YOUR GUIDE TO BOOKS & AUTHORS • DISTRIBUTED BY 700 OUTLETS IN BC FREE news& reviews FROMFROM BUDBUD TOTO WORSEWORSE GrantGrant Buday’sBuday’s sobering grow-op novelnovel exploresexplores badbad potpot luck.luck. P.P. 2828 BOOKWORLDBC VOL. 20 • NO. 4 • WINTER • 2006 SHELAGH ROGERS: POIGNANT BABYTALK P. 2 1

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GARRY 8000 GOTTFRIEDSON: B.C. AUTHORS COWBOYS AND INDIANS AND www.abcbookworld.com POETS. P. 15

MARILYN BOWERING: SANITY INSIDE THE CUCKOO’S NEST. P. 31

BLAZINGBLAZING NEWNEW TRAILSTRAILS IVANIVAN E.E. COYOTECOYOTE goes beyond conservative Alberta boundaries in her first novel. SEE STORY P. 22

ALSO INSIDE: PHOTO

SAWCHUK

LAURA

EARLE BIRNEY:

Publication Mail Agreement #40010086 REELING IN THE YEARS...35

HAIDA ART P. 7 • CHAINSAWS P. 8 • SHARKS P. 13 • JERRY WASSERMANIA P. 16 CANADA

We’ve got the world’s Beware the longest, bisecting bison east-west highway

udbury has the Big Nickel. Echo Bay has the Big SLoonie. Sault Ste. Marie has a huge baseball, seemingly left behind by giants. orth America’s longest north-south road, Highway 97, connects Not to be outdone, Wawa has a giant N Weed, California and the Yukon bor- goose; Moose Jaw has Mac the Moose, der. ten metres high. White River has a The Long and Winding Road (Her- marbelite statue of Winnie the Pooh itage $18.95) is Jim Couper’s illus- clutching his honey pot. trated guide to the “pleasures and They’re some of the roadside attrac- treasures” of the two-thousand-mile tions in Dan Francis’ paean to mo- route that passes lava beds, bison, deserts, torized transport, A Road for Canada orchards, vineyards, forests and a full- (Stanton, Atkins, Dosil $39.95), mar- scale replica of Stonehenge at Maryhill keted as an illustrated history of the on the Columbia River gorge. Trans-Canada Highway. Founder of Canada’s national cycling As Francis first discovered during his magazine Pedal, Couper lives within ten three-month honeymoon journey in an miles of Highway 97 in Kelowna and orange Volkswagen camper, Canada’s wrote Discovering the Okanagan in other National Dream is an automotive 2004. 1-894974-12-3 spinal cord that stretches from Victoria to St. John’s—making it twice as long as the Great Wall of China. Fueled by “Driving the Trans-Canada is a rite Mac, the of passage,” he recalls, “but it can also world’s largest blackberries be a trial by fire.” Back in the late sixties, he and his bride always parked on a moose, greets s self-described Geriatric Gypsies, slope, enabling them to jump-start the A Barb and Dave Rees of vehicle each morning. “Canada was sev- visitors in Powell River hit the road in an old 27- eral days wider than I had given it credit Moose Jaw. ft. motor home loaded down with drift- for,” he recalls. wood, books, brandied blackberry sauce While paying heed to iconic mo- and sold their possessions as they went. ments—such as watching a weathered With advice on free camping and grain elevator grow larger on the hori- roadside survival tips on locating farm- zon—Francis also explores the roadway’s ers’ and flea markets, RV Canada on a historic and symbolic significance. “As Dime and Dream ($19.95) recounts Canadians know from our periodic con- how they financed their way across stitutional squabbles, the thread might Canada, starting with only $300 in their break. Meanwhile, the highway reveals pockets. us to ourselves.” “It wasn’t without many down-to-the- The first province to complete its Dan Francis (right) celebrates how the wire moments,” she says, “but more of- share of the Trans-Canada was Saskatch- Trans-Canada Highway ties our country ten it was filled with the wonderful ewan. The highway’s half-way point is together in A Road for Canada. generous people that make up our great Chippewa Falls in Ontario. 09732346-7-9 country.” 0-9736198-8-0. Info at www.abcbookworld.com

Contributors: Grant Shilling, Mark Forsythe, Sheila Munro, Joan Givner, Sara Cassidy, Louise Donnelly, Hannah Main-van der Kamp, INDEX to Advertisers BC Heather Ramsay. Cherie Thiessen, John Geary, BOOKWORLD Shane McCune Alford, Patsy...40 Heritage House...9 Royal BC Museum...32 Writing not otherwise credited is by staff. Arsenal Pulp Press...17 Hignell Printing...42 Sandhill...14 Winter Issue Vol. 20, No. 4 Photographers: Barry Peterson, Laurie Sawchuk Banyen Books...36 Hooper, Jackie...40 Save-On Foods...34 BC Book Prizes...27 Houghton Boston Printers...42 SFU Writing & Publishing...28 Publisher/ Writer: Alan Twigg Proofreaders: Wendy Atkinson, Betty Twigg BC Historical Federation...38 Howard, Ruth...40 Sidney Booktown...38 Editor/Production: David Lester Design: Get-to-the-Point Graphics BCIT...26 Julian, Terry...40 Sono Nis Press...10 Deliveries: Ken Reid Publication Mail Agreement #40010086 Bolen Books...32 Literary Press Group...34, 36 Stanton, Atkins & Dosil...20 Return undeliverable Canadian We acknowledge the assistance of Canada Council and the Book Warehouse...30 Lived Experience...41 Temeron Books...34 addresses to: BC BookWorld, Province of British Columbia, through the Ministry of Caitlin Press...30 McClelland & Stewart...5 Terasen...4 3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, Community, Aboriginal, and Women’s Services. BC V6R 2S3 Crown Publications...32 Morriss Printing...42 Thomas Allen...12 Douglas & McIntyre...2 Multicultural Books...26 Thomson, Ann...40 Produced with the sponsorship of Pacific BookWorld News Society. Douglas College/EVENT...34 New Star Books...34, 36, 38 Transcontinental Printing...42 Publications Mail Registration No. 7800. ECW Press...30 Nightwood...36 Treeline Books... 39 BC BookWorld ISSN: 1701-5405 Ellis, David...38 Northstone...32 UBC Creative Writing...38 Advertising & editorial: Federation of BC Writers...40 Oolichan Books...18 UBC Press...41 BC BookWorld, 3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., V6R 2S3 First Choice Books...36 Orca Books...24 Vancouver Desktop...40 Friesens Printers...42 Penguin Books...13 White Knight Books...26 Tel/Fax: 604-736-4011 Givner, Joan...36 People’s Co-op Bookstore...38 Woewoda, James...40 Email: available on request . Annual subscription: $12.84 Granville Island Publishing...36 Playwrights Canada Press...34 Wolsak & Wynn...34 Harbour Publishing...44 Printorium...42 Yoka’s Coffee...39 All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online at www.abcbookworld.com HarperCollins...18 Random House...29 TO ADVERTISE CALL Hedgerow...34 Ronsdale Press...6 604-736-4011

3 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 ART

QUEEN CHARLOTTE CITY BOOK LAUNCH: Curator Nika Collison (left) and Skidegate Haida Immersion coordinator Kevin Borserio hold Raven Travelling as elder Jackie Casey reads from the book.

HAIDA REDUX PHOTO HAIDA REDUX RAMSAY TWO CENTURIES OF ART HEATHER

n front of a fire pit in the Performance House at the old the rude and funny stories he creates are rendered in a village site of Qay’llnagaay or Sea Lion Town, near Japanese comic book style, Skidegate on Haida Gwaii, direct and indirect contribu- rich with Haida symbols and imagery. “We haven’t lost tors to Raven Travelling (D&M $65) gathered to celebrate anything,” he says. Accord- the launch of the lavish coffee table book that coincides ing to Yahgulanaas, the great masters of Haida art from with a national touring exhibit of the same name that cel- two centuries ago are still ebrates two centuries of Haida art. here, as evidenced by Raven Travelling. “And they are still The celebration com- started out in high school,” he here through the names,” he Imenced when the Haida ver- says, “there were five books says. sion of a wild man of the available and they were all by Yahgulanaas notes the woods slipped into the room, Marius Barbeau.” Haida, like the raven, are two women screamed and the Giitsxaa, 61, says he didn’t also travelling afar, gaining creature was ceremonially choose to be an artist, he sim- global recognition. “We are PHOTO drummed out of the hall. ply is one, but he envies the on the $20 bill,” he says, re-

RAMSAY RAMSEY Then the emcee spoke about HEATHER young artists of today. “I won- ferring to the image of Bill which bathrooms were work- der what it would be like to start Reid’s Black Canoe, the ing in the still-to-be-completed, $25 mil- out with all of these books and knowl- HEATHER original of which stands out- Giitsxaa, a carver who grew up in Skidegate. lion Haida Heritage Centre. It was a edge that people were trying to sup- side the Canadian Embassy seamless mix of tradition and contem- press,” he said. When he was growing in Washington, DC. “And porary reality—like the book itself. up in Skidegate, there were carvers but relatives that recognize the pieces and also we have infiltrated the most militarily ✍ they were less visible. The potlatch ban know its history, even more so, and tell us powerful city in the world. The Raven is For the unprecedented exhibit, now effectively silenced the political, social the stories behind it…It’s so important, the about to erupt!” touring across Canada, gold and silver and economic system of the Haida and strength that comes through that.” Newly commissioned pieces in Raven bracelets, deeply-carved feast dishes, many young people were sent to resi- The book features more words from Travelling include an impassioned essay spruce root hats, argillite pipes and silk- dential schools. the artists themselves including poems by Haida Gwaii museum curator Nika screen prints were gathered from muse- Artist Jim Hart also talks of the by Bill Reid and political leader Collison, the story of the repatriation ums around the world. importance of seeing these pieces of the Guujaaw and interviews with Don of Haida ancestors by two key partici- And like the exhibit, Raven Travel- past. His statement, quoted in Raven Yeomans, Isabel Rorick pants and advisors on the show Lucille ling strives to place a myriad of works Travelling, comes from 2002 when sev- Robert Davidson, and Michael Bell and Vince Collison, as well into social and artistic contexts. How eral Haida treasures were repatriated to Nicoll Yahgulanaas. as a look at the evolution of Haida art these works were collected and the role Haida Gwaii. Yahgulanaas was on Haida Gwaii to by scholar Peter Macnair. these pieces of art play in Haida society, “Our people, when they carved these attend clan business and naming cer- Elders, a precious resource on Haida along with the role of the artist today, pieces, they were survivors from the old emonies. He lives in Vancouver, amid Gwaii, provide a new telling of the Haida are themes that swirl throughout the sicknesses that were going around…The concrete and glass, but when he spoke creation story in the Skidegate dialect us- text. carvers that survived that—how they got he was surrounded by cedar. “I see ing an alphabet they have been devel- Giitsxaa, a carver, whose work in together and worked on pieces to help Raven traveling,” he said. “I see him flip- oping at a local language program. silver graces the pages of Raven Travel- record our history, and for us today to look ping out.” By that, he means Raven Travelling is dedicated to the an- ling, and whose grand pole stands front at, to hang on to, to study, to talk about, permeations of Raven are expanding cestors. 1-55365-185-5 and centre on the beach at Qay’llnagaay, because all that knowledge is in there. We everywhere, exporting Haida sensibili- explained to me how important this type look at [a piece], and study it, and talk to ties beyond Haida Gwaii. Heather Ramsay writes from of book is to young artists. “When I each other about it. If we’re lucky, we have Yahgulanaas’ art is ink on paper and Queen Charlotte City.

7 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 CUTTING EDGE TOP THINGS YOU DAVID LEE’S DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT TEN CHAINSAWS ncle Ned doesn’t need CUTTING EDGE another hockey book TECHNOLOGY: about the Original Six, engine power meets the U two-man he can’t smoke anymore, an Swede saw. axe is too dangerous and these days you need a goddam li- cense to go fishing.

So what better Yuletide surprise for an old fart, or even a young one, than, at long last, a book entirely devoted to everything you David Lee wanted to know about chainsaws but never thought to ask. From 600-pounders powered by steam to diesel units to electric chainsaws powered by generators, David Lee has researched them all for Chainsaws: A History (Harbour $49.95), an illus- trated, critical guide to killing trees with metal for profit. Although he’s a jazz aficionado who has just written The Battle of the Five Spot: Ornette Coleman and the New York Jazz Field (Mercury Press $18.95) Lee, a bassist who co-founded the Pender Harbour Jazz Festival, has simultane- IEL (for Industrial Engi- ously compiled the first-ever worldwide neering Ltd.) an employee- history of the chainsaw after moving to 8 owned company in the Sunshine Coast where he had to Burnaby, was one of the maintain a wood supply for his house. world’s leading chainsaw From Andreas Stihl’s experi- manufacturers in 1943-1956, produc- ments in the Black Forest to the rise and ing the world’s first one-man chainsaw fall of Canada’s Pioneer brand, we learn and direct-drive chainsaw, among other the following cutting edge cocktail party innovations. ephemera. ✍ In the 1950s there were hundreds of brands world- Ed Gein, the real-life 9 wide. Now two European murderer (“massacrerer?”) companies, Husqvarna and 1 upon whom the movie The Stihl, have a virtual monopoly. Texas Chainsaw Massacre Husqvarna, which means “house mill” was based, as well as the movies Psycho in Swedish, started as a water mill in the and The Silence of the Lambs, never used Middle Ages, though it didn’t make its a chainsaw as a weapon. first chainsaw until 1959. In the 1950s, Vancouver was a leading producer of chainsaws, this poster advertises two The first chain for sawing models made by Industrial Engineering Limited in Vancouver. Stihl, the other leading 2 wood was patented in chainsaw manufacturer to- 1858. 10 day, was also one of the Marilyn Monroe got Vancouver became a world first, having marketed its The first commercially pro- her start when she was pho- leader in chainsaw manu- first model in 1926, but it had to start duced chainsaw was the 5 tographed for a newspaper 7 facturing during WW II over after its factory was bombed in 3 Sector, invented by A.V. feature on “Women Doing and held that position WWII and did not become prominent Westfelt in Sweden be- War-work” while working on a wartime through the 1950s, but no longer pro- again until 1959. fore the First World War and driven by project using McCulloch chainsaw duces any saws. Chainsaws 1-55017-380-4; Ornette 1551281236 a flexible shaft attached to an outboard parts. motor. “It rips, and cuts, it makes a horrible racket. David Conover, the A chainsaw is a frightening During WW II, Vancou- US army photographer thing. I write not to glorify its ver became known for pro- 6 who discovered Marilyn terrible power but to acknowledge 4 ducing a chainsaw called Monroe, moved to British the “Timberhog.” Powered its place in the most sweeping revolution Columbia soon after and settled on th by a motorcycle engine, it required two Wallace Island near Victoria, where he that technology has wrought in the 20 strong men to operate and could only wrote the bestseller, Once Upon an Is- century—the revolution of individual be run while sitting level. If it was tilted, land. Wallace Island is now a marine empowerment.”— DAVID LEE it stopped. park.

8 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 CHRISTIANITY

The powerful missionary couple of Emma and Thomas Crosby (right side of porch) dominated social life at Port Simpson from 1874 to 1897. Emma Crosby, the north coast’s first schoolmarm, wanted to turn her pupils into Europeans, but at the same time she and her husband supported Aboriginal land claims.

St. Stephen, the first Christian to be killed for his faith, is seen here as a plaster saint in Rome. From “Saints: A Visual EMMA’SEMMA’S Guide.” EMANATIONS

EXHAUSTED AND SICK FOR MUCH OF s the wife of the intrepid West Coast from 1787 to her stay on the coast, Emma 1898, the year the Hawaiian Crosby lost two of her children preacher Thomas Crosby, Islands were annexed to the to diphtheria, managed a Emma Crosby opened the United States. It is based on ar- boarding school for girls and A chival work in British Colum- wrote How the Gospel Came to Crosby Girls’ Home in 1879 in Fort bia, Oregon, California, and Fort Simpson published by the Simpson to ostensibly rescue Aboriginal Hawaii. Methodist Church in Toronto. Among the more notewor- “Emma Crosby was just as girls from liquor and prostitution. There is thy immigrants from Hawaii, convinced as her husband that previously known as the Sand- SAINTS & PAINTS their brand of religion was su- little evidence that her famous husband wich Islands, was William perior to Aboriginal spiritual- was much-concerned by her sacri- Kaulehelehe, the un- A professor emeritus of Germanic Studies at UBC, ity,” says historian Jean ordained Christian missionary Edward Mornin and his wife Lorna Mornin, a Barman, “but she was also fices—or that she expected him to be. sent by his Hawaiian king in former UBC scientist, have co-written a field guide, concerned on the everyday level the 1840s to serve as “Chap- Saints: A Visual Guide (Novalis $24.95), with illustra- for the Tsimshian people’s well-being and, despite bury- lain to the Hawaiians in the Columbia.” His “Owhyhee tions from both ‘high’ and ‘low’ art. Included among ing four of her eight children at Simpson, worked tire- Church” was torn down about 15 years later. the more than 130 popular Catholic saints are St. Brigid, lessly in what she considered to be others’ best Kaulehelehe was an unrealistically pious teacher who who changed bathwater into beer, and St. Olaf, the pa- interests.” was disheartened to discover he was mostly needed to tron of Norway, who vanquished heathendom as a bru- ✍ arbitrate disputes among the Kanakas, many of whom tal conqueror. 2-89507-739-8 Jean Barman’s sixth and seventh titles since 2002 are preferred to work or drink on the Sabbath. In 1862, ✍ Good Intentions Gone Awry: Emma Crosby and the Kaulehelehe came to Fort Victoria where he worked as As everyone knows, dog is god spelled backwards. It Methodist Mission on the Northwest Coast (UBC Press a Hudson’s Bay Company clerk and translator. He was was only a matter of time and dogliness before Northstone $85), co-authored with Jan Hare, and Leaving Para- buried in Ross Bay Cemetery in 1874. expanded its popular series of titles on spirituality (wine, dise: Indigenous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest, “The Hawaiians have repeatedly and daily asked me gardening, mazes and art) to include The Spirituality 1787-1898 (University of Hawaii Press $45 U.S.), co- to see about their trouble of being repeatedly abused of Pets (Northstone $39) by award-winning journalist authored with Bruce McIntyre Watson. by the white people without just cause,” he once wrote. James Taylor, who holds an honorary Doctor of The latter provides an exhaustive directory of indi- Divinity from United College (McGill). 1-896836-81-2 Crosby 0-7748-1270-2; vidual Hawaiian-born pioneers and labourers on the Hawaiians 0-8248-2943-3 continued on page 12

11 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 CHRISTIANITY “Adderson is a superb stylist, and these are classic examples of the storyteller’s art.” – THE VANCOUVER SUN “engaging and enjoyable fter seven-year-old collection of stories” Tabitha is intrigued by A a Bible story, she – GLOBE AND MAIL shares Jesus’ ideas with three best friends. The foursome starts their own non-virtual chat room, a club to discover “one of the best how God enters their lives. That’s the premise for the writers to come out seven stories for and about children and their innate spir- ituality in Adventures of the of this country” God Detectives (Northstone $8.95) by clinical psychologist — QUILL & QUIRE Nancy Reeves and singer- songwriter Linnea Good, illus- trated by Leslie Chevaliér. 1-55145-542-0

Linnea Good is an entertainer who helps individuals and churches express their spirituality through music. Her first book is Adventures of the God Detectives (Northstone).

continued from page 11 Ferguson’s Sing a New Song Lorraine Milton of Kelowna has (Dundurn $35) tells the stories of four worked as a chaplain consultant in the Canadian bishops who embraced un- Spiritual Care Department at the popular causes. Michael Ingham, Hazelden Foundation, an alcohol and Douglas Hambidge, George chemical addiction rehabilitation centre Hills, and David Somerville in Minnesota. Her book, Step by Step separately fought for the rights of Blacks, to Grace: A Spiritual Walk Through the Aboriginals, women, gays and lesbians. Bible and the Twelve Steps (Novalis Ferguson chronicles the impact these $16.95), is a guide to overcoming ad- ground-breaking bishops have had on diction and dysfunctional behaviour by Canadian society, while delving into incorporating principles of the Bible and their personal and spiritual lives. Hers is of Alcoholics Anonymous into treatment not the first summary of the conflicts methods. 2-89507-277-9 between Bishops George Hills and ✍ Edward Cridge on Vancouver Island in With a foreword by The Most Rev- the 1860s and 1870s, but it will be of erend Andrew Hutchison, Pri- special interest to B.C. history buffs. mate of Canada, Julie H. 1-55002-609-7

Nine razor-sharp stories from one of Canada’s most accomplished writers.

Pleased to Meet You Caroline Adderson $24.95 Trade Paperback

The bitter doctrinal disputes between former Hudson’s Bay Company chaplain Bishop Cridge (left) and upper class Bishop Hills, “the very model of an Anglican prelate,” www.thomas-allen.com culminated in an 1874 court case. Chief Justice Sir Matthew Begbie granted an injunction to forbid Cridge from continuing as a Church of England clergyman, whereupon Cridge joined the Reformed Episcopal Church.

12 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 ENVIRONMENT

Super less the second largest fish in the world has long been irration- ally feared and condemned, variously described by B.C. Slaughter newspapers as “grotesquely huge,” “monster of the deep,” f the 1,165 shark-like “menace,” “lazy, good-natured slob,” “sleeping giant,” “salmon fishes of the world, killing monster,” and “curse of only three have been fishermen.” O Wallace and Gisborne have described as “supersharks” by compiled an appendix listing of one of the world’s foremost shark media reports of basking sharks from 1905 to the present, with experts, Leonard Compagno, an emphasis on British Colum- author of the United Nations bia and Washington State. Food and Agriculture Organiza- As suggested by E.L. Bousfield and P.H. tion’s Sharks of the World. These LeBlond in their book are the white shark, the whale Cadborosaurus: Survivor from the Deep, it’s likely that many shark and the basking shark. of the 181 documented sightings of the West Coast Described in 1952 as “the length of “sea monster” known as Caddy, a London bus,” basking sharks have been or Cadborosaurus, between A three-ton basking shark caught off Vancouver Island. Photo from Victoria Colonist, 1955. hunted almost to extinction in B.C. wa- 1881 and 1991, were likely ters because they were long deemed a glimpses of basking sharks. nuisance to the commercial fishing in- on the Columbia, off Estevan Point, in Sound in 1992 but the basking sharks The Department of Fisheries used dustry, mainly by getting entangled in 1791, in Basking Sharks: The Slaugh- have long since disappeared from those cutting blades on their patrol boats in nets. ter of B.C.’s Gentle Giants (New Star waters, as of 1994. Basking sharks were the 1950s and 1960s, particularly the Scott Wallace, a Sustainable $19). also formerly prevalent in Queen Char- Comox Post, to greatly reduce the popu- Fisheries Analyst for the David Suzuki Unlike its razor-toothed relatives, the lotte Sound and Barkley Sound. lation of basking sharks. The lethal blade Foundation, and West Coast mariner seldom-studied basking shark has re- As one of only four species of from the Comox Post can be seen at the Brian Gisborne have written the mained an enigma to most marine bi- the world’s large, filter-feeding Alberni Valley Museum as one of the first history of basking sharks on the West ologists. Long-time Tofino resident Jim “elasmobranches,” the million-plus- public reminders of the placid creatures Coast, starting from their possible sight- Darling and an assistant managed to year-old basking shark maintained its who have been vilified almost out of ex- ing by a member of Robert Gray’s crew identify 27 individuals in Clayoquot girth by feeding on plankton. Nonethe- istence. 1-55420-022-9

REASONS CRAIG DAVIDSON to read fiction

MARILYN BOWERING

JAMES ROBERTSON

SAM BOURNE

STEF PENNEY © Rupert Bassett 7 YASMIN CROWTHER penguin.ca

RANDY BOYAGODA

13 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 PEOPLE HAPPY TRAILSTRAILS OF INTIMATE TRANSFORMATIONS (TO YOU) “There are two types of cowboys: rodeo and ranch,” says Garry Gottfriedson. “Because I am dark, people obviously see I am First Nations; they don’t see me as a cowboy first.”

BY MARK FORSYTHE boy and Indian Her- itage Poems (Rons- “YOU CAN’T JUST COME HERE AND LISTEN.” dale $14.95), which Jeannette Armstrong’s com- has an endorsement mand was unequivocal—if Garry from Joy Harjo: “This Gottfriedson was to participate in is real cowboys and their poetry readings at the En’owkin Indians, not just pre- Centre in Penticton, the province’s lead- tend, making a trail ing school for First Nations writers, he of intimate transfor- needed to contribute more. mation, of fierce Knowing of Gottfriedson’s deep af- questioning.” finity for horses, Armstrong passed along Whiskey Bullets a copy of She Had Some Horses by Joy mostly looks at the Harjo. Twenty years later, Gottfriedson duality of First Na- still remembers the impact of reading tions and cowboy cul- Harjo’s poetry. The imagery intrigued ture, unravelling him immediately. Speaking from his clichés and stere- ranch at Paul Lake, near Kamloops, he otypes. “People think recites some of her lines without prompt- cowboys aren’t artis- PHOTO ing: tic or poetic,” TWIGG “She had some horses who were bod- Gottfriedson chuck- ies of sand. She had some horses who les. “People see them Garry Gottfriedson performed last year at the Shuswap Writers Festival, along with bill bissett (right). were maps drawn of blood. She had as rough, rugged and horses who were skins of water.” unbreakable people. They just look at the motion picture Brokeback Mountain. part of me. I have had so many oppor- Recognizing his potential, Armstrong the spurs and cowboy hat. But lots of “It was a good love story,” he says. “I’m tunities to move to the city but I just can’t took it upon herself to send some of cowboys are songwriters and musicians.” not sure cowboys would be rough lov- leave my horses behind. I just can’t get Gottfriedson’s earliest writing, without The poignant and frequently humor- ers like that. And they should have had rid of my Shuswap culture.” his knowledge, as an application to the ous poems in Whiskey Bullets easily dis- cattle not sheep! I do know a couple of While teaching at the Chief Atahm Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. pel the notion that Indians aren’t real cowboys who are gay, not openly like, School in nearby Chase, Garry “I just started writing and didn’t know cowboys. “Percy Rosette was born in Vancouver. They’re not in the parade, Gottfriedson raises quarter horses for ro- it was poetry,” he says. Much to his on the Gang Ranch, was raised there, out there marching. They’re just regu- deos and he manages his ranch. All of amazement, Gottfriedson was awarded broke all their horses and became the lar guys. I guess it goes back to disman- his brothers, and his father, were pro- a scholarship to work with Beat poet head cow boss,” says Gottfriedson. “He tling of stereotypes.” fessional rodeo cowboys. His father won Allen Ginsberg, post-Beat poet could barely speak English, yet he was a Despite his increasing profile in the the Calgary Stampede Wild Horse Race Anne Waldman and singer-song- cowboy and is still a cowboy. People that literary world, Gottfriedson has never in 1942. writer Marianne Faithful. work at Douglas Ranch are still there, read any of his work to any cowboys “My brother was a world champion “I went there as this very shy bush generation after generation. We are cow- other than his own brothers. “Gus is still in 1963-64 when the U.S. was at the Indian, hair down to my knees and boys. We break and train horses, know a ranch cowboy; he really thinks about peak of racism,” he says. “He was a First braids,” he says. “I didn’t know who how to work cattle. We know the ins and my work and once in a while will come Nations person right in there compet- Ginsberg was. But I didn’t hold them in outs of ranching.” to the house and is very quiet. He’s a ing and a lot of times he was robbed of awe. I think they liked me because I Talk of stereotypes naturally moves to deep thinker, the kind of guy who will points. There were people who would wasn’t following them hang around you never let him win the Calgary Stampede. around.” and then say, ‘You Whereas my Dad could get away with it [excerpt] The once-shy “Indian Tonto and the Lone Ranger know this one line of because he looked white, and the last cowboy” has since read his your poem, it got me name is not a typical First Nations poetry across North Tonto and the Lone Ranger thinking about this name.” America, had his work per- and that.’” The surname is a tad misleading. formed with a symphony were never exposed In Shuswap cul- Gottfriedson’s father was part Danish on CBC radio, taught at on prime time as fantasy in ture, the horse is one and part Okanagan; his mother was of Cariboo College and of the animals closest French and Secwepemc (Shuswap) ex- served as a councilor and America or Canada to humans. “I can’t traction. It is her heritage he identifies consultant for the Kam- go without horses,” with most closely, speaking the language loops Indian Band. but the viewers drooled Gottfriedson says, (as do his grandchildren) and honour- Along the way throbbing electrical currents “they’re so much a ing their ceremonies. 1-55380-043-5 Gottfriedson has published part of my life; if I hallucinating reality tv sold them it would five books, the newest be- Garry Gottfriedson Mark Forsythe of CBC Radio often ing Whiskey Bullets: Cow- be like the death of contributes profiles to BC BookWorld.

15 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 PEOPLE MR. VERSATILE: FROM CHAMPLAIN TO MACGYVER BY JOHN GEARY

aving appeared in more than 130 movies and televi- sion episodes, with roles in X-Files and Smallville, Jerry Wasserman has simultaneously reviewed more than H1,000 plays, mainly for CBC and The Province. In addition, the New York-raised Wasserman, who came to Canada in 1972, has written and lectured exten- sively on American blues music and Ca- nadian theatre while teaching English JERRY WASSERMAN and theatre at UBC. His latest literary project is the 400th —the actor & professor—has edited anniversary edition of arguably the first a version of the first play ever staged North American play, a masque per- formed on the Bay of Fundy by mem- in Canada, 400 years ago. bers of the colony of Port Royal on November 14, 1606, to celebrate the return of Samuel de Champlain me to work on the Canadian side.” from a voyage to Cape Cod. Wasserman in Mob Princess, a TV movie ✍ Spectacle of Empire: Marc In addition to editing books about Lescarbot’s Theatre of Neptune in New Canadian drama and teaching young France (Talonbooks $21.95) includes Canadian acting students, Wasserman the original French script, two modern supports local theatre on his website, translations and an extensive historical www.vancouverplays.com. He started and critical introduction. the site in 2004 when his CBC review- ✍ ing gig ended, and he decided to put Born in Ohio in 1945, Jerry reviews and other theatre information Wasserman is an ardent Canadian na- onto the web. tionalist who set out to study engineer- With Sherrill Grace of UBC’s ing, but was soon waylaid by the arts. English department, Wasserman has also His education stateside, followed by his Wasserman in MacGyver, a TV series co-edited Theatre and AutoBiography: immigration north, has provided him Writing and Performing Lives in with a unique perspective on his own Theory and Practice (Talonbooks Wasserman in Beans Baxter, a TV series secondary trade as an actor. $29.95). As well, his two-volume anthol- “Canadian theatre became profes- ogy Modern Canadian Plays, now in its sional much later,” he says, “whereas clude First Nations ritual performance. 4th edition, has become the standard modern American theatre has much “This is the first scripted play, writ- text in its subject area. deeper historical roots, beginning in the ten and performed on soil that became “I think part of my job is to raise con- early 20th century with people like Canada. In fact, you could argue it was sciousness that Canada has an interest- Eugene O’Neill. Canadian theatre the first North American play. It certainly ing history, maybe even a ‘sexy’ history,” doesn’t seriously begin until about provides a point of reference or origin he says, “one worth knowing about. If 1967.” for Canadian theatre.” you know history, it helps form your Hence Wasserman has edited a col- Reprinted with a version of Ben knowledge about contemporary life.” lection of plays that emanated from Van- Jonson’s The Masque of Blackness Wasserman is currently working on couver’s New Play Centre and he is (1605), a contemporary English impe- a book dealing with how Canadian thea- fascinated by the obscure play that was rial spectacle, Lescarbot’s masque was Wasserman in Young Blades, a TV series tre always struggles with the seductive written and produced by New France also used as a tool to rally the troops, to power of American culture. “It’s almost lawyer, historian and poet Marc get them through a difficult winter. never acted before, Wasserman audi- impossible to avoid comparing yourself Lescarbot. “It’s important for us to understand tioned for, and earned a role in Leave it to a country right beside you with a First performed 400 years ago, that culture has always been a very im- to Jane, a 1930s musical, and toured population ten times bigger,” he says. Lescarbot’s paean to empire “trans- portant tool by which people measure around Europe for two months. He later “But we are getting on with it. In the muted the work of colonialism into spec- the success of their lives and help them- earned his doctoral degree in English. last 20 years, there is a lot less worrying tacle” as a thanksgiving ritual to mark selves get through difficult times,” says Given his experience and connec- about how we measure up than there the safe return of Champlain and Sieur Wasserman. tions, Wasserman could probably write used to be. I think that’s a good thing.” de Poutrincourt from a journey Wasserman’s own involvement with more about American drama, but he’s ✍ in search of a more temperate site for theatre has helped him get through dif- happy focusing on theatre north of the All of which probably won’t interest their colony. ficult times. When he entered univer- border. “There are plenty of people to most Canadians as much as the fact that “We tend to undervalue the accom- sity, he found he could not do physics, advocate for American culture, and I Jerry Wasserman appears with Will plishments of Canadian theatre artists, thus ending his dream of working in the don’t think it needs my help,” he says. Smith in I, Robot. and here is a play that marks, in many NASA program. Around this time, he “But I don’t think there are enough Neptune 0-88922-549-4; AutoBiography 0-88922-540-0 ways, the beginnings of Canadian thea- met and became enamoured with a Canadians who support Canadian cul- tre,” says Wasserman, “[that is] if we ex- woman involved in theatre. Having ture, and it’s much more important for John Geary is a Vancouver freelance writer.

16 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 INTERVIEW

“I never the keepers of the Thunder think of Medicine Pipe bundle that myself as Beverly and I cared for 28 a loner, years. They live in Cranbrook, though near his reserve. Right now that’s she’s busy raising baby daugh- probably ter Natanik, working for her what I husband’s tribe and im- am.” mersed in her cultural duties. —Adolf Hungry Wolf Star was the Sun Dance woman once, over ten years ago, and she was recently the “holy grandmother” for Sun Dance for the sixth time. She ran the woman’s part of the lengthy ritual, initiating the “holy woman” for the Sun Dance. BCBW: And what about Okan, your eldest son? AHW: He was just the “holy person” a few weeks back, for the fifth time, for a Sun Dance on the Blood Reserve. It’s the most traditional and conservative of the four Blackfoot divisions. Okan and his “holy partner” have vowed another Sun Dance for next Adolf Hungry Wolf summer, and he vowed to of Skookumchuck, spend the year in-between riding his Spanish mustangs B.C., with Shadow, through traditional Blackfoot a timberwolf. country, from the Red River KEEPING the DOOR FROM the to the Yellowstone, camping BC BookWorld: Can you pinpoint in his tipi. He normally lives in his great- where the process for The Blackfoot Pa- grandma’s little cabin, without plumbing pers (Good Medicine $300) began? and electricity, on the Blood Reserve. Adolf Hungry Wolf: Right after As we’re talking, he is crossing the high school, in 1962, I was at an estate Rockies with five of his horses, three of auction of an anthropology teacher them packed, from the Blood Reserve to where everybody wanted pottery and our guiding camp which is next to furniture. Nobody bid against me for Waterton National Park. He plans to one box of old photos. There were a few document his journey with a video cam- hundred of them, mostly old scenes of era and he might try to do a book, as well. the Blackfeet, though I didn’t know that My other three kids respect our culture. at the time. There was hardly any info They attend family ceremonies. But so far with the prints. I didn’t know much they are not leaders like those two. about the Blackfeet then. I didn’t have BCBW: You’ve worked all this time with- any plans to join them. How Adolf Hungry Wolf spent out funding, but you must have had some I was making my second photo-his- WOLF support along the way. tory book on railroads. It occurred to AHW: The book designing was done me I might do something similar with 44 years preparing his 4-volume over a two-year period with Diane these “Indian” photos but I never Jefferson and her computer. And I have dreamed it would take me 44 years. I history of the Blackfoot people. had a fantastic relationship with David just figured I’d get as many of the im- Friesen at Friesen Printing in Manitoba. ages identified as possible. By the seven- taken after someone came to a Sun Dance from the Indianology academics? Without him, these books could not ex- ties, I realized it would have to be a very camp, a pow-wow, or whatever. They AHW: I don’t know and I don’t really ist. I gave him every penny I owned in large and well-done book. I’m half Swiss. took some shots, then went back wher- care. My daughter Star says there have cash, which was about one-fifth of the [Laughter] Precision and accuracy are in ever they came from. A handful of these been enough hatchet jobs done over the total cost. David flew me to Winnipeg, the genes! elders are still living. All of them got free years that I could do a book by just re- showed me the plant, put me up. He in- BCBW: Not to mention perseverance. books with their photos and stories. Every plying to them all. But that would be troduced me to everyone there, then said AHW: Absolutely. All through the years time I call them they seem to be brows- boring and useless. The last one was from he believed enough in my project to bring I envisioned one book, but reality made ing, reading, finding more stuff they some German professor. My eldest son it out. He knows my debt-paying from me split it up. Four is our special number, never knew, photos they never saw be- and Star did get me to respond to some doing business together for twenty-some ceremonially. So it became four volumes. fore, and people they remember. of the attacks in an upcoming autobi- years. So that’s it. It’s just Friesen’s and me. And there are 400 numbered limited BCBW: Do you see anybody doing simi- ography, but that’s mostly so my There is no advance announcement, no editions. There are 44 single volumes lar work to what you’re doing? The Ameri- grandkids will get to hear my side of the planned public relations. without numbers, which I’ve been giv- can filmmaker Ken Burns, for instance? story. There were some assassination at- BCBW: Assembling that amount of ma- ing to those who helped most, plus my AHW: I’ve never heard of Ken Burns. tempts back in the seventies, but I don’t terial must have been equally daunting. family. The first three volumes explain I don’t see my work in relation to any- have much dealings with the “Native in- AHW: I felt like the conductor of an or- the tribal history, culture, lore, dancing body else’s. I still don’t take much part tellectuals.” I don’t know what they think chestra. I knew what I wanted, and Diane and ceremonies, etc. The fourth one in many book-related activities, except of me. I don’t care much. I lead a cou- knew how to put my wishes into the com- contains the biographies. It’s the most the Frankfurt Book Fair. And this inter- ple of the most important medicine bun- puter. We got uptight with each other a popular so far. No surprise about that. view. I rarely read books. I never think dle rituals for various traditional families few times, but mostly it just flowed. I did BCBW: What are some of your best dis- of myself as a loner, though that’s prob- within the Blackfoot Confederacy and all the writing on my solar-panel-powered coveries you’ve made over the years? ably what I am. At least in regards to the I do care what those people think. IBook. I would have been crazy not to. AHW: The photos of people I’ve come literary world. BC BookWorld is about BCBW: Some of your kids have started But it’s packed away again. I’m back to to know personally. Photos from the early the only place I can think where I might making books and films. Can you tell me the trusty old typewriter. 1900s. Even the late 1800s in a few cases. feel I belong. about what they’re up to? And where they I’m talking about elders, of course. Al- BCBW: As the proverbial white guy do- live? FURTHER INFORMATION: most always they have never seen these ing Indian stuff, do you get more flak these AHW: Star and her husband, who is a Box 844, Skookumchuck, B.C. V0B 2E0 photos of themselves. They were usually days from First Nations intellectuals or member of the Kootenay tribe, are now www.goodmedicinefoundation.com

19 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 LETTERS

Brother XII’s old safe in a basement in Cedar By The Sea, just north of Nanaimo Cedar safe Upon reading Sheila Munro’s review (BCBW Autumn) of that new novel that imagines the life of Madame Zee, mis- tress to the Brother Twelve, I thought your readers might be interested to see the original safe in which the Brother Twelve [The Brother XII] kept some of the money that he and Madame Zee col- lected from his Aquarian community. Here is a photo of my son (Jesse Matthewman) standing outside the safe in the basement of the Brother Twelve Main House in Cedar by the Sea, just south of Nanaimo, where we live. The old house was built on sandstone bed- rock and is amazingly solid, even today. There have been remarkably few changes to the house since it was built around 1930. We acquired Brother Twelve’s former house in June of 2005. Doug Matthewman Cedar by the Sea, B.C. [An expanded version of John Oliphant’s definitive Brother XII biography has been re-released by Oliphant, with many new photos, but not a picture of this safe.—Ed.] Ireland revisited Though I am semi-re- tired after 40 years with a bookshop, I always enjoy reading B.C. BookWorld. I notice in the John Ireland advertisement on page 8 for Alan Twigg’s new book Thompson’s High- way (BCBW Autumn) there is a refer- ence to William Ireland. Shouldn’t that read Willard Ireland, your province’s great provincial archivist and librarian from 1946 to 1974? And the brother of the fine actor John Ireland (the first Vancouver-born actor nominated for an Academy Award). Just thought you would like to know there are book lovers in the east who read your ads. Hugh Anson-Cartwright Fine Books, Maps & Prints Toronto, Ontario Letters or emails contact: BC BookWorld, 3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 [email protected] Letters may be edited for clarity & length.

20 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 LOOKOUT #26 a forum for & about writers: 3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 • [email protected]

understanding that they were back. I wanted a child of our own. all part of a chain of life. My husband felt he already had a I felt very unhappy for my- family, and indeed he did. I remember self. I wanted in, and for a lot talking to him about the extraordinary of reasons, I was out. No part- measures I would go to, to have a child. ner, bad physical prognosis, de- And he would have to reverse a vasec- manding job which I let tomy. But it wasn’t going to happen. I consume me. Despite my out- was so frustrated and hurt to recognize ward mantle of success, I was this last chance eluding me that I picked sick at heart. And I didn’t deal up a salt cellar and hurled it into a wall. with it very well. Believing I It made a perfect, cellar-like indenta- LOOKOUThad nothing to offer them beyond my tion—a mark of my anger that I refused imagining of motherhood, I withdrew to cover up. from some of my oldest child-bearing I started to work on a relationship 21-NONE SALUTE friends. I was openly jealous of my sis- with my husband’s kids. It took us some ter, a new mom with a different, more time to get used to each other. I knew I Twenty-one non-mothers who are skilled

PHOTO profound relationship with our mom. wasn’t going to step into a mothering role

writers—such as Kate Braid, Maria Coffey, Lorna So I got to be a failure on a number of with them. They had (and have) a per- Crozier, Maggie de Vries, Katherine Gordon, fronts: as a woman, sister and friend. fectly lovely woman who is, in fact, their NETHERCOTT

and — have And for years, I wallowed in it. mother. At first, I thought I would be

Hannah Main-van der Kamp Rita Moir DIANA contributed to Nobody’s Mother: Life Without Kids (Touchwood $19.95), ed- But gradually, the wave of baby-de- lucky if we could be sort-of friends. It was sire receded. a rough couple of years, mostly because ited by Lynne Van Luven (above right). It provides a forum for women Then I got together with the man I tried too hard to do things for them without children to examine their various choices and circumstances. Roughly I would eventually marry. He already and was sickeningly nice. Fortunately, I one in every ten Canadian women is choosing not to have babies. had children: one son in his 20s, a couldn’t keep it up; the more human I Written on Gabriola Island, here is the foreword to Nobody’s Mother by daughter in her mid-teens and a son became, the more we started to commu- CBC radio host Shelagh Rogers. who was 10. I felt The Wave coming nicate. I never, however, felt at all mater- nal—more fraternal than anything. have just turned 50 as I write this. Prolapsed. That was the word. It de- We have all warmed up to each There are a lot of things I feel I am scribed exactly how I felt, as though I other. I can say without reservation Igrasping at last: being comfortable had fallen or slipped out of place, like that I love them and I am grate- in my own skin, beginning to feel oddly my uterus. And just as I was trying to ful to have them in my life. sexy at a time when Germaine Greer says deal with this, all of a sudden almost But I will always won- women become invisible to society. I am every woman I knew was having a der (and now my younger excited about what the next act will bring. baby. I was happy for them. I friends are having babies There’s some mystery to it. But one thing had to be. They seemed fo- and raising children): I know for sure: it will not bring children cused, serene, fulfilled. As have I missed out on I bear myself. And finally, I am happy their worlds became one of the greatest with that. But it has taken a while. smaller, their hearts be- experiences a The first flush of baby-love rose up came larger. Even if they woman can have? in me like a primordial swell when I was were exhausted, they Are mothers hap- in my late 20s. It seemed to arrive over- seemed to glow. And they pier? Or just a night. I felt I was swimming in that lake were swimming in that lake I different kind of where women down through the ages wanted to swim in, where PHOTO

happy? Are they had swum. And I needed to find a mate. women could just more fulfilled?

(It really wasn’t quite that clinical but,KOWAL look at each other More topped-up looking back on it now, I see it as, if not with a deep, shared

JAIME as humans? Maybe an imperative, at least some kind of di- the answers, what- rective.) ever they may be, As so often happens, as soon as I lie ahead in these stopped consciously searching, I found pages. 1-894898-40-0 “the guy.” If I’d had a list at the time, every box would have been checked off. He looked like Gary Cooper, he loved Mozart and Bessie Smith, he was a writer, he played hockey, he was funny (worked on the Harvard Lampoon!). He wrote me a letter a day for years, even when I was in the next room. But it didn’t work out with him. And just as that fact was sinking in, I had days on end when I felt fatigued, nauseated, “The first flush headachey, sick to my stomach, when I had pelvic pain. And then I missed a pe- of baby-love rose riod. I went back to him and said, “Hey, I’m pregnant,” like some film-noir hero- up in me like a ine in a last-ditch attempt to keep her man from slipping away. It didn’t change primordial swell his mind about us. I felt angry and sad and decided not to continue with the when I was in pregnancy. It turned out I wasn’t pregnant at all. my late 20s.” What was growing in there were some —SHELAGH ROGERS advancing cervical cancer cells. I had the surgery and “poof,” they were gone. Af- ter that, it was six-month rounds of (can we talk, sister?!) pap smears and cone bi- opsies. I was told I might not have been the best candidate to have children any- way because I had a severely prolapsed uterus.

21 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • WINTER • 2006 COVER STORY Ivan E. Coyote at the Moderne Burger diner in Vancouver.

At the end of her previous book, Loose Ends, Yukon-raised storyteller, bon vivant and trick- ster Ivan E. Coyote recalled the terrible fire that destroyed the rented East Vancouver house in which she had lived for twelve years. At the outset of Bow Grip, her first novel, Coyote now credits her cousin for saving the contents of Bow Grip by prying the hard drive out of her melted computer. Coyote fans who have been wondering whether she has the staying power for a longer work will be pleased to learn her fried hard drive was worth the rescue. According to our reviewer Grant Shilling, Bow Grip (Arsenal $19.95) “is a heartfelt, amusing page turner—a grimy gem com- plete with cigarettes, loneliness, run-down motels, a les- bian love child, working class characters and a cello.” SEX & THE SINGLE FELLOW’S CELLO

Bow Grip begins in at his garage they come to a Robert Johnson Drumheller, Alberta, crossroads deal. Joey agrees to sell his beater where Joey Cooper is a Volvo in exchange for a beautiful hand- good-hearted, forty-some- made cello. Joey sees the cello as an oppor- thing mechanic and his tunity to make some overdue changes in buddy Mitch Sawyer runs his life—considering his mother keeps in- an Esso. Until recently, Joey sisting he needs a new hobby to get over PHOTO GRANT SHILLING was happily married to the break up. Joey finds it hard to argue Alison and Mitch’s wife with his mother.

Kathleen was a quiet kindergarten teacher. Mitch The car breaks down shortly after Joey SAWCHUK and Joey played hockey together and shared the sells it to James. Joey takes a trip out to the

occasional beer. bus where James lives and makes a dark LAURA But Joey and Mitch share some news; their discovery about the reasons for its pur- wives ran off with each other—and as is the case chase. Then Joey makes another startling in a small town—everybody knows. Mitch now discovery: his wife graduated from college, while I closed the case and walked into Allyson’s of- it. I thought Ally would be pleasantly surprised, my wife was attached to the old stuff. He asked With her gender-bent spends his nights in the bar of the local hotel, la- they were together, and he never knew it. GIRLS WILL BE BOYS: fice. Her desk was still there, a third-hand solid but instead she wouldn’t even let me unload them me if my wife was from the city, because the vin- menting to anyone who will listen about his wife “I had never sat down at Ally’s desk since I gave humour and observations, Ivan E. Coyote has quickly running off with another woman to their “one- it to her, just like she would never have touched oak number I had found for her on our first an- out of the back of my truck. It hadn’t even oc- tage look was all the rage these days in Toronto, bedroom artist’s loft in Calgary.” anything on my workbench in the garage, or transformed herself into one of the most original and niversary. There was still a coffee cup sitting on curred to me that she would prefer Harvest Gold even Calgary now. Then he tried to sell me a Coyote has a great ear for conversation and a opened mail with only my name on it. It was one entertaining writers in Western Canada. the desk’s faded top, the remains of its contents to stainless steel. brand new fridge and stove that was built to look keen understanding for those small moments that of the things about Ally and me that I had always define who we are and offer glimpses of our hu- appreciated, that we still had private spaces and now dried like varnish on its bottom and sides. I ended up sitting through a serious lecture old already, from a catalogue. Ally really laughed manity, moments often punctuated with a dry, lives. The title of her first novel Bow Grip refers to the Bow The cup was orange, Allyson’s favourite colour. about how it was unhealthy for a grown man to when I told her that bit later. Said it was pain- observant sense of humour. “No rules or hassles about it, we just fell into River in Calgary as well as the way her main character, It had lime green and lemon-coloured flowers let his mother make decisions for him, and how fully ironic, didn’t I think? What Ally doesn’t As Joey Cooper sees it: “Mitch Sawyer seems things that way. We were both just naturally pri- to feel that the fact that Kathleen left him for an- vate people. Not like some couples get. Until she a mechanic named Joey, learns to hold a cello bow on it, like from the seventies. I think it used to I was married now and that meant it was my wife’s know is that the old Harvest Gold stove finally other woman is more binge-and-sympathy wor- popped the news to me about her and Kathleen after his wife has left him for another woman. Here fol- belong to my parents. I think we once had the job to tell me what colour the stove was going to kicked the bucket not a week after she split, and thy than if she’d just run off with his brother or Sawyer, of course. That was the first time that her whole set. Ally had probably scooped it from be, not to mention that buying new stuff when now I have a brand spanking new stainless steel the postman, but I guess I don’t really see it that privacy turned itself into a secret.” lows an excerpt: way. My wife of five years has left me, and I pretty With a strong desire to close the door on his Mom and Sarah’s pile of yard sale stuff, when my the old things weren’t broken was exactly what range, right next to the old gold fridge. I still much don’t care who she went with, all I know is failed marriage, and also to return some furniture, hat night I dragged the cello bow with a sweat-worn handle, and a small tin of mom bought the new set from the IKEA in would eventually turn the planet into one big owe Rick Davis free oil changes for a year yet, in that she’s gone, and it’s been about twelve and a Joey hits the road and travels to Calgary where he home and laid it down on the wax. I didn’t take the cello out, just sat for a bit Calgary. Ally loved old stuff. The first real fight toxic landfill, and so on. We ended up cutting a trade for part of the labour from him putting in half months now of looking like she isn’t coming lands at a rundown hotel straight out of a Sam back. Shepard play, populated with mysterious drifters loveseat next to the front win and stared at it. I’d have to get an instruction book we ever had was over the kitchen appliances, deal. I took the new fridge and stove back the the new floor five years ago, and he’s still bitching “Drinking doesn’t seem to help much either, offering sage advice. dow in the living room,where out of the library. I reached over and plucked when we first bought this place. She loved the next day, but we got Rick Davis to come put a about paying good money for a baritone saxo- so mostly I try and just avoid running into Mitch Joey’s eventual meeting with his ex and her new Ally used to lay and read on the thickest string. The body of the cello hummed Harvest Gold fridge and stove set. My mom new hardwood floor in the front room, in place phone collecting dust in the basement because Sawyer. I like the Mohawk gas better anyways, lover produces one more surprise for him, but not higher octane, plus they got the video rental coun- before he finds a cello teacher, a sympathetic Trainy days. I opened the case. Inside, it smelled a cement foundation of a note until I placed my thought they were hideous and had to go. I didn’t of the orange and brown shag that Ally claimed his fucking kid decided to study political science ter right there in the gas station. I’ve been watch- shrink, insight into the furtive James and a new like an attic, or an old suitcase. The wood was deep hand on it. It felt warm, like a living thing. Like it really care either way, they still both worked fine, to love. The guy at the Sears laughed at me when in college instead. Meanwhile, I’m the only di- ing a lot of movies lately.” path for his life. 1-55152-213-6 When James, a stranger who lives in a bus on red-brown and glowing. James or Jim had shined could breathe on its own, if I could figure how to but I let my mom talk me into thinking we needed I showed up again the very next morning to re- vorced guy around these parts who doesn’t have a the edge of town, approaches Joey the mechanic Grant Shilling writes from Cumberland. her up nice for me. There was also a soft rag, a get it started. a new stainless steel set, and that Ally would love turn the new fridge and stove, explaining that built-in ice cube maker. Painfully ironic, you bet.

22 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • WINTER • 2006 23 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • WINTER • 2006 reviews KIDLIT

SHORT LIST

Exit Point by Laura Langston (Orca $9.95)

Fascinated with the concept of “life after death,” Laura Langston has written a novel for reluctant readers, Exit Point, from the perspective of a teenager who is killed by his own drunken driving. Guided in the after- life by Wade, and the spirit of his grand- mother, the remorseful Logan realizes he was meant to save the life of his younger sister Amy, but his life took a wrong turn, literally and figuratively. 1-55143-505-5

Chasing the Moon by Penny Chamberlain (Sono Nis $9.95)

Between 1920 and 1933, the Volstead Act in the United States strictly prohib- ited the production, sales and con- sumption of alcohol in the U.S. Penny Chamberlain’s Chasing the Moon, a juvenile novel about rum running be- tween Victoria and Seattle, includes the most notorious B.C.-based rumrunner, Roy Olmstead, who reput- edly smuggled two hundred cases of Alfred Scow liquor into Seattle daily during the early 1920s until he was caught and con- victed. 1-55039-157-7

Jeremy in the Underworld by Becky Citra (Orca $6.95

Illustration by Darlene Gait In Becky Citra’s Jeremy and the from Secret Of The Dance Enchanted Theater (Orca, 2004), illus- trated by Jessica Milne, the pro- tagonist travelled to Mount Olympus with an orange cat named Aristotle to save Mr. Magnus’ theatre, but Zeus agreed to help only if three riddles could be solved. In the follow-up, THE POTLATCH WATCHER Jeremy in the Underworld, also illus- trated by Milne, Jeremy must travel to Judge Alfred Scow recalls an ‘illegal’ gathering at Kingcome Inlet in 1935 the underworld in order to solve one of the riddles. 1-55143-466-0 Secret of the Dance by Andrea Spalding, pated in the National Film Alfred Scow with illustrations by Darlene Gait (Orca $19.95) FINELY KNIT Board documentary, The Story of WORD PLAY the Coast Salish Knitters. FAMILY Words by Mark Ellis with illustrations by Olsen’s picture book Yetsa’s Ruth Campbell (Oolichan $19.95) ecret of the Dance by Pender Yetsa’s Sweater by Sylvia Olsen Sweater introduces the sensual Islanders Andrea Spalding with illustrations by Joan Larsen (Sono Nis $19.95) art of making the sweaters to ancouver painter Ruth Sand Alfred Scow, and illus- younger readers. Campbell, a graduate trated by Darlene Gait, is a final- aving married a Coast Yetsa, who helps prepare Vof the Emily Carr Col- ist for the Aboriginal Children’s Salish man at age 17 wool for her grandmother, is a lege of Art & Design has illus- Book of the Year. It describes a and moved onto the depiction of Olsen’s own grand- trated Mark Ellis' Words, the story forbidden potlatch at Kingcome H of a reading-challenged child Tsartlip Reserve, Sylvia Olsen daughter, a sixth-generation Inlet in 1935 as witnessed by Al- learned how to make Cowichan knitter. Already proficient at who is helped by a compassion- fred Scow when he was an eight- “Indian” sweaters and operated making Coast Salish blankets, in- ate teacher-librarian. After the year-old boy. a Cowichan sweater shop on the digenous women on Vancouver child says she can't control the Now an elder of the reserve for 16 years. Upon her Island were first encouraged to way words dance around, he Kwakwa’ka’wakw Nations, Scow return to university, she com- make woollen sweaters by 19th helps her learn how to read and is a retired judge who received pleted her Master’s thesis on century Scottish settlers. also write her own stories. "Im- Abby’s Birds illustration by the Order of Canada. Born in Coast Salish knitters and partici- 1-55039-155-0 agining the illustrations for this Sima Elizabeth Shefrin Alert Bay in 1927, Scow sailed story," says Campbell, "I realized Abby’s Birds by Ellen Schwartz with his family from Gilford Is- the characters needed to have (Tradewind $19.95) land to attend the potlatch as a Yetsa learns to fun. In addition, the child memorial for his grandfather. needed to feel like a real girl, so Having already had a bestseller for ’s Tradewind Books It was especially dangerous make Cowichan she became a bit like me. She has Michael Katz with Mr. Belinsky’s Bagels, published in for children to participate in lots of freckles and pets, just as I sweaters. 1997, Ellen Schwartz has con- such events because govern- had when growing up." 0-88982-227-1 cocted another charming cross-cul- ment officials were known to tural story for Katz, this time about a confiscate children found at il- girl named Abby who moves into a legal potlatches and remove HER NAME IS MUD neighbourhood and befriends an eld- them from their families. Mud Girl by Alison Acheson (Coteau $9.95) erly Japanese woman, Mrs. Naka, Told he couldn’t attend, who teaches her the gentle art of Scow sneaked inside to watch lison Acheson’s Mud Girl making origami birds. 1-896580-866 his father dance. Alfred John is the story of Abi Jones, Scow later became the first Abo- A a lonely teenager who riginal in B.C. to graduate from lives with her father in a strange UBC law school and was called house by the Fraser River, bereft to the bar the following year. of cool clothes or a mother. The In 1971, he became the first odd house earns her the name Aboriginal legally-trained in B.C. “Mud Girl.” Things look up dur- to become a provincial court ing the summer before her last judge, serving until 1994. He year of high school when Abi received an honorary doctor of gains a Big Sister, lands a job ILLUSTRATION laws degree from UBC in 1997. cleaning houses and meets LARSEN The anti-potlatch law was re- Jude, a cute guy who has a two- Ellen Schwartz

scinded in 1951. 1-55143-396-6 JOAN year-old son. 1-555050-354-5

25 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 reviews NON-FICTION THE MAN WHO NABBED THE GREY FOX BILL MINER

The Lawman: Adventures of a Frontier viewed some 50 former keeping peace in the Diplomat by Lynne Stonier-Newman policemen for Policing A (Touchwood $19.95) mines. Pioneer Province and heard When the Provincials many of them refer to weren’t busy dealing with hen “gentleman ban- Hussey as a legendary fig- smallpox outbreaks, boot- dit” Bill Miner held up ure. ✫ leggers, opium smugglers, WCPR No. 97 near domestic violence and Kamloops on May 8, Drawing on murders, overt racism 1906, his gang of archival mate- whipped up a volatile en- three netted only $15 rial that in- vironment. “Chinese and for their efforts—be- cludes letters Japanese were to be kept cause they robbed and scrapbooks, not only out of the mines the wrong train. After Stonier- but also out of any work a five-day manhunt, Newman re- undertaken by permission Bill Miner and his two veals how a of the B.C. government,” colleagues were cap- MARK FORSYTHE peacekeeper’s says Stonier-Newman. tured near Douglas job could be “That included all new Lake and brought to Kamloops complicated in the rough railways, roads, logging, in handcuffs. and tumble world of the real estate development As Lynne Stonier-Newman 1890s. New mines, can- and construction.” describes in The Lawman: Adven- neries and logging opera- At age 47, Hussey mar- tures of a Frontier Diplomat, a crea- tions were attracting men ried a young nurse named tive non-fiction history of by the thousands. Nell Good who declared Provincial Police Superintend- When Hussey took she would continue to ent Fred Hussey, the ensuing charge of the Provincials work part-time—some- trial revealed B.C.’s most famous in 1891, there were thing shocking to 19th crook—who spent most of his fewer than 50,000 non- century British sensibili- adult life in prisons—had left natives in B.C. Twenty ties—but Hussey grew to some crucial evidence at the years later the population understand and like it. scene of the crime. had mushroomed to Stonier-Newman imagines Having robbed the wrong 300,000. their lives together in rap- train, Miner managed to leave a The Provincials were idly expanding Victoria leather belt on the tracks near a placed in the busiest re- Frederick S. Hussey was superintendent of the B.C. Provincial Police where their paths crossed parcel of dynamite. Hussey cag- gions to anticipate problems be- for twenty years. He had a reputation as a straight shooter. with the elderly Judge Matthew ily asked the alleged culprits to fore they happened. In Hussey’s Begbie. “identify who owned what from day, laying charges meant you With some prodding from governments. Much of Hussey’s Upon Hussey’s death from a pile of their revolvers, belts weren’t doing your job. Hussey, a modern police act was tenure pre-dated clearly de- cancer at age 59, the Victoria and other effects.” When Miner passed in 1904 and its contents fined party politics and the more Colonist recalled, “He was kind, picked up the belt that had been were distilled in practical stable governments that fol- broad-minded, thoughtful of lying on the tracks at the rob- leather-bound handbooks that lowed. others... always fair, always the bery site, Hussey knew he had were to be carried by Provincials At various times, as the prov- soul of honour and justice, a big his man. at all times. “As the superintend- ince teetered on bankruptcy, kindly, brave, manly man.” Hussey had risen through the ent, Hussey liked orders to have Hussey and his men endured Although the dialogue in The ranks, patrolling on horseback, simple, explicit wording. He post-colonial variations of “re- Lawman can be stilted and char- stage coach, train, paddle- wanted the 1904 Police Act to straint.” At one point policemen acters need more subtlety, it’s a wheeler and sleigh. “He was a be an instruction manual, in- were forced to pay for their own compelling picture of a frontier good listener and honest,” says forming a constable of what was horse’s feed while on duty, re- province feeling its oats. The Stonier-Newman. “There was no expected of him and how he was sulting in a lot of horse sales and Provincials were eventually hint of dipping a hand in any to manage in all circumstances.” demoralized constables. merged with the RCMP in 1950. pot. There was a lot of that ✫ According to Stonier- 1-894898-39-7 around in those days.” Lynne Stonier-Newman lives As a superintendent in Vic- Newman, Hussey preferred to north of Kamloops at Little Fred Hussey had built his toria, Hussey spent much of his be in the field, working with his CBC Almanac host Mark Forsythe Heffley Lake. She was born in reputation as a straight shooter and Greg Dickson are inviting Brit- Quesnel where her father time trying to secure resources Provincials, where he developed who loved a good horse race, Gordon Nicol was the first for his “lads” who were scattered strong relationships with First ish Columbians to contribute to a new especially if he was on the win- BCPP highway patrolman in the around the province. This Nations leaders and showed “re- Almanac book project to recall the im- ning mount. Stonier-Newman Quesnel district from 1939 to meant going toe-to-toe with at- spect and compassion for the portance of the 1858 gold rush. Visit decided to imagine his life for 1941. He later served as mayor torneys-general who were usu- Kootenay miners.” She credits www.cbc.ca/bcalmanac and click on The Lawman after she inter- of Kamloops from 1970 to 1972. ally members of short-lived his superior listening skills for Gold Rush Connection.

27 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 reviews FICTION

It happens all the time: somebody reads one novel from a large publishing house FROM BUD and confidently pronounces TO WORSE it’s the best Canadian novel Grant Buday profiles an unsmooth grow-op operator of the year, a surefire Giller who wishes he could grow apples instead. contender—because they Adam Lewis Schroeder Rootbound by Grant Buday (ECW $26.95) Empress of Asia by Adam Lewis Schroeder happen to have read it. (Raincoast $29.95) The absurdity of such nlike that upbeat single Mom pot-grower in that new TV se- Raised on an apple orchard in Vernon, unresearched statements ries, or the pot-cultivating Brit- UBC creative writing graduate Adam never seems to phase editors, ish Properties matron in Doug- Lewis Schroeder became a teacher of creative writing at Okanagan College in las Coupland’s new comic or the public, who presume Penticton partly on the strength of his novel, Grant Buday’s 50-year-old bankrupt and U first collection of short fiction, Kingdom the reviewer must know his paranoid former building contractor and of Monkeys, nominated for the Danuta Atwood from a hole in the wannabe orchardist-turned-reluctant-pot- Gleed Literary Award. ground. grower in his third novel Rootbound only goes His first novel Empress of Asia from bud to worse. evolved from his curiosity about his We are so awash in hype As if it isn’t hard enough these days with grandfather’s generation and that hyperbole has become Hydro checking everyone’s electricity con- World War II. normal. sumption, poor ol’ Willie LeMat, a down-on-his- At the deathbed of his beloved luck Willie Loman for the entrepreneurial new wife Lily in 1995, the protagonist/ At BC BookWorld we have millennium, gets his first crop filched and he has no narrator Harry Winslow receives the address of Michel Ney, a man seen more than 70 new works economic alternative but to grow another one and re- who had saved his life in World main ever-fearful it, too, will be poached. of fiction published by British War II and was assumed to have His daughter is pregnant by a Burmese monk, his usuri- Columbians this year. We been killed by the Japanese. ous landlord is a conman and his girlfriend paints only self- Travelling to Thailand, he pro- have managed to write about portraits; meanwhile purblind losers like LeMat, trying to ceeds to investigate Michel and only 33 of them. scrape by, are surrounded by real estate speculators making Lily’s fifty-year-old secret, recalling bundles from an Olympics in 2010 that has already gone Grant his own whirlwind courtship with way over budget. All this would be funny if only it wasn’t Buday Lily in bombed-out Singapore dur- all-too-plausible. 1-55022-748-3 ing World War II. 1-55192-987-2 Explore the World www.sfu.ca/wp of Writing and 2007 Publishing.

JANUARY, FEBRUARY AND MARCH COURSES

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28 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 NOW IN PAPERBACK The NATIONAL BESTSELLER and WINNER of the GOVERNOR GENERAL’S AWARD FOR NON-FICTION

Zero Gravity by Sharon English der weapon, but Crowchild believes his (Porcupine’s Quill $22.95) client is innocent. THE Greyeyes’ sister was once raped by the As a follow-up to her first collection of murder victim and two of his companions, linked stories, Uncomfortably Numb (Porcu- circumstantial evidence that encourages pine’s Quill 2002), about adolescence police to simplify the case. LaRue, who from the perspective of a rock-music ob- has written for Aboriginal publications sessed girl and her party-hard friends, such First Nations Drum since the early Sharon English has turned to an older 1980s, was inspired to write Innocent Until Vancouver crowd for Zero Gravity, a collec- GOLDEN Proven Indian after reading a heart- tion in which the female narrator from wrenching letter that describes a rape eastern Canada is initially unsettled by the similar to one that serves as a backdrop to ambiguities of West Coast manners. Eng- the novel. 0-9735840-1-7 lish presents a variety of characters who confront the complexities of urban life Absolute Honour by C.C. Humphreys particular to a place of rapid growth and (McArthur $10.99) high transience, and the paradoxes that A former schoolboy fencing champion SPRUCE come from living on the edge of wilder- ness. Sharon English lived in Vancouver who became a fight choreographer for for six years, enrolling in a Ph.D program actors, C.C. Humphreys lived in London at UBC, before returning to live in To- for 12 years and came to live on the West ronto. 0-88984-2795 Coast in 2006. Absolute Honour is his “rip- roaring” historical novel about a swash- buckling British soldier, Jack Absolute, who leaps from battlefields to bedrooms. Along the way he becomes a spy at the Jacobite Court in Rome and ends up “A powerful fighting the Spanish at Valencia de work that will Alcantra. During his 25 years as an actor, Humphreys played Hamlet and the char- change how acter of Jack Absolute in Sheridan’s The Rivals. His first novel, The French Executioner, many people was shortlisted for the British CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger best thriller award. think about 1-55278-599-8 nature.” Windflower by Nick Bantock and Edoardo Ponti (Chronicle $29.95) —Sebastian Junger Sharon English: Uncomfortably coastal After a combined run of more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists, the six “Griffin & Sabine” novels by artist Innocent Until Proven Indian by Frank LaRue (Vancouver: Totem Pole Books $21) and writer Nick Bantock were revived by Bantock for a romantic drama at the Arts Aboriginal lawyer Jesse Crowchild is a Club Theatre, premiering last October. For 300 years, a mythical golden spruce on the recovering alcoholic dealing with the Simultaneously he has released Queen Charlotte Islands was sacred to the Haida, death of his son and separation from his Windflower, a fanciful, faux Italian tale of wife at the outset of Frank LaRue’s first a strikingly beautiful caravan dancer, Ana, respected by loggers, protected by environ- mystery novel, Innocent Until Proven Indian. who flees an unwanted wedding. The ac- mentalists, and loved by all who saw it. After a realtor is found dead in a Vancou- tion occurs in a timeless, fairy-tale zone ver hotel room, Crowchild discovers his with place names such as Capolan and best defence for the accused Jimmy Serona. Then one man deliberately felled it Greyeyes is to find the perpetrators of the Minus Bantock’s trademark array of as- and mysteriously disappeared. crime. sembled images, but illustrated with Greyeyes had a con- a variegated colour frieze at the frontation with the bottom of each page, the text murdered realtor has been co-credited to only hours before Sophia Loren’s son, he was killed, and Edoardo Ponti, who is writ- JOHN VAILLANT his fingerprints ing a screenplay adapta- are on the mur- tion. 0-8118-4352-1 “[Like] Jon Krakauer and Sebastian Junger, Vaillant deftly peels away the surface story to explore the psychology below ... an intense mystery and a sweeping history ... a terrific read.” —National Post

VINTAGE CANADA “Fascinating ... a gripping wilderness thriller ... Essential reading.” —The Georgia Straight

A TRUE STORY OF MYTH,

Frank LaRue: Holding court MADNESS AND GREED

29 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 reviews FICTION RANKIN INLET FILES

Consumption by Kevin Patterson (Random House, $34.95)

iolence and medical trag- edy unhinge the commu- Vnity of Rankin Inlet in physi- cian Kevin Patterson’s first novel Consumption. A local doctor, Balthazar, from New York, gets to know Victoria, who was evacuated from the north at age ten in the early 1950s for treatment of tubercu- losis. Marooned in a southern sana- tarium, Victoria learned both Cree and English and adapted to store-bought food and southern media, but by the time she moved back to the tundra, she was estranged from the people she knew and their much-altered ways. Feeling oddly trapped by “in- PHOTO ternal exile,” Victoria tries to raise a family but her son wants to

PETERSON emulate the traditional approach - taken by her grandfather. ENRIGHT Her daugh-

BLAISE ters hanker

& for the main- stream pop

PETERSON culture

spawned by BARRY 24-hour sat- ellite TV. Her Kevin Patterson white hus- band Robertson grows distracted by new economic opportunities and her Inuit lover can only bring temporary solace. Once a leg- endary hunter, her father Emo Novelist and poet has restricted himself to staying Marilyn Bowering in Rankin Inlet. lives in Sidney, BC Only disaster can re-unite them. Kevin Patterson lives on AN ALCATRAZ OF Saltspring Island and works at the What It Takes To Be Human by Nanaimo General Hospital as a Marilyn Bowering (Penguin $26) specialist in internal medicine. BY CHERIE THIESSEN “From a writer’s point of view, medicine and health care is the t’s 1941 and Sandy Grey, a THE MIND best imaginable day job,” he university student and air Marilyn Bowering’s What It Takes To Be Human owes says. “You’re surrounded by pa- Icadet, wants to enlist. When some of its origins to the Colquitz Centre for the Criminally thos and get these glimpses into he delivers this news to his par- people’s lives during crisis points.” ents on Vancouver Island, his Insane, a Saanich facility that operated from 1916 to 1954. His previous fiction collection, father becomes enraged and Country of Cold, received the there’s a violent confrontation. essence of night is to hide, the or Shawshank Redemption. But Cooper. Grey is driven to exon- Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Sandy’s parents are religious essence of Pete Cooper is to de- Bowering’s storyline also in- erate Macaulay and to exorcise in 2003 and the first City of Victo- ria Butler Book Prize in 2004. zealots who arrange for their son stroy: He’s a negative force, it’s cludes sea serpents, submarines, his ghost by writing the executed 0-679-31437-7 to be incarcerated in an asylum nothing personal; the hatred improbable sea rescues, implau- man’s story, thereby providing a for the criminally insane where that possesses him is transcen- sible escapes and Grey’s saviour, story within a story. electric shock treatments, lo- dental.” Georgina, an older woman With over a dozen books of botomies and insulin therapy are Almost all the inmates appear whose life has also been savaged poetry, Bowering knows the all practiced in the institute’s normal and the forces keeping by her family. Georgina’s son’s power of words, and as an award- East Wing. them in are abhorrent. Many are book, The Storehouse of Thought winning novelist—in 1998 she In Marilyn Bowering’s novel more like prisoners of war than and Expression, focuses Grey in received the Ethel Wilson fiction What It Takes To Be Human Sandy patients. his writing and in his thinking. prize for Visible Worlds—she Grey is kept in the West Wing A German, a communist, a ✫ knows how to construct plot and where a caring doctor tries to Japanese and Russians all long for What It Takes To Be Human also character. It’s the mark of a mas- get him to revisit the parentally- some word of their families. One relates the tale of Alan Macaulay, ter that when reading this novel, inflicted trauma of his child- young prisoner seems to have a prisoner from forty years be- you’re unlikely to find it cum- hood. Unfortunately his been detained merely due to his fore, who was hanged and bur- bersome or unwieldy unless you attendant, Pete Cooper, is a sexuality. ied at the asylum when it was try to recapture it for others. seething and nasty piece of Evil wardens and misunder- classified as a prison. Macaulay was Sandy Grey is the perfect work, prone to unprovoked at- stood inmates. It sounds a little another innocent who was de- Everyman. You want the story to tacks on his patients. like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest stroyed by a man much like end well but you just don’t see The so-called asylum is an how it can ever happen; when- emotional war zone. Cooper ir- BOWERING BIBLIOGRAPHY: ever hope arises, it seems rationally hates the articulate Cooper is there to glower and and challenging Sandy Grey and What It Takes to Be Human, 2006 • Cat’s Pilgrimage, 2004 • The Alchemy of to hate. But then comes a sur- he’s hell-bent on destroying Happiness, 2003 • Human Bodies, 1999 • Visible Worlds, 1997 • Autobiography, prise dream-like ending that few him. 1996 • Love As It Is, 1993 • Calling All the World, 1989 • To All Appearances A writers would ever attempt. Staring down the barrel of Lady, 1989 • Anyone Can See I Love You, 1987 • Grandfather Was A Soldier, Only a pro could write a book Cooper’s gun, Grey has an 1987 • The Sunday Before Winter, 1984 • Giving Back Diamonds, 1982 • like this and get away with it. Sleeping With Lambs, 1980 • The Visitors Have All Returned, 1979 • epiphany: “Every now and then 0143053876 Illustration from Kevin Many Voices, edited with D. Day, J.J. Douglas, 1977 • The Killing Room, 1977 • we’re given the gift of clarity, Cherie Thiessen is a freelance Patterson’s Consumption One Who Became Lost, 1976 • The Liberation of Newfoundland, 1973 and I have it now. Just as the writer on Pender Island.

31 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 reviews FICTION

“The“The ferry’sferry’s wakewake unspooledunspooled likelike WINDLEY’S aa lengthlength ofof silksilk onon thethe palepale sea.”sea.” ILLUMINATIONS

Home Schooling by Carol Windley ing, the remote private school (Cormorant Books $22.95) founded by Annabel’s father has had to close its doors because t isn’t often I discover a one of its pupils has drowned on writer whose writing is so the property, leaving a shaky fu- Igood I find myself having to ture for the family stranded on go back and read a sentence an isolated island. Annabel’s over again for the sheer pleas- mother, who has given up a ure of the language. promising career as a concert Happily, Nanaimo’s Carol pianist to follow her husband, Windley, whose latest offering, has loved the boy who drowned, Home Schooling, which was short- a gifted musician, a prodigy like listed for the Giller herself, more than she prize, is such a writer. has loved her own When I opened daughters. Meanwhile her book to the first seventeen-year-old page and came across Annabel and her fif- the sentence, “There teen-year-old sister are were white fawn lilies locked in a fierce com- like stars fallen to petition for the atten- earth and bog-or- SHEILA MUNRO tions of a lover they visit chids, also called can- on alternate nights. dle-scent, and stinging nettles, In this story, as in several oth- blameless to look at, leaves limp ers, families are unsatisfactory as flannel, yet caustic and burn- places whose members are un- ing to the touch,” I just had to able to thrive within them, shar- go back and read it again. ing a common space, but living Set in the Pacific Northwest parallel, almost unrelated lives. and Vancouver Island, Windley’s ✫ stories capture the wild beauty The Joy of Life is another story Carol Windley of the coastal landscape, in which marriage and mother- whether its the lush vegetation hood clash with a woman’s artis- was a Giller Prize of “skunk cabbages, bulrushes, tic ambitions. Desiree is a nominee for rotting trees incubating fleshy, painter who attends an artists’ Home Schooling. tumor-like funguses with names retreat in Wales in the 1950s. like Dead Man’s Fingers, Soon she begins having an affair Witches’ Butter, and False with a poet, while leaving her found, she says, but it is rare and When I read these stories, I that allows her to move her sto- Chanterelle,” or the calm of the more conventional friend, Alex, likely to be found in unusual was reminded of those lines ries outward in concentric cir- ocean, “the ferry’s wake un- who wants nothing more than places and unexpected alli- from Emily Dickinson about how cles, to jump from the spooled like a length of silk on the domestic life Desiree es- ances, as families dissolve and sometimes the only way to tell perspective of one character to the pale sea.” chews (as well as wanting reconfigure themselves, impro- the truth is to “tell it slant.” another, to leap around in time More remarkable is the way Desiree’s husband). vising new lives, trying to reclaim Windley is constantly reminding and place, and throw in refer- she serves up the lives of its in- Alex is left to look after some solid ground. us that people’s stories change, ences to painting and poetry habitants, recreating that rest- Desiree’s young daughter, who I think Windley says so much memory is unreliable, identity is without missing a beat. She daz- less West Coast sensibility of has become fixated on her kin- about the way we live now when multi-faceted and elusive, with zles us with all these pyrotech- people who are in transition, dergarten teacher. Children are she describes a remarriage in the each person “made up of innu- nics while quietly honing in on, who are experimenting, who often the casualties here, bear- story Family in Black as a “broken, merable past selves and these with deadly accuracy, some par- attend wellness workshops, or ing the scars of abandonment, patchily reassembled family in selves were hidden and ticular truth about family or loss, establish alternate schools, or but they, too, are resilient the early years of a century no unreachable.” or art or love. leave spouses and children be- enough to forge new attach- one had yet learned to trust or I think that in recognizing Her previous titles are the hind, all in pursuit of some ide- ments. had any reason to trust.” There’s the shifting, unreliable nature award-winning story collection alistic quest for authenticity. She ✫ a leap of faith involved in carry- of experience and “telling it Visible Light and the novel Breath- does this in prose that is Despite their elegiac tone, ing on in such an uncertain slant” Windley is getting to some ing Underwater. 1-896951-91-0 nuanced, precise, graceful and and the themes of loss and dis- world, and yet we do. The peo- larger truths. intelligent. connection, Windley’s stories ple in these stories do make the With this collection she has Sheila Munro writes from ✫ are never bleak. Love can still be best of it. achieved the mastery of form Powell River. The characters in Windley’s stories often find themselves All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online at dealing with the aftermath of ALL THE RAGE www.abcbookworld.com some kind of terrible loss or trag- edy. In What Saffi Knows, a young girl is aware of the awful truth Rage Therapy by Dan Kalla (Tor $29.95) sexual abuse from the twin points of about what has happened to a view of the patient and a psychiatrist boy who has mysteriously disap- s a follow-up to Pandemic and who is appalled by his patient’s be- peared from a nearby field. But Resistance, Dan Kalla’s Rage haviour. “Pooled studies from the past while the search parties keep Therapy is a psychological twenty-five years,” says Kalla, “sug- looking for him, Saffi finds her- A whodunit about the brutal murder of gest that four percent of all therapists self unable to say anything about report having engaged in sexual con- the imprisoned bird boy she has a Seattle psychiatrist who specialized seen in her neighbour’s base- in anger management. A young wid- tact with their patients during the ment. owed psychiatrist named Dr. Joel course of therapy.... The rates of de- For Saffi, telling would make Ashman investigates the fatal beating pression, anger, sexual dysfunction it real, would lend it power, but of his mentor, Stanley Kolberg, as well and suicide are considerably higher if you don’t tell maybe it’s just a as the suicide of a young patient, in such patients compared to those dream, maybe it isn’t real. Here Angela Connor, a year apart. Then a who did not have sexual contact with Windley is exploring the kind of second psychiatrist is murdered. their therapist.” magical thinking all of us are Including a subplot that detours Kalla is an emergency ward physi- capable of when certain truths into the sub-culture of S&M, Rage cian who graduated from UBC. seem unbearable. ✫ Therapy explores doctor/patient Dan Kalla 0-765-31225-5 In the title story, Home School-

33 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 reviews POETRY

With wry allusions to their difference in age, Birney repeat- edly sets her free, to go on after his death: “to warm another with the same love you shone steadfast on me If sometime my shadow flits over the embers it’s just to bless.” In 1973, Wailan Low (left) The volume concludes with was 46 years younger than about fifteen pages of Birney’s Earle Birney. She is now a prose which demonstrate his judge in Ontario and the humour and the contemporary executor of his literary estate. nature of his poetics. He writes, “There’s a curious peace that comes in the intensity of practicing one’s me- tier, an absorption that BRINGING BACK EARLE, annihilates time and place.” In 1966, when most Canadian readers had RESURRECTING DAVID not yet noticed Eclectic, ornery, sometimes vitriolic, both old-fashioned Marshall McLuhan, Birney wrote, “Litera- and inventive, Earle Birney’s poems, now collected anew, ture is all the more alive today because it is span his writing life from 1926 to 1987. changing so rapidly. In fact it’s adjusting to the One Muddy Hand: Early Birney, Edited Editor Sam Solecki Wailan Low who by Sam Solecki (Harbour $18.95) possibility that the has collected an amaz- cared for him later printed page is no ing variety of work. when he was ill and longer the chief arle Birney’s famous While starting out disabled. The se- disseminator of ideas.” poem about the death of as a traditional formal- quence of love poems The prose section E a hiking companion, ist, heavy on Anglo- written to and for Malcolm Lowry and Earle Birney, 1947 includes a long piece “David,” had been published Saxon rhythms, her, many of them on on the composition of twenty years before I first heard Birney, an avid MAIN-VAN her birthdays, are so hesitates to use the word “sweet” HANNAH DER KAMP David, the poem which ends un- it. I can still recall the voice of outdoorsman and intimate it feels like a because it’s been so over-used forgettably like this: Mr. Burt, my Grade 12 English hiker, continually ex- blundering intrusion and ruined by cynics. “I said that he fell straight to the teacher, reading it aloud and perimented with form, shape to read them. The love poems are unaf- ice where they found him, reading it well. and voice. No doubt their spring/win- fected and unpretentious; short And none but the sun and incu- “That day we chanced on the The work of Birney’s friend ter relationship caused a stir but and deceptively slight: rious clouds have lingered skull and the splayed white ribs and fellow poet Al Purdy (also to read these poems now is to “the magic flows Around the marks of that day Of a mountain goat underneath collected by Sam Solecki) is the sense them as a memorial of sur- in the wind that bends on the ledge of the Finger, a cliff-face, caught nearest in comparison. Both prise and gratitude. How genu- the waterlily’s face That day, the last of my youth On a rock. Around were the were unmistakably Canadian ine his love for her was; one to the lips of the wrinkling lake.” and the last of our mountains.” silken feathers of hawks. though that’s hard to define how ✫ And that was the first time I and why. Both were also peripa- Despite more than five dec- knew that a goat could slip.” EARLE BIRNEY SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY: tetic travelers, restless even. Po- ades of literary activity, Earle It remains visceral, the shock ems by Birney flowed from and David and other poems (Ryerson, 1942) Birney, who died eleven years of that poem; its powerful about Mexico, Thailand, Istan- ago while in his nineties, has rhythm and wording as well as Now Is Time (Ryerson, 1945) bul, Japan and Peru. Then he’s been fading in notoriety. the unforgettable narrative in Australia or London or writ- The Strait Of Anian: Selected Poems (Ryerson, 1948) Turvey: A Military Picaresque (M&S 1949; rev. 1976; 1989) Thousands of talented writers about a mountain climbing fa- ing in a tavern by the Hellespont. are coming out of Creative Writ- tality. It is one of the few poems Trial of A City, and Other Verse (Ryerson, 1952) Birney never wrote the same ing programs these days, not to in the Canadian canon that most poem twice. In “The Speech of a Twentieth Century Canadian Poetry (Ryerson, 1953). Ed. by Birney Down the Long Table (M&S, 1955, rev. 1975) mention many more who are readers of this column might Salish Chief,” taken from The Dam- skilled poetry readers and book recognize. The Kootenay Highlander (Four Square, 1960) nation of Vancouver, Birney wrote buyers, yet how many know it was ✫ of Indian baskets and the destruc- Ice, Cod, Bell or Stone (M&S, 1962) Near False Creek Mouth (M&S, 1964) Birney, along with UBC profes- Naturally “David” has been tion of First Nations culture: sor Roy Daniells, who started the included in One Muddy Hand, “Red roots and yellow weeds en- Selected Poems, 1940-1966 (M&S, 1966) Memory No Servant: Poems, 1947-1967 (New Books, 1968) first Writing Workshop in the only Birney collection cur- twined themselves Canada, forty years ago, at UBC? rently in print, but this is a sur- The Poems of Earle Birney (New Canadian Library, M&S, 1969) Within our women’s hands, As it matured into the country’s prising book. Along with David, coiled to those baskets darting Rag and Bone Shop (M&S, 1971) The Bear on the Delhi Road (Chatto & Windus, 1973) first Creative Writing Depart- one might expect mostly worn- With the grey wave’s pattern, or ment, Birney was its first head. out or sentimental work from an The Collected Poems of Earle Birney (M&S, 1975) the wings Since then his influence on academic born more than a hun- Of dragonflies, you keep in your The Rugging And The Moving Times (Black Moss, 1976) The Damnation of Vancouver (M&S, 1977) writers in this province, and in dred years ago but his moder- great cities now this country, cannot be over- nity and energy astound. Within glass boxes. Now they are Ghost in The Wheels: Selected Poems (M&S, 1977) stated. 1-555017-370-7 There are poems with eco- art, white man’s taboo Fall By Fury & Other Makings (M&S, 1978) Copernican Fix (ECW, 1985) logical insight, others with a pas- But once they held sweet water…” Every day Hannah Main-van sion for indigenous cultures, as ✫ Last Makings (M&S, 1991) der Kamp writes poetry and well as sensitive and delicate One Muddy Hand (Harbour, 2006). Edited by Sam Solecki Birney’s last great love was a swims in the ocean. love poems. much younger woman named

35 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 WHO’S WHO

Angie Abdou by the Elk Valley River, near Fernie.

is for Abdou is for Davidson

She didn’t get nominated for the After her ten-year stint as director of Giller Prize and she didn’t get invited to the Festival of the Written Arts at Sechelt, the fancy-pants festivals (the ones where Gail Bull is passing the torch to Jane publishers are often required to cough Davidson of Roberts Creek, formerly up dough in return for having their au- the General Manager of the Vancouver thors selected), but Angie Abdou of International Writers Festival for six years. Fernie has made an extraordinary liter- Davidson has also been coordinator of ary debut with her collection of stories, the Raven’s Cry Anything Boys Can Do ($18.95 This- Management So- tledown). ciety, assistant to The atypical title story describes a the curator at the woman watching her young nephew Charles H. Scott compete in a brutal championship wres- Gallery and Com- tling match, almost losing his eye. More pany Manager of frequently, Abdou describes young the Charlottetown women exploring beyond traditional Jane Davidson Festival. limitations, including monogamy. A fa- ther introduces his daughter to a golf- ing buddy. “This is my daughter. She’s a Lenny Buddhist. This week.” Breau is for Edney Overall, there’s an alluring combina- Decline plastic bags. Don’t overfill tion of tomboy-ish bravado and sophisti- Like father, like son: Winnipeg guitar wizard Lenny Breau and his father both died in penury. cated humour. “Why is it that nobody in your kettle. Register on-line as an organ GAP World ever gets a cold sore?” But donor. Recycle your old computer. Give walked the face of the earth” by Chet there’s more to Abdou than brisk asides blood. There are thousands of small ways Atkins, the drug-doomed multi-styl- and clever dialogue. In Bruised Apples, a you can improve the planet; Paul ist Breau is the subject of Ron childless and uninspired academic leaves is for Crane Edney has spearheaded a Canadian Forbes-Roberts’ unusually com- home to work in a friend’s orchard and edition of Change the World for Ten prehensive biography One Long Tune Dede Crane’s young adult novel, to collect her thoughts, only to conclude Bucks (New Society $10) to encourage (Scholarly Book Services $18.95). The 25 Pains of Kennedy Baines her marriage is worth saving. 1-897235-12-7 fifty ways to make a difference.1-55092-300-5 With information gleaned from more (Raincoast $11.95), features a 15-year- than 200 interviews, conversations with old protagonist who has an annoying sis- the guitarist’s mother, and exhaustive re- ter, a disappointing boyfriend, is for Breau search in television and radio archives, irresponsible friends and a mother who is for Fifth Fest the Vancouver-based music journalist might be having an affair. Kennedy takes Known and idolized by Guess Who and classical guitarist Forbes-Roberts has comfort from reading Pride and Prejudice The mainly B.C.-based line-up for guitarist Randy Bachman when he done a great service to Canadian music while making a list of her 25 main “pains” Michael Elcock’s fifth annual grew up in Winnipeg, Lenny Breau history by generating a lasting print in life. An equivalent character to Jane Sidney Christmas Writers’ Festival, No- died at age 43 in 1984. His body was monument to Breau’s brilliant but tragi- Austen’s Mr. Darcy arrives in the form vember 24-26, includes Michael Turner, found in a rooftop swimming pool in Los cally truncated career. Like his father of a handsome and sexually active 18- Richard van Kamp, Kate Braid, Andrea Angeles, allegedly murdered. Once before him, the Winnipeg guitar wizard year-old from England who visits as the MacPherson, Brian Payton, Roo Borson, dubbed “the greatest guitarist who ever Lenny Breau died in penury. 1-57441-230-2 son of her mother’s friend. 1-55192-979-1 continued on next page

37 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 WHO’SWHO

continued from belonged to the previous page late Jack Rock- Maggie de Vries, indale, one of Robert Hilles, the Hollyburn Stephen Hume, oldtimers who Pat Carney, Ian built about 150 Haysom, Bill cabins on the Wolferstan, Jack mountain. Whyte, Sally Ire- Michael Elcock Hooper has re- Jacqueline Hooper land, Amanda Hale and Lynne Bowen. corded many of the Hollyburn cabins See www.christmaswritersfestival.ca in pastels, selling them to the owners, keeping them in her files, or donating them to the West Vancouver Archives. “Each cabin is photogenic,” she says, is for Griffiths “usually log-built with cedar shake roof and a signature wood pile ready for the G.J. “Bus” Griffiths, author chilly winters.” of the illustrated novel Now You’re Log- Hooper studied at the Vancouver ging (Harbour 1978), died in Courtenay School of Art and has exhibited her work on September 25, 2006 after a lengthy since 1972. 0-9780741-0-6 TRANSMONTANUS 15 illness. Born in Moose Jaw and raised in Clam Gardens Vancouver, he went to live in Fanny Bay Aboriginal Mariculture on Canada’s West Coast in 1944 from Port Coquitlam where he had been logging on Burke Mountain. is for Iona by Judith Williams Griffiths worked for decades in the logging industry, primarily as a faller. Find it here Lieutenant Governor Iona After an editor at BC Lumberman maga- Campagnolo attended the Fort St. zine encouraged him to submit comic James Bicentennial Homecoming Week- People’s Co-op Bookstore strips about logging, his wife Margaret Magpie Magazine Gallery end in August to help launch a new pub- encouraged him to continue drawing, lic library and the re-issue of the Duthie Books usually working first in pencil, then in remarkable journal kept by American- Blackberry Books India ink. Often referred to as a West born fur trader Daniel Williams Salt Spring Books Coast classic, Now You’re Logging is his Harmon. Crown Publications comic strip-styled novel about two young The softcover edition called Harmon’s Abraxas Books men, Al Richards and Red Harris, who Journal 1800-1819 (Touchwood Marnie’s Books learn truck-logging in the 1930s from a $19.95) has been augmented by a tough camp boss. deluxe, collectors’ edition available from Published by New Star Books Griffiths also illustrated a children’s Harmon’s great-great-great-grandson, book, Patrick and the Backhoe, and Bush Graham Ross of Saanich, who Poems by Peter Trower, made arrangements with the daughter who used to read of W.K. Lamb to republish the hard- est.1945 Griffiths’ comic strips cover and softcover editions using the th when he was growing 24 Annual version edited by W.K. Lamb, and add- up on the ing an introduction by Jennifer Lieutenant Sunshine Brown. Coast. For more info, see Harmon en- Governor’s try at www.abcbookworld.com Award 1-894898-44-3 for historical writing of non-fiction books published in 2006 by is for Jiwa authors of B.C. history. For Margin of Terror: A Reporter’s (reprints not eligible) Twenty-Year Odyssey Covering the Tragedies of the Air India Bombing Entry deadline: December 31, 2006 (Key Porter $24.95), Province reporter Contact: B.C. Historical Federation Salim Jiwa partnered with c/o Barb Hynek 1391 Commercial Drive Donald J. Hauka to update [email protected] or 604-535-9090 Vancouver BC V5L 3X5 Jiwa’s 1985 book about the two Air (604) 253-6442 India bombings with new infor- mation on the 20-year Air India investigation and the 19-month trial that resulted in a verdict of PHOTO FIRST NATIONS not guilty for the ac-

JAMES Bus Griffiths (1913-2006) BOOKS cused in 2005. RICK In late April, Prime Minister Stephen Harper an- Rare and out-of-print nounced a new public probe into the titles on the is for Hooper Air India bombings. 1-55263-772-7

Aboriginal peoples of Born in 1927, Jacqueline Western Canada Hooper (Hugo), as coordinator of the Brock House Hikers in Vancouver, has is for Kogawa self-published Hiking in Colour ($18), a slim collection of 67 pastel paintings Prior to renovations that will turn the and explanatory text to depict and de- former Kogawa family residence in the David Ellis, Bookseller scribe some of her favourite hiking lo- Marpole neighborhood of Vancouver cales around the Lower Mainland, such into a writers’ retreat, an Open House [email protected] as Hollyburn Mountain, Belcarra Park, was held on September 17 to celebrate Stawamus Chief, Lynn Creek, Mt. the purchase and preservation of Joy th Vancouver 604-222-8394 Strachan and St. Mark’s Summit. It Kogawa House at 1450 West 64 by opens with an image of the cabin that The Land Conservancy. The organiza-

38 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 
   tion purchased the property aided by donations from 550 individuals. Best known for her novel about the intern- is for Olfman ment of Japanese Canadians during World War II, Obasan, Joy Kogawa Co-edited by psychology professor was in attendance for the celebration. Dr. Sharna Olfman, with a fore- Info: www.conservancy.bc.ca word by the Dalai Lama, folksinger Raffi’s Child Honoring: How To Turn This World Around (Praeger $29.95 U.S.) is a multi-faceted overview is for Leier with a chapter entitled Honoring Chil- dren in Dishonorable Times. It notes that SFU historian Mark Leier has ex- Sweden and Norway ban television mar- amined the life and ideas of “anarchism’s keting to children under the age of 12, first major thinker” in the biography the province of Quebec bans market- O     P Bakunin: The Creative Passion (St. ing to children under age 13 and Greece      Martin's Press $25.95 U.S.) “After 9/ prohibits ads for toys on television be- 11,” Leier says, “[Mikhail] Bakunin
      
    tween 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. 0-275-98981-X was explicitly singled out as the original          theorist of terrorist violence by all kinds               of pundits and analysts. It was pretty     ! R          clear that they didn't understand anar- is for Porter       #    !  chism or Bakunin, and so the book be-   $  $   ! came a project to set the record straight.” Pamela Porter of Sidney has            won the $20,000 TD Canadian Chil- 0-312-30538-9           dren’s Literature Award for The Crazy       
 Man (Groundwood), her free verse jun-        ior novel about a Saskatchewan family is for Moriyama in 1965. After Emaline is injured in an     ! R              Born in Vancouver and interned dur- accident with a tractor driven by her fa- ing World War II, Toronto-based archi- ther, he leaves Emaline and her mother O          to fend for themselves. To the disap- tect Raymond Moriyama of the           P firm Moriyama & Teshima Architects proval of neighbours, Emaline’s mother N&
  

  designed the National Museum of Saudi hires Angus, a friendly, red-haired giant Arabia, Ottawa’s City Hall, the Ontario from the local mental hospital, who helps
"(($sˆyyƒhtrp‚y‚ ƒyh‡r†0U hih vU rryvr7‚‚x† '($%%%!&( Science Centre and the new Canadian Emaline overcome her despair. 6‰hvyhiyr)HCvy€‚"('%8rqh Cvyy8 ‚††S‚hqWvp‡‚ vh78W'Q!I& War Museum. With a foreword by
  ##        Adrienne Clarkson, is for Quail his account of conceiving Penticton Band member Denise and building Lecoy, provincial coordinator for the the museum BC Ministry of Health Service’s Aborigi- is the basis nal Tobacco Strategy “Honouring our for In Search Health,” has supplied the text for Look- of a Soul ing After Me (Theytus $12.95), the (D&M story of a baby quail who learns the im- $45). portance of laughing, crying, anger, Raymond Moriyama 1-55365-207-X hurt, happiness, standing up for oneself, fear, trust and love. 1-894778-29-4 is for Nancy is for Rowe After decades in a windowless down- town warehouse where she became the When he retired to New Denver in province’s leading distributor of inde- 1990, Stan Rowe, son of a United pendent titles, Nancy Wise of Church minister, promptly got himself Kelowna has relocated to fancy new digs. arrested in anti-logging protests in New The new address for her Sandhill Dis- Denver’s watershed. A conscientious tributing is Unit #4-3308 Appaloosa, objector during WW II, Rowe had Millcreek Park, Kelowna, BC V1V 2G9 continued on next page

Advertise here & reach 100,000 readers. BC BOOKWORLD Just call 604-736-4011 to advertise in BC BookWorld or email [email protected]

39 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 WHO’SWHO

continued from p.39 the twentieth century. wound up teach- Revelstoke-born and raised, Grauer ing high school to is for Tafler is for Williams later moved to Kamloops, the town Japanese children where Miner was brought to justice af- in the internment A former Monday editor in Victoria, Since 1989, Judith Williams ter a botched robbery. Visit camp in New Sid Tafler has caught the self-pub- has travelled along the West Coast in her www.billminer.ca for details. 0-9739980-1-6 Denver before he lishing bug with Us and Them (Net two boats, Tetacus and Adriatic Sea, lead- proceeded to be- B.C. Pub. Ltd. $23.95), a memoir about ing to Clam Garden (New Star $19), Stan Rowe come one of his Jewish family roots in Montreal. Tafler an examination of Aboriginal Canada’s foremost ecologists. When will participate in the 22nd annual Jew- mariculture that was informed by is for Yoga Rowe died at age 85 on April 6, 2004, ish Book Festival in Vancouver, Nov. 18- Klahoose elder Elizabeth Henry’s flags at the University of Saskatchewan 23, along with several dozen Jewish descriptions of the clam terraces at Yoga teacher, Ayurvedic cooking in- in Saskatoon were lowered to half-mast. authors, including Jonathan Waiatt Bay on Quadra Island. Williams structor, and co-founder of a Vancou- Rowe’s posthumous collection of essays, Safran Foer, who will deliver the has looked at clam gardens in the ver-based clothing company called Earth Alive: Essays on Ecology (NeWest opening night Cherie Smith Memorial Broughton Archipelago, Waiatt Bay and lululemon athletica, Amrita Sondhi $24.95), edited by Don Kerr, brings Lecture. Foer’s novel Everything is Illu- Gorge Harbour on Cortes Island to chal- has produced a collection of contempo- together Rowe’s writing from the last minated received the National Jewish lenge the notion that pre-contact Abo- rary vegetarian recipes derived from the twenty-odd years. 1-897126-03-4 Book Award and the Guardian First riginals on the coast were exclusively holistic healing traditions of India in gen- Book Award. His new bestseller is Ex- hunter-gatherers. 1-55420-023-7 eral, and yoga in particular, The Mod- tremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Info: ern Ayurvedic is for Shardlow www.jccgv.com Us & Them: 0-9781017-0-7 Cookbook (Ar- is for Xtraordinary senal $24.95). Wildlife biologist Tom 1-55152-204-7 Shardlow’s research on wild salmon is for You has taken him down many isolated riv- Easily one of the most remarkable ers and to remote bush camps near the You can subscribe to BC BookWorld titles from and about British Colum- Yukon where his affinity for the wilder- by sending $12.72 to 3516 West 13th bia this year, Peter Grauer’s self- ness has also spawned a fascination with Avenue, Vancouver, BC. V6R 2S3. published Interred With Their Peter Grauer David Thompson. Creating bed- Bones, Bill Miner in Canada, 1903- time stories for his two daughters in- 1907 (Partners in Publishing spired Shardlow’s first children’s book, $35 plus $10 shipping) Mapping the Wilderness: The Story of is for Vancouver is a 600-pager that ex- David Thompson (Napoleon $18.95), haustively documents and a condensed biography, David For the second time in the history of and investigates the Thompson, A Trail by Stars (XYZ the City of Vancouver Book Award, the four years that the $17.95), that incorporates some of judges couldn’t make up their minds— chronically inept Thompson’s own writing. Bicentennial the prize has been split between Jean “gentleman bandit” events and books will celebrate Barman for Stanley Park Secrets (Har- Bill Miner spent in Thompson’s arrival in B.C. in 1807. bour) and James Delgado for Wa- British Columbia dur- Mapping 0-929141-85-7; Stars 1-894852-18-4 terfront (SA&D). ing the first decade of

! "# " $%$&'      ! " () * + 2.&        2  / 2      * / /@ * /( "In her 80th year, Ruth Howard has pub- )+ 2(=+/() lished Crabby Crab (Trafford $9.99), a +/(8 >(< < very pleasing children's book, illustrated ) (< )() </R) by Helen Downing Hunter, about a shore     92  %"! " crab that gets trapped in a red sand bucket 2CC   !" #"$ belonging to two children digging on the   */  beach. Taken home for show 'n' tell, the  2  D P      *,    Q crabby crab is then replaced in the ocean. 7)*8@:96&A:&$#9:9. Ruth Howard worked in fisheries research O  and continued her appreciation of marine         life from a cottage at Hopkins Landing.”        /0 —abcbookworld.com !
 "  # $ !   %&' 1(+ (22 N45& 66 7)*8#9$#5:9$5$&9;


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40 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006 Dragonfly attends Vancouver Folk Festival, 2006.

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Delta School District - Queen of Coquitlam Goldrush Books - Richmond - Greenwood - Logan Lake - Princeton - Cowichan Station Bean Around the - Queen of Cowichan Gold Book Books - Saanich - Hazelton - Lytton - Revelstoke - Cumberland World 33 outlets - Queen of Esquimalt The Good Life Books - Surrey #1 - Houston - McLeese Lake - Rutland - Crofton Big News - Queen of Nanaimo Hager Books - Surrey #2 - Hudson’s Hope - Merritt - Salmon Arm - Discovery BC Teachers North Van School Libraries - Queen of New Westminster Hermit Books - Vernon - Inonoaklin Valley - Narcosli - Seymour Arm - Drinkwater Federation - Queen of the North Interior Stationery - Westbank - Invermere - Nazko - Sicamous - Duncan Elem Blenz 41 outlets - Queen of Oak Bay Isabel Creek Store - White Rock - Kaslo - North Kamloops - Silver Creek - Elsie Miles Calhouns - Queen of Saanich Ivy’s Book Shop - Williams Lake - Kimberley - 100 Mile House - Summerland - Frances Kelsey Capers Vancouver Secondaries - Queen of Surrey K&K Books SFU Bookstore - Kitimat - Quesnel - Trout Creek - George Bonner Choices Market - Queen of Vancouver Katrina’s Books (2 locations) - Lions Bay - Riske Creek - Vernon - Gold River MacFalafel 18 outlets - Queen of Vancouver Island Kwantlen College Sooke Regional Museum - McBride - Roe-Sheridan - Westbank - Holberg Cranbrook School - Pacificat Discovery - Langley Sorensen Books - Midway - Savona - Winfield - Honeymoon Bay Dist. Vancouver Elementaries - Pacificat Explorer - Newton Starfish Studio - Moyie - Spences Bridge - South Bookmobile - Hornby Island Daystar Market - Spirit of British Columbia - Richmond Garden Bookstore - Nakusp - Strathnaver - North Bookmobile - Khowhemun Empire Magazines 89 outlets Cadboro Bay Books - Surrey Talisman Books - Nelson - Tatla Lake - Headquarters - Koksilah Federation of BC Carson’s Books L.J. Bookstand Tanner’s Books - New Denver - Tillicom Richmond - Ladysmith Writers Caryall Books Langara College Bookstore Tanglewood Books - Pemberton - Wells - Brighouse - Lake Cowichan Festival of the Written Chapters/Indigo/Coles Langara Journalism Talewind Books - Pender Harbour - Williams Lake - Seafair - Manson’s Landing Arts - Abbotsford (Sevenoaks) Laughing Oyster Books 32 Books - Pender Island Coquitlam - Shellmont - Maple Bay Fifth Ave Cinema - Burnaby (Brentwood Mall) Looking Glass Books UBC Bookstore - Pouce Coupe - Lincoln - Steveston - Masset Flag’s Pizza - Burnaby (Lougheed Mall) Lotus Books UVic Bookstore - Powell River - Poirier Port Moody - Mill Bay Green Room - Burnaby (Metrotown Centre) Macleod’s Books Univ. College - Prince George Fraser Valley Surrey - Mt. Brenton Great Pacific News - Chilliwack (Cottonwood Cnr) Malaspina College Books of Fraser Valley - Prince Rupert - Abbotsford - Cloverdale - Mt. Prevost Grounds for Coffee - Coquitlam Marika’s Books - Abbotsford - Riondel - Aggasiz - Fleetwood - Nanaimo Haig-Brown House DISTRIBUTIONDISTRIBUTION The staff of BC BookWorld looks forward to serving you in 2007.

43 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2006