in a nightmare of bureaucracy, while Ángela into a life in music. huddles for the night on her bench in Parque Central.

ISBN: 978-1-77187-165-5 Jan in 35 Pieces Available October 1 Ian Hampton Insomnia Bird The Porcupine’s Quill Kelly Shepherd 978-0-889844-13-1 | Fiction The genius loci, the Black-billed Magpie is the protagonist and the muse, the thread that connects Shepherd’s poems as they spiral around Edmonton’s “shadow geography,” shifting between lyricism and found text, Secrets can remain buried emulating a Black-billed Magpie’s nest. The for only so long. poems speed like a NAIT train and dive like magpies after a tasty image or crumb of detail.

ISBN: 978-1-77187-169-3 Left Unsaid Available October 1 Joan B. Flood Available at your local bookstore | www.thistledownpress.com Signature Editions 978-1-773240-09-1 | Fiction GREAT SUMMER BOOKS FOR THE BEACH

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18 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 review MEMOIR

The Unceasing Storm: because of her capitalist Memories of the Chinese origins (her father was a Cultural Revolution by Katherine Luo businessman) and over- (Douglas & McIntyre $22.95) seas relations. When she tried to get the certificate she deserved, she was BY JOAN GIVNER rebuffed by one official after another (shades of T IS NO SURPRISE THAT Dickens’ Department of the benign pres- Circumlocution). ence of acclaimed “Well, Luo, you are defi- novelist Madeleine nitely different. I remember IThien hovers over you to be shy and timid, Katherine Luo’s memoir; but you’re quite a shrewd the two share a family con- Katherine Luo during one now, aren’t you?” an nection as well as the same the Cultural Revolution, unsympathetic former literary subject matter. which marked the teacher told her. After Luo immigrated beginning of years of Finally, she found a desperate and terrible to Canada in 1998, she former teacher willing and struggle. taught piano and voice in able to redress the wrong. Vancouver where she met She got her promotion but and married Thien’s fa- after forty years of being ther. When the two women denied respect and lost got to know each other, income, it came a little too Thien learned that in her late. Yet she acknowledges youth Luo had been a that compared with so student at Beijing’s Cen- many greater abuses, hers tral Academy of Drama, seem trivial. and later a member of the Another short piece, opera troupe of the Red SINISTER “Diaries,” describes her Army. effort at the beginning of Thien was astonished the Cultural Revolution’s to discover that Luo had Cleansing of Class Ranks actually experienced the Campaign in 1968, to de- suffering of artists and stroy the diaries and letters musicians that Thien had SMILES, that may have contained so vividly imagined in her evidence of “political un- novel Do Not Say We Have reliability.” Unfortunately, Nothing (Knopf) for which she overlooked two diaries she won the Governor FORCED and these were seized to General’s Award for Fic- be scrutinized for evidence tion and the $100,000 of guilt. While she was Scotiabank Giller Prize in detained for eight months 2016. doing manual labour and Both writers focus pri- MARRIAGES writing confessions, no evi- marily on the Chinese Cul- & dence of “subversive thoughts tural Revolution (1966-76) and opinions” was ever found. as well as referring to events The loss of all her written before and after that crucial diaries and letters illustrates decade—the political and mili- the means by which subse- tary campaigns of Mao Zedong LOST DIARIES quent generations have been which began in 1927 and the denied access to important Tiananmen Square massacre disparity in length and format of others, the cold smile of was not reinstated as a singer records detailing the history of 1989. At least sixty million among the thirty-seven pieces mocking sarcasm, the wicked and never given the roles she of their country. Luo’s experi- died as a result of Mao Ze- (nine different translators smile of evil intent, the baring deserved. Her smile became ence also has a counterpart dong’s political campaigns, yet worked on them), Thien ex- of teeth in a false smile. an expression of never-ending in Thien’s novel. There a rare his policies have never been plains that the Chinese essay From these observations helplessness. clandestine work, The Book repudiated by the Chinese is a fluid genre that includes a she makes the transition One lighter autobiographi- of Records, is passed from Communist Party. multiplicity of forms—sketch- to the painful life cal piece, “My Grad- person to person during the Thien contributes a concise es, political manifestos, travel of Xiao Wan, a tal- uation Certificate,” worst times. One character foreword to her step-mother’s notes, brief vignettes, and ented opera singer, is a mini-drama with after another adds to it, even book, in which she explains journalistic reportage. Luo’s with a radiant smile. lively dialogue and risking torture and execution that it is a response to the collection comprises most of Because her class humour. It takes to do so. Thus Thien’s memo- Chinese government’s obfus- these as well as biographical background was not place in the 1980s rable fictional characters— cation and denial of history. accounts of the lives of her good (both her father during a brief period Wen the Dreamer, Sparrow, Luo’s achievement is to make parents and relatives, forming and step-father were of deceptive detente Swirl, Big Mother Knife—and visible the hidden history and a litany of tragic lives ending in army officers), her JOAN by the repressive re- Kuo’s memories of her family give human faces to the bare premature deaths and suicide. status dropped into GIVNER gime. An order went and friends converge in the statistics. Her recurring theme The longest and most pow- the category of those out to re-issue cer- shared attempt to reclaim is the destruction of individual erful narrative, “Smile,” begins to be “executed, imprisoned tificates to those unfairly history. While Luo’s work will lives, the thwarting of creative with a meditation on smiles. or placed under surveillance.” penalized and prevented from not achieve the international talent, and the loss of an entire She notices that people in The party forbade her mar- graduating in previous de- acclaim of Thien’s novel, it country’s cultural legacy and Canada casually exchange riage to the man she loved and cades and Luo, then deputy is nevertheless a very worthy artistic future. Each essay friendly smiles with complete approved instead a dull man head of The People’s Music companion piece. describes families torn apart, strangers. This habit contrasts with impeccable credentials— Press, determined to get her 978-1-77162-186-1 relationships poisoned, and with the range of sinister “poor peasant for three gener- just deserts. In spite of her lives ruined, many ending in smiles she remembers from ations.” This failed to improve high academic achievement, Joan Givner just gets suicide. earlier decades in China—the her situation and, even during she had been expelled from better and better—writing For those who might note a jeering smile at the misfortune a later period of detente, she the Central Academy of Drama now from Victoria.

19 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 VIVID AND ENGAGING “A vivid and engaging look at a summer of unprecedented wildfires, British Columbia Burning takes the reader inside the communities that were forced to flee the flames. An important book that everyone should read.” — Rob Shaw, co-author, A Matter of Confidence: The Inside Story of the Political Battle for B.C. MUST-READ “The reader experiences the plight of those affected by these fires, hears the analyses of the scientists studying their cause, and stands side-by-side with the firefighters battling the blaze. This book is a must-read.” — Warren Mabee, director, Queen’s Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy, Queen’s University BEAUTIFULLY TOLD “Urgent and beautifully told, this is a story of how British Columbia may be facing a future of increasingly epic wildfires. It is not only good reading, but also contains vital information.” — Linda Solomon Wood, founder MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc. and editor-in-chief of the www.macintyrepurcell.com National Observer

HOT SUMMER READS

SODOM ROAD EXIT THE PLAGUE LITTLE FISH JONNY APPLESEED Amber Dawn Kevin Chong Casey Plett Joshua Whitehead “As Sodom Road Exit queers the “A nuanced study of human nature “A confident, moving work that “If we’re lucky, we’ll find one or two books horror genre, it also asks what queer under biological siege, and a terrific reports unflinchingly on the lives in a lifetime that change the language of horror includes—a critical question riff on the Camus classic.” of trans women in Winnipeg ... a story, that manage to illuminate new curves right now—and how we heal from —Eden Robinson, powerful and important debut.” in the flat vessels of old letters and words. that trauma.” —The Globe and Mail author of Son of a Trickster —National Post This is one of those books.” –Cherie Dimaline, author of The Marrow Thieves

PROPERTY VALUES FORWARD: A Graphic Novel FIGHTING FOR SPACE BLOOD, SWEAT, Charles Demers Travis Lupick AND FEAR “In Property Values, Canada’s best Lisa Maas Winner, George Ryga Award for and most socially engaged comedian “A moving depiction of grief and Eve Lazarus Social Awareness in Literature: “An takes aim at the housing crisis and loss, but one that also includes sweet Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis intense, riveting report on a public the death of journalism with equal moments of sexual desire, joy, and Award finalist: the story of Vancouver’s health crisis and a network of heroes parts humour, outrage, and literary laughter, which bubble up even in forensics investigator John Vance and the on the front lines.” —Kirkus Reviews virtuosity.” —Sam Wiebe, the most painful of times.” compelling cases that were solved with his author of Invisible Dead —Sarah Leavitt, author of Tangles pioneering techniques. ARSENAL PULP PRESS arsenalpulp.com

20 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 review BIOGRAPHY Against the Current: “It is possible that when the The Royal Commission wrote. “Fated always to play a The Remarkable Life of Inquiry process encouraged secondary part in the family Agnes Deans Cameron by Cathy Converse the government to suspend drama, it is hard to see what (Touchwood $30) history of British Columbia Cameron’s first-class teach- of pleasure life holds for her. ing certificate for three years The birth of a baby girl is not comes to be written,” the Daily effective June 1, 1906. attended with joy or thank- This fracas prompted Cam- fulness. From the beginning HEN AGNES Colonist declared in 1912, “the eron to get elected as a Victoria the little one is pushed into Deans Cam- School Trustee in 1906, plac- the background. The boy ba- eron died in name of Agnes Deans Cameron ing herself in the position of bies, even the dogs, have the 1912, her working with the people who choicer bed at night, and to funeral cor- will be inscribed therein as the had fired her. Unable to work them are given the best pieces Wtege was the largest the city as a teacher, Cameron turned of meat.” of Victoria had ever witnessed. most remarkable woman citizen to journalism and was asked Cameron returned from Fast forward to Canada’s to speak at the third annual the Arctic with a heightened 150th anniversary of con- Canadian Press Association awareness of the need to as- federation and Agnes Deans of the province.” convention, in Winnipeg, in sert the equality of Aboriginal Cameron was named one of 1906. This led to a position peoples. She returned to Chi- the top 150 most significant with the Immigration Associa- cago and later toured Brit- individuals in B.C.’s history. tion, based in Chicago which ain in late 1909, with Jessie But few people know her as prompted her resignation from Cameron Brown and another the first celebrated author to the School Board of Victoria niece, Gladys Cameron, giv- be born in B.C. and her relocation to Chicago ing presentations about her Born in Victoria in 1863, to work as a writer, chiefly writ- journey to the Arctic Circle. she wrote one significant book, AGNES ing about the Canadian West. In 1911, Cameron returned The New North: Being Some Cameron became vice-pres- to Victoria and appeared on Account of a Woman’s Journey HEROINE OF CHANGE through Canada to the Arctic (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1910), that described a 10,000 mile return trip she made in 1908 with her niece. Cameron claimed they were the first non-Indigenous women to reach the Arctic overland and to travel down the Mackenzie River to the Beaufort Sea. A lifelong crusader for women’s suffrage, Cameron became B.C.’s first female high school teacher in 1890 and its first female principal in 1894. She was also one of British Columbia’s first female jour- nalists, publishing extensively in Canadian and American magazines such as Saturday EDITIONS Evening Post, Pacific Monthly, The Canadian Magazine, Edu- cational Journal of Western Canada and The Coast. TOWCHWOOD Also, a perceptive observer 10136 / M of Inuit and Chipewyan cul- , ture and women, she travelled ARCHIVES extensively in later years pro- moting immigration to western VICTORIA

Canada and addressing audi- OF ences at Oxford, Cambridge, CITY St. Andrew’s University and OF

Agnes Deans the Royal Geographical Soci- Cameron (right) and ety. Now she’s the subject of Jessie Cameron Brown, COURTESY Cathy Converse’s Against Peace River, Alberta, the Current: The Remark- moment we dare to step apart The parents objected to this 1908 stage with the British suffrag- able Life of Agnes Deans from the norm.” disciplinary treatment and the ette Emmeline Pankhurst. Cameron. ✫ controversy reached the press. Cameron’s writing career “The events that shaped AGNES DEANS CAMERON’S PARENTS “I whipped him severely,” ident of the Canadian Women’s was in its ascendancy with a Cameron’s life, her integrity, were Scottish. Her brother she wrote, “just as severely as I Press Club and began saving four-month contract from the her courage, and her intel- William became a Victoria could. But the father goes fur- for her long hoped-for jour- London Daily Mail to write a ligence piqued my interest,” alderman and a member of ther and insists that I struck ney up the Mackenzie River daily column about Canada Converse says. “I was drawn to the B.C. legislature; Cameron the boy on the head—this is a to the Arctic Circle in 1908, and the prospect of being the fact that she was a strong chose teaching as a profes- mistake.” Cameron was fully at age 44, in the company of hired by the government of woman who wrote her own sion and never married. Pos- exonerated. her niece, Jessie Cameron Canada to lecture throughout script and was able to make sibly she was influenced by a Cameron was newsworthy Brown. With photographic Britain to encourage immigra- the very best out of the very visit to Victoria by the leading again in 1901 when she wrote equipment and a typewriter, tion. She planned to write a worst.” American suffragist Susan B. about sex discrimination in they made a six-month journey novel about mining camps Cathy Converse was first Anthony in 1874. salaries. This time the Victoria from Chicago to the Arctic via to be based upon research in introduced to Agnes Deans Cameron earned her first school trustees dismissed her the Athabasca River, Great Stewart, B.C. Cameron when Roberta Paz- teaching certificate at age 13. on a technicality for daring to Slave Lake and the Mackenzie Now that larger metropoli- dro contributed a chapter to a She taught at Angela College threaten their authority. She River. tan centres had recognized her book that Converse co-edited in Victoria at age 16, then was later reinstated. Cameron’s lone book is spirit and accomplishments, with Barbra Latham in 1980, in Comox and the sawmill In 1905, she was in hot wa- almost always accorded an Cameron soon discovered she called In Her Own Right: Se- settlement of Granville, before ter for allowing her students initial publishing year of was welcomed back to Victoria lected Essays in Women’s returning to Victoria after the to use rulers for their drawing 1910 but it could well have as a celebrity. Stricken with History in B.C. death of her father in 1884. tests. Her dismissal this time been 1909. In her travelogue appendicitis, Cameron con- “As a woman,” Converse At 26, while teaching at brought forth a public outcry. Cameron accepted polygamy tracted pneumonia following says, “I also felt that she could Victoria Boys’ School, she A Royal Commission Inquiry among the Inuit but regretted surgery and died at age 48 teach me about confidence became infamous for strap- was held for two months. It the general status of women. on May 13, 1912, in Victoria. and how to deflect the arrows ping a disobedient student issued a 33-page report that “Sad is the lot of the Indian Her body was taken to Seattle that threaten to slay us the named Herbert Burkholder. upheld the firing. woman of the North,” she for cremation. 9781771512701

21 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 review BIOGRAPHY

Finding John Rae his story of ghostly white men second narrative arc. respectability was measured his desire to meet his mother’s by Alice Jane Hamilton marching south several years Across Chapters 4 through in the pigment of one’s skin healer. (Ronsdale Press $21.95) prior, set Rae on this path to 6, Hamilton explores Rae’s and the performance of mid- By turns paternal and pa- confirm the fate of the Frank- efforts to rebuild his life in dle-class propriety, Rae’s long- ternalistic, Rae’s relationship lin Expedition. The chapter colonial Hamilton, even as the standing relationships with with Irniq blossoms during BY DYLAN BURROWS also details Rae’s confirmation Arctic beckons him. He lived Indigenous peoples were a their summer meetings in of the final link in the elusive in Hamilton from 1857-1860. blight. Orkney in 1883 and 1886. His

N FINDING JOHN RAE, Northwest Passage. In 1860 Rae married the Throughout Chapters 5 name literally translating to Alice Jane Hamilton The public fallout from his much younger Kate Thompson and 6, Hamilton directly ad- “son,” Irniq is for Rae the “son upends the standard momentous decision to in- and they moved away. dresses the racism of colonial I have longed for.” narrative of mid-nine- clude Inuit accounts of quaq, In Chapter 4, Rae’s endur- society. Kate’s miscarriages Travelling the land togeth- I or cannibalism, occupies ing obsession with the North- cut short their dream of fam- er, Irniq breaks their periods teenth century Arctic exploration, focussing not on Chapter 2. Abandoned by his west Passage finally breaks ily life, though through prayer of contented silence to share the vainglorious search for the Royal Navy allies, and attacked him. and faith they “get on with the the “full truth of what [Inuit] doomed Franklin Expedition by the grieving Lady Franklin Belatedly awarded £10,000 job of living,” and permanently think of Kabloonans [white but those left in its wake. men].” Hamilton vividly recounts Under the aegis of British the odyssey of her Orcadian Alice Jane Hamilton’s Orcadian ancestor Arctic exploration, Inuit suf- ancestor, Hudson’s Bay Com- fer resource theft, economic pany trader, surveyor, sur- John Rae exposed cannibalism among exploitation, and, for women, geon, and Arctic sojourner the doomed Franklin Expedition. the constant threat of sexual John Rae (1813-1893). assault. During his fifth and final Arctic expedition in 1854, in what is now Canada’s Boothia Tomb of John Rae, Peninsula, Rae learned of the St. Magnus Cathedral, Franklin crew’s descent into Kirkwall, Orkney starvation and cannibalism through the testimony of Inuit informants. Rae’s inclusion of their stories as evidence in his con- fidential report to the British Admiralty was a fateful deci- sion for both himself and the Indigenous inhabitants of the Arctic. Hoping to end the na- tion’s Arctic fascination and reallocate Royal Navy resourc- es to the ongoing Crimean War, the Admiralty released the report prior to Rae’s return to London. His trial in London’s court of public opinion was drawn out and brutal. However, Rae never recanted his words nor wavered in his defence of the integrity of his Inuit allies against efforts by the “British Establishment” to slander them as depraved, unreliable RAE savages. As a piece of creative non- fiction, Hamilton’s work com- bines careful historical re- OF search with literary invention to intimately detail Rae’s life during and after his difficult year in London. Written as a series of en- TRUTH tries in her ancestor’s personal diary, the story is driven by and her literary ally, Charles by the British Admiralty for relocate to London, England, A work of creative non- Rae’s decision to bear the cost Dickens, Rae mounts a stub- mapping the passage’s last by 1870. fiction, this last chapter none- of his life-altering decisions, born defence of his credibility. link, Rae commissions his At the heart of empire, Rae theless reverberates with con- an attitude captured by the In Chapter 3, ostracized brothers’ shipbuilding com- finds himself overshadowed temporary Inuit critique of Orcadian proverb, tara gott. from London’s high society, pany to construct the sailing- by the myths of the Franklin Canadian Arctic colonialism. Roughly translating to “it is Rae retreats to the safe ha- ship Iceberg. Expedition. While the press Hardly an act of cultural ap- done,” the proverb haunts Rae ven of his childhood home Repeated delays and a and public canonized Sir John propriation, Hamilton’s craft- as much as it gives him the in Stromness in the Orkney downturn in family fortunes Franklin as a hero, Rae is ing of Irniq’s voice channels, resolve to carry on. Islands off Scotland’s northern see Rae’s dream vessel moving faced with his own relegation I would wager, her conversa- ✫ coast. Hamilton’s remarkable coal on the Great Lakes rather to a footnote in the annals of tions with Inuit elders while FINDING JOHN RAE FOLLOWS description of the isles in the than sailing Arctic waters in Arctic history. researching her book. narrative arcs across seven mid nineteenth century is en- search of the remains of the Yet, as we find in the final Through her perceptive chapters anchored by specific hanced by masterful and scru- Franklin Expedition. chapter and the conclud- and historically grounded evocations of tara gott. pulous historical research. After Iceberg sinks, Rae spi- ing passage of the narrative narrative, Hamilton unravels Chapters 1 through 3 cen- However, Orkney is not rals into a year-long period of arc, the Inuit have not Canadian national myths sur- tre on the single momentous the home Rae remembers. depression, from which he forgotten Dr. Rae. In rounding nineteenth century year of 1854, when Rae met With a growing family and eventually recovers. 1881, he receives a British Arctic exploration and Inuit at Pelly Bay and Repulse few economic prospects in In the settled parts of letter from Irniq, a forces her readers to confront Bay and obtained Franklin rel- Stromness, his sister and his colonial Canada, where young Inuit man, the contemporary legacies of ics from them. brother-in-law inform him who details how the era of John Franklin and Chapter 1 covers Rae’s of their plans to join their Alice Jane Hamilton Rae saved his moth- John Rae for Inuit people. initial encounter with the younger siblings in Canada. is the great-great er’s life years 9781553804819 Inuit hunter In-nook-po- The death of Rae’s mother granddaughter earlier during zhee-jook, or In-nook for and the departure of all the of John Rae’s a complicated Dylan Burrows is an Anishi- short. In-nook’s possession of Raes for Canada is an “end of sister, Marion childbirth, naabe Ph.D. candidate at a Royal Navy cap band, and an era” and opens the novel’s and expresses UBC’s history department.

22 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 PRIZES

Public invited to Woodcock ceremony

s the author/editor of twenty-five books, popular poet Aand writing instructor Lorna Crozier will become the 25th recipient of the George Woodcock Lifetime Achieve- ment Award for B.C. literature at a ceremony at the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library on June 28 at 7 pm. The event is free and open to the public. Crozier has won just about every- thing else, including the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Liter- Lorna Crozier ary Excellence in 2013, both the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, two Pat Lowther Awards for best collection of poetry by a Canadian woman, a Governor General’s Award for Inventing the Hawk (1992) and a Canadian Authors Association Award. In 2009 she was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada. Highways win in Nakusp

T ITS AGM in Na- Akusp, the B.C. Historical Federation (BCHF) Hope-Princeton Highway, Manning Park, 1960s. announced that From British Columbia by the Road by Ben Bradley. Ben Bradley had won its venerable BC Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for historical writing for his book, British Columbia by the Road: Car Culture and the Making of a Modern Landscape (UBC Press). It was reviewed in the Winter issue of BC BookWorld by Daniel Francis. His longer version first appeared in The Ormsby Review. BCHF delegates voted to support BC Heritage Fairs throughout the province and provide financial assistance to The Ormbsy Review, the new online journal named in honour of Canadian historian and former BCHF president, Margaret Ormsby. r&45?A<852@5:3@;91;Ŋ1>? well-founded hope...” r>;-09-<@;85.1>-@5;:2>;9@41 3>110E.-:7?@1>?p01-@43>5<;:;A> 1:B5>;:91:@-:0?;/51@51? s

Joyce Nelson Bypassing Dystopia:

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The Sequel to Beyond Banksters Watershed Sentinel Books

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PHOTO $20

ISBN 978-0-9953286-3-1 KATZ

MICHAEL Kindertransport graphic novel wins twice your New Use More $$$ ORTH $10,000 EACH, THE NATIONAL VINE AWARDS FOR Deadline!! Jewish Literature in Canada are presented by Wthe Koffler Centre for the Arts in four catego- ries. The 2017 winners for Children’s/Young Adult were Berlin-born Irene W. Watts (text) and Kathryn E. Shoe- Enter EVENT Magazine’s maker (illustrations) for Seeking Refuge (Tradewind), their graphic novel arising from the Kindertransport that 2018 NON-FICTION CONTEST enabled ten thousand Jewish children to escape from Nazi $3,000 in prizes 5,000 word limit Germany prior to the outbreak of World War II. For the same book, Watts and Shoemaker subsequently took home Deadline: October 15 the Jonathan & Heather Berkowitz Prize in the Children and Youth category at the 2018 Western Canada Jewish eventmagazine.ca Book Awards (above).

23 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 BC BOOK PRIZES Congratulations to Carleigh Baker! whose short story collection, Bad Endings, was a Finalist for the Booksellers’ Choice Award (BC Book Prizes) “These stories are not about happy endings – they are about powerful endings, and we found them nothing short of electrifying.” – 2017 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Jury “Her characters possess an abundance of hard-luck stories, true, but she writes them as sometimes wrong and sometimes foolish and hence eminently human in their fallibility.” — The Georgia Straight

• Winner, City of Vancouver Book Award • Finalist, Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize isbn: 978-1-77214-076-7 • $18

www.anvilpress.com | distributed by raincoast

CO S NGRATULATION

MercedesM des EEngng Winner of the 2018 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for her book Prison Industrial Complex Explodes. PHOTOS

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ISIS JónínaJ Kirton Finalistl forf theh 201820 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for (above) Winners, fiction literary work went to Arthur Manuel and Grand nominees and pre- Chief Ronald Derrickson for The Reconciliation her book An Honest Woman. senters; (left) Travis Manifesto: Recovering the Land, Rebuilding the As the west leans to the east Lupick signs his Economy (James Lorimer and Company). Accepting book, Fighting For on behalf of his late father, who died on January 11, Space at the Book 2017 at the age of 66, Arthur Manuel’s son Ska7cis Just two of the seven awards at the 34th annual Prizes book table. Manuel gave the other memorable speech of the night. His nominated “My father was undeniably committed to Aboriginal B.C. Book Prizes went to established B.C. presses title won the 2018 rights entitlement,” he said, “and he was a strong op- Ryga Award for ponent of the Treaty Process because it extinguished Social Awareness in EWCOMER MERCEDES ENG WON THE DOROTHY the position of my book on the shelves. People tell me how many Aboriginal Rights… My Dad believed that reconciliation Literature; Ska7cis copies of On Island are on the Departure Bay run, on the Swartz will only be achieved when land rights are recognized, Livesay Poetry Prize for Prison In- Manuel (below) ac- Bay run, and so on. our own rights, not rights held in the name of the queen cepted the award for dustrial Complex Explodes from “One last anecdote: I was in Life Labs waiting for a test a few of England. He dedicated his life to that. It’s an honour his father’s Hubert Talonbooks weeks ago, and the guy sitting next to me says, ‘I loved your book! to accept this on his behalf.” Talonbooks [see page 26] while Touch- Evans Non-Fiction I have a cottage on Savary Island. I know who you are talking It was supposed to be funny when Nickerson placed Prize winner, N wood Editions and veteran writer Pat a framed, McDonald’s employee-of-the-month photo of about!’” The Reconciliation himself from July, 1989, on the front of the podium; less Carney garnered The Bill Duthie Book- Conversely, when asked to accept her Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Manifesto. Th eresa Kishkan Literature Prize for her Zero Repeat Forever (Simon & Schuster), so when it remained there throughout the proceedings. sellers’ Choice Award—accorded only to a CONGRATULATIONS & Rhonda Ganz! Gabrielle Prendergast told the audience she hadn’t The ‘two-minute-max’ maxim for winners’ speeches did B.C.-published book—for On Island: Life bothered to compose an acceptance speech. She not apply to a parlour game he orchestrated, or to two gleeful presenters who doubled as his fan club. Among the Coast Dwellers. ended up thanking George Lucas and Star Wars. Newly arrived in Vancouver from Halifax, Faith The Lieutenant Governor’s Award for an outstanding An ex-politician and former journalist, Carney Erin Hicks was not present to accept the Christie literary career in B.C. has been presented with much ignored emcee Billeh Nickerson’s warning that win- Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize for The hoopla and bagpipes since 2004. This year the award ners must not speak for more than two minutes or Stone Heart (New York: First Second Publishing). was not presented and no explanation was given. risk humiliation, resulting in the most well-crafted Having shown up in Toronto to receive the Rogers ✫ acceptance of the evening as she thanked booksell- Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize earlier this year, Da- FROM 1985 TO 2001, THE B.C. BOOK PRIZES WERE MANAGED ers, sales reps and the former publisher of Touch- vid Chariandy sent an acceptance speech for the by volunteers. Now a staff of seven administers the wood, Pat Touchie, who was the first person to read Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for Brother (McClelland event. her manuscript. & Stewart). In the 20th century, 60% of the B.C. Book Prizes “I knew Bill Duthie,” she said, “and he wouldn’t be Changing Tides co-editor Changing Tides: Vanishing Voices of Nikkei open to all publishers* went to B.C.-published books. here tonight. He’d be out in the hall selling books.” Henry Tanaka Fishermen and Their Families (Nikkei National In the 21st century, 44% of the B.C. Book Prizes Carney thanked her readers, many of whom have Museum & Cultural Centre) received the Roderick open to all publishers have gone to B.C.-published Euclid’s Orchard & Other Essays, Frequent, small loads of laundry, “adopted On Island as their own,” including her fellow islanders Haig-Brown Regional Prize for best contribution to the enjoyment books. fi nalist for the Hubert Evans fi nalist for the Dorothy Livesay on Saturna. “People always say, ‘I know just who you are writing and understanding of B.C. Accepting for his co-editors Fumio The amount of money awarded per prize has not Non-Fiction Prize! Poetry Prize! about—that’s my neighbour!’ “Frank” Kanno, Kotaro Hayashi and Jim Tanaka, Henry changed in this century. “I have an army of guerrilla publicists who move the books Tanaka acknowledged the contributions of local editor Naomi M MOTHER TONGUE PT PUBLISHING LIMITED mothertonguepublishing.com around on BC Ferries’ shelves. One fellow wrote to say he had Pauls and designer Patty Osborne. *Excluding the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award that been on the MV Coho from Victoria to Port Angeles, so he improved The Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize for the best original non- can only go to a B.C.-published book

24 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 25 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 CONGRATULATIONS PRIZES TOPATCARNEY winner of the BC Book Prizes’ Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award for On Island: Life Among the Coast Dwellers

“These stories are gems.” —Shelagh Rogers, CBC’s The Next Chapter

Congratulations to Our BC BOOK PRIZE FINALISTSALISTS

PHOTO Mercedes Eng at the BC Book Prizes

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DEAD RECKONING FIGHTING FOR SPACE Carys Cragg EVERYTHING IS AWFUL Dorothy would approve Travis Lupick Finalist, Hubert Evans AND YOU’RE A Non-Fiction Prize TERRIBLE PERSON Finalist, Roderick Haig-Brown Daniel Zomparelli Regional Prize ERCEDES ENG WAS THE SUR- She also helped create the Planet Finalist, Ethel Wilson prise and surprised Earth Poetry reading series in Victoria Fiction Prize winner of the Dorothy that brings live poetry to audiences on Livesay Poetry Prize at Friday nights. PULP PRESS arsenalpulp.com ARSENAL M the B.C. Book Prizes Now the Sooke poet and author of for her debut poetry six books has received the Federation collection, Prison Industrial Complex of British Columbia Writers’ 2018 Hon- Explodes (Talonbooks $17.95). The ourary Ambassador Award. - S ge ever-feisty Dorothy Livesay would “Wendy was chosen this year,” said have thoroughly approved. Ann Graham Walker, president of the AN Judges Jordan Abel, Chelene FBCW, “in part because of her work as Knight and Carl Leggo were struck creator of the Elder Project—an initia- Congratu- by Eng’s juxtoposition of deeply-felt tive that brings indigenous students personal writing by her father and the together with their elders to capture lations to carefully aloof, cold and impersonal cultural narratives and empower the REW STRUTHER rigidity of correspondence from gover- students to write poems and publish D mental officialdom. them in a chapbook.” This work arises from the author’s author of Around the World On Minimum Wage, The Last Voya ( belief and awareness that “the incar- Recent poetry books: of the Loch Ryan, The Green Shadow, &c.) - ceration of Indigenous people, refugees, Surjeet Kalsey has worked for many and people of colour is rapidly increas- years to raise awareness about violence ing as corporations eagerly court the against women and children with fami- n government for private-public part- lies who went through family violence. nerships to fund the building of new Her writing focuses on women’s issues prisons and detention centres.” in Reflections on Water (Ekstasis (Double?!) Finalist In a brief acceptance speech, Eng Editions $23.95). 978-1-77171-285-9 said her prize was, “for every ✫ prisoner out there.” Patrick Friesen touches on newstarbooks.com Prison Industrial Complex musical influences and the THE SACREDIL’S WEEDfor the HERBP rizeHubert /Evans THE Non-Fictio DEV Explodes was prompted and changes in language over the inspired by the discovery of centuries in Songen (Mother Eng’s father’s prison cor- Tongue $19.95). 978-1896949642 respondence. According to ✫ Congratulations the publisher, this cache of Manolis has released Ch- material included letters from thonian Bodies with th to the 35 Annual BCHF’s the federal government stating Wendy Morton paintings by Ken Kirkby their intention to deport him (Libros $48). The White Historical Writing Winners because of his criminal record; letters Rock poet has also published from prison justice advocate Michael Shades and Colours (Libros $20) by 1st prize, $2,500, and the BC Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing Jackson advising her father on depor- Ion Deaconescu, translated by Oliver Dr. Ben Bradley tation; letters from the RCMP regard- Fraggieri. Shades 9780926763491; British Columbia by the Road: Car Culture and the Making of a Modern Landscape ing the theft of her father’s property, Bodies 9781926763408 UBC Press a gold necklace, while in transport to ✫

HISTORIC BIA AL M F Kindertotenlieder U E L D Community History Award $500 prison; letters from family members Gustav Mahler’s (a O E C R A H T S I I O T I N

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L G I Wayne Norton and friends; letters from Eng and her E 1904 song cycle for voice and orches-

N U WINNER I

T T I E N R A W N T L G A O IC Fernie at War: 1914-1919 V R brother. tra) inspired E.D. Blodgett to write E R TO NO IS R'S R H MEDAL FO Caitlin Press Eng is currently writing a detective Songs for Dead Children (University novel set in her grandfather’s China- 978-1-77212-369-2 See full list of winners and photos on our website of Alberta Press $19.95). town supper club, circa 1948. ✫ 9781772011814 Laisha Rosnau explores sexuality and ✫ inequality in the lives of Eastern Euro- WENDY MORTON STARTED THE RANDOM pean women, both contemporary and British Columbia Acts of Poetry movement to encourage historical, for Our Familiar Hunger Historical Federation poets to read their work and give copies (Nightwood Editions $18.95). of their books to passers-by. 978-0-88971-344-4

26 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS OF THE 34TH ANNUAL BC BOOK PRIZES!

WIN THE WINNERS CONTEST OK P Enter to win a collection of all seven winning titles. See participating stores and contest details O R online at www.bcbookprizes.ca. Contest runs from May 20 – June 17, 2018. I B Z

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SEE FINALIST BOOKS, TOUR PHOTOS, AND MORE AT WWW.BCBOOKPRIZES.CA C S

WE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGE THE SUPPORT OF OUR SPONSORS AND SUPPORTERS: Access Copyright | Ampersand | Anonymous | B ABPBC | BC Booksellers’ Association | BC Teachers’ Federation | Bear Country Inn | Canada Council for the Arts | Central Mountain Air | Columbia Basin Trust | Comfort Inn & Suites North Vancouver | Cozy Court Motel | Creative BC | Days Inn & Conference Centre Cranbrook | Friesens | Government House Foundation | Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund | The Griz Inn | Hamber Foundation | International Web exPress | Kate Walker | Marquis | National Car Rental | The Old Courthouse Inn | Prestige Hudson Bay Lodge | Province of British Columbia | Rebus Creative | Rio Tinto Alcan | Sandhill Book Marketing | Siesta Inn | Siesta Suites | Sutton Place Revelstoke Mountain Resort | Teresa James | Vancouver Kidsbooks | Western Book Reps Association

Tradewind Books congratulates

Nicola Campbell ›Ž—ŽȱŠĴœ Arushi Raina ž•’Žȱ•ŽĴ Kathryn Shoemaker

іћћђџ: іћюљіѠѡ: іћћђџ: The Children’s Africana The 2018 BC Book Prizes, The 2017 Vine Award for Book Awards 2018 Christie Harris Illustrated Canadian Jewish Literature Children’s Literature Award Ȋ Ȋ Ȋ іћюљіѠѡ: іћћђџ: іћћђџ: ‘ŽȱŘŖŗŝȱ Ž˜ě›Ž¢ȱ’•œ˜—ȱ The Western Canada Global Read Aloud Choice 2018 Award for Historical Fiction Jewish Book Prize 2018 for Young People

27 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 HISTORY Panel from The Antifa Comic Book by Gord Hill s a United Church minister, Kevin Annett came to Port Alberni in 1992. AHaving accused the church of complicity in "Canada's slaughter of Aboriginal people," Annett was ousted from the pulpit in 1995. By February of 1996, survivors of residential schools in Port Alberni commenced seeking legal retribution against church and state. Kevin Annett has since worked to initiate an international war crimes tribunal into genocide against the Aboriginal people of Canada and gained support from Noam Chomsky. Annett has self-published numerous books, most recently, At the Mouth of a Cannon: Conquest and Cupidity on Canada's West Coast: A Personal Account (Amazon $15). It recounts his friendship with Ahousaht Chief Earl Maquinna George in the 1990s to prevent the sale and logging of Ahousaht ancestral land on Flores Island. 978-1983790843 ✫ Norman Bethune, who pioneered portable blood transfusion units during the Spanish Civil War and supported Mao against Japanese invasion, remains the most famous Cana- idespread media coverage of the neo-Nazis in North Carolina last summer dian in China. UVic’s Larry Hannant has contributed shocked many people. Some anti-fascist protestors (also referred to as antifa) a chapter about Bethune’s W fought the racist neo-Nazis back and risked their lives to do so. Nevertheless, relationships with women— neo-Nazis took inspiration from support received from the American president. discounting reports that he was a womanizer—for Nor- For his part, Indigenous writer, artist and activist Gord Hill has created a graphic non-fiction man Bethune, Rediscov- The Antifa Comic Book book, (Arsenal Pulp Press $19.95) documenting the clash of fas- ering Norman Bethune cism and antifa movements over the past 100 years. Hill is also the author of The 500 Years (Pandora Press $21.95). 978-1-926599-60-1 of Resistance Comic Book (2010) and The Anti-Capitalist Resistance Comic Book (2012), both published by Arsenal Pulp. He will be contributing a chapter to Direct Action Gets The Goods: The only known photo A Graphic History of the Strike as Political Protest of Dr. Bethune , forthcoming from Between the Lines in and Chairman Mao, 2018. Gord Hill lives in New Hazelton. 978-1-55152-733-8 May 1, 1938

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BLACK STAR HIDER/SEEKER QUARRELS a novel by Maureen Medved stories by Jen Currin prose poems by Eve Joseph “The scholarly life has lent itself to “Currin writes with precision, beauty, “‘The illogical must have a logic of its fiction and satire for decades now and tenderness about the politics of own…’ This declaration, recounted in (centuries, if you want to go back to imperfect relationships and people a piece early in the collection, could be Chaucer). Campuses are full of struggling to find wholeness.” taken as a premise for the book as a thwarted ego, garbled theorizing, —Kevin Chong, author of whole. These mini-fables, ekphrastic clanking bureaucracy—in short, Beauty Plus Pity and The Plague tales, and the lovely elegiac sequence regular life, only here mutating in a that completes the book each “...this collection is a work of sealed petri dish, perfect for a demonstrate anew that the real is art that cuts brilliantly through novelist’s uses. Delorosa Hanks, the underpinned by the surreal, rather to the truth.” —Wayde Compton, chaotic narrator of Black Star, is the than the other way around. Read each author of The Outer Harbour latest heir in this line. By the second 224 pages | $20 86 pages | $18 one slowly, and watch it blossom in isbn: 978-1-77214-117-7 ISBN: 978-1-77214-119-1 224 pages | $20 sentence of the scalding new novel by Available Now! “Jen Currin writes into difficult places Available Now! the interstices of what might once isbn: 978-1-77214-112-2 Vancouver author Maureen Medved, with delicacy, humour and meditative have been considered ordinary life.” Available Now! Hanks is referring to her academic grace. . .” —Shaena Lambert, author of —Roo Borson rival as ‘a lesion of carcinogenic Oh, My Darling and Radiance. “Eve Joseph hands us the golden key proportions capable of rotting and that unlocks an iridescent wonder; destroying departments’. It just gets her prose poems glisten. Following darker, funnier, and more acidic from Charles Simic’s dictum, she keeps there.” —The Georgia Straight STRAIGHT CIRCLES them spare and tells us everything.” a novel by Jackie Bateman —M.A.C. Farrant, author of The Domestic satire meets gripping World Afloat ATOMIC ROAD suspense in Straight Circles, the final, explosive chapter of Bateman’s Lizzy a novel by Grant Buday Trilogy. The original and eccentric BOLT “Atomic Road is compelling fiction. cast of characters return in this genre- poetry by Hilary Peach With its loose basis in historical fact, bending thriller, but not everyone’s the story carefully spirals in and out getting out alive. The debut collection from West Coast performance poet Hilary Peach, BOLT of absurdity without losing the core of Praise for Bateman’s previous novels: the journey. The quest draws readers is a collection of scars and a compen- in, the dynamic between the two leads “a thriller that succeeds by nodding dium of remedies; a measurement of lightning. It’s the familiar impulse holds the attention, and the resultant 320 pages | $20 politely to the formula, then turning unusual book is sure to stick in the isbn: 978-1-77214-114-6 it on its head.” —Quill & Quire that occasionally seizes us all, to sud- mind like an insightful LSD trip.” May denly run, out of control. But it’s also “Bateman draws on her Scottish roots —Foreword Reviews (5-Star Review) a carefully engineered fastener that for a bewitching first novel...” holds things together. 224 pages | $20 —Prairie Fire isbn: 978-1-77214-113-9 “Hilary Peach in Bolt is wildly open Available Now! to the world. Though times be desper- 96 pages | $18 isbn: 978-1-77214-116-0 ate, she’s restless and alert in every May moment.” —Erin Moure

28 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 review HISTORY

Fernie At War: 1914-1919 Wartime internment by Wayne Norton camp at Morrissey, (Caitlin Press $24.95) near Fernie.

BY W. KEITH ages drove the CNPCC to take REGULAR the unprecedented further step of requesting a ban on lo- ERNIE AT WAR: cal recruitment. Surprisingly, 1914-1919 by the federal ministry of labour Wayne Norton concurred, and the federal Fhas deservedly government enacted Military won the Commu- Order No. 448. nity History Award from the Norton asserts that this B.C. Historical Federation for 1916 ban on local recruitment making sense of the town’s was the only measure of its volatile daily life, from 1914- kind in Canada. Only the local 1919, with in-depth informa- 107th East Kootenay Regiment tion and analysis that brings was excluded from the ban. Fernie’s fractured and fissured An interesting aspect of history to light. Norton’s approach for this His main focus is Fernie’s fascinating study is his am- response to a national war bivalence regarding the extent emergency, highlighted by pa- to which Fernie and its his- triotic expressions, sometimes tory was, and still is, much rabid, and radical unionism. neglected. Canada’s war effort was char- The abundant evidence acterized, as Norton recog- Norton presents demonstrates nizes, by the emotional force of that, by virtue of the sig- extreme nationalism justified nificance of its coal-based by crude propaganda that economy and wartime disrup- denigrated the enemy. FERNIE tions around it, Fernie, a com- Over-zealous patriotism munity served by two railways resulted in WWI internment and a highway became both a camps for civilians—still little national distraction and a dis- known by almost all British ATWAR ruptive force in international Columbians. unionism. Norton’s work is ✫ moil would lead to competi- mining communities. security, Ottawa acted with a significant contribution to IT ALL BEGAN ON JUNE 5, 1915, tion between the United Mine Bowser’s actions mirrored its Order-in-Council 1501, contextualizing both a provin- when a small delegation of Workers of America and the the federal government’s agen- deferring the right of habeas cial and national perspective. Belgian—and English—speak- syndicalist trade union One da across Canada, embodied corpus and legitimating the The quantity and quality ing miners at Coal Creek, near Big Union (OBU). in the War Measures Act of arrest of the internees at will. of Norton’s research, and the Fernie, acting independently Stirring this rather large 1914. Individuals deemed a Thus, British Columbia’s conclusions drawn therefrom, of their union, voiced safety cauldron of disaffection was threat to national security foray into domestic national have resulted in a valuable concerns about working un- the hand of Bowser’s political were easily interned or deport- policy at Fernie and environs study. The historical issues derground with enemy aliens. ambitions. Norton presents ed. Bowser correctly guessed became the source of much discussed in Fernie At War: By June 8, they had launched internment architect Bowser that miners desire for inflated controversy. For four years, 1914-1919 are of such sig- an illegal strike. as ambitious and calculating, pay cheques would matter internment camps for non- nificance that this book des- The next day B.C. Attor- and it is difficult to disagree more to them than union Anglo labourers were deemed perately needed to be written. ney General (and later acting with this assessment. cohesion. It did not take long patriotically defensible. It is essential reading on the premier) William Bowser or- Bowser’s self-serving agen- for Anglo workers, in league Meanwhile, as Norton history of Fernie for both pun- dered the internment of enemy da to court favour among with other allied workers, makes clear, miners were dit and scholar. 9781987915495 aliens. There followed four Anglo voters generated his in- such as Italians, to defy their enlisting at such rates that a years of strife. Fernie residents ternment camps. Scapegoats leadership and abandon fellow labour pool shortage resulted. Keith Regular, Ph.D, is a re- and returning soldiers would were needed for war and a unionists to their unhappy Dire warnings of possible mine tired teacher and principal in be pitted against foreigners; depressed economy; and they fate of internment. shutdowns prompted the Cranbrook. His book Neigh- union leaders against the rank were easily found among hun- Bowser’s crass actions CNPCC to successfully request bours and Networks: The Blood and file; and the Crow’s Nest dreds of foreign miners, espe- soon involved Robert Bor- release of some internees to Tribe in the Southern Alberta Pass Coal Company (CNPCC) cially Austro-Hungarians and den’s federal government. remedy the labour shortfall. Economy, 1884-1939, was against the union. This tur- Germans, inhabiting B.C.s In the interests of national Continued labour short- published in 2009. Internment Operations In Canada (1914-1919)

Internment Camp Work Site

29 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 VISUALS

There was a time, long ago, when I thought I would like nothing more than to be a street-corner musician. What I became, and have been for many years, is an artist. Not a singer, not a pianist, not a violinist, but a visual artist.” GATHIE FALK

“ Co-written by Robin Laurence, Gathie Falk’s new memoir, Apples, etc. (Figure 1 $22.95) reflects on her nearly ninety years of life and almost fifty years as a dedicated artist, alternating chapters of autobiogra- phy and artmaking. Along the way she has received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts, the Gathie Falk Gershon Iskowitz Prize, the Order of British Columbia and the Order of Canada. The gamut of her work is hard to define. She has created performance works involving THE ART eggs and bird feathers; paintings of flower OF THE ORDINARY beds and night skies; and ceramic sculptures of fruit, men’s shoes and dresses. Her oeuvre ATHIE FALK WAS SOMETHING OF A early, she finished high school by correspon- is often and aptly summarized as a “venera- late bloomer. Her Russian dence in 1947, then moved to Vancouver. tion of the ordinary.” 978-1-77327-012-8 immigrant father died just After some menial jobs, she became a ✫ G ten months after she was school teacher during which time she re- SONNY ASSU: A SELECTIVE HISTORY born on January 31, 1928 in awakened her childhood passion for art. (Heritage House 34.95) is the first major ret- Alexander, Manitoba. She grew This led her to take classes in the 1960s with rospective to span the career and subversive up during the 1930s and 1940s in a Menno- J.A.S. MacDonald, Roy Oxlade and Glenn spirit of Indigenous artist Sonny Assu. nite community watching her mother make Lewis. Her first important solo exhibit was Assu’s art merges the aesthetics of Indig- cabbage rolls by hand, hearing her brothers in 1968. A major book about her work was enous iconography with a pop-art sensibility skate on a backyard rink while she lay sick published in conjunction with her second in large-scale installations, sculpture, pho- in bed, and taking music lessons courtesy of major retrospective exhibit at Vancouver Art tography, printmaking, and painting. an anonymous donor. Forced to leave school Robin Laurence Gallery in 2000. 9781772031706

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30 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 review FICTION

The Promise of Water degree: tuition and an apart- by Judy LeBlanc ment. He says I’ve got to live (Oolichan $19.95) up to my potential. I know you don’t believe it, but I could be BY CAROLINE anything I want. It’s been a gas. We had some nice times, WOODWARD you and I, and likely we’ll miss each other now and then. Take UDY LEBLANC’S DEBUT collection evokes a care and all the best.” tangible sense of Thesp has avoided succes- place—Vancouver sive house parent meetings J with the social worker by Island—where the sweet fragrance of cedar min- wrapping himself in a carpet gles with the murky odours and getting into method acting of damp mould and stale while employed by Lug-A-Rug cigarette smoke that can be and waving at traffic on Blan- washed away by a clean, cold shard Street in Victoria. Amy blast of salt air. It is populated has been dealing with keeping with fully-imagined lives, al- hard-partying young women lowing us to gain insight and alive in the age of deadly drugs even feel compassion for hu- and morose, towering youths manity’s blundering ways. with knives strapped to their Each story has what I call boots. She emails the feckless an ‘emotional time bomb’ Thesp, after summing up her within it, the kind of tension life to date and their relation- we all feel when we have to ship on her own terms, with attend to something we have these overdue words: “This is been avoiding, like the dying not a gas, you clown.” of a difficult brother who has ✫ constantly sneered at your ‘EXPOSURE’ IS A STUNNINGLY GOOD life, your house, your kids, story set in the mining town your spouse, et cetera, ad of Cumberland in the first half nauseum, or the ending of a of the last century. A miner’s romantic relationship with widow looks after her father someone who does not have who is dying of Black Lung or your back and never will silicosis. The prevailing work- because they are much more ing man’s suspicion of anyone concerned with the false front without coal-seamed hands is they present to everyone else. compounded by racism when There is sadness, yes, be- a photographer, known locally cause this is a book about as ‘The Jap,’ dares to walk the vulnerable children and teens same streets nattily dressed and mature, usually, adults in a suit with a fedora on his who struggle with hard knocks head. ‘The Jap’ is very good and gain depth and wisdom. at what he does. Everyone in These are characters so real MOTIONAL the segregated town who can afford to hire him does so to PHOTO they practically stride off the pages or sidle up and try to photograph their weddings LATTA bum a smoke off you. Harsh TIME BOMBS and family portraits. But he E sets tongues wagging when and hopeful lives lit up by BRIAN glimmering flashes of joy and he advertises for a white lady towed along by undercurrents Judy LeBlanc to model for him, for which of humour. ’s short stories reveal the he will pay cash. The miner’s ✫ widow is the only woman who applies and she has a particu- IN ‘CAN’T GO WRONG WITH AN IRIS,’ kind of tension we all feel when we have to we meet a sixteen-year-old lar grievance to sort out with mother, attempting to look the photographer, who also after her newborn, who must attend to something we have been avoiding. has the nerve to call himself contend with her own inef- an artist. fectual, self-absorbed mother ✫ dedicated to avoiding respon- ered there by indelible memo- dandelion fluff and tragedy and that’s an understatement. THIS IS A TERRIFIC DEBUT AND A sibility, never mind not pos- ries. It’s about one boy’s dream ensues. But we cannot help but feel book to reread just to admire sessing the grandmotherly of swimming in the Olympics The writing is so evocative, empathy for those souls who the use of language and to gene. and his mother’s promise to so pitch-perfect, I keep return- are truly doing the best they spend more time with some The basement-suite-dwell- buy him swimming lessons ing to these characters with can, too. classic Vancouver Island char- ing teen must accept the fact in a pool year-round, not just ‘what if’ scenarios, wanting I very much enjoy, probably acters. I found myself revisit- that her own mother will bail Shawnigan Lake across the to bargain on their behalf for more than I should but I am ing these characters as they on her yet again. Then she road in the summer. better choices and gleefully unrepen- set their sights on freedom must face the formidable The would-be Olympian happier outcomes tant, how LeBlanc and a better way of living and mother of the fifteen-year-old and his brother sneer and for them all. reveals and then expressing their best qualities father of her baby, who at least slap and punch each other ✫ skewers the privi- in this world. Judy LeBlanc is a North brings two bags of groceries, a non-stop, competing for the LEBLANC DEFTLY SHOWS leged poseurs and cheque and a bouquet of irises attention of their boozehound us what econom- slackers in these Island College English and before fleeing. father, who eggs them on ic and social and stories. creative writing instructor His mother declares, as when he returns from his well- educational class Take Darren, and founding member and she heads for the door, that worn chair in the local Legion. differences really CAROLINE in ‘The Confusion artistic director of the popular her son has a future, high- Their mother copes by play- look and sound and WOODWARD Technique,’ who Fat Oyster Reading Series, yet stepping through the muck ing the perpetual comedian taste like. Her adult prefers to be called another good reason to go to left behind by a recent flood. with rose-coloured glasses characters work at all kinds Thesp, for thespian. As an the Fanny Bay Community I cheered on the abandoned resolutely attached to her of occupations from group erstwhile co-house parent in Hall with a pit stop at the young mom, tough, and with head, and by working three home parents to English as a a challenging group home, he Fanny Bay Inn, aka The F.B.I., a bright and beautiful heart, night shifts a week at a retire- Second Language teachers to writes a farewell note to Amy, afterwards. 978-0-88982-320-4 much like an iris. ment home to keep the family loggers and miners and kayak his girlfriend of several years ✫ fridge stocked with weiners guides. Parenting by men and duration, who is in way over Caroline Woodward is a THE TITLE STORY, LIKE ALL THE SIX- (and flats of Lucky Lager, I by women gets its fair share her young, earnest head with lightkeeper on Lenard Island, teen powerful stories in The surmise, to pacify her season- of scrutiny and some of us, the streetwise teens: “I’ve been near Tofino and the author Promise of Water, is grounded ally-employed husband). as the report cards indicate, talking to my father again. of Light Years: Memoir of a in place and seemingly teth- Hope floats like so much have room for improvement He’ll set me up if I finish my Modern Lighthouse Keeper.

31 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ KARYOTAKIS- SHADES AND POLYDOURI: COLORS THE TRAGIC LOVE STORY Poetry by Ion Deaconescu. translated by Poetry translated by Oliver Fraggieri & Manolis Aligizakis Manolis Aligizakis

$20 $20

ISBN: 9781926763453 ISBN: 9780926763491 $48

Featuring a foreword by media baron 978-1-7750968-0-1 Rupert Murdoch, All The Oceans, hard cover w/jacket 200 images/colour CHTHONIAN BODIES Designing by the seat of my pants EROTOKRITOS includes some of the renowned yacht 8.5 x 9 in. | 392 pgs [FOR COLLECTORS OF RARE BOOKS] Poems by Manolis. Paintings by Ken Kirkby ISBN: 9781926763408 designer’s earliest sketches. Poetry by Vitsentzos Kornaros. Transcribed by Manolis Bookstore and libraries ISBN: 9781926763361 WRITE THE This memoir traces Holland’s sea- contact Aydin Virani WAY OTHERS faring adventures from his native New Libros Libertad PRAY Zealand to the US, Ireland and now “Holland is a Vancouver. There are great stories along congenial storyteller CANADA'S TRULY Selected poems by INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER István Turczi the way, like when his boat was boarded and skilled writer by Fidel Castro’s navy. He designed and his lifetime of [email protected] some of the world’s fastest racing yachts, achievement is as $20 luxurious super vessels for celebrities admirable as it is 1-604-838-8796 and royalty, and Mirabella V, the largest entertaining.” libroslibertad.com ISBN: 9781926763477 single-masted yacht ever constructed. Foreword Reviews

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varieties Yoka is reading & recommends: Speaking Our Truth by Monique

Gray Smith 978-1-926991-91-7 | Soft cover w/flaps | 4 col | 9 x 11 in. | 64 pgs | Jul 1 (Orca Books). In Mean Streets Killer Art, author Sean Nosek takes us deep inside a world of addiction, poverty, and homelessness to reveal the fascinating life and art of Vancouver’s Ken Foster. Set on the edge of the DTES, Foster’s story is both compelling and heart wrenching. The product of a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, the book includes 25 paintings. “With his innate sense of composition, Ken Foster edits a subject to its bare bones. When that is combined with his uncanny understanding of ‘light’, the result is masterful.” from the foreword by John R. Taylor, art curator

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32 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 20188 review FICTION ROUNDUP

between Singapore, Canada ✫ and Japan. Obsessed with IN HIS DEBUT mystery, Cobra natural disasters as well Clutch (NeWest $18.95), as emotional upheavals A.J. Devlin introduces his such as the loss of a loved fictional character “Ham- one, Dunic captures what merhead” Jed Ounstead it is like to simultaneously who is adjusting to life after Move over, experience global trauma, the pro-wrestling world. her place in history and Elinor Florence Hammerhead is now a bar personal loss. bouncer and errand boy Dunic is the singer/gui- for his father’s detective tarist of the band The Deep agency. Cove and also the artistic Cobra Clutch uses hu- David E. Kelley director of the Powell Street mor and gritty realism and Festival Society. includes a former tag-team 978-1-77166-282-6 partner, a kidnapped pet f you are a parent and you think you are being ✫ snake, sleazy promoters, and violence inside and out- IN ELINOR FLORENCE’S SECOND A.J. Devlin responsible by allowing a teenage party in your novel, Wildwood (Dundurn side the ring. “As the venom $19.99), Molly Bannister, a of Vancouver’s criminal house, with kids from supposedly good fami- single mother from Arizona underworld begins to seep must spend a year enduring into Jed’s life, a steel chair lies... Well, yikes. There are legal pitfalls. pioneer conditions in the to the back of the head is I remote Alberta backwoods the least of his problems.” Last year Robyn Harding’s The Party (Gallery/Scout $22) was welcomed as a shud- to earn her inheritance from Devlin grew up in Great- deringly unforgettable but compulsively readable morality tale about how comfortable, her great-aunt’s will. If she er Vancouver before moving suburban lives can so easily and horribly go awry. makes it through a year in to Southern California for R.M. Greenaway The Party is a perfectly executed, mainstream novel that will almost certainly be an off-the-grid abandoned six years where he earned made into a movie. Set in San Francisco, it starts with a good girl’s 16th birthday party farmhouse, she can sell a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Her Pretty Face downstairs with just a few girlfriends. the land to fund her four-year- Screenwriting from Chapman Uni- by Robyn Harding With The Party, Harding fully and old daughter’s much-needed versity and a Master of Fine Arts in (Gallery/Scout $35) probably irrevocably graduated to medical treatment. Screenwriting from The American mainstream fiction with a feat of But Colin, an idealis- Film Institute. Devlin lives in Port superb, chilling storytelling. It’s tic local farmer hopes Moody.978-1-988732-24-4 not rated PG; it is guidance for parents. to stop her plans to ✫ Now she’s returning this summer with Her Pretty Face, sell the property to VANESSA FARNSWORTH’S SHORT STORY an equally dark tale of contemporary female friendship in the an oil company. collection The Things She’ll Be realm of Sara Shepard’s Pretty Little Liars —since made into Molly must endure Leaving Behind (Thistledown the Emmy Award winning TV series with Nicole Kidman a brutal winter $19.95) features women who col- and Reese Witherspoon, scripted by David E. Kelley. that includes lide head on with chronic liars, Stay-at-home mom Frances Metcalfe struggles with blizzards and dead grandfathers, beleaguered her weight, self-esteem, and her troubled son. When he grizzly bears, sons, mysterious voices, unfaith- gets into an elite private school, Frances thinks she’s set emboldened ful husbands, midnight callers, to emerge from her social hell. That is, until something by a jour- spiteful sisters, and hallucinated happens that sets the whole school against her and her nal that was clowns. Husbands go crazy or son, plunging Frances back into misery. kept by the wayward or missing. Seemingly out of nowhere, Frances is befriended by land’s origi- Farnsworth is a resident of the another school mom who is rich and powerful. They nal home- B.C. Interior. Her short fiction bond against the other elite school mothers. Of course steader, her has appeared in literary journals it’s too good to be true. Frances’s beautiful new friend courageous across Canada and in the US. Her has a deeply dark past that threatens to end in great-aunt. memoir, Rain on a Distant Roof: A tragedy for her. It involves murder. For 978-1-459740-20-4 Personal Journey Through Lyme info on Harding’s other books see Disease in Canada (Signature abcbookworld.com 978-1-50117-933-4 Editions), was published in 2013. ✫ 978-1-77187-157-0 VANOUVER-BORN ANDREW BATTERSHILL’S ✫ first novel, Pillow, was longlisted NELSON-BASED R. M. (RACHEL) GREEN- for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller away’s first novel Cold Girl (Dun- Prize and shortlisted for the durn, 2016) won the Unhanged 2016 Kobo Emerging Writer Arthur Ellis Award. It was the Award. Pillow was selected by first in the B.C. Blues Crime se- CBC Books as one of the Best ries featuring RCMP investigator Debuts of the year. In his new Constable David Leith. The story crime thriller, Marry, Bang, begins with the vanishing of a Kill (Goose Lane Editions young rockabilly singer named $22.95), we meet Tommy Kiera in northern B.C. Marlo, a guy who mugs peo- The second book in the se- ple for their laptops. His life ries Undertow (Dundurn, 2017) as a nice guy petty criminal sees Constable Leith joined by gets complicated fast when Constable Cal Dion as they he rips off the daughter of go to Vancouver to solve the a psychotic, high-ranking murders of a mother, father, member of a notorious mo- and baby. torcycle gang. The pilfered In book three of Green- laptop contains proof of a away’s series, Creep (Dun- few gruesome murders and durn, $17.99), Constables the location of a huge stash of Leith and Dion are in North money. Battershill has been the Vancouver, mystified by a 2017-2018 writer-in-residence mauled body on the moun- at the Regina Public Library. tain—where a small boy is 9781773100029 attacked and bitten by a man ✫ in wolf form. Constable Leith HOW DO YOU FOLLOW UP WINNING THE ALICE follows procedures while out- Munro Short Story Contest? In the of-the-loop and rebellious Dion case of Leanne Dunic, you write and asks an attractive witness out on a PHOTO publish your first book. To Love the date... It’s dark in them thar hills. Coming End (Bookthug $18). The story Robyn Harding 978-1-45973559-0

follows the protagonist as she moves TALLULAH

33 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 review FICTION

Black Star by If I had to shelve Black Star Maureen Medved in a library, I’d put it in the (Anvil Press $20) horror/psychological section, rubbing jacket shoulders with FEAR ‘N’ LOATHING such modern gothic classics BY JOHN MOORE as Robert Bloch’s Psycho and

IMPLE FORMULA FOR A the collected works of Stephen compelling novel: King. (I’d put Margaret At- show the best peo- in a place resembling UBC wood’s The Edible Woman on ple on their worst the same shelf. Just saying.) behaviour. In Black Star, Medved takes SSince universities and—if they’re very on one of the toughest chal- Maureen Medved’s are generally sup- brave—to establish lenges in fiction: creating a posed to be inhab- criteria that can be novel is a “black comedy” main character, a protagonist, ited by the best and used to make ethi- with whom it is almost impos- brightest people in cal judgements and on par with real estate sible to sympathize, though we our culture, they’ve decisions. may identify with her in our been fertile ground Black Star’s Del bumph advertising most private moments. for ironic, darkly Hanks has tried Del’s nemesis, Helene Leb- comic fiction. JOHN to be one of those timeshare condos in Hell. ec, like so many of the fifteen- In Black Star, MOORE courageous think- second celebrities our culture Maureen Medved ers. Ten years ago, the department’s new junior snubbed as “a popularizer” spews into the limelight, is plows a field that has pro- she published The Real and lecturer, Helene Lebec. in any academic common easy to despise. Del is a more duced Kingsley Amis’ Lucky the Unreal, to positive peer Supermodel gorgeous, room for “dumbing-down ambivalent character; the Jim, Tom Sharpe’s Porter- reviews. For Del—now fat, dressed like a drug-dealer’s the discipline.” In today’s brainy goof, the smart nerd, house Blue, Malcolm Brad- forty and still single, from girlfriend, author of several pervasive climate of celeb- solipsistic, bereft of social bury’s The History Man and a family of chronic under- best-selling books on the eth- rity, she’s an ornament to the skills but possessed of a sharp several satirical piss-takings achievers—philosophy has ics of animal rights and other faculty, instantly possessed mind and cutting tongue, by the late great Peter de been more than a scholarly hot-button topics beloved of with massive clout that may easier to hate than to even Vries, to name but a few. discipline. It was her ticket out the politically correct and a be ephemeral, but that’s all casually like. But Black Star resembles of Smallville, U.S.A., and the frequent TV talk show guest, the more reason to use it fast, Few authors have dared its ancestors like children re- Boethius-approved consola- Lebec exudes star-quality. while it lasts. to give such characters more semble their parents; superfi- tion for humiliations endured Thirty years ✫ than a supporting role as cially. In the opening chapters, in every other aspect of human ago, she NO SPOILER ALERT INTENDED, BUT TO designated villains. The nar- we’re on a campus that seems relations. Her impending bid would describe Medved’s novel as a rator of Ford Maddox Ford’s generically familiar from both for tenure is more than just have “black comedy” is on par with The Good Soldier, is a con- experience and fiction. The another career step. Tenure is been real estate bumph advertis- temptible, passive cuckold. stock character of the loveable the one thing that can vali- ing timeshare condos in Hell. John (Rumpole of the Bailey) Absent-Minded Professor has date her whole pathetically After an ironically amusing, Mortimer wrote a trilogy of long since been replaced by a constrained life. deceptive start, Black Star novels around Lesley Titmuss, faculty of dysfunctional, ma- Unfortunately, her chronicles the descent of a a traitor to his working class nipulative, careerist social and tenure bid hinges fragile, brittle personality, origins who rises politically by sexual misfits whose lapses of on getting a pub- who has put her few eggs in embracing the Tory politics of memory are deliberate stra- lication deal for the only basket she has, his masters. Mortimer also tegic moves in the game of her new work, into the nightmarish wrote Dunster, the definitive university power politics—the forebod- pandemonium of total novel about the quintessential competition for funding and ingly titled paranoia. bad friend, whose narrator is tenure. The Cata- Del’s manuscript of a feeble in the mould of Ford’s Transmitting the essentials strophic The Catastrophic Decision narrator. of scholarship to a new gen- Decision, becomes increasingly In Del Hanks, Medved has eration doesn’t top the agenda. and writing surreal, mirroring her created an unlikeable but not Setting her story in the phi- it is starting to personal disintegration as unadmirable character and

PHOTO invites us to care about her... losophy department of an un- look like one of those she makes one irrational named West Coast Canadian fateful, book-a-tick- bad choice after another. or not. CRANE

. university, (nudge, nudge, et-on-the-Titanic d That would be an ethical .

R choices. Mean- decision. See your PHIL 102 wink, wink), Medved uses a In Black Star, Maureen instructor on Monday. blade sharp as a box-cutter while, her life is Medved takes on one of to open a Pandora’s package being weighed the toughest challenges 978-1-77214-112-2 of human duplicity. in a balance by in fiction: creating a main Philosophy professors do a committee character, a protagonist, John Moore continues to write not, as newbie undergrads of- of careerist with whom it is almost better than most people in the impossible to sympathize, ten assume, study The Mean- creeps and human race, from Garibaldi though we may identify Highlands. He has a collection ing of Life. Instead, they try to feebs, all of with her in our most refine and define the language whom are private moments. of essays forthcoming and he we use to apprehend ‘reality’ in thrall to has tenure in his garden.

34 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 review FICTION

On the Up by Shilo Jones (M&S $24.95) CRIME

N THE HEELS OF & WATER Charles De- mers’ comic Give Out Creek by JG Toews crime novel O (Mosaic Press $24.95) about the ef- fects of escalating real estate CRIME & prices in Vancouver’s Lower LONG-TIME RESIDENT OF Mainland, Property Values (Ar- Nelson, JG (Judy) senal, 2018), comes newcomer AToews was born on Shilo Jones’ equally dark cri- Salt Spring Island and raised tique, On the Up, a tense tale REAL ESTATE in North Vancouver. A gradu- of three disparate characters ate of UBC, she is a former who are involved in a shady teacher, nutritionist, colum- condo property deal in North nist, and non-fiction author. Vancouver. Shilo Jones could very well Set in Nelson, her debut Coping with PTSD, Mark is novel Give Out Creek—prior PHOTO an Afghanistan war veteran become the best novelist ever to publication—was shortlist- ed for the best unpublished who has left his wife and child MASON . born in Bella Coola. R

first crime novel by the Crime in Thailand in order to repay a Writers of Canada in 2016. debt to his nefarious brother. MARK Having returned to a small Although he’s co-founded Africa, enrolled in UBC’s MFA a novel that is pitched as a mountain town where she an environmental investment Quentin Tarantino program and then got picked blend of grew up, newspaper reporter company, Carl “Blitzo” Reed is Elmore Leonard REMOVING up by the Dean Cooke Agency and . If you Stella Mosconi doesn’t ever a drug addict who, like a huge in Toronto. As a stay-at-home can’t play in the high stakes mention her crippling fear of percentage of Vancouverites, father in Kelowna, he has poker game, disparaging it HURT deep water. is caught up in the ecology expressed an increasingly comes naturally. But he says With spring runoff, the of greed. common love/hate relation- he misses living in Vancouver. Rejoice: alpine creeks are swelling as Jasminder is an aspiring A Knife to the Heart ship with Vancouver within 978-0771049101 by Steven Erikson she watches the level of the investigative journalist who (Promontory $29.95) lake rising outside her door. tries to stay high-minded When a new friend is found within the realty-mad maze of dead in her rowboat, Stella Vancouver’s otherwise micro- CURATOR OF THE STRANGE OST WRITERS AT THE is drawn into the investiga- managed streets, while shar- Moutset of their ca- tion despite a complicated ing a one-bedroom apartment reers are intimidated history with the police officer with her mom. Archivist and curator Susannah M. Smith by the blank page. in charge. Steven Er- Stella struggles to hold After a rural upbringing, of Vancouver says her storytelling influences include visual Victoria-based Shilo Jones attended high ikson had to over-step a Ca- her family together following school in the Lower Mainland artists, photographers, illustrators, filmmakers and fashion nadian orthodoxy that he calls the death of a second woman and tried UVic’s creative writ- designers. “I admire writers who break the rules,” she says, the Blank Wall. who was a suspect in the ini- ing program before he realized “I ran face-first into that tial investigation. Ultimately, “who create forms that are truly novel, who make me feel she will have to find the cour- it would be a better idea to first wall rather early on,” Erikson like anything is possible.” As a follow-up to her debut novel, age to overcome her intense grow up and have something writes, on his website, “in fear of water in order to help worthwhile to say. So he used How the Blessed Live (Coach House, 2002), she has devised the company of that high- solve the murders. his hands to work as a tree brow institution of exclusivity a curiosity cabinet of interconnected galleries for The Fairy 978-1-77161-305-7 planter and stonemason. known as CanLit (an amor- Tale Museum (Invisible Publishing $19.95). After getting a BFA in Vi- phous Canadian sual Art and Cultural Theory Ranging from grotesque to endearing, Smith’s subjects entity of ‘serious’ “Word of mouth from SFU, during which time include bird-headed lovers, a cyborg cyclops, revolutionary literature as pro- is very powerful he contributed essays to gal- mulgated primar- in fantasy.” ventriloquists’ dummies, Eros and Thanatos and a narcoleptic STEVEN ERIKSON lery catalogues in Vancouver, ily by the Canada he travelled extensively with vampire. Her eclectic blend of influences includes W. G. Sebald, Council, writing his wife in Asia and Audrey Niffenegger, the Brothers Quay, Banana Yoshimoto, departments at Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, universities, The Globe and Mail, Peter Carey and Anne provincial granting Carson.978-1-988784069 agencies and CBC Radio).” Since those ear- ly days of tenta- tiveness, Erikson, a former archae- ologist and anthropolo- speculative fiction series, The gist has published a Malazan Book of the Fallen, ten-novel, three- beginning with Gardens of the million-plus- Moon in 1999. words, His latest novel Rejoice: A Knife to the Heart opens in Victoria with the apparent UFO abduction of sci-fi writer Samantha August as she walks down a busy street. But she wakes up in a small room, hearing a male voice. The story spreads worldwide— and beyond—as Erikson con- siders what the world would be like if our ability to hurt one SUSANNAH M. SMITH: other was removed. “I always carry a small Erikson has also undertak- notebook with me to en a separate but related pre- capture impressions and quel trilogy, The Kharkanas story fragments as they Trilogy, that started with Forge arise. At last count, there of Darkness in 2012. was a total 25 notebooks.” 978-1-77374-012-6

35 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 review ESSAYS

Euclid’s Orchard ALTHOUGH THE FINAL ESSAY, and Other Essays “Euclid’s Orchard,” mentions by Theresa Kishkan several different mathematical (Mother Tongue $22.95) concepts in order to explore the intertwinements of trees, BY CATRIONA Intensely personal, coyotes, and generations of even heated, a family—Euclidean axioms SANDILANDS and postulates, Pascal’s tri- Theresa Kishkan HIS BOOK’S FIRST angle, and most beautifully essay, “Heraklei- writes about her the Fibonacci numbers that tos on the Yala- fraught relationship are so abundantly manifest in the natural world—the over- kom,” is so per- with her parents, sonal that it is whelming sense of the book Talmost painful to read. especially her father. is that attentive presence in It is a daughter’s frank the world requires “departing letter to a very difficult, some- from… logical usage to urge times downright hateful par- the reader to emotional and ent who is more concerned intellectual discovery”: look- with knives and fishing tackle AndAnd thethe HEATHEAT goesgoes onon ing, sideways, at the trees we than the affections and aspira- otherwise can’t see. tions of his daughter and sons. Life’s patterns may be in- His is a “legacy of dimin- tricate and exquisite, but it ishment.” Later in the book, Theresa Kishkan: bluebot- told that the family home was Near Drumheller, she is the unpredictable, intimate Theresa Kishkan softens tles, leaf beetles, grease- a shack in a former squatters’ sings the prairie: “turn, turn, details of the past and present slightly by allowing into her wood and cocklebur. settlement.” bend the song to the roadside that create a life: a father’s relationship with him the ✫ plants… free verse composed fishing knife, a mother’s new fuller family picture of broth- Kishkan also softens to- EUCLID’S ORCHARD IS FULL OF of craneflies, dragonflies, blue- suit, a grandmother’s hands, ers, mother, and the different ward her father by giving him Theresa Kishkan’s arresting bottles, broad-bodies leaf the anticipation of an egg places where they lived when a context in the struggles of descriptions of the material beetles, greasewood and cock- salad sandwich, a cherished she was a child. his parents, poor immigrants details of places such as her lebur.” family wisteria by the west- In “Poignant Mountain,” from what is now the Czech home on the Sechelt Peninsula And near her home, she facing deck. for example, set in Ridgedale Republic, to make a life for and, of course, her orchard, concludes with the cries of coy- After searching for the where he worked at CFB Mats- themselves and their surviv- lovingly planted and eventually otes: “lilting joyous youngsters meaning of Euclid’s orchard, qui, his violence is still pres- ing child in the harsh, dry failed in the face of the deer unaware that a life is anything sometimes the most important ent, but only as a small, almost landscape of Drumheller in and bears that have, in the end other than the moment in the thing you are left with is the matter-of-fact moment in her the early twentieth century. result, a more vigorous claim moonlight, fresh meat in their smell of apples cooking in your rich depiction of the tastes, As she discovers on a trip to the harvest than she does. stomachs, the old trees with a kitchen. 9781896949635 smells, sites, and events of to the Alberta Provincial Ar- Near Victoria, she recounts few apples and pears too small her remembered life there: the chives, her paternal grand- an exquisite memory of “an and green for any living things Catriona (Cate) Sandilands sharp taste of buttermilk and parents were not, as she had abandoned house completely to be interested in this early in is a professor in the Faculty the creamy yellow of pancakes thought, homesteaders: her knitted into place by honey- the season.” of Environmental Studies from neighbouring farms. father “never knew or never suckle and roses.” ✫ at York University.

if wants to be The Big Note the same as is A Guide to the Recordings of Frank Zappa Essential Poems of David Bromige Jack Krick, Bob Perelman, Ron Silliman, eds. Charles Ulrich Introduction by George Bowering “Destined to be the essential Zappa lis- “A poet of enormous intellect, tening companion for the 21st century.” humor and innovation.” —David Ocker —Kathleen Fraser “The next best thing to being “Among the three or four most in the room with Frank.” significant writers of his generation.” —Scott Thunes —Michael Davidson

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Some End/ Maria Mahoi of West Broadway the Islands George Bowering/ Jean Barman George Stanley

An important chapter in the story “Caustic and clever...Often of Salt Spring Island, and a classic in beautiful and always witty.” its field, Maria Mahoi of the Islands —Jonathan Ball, is an important document on the Winnipeg Free Press history of Indigenous Hawaiians & their early presence across the Pacific Northwest.

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NEW STAR BOOKS fine poetry & prose since 1970 newstarbooks.com | [email protected] | @newstarbooks

36 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 review FICTION

The Plague by Kevin Chong these two, fully-realized char- (Arsenal Pulp $19.95) A classic French text invigorates a new tale acters have little personal of rats overtaking Vancouver. Joan Givner resemblance to each other. BY JOAN GIVNER Coming from different ethnic compares Kevin Chong’s The Plague, set in backgrounds, they have indi- N 1947, ALBERT CAMUS vidual histories and their own published La Peste (The Vancouver, with Albert Camus’ work of the eccentricities and speech pat- Plague), sometimes terns. It’s just one example of called his “resistance same name published seventy years earlier. how Chong’s novel manages to novel.” Set in the Al- be similar but also different. Igerian coastal city of Oran, expert on funerary rites from Dickens, or Henry James is feel most sensitively about Whereas Camus pays little it channelled his experiences Los Angeles, stranded during treated respectfully, the ex- this material to either skip the attention to the Arab popula- during the German occupation a tour to promote her book, tensive use of structure and remainder of this chapter or tion of his city, or to the dis- of France into a fiction about The Meaning of Death. As their plot is suspect. When Graham read it at arm’s length.” possessed, Chong is sensitive a community in the grip of a lives become entwined, a cast Swift’s Last Orders won The Camus’ trademark sense to issues of ethnic and gender deadly epidemic. of minor characters includes Booker Prize, he was accused of the absurd is evident in his diversity, extending his cast Seven decades later, Kevin their families and friends, of plagiarizing Faulkner’s As description of a municipal of characters to include more Chong pays homage to Camus as well as the city’s mayor, I Lay Dying. Earlier this year clerk who is an aspiring writer, women. in The Plague by replicating a smooth-talking, telegenic, a New Yorker story that rep- unskilled but obsessive. As At the same time, he casts a the dramatic structure and former Rhodes scholar. licated Mavis Gallant’s story tragic and heroic events un- sharp critical and/or satirical some of his characters in It’s up to the reader to de- The Ice Wagon Going Down fold around him, he endlessly eye on foibles of his own time a novel that takes place in cide the extent to which Chong the Street caused a flurry of polishes the first sentence of a such as the tourist industry “Vancouver, Canada in the is intending to draw direct par- angry letters. novel set in an exotic place he promoted by the Chamber of near future.” allels to world class Vancouver. Jane Austen seems to be has never seen. Chong, like- Commerce and the by-now de Like the earlier work, Everyone marooned by the the current favourite for clum- wise, has a would-be author rigeur author book tour. Chong’s new novel starts disease is completely changed. sy riffs. Of course, who gets no further Chong’s novel shows that with the appearance of a One group forms a bond to much depends on than the endless re- for all the long and chequered few dead rats. Their number relieve the suffering of their whether the execu- vision of an opening history of literary borrowing, it rapidly increases, and before neighbours. Others devote tion of the second sentence. can still lead to a rediscovery long the deadly bacillus bac- their energies to escape plans, text is skilful or Chong provides of the original text, as well as teria spreads to the human or devise ways to profit from weak. As T.S. Eliot a new perspective yielding an independent work population. the situation by smuggling noted, a good writer on Camus’ charac- that is fresh and compelling. A brief period of calm fol- people out and scarce com- improves or at least ters and incidents The total effect of all these lows as civic officials issue modities in. makes different what JOAN by transposing them parallels and divergences is false reassurances until the The mayor, whose polished he borrows. GIVNER into a different con- to set up a kind a dialogue extent of the danger can no exterior has been demolished Chong’s novel il- text. Sometimes between the two novels. Since longer be concealed. A quar- by the exposure of his scan- lustrates the innovative use similar details spark totally Chong is writing in a later age, antine is then imposed with dalous past, is one of the few of a classic text at its best. divergent situations, as do the his variations act as a two-way road blocks set up on all high- who is redeemed by his first- One of the striking features of following notes pinned to an critique of then and now. For ways and bridges, trapping hand exposure to suffering. Camus’ novel is the distinctive apartment door. instance, while both novels everyone within the immediate ✫ voice of his narrator: a con- Camus’ character named are set in colonized places, metropolitan area. CHONG’S NOVEL IS A COMPELLING scientious witness of a great Cottard: “Come in, I’ve hanged Chong’s greater awareness of This epidemic lasts for four work of storytelling, which tragedy, striving for reportorial myself.” this fact is made clear in his months and kills over 1,400 stands on its own feet, quite objectivity but often ironic. Chong’s character named opening, possibly tongue-in- people. independent of Camus’ work. Chong echoes the tone; his Farhad Khan: “I have killed cheek, sentence: Chong’s novel follows three At the same time, a familiarity narrator becoming at times myself. Call the police. You do “The remarkable events main characters—Bernard with the source adds another admonitory as he cautions, not need to see this.” described in this narrative Rieux, a doctor; Raymond dimension of complexity. De- “Don’t misinterpret [the char- Both these two aforemen- took place in Vancouver Siddhu, a journalist who is spite a long history of literary acters] as archetypes.” tioned characters find a ne- (traditional territories of the prevented from returning to borrowing, this practise is not On another occasion, he farious purpose during a Musqueam, Squamish, and his wife and small sons in the universally appreciated. provides a mock trigger-warn- time of universal devastation. Tsleil-Waututh First Nations) suburbs; and Megan Tso, an While a novel about a char- ing to those who might be When normalcy returns and in 201...” 978-1551527185 acter in a classic work by traumatized by the harrowing deprives them of their new- Charlotte Bronte, description of a child’s grue- found purpose, they become Joan Givner, now based in Vic- some death: “We therefore deranged and violent. Yet toria, has continually provided kindly invite those who might first-rate reviews for longer than we can remember.

A PLAGUE ON OUR PHOTO

QUERNER

HOUSES ANDREW 37 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 STORE FRONT ON WHEELS: Iron Dog Books is a mobile bookstore centered on the belief that books should be affordable and accessible, stating “Book ownership and reading are powerful tools for self-determination and engagement.”

A is for Atleo G is for Goodison

FIRST, THERE WERE FOOD TRUCKS. NOW ALONG ONE OF THE WORLD’S rolls Iron Dog Books, a mobile book- WHO’S eight entirely sur- store, using a 2006 Freightliner step prised writers who van, owned and operated by Indigenous BRITISH•COLUMBIA received a call this partners Cliff and Hilary Atleo (Nuu year from the direc- Chah Nulth/Tsimsian and Anishi- tor of the Windham- naabe/Scottish racial backgrounds). Campbell Prizes, Burnaby-based and dedicated to serv- informing them ing Tsleil-Waututh, Skwxwú7mesh and WHO Lorna Goodison that they had just Musqueam territories (metro Vancou- won one of eight ver), Iron Dog Books now attends liter- $165,000 US prizes, is Lorna Goodi- ary functions such as the book launch son of Halfmoon Bay. These awards for Pat Ardley’s memoir, Grizzlies, worth more than $1 million annually Gales and Giant Salmon: Life at a are conferred each September at a Rivers Inlet Fishing Lodge (Harbour D is for Deadmonton literary festival at Yale University in $24.95). 978-1-55017-831-9 memory of Sandy M. Campbell, part- EDMONTON SNAGGED ITSELF THE TITLE OF ner of novelist Donald Windham for “Murder Capital of Canada” in 2011 45 years. In 2017 Lorna Goodison was B is for Burton with 48 of its citizens coming to a installed as poet laureate of Jamaica sudden and violent end. Back in 1938 for a three-year term during a cer- DURING MORE THAN 30 YEARS AS A POLICEMAN, the “City of Champions” also scored emony at King’s House in St. Andrew, Ken Burton served as a captain on a higher per capita murder rate than Jamaica. She lives with her husband RCMP coastal patrol vessels including Chicago. In Deadmonton: Crime and fellow writer Ted Chamberlin. St. Roch II. Starting from Unalaska Stories from Canada’s Murder City in Alaska and carrying on through (U. of Regina Press $21.95), Pamela the Northwest Passage to Greenland, Roth of Victoria takes a look at some of Jackie Kai Ellis: “When I first started H is for Harrison Burton explores the highlights, histo- Edmonton’s most notorious murders, writing The Measure Of My Powers ries and people along the way in Can- both solved and unsolved. about 2 years ago, I knew I needed KEITH HARRISON’S NINTH BOOK, SHAKEspeare, ada’s Arctic: A Guide to Adventure 9780889774261 to be alone to do it.” Bakhtin, and Film: A Dialogic Lens through the Northwest Passage (Pa- (Palgrave Macmillan $140.86), is a cific Marine $49.95). In 2000, Burton study of Russian philosopher Mikhail captained a non-ice-reinforced vessel E is for Ellis F is for Frie Bakhtin (1895-1975) who, while living on a continuous circumnavigation of under Stalin, according to Harrison, the North American continent in one LAST YEAR HEATHER ROSS, WHO RUNS A DÉCOR ROGER FRIE, A NON- “developed bold ideas about the car- season. 978-0-919317-58-1 boutique on Fir Street in Vancouver, Jew, was awarded nivalesque, dialogue, and the chro- published The Natural Eclectic: a De- both the 2017 Ca- notope.” Harrison makes use of these sign Aesthetic Inspired by Nature. Now, nadian Jewish Lit- concepts to help il- C is for Campbell her next-door-entrepreneur, Jackie erary Award in the luminate the cre- Kai Ellis, owner of Beaucoup Bakery, history category for ativity behind ALL MEMBERS OF OLGA CAMPBELL’S MOTHER’S has published The Measure of My his engaging memoir the global pro- family were murdered in the Shoa but Powers: A Memoir of Food, Misery, Not in My Family: liferation of no details emerged. Campbell’s self- and Paris (Random House $24.95). Roger Frie German Memory Shakespeare published A Whisper Across Time In the style of Eat, Pray, Love, Ellis’ and Responsibility on screen. (Jubaji Press $32) combines prose, art memoir details how her life spiralled After the Holocaust (Oxford University 978-3-319-59742-3 and poetry to revive the story of one when she suffered with crippling de- Press $36.95) and The Kahn Fam- family’s experience of the Holocaust. pression. Despite having a handsome ily Foundation Prize in the holocaust Described as a healing ritual and “a husband, a successful career and a category at the 2018 Western Canada Shamanic Soul retrieval,” A Whisper beautiful home, she left it all behind to Jewish Book Awards. The son of Ger- Across Time will be launched with an travel to France, Italy and the Congo man post-war immigrants who were art show on Nov. 15 at the Gertrude Republic. Her marriage didn’t survive children during World War II, Frie Keith Harrison has and Sidney Zack Gallery as part of her evolution, but after attending examines his family’s largely unspoken written five novels and Vancouver’s Jewish Book Festival. pastry school in Paris, she returned history, including familial links to the lives on Hornby Island. 978-0-9812911-2-3 to start Beaucoup. 9780147530394 Nazi regime. 978-0-19937-255-3

38 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 WHO’SWHO
         

authored Journey to Kaho’olawe, is for Indian Fishing covering more than two centuries I of Hawaiian cultural exchange and inter-marriage with coastal peoples. IN 1977, HILARY STEWART (1924–2014) Wyss is known for her ‘plant walks’ in wrote her most renowned book on Stanley Park and a City of Vancouver Northwest Coast cultures, Indian Fish- public art collaboration to ‘remediate’ ing: Early Methods of the Northwest former gas station sites using plants Coast (D&M $28.95) before the term and Indigenous methods of sustainable First Nations had come into use. In agriculture. more than 450 drawings and 75 pho- tographs, Stewart shows what coastal fishing tools looked like and how they L is for Little were used. Now re-printed, Stewart’s illustrations of handmade fishing tools SFU’S JACK LITTLE EX- remain as impressive as ever. amines how Canada 978-1-77162-185-4 came to be identi- fied with its natural is for Justice & Joseph landscape in Fash- J ioning the Cana- dian Landscape: WHY INDIGENOUS LITERATURES MATTER Essays on Travel (Wilfrid Laurier $19.99) by Daniel
           Writing, Tourism, Heath Justice (Cherokee Nation) Jack Little and National Iden- challenges readers to re-think their tity in the Pre-Automobile Era (UTP      




 

 
 

assumptions about Indigenous litera- $75). Little argues that the national ture, history and politics. He holds the  





 

 

 
 

  


image of Canada that emerged was Canada Research colonialist as well as colonial in nature. 
 
  

 
  
 


 Chair in Indigenous 978-1-4875-0021-4 Literature and Ex- pressive Culture at
           UBC. Former as-             sociate professor at Royal Roads Uni-      



!  "
#  "
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 versity, Bob Joseph Bob Joseph discusses the dra- conian and oppres-  !!"#            sive effects of the Indian Act since its   $%  &%
    



creation in 1876 with 21 Things You May Not Know About The Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Rec- onciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality (Indigenous Relations Press $19.95)—outlining such prohibitions
   
 as entry into pool halls or soliciting 
     funds for Indians to hire legal counsel. He is founder of Indigenous Corporate Training Inc. and a member of the Gwawaenuk Nation. George Mercer with beary good friend Justice: 978-1-77112-176-7; Joseph: 978-0-9952665-2-0 M is for Mercer

K is for Kaho’olawe GEORGE MERCER’S FOURTH NOVEL, FAT CATS ($19.99) is about a park warden who ARTIST AND ETHNOBOTANIST T’UY’T’TANAT- “goes rogue.” When a cougar shows up Cease Wyss is the 2018 Indigenous on one of the Gulf Islands, a group of storyteller in residence at Vancouver neighbouring landowners want to see Public Library, a program that was the cougar tackle the overpopulation introduced in 2008. of deer on the island—but the cougar Wyss has been is shot and killed. Frustrated, park influenced by warden John Haffcut takes matters her diverse her- into his own hands and puts a cou- itage—which gar back onto the island. Then he includes Skwx- has to deal with a notorious cougar wu7mesh, tracker who is intent on killing it. Sto:lo, Irish- As a Gulf Island National Park Métis, Hawaiian monitoring ecologist, Mercer is and Swiss— familiar with the challenge of and she maintaining native ecosystems in has co- the absence of predators. “Before I

         
 retired,” Mercer says, “I was often     
   asked what I was going to            !  do with all my spare time. " # #       $# # I used to joke that I was 
#    
# ## # going to do exactly  # what John Haffcut
             does in Fat Cats.” 9780987975461; georgemercer.com       T’uy’t’tanat- Cease Wyss       ! " #$$   % %&' 

39 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 N is for Nine Dragons

One good detective, one bad town, one dead white woman… With its opium dens, seedy bars and sex workers, Kowloon in the 1920s is the setting for Jovanni Sy’s cross-cultural thriller, Nine Dragons (Talonbooks $17.95), a play that recently pre- miered at Richmond’s Gateway Theatre. Like Sy’s preceding play that refracted a critique of colonialism through the arti- fice of a cooking show, Nine Dragons uses the façade of hard- boiled detective noir—think Raymond Chandler and Robert Mitchum—to examine colonialism, racism, assimilation and the clash of cultures. Nigel Dunston-Smith is the police boss who sends a white, newbie detective with veteran gumshoe Tommy Lam to investigate the Fung family who own the Nine Dragons nightclub. Theatrically, the play included video projections, fight scenes and a dramatic musical score. 9781772012040 PHOTO

NGUYEN

TIM

David Chen, John Ng, Toby Hughes and Duval Lang in Nine Dragons, Gateway Theatre

cluded the Winter Olympics, that the ily contact until age half Bowering’s short length verses. first critical book to examine his legacy fourteen. Burdened They occasionally make reference to O is for Oghma isn’t B.C.-published. UNBC professors by symptoms of fetal each other’s work. Stanley’s describes

AFTER A SEVERE AC- J.R. Lacharite and Tracy Summer- alcohol syndrome a panhandler: “Face unlovely/ mix of cident caused ag- ville have gathered 368 pages of critical and abuse by sadis- hair & skin/ emanating fury/ mouth nosia—the inabil- essays for The Campbell Revolution? tic men, Caplin was a cave/ ‘(swallowed word) something ity to recognize and Power, Politics and Policy in Brit- nonetheless deter- to eat,’/ takes the proffered coin,/ identify objects or ish Columbia ($31.46) from McGill- mined to decide her ‘Thanks.’” Stanley grew up in San persons—Emisch Queen’s in Quebec. 9780773551039 Janet Romain own fate and not Francisco where he later hung out Oghma of Victoria be a victim. Not My with Jack Spicer’s circle of writers. began studying and Fate: The Story of A Nisga’a Survivor Immigrating to Canada in 1971, he has is for Romain records her arduous and triumphant known Bowering since then. Emisch Oghma modernizing the an- R cient Chinese face creation of a private life of peace and 978-1-55420-145-7 reading system called siang mien. By IN HER SECOND BOOK, NOT MY FATE: forgiveness. 978-1-927575-54-3 The Story of a Nisga’a Survivor (Cait- Troy Townsin being more observant and interested (below left) in people’s faces, Emisch was able to lin $24.95), Janet Romain recounts reduce the effects of agnosia, giving the life story of her friend, Josephine S is for Stanley rise to his book, In Your Face (Agio (Jo) Caplin. Jo was forced to overcome $19.95), designed to show how anyone maternal abandonment, alcoholism IN HOMAGE TO A LONG FRIENDSHIP, GEORGE can quickly “read” their own face, their and epileptic seizures. After she was Stanley has published his own new friends, family or co-workers. removed as a third grader from the works in a “flip book” with George 978-1-927755-54-9 care of her father, brother and uncle Bowering’s latest poetry. Some End/ due to alcoholism in the family, she West Broadway (New Star $18) is half endured foster homes without any fam- Stanley’s narrative and lyrical work, P is for People’s Co-Op

“AS FAR AS WE KNOW,” SAYS ROLF MAURER, “the People’s Co-op Bookstore is the oldest bookstore in the country, not just Vancouver. Apart from some university bookstores, no other has continually stayed in business for this long.” Started in 1945, the bookstore has been located at 1391 Commercial Drive since 1983. At a special general meeting in January, co-op members T is for Townsin approved a plan to develop a new foundation for the future. Their stock MELBOURNE- BORN ACTOR- PLAYWRIGHT of new and recently-released titles has Troy Townsin worked for the United been expanded and donations of books Nations Information Centre in London are still gratefully accepted. prior to his B.C. arrival in 2002. Four books for his own Polygot imprint since 2008 have now been followed with five Q is for Queen’s more for his new Canadian Monster Club series, illustrated by Trish Glab, IT WAS GORDON CAMPBELL’S REGIME THAT $12.95 each, for ages 4-7. Entitled instructed ICBC to become more liti- Sasquatch, Mannegishi, Wendigo, PHOTO gious when British Memegwesi and Ogopogo, these books RODIN

Columbians try to provide short, repetitive singing parts get compensation for children as well as a “look-and- RENEE as accident victims. find” component. Each book contains George Bowering (left) and George Stanley launching Some End/West Broadway Possibly it says at People’s Co-Op Books in Vancouver. The bookstore’s first brochure in 1945 a historical account of each mythical something about stated: “the struggle against fas cism and Nazism must be carried on. Because monster. Partial proceeds from the sale his popularity, af- of this people are grasping for solutions.... The People’s Co-op Bookstore of these books, distributed via Sandhill, ter a decade-long will be more than just a book selling business. It will aim to stimulate the are donated to the First Nations Family Tracy Summerville premiership that in- circulation of books that are socially significant.” and Caring Society.

40 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 Self-Publish.ca Raven WHO’SWHO Publishing Inc. Books about Pacific NW Coast Aboriginal Art and Culture by the Trump administration.” The U is for UBC authors believe criminal prosecutions New could be used to repress and deter the
     lies of climate-change deniers. FOUNDED IN 1915, UBC   978-0-9986947-3-3 in Vancouver is one of Canada’s larg- " ' '(  est campuses, with X is for Xerography &)*$+$#,+-
Draw, paint, carve, a total enrollment ./( do cross stitch of 54,000 and an XEROGRAPHY IS A LIT- alumni of over 
 
 
and marquetry, erary journal co- 318,000 in 150  
 
founded and co- enjoy. Kim Campbell, 1965 countries. Student 
 
 
edited by Onjana English, French, German, Spanish leaders on campus  
 
 Yawnghwe, also have included Pierre Berton, John co-founder of a ‘mi-  !"#$%& Turner, Kim Campbell and Stan Per- cro press’ for hand- sky. Sheldon Goldfarb’s large-format made publications book, The Hundred-Year Trek: A His- called fish magic tory of Student Life at UBC (Heritage Onjana Yawnghwe press. Yawnghwe $32.95), is an overview of student was born in Chiang Mai, Thailand, government and activism at UBC from Memoir Writing Services but is a part of the Shan people from 1915 to the present. 9781772032239 Burma. She grew up in Vancouver and received the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Your life adds up to a story. is for Vassilopoulos Award for Emerging Literary Artist in V 2012. Her first poetry collection, Frag- Tell it. ments, Desire (Oolichan, 2017) has led LONG- TIME BOATING Now you can hire an experienced writer— to The Small Way (Caitlin $18). enthusiast and with more than two decades as a full-time 978-1-987915-77-8 writer/publisher, freelance writer in Vancouver—to help you: Peter Vassilopou- Record your life stories through an los has simultane- • Y is for Younging extensive interviewing process. ously released four • Conduct research to augment your story. new titles through Write the story with you. GREGORY YOUNGING HAS PUBLISHED • his Pacific Marine Manage the book design. Elements of Indigenous Style (Brush • Publishing, three Provide advice on printing. Peter Vassilopoulos Education/Dog Training $19.95) as A • of which he wrote: Guide to Writing By and About Indig- For more information contact me at Turn of the Tide ($24.95), a novel that enous Peoples in respectful and insight- 604-688-1458 • [email protected] uses the apartheid era politics of South ful ways. He outlines 22 Indigenous Africa as a backdrop to underwater Beverly Cramp style principles that are about process LAURA SAWCHUK PHOTO adventure; OOPS!: Boating’s Close as well as appropriate terminology. He Encounters and Other Awkward Mo- also discusses the place of Indigenous ments ($19.95); and Adventures on Literatures in the world of CanLit the West Coast of Vancouver Island and the representation of Indigenous ($39.95). www.marineguides.com peoples in literature. He is currently In- digenous Studies Program Coordinator FAT CATS W is for Woodworth at UBC Okanagan and former assistant director of research for the Truth and BY Reconciliation Commission of Canada. GEORGE MERCER A LONG-TIME WRITER ON CLIMATE CHANGE 9781550597165 science and activism, Elizabeth Wood- worth has co-authored with Dr. Book Four in the Peter D. Carter, Unprecedented Z is for Zizka Crime: Climate Science Denial and Dyed In The Green Game Changers for Survival (Clar- WITH MORE THAN 200 IMAGES, PAUL ZIZKA’S fiction series about ity $27.95). While updating alarming The Canadian Rockies: Rediscovered environmental damage done by global (RMB $50) is a coffee table book of lav- warming, it lays out a case for crimi- ish landscape photography that covers RXUQDWLRQDOSDUNV nalizing climate science denial. The all the rocky mountain icons in Alberta doomsday clock has now been rede- and British Columbia: Yoho, Banff, ISBN: 9780987975461‡ signed to include the human-caused Kootenay, Jasper, Kananaskis, Mt. www.georgemercer.com catastrophes posed by climate change. Assiniboine and Mt. Robson. Zizka’s The global threat is worsening due to ascent of the tallest mountain in the $YDLODEOHDWLQGHSHQGHQWDQG,QGLJRERRNVWRUHVDFURVV&DQDGD “…the rise of ‘strident nationalism’ Canadian Rockies, Mt. Robson (3,954 $OVRDYDLODEOHDVDQHERRNIURP$PD]RQDQG.RER worldwide… and the disbelief in the sci- m / 12,972 ft), resulted in some of the entific consensus over climate change most remarkable images. 9781771602310 PHOTO

ZIZKA

PAUL Wapta Falls, Yoho National Park, B.C., from The Canadian Rockies

41 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 THE ORMSBY REVIEW A rebirth for serious book reviews

New website coming in September: www.ormsbyreview.com

Published George Bowering, The Hockey dian Story (Crackingstone) Religion in Settler British Columbia Book Reviews Scribbler (ECW) Christopher Pollon, photos by (UBC Press) YEAR ONE Ryan Eyford, White Settler Re- Ben Nelms, The Peace in Peril: The Joy Kogawa, Gently to Nagasaki serve: New Iceland and the Coloni- Real Cost of the Site C Dam (Har- (Caitlin) Jonathan Peyton, Unbuilt Envi- zation of the Canadian West (UBC bour) Jean Barman, Abenaki Daring: ronments: Tracing Postwar Develop- Press) Brian T. Thorn, From Left to The Life and Writings of Noel An- ment in Northwest British Columbia Rafe Mair, I Remember Horse- Right: Maternalism and Women’s nance, 1792-1869 (McGill-Queen’s) (UBC Press) buns (Promontory) Political Activism in Postwar Canada Marilyn Laura Bowman, James Peter O’Neil, I Am a Metis: The Mike McCardell, None of This (UBC Press) Legge and the Chinese Classics: A Story of Gerry St. Germain (Harbour) Was Planned: The Stories Behind W. Wesley Pue, Lawyers’ Empire: Brilliant Scot in the Turmoil of Co- Robert Griffin & Richard A. Rajal, the Stories (Harbour) Legal Professionals and Cultural lonial Hong Kong (Friesen) The Sustainability Dilemma: Essays B. Brett Finlay and Marie-Claire Authority, 1780–1950 (UBC Press) Sage Birchwater, Chilcotin on British Columbia Forest and En- Arrieta, Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving David Suzuki and Ian Hanington, Chronicles: Stories of Adventure vironmental History (RBCM) Our Children from an Oversanitized Just Cool It! The Climate Crisis and and Intrigue from British Columbia’s Ujjal Dosanjh, Journey after Mid- World (Greystone) What We Can Do (Greystone) Central Interior (Caitlin) night: India, Canada and the Road Red Robinson: The Last Deejay Tom Swanky, The Smallpox War Caroline Fox, At Sea with the Beyond (Figure1) (Harbour) in Nuxalk Territory (Shawn Swanky) Marine Birds of the Raincoast (RMB). Mark Leiren-Young, The Killer Peter McMullan, Casting Back: Daniel Francis, Where Mountains Jason Beck, The Miracle Mile: Whale Who Changed the World Sixty Years of Fishing and Writing Meet the Sea: An Illustrated History Stories of the 1954 British Empire (Greystone) (Rocky Mountain Books) of the District of North Vancouver and Commonwealth Games (Caitlin) Michael Layland, A Perfect Eden: Serge Alternês & Alec Wainman, (Harbour) The Lost Vancouver: An Unex- Encounters by Early Explorers of Live Souls: Citizens and Volunteers Christine Dickinson, Deborah pected Art Deco Tour (Space Gallery) Vancouver Island (TouchWood) of Civil War Spain (Ronsdale) Griffiths, Judy Hagen, and Catherine Making Room: Forty Years of Christina Johnson-Dean, The Genevieve Von Petzinger, First Siba, Watershed Moments: A Picto- Room Magazine (Caitlin) Life and Art of Mary Filer: The Un- Signs: Unlocking the Mysteries of rial History of Courtenay and District Alisa Smith, Speakeasy (Douglas heralded Artists of BC No. 9 (Mother the World’s Oldest Symbols (Simon (Harbour) & McIntyre) Tongue) & Schuster) Betsy Warland, Oscar of Between: Michael Kluckner, 2050: A Post- Eden Robinson, Son of a Trickster Brandon Pullan, The Bold and A Memoir of Identity and Ideas Apocalyptic Murder Mystery (Mid- (Penguin Random) Cold: A History of 25 Classic Climbs (Caitlin) town Press) Adriana A. Davies, The Rise and in the Canadian Rockies (RMB). George Bowering and Charles The Summer Book: A new collec- Fall of Emilio Picariello (Oolichan) James W. Taylor, Guilty But In- Demers, The Dad Dialogues: A Cor- tion of creative non-fiction by twenty- Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail, In This sane: J.C. Bowen-Colthurst, Villain respondence on Fatherhood (and the four BC writers (Mother Tongue) Together: Fifteen Stories of Truth or Victim? (Mercier Press,) Universe) (Arsenal Pulp) Andrew Scott, The Promise of and Reconciliation (Brindle & Glass) Nick Russell, Glorious Victorian Cameron, Kelton, Swedlund, edi- Paradise: Utopian Communities in Aaron Chapman, The Last Gang Homes: 150 Years of Architectural tors, Beyond Germs: Native Depopu- British Columbia (Harbour) in Town: The Epic Story of the Van- History in British Columbia’s Capital lation in North America (University James Fox, ed., The Art of Jeffrey couver Police vs. the Clark Park Gang (TouchWood) of Arizona) Rubinoff: An exploration of the life (Arsenal Pulp) Judi Tyabji, Christy Clark: Be- Tom Sandborn, Hell’s History: and work of Canadian sculptor Jef- Bev Sellars, Price Paid: The Fight hind the Smile (Heritage) The USW’s fight to prevent workplace frey Rubinoff (Douglas & McIntyre) for First Nations Survival (Talon- Ian Gill’s No News is Bad News: deaths and injuries from the 1992 Brandon Dimmel, Engaging the books) Canada’s Media Collapse—and What Westray Mine disaster through 2016 Line: How the Great War Shaped Ron Smith, The Defiant Mind: Comes Next (Greystone) (United Steelworkers) the Canada - US Border (UBC Press) Living Inside A Stroke (Ronsdale) Amber McMillan, The Woods: A Sean Karemaker, The Ghosts We Thora Illing, Gold Rush Queen: Pnina Granirer, Light Within the Year on Protection Island (Harbour) Know (Conundrum Press). The Extraordinary Life of Nellie Shadows: A Painter’s Memoir (Gran- Luis Fabini and Wade Davis, Caitlin Gordon-Walker, Exhibit- Cashman (TouchWood Editions) ville Island) Cowboys of the Americas (Greystone) ing Nation: Multicultural National- Jack Knox, Opportunity Knox: Nikki Tate, Deadpoint (Orca) Jon Turk, Crocodiles and Ice ism (and Its Limits) in Canada’s Twenty Years of Award-Losing Hu- Picturing Transformation: Nexw- (Oolichan) Museums (UBC Press) mour Writing (Heritage)] Ayantsut (Figure1) Lloyd Keith and John C. Jackson, Charles Menzies, People of the Andrew Struthers, The Sacred Christian Fink-Jensen and Ran- The Fur Trade Gamble: North West Saltwater: An Ethnography of the Git Herb / The Devil’s Weed (New Star) dolph Eustace-Walden, Aloha Wan- Company on the Pacific Slope, 1800- lax m’oon (University of Nebraska) Catherine Richardson, (Kinew- derwell: The Border-Smashing, 1820 (Washington State University) Sam Wiebe, Invisible Dead (Pen- esquao), Belonging Metis (J. Charl- Record-Setting Life of the World’s Claudia Casper’s novel, The guin Random) ton Publishing) Youngest Explorer (Goose Lane) Mercy Journals (Arsenal) Tina Block, The Secular North- John Cherrington, Walking to Dr. Anthony Kenyon, The Re- Jay Sherwood, Ootsa Lake Odys- west: Religion and Irreligion in Camelot: A Pilgrimage through the corded history of the Liard Basin sey: George and Else Seel—A Pio- Everyday Postwar Life (UBC Press) Heart of Rural England (Figure1) 1790-1910: Where British Columbia neer Life on the Headwaters of the Colin D. Levings, Ecology of Shelley O’Callaghan, How Deep joins the Yukon and N.W.T. (Fort Nechako Watershed (Caitlin) Salmonids in Estuaries around the is the Lake: A Century on Chilliwack Nelson News) Donna Macdonald, Surviving City World: Adaptations, Habitats, and Lake (Caitlin)] David Chuenyan Lai and Ding Hall (Nightwood) Conservation (UBC Press) Diamond Jenness (Author), Bar- Guo’s Great Fortune Dream: The Wade Davis: Photographs (Doug- Gary Geddes, Medicine Unbun- nett Richling (Editor), The WSANEC Struggles and Triumphs of Chinese las & McIntyre): dled: A Journey through the Mine- and Their Neighbours: Diamond Settlers in Canada, 1858-1966 Jack Knox, Hard Knox: Musings fields of Indigenous Health Care Jenness on the Coast Salish of Van- (Caitlin) from the Edge of Canada (Victoria: (Heritage) couver Island, 1935 (Rock’s Mills) Gwen Curry, Tod Inlet: A Healing Heritage House) Ron Brown, Rails Over the Moun- Barry Gough, Britannia’s Navy Place (Rocky Mountain Books) David Pitt-Brooke, Crossing tains: Exploring the Railway Heritage on the West Coast of North America, Catherine Holder Spude, editor, Home Ground: A Grassland Odyssey of Canada’s Western Mountains 1812-1914 (Heritage) All for the Greed of Gold: Will Wood- through Southern Interior British (Dundurn). Jayne Seagrave, All the World’s a in’s Klondike Adventure (Washington Columbia (Harbour) Tom Hawthorn, The Year Cana- Stage: The Story of Vancouver’s Bard State University) Mary Tasi and Wade Baker, The dians Lost Their Minds and Found on the Beach (Heritage) Chris Harris, British Columbia’s Hidden Journals: Captain Vancouver Their Country: The Centennial of Jim Cooperman, Everything Cariboo Chilcotin Coast (108 Mile and his Mapmaker (Sky Spirit) 1967 (Douglas & McIntyre) Shuswap (Playfort) Ranch: Country Light) Tristram Lansdowne et al, J. Pat Carney, On Island: Life Among Erik Bjarnason and Cathi Shaw, Kay Johnston, The Amazing Fenwick Lansdowne (Pomegranate) the Coast Dwellers (TouchWood) Surviving Logan (RMB) Mazie Baker: The Squamish Nation’s Colin Henthorne, The Queen of Douglas E. Delaney and Serge Ian Gibbs, Victoria’s Most Haunt- Warrior Elder (Caitlin 2016) the North Disaster: The Captain’s Marc Durflinger, Capturing Hill 70: ed: Ghost Stories from BC’s Historic Larry McCann, Imagining Up- Story (Harbour) Canada’s Forgotten Battle of the First Capital City (Touchwood) lands: John Olmsted’s Masterpiece Wade Baker and Mary Tasi, The World War (UBC Press) Robert William Sandford, Our of Residential Design (Brighton Hidden Journals: Captain Vancou- Michael Gates, From the Klondike Vanishing Glaciers: The Snows of Press) ver and his Mapmaker (Sky Spirit to Berlin: The Yukon in World War Yesteryear and the Future Climate Glen A. Mofford, Aqua Vitae: A Studio). I (Harbour) of the Mountain West (RMB) History of the Saloons and Hotel Bars Patricia Sandberg, Sun Dogs and Lynne Marks, Infidels and the of Victoria, 1851–1917 (Touchwood) Yellowcake: Gunnar Mines—A Cana- Damn Churches: Irreligion and

42 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 More Readers, More Reviews, More Often

Published Sylvia Taylor, Beckoned by the formed One City’s Struggle with Ad- Up: A History of Skates in Canada Book Reviews Sea: Women at Work on the Cascadia diction (Arsenal Pulp) (Heritage) Coast (Heritage) Matthew Soules (text) and Mi- R. Peter Broughton, Northern YEAR TWO (partial) David Starr, The Nor’Wester chael Perlmutter (photos), Binning Star: J.S. Plaskett (UTP) (Ronsdale) House (UBC SALA/ORO Editions) Major-General Sir Edward Mor- Michael Chong, Scott Simms, and Geo Takach, Tar Wars: Oil, Envi- Hans Winkler and T’uy’t-tanat rison, edited by Susan Raby-Dunne, Kennedy Stewart (editors), Turning ronment and Alberta’s Image (Uni- Cease Wyss, Journey to Kaho’olawe Morrison: The Long-lost Memoir of Parliament Inside Out: Practical versity of Alberta Press) (Grunt Gallery) Canada’s Artillery Commander in Ideas for Reforming Canada’s De- Ian McAllister and Nicholas Read, Douglas M. Grant, Vertical Ho- the Great War (Heritage) mocracy (Douglas & McIntyre) Wolf Island (Orca) rizons: The History of Okanagan Rhodri Jones [Rhodri Windsor- Leanne Lieberman, The Most David Chariandy, Brother (Mc- Helicopters (Harbour) Liscombe] Edges of Empire: A Docu- Dangerous Thing (Orca) Clelland & Stewart). Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for mentary (Rarebit Press) Richard & Sydney Cannings, Miriam Matejova, editor, Wherev- Life: An Antidote to Chaos (Penguin Barry Gough, Churchill and Fish- British Columbia: A Natural History er I Find Myself: Stories by Canadian Random) er: The Titans at the Admiralty who of its Origins, Ecology, and Diversity Immigrant Women (Caitlin) Lisa Anne Smith’s Emily Pat- fought the First World War (Lorimer) with a New Look at Climate Change Patrick M. Dennis, Reluctant terson: The Heroic Life of a Milltown Russell Cannings and Richard (Greystone) Warriors: Canadian Conscripts and Nurse (Ronsdale) Cannings, Best Places to Bird in Andrea McKenzie, War-Torn the Great War (UBC Press) Wayne Norton, Fernie at War: British Columbia (Greystone) Exchanges: The Lives and Letters of Rob Wood, At Home in Nature: 1914-1919 (Caitlin) Kenton Storey’s Settler Anxiety at Nursing Sisters Laura Holland and A Life of Unknown Mountains and Keith Ogilvie, The Spitfire Luck the Outposts of Empire (UBC Press) Mildred Forbes (UBC Press) Deep Wilderness (RMB) of Skeets Ogilvie: From the Battle of Neil Sterritt, Mapping My Way Cynthia Toman, Sister Soldiers Hamilton Mack Laing, The Trans- Britain to the Great Escape (Heri- Home: A Gitxsan History Creekstone of the Great War: The Nurses of continentalist: Or, The Joys of the tage) Press) the Canadian Army Medical Corps Road (Manuscript in the Laing Pa- Patrice Dutil, Prime Ministerial Kevin Chong, The Plague (Arse- (UBC Press) pers at the B.C. Archives, written Power in Canada: Its Origins under nal Pulp) Lily Gontard & Mark Kelly, Be- in 1915) Macdonald, Laurier, and Borden Tomson Highway, From Oral to yond Mile Zero: The Vanishing Barbara MacPherson, The Land (UBC Press) Written: A Celebration of Indigenous Alaska Highway Lodge Community on Which We Live: Life on the Cari- Richard J. Hebda, Sheila Greer, Literature in Canada, 1980–2010 (Harbour) boo Plateau: 70 Mile House to Bridge and Alexander Mackie (editors), (Talonbooks) Ben Bradley, British Columbia Lake (Caitlin). Kwädąy Dän Ts’ìnchį: Teachings Shannon Sinn, The Haunting by the Road: Car Culture and the Linda J. Quiney, This Small Army from Long Ago Person Found (RBCM) of Vancouver Island: Supernatural Making of a Modern Landscape of Women: Canadian Volunteer Ronald E. Ignace & Marianne Ig- Encounters with the Other Side (UBC Press) Nurses and the First World War nace, with contributions from Nancy (Touchwood) Colin Browne, Entering Time: (UBC Press). Turner, Mike Rousseau, and Ken Rick Harbo, Pacific Reef & Shore: The Fungus Man Platters of Charles Roderick Haig-Brown, re-issued Favrholdt, Secwépemc People, Land, A Photo Guide to Northwest Marine Edenshaw (Talonbooks) Alison’s Fishing Birds [1980] (Cait- and Laws: Yerí7 re Stsq’ey’s-kucw Life (Harbour) John MacLachlan Gray, The lin), illustrated by Sheryl McDougald (McGill-Queen’s) Joel Solomon, Tyee Bridge , The White Angel (Douglas & McIntyre). Daniel Stoffman, People, Power, Jay Sherwood, Surveying the Clean Money Revolution: Reinvent- Dan Jason, Some Useful Wild and Progress: The Story of John Hart Great Divide: The Alberta/BC Bound- ing Power, Purpose, and Capitalism Plants: A Foraging Guide to Food Dam and the Campbell River Power ary Survey, 1913-1917 (Caitlin) by (New Society) and Medicine from Nature (Harbour) Projects. (Figure1) John Geiger and Owen Beattie, Robert Cannings, A Field Guide Colin Coates, editor, Canadian Grant Lawrence, Dirty Wind- with an introduction by Margaret to Insects of the Pacific Northwest Countercultures and the Environ- shields: The Best and Worst of the Atwood, Frozen in Time: The Fate (Harbour) ment (U. of Calgary Press) Smugglers Tour Diaries (Douglas & of the Franklin Expedition (updated Erín Moure, Sitting Shiva on Wanderings of an Artist (Royal McIntyre) edition). (Greystone) Minto Avenue, by Toots (New Star) Ontario Museum) Helen Raptis with members of Tracy Summerville and J.R. Roger Boulet, A Legacy of Cana- Nicola Levell, The Seriousness of the Tsimshian Nation, What We Lacharite, eds. The Campbell Revo- dian Art from Kelowna Collections Play: The Art of Michael Nicoll Yah- Learned: Two Generations Reflect on lution?: Power, Politics, and Policy (Kelowna Art Gallery) gulanaas (Black Dog) Tsimshian Education and the Day in British Columbia (McGill-Queen’s) Mark Zuehlke, The Cinderella Cecilia Morgan, Commemorat- Schools (UBC Press) Doug Sarti and Dan McLeod, in- Campaign: First Canadian Army and ing Canada: History, Heritage and J.R. (Jim) Miller, Residential troduction by Bob Geldof and essays the Battles for the Channel Ports Memory, 1850s-1990s (UTP). Schools and Reconciliation: Canada by Mike Harcourt, Paul Watson, and (Douglas & McIntyre) Peter Babiak, Garage Criticism: Confronts Its History (UTP) Bif Naked, The Georgia Straight: A Kathy Page, The Two of Us (Bib- Cultural Missives in an Age of Dis- Craig McInnes, The Mighty 50th Anniversary Celebration (RMB) lioasis) traction (Anvil) Hughes: From Prairie Lawyer to Susan Boyd, Busted: An Illus- Paul Watson, Ice Ghosts: The Carol Pearson, Emily Carr As I Western Canada’s Moral Compass trated History of Drug Prohibition in Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Knew Her [1954] (Touchwood) (Heritage) Canada (Fernwood) Expedition (McClelland & Stewart) Joseph William Heckman and Marilyn R. Schuster, with a fore- K. Jane Watt, Surrey: A City of Richard Wagamese, Indian Horse Ralph Beaumont, Heckman’s Cana- word by Margaret Atwood, A Queer Stories (City of Surrey) (Douglas & McIntyre) dian Pacific: A Photographic Journey Love Story: The Letters of Jane Rule Theresa Kishkan, Euclid’s Or- Stanley Evans, Seaweed Under (Paris, Ontario: Ralph Beaumont and and Rick Bébout (UBC Press) chard and Other Essays (Mother Fire (Ekstasis) Rod Clarke) Nicola Peffers, Refuge in the Black Tongue) Kate Bird, City On Edge: A Rebel- Christine Kim, The Minor Intima- Deck: The Story of Ordinary Seaman Jean-Marie Leduc, with Sean lious Century of Vancouver Protests, cies of Race: Asian Publics in North (Caitlin) Graham and Julie Léger, Lace Riots, and Strikes (Greystone) America (U. of Illinois Press). Alfred H. Siemens, Green Macki- Jessica Dempsey, Enterprising naw in Europe, 1954-55 (Friesen Nature: Economics, Markets, and Press). Also published: Finance in Global Biodiversity Poli- Chick Stewart, (with Michele tics (Wiley-Blackwell). Carter) It Can Be Done: An Ordi- 30 Essays, Interviews and Obituaries R.W. Sandwell, editor, Powering nary Man’s Extraordinary Success 135 Up Canada: The History of Power, (Harbour) Forthcoming: reviews now in progress Fuel, and Energy from 1600 (MQUP, Alice Jane Hamilton, Finding Supporters to date: Yosef Wosk, SFU’s Graduate 2016) John Rae (Ronsdale) Blaise Cendrars Speaks… (Eksta- Yvonne Blomer, editor, Refugium: Liberal Studies Program, BC BookWorld sis) Translated by David J. MacKin- Poems for the Pacific (Caitlin) non David Doyle, Louis Riel: Let Jus- Chris Madsen, Michelle La, and tice Be Done (Ronsdale) Liam O’Flaherty, Longshoring on the Stephen Wadhams, The Orwell Fraser: Stories and History of ILWU Tapes (Locarno) Local 502 (Granville Island) Cornelia Hoogland, Trailer Park Eve Lazarus, Blood, Sweat, and Elegy (Harbour) Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance, Pauline Le Bel’s Whale in the Vancouver’s First Forensic Investiga- Door: A Community Unites To Pro- tor (Arsenal Pulp) tect BC’s Howe Sound (Caitlin) Jan Peterson, Mark Bate: Na- Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe and naimo’s First Mayor (Heritage) Michelangelo Sabatino, Canada: Michael L. Hadley and Anita Had- Modern Architectures in History ley, Spindrift: A Canadian Book of (Reaction) the Sea edited (Douglas & McIntyre). Robin Brunet, Red Robinson: The Clea Roberts, Auguries (Brick) Last Deejay (Harbour) Robert Stuart Thomson, Florence, Travis Lupick, Fighting for Space: Dante and Me (Godwin Books). How a Group of Drug Users Trans- “Only connect.”— E . M . FORSTER

43 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2018 OBITS

HISTLEBLOWERS Bloomsbury Group. Alan Fry con- are seldom cited tended his own father immigrated to as heroes—es- the B.C. interior to escape Roger Fry’s pecially those shadow. After more than 20 years of who can be dis- working in northern and central B.C., missed as crack- including fifteen years as an Indian pot racists. agent, and three more realistic novels WThe importance of Federal Indian about life in the B.C. Interior, Fry quit Agent Alan Fry’s first novel and second working for the Department of Indian book, How a People Die (Doubleday Affairs out of frustration and settled in 1970; Harbour 1994) has therefore the Yukon in 1974. gradually been glossed over, even dis- After moving to the Yukon, Alan Fry paraged, now that Canadian society repeatedly wrote letters and editorials does not wish to countenance a white warning his fellow Yukoners about the man’s first-hand reportage on social perils of racism of all stripes. “I have decay on Indian reserves in the 1960s. said more than once in frustration,” Published on the heels of Cree leader he wrote, “that if I had the power of Harold Cardinal’s The Unjust Society God, I would put everyone on earth (1969), Fry’s chilling descriptions of into a huge pot and stir them up so degradations he witnessed in central thoroughly they would come out all British Columbia—truthful or fic- the same colour, probably some shade tional—nonetheless ushered in a new of brown. And there wouldn’t be any era of realistic writing about Canada’s whites to lord it over everyone else.” First Nations. The controversial nature of How How a People Die concerns the death A People Die unfortunately overshad- of an infant named Annette Joseph on owed the appeal of possibly his su- the fictitious Kwatsi Reserve, a col- perior novel, The Revenge of Annie lection of shabby houses strewn with Charlie (Doubleday, 1973, Harbour empty bottles. Examining the unsani- 1990) an often humourous, sly tale tary conditions surrounding the death, that describes Indigenous characters RCMP Corporal Thompson, a veteran outwitting non-Indigenous society. of 15 years on the force, takes the Fry also wrote Come A Long Journey controversial measure of charging the (Doubleday, 1971) and The Burden infant’s parents with criminal neglect. of Adrian Knowle (Doubleday, 1974). The question soon arises among the In Whitehorse, Fry also co-authored characters of the story as to who should ALAN FRY Wilf Taylor’s memoir Beating Around be held blameworthy for the tragedy. 1931-2018 the Bush: A Life in the Northern Bush “Tell us how a people die,” says one (Harbour, 1989). Fry’s first non-fiction of the Indigenous characters, “and we book, The Ranch on the Cariboo can tell you how a people live.” I have said more than once in frustration (Doubleday, 1962, Touchwood, 2009) The editor of the novel, Doug Gib- was later republished by Touchwood son, has commented in a letter: “The that if I had the power of God, I would put Editions. It describes a teenager’s title, as I recall, came in ready-made introduction to manhood and ranch- from him, and I never queried it. Until, everyone on earth into a huge pot and stir ing in the early 1940s. Fry’s Survival that is, the book was out and doing in the Wilderness (Macmillan, 1981, well, and I was visiting bookseller Bill them up so thoroughly they would come out / St. Martin’s Press, 1996) describes Duthie in his store downtown, and he techniques and equipment required to started to tease me gently about having all the same colour, probably some shade of survive emergencies in the wilderness an ungrammatical title. He was right, of based on Fry’s own experiences. course, but for most of us, the immedi- brown. And there wouldn’t be any whites to Editor Doug Gibson first contacted ate link of the plural verb with a noun lord it over everyone else.” ALAN FRY Fry in 1969 and remained friends that normally is plural was enough to with him, last visiting Fry in January make it slip by unnoticed. So, Bill was of 2016 when Gibson went to White- right, but Alan Fry, seeking colloquial structive lifestyles [on Indian reserves] Alan Fry’s significance in B.C.’s liter- horse on a book tour. They tended to punch, was right, too, I think. And the “can be traced back to the end of liquor ary history has been largely expunged. chat with one another by phone on a courage of an Indian Affairs guy, work- prohibition to status Indians in the de- ✫ monthly basis. ing in the field, writing such a novel, cade following the Second World War,” ALAN FRY WAS BORN AND RAISED ON A “He was a very fine man and an was extraordinary, and I realized that he writes. To further make question- family ranch near Lac La Hache, B.C. important part of Canadian writing,” right from the start. Can you imagine able his opinions and observations, Fry in 1931. Although some of his ances- Gibson says, “especially for his role in such a thing today?” divulges he was himself an alcoholic. tors were farming Quakers in Wiltshire, alerting us to the scale of what we then Also appearing in the aftermath of He also relates an incident from his his grandfather Roger Fry, a member called “the Indian problem.” That this George Ryga’s The Ecstasy of Rita boyhood when an Aboriginal male of the Fry family that prospered in the brutally frank account, How A People Joe at the Vancouver Playhouse, Fry’s teenager allegedly tried to cajole him chocolate business, was a Cambridge Die, was written by an employee at the hard-hitting novel further forced Brit- into a sexual encounter in the woods. graduate who kept company with the Department of Indian and Northern ish Columbians to wake up to the plight To further his contention that de- Affairs led to a storm of protest, with of marginalized First Nations. For his pendency on alcohol can be overcome, national leaders demanding that he efforts, Fry was branded a racist for his he cites the example of the Alkali Lake must be fired. unscientific assertion that “alcoholism Band in the Chilcotin, southwest of “Alan went to work with the local is an inheritable disease and Indian Williams Lake, that managed success- band on Quadra island and said he’d people inherit it to a greater extent than fully to prohibit alcohol in its midst, leave the decision up to them. They do non-Indians” and the Indigenous as initiated largely by Phyllis and asked him to stay on and told the parents ought to be held fully account- Andy Chelsea and recorded in the national leaders to back off. Because able for the child welfare. community-produced film The Honour of our monthly contact, I was aware of Most novels by British Columbians of All: The Story of Alkali Lake. the health problems that caused him to received precious little attention prior Fry also asserted, “Indian self- lose one leg a year ago, then the other to Fry’s fictional debut. A reviewer for government must not be so struc- early this year. I know that he and his the New York Times Book Review de- tured that women and children living wife Eileen were pleased to welcome scribed it as “. . .one of the most sensi- under such a government have less the end.” tive and incisive statements on human protection than is afforded to other Alan Fry died in Whitehorse on alienation I have ever seen.” Canadian citizens by other levels of March 23, 2018. Fry’s introduction to a reissued edi- government.” More reprehensible by “Alan Fry was one of B.C.’s most tion of How a People Die contains an today’s standards, Fry wrote, “Primary successful writers in the 1970s and amalgam of statistical evidence of vio- responsibility for recovery lies with the ‘80s,” says publisher Howard White. lence and familial dysfunction among people themselves. Past injustice is not “That he has been so completely for- First Nations. “It is my firm conviction the issue...” gotten is a loss, as well as a caution to that the succession of increasingly de- All of which serve to explain why Original printing of How A People Die writers of today.”

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