BOOK REVIEWS

An Environmental An Environmental History of Canada. History of Canada I would heartily recommend it be adopted, and I suspect it will be in high Laurel Sefton MacDowell demand. Vancouver: ubc Press, 2012. 352 pp. After a short, but essential, $49.95 paper. introduction regarding definitions and directions in environmental history, Sterling Evans MacDowell divides the textbook into University of Oklahoma four parts. The first, “Aboriginal Peoples and Settlers,” has a couple of chapters entitled, respectively, o the growing list of books “Encountering a New Land” and Ton Canadian environmental “Settling the Land and Transforming history, University of Toronto historian the ‘Wilderness.’” Part 2 treats various Laurel MacDowell’s new textbook, facets of “Industrialism, Reform, and An Environmental History of Canada, Infrastructure,” which includes topics should take a prominent place. on urban history, conservation, mining, The evolution of this field of study and consumerism. The third part, indicates both a rapidly maturing “Harnessing Nature, Harming Nature,” branch of history and the need for a examines the important topics of energy, solid textbook for undergraduate upper water, and food/agriculture. The final division courses. Along with the first part is entitled “The Environmental book in the field,Consuming Canada: Era.” It has chapters on the Canadian Readings in Environmental History environmental movement, parks and (1995), edited by Chad Gaffield and Pam wildlife, coastal fisheries, and the North Gaffield; David Freeland Duke’s edited and climate change. Each chapter ends volume, Canadian Environmental with an excellent list of important History: Essential Readings (2006), works devoted to the topics covered which is essentially a nicely arranged (and nicely divided into subtopics) – course packet; and Graeme Wynn’s an extremely useful tool for students. Canada and Arctic North America: An A conclusion rounds out the textbook, Environmental History (2007); we can but it is rather short, at only four now add MacDowell’s fine textbook, pages, and perhaps could have been bc studies, no. 78, Summer 13 121 122 bc studies expanded to thematically unite some MacDowell explains right off that of the various dimensions of Canadian Canada “has a different climate [from environmental history dealt with that found in the United States], throughout the book. distinctive geographical features, A word about style and layout: Both such as the Canadian Shield, its own MacDowell and ubc Press should be history, a parliamentary system of congratulated for designing a model government and politics, and unique textbook. It is loaded with excellent elements such as Crown lands”(4). illustrations and photos, has in every These points are well taken, especially chapter a variety of engaging sidebar in her chapters on coastal fisheries stories (although some readers might and the environmental history of the find some of these a bit too short and far North. Instructors in the United superficial), and makes use of numerous States could benefit from adding maps, graphs, and diagrams. The map this textbook to their own courses on Canada’s ecological regions (42), on North American environmental however, should have appeared earlier history. Indeed, it would be a welcome in the book in order to provide some trend if Americans were to start seeing geographical context, and it should things more continentally. And, if have been reproduced in a larger and they find themselves a bit behind on more colourful format. But all of these their knowledge of Canadian history, features make for an enjoyable reading adopting this text will fill in the gaps experience, breaking up the narrative and will be of much use to professor and and providing a great many points of student alike. departure for classroom discussions. And, unlike Consuming Canada or Canadian Environmental History, Canadians and the Natural MacDowell’s book, thankfully, delves deep into twentieth- and twenty-first- Environment to the century topics, especially in terms of Twenty-First Century natural resources and environmental Neil S. Forkey politics and activism. These current issues are important for students Toronto: University of Toronto to understand; and the historical Press, 2012. 158 pp. $24.95 paper. grounding provided in the book, along with corresponding lectures, will Jonathan Clapperton help them to do so. As MacDowell University of Alberta explains the goal of the book: “This environmental history of Canada brings he field of Canadian to light the grave consequences of the Tenvironmental history has development ethos as it played out in blossomed over the past two decades. Canadian history, not to condemn, but Consequently, instructors of Canadian so we can develop strategies to create a environmental history courses are livable, sustainable environment in the becoming increasingly spoiled, having future” (6). so many good options from which to Some scholars south of the forty- choose for course readers. In all of ninth parallel may wonder how this this new scholarship, however, a short text differs from its counterparts in synthesis of Canadian environmental American environmental history. history was absent. Neil Forkey’s Book Reviews 123 recent work, Canadians and the Natural Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals have Environment to the Twenty-First cooperated on issues of the environment Century, fills this gap. (e.g., the Hudson’s Bay Company Forkey has arranged his book and the Cree with regard to beaver chronologically, with each of the conservation) as well as to defending five chapters addressing what he sees the important caveat that “modern as a dominant theme in Canadian environmentalism is replete with environmental history. His thesis: stories of dispossession and exclusion Canadians have always expressed of Aboriginal peoples” (114). This competing desires to both exploit and latter argument is made by offering protect natural resources. Chapter 1, such examples as the appropriation of spanning the 1600s to the early 1900s, Aboriginal identities via the notion of provides an overview of how Canada came the “Ecological Indian” as well as by to be conceived as, and its economy reliant highlighting the rifts that have emerged upon, a storehouse of fish, furs, timber, between environmentalists and First agriculture, minerals, and hydroelectric Nations during protest events. power. He also examines Canada’s Forkey’s book, part of the Themes importance as a place for scientific in Canadian History series, delivers exploration and natural study. Chapters on the series’ promise to provide titles 2 and 3 focus on the rise of conservation that are accessible to non-specialist and preservation, respectively. Forkey readers and to offer broad overviews of focuses on the emergence of a state- the main themes of particular subjects. centred environmental regime, which The book’s brevity necessitates some includes the creation of parks and other unfortunate omissions. There is no protected areas, and the concomitant discussion of environmental history marginalization of “rural” and methodology or theory, and there is no Aboriginal people from these places historiographical debate (though Forkey in the nineteenth and early twentieth states that this is beyond the scope of centuries. In Chapter 3, his discussion his work). That being said, one will of the key differences between English- find the most influential environmental Canadian and French-Canadian historians in Canada, and many of those nature romanticism deserves to be abroad, cited in Forkey’s bibliography. highlighted; it adds a dimension to The absence of maps or images – two Canadian environmental history that integral components of any introductory is lacking in other readers and is the text – is much more problematic. most intriguing section of the book. Nonetheless, in a classroom setting Chapter 4 chronicles the history of the these shortcomings could easily be modern environmental movement in addressed by pairing Forkey’s work with Canada. Arguably, it over-emphasizes either of two relatively recent edited the significance of literary writers such collections: David Freeland Duke’s as Farley Mowat and Hugh MacLennan Canadian Environmental History: in spurring the movement, and pays Essential Readings (2006) and Alan too little attention to environmentalist MacEachern and William J. Turkel’s organizations (perhaps reflecting the Method and Meaning in Canadian relative dearth of historical scholarship Environmental History (2009). Forkey in this area) or government responses deserves credit for producing an to environmental activism. Chapter 5 is engaging and jargon-free text that will dedicated to a short discussion of how appeal to students and that instructors 124 bc studies can use as a foundation for introductory organization, different policy contexts environmental history courses. at the provincial level, and the human resources and skills they foster. Further, resource towns are not simply nodes to Why Canadian Forestry and facilitate broader goals of development Mining Towns Are Organized and geopolitics but, rather, the homes Differently: The Role of Staples in of workers and their families as they develop routines, identities, and shared Shaping Community, Class, and communities. Louise Dignard’s book Consciousness focuses on these latter differences in Louise Dignard Canada’s resource towns, or sits, to use her preferred acronym. Lampeter, Wales: The Edwin In general terms, Harold Innis’s Mellen Press, 2011. 284 pp. panoramic view of Canadian staple $139.95 cloth. history across space and time provides the foundation for Dignard’s analysis. Roger Hayter For Innis, resource town experience Simon Fraser University was always problematical. Resource towns were often dependent on distant anada’s single-industry towns decision makers and boomed and C(sits), especially resource towns, busted in response to the vagaries of continue to be the focus of considerable “metropolitan” demands, first by the academic and policy attention. Canada’s United Kingdom, then by the United population may be highly urbanized, States, and now by Asia, especially indeed urbane, with the major China and Japan. Innis emphasized metropolitan and even medium-sized both the distinctive nature of Canadian urban regions increasingly self- staple development and the variation in identifying with creative city mantras the evolutionary geographies among that emphasize jobs that research, staples. Dignard’s contribution is develop, engineer, entertain, design, to show how staple type is vital for and communicate rather than process. understanding sits. She particularly Yet staple commodities (resources and compares Canadian forestry and mining primary manufacturing) continue to sits that exploit, respectively, extensive dominate Canada’s visible exports renewable resources and point-based and perceptions of the country’s non-renewable resources. Her approach global role. Indeed, as revealed by is entirely based on comprehensive recent debates over the economic and interdisciplinary literature reviews, environmental (local, national, and particularly those that focus on the global) impacts of Athabasca’s oil/ business organization, power and social tar sands, resource exploitation has structure, and consciousness of sits. become highly controversial and a Dignard begins with an insightful, if priority of public policy. As the focal overlapping, classification of different points of resource extraction, these approaches towards evaluating sits – debates are grounded in resource towns. namely, as institutions, collectivities, Moreover, resource town Canada is a gendered labour processes, and highly varied space, differentiated by networks. While she briefly reviewssit s evolutionary dynamics, geographical in terms of institutions and collectivities realities, staple type, forms of business in separate chapters, as a sociologist Book Reviews 125 interested in daily routines Dignard is has become increasingly differentiated, primarily concerned with comparing driven by highly volatile markets and how the specifics of forest and mining multifaceted processes of restructuring staples shape, or “staple-ize,” labour that have variously involved searches processes and the role of women in for employment, technological and sits. She reveals that labour processes organizational flexibility, downsizing, in general and women’s experiences in fly-in workforces, the decline of particular have developed in distinctive industrial unions, environmental and ways, featuring different class relations, cultural conflicts, and the rise of attitudes, and experiences in the two ideas related to local and community types of towns. For example, mining economic development, sustainability, sits are more hierarchical and company and resilience. These days, Canada’s dependent, with workers more inclined resource towns are not only sites of to be unionized, socially connected, and boom and bust but also conflicted spaces to have a stronger sense of rights and so that move in different directions beyond on (see summary, 143-45). staple confines. In British Columbia, While Dignard recognizes that her for example, resource towns cannot be findings are not new, students of sits properly discussed without reference will benefit from her critical reading, to Aboriginal and environmental the synthetic scope of her comments, imperatives. Notwithstanding these and her appreciation of the community limitations and silences, Dignard’s book impact of staple-izing processes. provides an informative starting point Admittedly, dependence on published to support her plea for more research studies conducted in various ways in into Canada’s increasingly diverse different times and places inevitably sits, which are the locus of important constrains interpretation. In practice, multi-scalar policy challenges. Such time and place tend to be incorporated research would especially benefit from a in an implicit, ad hoc manner, with the BC focus. discussion rooted largely in central and eastern Canadian experience. In this regard, brief descriptions (e.g., staple type, community location, time period, Ceramic Makers’ Marks data sources) of the sits examined by Erica Gibson Dignard would have provided useful context as well as more information on Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast forestry and mining town structures. Press, 2011. 146 pp. $27.95 paper. The presence of significant processing activities in forestry towns, for example, Lorne Hammond can bring them closer to the mining Royal British Columbia Museum model of social life. Further, the “datedness” of the or those working to identify discussion and the overwhelming focus Fceramic shards, this slim and on studies published before the early well-designed identification guide 1980s is disappointing. Even reference focuses primarily on nineteenth- to “new” gender issues focusing on century American and European women’s experiences relies largely on manufacturers of ceramics. Despite discussions of older studies. Since the the back cover’s reference to “North 1980s, however, resource town Canada American sites,” it only draws upon 126 bc studies material found within California. Over primarily English or Scottish and a fifteen years, Erica Gibson, as the lab very small number of French (four) director of the Anthropological Studies German (one), and American (seven). Center at Sonoma State University, has There are none from Spain, Mexico, examined some 250 collections. China, or Canada. The marks are Gibson draws upon the classic presented alphabetically by name of works by Geoffrey Godden, Arnold manufacturer, one to three per page, and Dorothy Kowalsky, and Lois with notes for each. A delightful Lehner. Ceramics literature has evolved cautionary note discusses how easy it is out of connoisseurship and museum to confuse the mark of John Wood with collections consisting of complete forms that of Josiah Wedgwood as Wood used of ceramics. It is a field of study that his initial (Josiah did not) and left no involves a great deal of interplay between space between his middle name (Wedg) practitioners and disciplines. Specialists and his surname (136). move freely between museum and The majority of the marks have private collections, archaeological a photographic illustration, which digs, technical conferences, London Gibson’s colleagues prefer over and Hong Kong auction houses, and pencil. Economics likely limited the the studios of contemporary potters, photography to black and white, an some of whom sit literally atop historic area where the internet has a great production sites in Staffordshire or advantage (http://www.thepotteries. Fusan. I have heard Godden speak org/pottery.htm). Many marks have joyfully about getting down in the dirt colour variations. and examining potsherds with staff at A great subtheme of Ceramic Makers’ historical archaeology sites in pottery Marks is the presentation of a tremendous districts in London and Staffordshire. range of the possible conditions of In this book we are dealing with the marks. The book successfully illustrates post-consumer end of the commodity the typical real-world problems faced chain. by archaeologists seeking to identify Godden’s influence is seen in the style ceramics. The broken examples include Gibson uses for the entries. However, missing shards, a mark poorly applied her work with sites in California has or badly fired, or a plate subject to a different emphasis, focusing on the heavy crackling. This is the experiential archaeological problem of fragmentary teaching aspect of the volume – a and rare evidence. This melding of subtext that imparts field experience approaches gives the book its strength to the reader and instills analytical as a practical and useful tool for persons confidence. working with ceramic fragments, and it Given her expertise, I wish the represents a synergy between traditional author had discussed the materials approaches and today’s fieldwork. themselves, both clays and glazes, and The organization of the book is the agents that act upon them: physical straightforward. In her brief and concise shock, fire or smoke, chemicals or earth introduction, Gibson dispels web- stains, water, evidence of heavy use, and perpetuated myths about trademark act patina and crackling. and country-of-origin marks and dating The book’s excellent two-page (11-12). Over the next 123 pages, we bibliography lacks only Robert E. find discussions of 343 ceramic marks. Röntgen’s detailed and useful Marks This represents 112 manufacturers, on German, Bohemian and Austrian Book Reviews 127

Porcelain, 1710 to the Present (Schiffer, was a unique colonial adventure, he 1997). The index uses categories: city, argues, in which the tsar’s government country or state, (design) element, supported, if it did not encourage, mark type (impressed [or printed] and exploitative policies that served the colour), word, and maker. There is profit orientation of the Russian no entry under “Country or State” for American Company, while at the Germany, and only one for California same time implementing progressive (142), yet the introduction lists one and measures meant to recognize the two examples, respectively (10). This humanity of the indigenous population results from the decision to limit the and to impress other nations with the index to the physical mark itself. humanitarian character of Russia’s Well researched, tightly organized, imperialism. and inexpensive, Erica Gibson’s work Distinguishing sharply between the will prove a great regional resource in Siberian merchant and promyshlenniki British Columbia, where European (contract fur-trade worker) beginnings ceramics are commonly encountered in of the colony – before formation of museum collections and archaeological the Russian American Company digs alike. The size suits a field camp; and its later administration by the however, unlike plant identification Russian Navy – Vinkovetsky posits that guides or silver mark books, it is too the many circumnavigation voyages, large for pocket use. I applaud the without which the colony would have book’s utility for the teaching of visual been unsustainable, transformed the analytical skills. The author has made nature of the American venture. These a useful addition both to historical brought it to a level of organization archaeology fieldwork and to the and professionalism borrowed, in classroom. This is a useful reference part, from other nations’ imperial tool for the ceramics fraternity. networks, but they were also the result of innovations that were responsive to the colony’s unusual ecological and economic character. Though the Russian America: An Overseas Siberian promyshlenniki were familiar with Subarctic conditions, negotiating Colony of a Continental Empire, the formidable seas between Kamchatka 1804-1867 and Alaska took a significant toll Ilya Vinkovetsky on men and material. Supply from the many circumnavigation voyages Oxford and New York: Oxford largely overcame that obstacle. But University Press, 2011. 270 pp. that was possible only because the $54.95 cloth. Russian population of Alaska and California (Fort Ross, eighty miles Stephen Haycox (128 km) north of San Francisco) never University of Alaska Anchorage exceeded nine hundred. The number of “Creoles,” mixed-heritage offspring n this important book, Ilya from indigenous women and Russian IVinkovetsky of Simon Fraser men, was generally twice that number. University places the story of Russia’s Profit from the sale of fur peltry was American experiment fully within the the only reason for the Alaskan venture history of colonialism. Russian America 128 bc studies

(never was it the establishing of a new Given the eventual decision to sell society). Alaska, Vinkovetsky describes the The small Russian population American venture as a failure. But that relied on both Creoles and Native conclusion seems inconsistent with his people for labour, management, supply, argument that the Russians manifested and companionship; accordingly, substantial adaptability in the colony both Creoles and Natives were given and elsewhere utilized the lessons they codified legal standing under Russian learned in doing so. His demonstration law. Building on their rudimentary, of this thesis will make the book very elementary colonial education, a number useful to historians and anthropologists of Creoles received further training alike. in Russia and became important functionaries in the Russian American Company. Drawing on an impressive command Pacific Connections: The Making of both Russian- and English-language of the US-Canada Borderlands sources, Vinkovetsky provides Kornel Chang intriguing insight into the sustained effort Russians made to “Russify” the Berkeley and Los Angeles: Uni- indigenous people with whom they had versity of California Press, 2012. 264 constant contact. Managers directed pp. $29.95 paper. policy towards generating among the Natives an appreciation of the efficiencies and predictability of order, with the design of rendering them Chasing the Dragon in more accepting of Russian authority. Shanghai: Canada’s Early Education played a significant role in Relations with China, 1858-1952 that policy, as did conversion to Russian John Meehan Orthodox Christianity. Vinkovetsky provides a particularly salient analysis Vancouver: ubc Press, 2012. 260 pp. of the work of Ioann Veniaminov, $32.95 paper. Bishop Innocent, who contributed substantially to the Russification effort by providing evidence, in his Notes on the Islands of the Unalaska District, of Native Orienting Canada: Race, people’s capability and adaptability. Empire, and the Transpacific They should be viewed, he argued, not John Price as an impediment to the achievement of colonial aims but, rather, as an asset. Vancouver: ubc Press, 2011. 464 pp. The Russian experience in North $34.95 paper. America proved valuable as the Russian Empire expanded into the Asian Laura Madokoro Far East after the 1850s, an area of University of British Columbia much more interest to Russia than was Alaska. Following on the Alaska he history of Canada’s Pacific experience, the tsar’s government Trelations has long been a neglected treated the area as a colony rather than subject. The general consensus was as an expansion of Russia proper. that Pacific relations were not central Book Reviews 129 to understanding the history of the the “connections and transformations country and its place in the world. wrought by a globalizing world kindled In their own way, the three offerings a countermovement to solidify national under study here repair this imbalance. borders among white settler societies Read together, they form a sort in Canada and the United States, of triumvirate. Even though they who together elaborated new forms of take different approaches and explore sovereignty in an attempt to control different issues, at least two of them Asian migration across the Pacific converge on questions of temporality; and across landed borders in North on place and the construction of America” (3). In his rich analysis, borders; on racism and its impact on Chang documents the manner in relationships in multiple contact zones; which Chinese “managerial elites” and on the significant and tangible benefited from the supply of Chinese bonds that were forged between labourers to North American markets, Canada and the Pacific for centuries. the politics of white union activists Together, these three books provide a and how they flowed along imperial rich tapestry upon which to trace the circuits, the confluence of interests multitude connections that shaped between labourers and South Asian relations between Canada and the activists under the Industrial Workers Pacific and, in the hands of these of the World (iww), and how migrants’ authors, the very nature of Canada and successful evasion of growing the Pacific since the mid-nineteenth immigration regulations led to greater century. At the same time, they all state surveillance and intervention in move beyond narrow investigations of their lives. Chang’s studies of the role Canada’s Pacific World to suggest how of migrant elites in bridging various Canada’s Pacific relations can inform interests, as well as the impact of illegal the historiography of border studies, migration in shaping the character colonialism, imperialism, racism, and of the Canada-US border, build on international relations more broadly. interventions made previously by Lisa Kornel Chang’s book is an innovative Mar in Brokering Belonging: Chinese exploration of the dual processes of in Canada’s Exclusion Era, 1885-1945 globalization and border formation (New York: Oxford University Press, on the Pacific coast of North America 2010) and Erika Lee, At America’s in the late nineteenth and early Gates: Chinese Immigration during twentieth centuries. Contrary to the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943 (Chapel conventional studies that focus on the Hill: University of North Carolina history of particular groups in motion Press, 2003). However, Chang covers between different parts of the Pacific important new ground in his efforts to Rim, Chang focuses on the Pacific delineate a geographic space in which to Northwest (loosely defined but assumed tease out the paradoxical, contradictory, to encompass British Columbia, and twinned dynamics of globalization Washington, and Oregon). He slices and the establishment of national a thin wedge of the region’s temporal borders. history to consider how different John Meehan also takes a stab at the groups experienced the region and how “spatial turn” by exploring the history of the responses of local, national, and Canada’s experience in Shanghai from imperial authorities were informed by global phenomena. Chang argues that 130 bc studies

1 1858 to 1952. In a lively read, Meehan the interwar years” (180). Yet how this documents the wide range of people translated into Canada’s formal relations who made their way to Shanghai and with China, if at all, remains at the lived and worked there both during margins of Meehan’s analysis. This its heyday and at the lower ebb of its is partly due to the fact that Meehan history. Meehan is interested primarily draws back from engaging fully with the in filling the gap in the historiography question of racism in Canada. on Sino-Canadian relations, turning What Meehan leaves unspoken, John to an earlier period than the standard Price makes patently clear. In Orienting Reluctant Adversaries: Canada and the Canada, Price places questions of race People’s Republic of China, 1949-1970 and racism at the core of Canada’s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, relationship with Asia from 1907 to 1991, ed. Paul M. Evans and B. Michael 1954. Rather than focusing on bilateral Frolic), to investigate the relationship. relations, Price addresses the sweeping The result is a twinned analysis. On one political and cultural connections level, Meehan looks at the Canadians between Canada and Korea, Japan, – loosely defined as “those who were Vietnam, and China. Through an born in Canada, those who came from analysis of major events in the region, there directly, or, in certain cases, those Price argues eloquently that Canada’s whose ties were more tenuous” (9) – who transpacific (a term never clearly defined) lived, worked, and visited Shanghai. On relations were informed by notions of another level, he traces the parameters of racial supremacy and changing ideas of Canada’s formal relations with successive empire. Price persuasively demonstrates Chinese governments over nearly a how Canada supported the United century of turbulence and conflict States in the “remilitarization of the on the Mainland. The two-pronged Pacific” (7). During this process, approach offers readers significant Price suggests, the interests of Asian insights into Canadians in Shanghai as leaders were marginalized in favour well as various efforts to establish formal of efforts to carve out an American relations between the two countries. sphere of influence. In each chapter, In his conclusion, Meehan suggests that Price documents the history of major the story of Sino-Canadian relations in events in Asia before exploring the the years he documents demonstrates a history of Canadian engagement and kind of parallel “coming of age,” though participation with events in Japan, in a vastly different guise. He suggests Korea, and Vietnam. Price convincingly that, over time, Canadians came to demonstrates not only that issues in Asia distance themselves from the “Shanghai played “a foundational role in Canadian mind” (the sense of superiority ascribed and world politics” (2) but also that it to many Western residents of Shanghai was the upheaval in Asia that lay the in this period) “particularly as their groundwork for America’s imperial own nationalism developed during ambitions and inspired Canadian diplomats to actively encourage the 1 Although the spatial turn tends to refer United States to take on this role to the use of gis technology (beginning 128 in the 1990s) to map historical spaces of ( ). Price’s masterful intervention inquiry, I use the term more generally here fundamentally alters understandings of to reference efforts to pursue translocal or Canada’s engagement with Asia, pairing local histories that inform discussions of the it with notions of racial superiority as nature of globalization. Book Reviews 131 well as the expansion of the American Above Stairs: Social Life Empire. in Upper-Class Victoria, These three books situate British 1843-1918 Columbia’s history of entangled relations with the Pacific within Valerie Green broader questions of globalization and Victoria: Sono Nis, 1995; reprinted empire. Of the three, Chang is the most by TouchWood, 2011. 240 pp. forthright about making connections $19.95 paper. between the history of places and the circulation of notions and practices of imperialism. It is troubling, therefore, that Chang mentions the presence More English Than the English: of First Nations peoples only twice. A Very Social History of Victoria The Pacific Northwest was not an empty Terry Reksten region upon which the politics of empire were played out on the backs of migrants Victoria: Orca, 1986; reprinted by alone. Moreover, as Bonita Lawrence Sono Nis Press, 2011. 232 pp. and Enakshi Dua have suggested, all $19.95 paper. immigration needs to be understood as 2 a form of settler colonialism. Chang’s Katie Louise McCullough thoughtful analysis of the dynamics University of Guelph that shaped the trajectory of the Pacific Northwest and its place in the larger n “Tracing the Fortunes of Five Pacific World neglects this important IFounding Families of Victoria” issue, and his analysis therefore invites (BC Studies 115/16 [1998-99]), Sylvia further study. Questions of how to Van Kirk reveals the mixed cultural account for the particularities of place, background of some of Victoria’s structural racism, and the impulse most important settler families (the for encounters between Canada, Douglases, Tods, Works, McNeills, Canadians, and the Pacific World and Rosses), whose patriarchs settled remain provocative ones. These three their families on Vancouver Island works make a substantial contribution after retiring from Hudson’s Bay to expanding the horizons of the pursuit Company (hbc) service. With the of such scholarly inquiries. notable exception of Van Kirk’s article, recent academic social histories of British settlers in Victoria are few and far between. Popular social histories, on the other hand, are plentiful. Authors such as John Adams, Kathryn Bridge, Valerie Green, and Terry Reksten sell extremely well to audiences, both academic and non-academic. However, with the exception of the Douglas family (James Douglas, as the governor of the colonies of Vancouver Island 2 Bonita Lawrence and Enakshi Dua, and British Columbia, is worthy of “Decolonizing Anti-Racism,” Social Justice attention), the other mixed-heritage 32, 4 (2005): 120-43. 132 bc studies hbc families seem almost absent from encountered on this North Pacific the popular historical imagination. island. British settlement to British In Valerie Green’s Above Stairs: Columbia, as a diasporic phenomenon, Social Life in Upper-Class Victoria, is an understudied topic in general. 1843-1918 and Terry Reksten’s More Until recently, Canadian historians English Than the English: A Very Social were reluctant to include Canada in History of Victoria, the reader is given “the new imperial history” pioneered a glimpse into the lives of some of the by J.A. Pocock, Kathleen Wilson, more notable British (and Irish) settlers Catherine Hall, and others, but this in Victoria during the Victorian and is slowly being rectified (see Nancy Edwardian eras. Through the use of Christie, ed., Transatlantic Subjects: diaries, letters, and newspaper articles, Ideas, Institutions, and Social Experience Green gives us a taste of the daily lives in Post-Revolutionary British North of some of the notable upper-class America [Montreal and Kingston: Victorian families. The parties, picnics, McGill-Queen’s University Press], plays, and other social gatherings of the 2008). We are now gaining the tools Douglas, Pemberton, Skinner, Crease, with which to properly place British O’Reilly, Trutch, Rithet, and Barnard North America within the Atlantic families – “an elite and powerful group World, including its crucial relationship of settlers who became the aristocracy of to the United States. But we do not Victoria” (13) – were attended by much have a clear picture of where the British of the colonial gentry, including officers settlers in Victoria fit as peripherals of of the Royal Navy. These interactions the British Empire. cemented the far-flung colony’s British Vancouver Island, as the site of an connections and, as the ruling “elite,” ambitious and significant colonial these British colonials reinforced ideas experiment orchestrated by the hbc and of white superiority through the social the Colonial Office, was acted upon by networks they maintained. imperial forces and, in turn, influenced Reksten, on the other hand, provides domestic British culture through a more general overview of Victoria the familial, political, cultural, and in this period, but she never intended intellectual ties its settlers established the book to be a comprehensive, or between the Island colony and Britain. “academic,” history; rather, it was Ideas about where Victorians sat within “written for those who might not the imperial imagination reflected their usually find pleasure in reading about contact with Aboriginal peoples and the past” (9). And this is certainly other groups that settled alongside the case. This book is accessible and the British in smaller numbers in the interesting and will appeal to anybody nineteenth century, including Chinese, interested in Victoria’s past. Many of Hawaiian (“Kanakas”), African- the scandals – such as that relating to American, Sikh, Jewish, German, Alice Douglas, who, with her three Canadian, and Japanese migrants. children, fled to England in1870 to The ideas and imaginings of the escape her husband Charles Good, her British settlers in Victoria reinforced father’s private secretary, to whom she racial hierarchies and assumptions of had taken “an inconceivable dislike, … white (or Anglo-Saxon) superiority so much so she could hardly bear to see in opposition to the many “others” him” (129) – and the notable characters of this small but vivacious colony are Book Reviews 133 expertly woven into a broader narrative. The Spencer Mansion: A House, Of particular note in this reprinted a Home, and an Art Gallery edition is an updated list of sixty-one historical sites, with maps, that enable Robert Ratcliffe Taylor the reader to visit the remaining stately Victoria: TouchWood Editions, homes and other historical points of 2012. 216 pp. $19.95 paper. interest, which, according to Reksten, “represent Victoria’s real, rather than Maria Tippett imagined, past” (208). Cambridge University However, both authors agree that Victoria never became the “Little obert Ratcliffe Taylor’s The England” envisioned by some of its RSpencer Mansion: A House, a Home earlier settlers; rather, the settlement and an Art Gallery is, as the title occupied a space between British suggests, really two books. One half colonial outpost and North American considers the “life and times” of the frontier. For the most part, these five families who made Gyppeswyk – books tell of the men and women who the Old-English name for the Suffolk tried to make Victoria a white British town of Ipswich – their home. The settlement, and we must take them for other half follows the transformation what they are: stories of some of the of that home into a civic art gallery. In people who settled in Victoria at the doing these two things, Taylor takes height of the British Empire. Until the his readers through the social, cultural, new imperial history brings Victoria political, and architectural history of into the fold, we must turn to popular European settlement in twentieth- historical works for our basic regional century Victoria. history. We must ask ourselves: What Gyppeswyk was designed by the local can a settlement like Victoria tell architect William Ridgway Wilson historians of the British Empire and and was built by George Mesher in those interested in diaspora studies in 1889. As Taylor puts it, the Italianate general? For now, however, we have villa was “constructed of gold dust” these two well-researched and well- (2). Victoria owed its expansion to a written books by English-born authors series of gold rushes. Gyppeswyk’s first who, like many of their historical owner, Alexander Green, made enough subjects, settled in Victoria. As a money in the Australian and American native Victorian, I enjoyed these books goldfields to set himself up as a banker very much indeed, finding them to be in Victoria. And the house’s last owner, important sources for future scholarly David Spencer, whose family occupied inquiry. Gyppeswyk from 1903 to 1951, was lured to British Columbia from his native Wales by the discovery of gold in the Cariboo. Though Spencer may never have made it to the goldfields, by 1863 he had opened a dry goods store in Victoria. By the time of his death in 1920, succeeding members of his family were operating stores throughout the province. 134 bc studies

It was not just business that drove the mansion’s graceful porte cochère the early owners of Gyppeswyk. The was dismantled, the Minton tiles and Greens, the Spencers, and the other delicate woodwork were removed from families who occupied the house the fireplaces, the gardens fell into were civic-minded late-Victorians ruin, and, in 1958, an unsympathetic who sat on the boards of charitable annex was attached to the north side institutions, hosted evening musicals, of the house. Today the only original and supported fundraising events. feature still intact is the beautifully It was this spirit of philanthropy that panelled foyer, where the Greens and prompted David Spencer’s daughter, the Spencers once greeted their guests. Sara, to give what was by then known With this rueful observation, Robert as the Spencer mansion to the City Ratcliffe Taylor ends his well-told story of Victoria as a centre for the arts in of how a stately villa became a centre 1951. Some members of Victoria’s City for the arts. Council were not “overly anxious to take possession” (135) of the mansion until the provincial government agreed The Life and Art of to award the Victoria Arts Centre an annual grant. Ina D.D. Uhthoff The centre’s inaugural exhibition Christina Johnson-Dean in 1951 featured eighteenth-century portraits alongside contemporary Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue works by Quebec’s leading abstract Publishing, 2012. 128 pp. $32.95 paper. painters. The centre’s first director, Maria Tippett Colin Graham, continued this eclectic approach. A native of Vancouver, Cambridge University Graham attended the University of British Columbia, then Cambridge and ike many female artists of her Stanford universities before taking a job Lgeneration, Ina D.D. Uhthoff, in San Francisco’s Civic Art Museum. In née Campbell, had a difficult time 1951, he moved back to British Columbia sustaining a career as a professional in order to become the Victoria Art artist. The daughter of middle-class Centre’s first director. During his long Scottish parents, she did not lack association with the centre – it lasted opportunity. In 1905, the sixteen- until 1980 – Graham built a permanent year-old girl entered the Glasgow collection encompassing Canadian, School of Art, then at the peak of American, and Asian art and hosted international influence, where she exhibitions from around the world. The came under the influence of the superb centre also became a venue for musical draftsman Maurice Greiffenhagen. Nor and theatrical events, lectures, and art was Ina without talent. Following her classes. Thanks largely to Graham’s graduation in 1912 she exhibited with efforts – and to a hard-working group the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine of volunteers – within ten years the Arts and the Royal Scottish Academy centre’s membership had the highest (though the author does not tell us how ratio per capita of population for any her work was received). Moreover, Ina art gallery in Canada. was adventurous. In 1913 she travelled During the course of transforming to British Columbia to visit friends who Gyppeswyk into a centre for the arts, were homesteading at Crawford Bay on Book Reviews 135 the east side of Kootenay Lake. mother. What Johnson-Dean does not During her year in British Columbia, do, however, is tell us enough about the Uhthoff captured the Creston Valley development of Uhthoff’s art. landscape and the cityscape of It is not enough to quote from Vancouver in sharply defined pen- newspaper reviews, or simply to list and-ink sketches. And she met the contents of an artist’s work, or to homesteader Edward “Ted” Uhthoff. expect illustrations of the paintings The couple’s ensuing romance was and drawings to speak for themselves. interrupted by the outbreak of the Great Uhthoff’s stunning wartime painting, War. Ted crossed the Atlantic with the Girl Welder at Work (1943), deserves 54th Kootenay Batallion and saw action comparison with other artists who at Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele. worked in munitions plants. We need to Ina returned to Glasgow, where, after know why the artist made the occasional qualifying as an art teacher, she taught foray into non-objective painting when at elementary schools and even had a she was clearly unsympathetic to that solo exhibition of her Canadian work. genre. I would have liked Johnson- (Again, we are not told how that work Dean to have taken a stab at dating was received.) the works; to have shown the extent The couple married at the end of the to which Uhthoff’s training at the war and returned to the Kootenays, but Glasgow School of Art underpinned things were never the same. Ina found her vision throughout her career; and, it difficult to cope with the physical above all, to show the degree to which work on the ranch, especially after she Uhthoff’s work was derivative of Emily became a mother – by 1922 there were Carr and the Group of Seven, among two children. Mentally damaged by his other artists. wartime experiences, Ted as well as the The book prompts us to venture children needed Ina’s support. further into counter-factual history. After relocating to Victoria in the Would Ina Uhthoff’s paintings have mid-1920s, Ina gave private art lessons been any different if she had lived in and taught at public and private schools. central Canada? Or even in Vancouver, She designed and administered a where she would have come into contact correspondence course in art. She with more artists and more ideas? What became an art critic for the local if the constraints of teaching, reviewing, newspaper. She helped establish the and raising a family had given her more Little Centre – the forerunner of time to devote to her work? Or was she the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, doomed, like most female artists of of which she later became a board her generation, to the tasks of teaching member when it opened in 1951. and reviewing and making a living And she established her own art school: as best she could? These are some of the Victoria School of Art, which ran the questions prompted by Christina from 1926 to 1942. Johnson-Dean’s valuable biography, the Johnson-Dean admirably answers to which could have enhanced demonstrates the extent to which our understanding of Uhthoff’s work Uhthoff was an inspiring teacher and and the process under which she competent art administrator. The created it. book shows how she helped shape the cultural history of the city and, equally, how she never fell down on the job as 136 bc studies

Wrong Highway: contract as section cook at a railway The Misadventures of a camp in the Yukon, where she not only cooked for the men who worked Misplaced Society Girl the track but was also responsible for Stella T. Jenkins and requisitioning the supplies, notifying Mark E. Smith other section houses when a train was on the line, dispatching rolling stock, Surrey, BC: Hancock House, 2011. keeping equipment records, and getting 360 pp. $24.95 paper. the mail ready for pickup by the next Cameron Duder train. Jenkins was not the only slightly Vancouver rebellious middle-class woman to strike out into a very different world after the rong Highway is the memoir of war. Wrong Highway gives us a good W Stella Jenkins, a middle-class sense of what some of those women mother of four from Victoria who, actually did. However, despite her in 1948, recently divorced, formed a new work roles, constrained financial relationship with Bob Smith, a trapper circumstances, and peripatetic life, and labourer. Stella left Victoria with Jenkins was never very far from her her two younger children and joined urban origins. At times she resorted to Bob in Smithers. They married in sending her children back to “better” July 1949, had one child, and lived circumstances in Victoria, and some and worked in various parts of the of her comments demonstrate that her BC Interior and the Yukon before basic attitudes remained. For example, returning to Victoria in 1953. Wrong she remarks about one couple: “They Highway is the story of their life were living common-law. I was quite together until Bob’s death from an put off and thought do we really have accidental gunshot wound in 1956. to be with people like this all the time? Jenkins’s memoir provides a glimpse By now it was obvious that the north into small communities, work, gender, was a sinkhole for drifters, runaways social relationships, and Aboriginal and illicit relationships” (128). It seems stereotypes in the BC Interior and not to have occurred to her that she and the Yukon in the decade following the Bob might have been described using Second World War. Jenkins provides these very terms. detailed accounts of the terrain and of Unfortunately, the insight Jenkins the trapping and fishing life, which give provides does not extend to Aboriginal the reader a good sense of life in rural people who, when mentioned at all, are British Columbia in this period, and the portrayed in stereotypical and largely characters are quirky and humorous. negative ways. We read: “It was while Wrong Highway det a i l s B ob we were in Smithers that the Indians Smith’s outdoorsman skills, trapping obtained their franchise and were techniques, and his building their allowed into licensed parlours. They log cabin in Clinton. He trapped and came in droves at first but couldn’t worked as a labourer but dreamed of handle their liquor” (60). Later, Jenkins owning a hunting lodge, while Stella informs us: “In 1952, the inhabitants of took work where she could find it. The the valley tended to fall into groups: most interesting parts of the book deal ranchers, sawmill people, hotel people, with her employment, most notably a government staffs, merchants and Book Reviews 137

Indians – the latter very much in Unbuilt Victoria evidence in the pubs on Saturday” (281). Dorothy Mindenhall Jenkins implies that her attitudes changed over time. In describing a Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2012. warm greeting between a white woman 248 pp. $29.99 paper. and a group of Aboriginal women in Whitehorse, she reflects: “My own view Larry McCann of Indians at the time was that they University of Victoria were okay as long as they behaved in a civilized manner, but of course most of them didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t. hat if? Ah yes, that perennial It never occurred to me to meet W question. What would a city look them like this woman, on their own like if the “unbuilt” were actually built? terms” (122–23). Such views were What if a municipality’s proposed plans the norm among white people in were followed “to a T”? Sometimes the British Columbia in the mid-twentieth rejection of a questionable proposal century, but that they should be so results in an improved counter- unproblematically expressed in a book proposal, even a successful outcome. published in 2011 demonstrates just Other times, sensible schemes are how much work we still need to do to scuttled because the economy is in a eliminate stereotypical depictions of tailspin. Or they are cast aside for sheer Aboriginal peoples. lack of political will. In a related way, Wrong Highway will be of interest “what if” questions can fairly be asked to anyone seeking to know more about of any historical study that examines how people lived outside the larger cities the role of the “unbuilt” in the city- of British Columbia and, particularly, building process. What if the choice of how women’s lives did and did not unbuilt projects had been widened by change after the Second World War. plan and building type, by number of Jenkins seems at pains to depict herself case studies, or in geographical scope as having lived a rebellious life. In some to give a more complete portrayal of respects she is indeed an example of the city-building process? And what how some women rejected the norms if the author had probed more deeply of the period. Nevertheless, in reading into archival sources to reveal why Wrong Highway I am reminded that the “unbuilt” actually remained, well, we are rarely as rebellious as we like to unbuilt? think. Unbuilt Victoria is part of a new series sponsored by Toronto’s Dundurn Press. Unbuilt Calgary has just been published. Judging from the contents of both books, the apparent approach is as follows: the author selects a range of unbuilt projects that she or he deems important and that, if built, would have had a significant impact on a city’s built environment. We are indebted to Dorothy Mindenhall for introducing us to a cast of buildings and plans that at one time took centre 138 bc studies stage in local newspapers and municipal and historic “Old Town” district, council chambers. Regrettably, though, receives detailed attention. It is an a number of Mindenhall’s “biographies” important story, entertainingly told of buildings and plans remain unbuilt, and well illustrated. But, in the end, their full story incomplete, unresolved. why did Dave Barrett’s provincial ndp For Dorothy Mindenhall, the choice government eventually purchase the of unbuilt schemes focuses heavily land, bringing closure to the scheme? on public places and institutional Also informative is the story of the buildings, with less attention given to various convention centre plans and commercial and residential projects. the equally numerous choice of sites Thus, Victoria’s waterfront landscape, “around town.” The spatial variety of including the Songhees district and desirable building sites is an unspecified legislative precinct (all united by an but nonetheless underlying theme of egregious mid-1960s transportation Unbuilt Victoria, at least to this reviewer. plan), draws considerable attention. But again, important questions remain Building projects include Victoria’s unanswered. For example, why did the City Hall, the provincial Parliament site adjacent to the Empress Hotel – Buildings, a convention centre, a shunned in the 1950s – regain favour civic art gallery, several cathedrals, as the convention centre’s final resting and the University of Victoria. place? Would files in the cpr archives The City of Victoria’s urban landscape in Montreal yield the reason? Or a garners most attention. The suburban planning report in the City of Victoria districts of Greater Victoria are largely Archives? Mindenhall claims that John shunned. Unbuilt Calgary, by contrast, Blair, the designer of Beacon Hill Park, has much more to say about suburban is “a shadowy figure about whom little development and residential housing. can be confirmed.” Yet in The Pioneers of Mindenhall’s choices receive American Landscape Design, W.A. Dale varying degrees of discussion and offers details of Blair’s career. supporting research. She relies heavily Other discussions seem to “tail off,” on newspaper accounts to tell stories of never fully resolved. Although the the unbuilt. When possible, especially Bay Village scheme at the heart of the for the recent past, these accounts James Bay neighbourhood is wisely are supplemented by interviewing chosen for discussion, we are never told a cast of actors, mostly architects, about various other proposals for the once associated with a scheme. These site, such as a thirty-story, mixed-use sources do yield important insights into tower proposed by the developer J.A. why certain projects were never built Mace (he of an unrealistic convention but, too often, reveal only part of the centre proposal at the corner of Bay story or gloss over the precise reasons and Government streets). Nor is it for failure. Government records – for explained how changes in provincial example, municipal land use and zoning planning legislation and shifts in files, and City Council minutes – are Victoria’s policies towards limiting the seldom examined by Mindenhall. Even height of high-rise residential towers readily available published research is throughout the city brought a close sometimes ignored. The controversial to the dreams of Mace Homes and Reid project of the 1960s and early Investment Limited. In fact, the final 1970s, its proposed high-rise buildings building, James Bay Square, is much looming large over Victoria’s waterfront smaller than is indicated by the scheme Book Reviews 139 illustrated in the book. Similarly, the Making Headlines: 100 Years of discussion surrounding the money- the Vancouver Sun raising development aspirations of the University of Victoria in the vicinity of Shelley Fralic with Kate Bird the campus contains a number of errors. Vancouver: The Vancouver Sun, 2012. It was the proposal to build a large 183 pp. Illus. $36.70 cloth. complex of apartments on what is now the parking lot of Camosun College John Douglas Belshaw that enraged the residents of Oak Bay’s Vancouver Lansdowne Park neighbourhood, not the apartment area north of Cedar he Vancouver Sun turned one Hill Cross Road. These money-making Thundred in 2012. To mark this development schemes were essential event, reporter Shelley Fralic compiled before the provincial government a (roughly) chronological account of of W.A.C. Bennett finally decided, goings-on in the city and at the paper in 1964, to provide direct financial itself. It is not so much a life-and-times support to British Columbia’s several approach as a run-and-gun account universities. of the town rag and the ink-stained Despite these caveats, Dorothy wretches who produce it. There are Mindenhall’s Unbuilt Victoria is critical assessments of the newspaper important because it brings to our business in Vancouver: this is not one attention many forgotten features of them. Making Headlines is a self- of the city-building process in the described “celebration,” a souvenir that province’s capital city. It’s a shame, will find a place on many BC shelves though, that suburban schemes in the because of the memories it evokes. Capital Region District (once known There are some very good photos, some as Greater Victoria) failed to win of which are gratifyingly unfamiliar. more attention: schemes like the many The writing is tight enough and suitably “paper” subdivisions promoted during journalistic. Fralic has a natural nerdly the early twentieth-century land boom understanding of the way technology era, or a high-rise apartment project (re)shapes process and product over a envisioned to sit atop scenic Gonzales century. Hill, or the Eaton’s department store As accounts of the past go, however, that might have anchored Saanich’s this one is extremely problematic. Broadmead Village. Ah yes, what if her Some warts are revealed and some publisher had offered Mindenhall more of the underlying assumptions of the space to round out the story of unbuilt newspaper are laid bare, but Making Greater Victoria? Headlines reinforces rather than challenges many outdated notions about news, journalism, and society. The title of this volume is apposite: the newspaper manufactures news. Stories don’t “make” headlines, journalists do. If we can agree that newspapers do write the first rough draft of history, ought we to shy away from saying, “Well, you got that badly wrong, didn’t you?” 140 bc studies

By way of example, take the a “Frenchman” than Joe Clark is Doukhobor story, a long and complex an Englishman (164). Landy didn’t one that wends its rather sad way from “inexplicably” do a shoulder check on the 1920s through the 1970s. The press Bannister: he had been doing them generally approached the Sons of rhythmically over the final one hundred Freedom with the kid gloves off and yards – which telegraphed to Bannister a taste for the sensational; newspaper (and photographer Charlie Warner) accounts shaped public opinion on the exactly when to sprint (78). sect and tailored the list of options On Warner’s iconic “Miracle Mile” available to authorities. In short, the photo, Fralic smartly reports the press is culpable for many things that conflict it engendered. Warner said he went amiss. To retell it, as Fralic does, owned the iconic picture because he was as though it all starts and ends in off-duty when he snapped the shutter; 1961 with Simma Holt is to do a great the Sun disagreed and kept the rights disservice and to perpetuate harm (91). and revenues. Too bad this parsimony Or take Fralic’s hubristic praise of is reproduced throughout Making the team that covered the “Missing Headlines: photographs are, with few Women” case, though only after an exceptions, not labelled with the names arrest was made. Descending on the of their creators. police like jackals in 2002 is nothing like The daily newspaper is as integral to getting out into the alleyways and doing the idea of the modern city as property the journalistic digging that might have taxes. It is a sponsor of civic culture and led to a break in the case a decade earlier commerce, ostensibly above the fray (168-69). and grubby materialism in its pursuit Fralic is better when it comes to of the truth. Fifties-era publisher Don gender issues. She is realistic about Cromie was at the helm when the historic contexts and she draws attention Sun proclaimed itself “a Newspaper to the glass ceiling (placed just above Devoted to Progress and Democracy, the windowless basement) confronted Tolerance and Freedom of Thought,” all by female journos. If, however, “the of which would have come as a surprise 1950s was the era of the housewife” (71), to readers whose sexual orientation, who made it so? The Sun depended on ideology, ethnicity, aspirations, or creed advertising revenue from the consumer were regularly criticized, chided, and/ goods industry that filled homes with or ignored by the Sun. Newspapers all mod cons, including washers, are, generally and universally, pulpits dryers, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators. for perspectives that range from the Despite the enormous wealth that thus relatively benign to the downright flowed from serving up visions of ideal malign. In short, the print media is part feminine domesticity, the newspaper’s of the society on which it reports, and “women’s department” couldn’t catch notions of an arm’s-length relationship a break: male journalists referred to it, are simply too foolish to entertain. This “derisively, as the ‘ovary tower’”(100). book reveals a Vancouver daily happy to There are, as well, errors and a stir the pot and then, when everyone is serious oversight. The Lions Gate suitably agitated, offer up a “Here, let Bridge was not under construction me hold your coat.” in 1912 (16), “situations wanted” is not advert-speak for “a place to rent” (17), and Pierre Trudeau was no more Book Reviews 141

Selwyn Pullan: Photographing Modern has found a public through Mid-Century West Coast books on Julius Shulman’s Los Angeles and via the film Coast Modern, which Modernism played to large audiences in Vancouver Barry Downs, Donald Luxton, last summer. The BC version may now Kiriko Watanabe, and Adele be seen in this revelatory monograph Weder on the commercial photographer Selwyn Pullan, co-published by Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, the West Vancouver Museum and 2012. 160 pp. $45.00 cloth. Douglas and McIntyre. It depicts British Columbia’s best mid-century Bill Jeffries Modernist architecture at the moment Vancouver when it was designed and built. The book is published on the rchitecture has been a key occasion of Pullan’s second exhibition Asite in the evolution of cultural at the West Vancouver Museum, and Modernism; the elevator is often Pullan himself, now ninety years old cited as an important early Modernist and living in North Vancouver, emerges manifestation, and the idea that function here as the latest discovery in British creates its own form is a key Modernist Columbia’s photographic history. His precept. Images of architecture are a photographic training, coincidentally, good entry point into assessing what was in the same California milieu that Modernism has actually bequeathed Shulman made famous. In the late 1940s, to us. Architectural photography, Pullan attended the Art Center School however, while appearing to be a in Los Angeles, where he studied with straightforward pictorial medium, Ansel Adams, among others. While does contain hidden complexities. Shulman captured California houses It is not the same as “photographs with by Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard architecture in them.” In “architectural Neutra, Pullan worked locally from the photography,” the building is the 1950s on, his images now strengthening primary subject, its designer named in the case that buildings by Barry Downs, the caption or title; in photographs with Arthur Erickson, Ken Gardiner, Fred buildings, architecture is present, but Hollingsworth, and Ron Thom can coincidental, and architect anonymity hold their own in the global history of is the rule. There is also the question of Modernism. whether an architectural photographer In Pullan’s residential images, the is “the architect’s eye,” as was mooted 1950s and non-Hippie 1960s seem at a panel discussion in London last coolly seductive; they depict local summer. Panelist Simon Allford went Modernist aspirations, now seemingly so far as to state: “If the photograph is a lost world of creative idealism. not good then maybe it is not a very The house of mirrors that is architectural good building.” A respondent replied: photography emerges when one “The image that is distributed to the considers hanging it at home as art, as public is the building.” many have. I could imagine purchasing These considerations play into the a Pullan to hang in my living room; if current interest in West Coast Modernist I did, what would that say? I’d create a architecture, its representations, and loop in which some photographs have the lifestyle that it offered. Coast houses in them and some houses have 142 bc studies photographs in them. The photograph Dalton’s Gold Rush Trail: on the wall could hang in the house Exploring the Route of the pictured in the photograph; or it might end up in a craftsman cottage, perhaps Klondike Cattle Drives as a sign of the inhabitants’ yearning for Michael Gates a less cluttered life. In Pullan’s images the minimalist interiors also mirror Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, Vancouver’s virtually empty urban 2012. 304 pp. $24.95 paper. streets, and this looping cultural history Charlene Porsild encompasses a medium (photography), a profession, built forms, landscape, and University of New Mexico the interpretation of those elements as examples of humanity aspiring to lthough the Chilkoot Trail is the design truly stunning structures. Amost famous trail to the Klondike, Encountering these sumptuous there were a wide variety of other routes images of Coast Modern homes, that gold seekers used to reach the theory can easily go out the Modernist interior of the Yukon between 1896 and window, as one simply wishes to have 1900. The historic Tlingit trading route the experience of living in one of the that became known as the Dalton Trail spaces pictured. Even if such a quasi- was one of them. It was not the shortest. austere space is not for you, there is It was not the easiest. But it was an little doubt about the importance of alternative to the steep, mountainous this amazing book; the pictures and terrain and heavy traffic found on the the houses themselves are special. main routes. Most of all, it was a route Texts by Barry Downs, Don Luxton, conducive to moving livestock. Kiriko Watanabe, and Adele Weder In this volume, Yukon historian shed new light on the era and the Michael Gates weave his own aesthetic that Pullan documented, contemporary backcountry experiences that of postwar confidence in which with historical documentation about it was hoped architecture could the now largely forgotten route known actually make the world a better place. as the Dalton Trail. Whacking through A labour of love, the book results from muskeg bogs and clouds of mosquitoes, hundreds of unseen and unmentioned Gates takes us through the bush and hours spent cleaning, restoring, and along some of the most remote and scanning old negatives undertaken by unpronounceable rivers in the north staff at the West Vancouver Museum. – the Takhini, the Kaskawulsh, the This is British Columbia at its best: the Dezadeash, the Tatshenshini, the photographs are good, so the buildings Klehini, and more – and through some must be as well. of the most spectacular wilderness to be found anywhere. Gates tells us the story of Jack Dalton, a temperamental American guide and outfitter, whose first forays into the North were to the Yukon interior from the Pacific coast with Frederick Schwatka in 1886. Dalton, though an adventurer, was first and foremost a businessman, and he was forever Book Reviews 143 dreaming up the next big get-rich-quick contribution to the growing list of high- scheme. Thinking the Yukon was surely quality studies on Klondike history. the “next big thing,” he hired on with Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in 1890 to accompany a group wanting Tse-loh-ne (The People at the to penetrate the interior of the Yukon from the Alaskan coast. From there, he End of the Rocks): Journey dreamed up numerous business schemes Down the Davie Trail to get rich by assisting others to make Keith Billington their way to the northern interior, all of them ill-fated. Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2012. While Dalton’s trail to the Klondike 256 pp. $22.95 paper. never became the highway (or the railway) its namesake hoped it would, Robin Ridington the trail was significant for several years University of British Columbia and had its own Mounted Police post and customs house. Jack Dalton also eith Billington has had a deserves a place in northern history for Klong career as a nurse in British several other reasons. First, in 1890, he Columbia and the Yukon as well as and his partner Edward Glave were the being band manager for the Fort Ware first non-Aboriginal adventurers to find Sekani/Kaska band (later known as and map the Tatshenshini River from Kwadacha Nation). The first part the interior to its outlet at Dry Bay on of the book is a frank, sometimes the Alaska coast. Second, his route humorous, but unvarnished account allowed numerous other entrepreneurs of his experiences as band manager. to bring over twelve thousand head He describes both the amazing bush of livestock (cattle, oxen, reindeer, skills of the people as well as the failings goats, horses, and sheep) into the of some due to alcohol, isolation, Klondike district through the summer and the trauma of residential school. of 1898, thus averting a food shortage in Billington provides a thorough review Dawson the following winter. Finally, of the sometimes confusing history he is a splendid example of a man with of the former Fort Graham and Fort questionable ethics who challenged the Ware communities following the Tlingit monopoly over a coastal pass disruptions and dislocations caused by only to replace it with a monopoly of the Bennett Dam. Fort Graham, now his own. under water, was initially relocated near Gates has been exhaustive in his Mackenzie until a determined group of research on the history of this much- Sekani took it into its hands to find a overlooked trail, offering information more suitable site at the mouth of the from many new sources and documents. Finlay River. The band was finally Northern borderlands history has its recognized as Tse Keh Dene (which for own challenges, but the author managed some reason Billington spells “Tse Keh to examine sources in Juneau, Seattle, Dena” as in “Kaska Dena”) with help Whitehorse, Calgary, and Regina in litigation from tribal chief Ed John. during his quest. His painstaking Billington has spent a lot of time on research, combined and interwoven the land and is familiar with travelling with personal experiences and insights, by dog team and on foot. That makes this an unusual but valuable experience prepared him, as well as 144 bc studies possible, for the trek along the 460 Hearts and Minds: Canadian kilometres of the Davie Trail through Romance at the Dawn of the the Rocky Mountain Trench. Atse Davie was a Sekani leader in the early Modern Era, 1900-1930 twentieth century and the patriarch of Dan Azoulay a strongly independent band. Diamond Jenness describes Davie in his 1937 Calgary: University of Calgary ethnography. The trail named for him Press, 2011. 300 pp. $34.95 paper. passes through the Rocky Mountain Megan Robertson Trench, a corridor once thought to have commercial potential but now Simon Fraser University one of the most isolated areas in British Columbia. Many Kwadacha band n Hearts and Minds, Dan Azoulay members were familiar with portions of Iincludes part of a 1913 letter from the trail from their winter trapping, but a young woman lamenting her lack few had walked it in the summertime. of companionship: “Although I Two of these were Charlie Boya and his like Vancouver very much I am not wife Hazel, who had a trapping cabin acquainted with many people, and there at Terminus Mountain about halfway are times when I feel very lonely” (10). between Kwadacha and Lower Post, the Reading this plea for a suitable male trail’s southern and northern ends. The correspondent with an eye to eventual expedition began as a way of showing marriage, I find myself drawing continued use of a traditional hunting parallels with our contemporary age and trapping area further to land of mediated communications. While claims negotiations. It went on to be an a century has passed since “Lonely adventure as well. Billington describes in Vancouver” penned her request, the country they encountered in the navigating the complicated world of kind of detail that is only available if social and individual expectations one travels through it on foot. There in pursuit of a life partner remains a were creeks and rivers to cross, once by challenge. raft, and more than one encounter with Hearts and Minds p r o v i d e s bears. a well-structured typology of the The book is well illustrated characteristics of the ideal partner, rules with archival and contemporary of courtship, and challenges to romance photographs of the people mentioned, between the start of the twentieth and it also offers a map showing century and the beginning of the First Sekani territory. Caitlin Press has a World War. A brief scholarly context, distinguished record of publishing informed largely by recent feminist authors with intimate knowledge of and gender studies inquiries into people and places in British Columbia, historical interactions between men and although an index would have been of women (as well as two canonical texts value here. The book is a good read as dealing with early twentieth-century well as an important contribution to Canadian relationships – Veronica BC First Nations history. Strong-Boag’s The New Day Recalled and Sandra Gwyn’s Tapestry of War) sets the stage for the examination of primary material: a series of epistolary columns that appeared in two Anglo-Canadian Book Reviews 145 publications between 1904 and 1929. into how Azoulay formed his approach: Readers from across the country sent Did the collections spur him to ask missives to “Prim Rose” at the Family questions about romance? Or did he Herald or the editor of the Western arrive at a concern for romance and then Home Monthly with the hope that their begin to seek primary material? Hearts words might appear in print and reach and Minds relies heavily on two archival an interested party who could contact sources, and it would have been valuable the editor for a mailing address. to reproduce an occasional letter to The typological approach works provide a sense of the material context well here because of the difficulty in with which readers and writers were conceptualizing “romance.” Here, familiar at the time. Azoulay does point Azoulay uses this term to refer to out the challenges that researchers what Canadians were looking for in a face when locating historical material marriageable partner and the socially related to personal understandings of accepted steps that were to be followed largely private matters, but I feel that to the altar. From his systematic review this could have been emphasized in of more than twenty thousand letters, such a way as to give further pause Azoulay can speak with some authority to considering how contemporary about what the everyday Canadian exchanges of romantic (electronic) of the pre-war era might have looked messages might be investigated in for in a heterosexual partner (with the future. The open, accessible, and women hoping for good providers and engaging prose throughout the work men of high moral character, and men encourages reflection – a task that not desiring domesticated and “feminine” all scholarly writing achieves. partners). And this, perhaps, is the key strength of Azoulay’s work: while he does not necessarily advance a complex Militia Myths: Ideas of the or nuanced thesis, his work does add colour to the “historiographic gaps” (9) Canadian Citizen Soldier, of the commonplace experience of life 1896-1921 in the early twentieth century and leads James Wood to a richer understanding of popular Canadian history. Vancouver: ubc Press, 2010. 308 pp. While the penultimate chapter draws $32.95 paper. heavily on epistles from Vancouver Island University’s Canadian Letters Patrick A. Dunae and Images Project, and addresses the Vancouver Island University tremendous upheaval in all aspects of life during the 1914-18 conflict, the final he Canadian Scottish chapter seems limited as the popularity T(Princess Mary’s) Regiment of the two romance and relationship recently celebrated its one hundredth columns waned through the 1920s. anniversary. Popularly known as the What limits this work for me is a Can Scots, it is the only militia unit lack of context in certain key areas. on Vancouver Island. The regiment For example, Azoulay notes that he had previously been honoured with the “discovered” the collections of letters freedom of the City of Victoria, and from the two periodicals “a few years so it marched through the provincial ago” (9), but we are not provided insight capital with bayonets fixed, drums 146 bc studies beating, and banners flying. During Expeditionary Force of the First World the anniversary parade, the marchers War. wore the ceremonial uniforms of This well-written study derives from Scottish Highland regiments and were the author’s PhD dissertation and relies attired in kilts, tunics, and busbies, rather heavily on material published with spats, sporrans, and sgian-dubhs. in the Canadian Military Gazette. The parade carried emblems of the That journal, as other reviewers regiment’s historical connection have remarked, expressed opinions to British Columbia. Regimental of the military establishment in the drummers wore cougar-skin capes, with Dominion and not the views of ordinary a growling cougar head hanging from Canadians. However, the author has the back of the cape. The regiment’s consulted many other sources, as fifteen predecessor, the 88th Victoria Fusiliers, pages of endnotes attest; and he has used the image of a growling cougar identified historical themes that helped on its badge when it was organized in shape public attitudes and opinions 1912. A fierce-looking cougar features regarding military service across the on the badge of 39 Canadian Brigade country. A major theme concerns Group today. This formation comprises the public’s preference for part-time eleven army reserve units, including the volunteer militiamen and a prevailing Canadian Scottish Regiment, based in view that, in times of war, those men British Columbia. The brigade group would provide an adequate core for badge incorporates a familiar motto: larger combat units. The book argues Splendor Sine Occasu. that “the ways in which Canadians The Canadian army militia has responded to the call to arms in 1914 played a prominent part in the history were largely determined by the values of British Columbia. Defence was and beliefs of a pre-war military culture a major concern in the colonial era, that employed the citizen soldier as its and militia outfits like the Seymour foremost symbol. This symbol became a Artillery Company helped to allay powerful myth, and in 1914-18 it helped jitters caused by Fenians and other raise an army” (272). potential threats. Military matters Some readers of this journal may were priorities when British Columbia be disappointed that the book does entered Confederation. A provision not devote more attention to British for the militia appears in Article 5 of Columbia. Storied militia regiments the Terms of Union, well ahead of the based in the Interior of our province, better-known Article 11, which relates such as the Rocky Mountain Rangers to the construction of a railway. During (1908), are not mentioned; militia units protracted and potentially violent in Victoria are scarcely acknowledged; disputes in Nanaimo, Rossland, and the militia presence in Vancouver, as Steveston, the militia was called upon represented by distinguished regiments to provide an aid to civil power. (Labour like the Seaforth Highlanders (1910), historians who vilify the militia for are mentioned only in passing. But the intervening in these disputes overlook author is an expert on the militia’s role the fact that rank-and-file militiamen in this province, as he demonstrates in were themselves ordinary workers a recent essay on the BC militia before when they were not in uniform.) the First World War (BC Studies 173) The militia was the foundation for and the larger, national concerns that many BC battalions in the Canadian Book Reviews 147 he discusses in this book are pertinent appeal because it helps to explain to British Columbia. the historical significance of militia Military historians will be drawn to armouries in British Columbia and the this book, but educational historians character of primary reserve units, like should look at it, too, because it provides the Can Scots and the Dukes, who have a good overview of a program endowed trained within their crenellated walls. by Lord Strathcona for promoting physical training in the public schools of Canada. British Columbia was the Train Master: The Railway Art second province (after Nova Scotia) to accept the terms of the Strathcona Trust of Max Jacquiard (1909) and engage militia personnel as Barry Sanford physical training (PT) instructors. The author does not identify instructors by Kelowna: Sandhill Book Marketing name, but, had he done so, Sergeant and National Railway Historical Major A.C. Bundy, who was in charge Society, 2012. 176 pp. $39.95 cloth. of PT in Vancouver public schools, would likely be in the first rank. He was Ian Pooley a tall, barrel-chested man who sported a Kelowna large, waxed moustache. (A photograph of Bundy in his dress uniform appears rain Master: The Railway Art of in The First Fifty Years: Vancouver High T Max Jacquiard, the new book by Schools, 1890-1940 [n.d.], 138.) Young the noted transportation historian Barry female schoolteachers would sometimes Sanford, looks at BC railways from swoon when he suddenly appeared in 1925 to 1955, as depicted in ninety-nine the doorway of their classroom, with paintings by Jacquiard. The scenes, his swagger stick tucked under his arm. painted with great attention to detail In a booming voice, he would order and historical accuracy, often show a pupils to “fall in” and follow him outside station or an aspect of railway right of to the school playground/parade square, way (sometimes a bridge or tunnel) seen where he would conduct a physical in the context of the local landscape. training drill according to the Syllabus Each painting is generally given a page of the Strathcona Trust. with an accompanying page of text by Sergeant Major Bundy was a Sanford, describing the location, its member of the Duke of Connaught’s history, engineering features of the Own Rifles, which is now part of rail line, and railway operations in the the British Columbia Regiment. The area at the time. The text, as Sanford oldest military unit in Vancouver, the points out, is intended for the general BC Regiment (Duke of Connaught’s reader. Occasionally Sanford has Own), a.k.a. the Dukes, is based in the added a photograph to complement splendid Beatty Street Drill Hall (1901), the painting. Unfortunately, the data a national historic site. The Bay Street pertaining to Jacquiard’s art (painting Armoury (1913) in Victoria, home of the dimensions, medium, date, and title) Canadian Scottish Regiment, is also are not given. listed on the national heritage register. The book, as might be expected, This new book by James Wood should devotes a generous amount of space to of course be in every armoury reference the Canadian Pacific Railway’s cpr( ’s) library. But the book will have a wider mainline from Banff to Vancouver 148 bc studies as well as its southern line through Backspin: 120 Years of Golf in the Crowsnest and Coquihalla. British Columbia To some extent, the Jacquiard cpr scenes echo themes of the picturesque Arv Olson as well as railway engineering in the Victoria: Heritage House, 2012. 432 mountains presented by renowned pp. $28.95 paper. cpr photographer Nicholas Morant (First published in 1992 by Par Four and others. Train Master also gives Publishing as Backspin: 100 Years of significant space to the Canadian Golf in British Columbia) National Railways’ (cnr’s) mainline from Jasper to the Coast. However, Elizabeth Jewett as Sanford notes in his introduction, University of Toronto Jacquiard has painted few of British Columbia’s less important railway rv Olson’s second edition of lines. Thus there are only two scenes Backspin expands readers’ of the Pacific Great Eastern, one of A acquaintance “with accounts of some the Esquimalt and Nanaimo, and, with of the people, places, and events” that the exception of a single painting of the shaped the 120 year history of golf in station at Prince George, no scenes of British Columbia (11). A journalist the cnr line from the Yellowhead Pass and golf enthusiast, Olson writes to Prince Rupert. for a popular audience that seeks The paintings, with their puffing detailed, anecdote-driven prose. The locomotives, tidy railway stations, and book’s chapters begin with brief, glimpses of small-town streets, evoke focused synopses and then turn quickly a nostalgia for what Sanford calls the to chronologically and thematically “golden age” of railroading. And the arranged local tales about individual book, with its gorgeous scenes, is a courses, players, and professionals from celebration of and a lamentation for around the province. the era when railway mileages in North The first chapters survey the America peaked, when steam engines geographical distribution and evolved to their ultimate technical transformation of golf courses in British capability, and when railways played a Columbia, beginning with the Victoria part in people’s lives in ways that have area and then moving to Vancouver vanished. and the Interior. In these regional The book leaves some lingering stories, Olson highlights the unique questions. Sanford does not explain “personalities” of certain golf courses. why we should especially care about For example, early in the history of the Jacquiard’s art, nor are we given clues Victoria Golf Club, the golf season about how Jacquiard’s twin themes had to fit around the grazing needs of of trains and mountain landscapes sheep and cows (23). The expansion of might have come together, or how the golf course at Port Alice eventually his treatment of his subject matter led to its encirclement of St. Paul’s evolved. And, although Jacquiard’s Anglican Church (78). Throughout paintings could be securely placed these individual histories, Olson traces within the discourse of tourist art common trends, including golf course and contemporary understandings expansion, the financial ups and downs of nostalgia, Sanford, who is not an of individual golf clubs, the role of local art historian, does not take us in this direction. Book Reviews 149 environments, and the importance of bolster golf in the province, but issues local professional and amateur players of gender are never explicitly analyzed. in propelling the regional growth of Throughout the text, Olson’s love golf. of golf shines through. His narrative Later chapters in Backspin focus on is supported by detailed research BC golf personalities (such as Stan and his stories are brought to life Leonard and the Black family) and with well chosen images. Olson’s on golf tournaments that brought acknowledgments speak to his together golfers from around the familiarity with the people and subjects world. A welcome addition to this detailed in the book. Scholars might edition is a brief chapter on caddies desire to know more specifically and on architects, including Arthur where Olson collected this fascinating Vernon Macan, that introduces the material, but the book’s emphasis is on reader to two important aspects of the players and their compelling stories, the sport that Olson argues have been and Backspin is a welcome addition to a overlooked (269). Broad themes include growing number of Canadian regional the establishment of a community golf histories. Olson brings a valuable of golfers and enthusiasts and the local perspective, which, when coupled complex social, economic, political, with national narratives such as those by and environmental realities of the James Barclay, provides useful insights BC golf world, which are intimately – for the sport historian and golf buff connected to a wider narrative of alike – into the complex and lively Canadian transformation. However, history of golf in both British Columbia these complexities are never discussed and Canada. to their fullest extent. For example, his narrative often broaches the influential role of Scottish-Canadian heritage Raising the Workers’ Flag: in the establishment and expansion of golf in the province, especially The Workers’ Unity League in among golf professionals. Olson, Canada, 1930-1936 at times, observes the hindrances Stephen L. Endicott and successes of non-Anglo-North American golfers throughout the Toronto: University of Toronto province’s golfing history, including Press, 2012. 442 pp. $75.00 cloth. the career of Victoria Golf Club’s first Chinese golfer, Sung Wai; the Ron Verzuh ethnic discrimination witnessed by Simon Fraser University Ben Colk as head pro at Langara on the eve of the Second World War; and he struggle to build trade unions the success of Eugene Wong, who was Tin the extractive and manufacturing named as PAC-12 Men’s Golfer of the industries of Canada – mining, forestry, Year for 2012. Yet the reader is left to fishing, clothing, furniture, and others ponder the deeper meanings behind – was meteoric, and its demise was the racial barriers and social exclusion equally rapid. Raising the Workers’ that existed within British Columbia’s Flag provides a welcome history of golfing history. In a similar vein, Olson the organization that was at the heart tells the stories of several white women of that struggle, detailing the saga of (like Violet Pooley Sweeny) who helped political infighting and courageous 150 bc studies field organizing that marked this miners’ strike; and J.B. McLachlan, the stunning bid to found unions that venerable Nova Scotia mine workers’ dared to challenge capitalist economic leader, also play significant roles in imperatives during the Depression era. Endicott’s recounting of the five-year Few historians have tackled their life of the wul. subject with more enthusiasm, insider Always on the front lines, these insight, and eye-popping detail than leaders aggressively engaged in the Stephen L. Endicott has done in this fight for workers’ rights, the creation first book-length treatment of the of unemployment insurance, demands Workers’ Unity League (wul). Aided for living wages, and health and safety by newly opened Soviet archives and improvements. They also shared a secret police spy reports, the Toronto strong belief in women’s equality as well historian has recreated the atmosphere as an undying devotion to rank-and- of fear and desperation that spurred the file democracy. Yet traditional labour call for industrial democracy in the era historians have seldom dedicated more preceding the Congress of Industrial than a few pages to this trade union Unions (cio) in Canada. Leading that phenomenon. Even the Communist call were young men and women, often Party of Canada’s own history leaves Communists, who were employed at much unsaid about its offspring. meagre pay to organize the unorganized Endicott revisits wul-led events like masses. Noted for using a strike strategy the 1930s Relief Camp Workers’ Union to foster militant industrial unionism, strikes; the furniture workers’ strike in the wul blazed across Canada leaving Stratford, Ontario; the lumber workers’ in its wake bitterly fought strikes, strike in Port Arthur, Ontario; and the police-induced violence, and years of brutality of the Copper Mountain and jail sentences for its young organizers. Anyox strikes in British Columbia, Endicott enlivens his history with providing rigorously researched portraits of several of these relatively background for each. And Endicott unsung heroes. Central among them does not shy from examining the is Arthur “Slim” Evans, leader of the union’s strategic and tactical mistakes famous On to Ottawa Trek of 1935. Also or avoid criticizing the party brass, taking a prominent place is Harvey exposing the reasons they abandoned a Murphy, the self-proclaimed “reddest successful organizing powerhouse like rose in the garden of labour” (101). the wul in the winter of 1935-36. Evans did the early spade work in the With Workers’ Flag, we gain an Alberta coal-mining region known as intimate and well-documented account the Crowsnest Pass and went to jail for of a Communist-led union that pushed his troubles. Murphy picked up where its affiliates to look beyond bread-and- Evans had left off, working with the butter issues to the broader field of social wul’s Mine Workers’ Union of Canada. unionism in a society that was edging He, too, went to jail for his efforts. towards world war. The organizers Becky Buhay’s role in building women’s ultimately failed in that bold initiative labour leagues is also thoroughly “but they led the way,” Endicott explored, as is the wul’s promotion of a argues, and wul members rejoined the greater role for women’s auxiliaries. J.B. mainstream of the labour movement Salsberg, the wul organizer in southern “enriched by their experiences in the Ontario; Annie Buller, who went to Red unions” (327). It is a union portrait jail for her role in the Estevan coal that contains pertinent lessons for both Book Reviews 151 labour historians and today’s labour century perspective, of course, there is movement. much to be admired in the record of a government that “got things done” and in leaders who did not relish The Art of the Impossible: power strictly for its own sake. Much policy-making history is embedded Dave Barrett and the ndp in in the book, and the authors have Power, 1972-1975 usefully mined the archives of the so- Geoff Meggs and called BC Project, a political science Rod Mickleburgh research project that promised to produce a multi-volume study of public Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, administration in Victoria between 1972 2012. 368 pp. $32.95 cloth. and 1976 but never did so. The project’s senior researcher, the late Walter D. Allen Seager Young, had little time for Dave Barrett Simon Fraser University and said so pretty plainly; but, with the passage of time, it is now possible to his book is a splendid work see how large a legacy Barrett left to Tof popular political history, the BC state. biography, and related media study, An oft-cited example of this legacy which co-authors Geoff Meggs (a is the Agricultural Land Commission, former communications director which (in principle) has remained to Premier Glen Clark) and Rod untouched over forty years of steadily Mickleburgh (a veteran of the west escalating land values and land-use coast press corps) are well-placed to demands in key regions of growth. Its make. The impact of Watergate, for story, as the authors relate, is anything example, is neatly woven into their but a simple tale of social democratic narrative of the life and death of British innovation. During the 1960s, Columbia’s first New Democratic Party preservation of British Columbia’s small (ndp) administration, whose damn-the- and shrinking stock of agricultural torpedoes style, all evidence suggests, land from the problems associated with would have been far better suited to “suburban sprawl” became a cause for a the zeitgeist of the 1960s than to the very loose coalition of new-model urban 1970s. Social democrats, especially planners, environmental romantics, and of the Canadian Prairie stripe, have more traditional pro-agrarian types. long scratched their collective heads (Harold Steves, a youthful champion over the foibles of British Columbia’s of the cause, who got elected for the 1972-75 regime – from its apparent lack ndp in a fairly right-wing, semi- of clear priorities to its inattention to rural district in 1972, best represented issues in the extra-parliamentary wing, all three strands of the coalition.) which eventually boiled over in a major Just before his fall, Premier W.A.C. way (see Chapter 9, “The Life of the Bennett had significantly tossed the Party”). Meggs and Mickleburgh, farmland preservers a bone in the however, clearly belong to what used form of a $25 million commitment for a to be called the “grin and Barrett” hazy “greenbelt” scheme while reining school of thought and draw more in a bureaucratic sparkplug named inspiration from the story than simply Sigurd Peterson, a policy analyst in a cautionary tale. From a twenty-first- the Department of Agriculture who 152 bc studies rocketed to a deputy minister’s role with legislature in support of his ministry’s the change of regime in 1972. Though (not the ministry’s) plans. In Barrett’s thoroughly impractical, Peterson absence, he bulldozed cabinet into appears to have understood the political approving an end-of-1972 land freeze problems embedded in the battle over by order-in-council, thus adding a farmland. No matter how dressed up, procedural dimension to a political the preservationist movement was a fire over “awesome, sweeping powers” clear assault on British Columbians’ assumed by the government, a fire that most cherished civil liberty: the right would never be extinguished, no matter to make money through real estate. what the issue du jour happened to be. The new ndp minister of agriculture, But at least Stupich forced action on David Stupich, had his own reasons for the legislative front, even if the end a combination of interest and concern. result was not exactly to his taste. As So it was that a Peterson-Stupich policy the compensation hobbyhorse hobbled line very quickly emerged that aimed off into the oblivion it deserved, to protect the speculator and shield the Barrett would make more general government from charges of Soviet-style commitments about compensatory confiscation by having the government measures – preserving “the family somehow either “buy” farmland or farm,” supporting home production, compensate rural landowners for lost and so on – that, forty years on, are development rights. How hypothetical still ideas that demand attention. The capital gains would be calculated or creation of the farmland reserve, of how much a compensation package course, was but one piece of a bigger, might cost the treasury were questions essentially urban puzzle. In hindsight, they did not care to answer directly. the Barrett government’s plans on Meggs and Mickleburgh find it odd related housing and transportation that Stupich, a professional accountant, issues had a good deal more logic to dodged these questions. He was either them than did those of future regimes, dissembling or driven by his inner light even if concrete results were inevitably as an unreconstructed Co-operative limited within such a short time frame. Commonwealth Federation (ccf)-era Meggs and Mickleburgh’s key motif political dreamer – in the words of an is a rhetorical question that Barrett old song, “farmer, labour, socialist” – asked his ministers on day one of their marching arm in arm towards a New deliberations: “Are we here for a good Dawn. time, or a long time?” In plainer terms, Most dangerous were the tactics used something like a one-term revolution by Stupich in pursuit of an objectively was imagined, though it is also clear impossible position. Bennett evidently that no real consensus existed on this did not want to know what it would point. If it had, the ministers might actually cost to compensate landowners have made a blood pact to keep the affected by greenbelt policies, while leader’s finger off the electoral button, Barrett found that ballpark estimates and the ministry could have soldiered began at about $1 billion in pre- on into calendar year 1977. At its demise inflationary 1970s currency. Stupich’s in 1975, the ndp left a huge to-do list, tactics included leaking bits and pieces some items fairly doable. The regime of strictly confidential news from had such a large and loyal parliamentary unresolved cabinet debates and urging majority that there was never any organized farmers to rally at the danger of its losing a confidence motion; Book Reviews 153 nor did it have to whip key votes in 1950s. This is a true riddle of Canadian an embarrassingly anti-democratic politics: Barrett was never so foolish fashion. As is explained in Chapter as to talk about Huey Long in ndp 11 (“Back to Work”), a hardy band of circles, let alone in the public realm, but dissenting backbenchers – Steves, Colin Meggs and Mickleburgh have finally Gabelmann, and Rosemary Brown found the smoking gun. Mention of – made some history of their own in Barrett’s musings about “what ‘Old reasoned arguments against a tangled Huey’ would say if he were alive in BC skein of collective bargaining decrees today” surface in the extraordinary that, for the labour-backed ndp, was four-hundred-page journal of Barrett potentially most explosive for the “life staffer Peter McNelly – a document of the party.” they heavily consult (120 [“A Note on By this time (October 1975) it was Sources”] and 341) – and this does set dawning on Premier Barrett and his him apart from a more mainstream one-man brain trust (Bob Williams, a Canadian socialist tradition: as late as C.D. Howe-like minister-of-everything 1975, we learn, members of Canada’s whom Meggs and Mickleburgh refer to Left Coast movement more typically as “The Godfather”) that the ndp’s worst channelled the ghosts of people like the nightmare – a restoration of the Bennett saintly J.S. Woodsworth (d. 1942). More dynasty – was beginning to materialize. work on “the Northern Kingfish,” as the While the more dovish Barrett dragged authors dub Barrett, is perhaps needed his heels, lest he be seen to be stomping now that almost everyone, including on the backs of working-class leaders David Mitchell, the major chronicler who opposed his measures (not all of the Bennett dynasty, agrees that the were so opposed), the more hawkish more menacing moniker for Barrett Williams soon got his way. Gambling (“The Allende of the North”) gets us that W.R. (Bill) Bennett was not yet nowhere in interpreting the man and ready for prime time, Barrett called his times (333). and lost an election in early winter, The Huey Long of Barrett’s the most gruesome campaign season. imagination, one hastens to add, was The authors well describe the “faintly clearly the populist hero who battled Hitlerian” atmosphere of 1975, when Standard Oil or improved conditions sliding fortunes seemed to energize for convict labour, not the fascist Barrett, a quite remarkable orator and sympathizer of the American 1930s. one-of-a-kind campaigner when in full Jewish by birth and the product of a flight. Without the rcmp security detail strangely mixed marriage in Eastside that Barrett most reluctantly accepted at Vancouver (mother, pro-Stalinist; the time, it is remotely possible that the father, a Harold Winch-line ccfer), story could have had another and more Barrett continues to fascinate. This tragically significant ending – like the book is by no means iconography, and assassination of “Kingfish” Huey Long we meet Barrett on some of his lowest in Baton Rouge back in 1935. days, like when he made the worst kind There are number of stories of news by harassing a female reporter (none substantiated) about Barrett’s whom he regarded as a “venomous admiration for, or emulation of, Long, bitch,” or the day he booted Frank a highly controversial historical figure Calder (his only pipeline to the fast- he would have learned about from his emerging world of modern Aboriginal Jesuit teachers during the American politics) out of cabinet for personal 154 bc studies indiscretions and telling “a lie.” But the those with new feminist tendencies is Calder episode could have been worse: sensitively sketched in this book. any member of the Long machine in Space precludes further commentary, Baton Rouge would have used the but I would mention, as a teaching tool, same police-sourced goods that Barrett the Meggs and Mickleburgh’s list of had on Calder to try to blackmail the “partial and subjective” legacies of the “Little Chief” into line. Calder lived Barrett regime. They list ninety-seven to fight another day, and some of the items, ranging from the creation of the more purely personal political hatchets Nisga'a School Board to the hiking of described in the book were publicly coal royalties from twenty-five cents buried before Calder and others died. to $1.50 a ton. Behind nearly every In a sustained (though not tedious) one of these items is a lesson, story, or argument against David Mitchell’s piece of unfinished business of some W.A.C. Bennett and the Rise of British consequence to anyone interested in Columbia, Meggs and Mickleburgh political economy, the emergence of are most thought-provoking in stating the welfare state, Vancouver’s civic that postwar modernity was something history, and so on. (I had not realized of an illusion in British Columbia. that, in the 1960s, nineteenth-century Key elites in business, government, robber baron Robert Dunsmuir almost or the media were trapped, they say, certainly paid a higher coal tax than did in a “time warp” whose all too public Kaiser Resources.) Not all, however, symbols were people like Bennett the are really legacies. Some are simply elder, Reverend Phil Gaglardi, and any memories of “possibilities” that would number of ccf/ndp figures that Bennett be lost during future, even darker, and Gaglardi liked to kick around. times. Though not on the list of ninety- Tom Berger, an archetypical and very seven points, the authors most carefully brilliant “New Party” man of the note the creation of the Fraser Institute, 1960s, tried to turn things around but a major neoliberal think tank whose was effectively purged from provincial informal mottos vis-à-vis the 1972-75 life by the fear-mongering right-wing experiment might be “Never Again” politics of the time. Fortunately, Berger and “Keep It Simple, Stupid” – a motto had plenty of other things to do. The that used to hang on W.A.C. Bennett’s authors find Gaglardi’s open back- office wall. stabbing of Bennett when he sought an unprecedented seventh term as premier in 1972 (the straw that finally broke the camel’s back) “inexplicable” In Flux: Transnational Shifts in (38). I don’t: such aging warriors were Asian Canadian Writing objectively losing their minds. Time- Roy Miki warped individuals in the new ndp government included Eileen Dailly, Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2011. whose personal priority at the Ministry 288 pp. $24.95 paper. of Education – abolishing the strap – would have been relevant when she was Janey Lew first elected in1966 . The culture clash University of British Columbia between people like Dailly, Barrett appointed as deputy premier, and he twelfth and most recent Tvolume in NeWest Press’s Book Reviews 155

Writer as Critic series, Roy Miki’s Canadian writing as a potential site In Flux: Transnational Shifts in Asian for resisting white, hetero-patriarchal Canadian Writing, like others in the ideologies underlying nationalist series, approaches writing as praxical literature. In Flux, to a large extent, intervention. Beginning with the picks up where Broken Entries leaves central argument that Asian-Canadian off, rehearsing some of Miki’s familiar subjectivity is formed in the interchange critiques of Canadian multicultural between racialization and performance, discourse as an assimilative cover for Miki goes on to trace “Asian Canadian” Asian-Canadian difference over a as a sign that undergoes and produces history of official racism. In In Flux, shifts in meaning within the national Miki widens the scope to account for imaginary, through Asian-Canadian the effects of increasing globalization cultural and critical productions, and in and commodification on the neoliberal transaction with rapidly transforming subject, asking: How are the effects global body politics. In the collection’s of Asian-Canadian racialization nine essays, Miki offers nuanced and articulated in an increasingly attentive analyses of a wide variety of transnational context? In what ways texts, including the multidisciplinary is Asian-Canadian writing being work of artist-poet Roy Kiyooka, mobilized? In what ways can it be? And historical materials relating to how can Asian Canadian as a critical anti-Oriental policies and popular methodology move towards unsettling opinion, the poetry of Rita Wong, and a “settler consciousness” (249)? Northrop Frye’s canonical essay entitled In Flux arrives at an opportune “Conclusion to A Literary History of time in the institutional trajectory Canada.” The essays in In Flux develop of Asian Canadian Studies. Miki’s two sets of tightly woven arguments: scepticism about institutionalization the first, a set of political and historical follows his line of thinking about propositions about Asian-Canadian embodiment: as universities become writing as an exemplary site in which increasingly corporatized, fields of to track changes in national and difference like Asian Canadian Studies transnational subject formation from are likewise susceptible to incorporation, the postwar period to the present; the or assimilation into the corporate body. second, a set of critical and theoretical With inaugural programs in Asian calls for developing reading practices Canadian Studies recently announced and cultural engagements that spur at the University of Toronto and the ethical acts and reflection. University of British Columbia, Miki’s Few voices carry as much weight pointed questions about developing as Miki’s in the emergent field of a rigorous critical pedagogy are not Asian-Canadian literary studies. The only urgent but also prescient. In the essay “Asiancy: Making Space for wake of poststructural arguments that Asian Canadian Writing,” from Miki’s seemingly textualize the human out of Broken Entries: Race Subjectivity Writing existence, In Flux is essential reading (2000), has arguably set the tone for for those interested in reintroducing scholarly production in the field. ethics into cultural praxis. In “Asiancy” (and more generally in Broken Entries), Miki critiques centralist narratives of Anglo-Canadian canonization and suggests Asian- 156 bc studies

People’s Citizenship Guide: that Canadians have the right to, for A Response to Conservative example, join a union. A Maclean’s editorial praised Discover Canada for Canada reinforcing “the responsibilities of all Esyllt Jones and Adele Perry Canadian adult citizens: including jury duty, getting a job and obeying Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring, 2011. the law,” suggesting that, despite the 80 pp. $14.95 paper. open acknowledgment of Canada’s Elise Chenier long history of inequality, Discover Canada validates anti-immigrant and Simon Fraser University anti-social welfare stances. Equally disconcerting to progressive centre eople’s Citizenship Guide: A Response and left Canadians is the emphasis on P to Conservative Canada is just Canada’s link to the monarchy and the that. It uses Discover Canada, the military (8-9). new Canadian Citizenship Guide, The People’s Citizenship Guide as a launch pad for critiquing the offers an interesting and engaging current federal government’s ideological counterpoint to the current rebranding leanings – leanings expressed in Discover of Canada’s once peaceful, rights- Canada’s emphasis on the British championing image (although scholars monarchy, the military, and the rule of quarrelled with that orthodoxy too). law. The usual centrist suspects, Jack Penned by historians Esyllt Jones and Granatstein and Rudyard Griffiths Adele Perry, the People’s Citizenship of the Historica-Dominion Institute, Guide is a testament to the discipline’s appear in the acknowledgments, but deeply political nature, especially so, too, do Desmond Morton, Margaret where it concerns our understanding MacMillan, and Jim Miller. We cannot and interpretation of nation and state. know how well Discover Canada reflects It paints its own ideologically driven their contributions, but with respect portrait, informed, as the title suggests, to indigenous peoples, Quebec, and by the needs of the people rather than “ethnic diversity,” a progressive view the objectives of the state. It is not a of Canadian history, as represented people’s history so much as a history of in books like Margaret Conrad and the way in which the state has negatively Alvin Finkel’s History of the Canadian affected the experiences of people Peoples, runs through the text. Women living within the region now known and labour do less well. A statement as Canada. By choosing to counter about gender equality is followed by the current government’s messaging the assertion that Canada does not with a critique of the state rather than tolerate “‘barbaric cultural practices’ a record of everyday experiences, the such as spousal abuse, ‘honour killings,’ People’s Citizenship Guide reminds female genital mutilation, forced us that Canada’s progressive left is marriage and other gender-based overwhelmingly social democratic. violence,” thus denouncing sexism Where Discover Canada characterizes while simultaneously invoking a the tools of the Canadian state as history of Western racialization and enabling “ordered liberty” (8), these xenophobia (9). Responsibilities appear historians see the state as a potential more prominently than rights, and tool for ensuring full equality. The book nowhere does the federal guide indicate documents how it has failed to do so. Book Reviews 157

The People’s Citizenship Guide an authoritative analysis but, rather, to oversimplifies the Conservatives’ “introduce an analytical methodology representation of history, especially that might facilitate discussion” as it appears in Discover Canada. The (102). In an area so fraught with commemoration of the War of 1812 shows misunderstanding, misinformation, us that the current government can get and deeply conflicting values, such its history wrong, but Discover Canada discussion is sorely needed. So, too, is at least does not “exclud[e] whatever the calm, measured, and knowledgeable facts and experiences complicate its tone Woo takes throughout. nostalgia for a simple past that never Woo marshals a formidable number really was” (6). Nevertheless, the People’s of carefully researched and disparate Citizenship Guide offers something resources to set up her analysis, valuable and rare: an opportunity to including Thomas Kuhn’s scientific bridge the gap between the kind of theory of paradigm change, an history produced in academe and the interesting historic review of Anglo- general public. As Discover Canada’s colonial law, snippets of international counterpoint, the People’s Citizenship law, Canadian constitutional law, the Guide seems particularly targeted for backgrounds of Supreme Court judges, new immigrants and would make an and several examples of lived Aboriginal excellent text when teaching English experiences within Canada. The as an additional language. It can also analysis itself becomes repetitious fairly be read by everyday Canadians and quickly and does not cover a lot of new young students of history. It is a strong ground. Nevertheless, the take-away reminder that history is about the points are important ones. There is a present, not the past. deep democratic deficit in both past and present Canadian legislation affecting Aboriginal peoples, and legal decision Ghost Dancing with Colonialism: makers are even less representative. Canadian court decisions continue to Decolonization and Indigenous Rights ignore both Aboriginal social orders at the Supreme Court of Canada and the fact that Canada’s existence as Grace Li Xiu Woo a nation – and the courts’ own authority – are rooted in the historic denial and Vancouver: ubc Press, 2012. 360 pp. destruction of those social orders. $34.95 paper. There is a clear cognitive struggle afoot to reconcile the constitutional Hadley Friedland aspirations of equality and recognition University of Alberta of Aboriginal and treaty rights with a history and present reality that do not n this book, Grace Li Xiu Woo, match this postcolonial self-perception. Ia retired member of the BC Bar, Most important, and here Woo does steps away from a standard case law a nice job of bringing these to light in analysis and instead analyzes Supreme a matter-a-fact manner, there are the Court decisions related to Aboriginal consequences of all this in the lives of and treaty rights based on certain real people. For example, Woo describes indicia of what she deems colonial and the aftermath of the Mitchell v. MNR postcolonial legality (104). She wisely decision regarding the administration stresses that her purpose is not to provide of a border crossing in the Mohawk 158 bc studies community of Akwesasne. She lists will become increasingly pressing for several incidents that demonstrate all Canadians. that the decision did not result in certainty or peaceful resolution for the community but, rather, left the problems unresolved, generating more “court cases, stress and life-threatening violence” (176). This lived reality is just one of many others in which the Canadian justice system, regardless of intent, appears to have had effects counter to Aboriginal peoples’ basic human needs, including for safety and social order. The challenge this poses to the very rule of law in Canada should not be underestimated. I was curious as to the practical solutions Woo might suggest and was a bit disappointed to see that the final chapter did not go far beyond the typical academic suggestions of acknowledging Aboriginal sovereignty, re-examining fundamental assumptions and underlying premises, and recognizing a multiplicity of possibilities for social order. To be sure. But more is needed to navigate the “untenable position” the court finds itself in at this point in history (228). The reality on the ground today is too pressing to indulge in endless intellectual deconstruction and too complicated for recognition of sovereignty to be simply reiterated or regarded as a panacea. We are all in need of concrete, constructive ways forward. Still, for legal practitioners and decision makers who are unfamiliar with Aboriginal realities and perspectives, Woo’s book should provide food for thought, and it could also be a good starting point for productive, respectful discussion about colonialism and Aboriginal and treaty rights in Canada. As the current Idle No More movement demonstrates, such a discussion, and constructive ways forward, are long overdue and