BOOK REVIEWS

Makúk: A New History of Lekwungen territory was located Aboriginal-White Relations around present-day Victoria, and it experienced rapid white settlement. John Sutton Lutz The Lekwungen were, “of all the 2008 Aboriginal Peoples in : UBC Press, . and western Canada[,] ... the best 416 pp. Maps, Illus. $85.00 cloth, $32 95 positioned to succeed within the . paper. European, capitalist economy” (50). The Margaret Sequin Anderson Tsilhqot’in, in contrast, were located University of Northern British in one of the most remote parts of the province and engaged in a lengthy Columbia struggle to keep settlers out of their territory in the interior plateau. Despite akúk: A New History of these differences, the current situations Aboriginal-White Relations is a of these two groups are not dissimilar. thoroughM treatment of a significant Lutz does a thorough job of laying out subject in BC history. Lutz has how this came to be. examined the history of exchanges Much of the book is taken up by of things, labour, and ideas between Lutz’s discussion of Aboriginal workers, Aboriginal peoples and immigrants and this is an excellent addition to and how Aboriginal peoples were the literature; he delves deeply into displaced from their land and resources the subject and provides both a clear in the province while, at the same time, overview and detailed examples of providing the labour to build it – at Aboriginal contributions in specific least prior to their labour becoming industries such as fishing, logging, and marginalized and denigrated, and agriculture. He has built on the work their communities impoverished and of earlier scholars (such as Rolf Knight, “vanished.” The book moves from an Dianne Newell, Douglas Harris, abstract, rather sweeping theoretical and numerous others) and provides discussion of perspectives on exchange quotations, from both the scholarly and postmodernism to detailed histories literature and from Aboriginal people, of two specific Aboriginal groups: drawn from archives, correspondence the Lekwungen and the Tsilhqot’in. with government departments, and bc studies, no. 63, Autumn 9 133 134 bc studies contemporary interviews. Of equal misunderstandings” (xii). Lutz uses this importance to his history of Aboriginal characterization of Chinook jargon as labour in various industries is Lutz’s a metaphor for the miscommunications analysis of the history of the current that often characterized relations welfare system and how it has altered between settlers and Aboriginal Aboriginal communities; he provides peoples in the history of the province, a detailed picture of the genesis of the but the metaphor seems to me to be welfare system in reluctant and racist unconvincing and the discussion of relief policies through to the trap in the language extraneous to the main which many Aboriginal communities thrust of the book. Creating the chapter now find themselves. The final chapter title “Pomo Wawa” (postmodernist discusses developments over the period vocabulary) as ersatz Chinook jargon from 1970 to 2007, including the impact for the discussion of the theoretical of recent court cases that seem to underpinnings of Lutz’s analysis was indicate that Aboriginal voices are more irksome than enlightening, at perhaps being understood to a greater least for this reader. degree than in the past and that there Makúk: A New History of Aboriginal- may yet be the possibility of productive White Relations is theoretically dialogue. A postscript crystallizes the sophisticated and richly detailed, and main thrust of the book, encouraging it will be valued as a reference for serious listening and real dialogue: “So researchers in several fields as well as long as we keep the silence, so long as by Aboriginal people. This book will we continue to ‘vanish,’ or in literary become a standard resource for research scholar Renée Bergland’s words, ‘ghost’ on BC history. I expect that, for the Indians, we will continue to be doomed next decade, it will fill the place in the to revisit the site of our haunting – the literature that Robin Fisher’s Contact history of aboriginal/non-aboriginal and Conflict held during previous encounters – over and over again” (308). decades. The book exemplifies the best One aspect of Makúk that I would of contemporary research on British like to note especially is the extensive Columbia’s history, and it will be an use of sidebars and illustrations of the inspiration to future researchers. people mentioned in the text, along with relevant quotations. These range from early drawings from the Cook expedition through to photographs of contemporary leaders and also include some of the theoreticians, such as Edward Said, upon whose work Lutz draws. The least successful aspect of the book, for me, is the attempt to frame it within a discussion of Chinook jargon, which Lutz characterizes as “a language amorphous enough that each [group] could interpret it in a way that made sense within its own cultural framework. It was a language of deliberate ambiguity” (xi), “a language whose very construction guaranteed Book Reviews 135

Madness, Betrayal and the Lash: no record of [Manby’s] survives of 186 The Epic Voyage of Captain this second visit to Hawaii” ( ), as if these passages are a significant part of George Vancouver the narrative. Instead, they add little, Stephen Bown and reinforce the peep show that was so important to eighteenth-century Toronto/Vancouver: Douglas and European imperialism. McIntyre, 2008. 256 pp. Illus. Personal conflicts dominate Bown’s $34.95 cloth, $21.95 paper. narrative, and with the exception of Bodega y Quadra, no one is likeable. Brian Richardson The most despicable character is University of Hawaii Thomas Pitt, the arrogant son of nobility and persistent troublemaker adness, Betrayal and the Lash is on the voyage. The conflict between his an accessible, succinct narrative claims to privilege and the discipline of Mof George Vancouver’s life, focusing the Royal Navy was a constant problem on the voyage he led into the Pacific for Vancouver, and in this case that in the late eighteenth-century. Bown’s conflict became very personal. Bown’s stated goal is to give Vancouver “a description of Pitt’s vendetta against more honourable place in history” Vancouver is a highlight of the book. (4) by rehabilitating his reputation, Another highlight was the which was ruthlessly attacked after description of Vancouver’s second the voyage. There are well-chosen powerful enemy: Joseph Banks. Both illustrations and interesting quotes, Cook and Vancouver had conflicts although unfortunately the author does with Banks, but the conflict with Cook not include a timeline, a map of the occurred when Banks had not achieved voyage, or references. significant power. Vancouver, on the There are some unfortunate errors other hand, faced a well-connected and distracting tendencies in the Banks capable of forcing his plans and book. Bown confuses Thomas Hobbes associates on Vancouver and of seeking with John Locke (16). He states that revenge when Vancouver resisted. As Cook’s journals were published “several with Pitt, the description of Banks’s months” after the voyage was completed vengeance offers a glimpse into English (8) when it fact it took roughly two society. Yet Banks not only tried to years. He also claims that Vancouver’s vilify Vancouver, he tried to write voyage, covering 65,000 miles, was Vancouver out of the country’s history, the “longest circumnavigation ever by and the details of Banks’s efforts are sailing ship and a significantly greater fascinating. distance than Cook’s second voyage” For a book that attempts to rehabilitate (232). Beaglehole, in contrast, notes Vancouver, the account of his character that Cook’s second voyage was roughly is surprisingly negative. Vancouver’s 70,000 miles (Exploration of the Pacific, anger is described throughout the 286). Finally, Bown tries to include too book. He frequently overreacts, his much titillating detail. The constant outbursts are “disgraceful” (134), and reference to Manby’s description of he is constantly impatient, annoyed, “native maidens” and “bewitching autocratic, and even cruel. Led by girls” becomes annoying. At one point his commitment to naval regulations, the author laments that “unfortunately Vancouver “always adhered to the letter 136 bc studies of his instructions, fearing that leniency interesting and accessible. Rather than would bring him censure or reprimand” rehabilitating Vancouver’s character, (117). He alienated most of the crew and however, he ends up reinforcing the his behaviour was a key reason why negative reputation Vancouver already morale on the ship was so poor (119). has. Vancouver appears better than how He was even described as going slowly he was portrayed by Pitt and Banks, insane (204). But rather than believing but only because the people around that Vancouver was largely responsible him, including Pitt and Banks, were for his fate, Bown sticks to the belief so despicable. There are many reasons that Vancouver has been wrongly why Vancouver failed, including his vilified, even if the details work against government, his crew, Pitt, Banks, his conclusion. and his own deteriorating health and As with Vancouver’s character, character. But explaining why he failed Bown also tries to improve the status does not mean that he succeeded. of Vancouver’s voyage. Yet the same Perhaps a more compelling narrative tension with the details arises. Bown structure, which the book hints at, claims that the voyage was monumental is that Vancouver is a tragic figure. but describes how the voyage was If he had not had such powerful ultimately inconsequential. Bown enemies, and if his voyages had not been claims that Vancouver’s “epic voyage overshadowed by the French Revolution to unknown Pacific America is one of and the Napoleonic wars, he might a handful of truly incredible voyages have joined Cook in the pantheon of in the history of seafaring, on par in its important navigators. In the end, the own way with the voyages of Columbus, strongest reaction that the author elicits Magellan, Drake, Bougainville and for Vancouver is pity. Cook” (237). But such a description is unsupported. At best, without Vancouver, Canada would not have a A Silent Revolution? 223 Pacific coast ( ) and Hawaii may have Gender and Wealth in English fallen under American influence a little faster. The political issues surrounding Canada, 1860-1930 Nootka Sound were resolved in Europe Peter Baskerville after the voyage ended. The agreement between Vancouver and Kamehameha, Montreal and Kingston: McGill- which would have increased the British Queen’s University Press, 2008. presence in Hawaii, was ignored by the 376 pp. $29.95 paper. British government. Vancouver’s voyage Judith Fingard likewise comes up short when compared to Cook’s: Vancouver’s voyage had little Dalhousie University anthropological detail (137), his voyage has no drama, the printed journals Silent Revolution? is a fascinating are tedious, and his relationship to study of female capitalists in the crew was dysfunctional if not VictoriaA and Hamilton at the turn of outright abusive. Not the makings of the twentieth century. Peter Baskerville a monumental voyage or of an heroic employs both quantitative and qualitative captain. methods to establish that women were Overall, Bown’s account of willing and active participants in Vancouver’s life and voyages is building the financial infrastructure of Book Reviews 137 the liberal bourgeois state in modern was far less structured than was that Canada. The prevailing ideology of of father-to-son. Women’s agency in separate spheres had virtually no impact material matters nonetheless increased on the behaviour of women in the over the period covered by this book. In marketplace. Female testators, investors, wills and probate, for example, women borrowers, lenders, property owners, became more active as executors. They and entrepreneurs held their own with were as likely as their husbands to their male counterparts, and the system place controls in their wills on their they produced together was largely non- widowed spouse, but they were more gendered. The context for the analysis likely to overlook their spouse entirely is urban English Canada, the approach as a beneficiary. For daughters, the comparative – female/male, Hamilton/ more generous inheritances encouraged Victoria, then and now – and it is based by the new laws governing women’s on every conceivable variable. The property provided the very opportunity sources constitute an impressive range for them to enter the money market. of probate and assessment records, Women’s gains in real property after shareholder lists, census returns, bills the enactment of women’s property of sale registration, and, for Chapter legislation were especially impressive: 7 (on businesswomen) and Chapter 8 in Victoria, women moved from owning (on family enterprise), the 5 percent one in every $29 of landed wealth in 1871 1901 census household sample of the to one in every $5 in 1899; in Hamilton, Canadian Families Project. the figures were one in every$22 and one Baskerville convincingly in every $7. In fact “more Victoria women demonstrates that the various provincial were landowners and general investors married women’s property acts of late than was the case in Hamilton” (114). Victorian Canada became more broadly A considerable portion of the analysis women’s property laws by encouraging focuses on relationships between wives new patterns of inheritance from and husbands concerning property, a parents to daughters and husbands to central issue then and for many decades wives. The loosening of the controls on to follow. Baskerville traces the likely women’s property rights facilitated the impact of such features as the lack of expansion of women’s role in financial dower law in British Columbia, the affairs whether they were married, traditional anti-coercion safeguard of widowed, or single. In terms of total the privy, or separate, examination of probated wealth, women in both cities the wife, and differential sex ratios were equal to men below the top quintile. in these two cities. In the mortgage Women were therefore not among the market, age turned out to be an wealthiest Canadians, nor were they important factor, with women loaning greatly attracted to risky business money to a younger set than did ventures, possibly a prerequisite for men. Women, especially self-employed attaining the most wealth. Their more women, were also active as lenders moderate and conservative patterns and borrowers in the chattel loan of wealth management, including market, which is described “as a kind a preference for shares in banks of pawnshop, only the goods remained and insurance companies and land in possession of the borrower” (168). ownership, may have been encouraged A broader range of class was involved by a mother-to-daughter practice of here than in the realty market. When financial knowledge-sharing that the author turns to the role of women in 138 bc studies business, he encounters the deficiencies annually and through their wills. As of the 1901 census, particularly with penny capitalists, sharing the features regard to boarding house keepers, and of their property with the middling spends considerable time explaining stratum of male capitalists, women had this problem instead of resorting to only two opportunities to exert power city directories as a possible solution. through their wealth. One involved As an enterprise, self-employment their position in the family, which for women was far more prevalent must have varied enormously woman early in the twentieth century than it to woman across society, from some would become later. Indeed, in 1901, calling the shots to others withering in women were 5.3 times more likely the corner (even for the more assertive to be self-employed than were men. it was indeed a well-hidden, or “silent,” Even though most were married and power). The other involved women’s undoubtedly middle class, these women position in their community, where were demonstrably not “constrained the rapid establishment and expansion by separate spheres ideology” (219). of all the agencies and institutions Moreover, the family context of that would today be incorporated as women’s self-employment meant that registered charities must have benefited “female-run family businesses extended considerably not only from their the world of contracts and competition activism but also from their financial into the home” (235). support. Placing first-wave feminists While some readers may find the across Canada within the framework of degree of speculation and repetition female capitalism that Baskerville has problematic, the number of graphs so compellingly uncovered would be an and tables tedious, and the statistical intriguing focus for a follow-up study. methods as obfuscating as they are revealing, Baskerville redeems himself by cogently situating his analysis Red Dog, Red Dog within the international literature on the subject – legal, feminist, business, Patrick Lane and theoretical. A discussion of one Toronto: McClelland Stewart, 2008 additional topic might have helped to . 332 $32 99 dispel the uncomfortable notion that pp. . cloth. women were merely individualistic, Mark Diotte closet capitalists. We are not told the University of British Columbia extent to which women used their wealth to create social capital, particularly ue to the strong tourism through bequests. Given women’s and leisure economy of British active participation in the institutions D Columbia, the Okanagan Valley has of their community – churches and become primarily associated with missions, schools and colleges, the orchards, beaches, and, most recently, arts, hospitals and homes, charities and award-winning vineyards in short, self-help ventures, it is not only their – the Okanagan Valley is synonymous participation in women’s organizations with the idyllic countryside. Yet, and auxiliaries that measures their while Patrick Lane’s debut novel Red philanthropic influence (see Appendix Dog, Red Dog is set in the Okanagan 4) but also their financial clout when Valley, it subverts any notion of the it came to longer-term support, both Book Reviews 139 romanticized countryside typically characters who populate Lane’s novel. associated with peace, purity, family Elmer Stark, the father figure of the values, stability, and healing. Instead, novel, is an alcoholic, quick-tempered Red Dog, Red Dog combines elements and violent; the eldest brother, drug- of the supernatural with elements of addicted Eddy, is also violent and is reality in an exploration of the dark side filled with “something dead” after he of human behaviour and psychology. comes back from Boyco, a correctional Indeed, Lane’s novel has echoes of school for boys (18); Tom, arguably the the violence, cruelty, and gloom of the most sympathetic character, is “a boy American South described by William gone early to old” (45); Lillian is the Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy, of the cruel, neglectful, and incestuous mother British Columbia described by Sheila figure. All characters in the novel are Watson in The Double Hook, and, to unstable, damaged through different a lesser extent, of the supernatural combinations of physical, emotional, elements described by Gail Anderson- and psychological abuse, and it is the Dargatz in Turtle Valley. process of revealing these multiple In combination with writers such as layers of abuse and secrecy that stands Watson and Anderson-Dargatz, Lane out in Lane’s novel. Like Eddy, the is contributing to what I would suggest characters in Red Dog, Red Dog all have is the beginning of a West Coast gothic “something dead” or psychologically tradition in Canada. Centred around missing; they are desperate and are the Stark family, the novel takes searching for that which will reconcile place over a one-week time period. their lives to their expectations of life. It Interspersed in the narrative are “stories is primarily the failure of this attempt at arcing back in time to the 1920s and ‘30s reconciliation that leads to desolation, on the prairies” and to the “1880s West” rage, and violence. While virtually all (book jacket). Narrated by the deceased characters in the novel are monstrous, infant Alice Stark, Red Dog, Red Dog they cannot be said to be evil; rather, immediately introduces an element they are examples of a failed humanity. of the uncanny into the narrative. Red Dog, Red Dog, above all, is a novel Traditional gothic architecture is that explores the bonds and loyalties replaced with bleak descriptions of a needed to survive while it highlights the “valley leading nowhere” set against pressures that combine to create these equally desolate “rocky outcrops with damaged characters. their swales of rotted snow” (14-15), Like other poets who make the while the innocent heroine is replaced decision to write fiction, Lane is open by an abusive mother who spends the to the criticism that his language is too majority of her time behind the locked poetic or laboured. In Red Dog, Red Dog, door of her bedroom at the end of the I don’t find this to be the case. Instead, hall. The traditional gothic atmosphere so-called called poetic or descriptive of gloom, foreboding, and horror, passages are used to accentuate the however, remains intact in Lane’s novel harsh, bleak atmosphere of both the through a narrative of continually physical and psychological landscape of shocking events that include buried the novel. Lane’s debut novel does much secrets, dog fighting, rape, incest, to illuminate the BC literary landscape murder, and child abuse. and makes a substantial contribution to Equally resistant to the cliché of literature in Canada. the romanticized countryside are the 140 bc studies

Subway under Byzantium the illusory character of any singularity Maxine Gadd separating “nature” (in its pristine island manifestations) and “humanity” Vancouver: New Star Books, 2008. (propagating in the [fallen] structures of 128 pp. $20.00 paper. urban ecosystems): “‘More production.’ Invent a new kind of justice / or a plastic gizmo to fill up the holes in the roads. Nightmarker Who goes there any / more to fix the cracks wherein did fall / the many who Meredith Quartermain are few?”(38). Her British Columbia is one in which “the eyes in trees” report Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2008. 107 $14 95 panoptic data to “strange minds in the pp. . paper. mountains planning casual chaos” (12). Jason V. Starnes Gadd’s Marxist politics are in evidence as she gives voice to economically and socially disempowered victims ancouverites Maxine Gadd and of capital: “Capitalism is caused by VMeredith Quartermain each pursue wars; Communism by floods. / There unique place-based poetics in recent comes a point where you can’t refuse books of poetry that deploy historical, yr neighbour at the price of being inhuman” (119). geographical, and philosophical Gadd’s poetic affinities include disciplines in ways that map specific a concrete aesthetic that appears social spaces in British Columbia. more frequently towards the end of Their related practices display a global Byzantium’s sequence, culminating in range of voice, description, and activism expressive typographic forms arrayed marshalled by locally critical and against Mandelbrot sets. Her interest socially conscious poetics. in humanity’s position in the ecology Gadd and Quartermain both write it generates recalls Lyn Hejinian, to from first-person experiences of their whom a poem is dedicated here. Her immediate community and geographic affiliation with the community of surroundings. Both inspired by and Kootenay School writers shows through affiliated with Vancouver’s Kootenay in the directness of her radical politics School of Writing, their works are not and the post-L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E limited to the specificities of place and aesthetics of her fragmentary yet lyrical space around them but, rather, arise lineation. out of their first-person engagements with communities that persist in Meredith Quartermain’s Nightmarker contemporary traces of history. is an exploration of the history embedded in local space, and in many ways it Maxine Gadd’s Subway under is a sequel to her BC Book Award- Byzantium represents the continuation winning Vancouver Walking (2006). As of her works about the dual spaces in that work, which poet Margaret of the Gulf Islands and Vancouver’s Christakos calls a “lived epic of how Downtown Eastside, extending the 2005 specific native soil became appropriated project collected in ’s Backup to a condition of contemporary real to Babylon. This dialectic of places estate,” Nightmarker develops a poetic explores the shared and distinct psychogeography as Quartermain delves qualities of these areas. Gadd evinces into both the geographical and archival Book Reviews 141 specifics of her urban environment. polis of his hometown in The Maximus The epic designation is important here, Poems. conjuring Nightmarker’s extension While Gadd and Quartermain pursue of Ezra Pound’s “poem containing slightly diverging practices, themes of history.” Quartermain’s epigraph from orientation and disorientation in the Charles Olson’s Special View of History postmodern welter of political-spatial denotes her epic sensibilities: “A thing experience are shared in the poets’ done is not simply done but is re-done or work, and the trope of way finding takes pre-done. It is at once commemorative, on allegorical significance. Gadd’s suite magical, and prospective.” Extending of lyrical personae, rich in politics and this maxim, Quartermain explores idiosyncrasy, enunciates the lost “i” the concrete manifestations of history of the unrepresented: “Leave me, fear while showing the present as spatially, that i will not find my way” 8( ); while contingently engaged with the past Quartermain’s epistolary poems, packed and directly determinative of future with dense philosophical allusion, forms. History in Nightmarker is a engage a psychogeographic mapping paratactic field versus a linear path, through the medium of language: “To and Quartermain beautifully arrays speak is to echolocate” (11). For both the synchronic materials unearthed and Gadd and Quartermain, the public gathered in the course of her Olsonian space of politics is a constant theme. Projective cartography: “Cartographer They each develop a poetic geography, at Work sails the 20th Century grid never far from the reality of community – no longer trees, but streets named and the fantasy of history. These books Chestnut. Cypress. Arbutus. Maple” represent important extensions of a (23). One perception leads to another tradition specific to British Columbia, with no loss of momentum or abstraction one that offers social critique and of critical insight. philosophical resonance pertinent to In “Night Bus,” Quartermain notes any citizen of postmodernity. that she has been called a philosophical as opposed to an anecdotal poet. This seems a fair description of her relationship to forebears such as Robin Blaser, with whom she collaborated in Wanders (2002), and Robert Duncan, both of whose poetics engage philosophy as organic content. Conjuring a persona called Geo, who may represent both a philosophical echo of George Vancouver and the Earth itself, many of the poems appear in the form of letters: “Sir, The universe is expanding... Shale, sandstone, yanked thin by mountains drifting west, grinding under tectonic plates... 10 million years later, humans reading this” (35-36). Geo bears a relationship to Olson’s Maximus, a mythic concatenation of historical personae that addresses letters to the 142 bc studies

Gold Dust on His Shirt: The disadvantage is that it erects hurdles True Story of an Immigrant for academic researchers. Gold Dust is a thoughtful tribute to Mining Family Howard’s Scandinavian family, taking Irene Howard the reader from Sweden and Norway to a search for either land-ownership or Toronto: Between the Lines, 2008. permanent work in British Columbia. 250 pp. $26.95 paper. We learn of “Old World” poverty, a Eva St. Jean powerful push-factor that convinced people to leave loved ones – even Northern Lights College children – behind in the faint hope of later reuniting. We also learn how ritish Columbia produces an endless and relentless labour caused the astounding number of works on premature death of Howard’s parents; non-BritishB immigrants on the west any bitterness betrayed in the book is coast. Many recent books, such as Voices found in the depiction of the Workmen’s Raised in Protest (2008), The Triumph of Compensation Board’s reluctant awards Citizenship (2007), Nikkei Fishermen for work-related injuries and Alfred on the BC Coast (2007), and Hiroshima Nilsson’s subsequent death by silicosis. Immigrants in Canada, 1891-1941 Here the text might have elaborated (2007) focus on Asian immigration. on why governments strangle funding However, while a significant minority to institutions helping ill and injured of Scandinavians resided in British workers, which ultimately makes Columbia in the first half of the villains of the wcb clerks charged with twentieth century, they are often doling out the funds. Such analysis, considered to have assimilated too easily however, might have proved difficult to into the Canadian fabric to warrant accomplish given the structure of this scholarly attention. work. Perhaps this is why Irene Howard The subtitle promises a True Story of presents her latest book in a form an Immigrant Mining Family, and this designed to attract a wider, popular is mostly upheld. There are trifling audience. Howard firmly established points, such as that Alfred’s sayings herself as a talented biographer with seem more Norwegian than Swedish her award-winning The Struggle for (perhaps due to the linguistic influences Social Justice in British Columbia: Helena of Howard’s Norwegian mother) and Gutteridge, the Unknown Reformer 1992 that the Prince Rupert “Norwegian” ( ), and Gold Dust continues the consul on page 214 is likely the Swede, theme of the immigrant working class. Olaf Hanson, from page 76. In other Where the Gutteridge biography cases, Howard’s reconstruction of follows a scholarly style of referencing events is wholly transparent as she with numbered notes, however, Gold “take[s] it upon [herself] to spin” the Dust lacks in-text notation and instead completion of a story (103). More serious lists sources at the end of the book, fictionalizing involves her desire to identified by chapter, page number, recreate her father’s image in line with and a few identifying words from a her labour movement heroes from relevant sentence. The advantage is Vancouver’s Svenskar (1970), but this tells an uncluttered text for those who more about Irene Howard than about are not interested in references; the her father and his contemporaries. Book Reviews 143

She admits wishing she was “writing The Law of the Land: fiction” so that she could revise Alfred’s The Advent of the Torrens 1912 non-participation in the famous System in Canada International Workers of the World strike (13), and she claims to “believe” Greg Taylor her father was one in a group of workers whose wage demands led to a mining Toronto: University of Toronto strike in 1935 (216). While such narrative Press for the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, 2008. impulses are wholly understandable, her 234 $55.00 story is already brimming with loyalty, pp. cloth. affection, ingenuity, and persistence – John McLaren all heroic qualities that need neither University of Victoria spinning nor embroidering. Despite these minor reservations, the structure of Howard’s biography n recent years both imperial lends it a much greater usefulness than historians and colonial legal would be found in a simple family Ihistorians have begun turning their portrait. It is migration history, labour attention to the networks at play history, women’s history, and family within the British Empire and the history woven into one story. Through transmission of information and ideas 1 photographs and literary depictions, within the imperial system. The Gold Dust provides vivid imagery of emphasis in this work has been as working-class life and shows that much, if not more, on the channels of the migratory pattern of BC workers communication between and among was not restricted to single sojourners. colonies as between the latter and the Indeed, in search of work, the family metropolis. Professor Taylor’s account criss-crossed British Columbia, even falls into this genre, more particularly venturing into the mines of Idaho in into those studies that track how legal the United States. This engaging tale ideas and institutions with their origins is written with an ironic, low-keyed in one geographic area of the Empire humour that demonstrates Howard’s were transferred to others, whether by deep affection for workers who often the physical movement of individuals lost limbs and lives in building this or by long distance communications province, and it will be useful to anyone within the imperial system. who seeks a better understanding of British Columbia’s rich working-class 1 See, for example, Zoe Laidlaw, Colonial history. Connections, 1815-45: Patronage, the Infor- mation Revolution, and Colonial Government (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005); David Lambert and Alan Lester, Colonial Lives across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). The value of this literature to colonial legal historians is stressed in Russell Smandych, “Mapping Imperial Legal Connections: Toward a Comparative Historical Sociology of Colonial Law,” forthcoming in the University of Adelaide Law Review (2009). 144 bc studies

The prospect of reviewing a work as colonies and sparsely settled, in on registration of land titles, even its which there were few, if any, vested history, might not engender enthusiasm interests in the Byzantine structure of in every reader’s mind. Any anxieties title searching that bedeviled English I may have had on that score were conveyancing law. In these histories the quickly dispelled. By combining sound initial impetus for adoption seems to and insightful biographical work on have come from personal connections, the major proponents of the Torrens the relationship between George Carey, system of title registration, careful the first attorney general of the island tracking of how the idea of guaranteeing colony, and Sir Hugh Cairns, the indefeasibility of title in a systematic eminent English barrister, law officer, and relatively simple way by treating the and judge who was an advocate of the latest registration of an owner’s title as system. The presence in the colony of dispositive of ownership spread from its J.F. McCreight, who had practised at Australian origins to other colonial and the Victorian bar in Australia in the national jurisdictions, with the detail of 1850s, and who was well aware of the the legal regimes themselves, Professor campaign in the colony of Victoria in Taylor has produced a work that is favour of Torrens registration, may both well crafted and engaging. The well have assisted in the process of author makes no bones about the fact persuading local politicians and their that this system of guaranteeing title constituents of the superiority of that is the best devised within the Anglo- system. American legal world. However, good Interestingly, Taylor notes that ideas, even legal ones, do not spread events in British Columbia seem to without human agency. The extension have had little or no direct influence of the system devised in the late 1850s on campaigns for the establishment of by South Australian official, politician, the system in Ontario and the North- and landowner Robert Richard Torrens West Territories, which got under way within the Australian colonies was in the 1870s. Plausibly, he ascribes this to not difficult given their geographic the cultural and economic remoteness proximity, the common problems they of the west coast possessions from the faced in dealing with title in hyperactive rest of British North America until markets for land, and the relatively the 1880s. The history of the attempts short period of European settlement to bring the Torrens system to central in that land mass. Moreover, the Canada and to the vast prairie lands of Australian political psyche was less the west – the North-West Territories impressed with arguments based on the and the Province of Manitoba – is need to follow Mother England’s lead largely an account of the activities of on legal procedures, in particular when the Canada Land Law Amendment they appeared arcane and unnecessarily Association, a well organized and complex, than was true of that in some astute pressure group that vigorously other settler jurisdictions. lobbied the relevant governments to The system’s translation to North adopt the Torrens system. This alliance America, and especially Canada, proved included representatives of money- more challenging. Not surprisingly, the lending institutions and interested first Canadian jurisdictions to adopt a professionals, including lawyers who form of Torrens were Vancouver Island understood the benefits of registration and British Columbia, newly founded as a guarantee of the indefeasibility Book Reviews 145 of title. Its success in the west, where lively engagement with his particular settlement conditions were closer to topic, points to other possibilities in those in Australia and frontier British cross-imperial legal studies. The Law Columbia, contrasts with political and of the Land is a valuable contribution professional resistance and bureaucratic to the literature. lethargy in Ontario. As a consequence, unlike western Canada, where the system took off in the decades after its Early in the Season: A British introduction, in Ontario it was only Columbia Journal in the late twentieth century that the system began to extend beyond regional Edward Hoagland application, primarily in more remote Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, and in rural areas, and to expand 2008 176 $24 95 throughout the province. Nova Scotia . pp. Maps. . cloth. and New Brunswick have recently Jonathan Peyton adopted the system, which now operates University of British Columbia in seven provinces and the territories. Taylor is careful to examine the claims made of other influences behind n the summer of 1968, aspiring the Torrens system in both Australia American novelist Edward Hoagland and Canada, and to separate out Ispent seven weeks in the BC bush, and evaluate the various motives interviewing locals, listening to stories, prompting its advocates. Based on this exploring highways and byways, and close analysis there seems little doubt chronicling his experiences. He was that, within the world of European gathering material for a grand novel, settlement where the Torrens system eventually published in 1986 as Seven took root, it served the purposes not Rivers West. It was his second journey only of its commercial champions (the north; the first, two years earlier, mortgage companies who stood to provided the fodder for his growing benefit financially from a simplified reputation as an essayist. He came to system of title registration) but also the Stikine and the Omineca mountains private property owners (an expanding searching for something he thought group in settler populations) who were he couldn’t find in urban America. spared the expenses of lengthy title The journal in which he fastidiously searches and the worry of less secure recorded his experiences is published registration systems. Moreover, apart here for the first time, forty years after from the infrequent blip associated with his self-reflexive wilderness journey. the occasional difficult personality in There are, of course, many ways to the land titles bureaucracy and miscues read a book as visceral and episodic as in organizing access to the system, it Early in the Season. Hoagland writes has worked consistently well in the with a keen sensory awareness. In jurisdictions that have adopted it. this sense, the book might contribute Taylor demonstrates the value of to a phenomenological study of the comparative colonial legal histories experience of the North in Canada; as a means of understanding the the stark aesthetics, the pungent borrowing of legal concepts and odours, and the varied silences that institutions between colonial and Hoagland invokes are all major actors postcolonial possessions and, in his in the history he is recording. This is 146 bc studies an experiential way of writing, a kind race, class, and gender relations in of anecdotal history that derives its British Columbia will also find much impetus from serendipitous meetings fodder for their analyses. with the old sourdoughs, hardened Early in the Season is a useful outfitters, and half-feral bush pilots. companion to Notes from the Century Hoagland came to the wilds of British Before, Hoagland’s other, more Columbia’s Interior because he believed comprehensive, travelogue of the it was the last bastion of this cast of Stikine. It should also be placed within northern characters. He is enraptured the canon of northern exploration by the differences between the frenetic literature alongside the works of urban life he left behind and the simple, Warburton Pike, Raymond Patterson, quotidian life of the North. But the and Fenley Hunter. Vancouver Sun constant presence of New York City columnist Stephen Hume offers in the narrative (through his personal much of this valuable context in his and professional reflections) exposes introduction. Hoagland’s work will be the interconnectedness of the North useful for scholars working in history, and the South within modernity. This anthropology, geography, and First contradiction, plainly more evident Peoples studies. However, Early in in light of the forty years wait before the Season should be read widely and publication, shows Early in the Season critically by all those interested in to be an important historical document the complex histories of the remote as well as a manuscript of literary merit. northern expanse of this province. Hoagland’s self-imposed remoteness from his urban experience and the perceived lack of modernity in the North are constant motifs used to reinforce the marginality of his experience. This fits with the common popular narrative of the Stikine. Scholars wanting to explore the relationality of the experience of modernity or of place will find the book of real value. For Hoagland, place in the North is a contested object, where old-timers fight against the onslaught of progress. Place becomes especially unique when Hoagland brings his New York to live there as well. Indeed, the book says as much about Hoagland (the personal) as it does about the experience of the North (the external). He is a central and utterly compelling protagonist in the narrative. The amateur psychoanalyst out there could have a field day with his self- reflexive commentary on his impending fatherhood, his speech impediment, his sexuality, and his ambiguous feelings about his new marriage. Students of Book Reviews 147

Shoot! one hundred gunmen. Insofar as social George Bowering order is concerned, British Columbia is described in terms of systemic political Vancouver: New Star Books, 2008. and social racism. Labelled “half- 260 pp. $19.00 paper. breeds,” the McLeans are denied land Mark Diotte and are excluded from both the white settler community and the surrounding University of British Columbia Aboriginal communities. Framed by the historical events that led up to this eorge Bowering’s Shoot!, murder and the subsequent hanging of originally published in 1994, is the Mclean Gang at New Westminster 1881 Gbased on the historical account of the in , Shoot! details the historical murder of officer Johnny Ussher by the circumstances and pressures in western McLean Gang. Ostensibly, Shoot! is a Canada that created murderers out western novel that revolves around the of young men. Yet, while the social youthful adventures of the McLean realities of the McLeans are horrific, Gang in the Cariboo-Chilcotin area Bowering does not suggest that these of British Columbia during the late realities justify Ussher’s murder; rather, nineteenth century. Yet, Shoot! quickly he uses this tragedy to portray the moves beyond a simple adventure larger population and socio-political novel and becomes an anti-western framework as complicit in both the by denying the romance of “the west” Ussher murder and the deaths of the and, instead, ranging across myriad McLean Gang. politically charged issues, including While at times there is too much Aboriginal land rights, violence and “Bowering,” or narrator commentary, racism on Canada’s western frontier, in the novel, the book’s many youth violence, power of the Hudson’s strengths make it a must for any Bay Company, mixed-race relationships, student of literature and history in and the death penalty. Canada. Bowering was Canada’s first 2002 04 While many components of the Parliamentary Poet Laureate ( - ) traditional western novel are present and winner of the Governor General’s 1969 in Shoot! – cowboys, gunfights, a Award for poetry ( ) and fiction 1980 posse, horse-stealing, hanging – these ( ). conventions work towards a subversion of the traditional western storyline(s) of adventure, the establishment of order, and the dividends of hard work. The heroes of the novel are four mixed-race “cowboy” characters who comprise the McLean Gang – Allan, Charlie, and Archie McLean, along with Alex Hare – and who are ultimately executed in a group hanging for the tragic murder of Ussher. The adventure of “the gunfight” and the social justice of “the posse” are replaced by four young men trapped without water in a small, feces- and urine-strewn cabin surrounded by over