YOUR FREE GUIDE TO BOOKS & AUTHORS G.G. WINNER DARREL McLEOD A Cree coming of age • 26 LILY CHOW Chinese families BC remembered • 13 BOOKWORLD

VOL. 33 • NO. 1 • Spring 2019

EJEJ HUGHESHUGHES TheThe 22 millionmillion dollardollar manman •• 2222 LAURALAURA JAMIESONJAMIESON TheThe lastlast suffragistsuffragist standingstanding •• 2727 JILLIAN ROBERTS MIKEMIKE McCARDELLMcCARDELL ShoelacesShoelaces && bestsellersbestsellers areare hardhard •• 3131 HELENHELEN WILKESWILKES HOWHOW OUROUR EldersElders areare changingchanging KIDSKIDS CANCAN thethe worldworld •• 2424 Through adversity p.8 to the stars. AVOIDAVOID INTERNETINTERNET PERILPERIL Our allegiance remains with you, the general reader.

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2 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 AROUNDBC Salt Spring Island ▼ rowing up on the Toronto Islands, Jana Roerick Gbaked pies, cookies, squares and muffins every Friday with her mother that they peddled the follow- ing afternoon on Ward Island from a bike and cart. They always sold out. Roerick became a pastry chef and eventually moved to Salt Spring Island after ten years at her first husband’s homeland of Tobago. She soon opened Jana’s Bake Shop and developed a loyal following. Now remarried, Roerick has pub- lished The Little Island Bake Shop: Heirloom Recipes Made for Sharing (Figure 1 $34.99) high- lighting her mother’s recipes and local ingredients like berries, pumpkins, vegetables, herbs, heritage variety apples and—believe it or not—bananas. “The Caribbean still flavours my baking to this day,” PHOTO she says, “you’ll taste it in my lamb patties and ACKEN 978177327-063-0

my famous, rum-soaked fruitcake.” DL

From Toronto Islands to Gulf Islands: Jana Roerick

PHOTO Nanaimo ▼ ▼ POOLE arly Nanaimo, we learn from Jean Barman’s ERIK Annie Bourret EIroquois in the West (McGill-Queen’s $29.95), Ashcroft was largely built by Iroquois. With ancestral roots in Eastern Canada and the United States, Iroquois shcroft-based translator and former Radio-Canada contributor peoples began moving in significant numbers to the Annie Bourret is the debut author for a new French language A West two centuries ago. Barman follows four groups publishing house in B.C., Les Éditions de l’Épaulard. Dedicated to including a band settling in Montana, and others serious topics, it’s the brainchild of UBC’s André Lamontagne, and opting for B.C. and the . Her UVic’s Réal Roy. Bourret’s Pour l’humour du français ($27.95) is a sources were descendants’ recollections, fur-trade series of 80 short, lively essays that were first published as syndicated and government records and other travellers’ columns in Franco-Canadian newspapers or aired by Radio-Canada. accounts. One of the stories describes a young In a resolutely humoristic fashion, Bourret highlights the richness Iroquois who leaves his home village of Caugh- and diversity of French spoken here and elsewhere. Readers will dis- nawaga in the late 1840s and arrives in Nanaimo cover the origins of numerous words and phrases, unusual detours of in 1852 just as it is being constructed to house grammar, the hate-love relationship of English and Canadian French emigrating English coal miners. 978-0-7735-5625-6 and the pitfalls of French in a minority setting. 978-2-924957-00-4

Oliver able to rise above the ridiculous boy- to name his first child after BoSox ▼ cotting of his most recent memoir/ slugger Ted Williams is the new novel No One (ECW Press) by the poster boy for a VGH Foundation aised main- New Orthodoxy staff at ECW who re- fundraising campaign. A lifelong ly in Oliver in fused to do promotional work for it. baseball fan and player, Bowering the , With a new partner, Jean Baird— likes to say he’s now into extra in- where his fa- who he married in 2006 at the Sylvia nings. ther was a high Hotel—Bowering has put an appar- Assiduously even-handed, to the school teacher, ently unhappy first marriage behind point of being dispassionate about RGeorge Bowering was a smart aleck him and is still producing several Bowering’s writing, former Vancou- who yearned for notoriety from the titles per year, seemingly in a race ver Sun book page editor Rebecca get-go. “At five,” writes biographer to catch up to George Woodcock for Wigod spent seven years combing Rebecca Wigod in He Speaks Vol- the title of B.C.’s most prolific author. through an enormous paper trail umes (Talonbooks $24.95), “George Bowering became newsworthy that Mr. Prolific has laid, having fleetingly wondered if he could be again in 2005 when he crumpled to planned to be famous throughout the second coming of Christ he’d the sidewalk on his way to the West his life. It is evident from this wel- heard about.” Point Grey library in . come, thorough and astute biog- As the loudest and most prolific Given CPR for cardiac arrest, he raphy that Wigod has been more of the TISH poetry clan from UBC, remained in a coma, at death’s door, intrigued by Bowering’s difficult Bowering has since secured his for more than a week. “He recovered personality than by his prodigious place in literary posterity by becom- more quickly and better than is ex- output. Or, as the biography deftly ing Canada’s first Parliamentary puts it: “Something about his man- pected of seventy-nine-year-olds.” This inspirational poster of George Bowering Poet Laureate in 2002. His position writes Baird. (at the UBC Hospital) helps to raise research ner of self-presentation piqued her in Canlit is so indentured the he is Now the man who once hoped funds for treatment of heart and lung ailments. interest.” 978-1-77201-206-4

3 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 BC TOP AROUNDBC

SELLERS Having published a new biography of Eliza Hamilton, wife of Alexander Hamilton, Shelley Adams wine grower Tilar J. Mazzeo relaxes with Saanichton ▼ Whitewater Cooks: her husband Robert Miles. More Beautiful Food (Sandhill $34.95) ilar J. Mazzeo’s Irena’s Chil- Tdren: A True Story of Cour- Daniel Marshall age has won the 2018 Western Claiming the Land: Canada Jewish Book Award. and the Making of a New El Dorado At the 34th annual Jewish Book (Ronsdale Press $24.95) Festival in Vancouver, Mazzeo spoke about her real-life heroine, Lou Allison & Irena Sendler, who smuggled thou- (editors) Jane Wilde sands of children out of the War- Dancing in Gumboots: saw Ghetto and convinced friends Adventure, Love & Resilience, Women of and neighbours to hide them. the Valley Mazzeo is currently newsworthy (Caitlin $24.95) for her biography of the devoted Elee Kraljii wife of Alexander Hamilton, as Gardiner depicted in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical Hamilton. Eliza Hamilton: The Extraor- PHOTO dinary Life and Times of the Wife JOSEPH of Alexander Hamilton (Simon

PAUL & Shuster $36) tells her subject’s Elee Kraljii Gardiner complete life story. In his last letter Trauma Head to her, Alexander described her as (Anvil Press $18) the “best of wives, best of women.” Neev Tapiero One of the leading cultural his- CannaBiz: Big Business torians in the U.S., Tilar J. Mazzeo, Opportunities in the has recently settled in Saanichton New Multibillion-Dollar Robert Miles

with her husband, , PHOTO Marijuana Industry a Canadian professor of English. JEAN

(Self-Counsel Press $22.95) There she is also the proprietor JANIS Jack Knox and winemaker at On the Rocks with Parsell Vineyard, Jack Knox: Islanders I on Lamont Road, Will Never Forget (Heritage House $19.96) where her estate- Fort St. John grown wines are Jillian Roberts naturally grown, elen Knott of Fort St. John is of Dane Zaa, Nehiyaw On The Internet: Our First with no chemical Hand mixed-Euro descent from Prophet River First Na- Talk About Online Safety In a CBC Short Doc filters, no chemical tion. In 2016, she was one of sixteen women featured glob- (Orca $19.95) called ally by the Nobel Women’s Initiative for her commitment fining—and sulfite- Rising, Helen Knott Charles Ulrich free upon request. (below) explores the to activism ending gender-based violence. In 2017, she received a REVEAL Indigenous Art Award. She has a Bach- The Big Note: A Guide Mazzeo first dangers of indus- to the Recordings trial expansions, elor of Social Work Degree while also pursuing a Masters gained New York Times bestseller of Frank Zappa bringing to light the in Studies at UNBC, she will release her first (New Star $45) status with The Widow Clicquot fact that Fort St. book, In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Struggle and (Harper Collins 2008) a biography John, now primarily an oil and gas town, Resilience (University of Regina Press, $24.95). Meanwhile L. Hunter Lovins of Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsar- A Finer Future: has a per capita she’s writing an indigenous female manifesto, Taking Back din, the eponymous founder of the Creating an Economy crime rate that is the Bones, described as personal narrative “interwoven with champagne house Veuve Clicquot. nearly double that in Service to Life humour, academic research and critical reflection.” She has Whether she’s writing about of Vancouver. (New Society $31.99) published short stories and poetry in the Malahat Review, Oskar ▼ Irena Sendler—the female L. Jane McMillan Red Rising Magazine and the Sur- Schindler—or a high society en- Truth and Conviction: viving Canada Anthology. On her Donald Marshall Jr. and the trepreneur, Mazzeo is intent upon blog, Warrior, she describes herself Mi’kmaw Quest for Justice revealing the secret lives of amazing as “six years sober and clean on her (UBC Press $34.95) women often obscured by history. journey, passionate about heal- Rebecca Wigod “That’s the story about Eliza Ham- ing, a mother to one, a mediocre ilton,” she says, “who is known only He Speaks Volumes: beader and a skilled berry picker.” A Biography of as the wife of a famous man but who, She is one of five participants George Bowering behind the scenes, kept powerful selected for the 2019 RBC Taylor (Talonbooks $24.95) secrets and saw herself as engaged Prize Emerging Writers Mentor- Ann Hui in deeply political acts of courage.” ship Program, along with UVic MFA student Miles Steyn. 9780889776449 Chop Suey Nation: Eliza Hamilton: 978-1501166303 The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada’s Publication Mail Agreement #40010086 [email protected] Chinese Restaurants Return undeliverable Canadian Annual subscription: $25 (D&M $24.95) BC addresses to: BC BookWorld, 926 West Contributing Editors: John Moore, BOOKWORLD 15th Ave., Vancouver, BC Canada V5Z 1R9 Derek Hayes Joan Givner, Mark Forsythe, We gratefully acknowledge the unobtrusive Produced with the sponsorship of Cherie Thiessen, Caroline Woodward. assistance of Canada Council, a continu- Iron Road West: Spring 2019 Pacific BookWorld News Society. Writing not otherwise credited is by staff. ous partner since 1988, and creativeBC, a An Illustrated History Volume 33 • Number 1 Publications Mail provincial partner since 2014. Registration No. 7800. Design: Get-to-the-Point Graphics of British Columbia’s Publisher/Writer: BC BookWorld ISSN: 1701-5405 Railways (Harbour $44.95) Alan Twigg Consultants: Christine Rondeau, Associate Publisher: Advertising & editorial: Sharon Jackson, Kenneth Li * The current topselling titles from Beverly Cramp BC BookWorld, 926 West 15th Ave., Photographer: Laura Sawchuk major BC publishing compa- In-Kind Supporters: nies, in no particular order. Editor/Production: Vancouver, BC Canada V5Z 1R9 Proofreader: Wendy Atkinson Simon Fraser University Library; David Lester Tel: 604-736-4011 Deliveries: Ken Reid, Acculogix Vancouver Public Library; UBC Library.

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5 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 JOIN FLAVIA ON HER 10TH AND FINAL ADVENTURE from award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Alan Bradley.

“If ever there were a sleuth who’s BOLD, BRILLIANT, and, yes, ADORABLE, it’s Flavia de Luce.” —USA Today

PHASE ONE COMPLETED: • 500 reviews • 350 contributors • 1,000 readers per day • Supported by Creative BC

PHASE TWO BEGINS: • New website in SEPTEMBER • New Ormsby board of directors • New partnerships (SFU, Coming Attractions, CAIS, Quills, New Orphic Review, kumtuks) • New sponsorships (Graduate Liberal Studies, Canadian Association of Independent Scholars, BC Historical Society, Yosef Wosk) • New publisher Richard Mackie

More books, more reviews, more often. THE ORMSBY REVIEW A rebirth for serious book reviews

6 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 heard and understood from ated by the US government in those stories, their varied 1891, and thus their hunting REVIEW perspectives giving a feeling grounds, root fields, and other FIRSTNATIONS for the diversity of settler resources were not protected cultures. or easily accessible. Aural, written, and visual The story goes that Am- Not Extinct: media conversations between brose Adolph and his Elders Keeping the Sinixt Way The Sinixt of the Sinixt and non-Sinixt par- intended to pan for gold in by Marilyn James and ticipants comprise the book’s their ancestral land to help Taress Alexis core. It is augmented by intro- make ends meet. (Maa Press $30) West Kootenays ductory remarks, biographical While in that territory, BY PAULA PRYCE were declared sketches of the collaborators, young Ambrose Adolph and glossaries of Sinixt words found his way to a stand of ears ago, on and phrases and important old-growth cottonwood trees a Decem- English terms. to hunt for grouse. When he ber after- ✫ looked up, he saw that those noon, I EXTINCT STORIES ARE THE HEART OF THE towering trees were filled pondered book. Online audio versions high with racks of caribou a collec- are augmented with book antlers. Y tion of tipis by the Canadian chapters that fill out associa- The Elders told him that on a frosty riverside. I knew tions. this was a hunting blind, from childhood that this quiet, government in 1956 “Coyote and Chickadee,” showing the site to be an an- rugged corner of British Co- for instance, is a complex tale cient Sinixt hunting ground. lumbia known as the Slocan of how Trickster Coyote tried Ambrose Adolph went away Valley had attracted artists, to steal Chickadee’s powerful to fight in the Second World Quakers, Doukhobors, and Now Sinixt members share . It serves as a springboard War but he wanted nothing back-to-the-landers. But in to discuss covetousness and more than to again visit that those last few days of 1989, their personal histories for the importance of feeling at powerful place. He survived when I had returned home ease with the variety of per- the war and returned only to from university over the win- future generations. sonal power (sumíx) one bears, find that the trees had disap- ter break, I was surprised to whether it seems impressive or peared. find First Nations people Marilyn James’s were protesting the ex- voice in the audio humation of ancestral Co-authors Taress Alexis and recording abruptly remains during road Marilyn James at Vallican concludes, “All that building on the Slocan Community Centre. was left were fences River at Vallican. and fields.” I learned these were This sobering Sinixt Interior Salish (or story leads on to a Lakes) people who had detailed written dis- been largely displaced cussion on how pop- from the West Kootenay ulation growth, the region in the late 19th loss of old-growth and early 20th centuries trees, and the ob- due to intensive silver struction of migrato- mining and disease. ry corridors by roads In its ignorance, the and land clearing Canadian government have contributed to declared this people ex- the critically endan- tinct in 1956. gered status of the No cohesive account Selkirk Mountain had ever been published Caribou, which had about the Sinixt people. once been plenteous During the next de- in the region. cade I studied archaeo- These stories il- logical, ethnographic lustrate the major and archival records to themes of the book: piece together the histo- relationships, com- ry of the Sinixt diaspora. mitments, respon- My book, Keeping the sibility, and service, Lakes’ Way: Reburial especially regarding and the Re-creation of a land and ancestors. Moral World among an The reflections,

Invisible People (UTP, PHOTO both Sinixt and non-

1999), was an effort to Sinixt, convey a deep LYONS solve the riddle of this longing to make people’s invisibility to MOE things right and to settler communities, and team, Marilyn James and well-being of their people and humble to others. follow a path of reconciliation to explore the forces that Taress Alexis, Not Extinct: their land now depends on “You truly have power that seeks justice and the prompted them to keep re- Keeping the Sinixt Way being seen and heard, Marilyn when you master your own creation of community. The turning even when Canadian now throws off the invisibility James and Taress Alexis have sumíx, and you’re comfort- book is an outcome of that immigration laws attempted to cloak. worked with a group of set- able in your own skin,” says communal desire. dissuade them. The authors have followed tlers called the Blood of Life Marilyn James. Indeed, the thoughtful col- ✫ in the footsteps of the late Collective to re-introduce their ✫ laborative process that Mari- BECAUSE OF COLONIAL PRESSURES Elders Eva Orr and Alvina people to non-Sinixt through NOT EXTINCT ALSO SHARES PERSONAL lyn James, Taress Alexis, and and lack of reserve land sanc- Lum to work as matrilineal story. histories of Sinixt members. non-Sinixt participants de- tuaries in Canada, many representatives attempting Editor K.L. Kivi describes James recounts the youth- vised to create the book could Sinixt people had moved to to restore knowledge of their how the collective project was ful experience of Ambrose be taken as a model by other the southern reaches of their people’s presence in their an- first inspired by fireside con- Adolph who, before the Sec- Canadians who seek ways to- territory on the Washing- cestral territory. versations and storytelling ond World War, drove his wards reconciliation between ton State Reservation of the They have also sought to with Marilyn James. Elders in a Model T Ford to First Nations and settler com- Colville Confederated Tribes, repatriate and rebury ex- The book retains this ora- their ancestral territory near munities. 9780968530283 or onto surrounding Canadian humed ancestral remains, torial, conversational tone by Revelstoke. reserves. and to act as environmental alternating Sinixt and non- In those days as now, many UBC anthropologist Paula Pryce But Sinixt people have stewards of the land. Sinixt voices. Sinixt voices Sinixt people were confined to is the author of Keeping the continually returned to their Combining classic Interior are primary, including online the Colville Reservation, and Lakes’ Way: Reburial and the Re- ancestral territory, eighty Salish oratory and a playful audio recordings and written despite their efforts at garden- creation of a Moral World Among percent of which lies in what is multimedia approach, the explanations of classic tales ing and farming, the land’s an Invisible People (University of now Canada, to hunt, gather, book offers stories to teach and family histories. resources were so limited that Toronto Press, 1999), and The visit family and friends, and others about Sinixt laws, cul- Non-Sinixt people contrib- many people were desperately Monk’s Cell: Ritual and Knowl- attend to sacred sites. ture, language, history, and ute responses through visual poor. edge in American Contemplative Written and compiled by a responsibility to the land. artwork and written reflec- The Sinixt portion of that Christianity (Oxford University Sinixt mother-and-daughter Today, believing that the tions about what they have reservation had been expropri- Press, 2018).

7 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 COVER INTERVIEW

BY BEVERLY CRAMP PHOTO

his is a true sto- ry. A single father

gives his young PEOPLEIMAGES daughter an iPad for Christmas. T While using it to work on a science project, this pre-teen inadvertently encounters pornographic images of sexual bondage. Not knowing what she was looking at, the little girl became traumatized. One day her father checks in on her because she had been in her bedroom a long time without making any noise. He discovers she has taken off all her clothes and wrapped herself in black tape. “Kids often deal with this situation by acting out,” says child psychologist and University of associate professor Dr. Jillian Roberts, author of On the Internet: Our First Talk About Online Safety (Orca $19.95). Dangers of the “It’s called trauma play.” This little girl would eventually become Dr. Roberts’ patient. She over- came her trauma with therapy. Child psychologists, such as Roberts, often hear stories like this; especially the Digital Playground kind involving children and sexual- ity, a combination most adults aren’t Birth (Orca, 2015) illustrated by Cindy comfortable discussing with each Revell, for ages 3 to 6. Then, Dr. Rob- other, let alone admitting that such The head-on collision of children erts began her first series of books, Just activities occur. Enough, to cover topics about death, “It’s embarrassing and stigmatiz- and pornography is increasingly cultural diversity, and parental sepa- ing,” she says, “yet there are hundreds ration or divorce. Titles include: What of thousands of families with some kind common. “We need to help Happens When a Loved One Dies? Our of experience like this and generally the First Talk About Death (Orca, 2016) and public doesn’t hear about it. We, [the children become good digital What Makes Us Unique? Our First Talk psychologists] are the ones hearing About Diversity (Orca, 2016). Dr. Rob- about these stories. citizens,” says Dr. Jillian Roberts. erts also created an app for Where Do “I’ve been concerned since at least Babies Come From? called Facts of Life. 2013 with a shift in the referrals I get In 2017, Dr. Roberts’ debuted a in my clinical practice and the kinds —Only posting what will make practices what she preaches. “I use new series, The World Around Us, of problems children are presenting someone else smile and therefore not all these ground rules: I use it in my which includes On the Internet. The to me. I used to deal with issues like posting anything negative. clinical practice, I use it teaching at U first title, On Our Street: Our First divorce problems and playground bul- —Never ‘liking’ or sharing material of Vic, and I use it as a mom,” she says. Talk About Poverty (Orca, 2018), in- lying. Now, children are being bullied negative or embarrassing for someone “We need to help children navigate troduces young children to the reali- online. There’s a tremendous pressure else. the Internet in a healthy way. And to ties of people living without sufficient to get as many ‘likes’ as possible on While On the Internet, with illustra- become ambassadors of peace in the resources and includes the homeless, their social media. It’s a status sym- tions by Jane Heinrichs, is aimed at playground.” the mentally ill, those living as refu- bol. So, many are posting nude photos children between the ages of 6 and 8, Dr. Roberts started working with gees, and other aspects of the difficul- because that gets a lot of attention.” Dr. Roberts has also published an ac- children more than 20 years ago, first ties of poverty. Problems don’t just arise from kids companying manual for adults, Kids, as a primary school teacher, then as a The second title in the series, On stumbling on inappropriate material or Sex and Screens: Raising strong, psychologist and associate professor of the News: Our First Talk About Tragedy posting inappropriate pictures. resilient children in the sexualized educational psychology. While working (Orca, 2018) was followed by On the “With kids spending so much time digital age (Fair Winds Press, $25.99) on her PhD, she specialized in medi- Internet and later this year On the Play- on their screens, they are taking a hit to be used in conjunction with cally fragile children. She first co- ground: Our First Talk About Prejudice on their interpersonal relationships, the children’s book. wrote School Children with HIV/ (Orca, 2019). not learning about actual face-to-face ✫ AIDS (Detselig, 1999) with Meanwhile the perils of pornography social interaction. We need to get good WITH THREE CHILDREN OF Kathleen Cairns. for impressionable minds will persist. guidelines, knowledge and wisdom her own, ages She went on to write “I believe it is impossible to prevent into parents’ hands so they can help 6 to 18, Dr. Where Do Babies Come children seeing inappropriate things their children navigate the Internet in Roberts From? Our First Talk About online,” Dr. Roberts says, adding that a healthy way.” despite what parents think are strong Dr. Roberts hopes parents will use software controls to prevent this, they her new book, On the Internet as aren’t enough. a starting point for sitting down “Free WIFI is available every- with their children, discussing where. It is super common for the dangers of the Internet and kids to access pornographic how to avoid them, and setting sites and share the material ground rules for online behav- with other kids. Parents need ior. “This book is designed to to have ‘the talk’ much earlier help children develop a sense of if they don’t want to lose the empathy,” says Roberts. “Integ- chance to help their children rity matters even if no one else with their sexuality. Instead, chil- sees it. Boundaries matter.” dren will get their first experi- Parents should make a so- ence on pornographic sites.” cial media plan for their fami- On The Internet: 978-1-45982-094-4; Dr. Jillian Roberts lies, including such things as: Kids, Sex & Screens: 978-1592338528 as illustrated by —Not posting a picture of Jane Heinrichs in Beverly Cramp is associate someone else online without On The Internet. their permission. publisher of BC BookWorld.

8 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 New this Spring from Greystone Books

From the bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Trees comes the final book in The Mysteries of Nature trilogy.

Trout School Gardening with Understanding Lessons from a Fly-Fishing Master Native Plants of the Northwest Coast    Pacific Northwest Indigenous Jewelry The Secret Wisdom of Nature   Revised and Updated The Art, the Artists, the History Foreword by   Third Edition   Trees, Animals, and the Extraordinary 978-1-77164-416-7 • $22.95 •    Foreword by   Balance of All Living Things &    978-1-77164-297-2 • $24.95 •    Foreword by  .  Translated by   978-1-77164-506-5 • $40.00 •  978-1-77164-388-7 • $29.95 •  Naturally Great Books greystonebooks.com

WRITE LISTEN READ WRITE RAISE READ WRITE YOUR LISTEN READ TE LISTEN READ WRITE LIST VOICE READ WRITE LISTEN READ CAITLIN PRESS & DAGGER EDITIONS RITE LISTEN READ WRITE LI Free to a good home more than a memoir Jules Torti LISTEN READ WRITE LISTEN Winter / Spring 2019 from Caitlin Press | caitlin-press.com

9 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 Curator and taxidermist REVIEW John Fannin at the HISTORY B.C. Provincial Museum, 1880s.

The Collectors: A History of the Royal British Columbia Museum and Archives by Patricia E. Roy (Royal B.C. Museum $39.95) BY CHAD REIMER

ome 130 years ago, the prov- ince’s foremost museum S in Victoria was given a dual mandate. First, it was “to secure and preserve specimens relat- ing to the natural history of the Province…and to obtain information…increase and diffuse knowledge regarding the same.” Second, it was “to collect anthropological material relat- ing to the aboriginal races of the Province.” Patricia Roy sets out to write the history of both those initiatives in The Collectors: A History of the Royal Brit- ish Columbia Museum and Archives. Her clear and carefully- researched narrative follows three main streams—natural history, Indigenous peoples and archives—from the found- ing of the Provincial Museum (1886) and Provincial Archives (1908) to the 2003 merger of the two into the Royal Brit- ish Columbia Museum and Archives. Natural history received ARCHIVES

the most attention and fund- BC , ing from the outset, in step PHOTO with the subsequent brand- ing of the province on license MAYNARD plates as “supernatural Brit- ish Columbia.” The second stream was a RICHARD harder sell. Well into the 20th collectionUN of 200 paintings of SUNG century, the museum was totem poles and villages in a stuck in its original salvage newly proposed provincial art mode, collecting “curios,” ar- gallery. curators get their due tifacts, and even human re- (Six decades later, when mains of what were widely seen a newly elected Social Credit ums: a B.C. Museum of Natu- as B.C.’s “vanishing Indians.” government wanted to sell One of the province’s foremost ral History on one hand, and a The work of anthro- the province to the world, it historians, Patricia Roy, Museum of Human History of pologist Wilson Duff and proposed a European tour of British Columbia on the other. Kwakwaka’wakw totem-pole work by B.C.’s most famous examines the 130-year history The archives, which lost carver Mungo Martin for the artist. They were told neither much of its autonomy when museum were among the first the museum nor archives of the provincial museum. the government merged it with to treat Indigenous cultures as had enough Carr paintings to the museum in 2003, could living, breathing entities. mount such an exhibit.) be attached to the latter and The third stream—the Pro- At times, Roy’s account rior to the Indigenous peoples The joining of natural his- regain some of its autonomy. vincial Archives—suffered pulls its punches when a they dispossessed. tory and Indigenous peoples in “The museum is now work- through budget cuts and sharper critique might be ap- This viewpoint was not so one public body was a product ing on a storyline that will indifferent archivists until propriate. much paternalistic as colo- of the late Victorian era, which present a single inclusive more professional footing was During much of the insti- nialistic. viewed Indigenous peoples as narrative of the history of In- afforded in the 1940s. tution’s history, Indigenous In the later chapters of The part of the natural world— digenous peoples in B.C. and Heretofore, the work of peoples were seen as a dying, Collectors, Roy does an admi- static and passive, either the of later arrivals,” Roy writes. Alma Russell, Muriel Cree, or at least diminishing, race, rable job of describing how backdrop to the real history of Meanwhile, Patricia Roy’s and Madge Wolfenden to and their cultures treated as the museum’s stance towards colonial “settlers,” or as speci- overview provides a welcome stamp some sense and order static and pre-modern. Indigenous peoples evolved mens to be studied. starting point for re-inventing on the collections has gone It is not enough to say, as from its early days as collector, Roy paraphrases the criti- its subject. 9780772672001 largely unheralded. Roy has Roy does, that museum per- through the breakthroughs of cism of Gloria Frank, a mem- located photos that bring sonnel were simply expressing Duff and Martin, to the most ber of the Nuu-chah-nulth Chad Reimer wrote Writing Brit- these remarkable women to the attitudes of the times, nor recent efforts that build on the Nation and then a graduate ish Columbia History, 1784-1958 public notice. to categorize their approach as active participation and initia- student, who in a 2000 BC (UBC Press, 2010) and Chilli- Of course, some mistakes “paternalistic.” tive of Indigenous peoples. Studies article, “That’s My wack’s Chinatowns: A History were made along the way. In We need to know how, over Roy’s discussion helps us Dinner on Display,” expressed (Chinese Canadian Historical what must go down as one its long history, the museum’s navigate current issues— resentment at “seeing her Society of B.C., Gold Mountain of the worst decisions in the efforts contributed to the such as the repatriation of people displayed as anthropo- Stories, 2011). His latest book is institution’s history, officials wider view that the immigrant artifacts to their rightful own- logical specimens.” Before We Lost the Lake: A Natu- turned down an offer made peoples who took over the ers—and consider the way The way forward may be to ral and Human History of Sumas by Emily Carr to house her province were somehow supe- forward. create two provincial muse- Valley (Caitlin Press, 2018).

10 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 cultivate a life filled with joy and understanding

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11 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 EPPICH HOUSE II DIVINE THREADS PEOPLE AMONG THE PEOPLE THE LITTLE ISLAND BAKE SHOP Greg Bellerby April Liu Robert D. Watt Jana Roerick

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Shaping the Future on Life beyond Settler Colonialism Incorporating Culture How Indigenous People Are Reshaping the Joseph Weiss Northwest Coast Art Industry Countering colonial ideas about Indigenous peoples being frozen in time and without a future, this provocative book Solen Roth explores the ways in which members of the Haida Nation are Incorporating Culture examines what happens when Indigenous shaping myriad possible futures to address the dilemmas that people assert control over the commercialization of their art by come with life under settler colonialism. instilling the market with their communities’ values.

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12 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 Chinese pronounce the same character differently. HISTORY REVIEW [Here’s how tricky it can be: The family name is spelled As a high school teacher in B.C.’s in the pinyin Romanization interior, formerly Prince George- system of Mandarin Chinese based Lily Chow of Victoria as Xie, but in the Toisan travelled in her spare time to dialect of the majority of the identify Chinese Canadian cafés migrants to B.C. it was gener- that dotted every small town ally anglicized as Der or Deer; in B.C. and across the Prairies, whereas in Hong Kong it would also noting Chinese names on generally be spelled as Tse; headstones in cemeteries. Her in Singapore as Chia; and in explorations eventually resulted in Shanghai as Sia.] two ground-breaking books about But Blossoms in the Gold Chinese communities in northern Mountains is about much B.C. Sojourners in the North (1996) more than semantics. It’s and Chasing Their Dreams (2001). primarily about families—no Now Henry Yu responds to her matter what others called fifth book, another cumulative them. Peter Wing, the first study, Blossoms in the Gold mayor of Chinese heritage Mountains.—Ed. elected in Canada (mayor of Kamloops, 1966-1971), was PHOTO Blossoms in the Gold Mountains: actually of the Eng family,

Chinese Settlements in the but Chow’s larger purpose is BEARG

Fraser Canyon and the to see him through the lens of Okanagan by Lily Chow ▼

DARWIN his family, through multiple (Caitlin Press $24.95) REMEMBERINGREMEMBERING Lily Chow in the remains generations. BY HENRY YU of the -era Kwong In this way, the stories of Okanagan & Lee Company store on Chinese Canadians in Yale, n Malaysia, Front Street, Yale , Kamloops, Vernon, where Lily , and Armstrong are Chow Fraser Valley brought to life not as anoma- glicization of Chinese names was lies but in ways that explain in B.C. The On Lee family of born and why they were often respected I Yale, for instance, was actu- raised, it citizens and community lead- Chinese families ally part of the Jang family, was a com- ers. but as with many other small mon pattern for ethnic Chi- By countering the over- town Chinese-Canadian fami- nese to be clustered in cities generalizations of others, in- lies, they became known by such as Kuala Lumpur or Ipoh Lily Chow continues to gather cluding scholars who have the business name of their or Georgetown (Penang), with insisted that the Chinese lived store rather than their own small numbers of Chinese stories of the Chinese in B.C. overwhelmingly in China- family name. families running local busi- towns across Canada (in fact, And, of course, there was nesses in rural areas and outside of the coastal cities. in no historical period did the no shortage of clerical errors. small towns. majority of Chinese Canadi- In an earlier work, she once Lily Chow noticed that B.C. ans live and work in urban Canadians after 1947, when was gradually forgotten as explained how Alexander Won had a similar historical pat- Chinatowns), Lily Chow has re-enfranchisement and the more Chinese families moved Cumyow and his son Gordon tern. The wholesale shift of so rescued the lives and work of quiet dismantling of white closer to universities. We owe Cumyow acquired their family many Chinese in rural B.C. the Chinese minority in these supremacy meant a long- a debt of gratitude to Lily name in English from a clerk in the mid-20th century from interior communities. denied ability to enter white Chow for telling us the stories writing down Cumyow’s given small towns to Vancouver had With Blossoms in the Gold collar professions, including of the Chinese in northern name as the family name. left only traces of their pres- Mountains, Lily Chow provides medicine, dentistry, account- and interior B.C. in her earlier This happened, as well, to ence in the places she passed an inclusive and accurate ing, and law. books. C.D. Hoy, the famous stor- through as a teacher. historical narrative that looks With full citizenship rights ✫ eowner and photographer Chow therefore developed back in time just as we look restored—the vote had been BASED MOSTLY UPON ORAL HISTORY of , whose proper her ongoing curiosity about forward and aspire to be a na- taken away from Chinese and interviews (supported by writ- name, Chow Dong Hoy, was individuals such as the lone tion that derives strength and non-whites as one of the first ten traces of the earlier Chi- rendered in Chinese order, Chinese cook at a mine or log- commonality from the diver- acts of the B.C. legislature in nese presence in newspapers with family name first. By the ging camp, or the lone Chinese sity she reveals. 9781987915501 1871 after the colony joined and local records), her Blos- alchemy of anglicization, the Canadian family in a town the Dominion of Canada— soms in the Gold Mountains surname Chow became Hoy. Henry Yu teaches history and who happened to own a store, Chinese Canadians were fi- concentrates on a few families Lily Chow establishes how is the principal of St. John’s a café or a laundry. nally able to aspire to a living who are inextricably tied to the what seems in English to be College at UBC. In 2015, Yu The Chinese migration beyond the mostly manual history of particular towns, a confusion of names—Chow, was appointed the co-chair for from small towns to cities labour to which they had such as the On Lee family in Joe, Zhou, Chou—is actu- the Legacy Initiatives Advisory within a broader 20th century been restricted by legislated Yale and the Chong family of ally the same Chinese family Council following the province’s rural-to-urban shift within discrimination. Lytton. name, . The proliferation of apology in 2014 for B.C.’s his- Canada in general gener- Chinese labour in laun- Along the way Chow ex- variants was both the prod- toric anti-Chinese legislation. ated new opportunities for the dries and food services in plains why there has been uct of transliteration and the He received a BC Multicultural younger generation of Chinese rural and small town Canada such inconsistency in the an- fact that different dialects of Award in 2015.

FROM THE ERZGEBIRGE TO : A history of geology and mining since the 1500’s by Sean Daly & Georgius Agricola 978-1-5255-1759-4 • $32 (pp) 978-1-5255-1758-7 • $38.55 (hc) British Columbia Available at Friesen Press & Amazon Historical Federation

13 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 HISTORY REVIEW 2184 . L

JMABC Seeking the Fabled City: ▼Wosk’s Ltd. furniture and appliance The Canadian Jewish Experience store display in the Home Building at by Allan Levine the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE), (McClelland & Stewart $45) Jews of circa 1955. Photo by DuBarry Studio. BY SHELDON GOLDFARB anti-Semitic complaint that Jews have llan Levine’s history too much power or influence—yet he of Jews in Canada, delights in pointing out Jews who have Seeking the Fa- made it, who are successful, who, in bled City, neces- Canada fact, do have influence. sarily cites slurs, Can we have it both ways, celebrat- A riots and quotas ing influence but criticizing those who that kept Jews out of say there is too much? I suppose it is Vancouver—and also to Victoria and it like when one parent has converted? professions and univer- the “too much” that is key: how much the rest of the province—developed Although Levine quotes a statement sities—and we learn that the peddler in is too much? And if a people have differently: rather than a wave of im- to the effect that Jews are all indi- who sells Anne achieved, why should they be criticized Anne of Green Gables migrants from the Old Country, Brit- viduals and notes the complexity and the dye that turns her hair green is a for that? ish Columbia saw individual Jews diversity of Jewish life today, he does German Jew. Also, how is it that the poor Jews arrive singly from elsewhere in North tend to homogenize. We learn nothing But have you heard the one about of the Depression have become so America, partly drawn by the 1858 gold about what it is like to live in an ultra- the Winnipeg paper that tried to ex- successful? How did the barriers to rush. Perhaps as a result Jews were al- Orthodox Hasidic family or in a family plain the ways of this strange new their advancement fall? Levine notes ways more integrated into non-Jewish of Jews from Morocco. people, the Jews, by saying their prayer that, though the Holocaust shocked society here. And what was it like in families of services were led by Rabbits? Jews and non-Jews alike, discrimina- Levine makes a big deal about Communist Jews back in the Depres- Or how about the Ottawa synagogue tion didn’t really fade away until the Toronto electing a Jewish mayor in sion? Jews were prominent in the Com- that discovered to its dismay that it was 1960s. Why is that? Levine credits 1954, but Victoria elected one (Lum- munist movement back then and in the next door to a pork processing plant Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and ley Franklin) in 1865 and Vancouver immediate postwar period. which wafted the smell of pork through multiculturalism, which celebrated did the same in 1888, electing David Levine’s book showers us with sta- the congregation during services? things like Israeli folk dancing (oh, Oppenheimer, who even has a statue tistics and talks about organizations We also learn that a Jewish family please, not Israeli folk dancing). Maybe in for the work he did in like the Canadian Jewish Congress, once claimed to own Labrador and it was just the general Sixties zeitgeist, creating it. and arguably it spends too much time there were Jews who tried to make the civil rights movement in the States, Levine cites the astonishing statistic compiling a Jewish Who’s Who: tell- a go of it as farmers in Wapella, Sas- and so on. that 73.5 percent of Jews in Victoria ing us where such and such a Jewish katchewan. One of the earliest Jews Anyway, there are interesting ques- marry non-Jews. Vancouver is not far leader went to school, who he or she in Canada, Moses Hart, abandoned tions that come to mind reading behind, at 43.5 percent. How can a married, how they became interested Judaism in favour of a religion of his Levine’s book, but they deserve a fuller community survive like that? And what in art, how they died. This information own invention. treatment than he affords them. We is a community like that? What is it like for reference purposes can be viewed Interesting stuff, to be sure. Levine could use a book that explores them, in the household of the intermarried? as a diversion from telling us about the is on solid ground when he tells the and especially explores the varieties of Levine spends a few paragraphs on inner workings of the Canadian Jew- fairly familiar migration story about Jewish experience, tracing the trends in a Toronto family and how they carry on ish experience. For that you might be how there were two main early waves of Canadian society, and we could espe- Jewish traditions, but that’s a family better off reading a novel by Mordecai Jewish immigrants to Canada, mostly cially do with a new book on the Jewish with two Jewish parents. What hap- Richler. to Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg. community in Vancouver and Victoria. pens when there is only one? What is Levine quite rightly points out the The first wave consisted of Ger- 9780771048050 man and British Jews; then came the ✫ Russian-Polish Jews, upon whom the 8,500 square-metre FOR MORE ON THIS TOPIC, THERE’S A BOOK first wave looked down. That second mural of Leonard that Levine does not mention: Lillooet wave struggled at first in poverty until Cohen on a 20-storey Nördlinger McDonnell’s Raincoast discovering prosperity in the Second building on Crescent Jews: Integration Street in Montreal. World War and moving to the suburbs. in British Columbia Vancouver was an outlier, Levine (Midtown Press, says; it didn’t follow the same evolution 2014), which is as the leading Jewish centres. What he based on her PhD neglects to mention, or he chooses to dissertation, “In overlook (except in a table at the end), the Company of is that in recent decades Vancouver Gentiles: Explor- has become one of the leading centres. ing the History of ▼ Lillooet Nordlinger Vancouver now boasts the third Integrated Jews in McDonnell largest community of Jews in the B.C., 1858 1971.” country, far surpassing Winnipeg. The growth of the Vancouver Jewish Sheldon Goldfarb has been the archivist community therefore merits more at- for the UBC Alma Mater Society for more tention. There’s even a question about than twenty years and has also written whether it is a community. two academic books on the Victorian Historically, Jewish migration to author William Makepeace Thackeray.

14 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 15 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 ence Apsassin of Blueberry River First Nation agrees. “Our earth is dying. It is gradually being destroyed.” ENVIRONMENT REVIEW The late radio personality Rafe Mair argues on behalf of civil disobedience: “An evil like the Site C Dam…that will flood vital food lands… trample the In December of 2017, when the NDP government announced rights of First Nations, destroy habitat … threaten they would proceed with the Liberal’s controversial Site C the Athabasca Delta… is supported by… governments dam, opponents such as agronomist Wendy Holm sensed and those who stand to profit from its construction.” there was an elephant in the room. Site C, she claims, “is ex- Considering Indigenous resistance, author Andrew actly where it needs to be to deliver continental water-sharing Another plans.” Sixteen contributors to Damming the Peace: The MacLeod presents the experience of Helen Knott, Hidden Costs of the Site C Dam, all argument against of the Prophet River First Nation. Her reserve is 3.8 the project. It’s the third book to take an adversarial stance. sq. km., while Dene Zaa territory is 25,000 sq. km. There has yet to be a book in favour of the project.—Ed. PEACE Treaty 8 affirms First Nations have the right to pursue traditional vocations “except where the land may be taken up for settlement or other purposes,” like the s early as the 1950s, the US Army flooding of the Peace River Valley. The italicized clause Corps of Engineers conceived of is clearly problematic and disempowering. diverting water from west of the “I want to get rid of the Indian problem,” proposed offering Duncan Campbell Scott of the Department of Indian Rockies to the east side of the continent. The so-called North Affairs, in 1910. Warren Bell, a family physician, A American Water and Power Alli- shows why Site C is “simply the culmination of a ance was conceived to make it hap- Editor Wendy Holm and sustained process of exploitation.” The health of a pen. Donald Trump has tweeted, “It is so ridiculous population depends on the health of the ecosystem. where they are taking the water and shoving it out contributor Joyce Nelson Bell looks forward to “a time of global healing.” Jour- to sea.” nalist and photographer Zoë Ducklow, asks “Is Site So how seriously do we have to consider the pos- claim Site C could really be C Really Past The Point Of No Return?” Local resident sibility that Site C is about exporting water in the Arlene Boon says: “We have until the water rises to future? In contributor Joyce about exporting B.C. water. stop the dam.” 9781459413160 Damming the Peace: Nelson’s view, the Site C ✫ The Hidden Costs reservoir is the last essen- TWO OTHER BOOKS ON THIS SUBJECT ARE BREACHING THE PEACE: of the Site C Dam The B.C. public never did grant the Site C Dam a tial link in this process. If The Site C Dam and a Valley’s Stand against Big by Wendy Holm (editor) social license (as in “Governments give permits but Trump gets his way via his Hydro (UBC Press $24.95), edited by Sarah Cox, (James Lorimer $22.95) communities give permission.”) revised NAFTA agreement, and The Peace in Peril (Harbour $24.95) by Chris- Environmental activist Briony Penn discusses BY JOHN GELLARD impounded water will be a topher Pollon and photojournalist Ben Nelms. the cumulative impact of Site C. Environmental as- commodity to be exported sessments evaluate projects in isolation, neglecting John Gellard is a retired Vancouver English teacher. He and Site C will be at the centre of a new water-based connections. “There is a threshold beyond which the travels extensively in British Columbia taking a keen geopolitics of North America. system will lose the capacity to recover.” Elder Clar- interest in environmental issues. In her own book, Beyond Banksters: Resisting the New Feudalism, Joyce Nelson also devotes a chapter to the looming issue of bulk water exports. In Dam- ming the Peace, Nelson exposes the “diabolical the- sis” that North American water is a “shared resource.” In editor Wendy Holm’s contri- bution, she writes that “The rich alluvial soils of the Peace River Valley are part of our foodland commons.” Loss of the com- mons has never been included in economic evaluations. It’s an

“externality.” She claims Site C entails losing the capacity to feed▼ at least a million people per year, Joyce Nelson in perpetuity. Alex Harris, a videographer, provides links to videos of interviews she has conducted during her trips to the Peace River Valley and she contributes the preface. David Schindler refutes the myth that hydro dams produce clean green energy, claiming they produce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and they poison fish. B.C. might need 75,000 gigawatt-hours per year by 2030, and the 1,100 megawatt Site C Dam will generate 5,100 GWh per year, but environmentalist and author Guy Dauncey persuasively argues that we don’t need this kind of power. He claims demand can be met by renewables: solar, wind, geothermal, and Demand Side Management. Biologist Brian Churchill documents why the Peace Valley is a “biodiversity hotspot.” The uniquely benign microclimate brings species from several eco- regions together with species not found outside the Valley. “Governments have forsaken their traditional monitoring [of this] island of nature in a sea of human disturbance,” he claims. Former NDP en- vironment minister Joan Sawicki critiques Hydro’s failure to include the miraculously benign microclimate in its analysis. Journalist Andrew Nikiforuk describes the dangers of fracking: earthquakes, huge consumption of water, and discharge of toxins. In a second chapter, he addresses Protesters the effect on the Athabasca Delta of the have expressed ▼ opposition to the Bennett Dam. The added drying caused by Wendy mega-project instigated Site C would be “history repeating itself as Holm by Christy Clark’s a rotten farce.” Liberals in many ways, Playwright/ journalist Silver Donald Cameron including this field of tells of lawyer Antonio Oposa, who used the law to yellow stakes near stop destruction of forests in the Philippines. Cameron Site C. reveals that “Canada…refuses to recognize the human right to a healthy environment.” Agrologist Reg Whiten, examines “social license.”

16 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 It’s a Big Deal! TALONBOOKS SPRING TITLES

ChileChil Con C Carne C The Weight of Snow The Great Happiness & Other Early Works CHRISTIAN GUAY-POLIQUIN M.A.C. FARRANT CARMEN AGUIRRE Translated by David Homel A delightful collection of seventy miniature fictions and comics riffing on the theme These three early plays from award- After surviving a major accident, the protagonist of happiness, The Great Happiness offers winning Chilean Canadian writer Carmen of The Weight of Snow, Christian Guay-Poliquin’s a series of lively antidotes – such as the Aguirre document the hardships, horrors, riveting new novel, is entrusted to Matthias, a recently dead experimental novelist and heartache of exile, revealing the far- taciturn old man who agrees to heal his wounds in “sitting in” on the obituary-writing session reaching effects of dictatorial violence and exchange for supplies and a chance of escape. The convened by her husband – to the current terror. Aguirre’s funny, poignant, and biting two men become prisoners of the elements and of climate of doom. The Great Happiness explorations of refuge and recovery are their own rough confrontation as the centimetres is the third part in a trilogy, preceded by as pertinent now as when they were first of snow accumulate relentlessly. Surrounded by a The World Afloat, winner of the City of written. nature both hostile and sublime, their relationship Victoria Butler Book Prize, and The Days, oscillates between commiseration, mistrust, and 978-177201-228-6 • $19.95 • Drama nominated for the Butler Book Prize and mutual aid. Will they manage to hold out against Now Available the ReLit Award. external threats and intimate pitfalls? 978-177201-221-7 • $14.95 • Fiction 978-177201-222-4 • $19.95 • Fiction Now Available Now Available

Redpatch It’sIt’s a BBigig Deal!Deal! breth RAES CALVERT & DINA DEL BUCCHIA selektid rare n nu pomes SEAN HARRIS OLIVER So many things seem like a BIG DEAL: BILL BISSETT Thanks to his experience in hunting and fashionable clothes, food trends for bill bissett’s innovations have have stimulated, wilderness survival, Private Jonathan healthfulness and coolness, personal turmoils, provoked, influenced, shocked, and delighted Woodrow quickly becomes one of the 1st what someone else just said, the ever-charged audiences for half a century. This new Canadian Division’s most feared trench political landscape, Instagram posts, extinct collection, which presents both new and raiders in WWI. But as the fighting stretches megafauna, avocado toast … the list could selected poems, “shows sew manee threds on with no end in sight, Woodrow begins – and does – go on and on. Quirky, wry, thru poetree n langwage btween n thru lyrik to realize that he will never go home again. sensitive, bitchy, and honest, It’s a Big Deal! sound song vizual narrativ non narrativ his Shedding overdue light on the Indigenous interrogates the ways we interpret and process her storikal naytur humour sexual romantik contribution to Canada’s Great War effort, the big deals of our twenty-first-century lives. politikul metaphysikal spiritual fuseyun.” Redpatch was a finalist for the Playwright Dina Del Bucchia’s poetic voice delivers sharp Guild of Canada’s 2017 Carol Bolt award. humour and candid sincerity. 978-177201-226-2 • $29.95 • Poetry Forthcoming in April 978-177201-229-3 • $19.95 • Drama 978-177201-225-5 • $16.95 • Poetry Now Available Now Available

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17 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 TRANSPORTATION REVIEW

Iron Road West: An Illustrated History of British Columbia’s Railways by Derek Hayes (Harbour $44.95) BY WALTER VOLOVSEK

erek Hayes’ magnum opus, Iron D Road West, examines rail transportation in B.C. from the National Dream to automated modern transit systems. We learn intriguing details about the silk trains (which took priority over everything else), armoured trains (to fight off a Japanese invasion) and other special trains. ✫ AS RAILS WERE ADVANCED WESTWARD across the prairies Andrew Onderdonk tackled the dif- ficult Fraser Canyon. The discovery in 1882 of a pass through the Selkirks by Major A.B. Rogers committed the line to a difficult penetration through the mountains and various challenges in tackling serious grades. Avalanches were another problem, espe- Kaoham▼ Shuttle, a partnership between Canadian National and the Seton Lake First Nation community, departs cially in Rogers Pass. from Lillooet for a route that travels from Seton Lake to Seton Portage. Photo from Iron Road West (Harbour). While dealing with these difficulties, the railway com- photographs of the current pany capitalized on the fabu- landscape. lous mountain scenery and The book ends trium- constructed deluxe hotels to Derek Hayes phantly in the section “A promote tourism. ✫ Legacy Preserved.” Many excellent colour photographs THE SECOND DECADE OF THE 20TH document the preservation century saw the birth of two of railway history in B.C., more transcontinental rail- stays on track from still functioning heritage ways: The Grand Trunk Pacific trains to exotic static displays and the Canadian Northern. of rolling stocks and other Both took advantage of the artefacts in railway museums. much gentler Yellowhead The intrepid geographer doesn’t disappoint It is obvious that Hayes is not Pass across the continental according to historian Walter Volovsek. only extremely knowledgeable divide that totally avoided the in all aspects of railroading, Selkirks. Grand Trunk Pacific but is also an accomplished boasted a grade no greater by the Great War—was taken ther north to stop competing geared drive shafts, resulting photographer. Perfect com- than 0.5 percent, compared over by the government of his railways from Alberta from in more pulling power. Three position, great lighting, and with the 2.2 percent the CPR successor. tapping the vast resources of basic designs were employed; sharp focus are characteristic still had to contend with, Up to that time it consisted northeastern B.C. Feeder lines of these, the Shay locomotive of his photographs, not all even after various improve- of two disconnected segments: were built in all directions, is probably best known. Un- of which were taken under ments. a working line between North and an extension pushed into derground mining operations ideal conditions. Their skilful The same period saw the Vancouver and Whytecliff, the northwest corner. had to consider the possibil- arrangement in the book is a completion of the CPR south- and a segment being pushed In 1972 the name was ity of explosions and for that feast for the eye. ern line through the con- northward from Squamish. changed to the British Colum- reason steam power was out. Iron Road West: An Illus- struction of the Kettle Valley The southern segment was bia Railway. The transforma- Traction engines were either trated History of British Co- Railway. Components of it had closed in 1928, while the tion was completed when the electric or run by compressed lumbia’s Railways is not only been built previously to take northern segment was ad- provincial government sold air contained in a large tank. a worthy addition to the refer- advantage of easier grades vanced gradually until work the line to Canadian National ✫ ence library of the seasoned through the Crowsnest Pass, was stopped 30 km short of in 2004. HAVING PRODUCED VARIOUS ATLASES railway buff, but it also serves and the coalfields discov- Prince George and the rails ✫ of historic maps, it is only as an intriguing coffee table ered nearby. The line initially removed back to Quesnel. THIS ENCYCLOPAEDIC WORK INCLUDES natural for Derek Hayes to conversation prop for the ended at Kootenay Landing, That section was rebuilt and chapters on all aspects of rail- include a well-chosen collec- amateur historian. with steamers filling the gap tracks connected to Prince way development. tion in Iron Road West. I had 9781550178388 to Nelson. George in 1952. The use of the steam lo- to rig up a strong magnifying ✫ The missing segment along comotive in industries such glass to examine the finer de- After studying medicine and THE COMPLEX EVOLUTION OF THE as mining and logging is well tails, but the cartography adds was blasted from managing the biology labs at Sel- provincial railway, whose the precipitous mountainside documented in a dedicated another dimension to this kirk College for 24 years, Walter mandate was to tap the re- by 1956, and West Vancouver chapter. Specialized locomo- comprehensive work. Also, O. Volovsek retired to a second sources of central and north- residents were chagrined to tives were utilized to follow in this category are a couple voluntary career: developing ern B.C., is well documented. have to revert to the disruption the tighter curves and uneven of sections called “Tracing walking and ski touring trails It was born as the Pacific Great of train traffic again, much of grades of the more primitive the Path of an Old Railway,” for the Castlegar community. He Eastern under B.C. Premier it now industrial. and transient logging railways. where Hayes matches infor- is the author of Trails in Time: Richard McBride’s govern- The government of W.A.C. Greater torque was supplied mation gleaned from old maps Reflections (Otmar, 2012). www. ment in 1912, and—crippled Bennett pushed the line fur- to the traction wheels by of long-vanished rail lines to trailsintime.org

18 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 she has not seen for eight mother needs an advocate to years, has had a stroke and protect her from some of the FICTION REVIEW is in the hospital in Inverness. people who are paid to help She contacts her sisters, nei- look after her. Obviously, it ther of whom has any in- would help a great deal if her Worry Stones tention of going to see their sisters would step up to the by Joanna Lilley (Ronsdale Press $18.95) mother. Jenny, reluctantly plate. Guilt in families easily Stones and books a flight back to Britain. generates rifts. BY CHERIE THIESSEN Someone has to do it. Jenny certainly deserves Anyone with siblings can happiness in the end and the t just doesn’t relate to these fractures that reader hopes she finds it. seem to hard places occur when someone bears the Despite a few awkward work if brunt of family duties. shifts in the storytelling, Wor- parents Joanna Lilley’s novel of the family Jenny will be delayed for ry Stones has a credible plot put their longer than she hopes and with believable characters. I dreams nightmare that is responsibility, expects; she will need to put making this a promising debut ahead of her academic research on hold novel after a collection of sto- their children’s. Take Mar- guilt and dreams. while she tries to unravel what ries and two books of poetry. garet and Alasdair Ross, for is going on with her mother. 978-1-55380-541-0 example. Their three daughters Cherie Thiessen writes are all intelligent and gifted. from Pender Island. There’s no question the family has a good genetic pool. Maddie, the oldest, has Short stories become a well-known art- ist, Sophie is on her way to of Cuba being a household name as Amanda Hale continues an actress, and Jenny, the to document the social youngest, is the academic and and political changes in intellectual one, working on eastern Cuba. Angela of her doctorate but also drawn the Stones (Thistledown to art and especially carving. $19.95) is her second col- But genes aren’t all there is lection of stories linked to to it. As parents, Margaret and the Cuban village of Bara- Alasdair are easily distracted coa, sometimes described with dreams and plans that as the second European fluctuate. They encourage and settlement in the Americas assist their daughters in their (where Christopher Co- goals, but only until their own lumbus reputedly erected dissatisfaction with their lives a cross). “All of Cuba is a motivates them to try some- museum now,” says one of thing different. her characters. “We live off The UK family is uprooted our old Revolution.” Hale’s several times. Jenny, the re- first collection of linked fic- sponsible one, has learned to tions set in Cuba, In the read the signs of an upcoming ▼ Embrace of the Alligator, upheaval. When she’s 13, her First-time novelist Joanna Lilley, with Pepper, emigrated from the U.K. in 2006. appeared in 2011. Linda parents move from Brighton Rogers’ review of Angela to Peebles in Scotland in order to get the family back together, don’t seem to care. Did she leave the commune of the Stones is available via to run a B&B, and her two convincing her parents to visit All of which is the backdrop voluntarily? And why is Alas- The Ormsby Review. horrified sisters, now 18 and the sisters’ flat for Christmas, for a story that opens in 2000 dair not with her? Did her 978-1-77187-165-5 16, whose plans and dreams but the effort doesn’t work. when Jenny is 25. She’s in mother escape from the com- involve London, refuse to When Jenny is 16, her Nunavut, interviewing Inuit mune and is Alasdair trying to ▼Amanda Hale in Cuba make the move with them and parents decide to move to a artists and researching their find out where she is? jeopardize their futures. commune. They sell up the art for her doctorate in art his- Jenny tries again to involve The two eldest sisters leave home Jenny has come to love tory. The normally solitary and her siblings for assistance. their new Scottish home al- so much, and give the money to focused young woman loves From an early age she has most immediately, without Viparanda, the founder of a re- her time here and is drawn collected stones that have at- letting their younger sister ligious sect called Gallachism. to the stark Arctic landscape. tracted her, stones she turns in on their plans, and Jenny, Jenny, adrift, refuses to She makes friends and is to when troubled. But worry who loves the new home in set foot in the commune and about to engage in a serious stones will not get her back Scotland, is left on her own. continues her studies, having relationship with what will to the Arctic where she could Why didn’t the pair tell Jen- lost her entire family and her be her first boyfriend since resume her studies and her ny what they were planning? beloved home. Maddie and a traumatic experience she budding relationship. Why doesn’t Sophie write her Sophie have had their own had in her second year of Stuck with playing the or answer her phone calls? It issues to deal with. It’s an university. thankless role of caregiver, seems her siblings are lost to uphill climb when a family In Nunavut she gets the Jenny cannot turn her back her even though she tries hard fractures and parents just news that her mother, whom on her disabled mother. Her

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19 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 FICTION REVIEW

More tales The Death and Life of Strother Purcell by Ian Weir (Goose Lane Editions $22.95) In a similar vein to Weir’s Strother Purcell…. Nelson-based Brian BY VALERIE GREEN ▼ d’Eon has written Big Ledge: The Triumphs and Tribulations hether or not early Brit- Trouble of Robert E. Sproule (Home Star ish Columbia can, in Press 2018), about the Ameri- reality, be lumped can prospector who rowed up into a western Kootenay Lake in the summer of American formula is Hell’s 1882 to a promontory known as for the professional Big Ledge. Sproule quickly found W historian to decide. at a rich ore body but his plans Meanwhile, if you are a fan of the for wealth were endangered by stereotypical old Wild West with all its other prospectors in the area, as elements of blood, sweat, guts, and well as a Californian business- gunfights—where a man’s life is of little Gate man, John C. Ainsworth who value and revenge is all-important—Ian wants to buy up the property Weir’s The Death and Life of Strother that Sproule is working. As the Purcell is definitely for you. Ian Weir back page blurb for this novel- Weir, a widely experienced screen- takes an American approach to ized biography concludes,“Conflict writer, brings the reader into the late seems inevitable, and murder, not B.C.’s frontier, mixing comedy and malice. 1800s with amazing detail. His expres- past reason.” 978-1-77538-720-6

Many of the characters in Steve Hunter’s first novel, The Cam- ▼ eron Ridge Conspiracy, set in the 1860s, reappear in his third novel, The Iron Promise (Riverside Press $22.95), which begins in the winter of 1870 when smallpox has decimated a Secwepemc camp. The only survivors are a young Secwepemc woman, Rose Wilson, with her infant daughter, Olivia. Assuming she, too, will succumb, Rose begs two strangers on the road passing by to save her daughter’s life and the strang- ers consent to take the child. A day later Rider Valcourt, Olivia’s father, finds Rose and takes her to the family ranch near Lillooet where she recovers. They make an “iron promise” to find their child. The story has dual narra- tives; one from the parents stead-

fastly searching for their child and

one outlining the experiences of the child who has lost her identity, ▼ her family and her culture. Steven Hunter of Big Lake in the Cariboo sive text, both dialogue and prose, is both A freight wagon on the Cariboo Road is talking about the manuscript he just has been a columnist for BC Out- realistic and faultless. And, despite the in the Fraser Canyon, by Edward received from Ian Weir, the author; but Roper, circa 1887; around the time doors magazine. 978-0-9917071-3-3 occasional bloodthirsty violence, Weir’s instead it is really all part of the story. Strother Purcell reached the area. humour shines through in the dialogue. It’s a very creative and unusual way to The story begins in the winter of 1876 begin a story. when three Americans from the Deep have done, Weaver becomes hell bent on The only problem a reader might South stop by a roadhouse near Hell’s writing his story. encounter is trying to keep track of the Gate, a few miles from Yale, along the The Death and Life of Strother Purcell myriad of characters, some of whom old Cariboo Wagon road in the Fraser is not told chronologically but flips back change their names throughout the Canyon. What happens there over the and forth from that first scene in 1876 to story. The time period switches from the next few days sets the stage for a long, sixteen years later, when the supposedly 1870s to the 1890s with alacrity, and twisted, involved story of hate, revenge, deceased legendary lawman Strother then goes back even further to the years love, and tragedy. Purcell re-appears in a San Francisco jail between 1848 and 1850. I found myself When I first began this story, I wasn’t under another name and as a completely constantly back-tracking to confirm who quite sure if this tale was non-fiction or different person. He is now a one-eyed, was who. Karen Lee White fiction. Was Weir describing real charac- derelict, homeless man. Regardless, Weir manages to build ters from the Wild West? His characters So, what happened in the years be- the tension and hold your attention to Karen Lee White is a Northern seemed so authentic that I felt they must tween? the final scene. At the beginning and at Salish, Tuscarora, Chippewa,

▼ surely have lived and died in those days. The genius of this well-crafted story the end of the story, he writes: and Scots writer from Vancouver The story of Strother and his step- is that what happened in those years is “They were passing into myth before Island. She was adopted into the brother Elijah (known as Lige) is told told through numerous written accounts the snow had commenced to fall in ear- Daklaweidi clan of the Interior in an ingenious style through the eyes from different people. Perhaps this might nest on that bleak midwinter afternoon, Tlingit/Tagish people. In 2017, of many different people. And therein prove to be confusing to the reader, blurring the hard distinction of this world. White was awarded an Indigenous lies the beauty of this work because, which it certainly is on occasion, but it So it is not possible with confidence to say Art Award for Writing by the as we know, everyone tends to see the also shows how legends are born and where certainties begin and end. There Hnatyshyn Foundation. Written past differently. For this reason, the exaggerated through the years. What is were three of them; this much at least is as a love letter to the Tlingit/ reader is left to wonder what exactly the real truth? beyond dispute….” Tagish people in the Yukon Ter- Ian Weir’s previous novels are Daniel ritory with whom she trapped, is the truth? The only problem for Weir as a sto- hunted and fished in the 1970s, One of the narrators, Barrington ryteller is that he needs an exceptional O’Thunder (D&M, 2009) and Will Starling her fictional work, The Silence Weaver, is a journalist looking for a good conclusion to bring together Strother (Goose Lane, 2014). 9781773100296 (Exile Editions $21.95), includes story to help make himself famous. His Purcell with his estranged step-brother. a CD of original music performed first idea is to write a book about Wyatt So should Strother Purcell be portrayed Valerie Green has published more than by the author. She says it was Earp but his encounter with Earp and as a legendary lawman, or should he be twenty books, most recently Dunmora: inspired by the rugged, unspoiled his wife (an amusing episode) comes depicted as the one-eyed radical he later The Story of a Heritage Manor House on beauty of the Yukon Territory to nothing. Once he discovers that the became? And was his stepbrother truly (Hancock House, 2017). and “the deep peace found in legendary Strother Purcell is still alive, an unspeakable murderer? Her soon-to-be-released debut novel Provi- wild places.” 9781550967944 and did not perish in a snowstorm six- Even the prologue is extraordinary. It dence (Sandra Jonas Publishing) begins teen years earlier as he was purported to reads as if the actual editor of this book a family saga set in 19th century B.C.

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21 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 REVIEW not at all aware of the unusual quality of his ART work, an artist who was not really convinced of his own talent. So—as I had done seven years earlier in the case of Emily Carr, whose repre- sentative and agent I had become—I decided on E.J. Hughes is now second only to the spot to take Hughes under my wings.” The relationship between artist and agent be- Emily Carr in terms of his market value as a came an enduring friendship bolstered by much correspondence. Thom wrote, “For Hughes, who Western Canadian artist. In November, Hughes’ was never good at meeting the public or pro- moting himself, a dealer provided not only the painting Fish Boats, sold for $2 assurance of a steady income and a degree of protection from the world at large but also, for million at an auction in Toronto. “He never went most artistic purposes, his public face.” The pressure of generating new work was to an opening of any exhibition of his work,” says apparent in Hughes’ replies to Stern, who some- times offered harsh criticism. “I would like to biographer Robert Amos, “and he avoided work and work and rework each one,” Hughes interviews. He just wanted to paint.” wrote, “until it gave me a good feeling, but you can realize that this would permit me to produce only three or four paintings a year, and I could not make a living at it that way. “The way it is now, the occasional painting is good (about one in five or six, I think) but that is due a lot to happy accident when they are turned out as fast, and that I don’t like…Leonardo’s Mona Lisa sure would have lost out if he had spent only two of the four or five years he took to complete it. It is thinking about him… that partly makes me feel so awful to send away a ‘half baked’ painting.” The two-million dollar man By the early 1950s, Hughes’ paintings were part of every major public collection from Ottawa to Vancouver, but his reputation was not firmly established until he reached old age. ✫ E.J. Hughes Paints Vancouver Island by Robert Amos A MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE OF (Touchwood Editions $35) E.J. Hughes’ career opened in January of 2003 and ran for six months, in conjunction with the release of a coffee-table book, solidifying Hughes’ slowly-won reputation as the most popular ith the exception of interpreter of British Columbia landscapes. Emily Carr, nobody E.J. Hughes (D&M, 2002), with text by Thom,

has painted British PHOTO featured 100 colour images and extensive cor-

Columbia so vivid- respondence between Stern and Hughes. ly, for so long, and Elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of COLONIST so well, as E.J. Arts in 1968, Hughes received the Order of Can-

Hughes. Now fel- TIMES ada in 2001 and the Order of British Columbia /

W low artist Robert in 2005, the same year his painting Rivers Inlet STONE

Amos’ moderately sold for $920,000, the highest price ever paid for priced E.J. Hughes ▼ a work by a living Canadian artist at the time.

Paints Vancouver Island (Touchwood $30) DARREN COLLECTION Jack Shadbolt praised Hughes as “the most

affords a biographical summary of Hughes’ life E.J. Hughes in his studio, Duncan 2004 engaging intuitive painter of the B.C. landscape

and exclusively focuses on his depictions of PRIVATE since Emily Carr” but only the University of Vancouver Island. was only too happy to answer questions and ▼ Victoria and Emily Carr College of Art conferred As a “travelogue,” we follow Hughes up the tell stories about his life. Salmon had brought 1,600 works now in the Canadian War Museum. Taylor Bay, Gabriola Island, 1995, honorary doctorates, an indication as to the island, from the ferry landing at Sidney, past a paper bag full of snapshots, as well as some “Sometimes I was working so hard,” he wrote, “One of the main reasons I paint is because watercolour (above); Passing Coast extent that Hughes has long been undervalued Goldstream and the Malahat to Bay, drawings by Hughes and a couple of his etch- “I was wishing that I was a combat soldier…they I think nature’s so wonderful that I want to Boat, 1965, looking north east from as “only” a B.C. artist. Genoa Bay, Maple Bay and Ladysmith, replicating ings, so they covered a table with this material at least had a lot of time off to rest, you know… Gabriola Island, oil on canvas (below left). Hughes’ wife, Fern, died in 1974. He died of the route taken by Hughes after he was awarded and sorted through it over the next two hours. As soon as I woke up in the morning, I had to try to get my feeling down about that on a cardiac arrest in Duncan—where he liked to a Emily Carr Scholarship by Lawren Harris Photographs Amos received that day became be looking for subject matter continuously… dominating or landscape, but by the time the eat lunch at the Dog House restaurant—at age in 1947. Every stop is illustrated with Hughes’ the beginnings of his archive of things relating to until dark.” canvas, if possible. I feel that, when I am ‘50s arrived I had decided to emphasize land- 93 on January 5, 2007. handwritten notes and annotated pencil sketches, E.J. Hughes. Out of gratitude, Amos wrote a note As a war artist, Hughes was given a letter scape, not only because it gave the feeling more Prices being paid for Hughes’ works have been continuing to Nanaimo, Comox and Courtenay. of thanks to Hughes, and over the next few years, stating how his military scenes were to be de- doing my painting, it is a form of worship.” strongly of the B.C. and Canadian environment… climbing since his death. Whereas in 2001, a As well, Amos presents Hughes’ working he and his wife received a number of handwritten picted: “You are expected to record and interpret but because I felt landscapes would sell more painting entitled Lake Okanagan was sold at a methods. About every four years Hughes took and carefully composed letters from the artist. vividly and veraciously (1) the spirit, character, —E. J. Hughes, The Lively Arts, CBC TV, 1961 readily, and not being equipped psychologically yard sale in Ontario for $200, its purchaser was the summer away from his studio to create new “There was much about this man—his upright appearance and attitude of the men… (2) the to be a teacher or a commercial artist, that was able to re-sell it six years later for $402,500. sketches based on “observational realism.” In- posture, his tweed jacket and tie, and his patient instruments and machines which they employ important.” In 2000, a Vancouver auction house sold a stead of relying on a camera, it was his habit to and attentive demeanour—that made a visit with and (3) the environment in which they do their In 1947, the Group of Seven’s Lawren Harris 1970 Hughes painting, Harbour Scene, Nanaimo, sit before his subject—usually in the front seat of him seem like visiting someone for whom time work.” The exactness demanded by the letter recommended Hughes to his agent, Max Stern, for a then-record $105,750. “If that one came for his car—and draw for two days on a small piece had stopped in the 1930s,” says Amos. “I didn’t would have fit with Hughes’ clear, detailed style. Canada’s leading art dealer. Referring to Hughes’ sale today, you could add another zero to that of paper, and on the third day fill in this study want to presume upon the basis of our meeting “There can be little doubt,” says Vancouver painting , Ladysmith Harbour (1950), total with no question at all,” says Amos. “He’s with colour and tone notes. to take things further, so I was pleased to receive Art Gallery former curator Ian M. Thom, “that Harris later said, “Nothing quite like it has been an absolute fixture in auction houses. His work Hughes’ on-the-spot sketches led to fully- another invitation, in 1996 to have lunch with the careful study of machinery and details of uni- done here or anywhere in the country. Everybody is almost always there. And typically, the prices realised graphite tonal studies, and eventually Hughes. He and Salmon met us in Duncan and forms sharpened his skills as a draftsman and likes it; painters, laymen and just folks. It’s that just keep rising and rising and rising.” to full-scale oils. He once travelled up the coast took us to his home, to see his studio.” observer, just as doing detailed sketches rather kind of painting—factual, detailed, accurate, According to an article in the Times-Colonist, a on an oil tanker in 1953, and occasionally he ✫ than broad treatments was to have a profound full of interest but its art quality transcends all mural by Hughes located at Nanaimo’s Vancou- visited the “vast and beautiful Interior” of B.C., BORN IN NORTH VANCOUVER ON FEBRUARY 17, 1913, effect on his working methods.” of these.” ver Island Conference Centre is now estimated but he never left Vancouver Island after 1967. Edward John Hughes grew up in Nanaimo and After his service in WWII, which also included Max Stern—who had “discovered” Emily Carr to be worth more than $3 million. According to Amos, he painted more pictures of North Vancouver. During the Depression, Hughes visits to military installations and camps in in 1943—followed up on Harris’ recommenda- In 2016, a 1949 Hughes painting, The Post Crofton than anywhere else. was the leading student at the Vancouver School , Hughes returned to the West Coast and tion and tracked down Hughes in the wilds of Office at Courtenay, B.C., had set a previously “I was surprised, one day in 1993,” recalls of Decorative and Applied Arts and he co-founded settled with his wife, Rosabell ‘Fern’ Irvine Shawnigan Lake, Vancouver Island. From that high sales mark for Hughes at $1.6 million. Amos, “to receive a phone call from his assis- a commercial art company with muralists Paul Smith Hughes, initially in Victoria, where in day onward, Stern would buy outright everything “As far as Western Canada goes,” says Amos, tant, Patricia Salmon. She said Hughes knew Goranson and Orville Fisher in 1934. 1946 he completed Fish Boats, Rivers Inlet, the Hughes produced. Stern’s first purchase—of 14 “Emily Carr is always the top. But he’s the next about me from my writing in the newspaper After graduation in 1935, he found that there record-setting painting that sold for $2 million oils, 4 oil sketches, 32 drawings and 4 prints— one—he’s in second place. There is nobody else (Times Colonist), and wanted to thank me for my was no way to make a living as an artist in Van- in 2018. Hughes relocated to Shawnigan Lake in earned Hughes the pitifully small sum of $500. you could talk about. They don’t come even close. encouragement.” couver in the 1930s so he enlisted with the Royal the 1950s; then moved to a permanent residence But the arrangement meant that Hughes didn’t The Audain Art Museum in Whistler features Hughes was coming to Victoria, for his car’s Canadian Artillery in 1939, as a gunner, and was in Duncan in 1974. have to sell a painting for almost 50 years. 19 Emily Carr oil paintings in one room, but

annual service, so he invited Amos and his wife posted to England. He served as one of Canada’s His decision to focus on landscapes rather COLLECTION “The meeting proved to be fascinating,” re- the next gallery, devoted to Hughes, also has to lunch at the Snug at the Oak Bay Beach first official war artists (as did Jack Shadbolt) than people was largely practical. called Stern, the owner of the Dominion Gallery 19 paintings.

Hotel. Far from behaving like a hermit, Hughes from 1943 to 1946, supplying approximately “I wasn’t sure whether to have figures pre- PRIVATE in Montreal. “There was a shy painter who was “That puts it into context.” 9781771512558

22 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 23 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 ACTIVISM REVIEW

Elders — not seniors — are more motivated to change the world

The Aging of Aquarius: and try to answer honestly Wilkes’s Igniting Passion and Purpose as an Elder question, then we are made slightly (New Society $17.99) by Helen Wilkes better even by that action, because we BY ALAN BELK have acted positively to address some- thing that may have been bugging us have always want- for most of our lives. ed to change the Improving our own lives by knowing world, to make ourselves better and being honest with it a better place. ourselves is one part of becoming an Perhaps you have, elder. The other part is to give to other I people. As an elder, if you know what too. Lots of things get in the way: edu- you are good at and what you like do- cation, raising children, working in a ing, and you have overcome your false job you may loathe, divorcing acrimoni- self. What can you do? You must find ously, and retiring. But if you are in the your own answer to this question, but last of these life stages, then the good some activities that can have a great news is you still have a chance to do effect on other people’s lives can be what you have always wanted. simple to do. Reading for people, mak- Helen Wilkes thinks you have a ing music, having conversations with better chance of being successful now people, talking about your life history, because retirement will free you to use teaching people, or protesting pipelines the experience you have gained over a and dams. Some of the over 200 ar- lifetime of growth. We live in a culture restees protesting the Kinder Morgan that does not always celebrate age and pipeline expansion are retirees. the wisdom that accrues with it, as evidenced by the unflattering words available to describe those of us of pensionable age. Wilkes, a retired professor of French literature, chooses to describe herself as an elder, a term that acknowledges that wisdom is a cultural resource, particularly in societies that do not primarily transmit culture through writing. But wisdom, perhaps, in the age of Wikipedia is not as valued as it should be. Elder is an instructive

choice of term because it shows that

we seniors need to define ourselves and reject the labels that are pasted ▼ on us. We must be active, not passive, Helen Wilkes opposing a pipeline. and being an elder is an activity we can engage with and participate in. The thread running through The But elders may be at a bit of a loss Aging of Aquarius is that improv- when it comes to changing the world be- ing ourselves through honest self- cause no one has given us a game plan, assessment and self-appraisal must and it is difficult to break out from a life be coupled with a desire to better the of conforming to social expectations. lives of other people, and we must act 20 plus Fortunately, Wilkes helps us along the on that desire to be successful in bet- way with some practical advice. tering ourselves. This reflects the idea Yoka Elderhood is not conferred by virtue of Aristotelian virtue, which is that varieties is reading & of age; there is no greeting card, no we must balance our responsibility recommends: welcoming party. We must choose to to ourselves with our responsibilities After Life: become an elder on our own and on our toward others in order to flourish as Ways We own terms. Becoming an elder requires human beings. If we concentrate only Think About self-examination and self-assessment. on our own wellbeing, or if we sacrifice Death Do you want to do something you are ourselves to ensure the happiness of by Merrie-Ellen comfortable with or do you want to take others, we are not living a virtuous life. Wilcox risks and extend your comfort zone? And if we do not lead a virtuous life, we (Orca Books). The key to being an elder is to offer cannot be spiritually happy. ISBN: 9781459813885 your wisdom as a gift to other people, One possible downside of self-exam- often in small ways. ination is having to face up to one’s own Self-examination can be difficult, death. For Wilkes, who escaped Nazi particularly if we view ourselves in Germany as a girl in 1939, coming to terms of success or failure, and it is terms with death has heightened her challenging because we may not want own spirituality and made her more to see what we find. At the end of each open to the possibility of an afterlife. chapter Wilkes provides a section on For me, not so much. “Ideas and Actions.” For example, But we do agree on one thing. Com- “Have you been hiding in a false self? pared to the richness of life, and the Write down the names of any voices unlimited potential of human beings from the past (or in the present) that to flourish in their lives, death is not #5 - 1046 Mason St. Victoria, B.C. V8T 1A3 are making you feel small, unworthy, significant. If you accept this view, you and incapable of further growth.” will want to become an elder, and Helen (just off Cook Street) 1-250-384-0905 The voices inside our heads are pow- Wilkes can help you do that. • Hand sorted for premium quality • Full selection of exotic teas erful and difficult to ignore. I suspect 9780865718944 • B.C. honey and Belgian chocolates • Mail orders welcome PremiumAffordable Quality Pricesat we pay more attention to the negative ones than the positive ones, to our Alan Belk of Vancouver drove a school bus www.yokascoffee.com detriment. But it is never too late to before teaching ethics, critical thinking, challenge and overcome them, and if existentialism, and philosophy to students we sit down with a paper and pencil at the University of Guelph.

24 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 PHOTO

PRIZES ENRIGHT Digital Legacy Plan: A Guide to the Personal and BLAISE / Practical Elements of Your Digital Life Before You Die PETERSON by Angela Crocker and Vicki McLeod BARRY

• From online banking to decades worth of digital family photos, copious creative or in- tellectual property, or personal history documented on social media, everyone has a wide- spread digital footprint that tells the story of our lives. • This book offers solutions for

the practical, social, emo- tional, and technical aspects

of your digital legacy. • Prepare the personal and ▼ practical elements of your digi- tal life before it’s too late! $19.95 | Paperback + Patrick Lane is Download Kit | 144 pages Woodcock winner Putting Your Affairs in Order: A Leave-Behind Guide for Your Loved Ones Born in Nelson in 1939, poet and novelist Patrick Lane is this year’s by G. Edmond Burrows FCPA, FCA recipient of the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an outstanding literary career in British Columbia. He will receive his • Make your wishes known and lay things out so that it’s award on Saturday, April 27, 1-3 p.m., James Bay much more likely to be a quick, easy estate dealt with the way you wish. Branch, Victoria Public Library, 385 Menzies St, Victoria. Free event. • Ensure your wishes are fol- lowed, and speed up estate SALT SPRING ISLAND NOVELIST KATHY PAGE stomach and I wrote to that feeling, learned late last year that her novel that memory, those wishes.” settlements while saving on Dear Evelyn (Biblioasis) was been In a series of letters addressed costs. awarded the $50,000 Rogers Writers’ to current occupants, as she peers • Organize everything for them Trust Fiction Prize. through windows into remembered ✫ spaces, Knight recalls aspects of grow- ahead of time, so there is THE THREE FINALISTS FOR THIS YEAR’S ing up with her brother in a variety of less chance of confusion. GEORGE Ryga Award for Social Aware- neighborhoods, including the Down- • Includes a sample will, ness are: town Eastside where her mother still power of attorney, codicil, lives. Breaching the Peace: The Site C Dam checklists, and information and a Valley’s Stand Against Big Hydro She told co-nominee Travis Lupick by Sarah Cox (On Point Press); Dear for a Georgia Straight article: “There are for those dealing with your Current Occupant by Chelene Knight so many stories of struggle and abuse estate before and after a (Book Thug); On the Line: A History of and neglect. I think that a lot of young death, all in one convenient the British Columbia Labour Movement girls think, ‘Well, that’s my path. This package. by Rod Mickleburgh (Harbour). is what I’ve seen, this is the way I grew ✫ up, and this is the only way to go.’ $29.95 | Paperback + Download Kit | 112 pages THE THREE FINALISTS FOR THE BASIL STUART- “I’m showing folks that ‘Yes, this is Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Scholarly kind of rough stuff, but…there is light Book on British Columbia, established at the end of the tunnel. You can go Contesting a Will without a Lawyer: in memory of Basil Stuart-Stubbs, a through all of these things and still be The DIY Guide for Canadians bloody amazing.’” beloved bibliophile, scholar and librar- by Lynne Butler BA, LLB ian, are: A graduate of The Writer’s Studio at Don’t Never Tell Nobody Nothin’ No SFU, Knight was featured on the cover How: The Real Story of West Coast Rum of BC BookWorld when she released • You can still contest a will Running by Rick James (Harbour); her first poetry collection, Braided Skin even if you can’t afford a Claiming the Land: British Columbia (Mother Tongue, 2015), largely emanat- lawyer. and the making of a new El Dorado ing from experiences arising from her by Daniel Marshall (Ronsdale Press); poverty, urban upbringing and youth- • Explore what a DIY versus Incorporating Culture: How Indigenous ful dreams while growing up as a mixed lawyer-assisted lawsuit People are Reshaping the Northwest East Indian/Black teen. would look like. Coast Art Industry by Solen Roth (UBC • Weigh the pros and cons of Press). UBC Library will host the award filing a lawsuit over a dis- ceremony and reception for the sev- puted will. enth prize, supported by UBC Library, • Navigate legal paperwork Pacific BookWorld News Society and and the court system. Yosef Wosk, on Thursday, April 25, from 4 to 6 pm. • Get your case heard by a ✫ judge and your legal costs CHELENE KNIGHT HAS WON THE 30TH covered! City of Vancouver Book Award for her second book, Dear Cur- $26.95 | Paperback + Download Kit | 144 pages rent Occupant, a memoir about liv- ing at more than twenty address- es while growing up in Vancouver. www.self-counsel.com

“When I wrote Dear Current Occu- pant,” she says, “I went to the place 1-800-663-3007 that scared me the most. I found the ▼ one thing that punched me in the Chelene Knight

25 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 MEMOIR REVIEW Darrel McLeod

Darrel McLeod’s memoir, lthough Mamaskatch by Darrel McLeod is intensely biographical, Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age, it has seemingly fictional prose that is reminiscent of Beatrice has won a Governor General’s A Culleton’s highly personal, 1983 classic, In Search of April Raintree. Award because it offers a McLeod’s narrative describes his early life with his mother, Bertha, his brother Greggie brutally honest view of the (later known as Trina following gender reassignment), and his sister Debbie. havoc that intergenerational Bertha started off as the kind of mother many In- trauma can wreak across digenous youths would love to have. She was in tune with the ebbs and flows of the natural world and the multiple lives. spiritual teachings they provide, which in turn she eagerly shared with her children. But she was physically abused as a residential school student and witnessed both physical and sexual abuse against the other students. Although she managed to physically escape from the school, she could not Mamaskatch: escape the emotional, men- A Cree Coming of Age tal, and spiritual damage by Darrel McLeod that it wrought. Getting (Douglas & McIntyre $29.95) into abusive intimate re- BY DAVID MILWARD lationships only hastened the process. Bertha could be ferociously protective, like a moth- er Grizzly Bear, when her children were faced with physical danger — or with the threat of child welfare apprehension. Ironically, those situations frequently came about because of her neglect while she passed time at the nearby bar. She was also frequently physically abusive towards her children. McLeod recalls two specific events. One involved throwing beer bottles at Debbie and himself, Dreams & and another involved attempting to set fire to the house while the children were still in it. Such is the paradox and nature of intergenera- tional trauma that its victims can at once try to love their children, and yet act out their pain and hurt them to perpetuate the cycle. ✫ nightmares DEBBIE IS SEXUALLY ABUSED BY HER UNCLE ANDY.She not only suffers the aforementioned abuse from her mother, but she herself winds homosexual anyway, in a relatively healthy manner. avoid censure beneath a surface tone of neutrality up in one abusive relationship after another. Eventually he met a man named Milan who en- or praise, but which yet, in substance, remain fun- Greggie is gang-raped at an early age by several abled him to become the man he is today. damentally racist. other youths. He eventually becomes part of the Racism, overt and buried, adds additional layers Instead of earning his attainments in their own drag scene, and then undergoes gender reassign- to his memoir, such as the clearly discriminatory right, he received insinuations that somehow he had ment surgery. McLeod passes no moral judgment on treatment he suffers from one of his school teachers, miraculously exceeded the limited inborn capabilities the latter decision, but relates that the surgery led Ms. Long. of a lowborn race, an erosion of personal agency that to physical ailments and complications. Debbie and The teachings provided by members of the Catholic almost reduced McLeod himself to a kind of museum Greggie struggled immensely with substance abuse, faith were also a constant assault on his self-esteem. piece to be gawked at. which only worsened their problems. Priests denigrated Indigenous peoples as primitive Multiple traumas piled on one another over a life- A great deal of Darrel McLeod’s own turmoil arose pagans and the church condemned his sexual explo- time can literally break people down to a point where from his struggles with sexuality. It started with an rations as a sin worthy of eternal damnation they can’t take any more. ambiguous encounter during his school years with McLeod also suffered from microaggression, a Debbie ends up committing suicide after years of an older boy named Stormy. McLeod remains unsure phenomenon studied by Black and Latino scholars. substance abuse and abusive relationships. if it was welcome or coerced, enjoyable or painful. It describes the use of words or actions that try to Their mother Bertha does not commit suicide, but More trouble arrived in the form of his her mind, body, and spirit have been ravaged. brother-in-law, Rory, whose marital relation- McLeod and his mother see each other one ship arose from a highly exploitative relation- ▼About Mamaskatch last moment before she dies. They let each ship with 13-year-old Debbie. It turns out that other know that they love each other, and Rory was emotionally, physically, and sexu- Mamaskatch is a Cree word used all is now forgiven. It is a very brief moment ally abusive towards both Debbie and Darrel. where no words can, or need, be spoken, Again, as with Stormy, Darrel, cannot sort as a response to dreams. but their souls touch each other through out whether it was consensual and abusive; their eyes. In an interview with CBC Radio’s Shelagh Rogers for The Next ✫ enjoyable or painful. Chapter, Darrel McLeod explained his personal connection to this word: ✫ I HOPE MORE PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY NON-INDIGENOUS “The word, Mamaskatch, has stuck with me over the years. Mom used DARRELL MCLEOD REVEALS THAT ABUSE FROM RORY people, read Mamaskatch to gain the in- to say it a lot when we were kids when things happened that were a bit was the most painful and shameful thing in sights that it offers on the social problems extraordinary. his life; he could never quite let anyone know. plaguing Indigenous peoples, and how the “I gave the book that title after going online with some fluent Cree His first consensual partner was a boy residential schools are not just a thing of speakers. I asked them what it meant and they gave various meanings, named Gresh. And while Gresh was not the past to be forgotten, but have left behind physically abusive, he was capable of mind ranging from, ‘How strange’ to ‘It’s a miracle.’ an enduring legacy that cannot be ignored. games that could be more cruel than any “It is the perfect title. I keep saying that word over and over again now. 9781771622004 physical blow. “Somebody asked me yesterday what would your mother say if she read McLeod renders no moral judgment on that book and I said she would say, ‘Mamaskatch.’” David Milward is an associate professor of law homosexuality. He remembers that, like any Prior to his retirement, McLeod was a chief negotiator of land claims with UVic and a member of the Beardy’s & other young boy, he had crushes on girls dur- for the federal government and executive director of education and inter- Okemasis First Nation of Duck Lake, Saskatch- ing his early school years. He openly raises national affairs with the Assembly of First Nations. ewan. He assisted the Truth and Reconciliation the question of whether he would have re- Fluent in French and Spanish, he holds degrees in French Literature Commission with the authoring of its final report mained heterosexual and eventually entered and Education from UBC. McLeod now writes, sings and plays jazz guitar on Indigenous justice issues. Milward’s books into a relationship with a woman leading to in Sooke when not performing in Victoria and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. include Aboriginal Justice and the Charter: Real- a family had he not suffered the traumas His next book will be a follow up to Mamaskatch. izing a Culturally Sensitive Interpretation of Legal he had, or whether he would have become Rights (UBC Press, 2013).

26 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 telling that one of Jamieson’s last public appearances was REVIEW at the founding convention of BIOGRAPHY the New Democratic Party in 1961 where she presided over a meeting of 300 women. The Last Suffragist Standing: Veronica Strong-Boag has fashioned a In relating Jamieson’s sto- The Life and Times of Laura Marshall Jamieson by Veronica lively biography of Laura Marshall Jamieson ry, Strong-Boag presents fresh Strong-Boag (UBC Press $89.95) material on the well-known divisions within the CCF, es- BY PATRICIA E. ROY (1882-1964), the last suffragist to serve in pecially between democratic a Canadian legislature. socialists or social democrats rom a variety candidates secured both Lib- like Jamieson and doctrinaire of sources eral and Conservative votes. Marxists, notably Dorothy —Includ- Jamieson was not long out Steeves, at times, the only ing in- of electoral politics. Elected as other female member of the terviews a Vancouver alderman, she ar- CCF caucus. F with de- The last gued for progressive reforms, ✫ scendants particularly low-rent housing, OUTSIDE THE LEGISLATURE, JAMIE- and records left by contem- but could not persuade city son combined her belief in poraries—Veronica Strong- council to adopt this idea. In the importance of educating Boag has uncovered many de- 1952, she re-entered provin- people, especially women, tails, and has set them firmly suffragist cial politics after the Coalition about current events, and in the context of the times, for disintegrated, but lost in 1953 the need to supplement her The Last Suffragist Stand- by a narrow margin to a can- income. When her husband ing: The Life and Times of didate of the new Social Credit died of blood poisoning, he Laura Marshall Jamieson. standing government. left only a modest estate and After growing up on a poor A feminist champion of so- two school-aged children. Ja- Ontario farm, Laura Marshall cial democracy, Jamieson had mieson created study groups Jamieson (1882-1964) briefly bodies. Yet, she was realistic. stream clubwomen” may have been deeply involved with the from whose members she col- taught in the Crow’s Nest When the international contributed to Jamieson’s CCF from its beginnings even lected a fee. Pass, graduated at the Univer- situation deteriorated in the defeat in the 1945 provincial though, as Strong-Boag notes, She also applied her belief sity of Toronto, worked for the late 1930s, Hitler changed election. That may be so, but many party members assumed in the value of co-operative YWCA in Stratford, Ontario, Jamieson’s belief in pacifism. in 1941 the Liberals and the that men had the right to lead housing by taking in boarders, married lawyer John Stewart She called for trade embargos Conservatives split the non- the party with women serving a precedent for the communal Jamieson, a member of the on belligerents. left vote; in 1945, Coalition only in an auxiliary role. It is residences for employed wom- Liberal Party, and moved to Given her husband’s part- en she set up in Vancouver. Burnaby. time position as a juvenile Her favouring of co-operatives The focus of this book is court judge in Burnaby, a was sincere; she urged CCF on Jamieson’s work for re- position to which she suc- members to patronize co- forms, especially those affect- ceeded after his death, Ja- operative ventures such as ing women, and her election mieson became known as an grocery stores. to the provincial legislature expert on child welfare. She ✫ to become, according to her called for sex education, even STRONG-BOAG RIGHTLY CONCLUDES biographer, the last Cana- for young children, and for that Jamieson was more con- dian suffragist to serve in a the establishment of nursery cerned about injustice based legislature. schools and of community on class and gender than on Her education, her active centres where older children race. Jamieson did favour an role in Vancouver’s University could enjoy recreational and easing of restrictions on immi- Women’s Club, and her hus- cultural activities. gration from China and India band’s position put Jamieson In 1938, she resigned her to permit family reunification into the middle class, but she judgeship to resolve, through but was cautious in speak- was uneasy with that status. politics, what she considered ing about the Japanese. Yet, She criticized the “patronizing” the root cause of juvenile de- during the war she endorsed attitude of some middle class linquency, the lack of “food the Vancouver Consultative women to the impoverished, and clothing,” an argument Council’s demand for jus- their non-recognition of the she was still making in 1953. tice for Japanese Canadians rights of domestic servants, ✫ while favouring their dispersal and the failure of suffragists ALTHOUGH SHE COULD NOT VOTE across Canada. such as Nellie McClung to for them in 1916, Jamieson Strong-Boag recognizes Ja- seek other reforms, such as favoured the provincial Liber- mieson’s imperfections espe- minimum wage laws, to im- als because they supported cially in respect to Indigenous prove women’s lives. women’s suffrage. Despite peoples. In British Columbia, Similarly, in the mid-1940s their introduction of such Jamieson appears to have when women were still cau- reforms as Mothers’ Pensions, had little interest in its Indig- tious about participating in Jamieson thought the Liberals enous residents, but in what public life, Jamieson com- abandoned their progressive was likely a draft for a speech plained of their “strong inferi- sympathies after granting relatively late in her career, ority complex” and hesitation the franchise, so she looked Jamieson wrote approvingly about taking on tasks of citi- elsewhere. Attracted by the of efforts to integrate Indig- zenship that would have the ideas of socialists about pub- enous children into the public public see them “as ordinary lic ownership of utilities and schools of Oliver. people first and as citizens, equal pay for equal work, in The Last Suffragist Stand- before it thinks of them spe- 1920 she announced that ing is lively and informative; cifically as women.” she had joined the Federated the descriptions and analyses Jamieson practised what Labour Party. of the times make a valuable she preached. She saw edu- By supporting socialism contribution to the wider his- cation and internationalism and internationalism in the toriography of women’s politi- as the keys to solving “global 1920s, Jamieson put herself cal activities in Canada and to problems” and achieving “a “on the periphery of women’s British Columbia politics in fair deal for women.” As the political activity.” Yet, when general. mother of young children, her she ran as a CCF candi- Laura Marshall Jamieson involvement in the Parent- date for a provincial seat in a would undoubtedly be pleased Teacher Association (PTA) 1939 Vancouver by-election, with this study of her life and seems natural, but Strong- some Liberal and Conservative times. 9780774838689 Boag suggests that Jamieson women helped her successful wanted to use the PTA to campaign. Patricia E. Roy is professor emer- “promote internationalism.” Strong-Boag suggests that itus of history at the University Active in the feminist and of Victoria. She is best known

moving away from “main- PHOTO pacifist Women’s International for her trilogy of books, A White FAMILY League for Peace and Freedom Laura Marshall, Man’s Province (1989); The Ori- (WILPF), she sought to ally the graduation, 1908, ental Question (2003), and The ▼

League with other progressive University of Toronto JAMIESON Triumph of Citizenship (2007).

27 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 BIOGRAPHY REVIEW

Rick Hansen’s Man in Motion nated by the celebration of Man in Motion World Tour recalls World Tour: 30 Years Later— what Montreal-based phi- A Celebration of Courage, losopher Charles Taylor has the adventures of the world’s most- Strength, and the Power called “expressive individu- of Community by Jake MacDonald alism.” In that context, the photographed wheelchair athlete. (Greystone Books $34.95) glories of the individual are highlighted. That perspective BY BRIAN FRASER is expressed by astronaut Chris Hadfield in the front ick Han- cover quote, “Rick is an amaz- ing person, an inspiration, and sen’ s one of the truly great Canadi- world fa- ans. No matter where life takes The finish mous ad- me, I look up to him.” R venture I think Hansen himself cap- did not tures the soul of MacDonald’s start well. It account better in a quote at was March 1985 and the the beginning of the last chap- line was weather was miserable. Before ter. “The Tour transformed he could wheel 40,000 kilome- everyone who was involved tres through 34 countries in with it. By working together for eighteen months, his support a common goal, we suffered to- vehicle got into an accident only the gether, supported each other, coming out of a shopping mall and became better versions of parking lot in Vancouver. ourselves.” The book is filled The challenges of the open- with wonderful stories to back ing day were simply a fore- up this perspective. It was a taste of the barriers to come, team approach that made the whether it was Rick’s physical beginning tour possible. endurance, weather condi- MacDonald’s selection of tions, technical troubles, or a rich range of photographs the lack of attention the tour adds to the book’s impact. By got in its early days. my rough count, only eight out Along the way his trainer of the 150 photos show Rick and road manager wiped out alone. And even then, the pho- on his bicycle and was nearly tographer and who knows how killed. A car that slowed to give many other people are just out Hansen room was rear-ended. Misreads of a map made the Rick Hansen was featured Man in Motion wheel far fur- on the cover of the very ther than planned. But the first issue of BC BookWorld, “man” and his team pushed (Autumn, 1987) for the on to complete the tour and book Man In Motion initially raise $26 million (Douglas & McIntyre). for spinal cord research and ▼ support services for people with disabilities in the process. Equally impor- tant, he proved that people with disabili- ties had great poten- tial if they pushed hard and long to realize their dreams. This all happened because, at age fifteen, coming home from a camping trip to Bella Coola, Rick Hansen was of sight: another telling tribute thrown from the back of a to the team on the tour. pickup truck and rendered a A great chapter in the book, paraplegic by a broken back. “Taking Care of Business,” Family and friends in Williams chronicles the support work Lake, in the years immediately that took place in the office following the accident, helped in Vancouver, far from the him temper his bitterness and cheering crowds and me- anger with their support and dia. It was filled with volun- turn it into a deep acceptance teers who stuffed envelopes, of cooperation as the true licked stamps, and answered source of strength, love, and phones. It morphed into the partnership. vast network that is the Rick Hansen proceeded to make Hansen Foundation. To date, himself into one of the most that power of community has decorated wheelchair athletes raised over $326 million for in the world prior to his global people living with and recover- tour at age 27. ing from spinal chord injuries. Now Jake MacDonald, a 9781771643443 journalist based in Winnipeg, has woven a wonderful tapes- Brian Fraser of North Vancou- try of descriptions, memories, ver is a minister with Brent- tributes, and reflections into wood Presbyterian Church and a compelling reminder of just a leadership coach with Jazz- how ridiculous and remark- think, a company that uses the able Rick Hansen’s dream wit and wisdom of jazz to help was, and how many people it communities flourish. He also took to make it a success. moderates in the SFU Philoso- ▼ We live in a culture domi- phers’ Cafe program. The Man In Motion tour at McIntyre Bluff on Vaseux Lake, near Oliver, 1987

28 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 TRUE CRIME REVIEW neral, Rene, Lolly and the judge’s imposition of the Murder by Milkshake: the two children from death penalty. An Astonishing True Story their different marriag- Instead Lazarus follows up of Adultery, Arsenic, and es drove off in a CKNW with an extended assessment a Charismatic Killer car for a holiday in Dis- of the impact of the trauma by Eve Lazarus (Arsenal $21.95) neyland. on Jeannine Castellani, the BY LARRY HANNANT If not for the dogged couple’s daughter. Under- determination of Dr. standably troubled by the loss ve Lazarus’ Bernard Moscovitch, of her mother and the realiza- Murder the internist who had tion of her father’s crime and by Milk- cared for Esther, the his ruthless manipulation of shake death would not have her, Jeannine struggled for PHOTO

Rene Castellani recalls been attributed to ar- years to address the carnage E masquerades the bi- senic poisoning. Two that consumed her youth. LIBRARY as the Maharaja zarre case ▼ Vancouver police detec- The focus on Jeannine

PBLIC of Aleebaba. of a husband tives found the source also reveals a laudable effort gradually killing his wife by of the poisoning under to minimize the sense of ex-

spiking her milkshakes with VANCOUVER the kitchen sink at the ploitation that is felt by some arsenic. Castellani home—weed killer. survivors of actual crimes who Vancouver College gradu- Rene was arrested, charged are featured later in books ate Rene Castellani mar- Arsenic, no lace and convicted of murder. and films. ried Esther Luond at Holy Sentenced to death, his pun- As a social history, Murder Rosary Cathedral in 1946. In ishment was commuted to life by Milkshake gives us a por- the early 1960s he became an in prison less than two weeks trait of a city still on the brink ambitious radio personality How an egotist’s extra-marital before he was due to hang. of finding itself, far from to- at CKNW. ✫ day’s shimmering metropolis While Esther worked part- affair with a CKNW receptionist EVE LAZARUS LAYS OUT THE case IN that’s consistently among the time at Cordell’s women’s a capable fashion, although top ten of the world’s most liv- wear, raised their daughter, named Lolly led to murder. two lengthy chapters of back- able cities. That snapshot of a Jeannine and loved noth- ground mean that the story city populated by ambitious, ing better than a White Spot the name that stuck at the In May 1965, Lolly was fired doesn’t begin to get some struggling people gives the burger, fries and milkshake, radio station. over the amorous relationship, wind until page 40. After five book special merit. Castellani invented on-air In 1964, when rumours of despite being the sole parent previous books of true crime 9781551527468 personas such as Klatu from their adulterous affair were for her six-year-old son. and historical mysteries, her Outer Space or the Maharaja rife, CKNW management Rene was spared, partly matter-of-fact account of the Books by UVic history profes- of Aleebaba. warned Rene and Lolly to because his wife had become trial of Rene comes across as sor Larry Hannant include The At the radio station, Rene cool it. In those days, the only seriously ill with a condition lacking an element of sus- Politics of Passion: Norman Bet- fell for receptionist Lolly Mill- grounds for divorce in Canada that baffled the doctors. In pense. In a single paragraph hune’s Writing and Art (1998) er, a widow, fifteen years were adultery, and the divorce July, Esther died after more of 75 words, she skims over and the forthcoming Bucking younger than Esther. Al- itself had to be by mutual than six agonizing weeks at the defence attorney’s plea for Conservatism: Alternative Sto- though her birth name was consent. Esther was unlikely Vancouver General Hospital. acquittal, the jury’s delibera- ries of Alberta in the 1960s and Adelaide, “Lolly the Dolly” was to consent. One day after Esther’s fu- tions, the guilty verdict and 1970s (2019). Art • Memoir • History • Stories

E. J. Hughes Paints The Collectors: A History of the Royal British Columbia Vancouver Island Museum and Archives text by Robert Amos by Patricia E. Roy (Royal British (Touchwood Editions $30) Columbia Museum $39.95) “With the exception of Emily Carr, Roy has produced “a clear, care- fully-researched narrative which nobody has painted British Columbia follows the course of three streams so vividly, for so long, and so well, as — natural history, Indigenous E.J. Hughes… Vancouver Island lo- peoples and archives — from the cales for the more than 60 works in founding of the Provincial Museum (1886) and Provincial Archives Amos’ book include Sidney, past Gold- (1908) to the 2003 merger of stream and the Malahat to Cowichan the two into the Royal British Bay, Genoa Bay, Maple Bay, Ladysmith, Columbia Museum and Archives.” Nanaimo, Comox and Courtenay.” – Ormsby Reviewer Chad Reimer – Ormsby Reviewer Alan Twigg

Mamaskatch: A Cree Shoelaces are Hard And Coming of Age Other Thoughtful Scribbles by Darrel J. McLeod by Mike McCardell (Douglas & McIntyre $29.95) (Harbour $29.95) A tale of trauma that has won A new collection of humorous the Governor General’s Literary and moving tales from the veteran Award for Non-Fiction, storyteller and journalist. “He’s Mamaskatch by first-time author a bit of an old-fashioned gentle Darrel J. McLeod of Sooke, who populist celebrating ordinary was raised in Alberta, “offers people and reminding us to learn a brutally honest front-seat to tie our shoelaces because if we view of the havoc wrought by were on an island without Vel- intergenerational trauma.” cro, the might come in and – Ormsby Reviewer wash our shoes away.” – Ormsby David Milward Reviewer Sheldon Goldfarb

Thought provoking Selected by books available on Alan Twigg

29 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 KIDLIT ROUND-UP Friendship in a time of war

rior to the intern- mal competes in its own unique way. ment of Japanese The ox works hard, the tiger is brave, Canadians in Brit- the dog smiles kindly, but who will win? ish Columbia, in Photographs of babies demonstrating 1942, two young the same traits as the animals in the friends named text, complemented by traditional P Michiko (Michi) and Chinese graphic elements, accompany Esther are both hankering to own the bilingual text, with a translation by the most popular dolls on display Kileasa Che Wan Wong. in a Vancouver storefront window— Sookfong Lee has also co-edited the Princess Elizabeth and Princess Whatever Gets You Through: Twelve THE WRITER’S Margaret dolls, in keeping with the Women on Life After Sexual Assault British Empire’s idealization of its (Greystone $22.95), a collection of per- royal family as heroic figures. The two sonal stories about how women survive friends share a birthday so they are after the trauma of sexual assault. simultaneously hoping their wished-for New Year: 978-1-4598-1902-3 STUDIO Assault: 978-1-77164-373-3 sister dolls might be able to play together. Esther’s grandmother, who is deeply WORK WITH A MENTOR IN A SUPPORTIVE COMMUNITY concerned about the fate of Online program starts September 2019 Jewish relatives in Europe, gives the Elizabeth doll to Applications accepted May-June Esther. When Michi doesn’t receive the Margaret doll, jealousy arises and the friendship falters; then www.sfu.ca/creative-writing it’s almost severed when Michiko’s family must close Carys Cragg, 2014 graduate their corner store and are interned away from the coast. That’s the premise for Ellen Schwartz’s The Princess Dolls (Tradewind $19.95), illustrated by Mariko Ando. For read- ers aged 9-12. 9781926890081

200-year-old pine tree KAREN AUTIO RECALLS THE place where Syilx/Okana-

gan people trapped wild

horses in Growing Up in Wild Horse Canyon (Crwth ▼ $25.95). When she began The Princess Dolls cover art by Mariko Ando researching the area, Autio got hooked on what had happened there over the past two cen- Understanding death turies. Weaving together First Nation HAVING VOLUNTEERED IN A VICTORIA HOSPICE, history, European settler accounts and Merrie-Ellen Wilcox frequently heard natural history, Autio’s story coalesced there was a need for a book about when she began imagining a ponderosa death for readers ages 9-12. Each pine tree growing in the canyon for 200 chapter of her After Life: Ways We years. Maps, old photos, and illustra- Think About Death (Orca $24.95) in- tions by Loraine Kemp complement cludes a brief telling of a death legend, the text. For ages 7-10. 978-1-77533-190-2 myth or historical summation from a different culture. Rivers play a role in The great the afterlife of many cultures. “The animal race souls of the dead often have to cross a river before they SUITABLE FOR AGES UP TO 3, and drawing on the Chinese enter the other realm of the zodiac, Jen Sookfong Lee’s afterlife… In Greek mythol- The Animals of Chinese ogy, five rivers surrounded New Year (Orca $9.95) the underworld: Acheron follows twelve animals as (the river of woe). Cocytus they speed across a river, (the river of lamentation). competing to represent Phlegethon (the river of Book Four in the Dyed In The Green the imminent new year fire). Styx (the river in a race held by the of hatefulness) and fiction series about our national parks. Jade Emperor, the Lethe (the river of forgetfulness). The ISBN: 9780987975461 • $19.99 most powerful Chi- nese god. Each ani- souls of the dead www.georgemercer.com drank from the River Lethe in or- Available at independent and Indigo bookstores across Canada. der to forget their Jen Sookfong Lee Also available as an ebook from Amazon and Kobo. lives on earth.”

▼ 9781459813908

30 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 Be natural—but not “natural” “Shoelaces are about everything in life. like the back-to-nature yoga HUMOUR REVIEW Hardship and then overcoming hard- practitioner being one with a ship—usually with some help. That help, tree because his leader told and overcoming hardship together, make him to do that and who won’t the beautiful poem of being alive.” talk to McCardell without his leader’s permission. Shoelaces M IKE MC C ARDELL Mike doesn’t much like it when people won’t talk to him, and he gets positively grumpy about the rise of me- are hard; dia relations departments that stop him from dropping in on firefighters and police officers. bestsellers He doesn’t like bureaucracy and red tape and politicians with their five-syllable words and people without disabili- are not easy ties who use parking spots for people with disabilities. And he’s not a fan of guns (he tries Mike McCardell a satire on this, which is not With his 13th book, really his thing) and gets very and his publisher have raised $100,000 angry at arrogant drug dealers who kill innocent bystanders. for B.C. charities, approximately $1 But mostly he is gentle and per book. Sheldon Goldfarb pays upbeat and brings a smile to your face or a tear to your tribute by mimicking his style. eye, or he makes you laugh by telling you about a grilled cheese sandwich in the middle Shoelaces are Hard & times it’s not clear what the of a story that has nothing to Other Thoughtful Scribbles point is; it just gets lost in do with grilled cheese sand- by Mike McCardell a parenthesis. Oh, wait, the wiches, or he has some words (Harbour $29.95) point of that story was Hope: of wisdom to pass along about BY SHELDON GOLDFARB you can tell because that’s thinking good thoughts or hu- what it is called.) mility or the changeability of ike McCa- So this is also a book about perspectives and the different rdell likes hope, hope and belief: belief sorts of truth. editors. that you can catch a fish where And he has his mantras, Not the there are no fish, or belief that like the one about “we the M sort of you can find a story to tell on people,” people like the Puerto editor who the news each day. Every day Rican bus driver who helped tells you McCardell goes out with his him get to the funeral and the what you mustn’t end a sen- cameraman looking for hu- recycling man from Smithrite tence with. No, he likes editors man interest stories, light little who picked up a piece of pa- who give him story ideas for things to leaven the darkness per. But he’s not too fond of PHOTO his daily piece on the televi- of current events. Not for him rich people or of rules, like the sion news program, or ideas the unhappy story about a rules for Masonic rituals that DIDLICK for how to shape those ideas. planter overflowing with gar- delayed his uncle’s funeral,

And these editors don’t bage—but when someone fixes NICK which he almost missed ex- have to be “editors”; they can up the planter and makes it snow and the television engi- though: he’s not always up- cept for the kindly bus driver. be his wife or his cameraman, green again, that’s his kind of neers being baffled because beat. He likes the old ways, He’s a bit of an old-fashioned or anyone who can give him a story. Uplifting, upbeat, some- they’ve never heard of snow. the old playgrounds where you gentle populist celebrating little help. times offbeat. Oh, did I mention that he’s weren’t entirely safe and so ordinary people and reminding This book is in part about Like the four-year-old who sometimes funny too, and might fall down and get hurt us to learn to tie our shoelaces giving help. The title story is likes to let his toboggan fly wanders off into detours—I and cry and someone would because if we were on an is- about how you can learn to down a hill and chase after mean writing detours in these hug you ’til you felt better. He land without Velcro, the tide tie your shoelaces if you get it, which leads to a scene little stories, but of course prefers those to the sanitized might come in and wash our a little help. Another story is in which there’s a toboggan also detours in the course of playgrounds enforced on us shoes away. 9781550178487 about how a kindly bus driver chased by a four-year-old hunting for stories, which he by the Playground Correct got him to his uncle’s funeral boy who in turn is chased does by going out and looking people (PC people, a joke, get Sheldon Goldfarb is the author on time—by taking a detour by a 48-year-old cameraman for something that he doesn’t it?), the sanitized playgrounds of The Hundred-Year Trek: A off the bus route. (I wonder who himself is chased by a know is there in the hopes where kids are bored. And he’d History of Student Life at UBC how the other passengers felt, 74-year-old reporter, with of turning it into something rather you just took the stairs (Heritage House, 2017). His though. Well, I don’t have to the boy’s grandmother bring- amusing for the six o’clock for exercise instead of invest- murder mystery, Remember, wonder: McCardell tells us ing up the rear, and with the news—and for this book of ing in gym equipment and Remember, was nominated for they were puzzled and scared. reporter worrying about the “scribbles.” modern gadgets telling you an Arthur Ellis crime writing But the point is … well, some- camera getting wet from the He has his pet peeves, how many steps you’ve taken. award in 2005.

Some books are worth reading.

31 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 with intellectual challenges. triarchal nature of the FLDS With Gracie, MacLeod suc- assures privilege to all male THEATRE REVIEW cessfully continues her modus members, MacLeod introduces operandi: the titular character the hierarchy-within-the-pa- moves with her family from triarchy through Gracie’s older Kevin Loring, artistic director made all the more tense by between various characters a Fundamentalist Church of brother Billy. Unable to resign of Indigenous Theatre at the Na- their humour. Moving from and the Bear Dancer. tional Arts Centre in Ottawa, has Jesus Christ of the Latter- himself to finishing school af- widely varying accounts of There are more revelations written a realist/expressionistic Day Saints (FLDS) colony in ter grade ten, performing low the origins of Thanksgiving in Act Two which culminates work, Thanks for Giving, which the U.S. to its equivalent in paid labour in the colony, and features a cast of eight. Joan to more personal matters, the with Clifford encountering the B.C. Apparently, the tenets passively awaiting his rewards MacLeod’s Gracie is performed conversation becomes increas- Bear Dancer and committing and practices of Mormon in the afterlife, he rebels, by a single actor assuming fifteen ingly rancorous, culminating suicide. His funeral, opening fundamentalist groups can countering his mother’s at- roles. However, their plays overlap in disclosure of Sue’s addic- Act Three, occasions a reunion in important ways: both are firmly vary; however, Gracie’s sect tempts to erase the family’s tion and Marie’s sexuality, that gives rise to confessions set in rural B.C. and hard hitting in is dominated by leaders who past and catalyzing Gracie’s which were not a complete and forgiveness. Marie and their approach to contemporary practice polygamy and decide gradual awakening. After be- surprise to the rest of the John make peace when she social issues. Both reward the to whom the female members ing banished from the sect reader with a taken aback experi- shares a digitized wax cylinder can be assigned. and disowned by his mother, ence that is at once true-to-life and in a world apart.—Ed. We are privy to Gracie’s Billy secretly returns to school life from ages 8 to 15. Ma- Gracie in the realities of the Thanks for Giving cLeod poignantly conveys the colony and the larger world. by Kevin Loring (Talon $19.95) Twins, sheer obliviousness of a child Here again, MacLeod uses Gracie by Joan MacLeod who has known no other the solo performance to great (Talon $16.95) world than one where effect. As Gracie mulls over BY GINNY RATSOY children raise children, Billy’s insights into the human material possessions are commodification that is the s with his grizzlies & in short supply, virtually backbone of the cult’s orga- first play, nization, and as she watches the Gov- her female siblings and friends ernor- being assigned to males at General’s the top of the hierarchy, she Award- slowly confronts her own fu- A ture. When things come to a winning Latter-Day Where the Blood Mixes, Kevin head when she is assigned to Loring’s Thanks for Giv- an older man, she attempts ing showcases an ability to blend realism and expres- sionism, gripping drama and Saints laugh-out-loud humour, and Lily Beaudoin is traditional and contemporary trapped in a stifling, cultures. Joan MacLeod’s realist play, inbred, and self- The play begins with ma- segregating atmo- triarch Nan narrating a story Gracie is set in a rural B.C. sphere as Gracie at about the Bear Dancer’s role the Belfry Theatre, as a guide to early humans, fundamentalist Christian community. Victoria, 2017 accompanied by the Bear Dancer herself. Nan’s culture Also set in B.C., Thanks for Giving links twin births to grizzlies, and her family is replete with by Kevin Loring, infuses twins. When, unbeknownst to her, Nâlakapamux beliefs into a Nan’s Caucasian husband Clifford shoots a grizzly (os- contemporary story of multi- PHOTO tensibly in self defense, but, actually, we later learn, for generational family dysfunction. COOPER profit) and her cubs, the echo

reverberates across the moun- DAVID tain valley and into their home. family, and the revelations of As three generations meet John’s career move and Clif- in their home village for ford and Clayton’s desecration recording of their great-great- Thanksgiving dinner, truths of the bears, which were. grandmother singing a Bear are laid bare. Nan’s unreliable Post dinner, as the charac- Song for twins. Marie, who every subject in the school escape. As her mother rushes daughter Sue has addiction is- ters share past experiences, has earlier revealed that she is curriculum is thinly disguised from her stove to restrain sues, the result of her witness- tensions ease up slightly. Nan pregnant, announces that her religion, where one is evasive her, she burns Gracie with ing the accidental deaths of and Sue accept Sam, and Ma- water has broken. The play with the few members of the hot cider. her husband and twin brother rie’s sexual orientation, and ends with newborn twins se- outside world one encoun- Awakening in a public hos- in the same accident and the Clifford even shares a trau- cure in their ancestors’ arms. ters, and where membership pital, Gracie is soon visited by sexual abuse she suffered matic childhood experience of Thanks for Giving, a com- involves surrendering any Billy, who reveals that their at the hands of Clifford, her his own when his father shot pelling unveiling of intergen- semblance of freedom particu- mother has disowned her, but stepfather. his beloved dog. However, erational trauma, interdepen- larly, but not exclusively, for given Billy written permission Sue’s daughter Marie, some frictions, such as that dence, and women. to return her to their biological whose generation was raised between John and Marie, who human har- Among the father in the U.S. At times dur- by Nan, is a not-quite-out-of- cannot abide the thought of diness, is a characters we ing their trip, Gracie is tempt- the-closet lesbian, as well as a her brother risking his life for profoundly GINNY meet are Gra- ed to return to the B.C. colony; vegetarian, environmentalist, their colonizers, are not easily important cie’s mother, only through Billy’s diligence academic, and Indigenous allayed. addition to RATSOY siblings, and and insistence on recounting rights activist who returns Above all, to Nan, the bear the growing friends, as well details of their early childhood from the city with her female shooting is unforgivable. The body of Indigenous drama in as authority figures such as does she gain the strength to partner, Sam. Marie’s twin, present trauma precipitates a Canada. Mr. Shelby, with whom the continue the journey to their John, also returns from the series of revelations by Nan: ✫ church has placed Gracie’s childhood home. Stories of her city with the secret that he has she divulges that she is a IN 2001 I NOTED THAT, JOAN mother, necessitating the fam- early history are her path to left university intent on joining residential school survivor MacLeod, in The Hope Slide, ily’s uprooting. The extent to her future in the larger world. the military. and recounts a story she has domesticated social issues. which Gracie’s mother’s indi- Giving 9781772012187 Gracie 9781772012026 Marie and John’s cousin long repressed about a Chief’s She favours private, rather viduality has been subsumed Clayton, whose father was the daughter and a grizzly (trans- than public spaces, intensely in the sect is particularly Ginny Ratsoy, associate pro- accident victim, has stayed in formed into human form) who develops a single charac- stunning: she is resigned to fessor of English at Thompson the town, where he imports parented twins, who could ter (most of her works are counselling her offspring to Rivers University specializing garbage from the city for a liv- themselves transform into one-handers) and, through erase their pasts and lie about in Canadian literature recently ing. He was Clifford’s accom- bears. Thus, her husband and that prism, sheds light on their present, and, even more contributed to No Straight Lines: plice in the bear shootings. grandson have committed an issues ranging from eat- harrowingly, to subjecting her Local Leadership and the Path The inevitable collisions abomination against her fami- ing disorders to bullying, daughters to virtual enslave- from Government to Government within such a fraught and ly’s culture. Act One ends with from urban devastation ment. in Small Cities (University of Cal- divergent group of people are expressionistic encounters to mistreatment of people Lest we assume the pa- gary Press, 2018).

32 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 of your white-aproned home economics class where you FOOD REVIEW had to level off that ¾ tea- spoon of extra-mild curry with a knife, squint-eyeing every grain like a scientist develop- ing a life-saving vaccine. Bring on the broccoli “Serve with love,” is Reid’s mantra as she takes us on journeys to Pemberton and the Okanagan, to the ghost Claire Mulligan celebrates locavore Jane Reid’s Freshly Picked as a call farms of Bella Coola and Salt Spring, as she reminds us to action. Along the way we learn pyramid builders ate garlic for stamina that food is about reciprocity and Louis XIV started the fad for snacking on fresh-shelled peas. and respect, about dirt and the outdoors, about sustain- ability and community, as she Freshly Picked: with animals than plants. To head over heels for her first kindly suggests we radically A Locavore’s Love Affair corn, whose co-dependent perfectly crisped beans. In rethink our relationship with with BC’s Bounty sex life (on us) takes a page to B.C., Reid tracks down a gar- the growing world. by Jane Reid (Caitlin $26) delineate. lic maestro through Craigs- Freshly Picked persuades BY CLAIRE MULLIGAN I don’t think it was a mis- list and discovers a garage you that it is not a big deal take that I kept pronouncing stocked with heirloom garlic: to eat responsibly, to support ow that I the word locavore (one who Russian Reds, Persian Star, your local farm economy; in have sa- eats foods grown locally when- etc. fact, it is easier than the way voured ever possible) as lovacore. At the end of each chapter, you purchase and eat now. the lus- Well, it was a mistake, but after you have appreciated You have to eat every day; trous given the love and wisdom the history and idiosyncrasies why not make it an act of pages that infuses this book, it’s an of, say, the strawberry, the generosity? N of Jane understandable one. cucumber, Reid gives, not a While we’re on that topic Reid’s warm- Still, Freshly Picked is not “recipe” as such, but a scene, a of generosity, I can’t think of hearted and witty book Fresh- just a celebration, it is a call story (the recipe for stew actu- a better gift for that foodie in ly Picked: A Locavore’s Love to action and Reid’s chapter ally riffs off an O’Henry story). your life, that gardener, and Affair with BC’s Bounty, I titles —“Give Peas a Chance,” in an orchard). Freshly Picked encour- especially that jaded produce- am going to tromp to every “Bring on the Broccoli”—illu- The poor minions of Ti- ages a joy of cooking that has avoider than, Freshly Picked. farmer’s market and roadside minate this. berius pushed cucumbers nothing to do with The Joy of 9781987915792 stall and apologize to all those Although Freshly Picked around in wheelbarrows to Cooking, that massive instruc- vegetables and fruits I have centres on the bounty in catch the sun. tional manual that could be Claire Mulligan teaches at UVic taken for granted and misun- our corner of the world, it is Louis XIV started the fad shelved beside the Joy of Tile and College. She wrote derstood. also expansive and worldly, for snacking on fresh-shelled Scrubbing. The Reckoning of Boston Jim To radishes, the sprinters ranging around the globe peas. Ease is emphasized. Cut (Brindle & Glass, 2007), a nomi- of the vegetable world. To and through history, offering The pyramid builders ate tomatoes “the size of a stamp.” nee for both the Giller and Ethel apples, those rebels who re- perfectly-portioned anecdotes garlic for stamina. Snip parsley “until you are Wilson awards. Her first short invent themselves with each with which to delight your Reid also weaves in de- bored.” Set asparagus on film, The Still Life of Annika My- new seed. To mushrooms friends around a table (I’m lightful, personal anecdotes. “your prettiest plate.” ers, which is all about food, is who, weirdly, share more DNA picturing a long, rustic one set In France, a young Reid falls These are not the rigid lists currently in production.

TRAUMA HEAD stories by Jen Currin poetry by Elee Kraljii Gardiner A debut collection from the award-winning poet, This long-poem memoir tracks the author’s experiences Jen Currin. These stories are about addiction and with un/wellness and un/familiarity with herself follwing meditation, relationships and almost-relationships, a mini-stroke. solitude and sexuality. “intensely fierce and sublimely sensual” “Currin writes with precision, beauty, and tenderness — Sandra Ridley, author of Silvija about the politics of imperfect relationships and people “Intimate and powerful.” — Daphne Marlatt struggling to find wholeness.” — Kevin Chong, author of The Plague “Kraljii Gardiner seizes this linguistic dream (traum) world 2018 Globe & Mail Top 100 Books with skill and playfulness; these are poems to wake up from.” — Fred Wah ISBN: 978-1-77214-117-7 • $20 ISBN: 978-1-77214-122-1 • $18 THE KNOCKOFF ECLIPSE THE SECOND DETECTIVE stories by Melissa Bull 3-Day Novel Contest Winner by Shannon Mullally A debut collection firmly rooted in the streets of The Second Detective is a deliriously entertaining Montreal, its many neighbourhoods and subcultures. reimagining of the hard-boiled detective novel, featuring a “Bull is a master provocateur” mysterious narrator, a missing husband, and a lascivious — Montreal Review of Books mountain goat with interspecies interests. “Melissa Bull is George Saunders and Clarice Lispector “The Second Detective by Shannon Mullally is a marvelous and Lorrie Moore and none of these people — she’s her book. Which is to say that it is both filled with marvels (of own vivid, mordant, heartbreaking story-writer...” insight, of language, of perception) and really, really good.” — Sean Michaels, author of —Laird Hunt, author of In the House in the Dark of the Woods ISBN: 978-1-77214-120-7 • $18 ISBN: 978-1-77214-128-3 • $16

FORTHCOMING BOOKS: AGAINST DEATH SKIN HOUSE I COULD HAVE PRETENDED 35 ESSAYS ON LIVING A NOVEL TO BE BETTER THAN YOU edited by Elee Kraljii Gardiner by Michael Blouin NEW & SELECTED POEMS An anthology of creative From the author of Chase & by Jay MillAr non-fiction exploring the Haven and Wore Down Trust psychological shifts that comes a story of thwarted This volume spans 25 years and occur when we prematurely or desire and misquided covers three distinct eras of Jay unexpectedly confront death. ambition. It’s really funny too. MillAr’s development as a poet. 978-1-77214-127-6 • $22 • MARCH 978-1-77214-118-4 • $20 • APRIL 978-1-77214-124-5 • $20 • MARCH

www.anvilpress.com | [email protected] • AVAILABLE TO THE TRADE FROM PGC/RAINCOAST

33 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 New from Ronsdale Press

Damage Done by the Storm Like Joyful Tears Jack Hodgins David Starr This new edition of Hodgins’ short This gritty novel takes us inside the civil story collection portrays the damage war in South Sudan and the desolation done to individuals by physical and of refugee camps. In a Kenyan camp, an emotional storms. Includes a brand African-born Canadian student fights to new story. bring a refugee family to a new life in Canada. 978-1-55380-559-5 (PRINT) 978-1-55380-565-6 (PRINT) 978-1-55380-560-1 (EBOOK) 230 pp $18.95 978-1-55380-566-3 (EBOOK) 270 pp $18.95

Clinging to Bone Riding the Continent Garry Gottfriedson Hamilton Mack Laing Secwepmec (Shuswap) poet Garry One of Canada’s first environmentalists Gottfriedson takes the reader inside records his experiences as a motorcycle- the rez, portraying the struggle of naturalist as he rides one of the earliest Indigenous people to escape the Harley-Davidsons on a 1915 cross-North shackles of the colonial legacy. America tour. With 25 photos. 978-1-55380-562-5 (PRINT) 978-1-55380-556-4 (PRINT) 978-1-55380-563-2 (EBOOK) 100 pp $17.95 978-1-55380-557-1 (EBOOK) 170 pp $19.95

GoldGold inin BritishBritish ColumbiaColumbia Gold in British Columbia Un rebelle en sous-marin DISCOVERY TO CONFEDERATION Marie Elliott Philip Roy Elliott takes readers through the gold In this French-language young reader rushes of B.C. from 1858 to B.C.’s entry novel, a Newfoundland boy teams up with a into Confederation, explaining their junkyard genius to build a submarine to sail central importance to Canada’s history. around the Maritimes. High-speed chases, With 30 photos & maps. daring rescues, and treasure hunting ensue. 978-1-55380-517-5 (PRINT) 978-1-55380-553-3 (PRINT) FRENCH LANGUAGE

MMiMariearie ElliEllEllliliiototttt 978-1-55380-518-2 (EBOOK) 350 pp $24.95 978-1-55380-554-0 (EBOOK) 280 pp $12.95

Available at your favourite bookstore or order from PGC/Raincoast Ronsdale Press www.ronsdalepress.com

revisits early1970s Vancouver jean in Mudflat Dreaming, diving into walton confrontations around housing and development problems that reverberate into 2019

Catch Jean Walton at the Vancouver Historical Society,

Museum of Vancouver . April 25 . 7:30 PM www.NewStarBooks.com

34 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 WHO’S WHO BRITISH COLUMBIA

Angie Abdou: “I felt like

▼ women’s voices are not taken seriously in the hockey rink. They can come in and tie their kid’s skates, but then it’s like ‘get out’ once that’s done.”

Africa as an international reporter for A IS FOR ABDOU the Italian press from 1996 to 2000. Set E IS FOR ERZGEBIRGE in Johannesburg, Cape Town, the Ka- SEAN DALY S FROM THE ERZGEBIRGE TO WITH THE CANDOUR OF IAN BROWN’S ACCLAIMED lahari Desert and Zanzibar, this story ’ Potosi (Friesen Press $31.49) is a memoir, Sixty, Angie Abdou has writ- of transcultural intrigue and personal B.C. book like no other. As an over- ten a bravely and sometimes alarmingly exploration is described as “a tale of view of geology and mining since the frank memoir about the year-in-the-life hate, guilt, love and redemption under 1500s, it considers the relationship of a hockey mom, smartly titled Home African skies.” After her colleague and between mining, geology and society, Ice (ECW $21.95). It’s about a lot more lover is killed in a car-jacking, Zoe du including the Renaissance and the than being a self-sacrificing parent Plessis, a paleontologist of Afrikaner Industrial Revolution, while citing the getting her young son to the rink or to origin, learns of a family secret and its most important strikes and protests tournaments around southern-eastern relation to an old Xhosa’s curse. As by miners to improve their working B.C. With a play-by-play honesty you she searches in the Kalahari Desert for

conditions. don’t get from Hockey Night in Canada, early human fos-

Daly charts the progress of geotech- Abdou is not averse to telling us inti- sils, Zoe also digs ▼ nical thinking with an emphasis on mate details about the freeze-up of her deeper into the the first geologist/engineer, Georgius second marriage and the discomforts of sense of guilt Nick Bantock is the author Agricola who wrote his treatise De watching her son’s inept “B” team lose haunting her and illustrator of 30 books. Re Metallica during the Renaissance. 8-0. “Ollie’s play is lackluster, and he people. occasionally erupts into frustration,” Daly’s text ranges from the Erzgebirge and impressions in prose-like iambic 978-1-77183-357-8 she writes. Mountains in Bohemia (where under- pentameter. His collection of seventy Subtitled Reflections of a Reluctant ground silver mines were started in poetic memoirs is Half a Mile in Rain: Hockey Mom, this is a cleverly-written the 1500s) to the contemporary silver Word Images from a Life in Flight mines at Potosi in Bolivia. chronicle of a lively woman morphing Arianna (Coast Dog Press $29). 978-0-9950292-5-5 Daly studied geology and mining en- towards menopause, wanting more out Dagnino gineering at university, and he worked of life. 978-1-77041-445-7 ▼ D IS FOR DAGNINO at the Highland Copper Mine for nine- B IS FOR BANTOCK teen years. He first became fascinated LAUNCHED ON THE OPENING NIGHT OF with geology due to the proximity of an Vancouver’s South African Film Fes- NICK BANTOCK’ S DUBIOUS DOCUMENTS old mine near Pender Harbour, where (Chronicle Books $26.95) is an epis- tival, Arianna Dagnino’s novel The he grew up, as the son of West Coast tolary puzzle featuring cryptic ana- Afrikaner (Guernica Editions $20) salmon fisherman John Daly, profiled grams, number puzzles, picturegrams draws upon her five years in South in Edith Iglauer’s Fishing with John. and wordplay scattered within sixteen 978-1-5255-1759-4 envelopes. A character named Magnus Joan B. Flood grew Berlin needs help solving a puzzle. By up in Limerick, ▼ F IS FOR FLOOD studying his introductory note, and Ireland and has decoding his list of clues and letters, graduated from DELIA BUCKLEY WAS ABANDONED BY THE readers can engage with this analog SFU Writer’s father of her daughter before their puzzle, revealing the answer to his Studio. child was born. He suddenly shows up riddle one word at a time. Bantock is a twenty-two years later, wanting Delia former Bowen Islander who has joined to nurse him in his terminal illness. the exodus to Victoria. Delia accepts since she is desperate for Bantock’s works have been trans- money, hoping to keep a professional lated into 13 languages and over 5 mil- distance, but life has a way of interfer- lion copies have been sold worldwide. ing with best laid plans. 978-1-452166032 Set in an Irish village where it’s hard to keep everyone’s natural curiosity at C IS FOR CURRIE bay, and where gossip is served up for breakfast, Joan B. Flood’s novel, Left WHETHER IN A HERCULES TRACKING THE great Unsaid (Signature $19.95), follows De- circle route to the UK or hauling dia- lia’s life as her ex-husband’s daughter monds for a mining company in Africa, arrives from Vancouver. More secrets retired Air Canada captain, Dennis emerge as more guests arrive. Currie, has composed his thoughts 978-1773240-09-1

35 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 by Across Oceans of Law: The Kom- agata Maru and Jurisdiction in the WHO’S WHO BC Time of Empire (Duke University Press $27.95). Through close readings of the ship, the manifest, the trial, and anti- colonialist writings of the era, Mawani argues that the Komagata Maru’s land- G IS FOR GAGNON ing raised urgent questions regarding the jurisdictional tensions between the IN 2017, AT AGE 57, GOGS GAGNON, BEcame common law and admiralty law, and, one of the over two million Canadian ultimately, the legal status of the sea. men diagnosed with prostate cancer. 978-0-8223-7035-2 After surgery and recovery, he decided to share his story to inspire others to become their own N IS FOR NILOFAR health advocates. BORN AND RAISED IN IRAN, NILOFAR SHIDMEHR Gagnon reveals in- came to Canada in 1997 and earned timate details that her MFA in creative writing from UBC. everyone impacted Before leaving Iran, Shidmehr trans- by the disease— Renisa ▼ lated Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest

man or woman— Mawani: Eye, from English to Farsi. Dedicated

needs to know. His “Across to her daughter, Shidmehr’s collection ▼ memoir Prostate Oceans of Law of short stories, Divided Loyalties Cancer Strikes: traces the Gogs Gagnon (Anansi $19.95), looks at the lives of Navigating the currents and Iranian women in post-revolutionary Storm (Granville Island $18.95) offers counter-cur- Iran as well as the contemporary dias- a route towards greater awareness of rents of British/ pora in Canada. Its publication coin- male health issues and their treat- colonial law and cided with the 40th anniversary of the ments. Indian radicalism Iranian Revolution on Feb. 11th. The Born in New Westminster, Gogs through the 1914 stories range from 1978, a year before Gagnon has worked as an independent journey of the S.S. the Iranian revolution, to Vancouver in technology consultant and developed Komagata Maru, the 1990s. Due to Iran’s divorce laws, software for Apple, IBM, and the gov- a British-built and Shidmehr’s daughter must remain in ernment of British Columbia, serving Japanese owned Iran. Shidmehr hopes one day to bring provincially as a lead programmer ana- steamship.” her to Vancouver. 978-1-4870-0602-0 lyst and data architect. His next book is a coming-of-age novel set in B.C.’s Lower Mainland during the 1970s. He O IS FOR OONA lives in the Comox Valley on Vancouver A FORMER GUIDE, RANCH HAND AND PARK Island. 9781926991948 ranger, Peter Christensen has lived in many places, including near Radium strikers battled police, vigilantes and H IS FOR HANEN the government. Along the way they Hot Springs in southeastern British Co- K IS FOR KHAN lumbia. He co-created one of Alberta’s FORMERLY EDITOR OF THE BOWEN ISLAND made international headlines. The first literary magazines, Canada Goose, Undercurrent for seventeen years, SEATTLE TEEN RUKHSANA ALI HIDES HER story is now graphically retold in 1919: in 1975. He has since relocated to the as well as the author of a history of crop tops and make-up from her con- A Graphic History of the Winnipeg lower Estuary, giving rise to Bowen Island, Edythe Anstey Hanen servative Muslim parents and sneaks Strike (Between the Lines $19.95). his fifth poetry collection Oona River has written a debut novel, Nine Birds off to parties without her parent’s Do the math and you’ll see it was 100 Poems (Thistledown Press $20). Singing (New Arcadia $20), with praise knowledge. She looks forward to the years ago. The author of this graphic 978-1-77187-190-7 from Jack Hodgins, Nick Bantock, day, a few months hence, when she novel is known as The Graphic His- Bernice Lever and Patrick Taylor who breaks free from her heavily monitored tory Collective, a group of activists, dubbed it, “a veritable Aladdin’s Cave life to attend Caltech and start a new, artists, writers and researchers who P IS FOR PRYCE of delights.” In synch with the #MeToo freer life. All her plans are forsaken are passionate about comics, history PAULA PRYCE OF VANCOUVER WAS RAISED movement, Nine Birds Singing is an od- when Rukhsana’s parents catch her and social change. The illustrator is in an inter-religious contemplative yssey of self-discovery, from Vancouver kissing girlfriend Ariana, and send David Lester, known internationally as household in the West Kootenays and in the 1960s to present-day Mexico, in her to Bangladesh. The Love and the guitarist for the venerable under- grew up with a which the heroine Maddie searches for Lies of Rukhsana Ali (Scholastic ground rock duo Mecca Normal—who fascination for independence from her parents’ restric- Press $22.99) is Sabina Khan’s first has designed BC BookWorld for thirty- the wisdom and tive values. 978-0-9810241-5-8 YA novel. Born in Germany, she spent one years. 978-1771134200 her teens in Bangladesh and lived in myth of diverse Macao, Illinois and Texas before set- cultures. She I IS FOR ISHIGURO tling in Vancouver with her husband M IS FOR MAWANI subsequently 978-1-338-22701-7 became a Social UBC HISTORY PROFESSOR LAURA ISHIGURO and two daughters. AS A SOCIOLOGY PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY

Sciences and self-describes as “a yonsei/fourth- of British Columbia, Renisa Mawani

Humanities Re- generation settler (she/her/hers). I researched racial tensions in Colonial L IS FOR LESTER ▼ search Council belong to Japanese emigrant (Nikkei) Proximities: Crossracial Encounters of Canada post- and hakujin (white, and in my case IT WAS ONCE THE MOST FAMOUS LABOUR and Juridical Truths in British Colum- Paula Pryce doctoral fellow primarily British) families; I am both, strike in Canadian history. Now few bia, 1871-1921 (UBC Press, 2009), in the Department of Anthropology hāfu, and neither.” She has published Canadians know much about it: revealing how Chinese settlers, at UBC. her first book about “settler colonial- In May of 1919, more than Indigenous people and set- Paula Pryce’s first book, Keeping ism, mobility, family, and the everyday 30,000 workers walked tler Canadians were sys- the Lakes’ Way: Reburial and the Re- in Canada and the British Empire,” off the job in Winnipeg, tematically oppressed creation of a Moral World among an In- Nothing to Write Home About: Brit- Manitoba to fight for by “the making of the visible People, has been followed by The ish Family Correspondence and the higher wages, col- settler regime” par- Monk’s Cell: Ritual and Knowledge Settler Colonial Everyday in British lective bargain- ticularly in the in American Contemplative Chris- Columbia (UBC Press $89.95). ing rights, and context of B.C. tianity (Oxford University Press $74), 9780774838436 more power salmon can- for working neries. It is based on nearly four years of research people. The now followed among semi-cloistered Christian mo- J IS FOR JAMES nastics and a dispersed network of non-monastic Christian contempla- RICK JAMES HAS PROVIDED AN AUTHORITATIVE tives across the United States and overview of what really happened when around the globe. B.C. boats ran liquor to the U.S. during Pryce has lived in Boston, Switzer- Prohibition in Don’t Never Tell No- land, Toronto, Yukon and Bolivia. One body Nothin’ No How: The Real Story of the main contemplative teachers of West Coast Rum Running (Harbour featured in The Monk’s Cell, Cynthia $32.95). “We operated perfectly legal,” Sabina Khan: “I wanted Bourgeault, lived on the West Coast said Captain Charles Hudson. “We

to be▼ a writer ever since for eight years and sometimes taught considered ourselves philanthropists! elementary school when at the Vancouver School of Theology. We supplied good liquor to poor thirsty I’d write about kids having Bourgeault founded The Contemplative Americans ... and brought prosperity fantastical adventures.” Society, which offers retreats and work- back to the harbour of Vancouver.” shops based in Victoria. 9780190680589 978-1-55017-841-8

36 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 EĞǁƟƚůĞƐĂǀĂŝůĂďůĞƐŽŽŶĂƚLJŽƵƌůŽĐĂůŬƐƚŽƌĞ

Bruno

Gogs

Robert Sanford ▼

for the dangerous waters of the Great Q IS FOR QUENCHING Sea Reef of Fiji, lured by a sunken Anton 18th century ship laden with gold. A STARTING WITH THE PREMISE, “AS CHINA GOES, life-and-death sailing battle ensues so goes the world,” Robert Sanford with ex-marine Lord Barclay and his unpacks China’s water crisis and uses crew of mercenaries aboard the 240- it to analyze Canada’s own deteriorat- foot Golden Dragon. 978-1-77041-427-3 ing water situation in Quenching the Dragon: The Canada-China Water T IS FOR TS’ELXWÉYEQW Crisis (RMB $16). Part travelogue, part essay, part call HAVING CO-EDITED A RODERICK HAIG-BROWN Ann to action, the book follows Sanford on Regional BC Book Prize-winning atlas two separate journeys from his Can- in 2001, David M. Schaepe has pro- Booklovers: Please visit our Published and distributed by more, Alberta home to Chinese cities ceeded to edit the mammoth Being website to see more of our books. Tianjin and Guizhou. Along the way, Ts’elxwéyeqw: First Peoples’ Voices Authors: Sanford offers commentary on water and History from the Chilliwack- Check our hybrid model Fraser Valley, British Columbia of publishing there to learn problems sweeping the world—from about our services. the collapse of fisheries, to mega dam (Harbour $94.95) by the Ts’elxwéyeqw construction, to lake eutrophication, Tribe in which granvilleislandpublishing.com Toll-free: 1-877-688-0320 to weather modification and ocean 85 place names acidification. are traced and Sanford is a water advisor to the explained. InterAction Council, an independent The tra- non-profit organization that brings to- ditional ter- gether former world leaders to develop ritory of the recommendations and foster coopera- Ts’elxwéyeqw tion for positive action on water matters First Peoples around the world. 978-1-771-60293-8 ▼ covers over Curious, David M. Schaepe 95,000 hect- R IS FOR RICHES ares of land in rigorous, and Southwestern B.C., encompassing the interdisciplinary.   FOOD BANKS NATIONS: POVERTY, CORPORATE entire Chilliwack River Valley. Literature, politics, Charity and the Right to Food (Earth- The Chilliwack region gets its name philosophy, humanity. scan/Routledge $39.95) by Graham from the Ts’elxwéyeqw tribe. Being Graduate degrees in liberal Riches has been described as a critique Ts’elxwéyeqw portrays the people, ar- studies. Explore MA GLS. of domestic hunger in the rich (OECD) tifacts and landscapes that are central world. Riches outlines the moral to the Ts’elxwéyeqw people, and repre- vacuum at the centre of neoliberalism sents a rich oral record of an aboriginal “driven by the corporate capture (Big heritage spanning thousands of years. Food/Big Ag) of food charity (U.S. style 978-1-55017-818-0 food banking with Canada’s support) and its false promises of solidarity with U IS FOR U-BREW the poor.”  Riches presents a human rights WITH THE EXPLOSION OF KOMBUCHA DRINKS counter-narrative to the feeding of on North American store shelves, it was ‘left-over’ food to ‘left behind’ people only a matter of time before a guide to and explores the role of civil society to brewing the probiotic fermented tea hold indifferent governments to accout. appeared. DIY Kombucha: Sparkling 9781138739758 Homebrews Made Easy (New Society     $29.99) by Vancouver chef and regis- S IS FOR SCOTT tered holistic nutritionist Andrea Pot- PRAIRIE-RAISED EX-FISHERMAN AND YACHT ter offers practical easy recipes that salesman Joel Scott of Chemainus don’t require expensive equipment or has crafted his second hard-to-find ingredients. contemporary, sea-faring, Readers will find out what Graduate Liberal Studies adventure novel, Arrow’s a SCOBY is (basically, it’s Fall (ECW $18.95), as the culture used to make a follow-up to his 2018 Kombucha but there’s a Looking back to look forward. debut Arrow’s Flight, set long story behind it), Kom- SFU Vancouver: off the coast of Mexico. In bucha history and other Arrow’s Fall, Jared Kane, interesting facts such as The intellectual orphaned at a young age, how to prevent bottles of heart of the city. but raised by strict Chris- fizzy drink from exploding. tian grandparents on a DIY Kombucha also www.sfu.ca/gls farm. Kane becomes father explores similar health to a half-Haida son. He drinks such as kombu- also serves two years in jail cha’s honey-fed relative on a trumped-up assault ▼ jun, and water kefir. charge before setting sail Andrea Potter 978-0-86571-887-6

37 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 WHO’S WHO BC Y IS FOR YOUNG PATRICIA YOUNG’S LATEST COLLECTION OF poems Amateurs at Love (Goose Lane $19.95) explores the dynamics between lovers. To the question of what is love, she answers: “I think it means a boxcar going off the rails, grain spilling down a gully, fermenting over summer, a bear gorging on that grain, passing out in a field, a bear that could wake any mo-

ment, hung-over and thirsty and ready

to kill for a drop of water.” Young has ▼ received other accolades including the Michael G. Varga Pat Lowther Memorial Award, the Con- federation Poets Prize and been twice V IS FOR VARGA nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry. 978-0-86492-991-4

CO- AUTHORED BY ROXANNE DAVIES, Michael G. Varga tells the stories of Z IS FOR ZOONE his 40 years spent as a cameraman in Inside View: The Eye Behind the BLUE TIGERS WITH WINGS, SHADOWS THAT

Lens (Self published $19.67). Work- stare back at you, cursed princesses, ing with the CBC, Varga covered NHL wizardry conventions, and secret base- hockey games, Grey Cup games, nine ▼ ment doors leading to a place called Olympics, four Commonwealth Games, Chew Lai Keen (front row, third from left) with his wife, Mon Ho Low, Zoone where hundreds of other doors the Pan Am Games, World Track and surrounded by their Quesnel-born children (From Wah Lee to Chew Keen). lead into more fantastical universes. Field, FIFA World Cup, World Cup Lee Edward Fodi’s The Secret of Skiing, figure skating champion- Zoone (HarperCollins $21) tracks the ships and more.Varga was at the The Woo-Woo: How I X IS FOR XINHUIXIAN adventures of a boy called Ozzie as he Calgary Olympics in 1986 when the Survived Ice Hockey, goes to the magical Zoone with the blue world was introduced to Eddie the Drug Raids, Demons, THE STORY OF HOW WAH LEE AND HIS WIFE, tiger, named Tug. Eagle and the Jamaican bobsled- and My Crazy Chi- Mon Ho Low, travelled from Xinhuixian Fodi is a children’s author, or ders. Throughout there are revelations nese Family (Arse- (formerly Sun-wui County) in China to daydreaming ex- about what it’s like working at the nal Pulp, 2018), a B.C. in 1917, via the Sun Ning Railway as he pre- “Mother Corp,” as CBC is known to rarity for a B.C.- corridor and Hong Kong, begins the fers to describe those who work there. 978-1-9994-026-2-4 published book. family memoir, From Wah Lee to Chew himself, who has Also shortlisted Keen: The Story of a Pioneer Chinese authored the for the Hilary Family in North Cariboo (Friesen Press Chronicles of Ken- W IS FOR WONG Weston Writers’ $17.49), by relative Liping Wong Yip. dra Kandlestar

FEATURED LAST YEAR ON THE COVER OF THE Trust Prize for The couple settled in Quesnel where series. Ozzie and autumn issue of BC BookWorld, Lind- Nonfiction, this memoir of Wah Lee became known as Chew Lai Tug’s story may well be the start say Wong is now a finalist for the growing up in Vancouver concerns Keen, and the couple had six children. ▼ 2019 edition of CBC’s Toronto-centric mental health and humour within a [Tzu-I Chung reviews this book in The of a new series. Canada Reads! for her first book, Chinese Canadian household. Ormsby Review.] 9781460294307 Lee Edward Fodi 978-0-06-284526-9

DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES: MAY 15, 2019 LUSH TRIUMPHANT LITERARY 44 2 Richard Kelly Kemick ‡ Read. They can hear your stomach churn,

smell the cavities in your molars, elevendollarsninetyfive seepoetry your pulse gallopingand prose into the soft parts of your neck. Subscribe. There is no place they do not know you. AWARDS Submit. Because every issue FICTION 3,000 words is an EVENT.

CREATIVE NON-FICTION 4,000 words • 2018 Journey Prize Long-list POETRY [suite of 5 related poems] • 2017 Canadian Magazine Awards Winner, Best Literature and Art Story, $3,000 IN CASH PRIZES including Poetry • 2016 National Magazine Awards ENTRY FEE: $30 (includes a one-year subscription to subTerrain) Finalist, Fiction and Personal Journalism SUBMIT: www.subterrain.ca • 2015 National Magazine Awards Finalist, Poetry INFORMATION: [email protected] STRONG WORDS FOR A POLITE NATION eventmagazine.ca

38 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 INDIES

Almost every day we receive another self-published title worthy of attention. Here is a selection of just ten titles.

BY BEVERLY CRAMP

t is almost a ghost town now, but from 1908 —1980 Ocean Falls was one of the largest communities and industrial facilities on B.C.’s coast. A company town dedicated to I pulp and paper production for 60 different types of paper, it began to die when the mill shut in 1980. Ocean Falls: After the Whistle ($40) covers the recollections of R. Brian McDaniel, one of the town’s inhabitants from 1953 to 1968. Although Ocean Falls was only reachable by boat or floatplane, it was once home to 70,000 mostly prosperous people. Its swimming pool fostered several world champions. Citizens included a longshoreman who was the first cousin to a Pope, as well as a young Dick Pound, later president of the World Anti-Doping Agency for sports. McDaniel reveals why people who lived in one of the wettest places on earth with wooden roads, no cars, no TV, and no computers generally loved it. 978-19994-207-0-3 ✫ A little-known fact is that the largest shipwreck disaster along the Pacific Northwest Coast was the sinking of the SS Princess Sophia on October 25, 1918. The tragedy occurred when the First World War ended so the sinking got less press atten- tion than it might otherwise have received. There were no survivors and the stories of an estimated

367 people on board are lost. What happened during their final hours will remain a mystery. ▼ SS Princess Sophia, Those Who Perished: The Unknown Story of the Largest Shipwreck Di- saster along the Pacific Northwest Coast of North F YOU’RE A LONG-TIME LOWER MAINLAND RESIDENT, BE America (Maritime Museum $19.95), co-authored by From Star Trek to Ripper prepared to get sentimental. Revolving W Judy Thompson and David Leverton, started as a resource guide to an exhibit about the SS Princess Iand Flying Pigs: A Neon Journal of Van- Successful Canadian director and actor, Alan Scarfe Sophia at the Maritime Museum of B.C., where Le- couver Vintage Cafes and Theatres (BoneYard (below right), who has twice portrayed Romulans in Star Trek, The Next Generation, spent three years writ- verton worked as executive director and Thompson Ink Books $50) by Keith McKellar is a stunning as a volunteer. The last message from the SS Princess ing The Revelation of Jack the Ripper (Smart House pictorial homage to Vancouver’s vintage cafes and Sophia is stark and tragic: “Alright but for God’s sake Books $22.95) in between television and film jobs. The suggestion for the book came from his wife and fellow hurry, water coming in room.” 9780969300175 theatres, many now gone. McKellar’s drawings ✫ bring alive such venues as the Smilin’ Buddha actor Barbara March. It’s a first-person fictionalized account of a British psychologist named Lyttlelton For his twelfth book, Kevin Annett, the tireless but Cabaret (where Jimi Hendrix once played, as well bizarrely unsung campaigner for justice on behalf of Forbes Winslow. The story helped Scarfe explore, in as D.O.A.), the still-operating Ovaltine Cafe with Indigenous victims of church-run residential schools, his words, “how the stark contrast between the poverty has recalled his formative friendships with four men its 1948 swooping arrow neon sign, Helen’s Chil- in the East End of London and the opulence of the West End had almost necessitated this most famous of all whose lives might otherwise be unaccounted for in dren’s Wear in Burnaby with the skirt-bearing girl Fallen: The Story of the Vancouver Four (www. serial killers.” Scarfe has an impressive range of titles on a swing sign, and of course the revolving “W” kevinannett.com $15). The quartet who lived on Van- published in Europe but little recognition in his home couver’s Downtown Eastside have all perished were at the Woodward’s department store. This gem is province. He lives in Magna Bay, on Shuswap Lake. Johnny “Bingo” Dawson (2009); Williams Combes well worth seeking out. Simply superb. But largely 978-0-96897-181-9

(2011); Ricky Lavallee (2012) and Harry Wilson overlooked because it’s self-published. 9781775357704 (2012). Annett recounts what they told him of the horrors of the state and church-run schools This is the sort of riveting, deeply-felt book that gives self- for being funny and weird—but the writing is also publishing a good name. 978-1-54815-268-0 sophisticated and sly. Others simply describe this ✫ collection of thirteen short stories as whimsical. The A Robot Called Zip ($13.25) is the illustrated story of author says his initial aim is to run with the absurd Zip, a newly-built and curious robot and his first foray and that by staying on this track, “soon it develops into the world. Written and illustrated by Vancouver- its own reality.” 978-0-9953235-3-7 based physical therapist Harminder Toor, the book ✫ teaches children to look after their health through Meanwhile retired Province editorial page colum- posture, activity, proper diet and rest. 978-1-9995217-0-1 nist Jon Ferry has graduated from the fray of daily ✫ journalism and published two books of poetry in the The late humorist and CBC Radio personality Arthur last two years: Dark Wood (Prominence $20.89) and Black has praised Throw Mama from the Boat and Charred Horses (Prominence $21.06). Other Ferry Tales (Rolling West $19.95) by PJ Reece Dark Wood: 978-1-9889-252-7-1, Charred Horses 978-1-9889-250-8-0

39 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 POETRY The Repairman by Howard White

MODERN Fall is here, it can’t be denied The pounding rains arouse in me a shapeless menace CAUTIONARY As I picture the leaf-clogged eavestroughs, the skimpy woodpile TALES And the things I discovered wrong with the boat On our last trip of the summer fter Kerry Gilbert won the Gwendolyn MacEwen The mysterious electrical leak that flatted the battery Poetry Award for Best Suite by an Emerging The equally mysterious accumulation of water Writer 2016/2017, her suite poems now serve Along one side of the bilge only as the core of a verse manuscript called Little A Red (Mother Tongue Publishing $19.95). It’s Not to mention several things I have known about for years a contemporary response to the classic Red Like the deteriorating floor. This is just the boat. Riding Hood fairy tale, fully cognizant of the Elsewhere my life seems equally unready for winter missing and murdered women in Canada. Gilbert explores deeply And I fret about it, wondering what to do— entrenched lessons in gender roles with poetry about Wolf, Nana, Call in help? What kind of help and where do you go? Scarlet, the Woodcutter, bear, the forest, lost and innocent chil- dren, crows, accidents and homelessness “creating a kaleidoscope We are not a family that ever called the repairman of modern cautionary tales.” The intention is to encourage readers My father always fixed the electric stove himself to find new ways to navigate the forest with hope instead of fear. Sometimes showering us with sparks Vernon-raised Kerry Gilbert grew up in the Okanagan and has And leaving it with one burner feeble lived on Vancouver Island, in South Korea, and Australia. She now lives back in the valley, where she teaches But mostly leaving things on his job list unreached creative writing at Okanagan College and This is the approach I inherit and many hundreds of hours raises her three children. Have I worried and wondered about that roof leak Three of Kerry’s poems made the Which I patched and re-patched to no effect long list for the 2017-2018 Ralph Until finally I broke down and got a roofer to look at Gustafson Prize for the Best Poem (The Fiddlehead’s 27th annual contest). He found the problem in about three minutes She is co-founder of Spoke Literary Laughed at my befuddlement, sticking his fat pencil Festival (spokefestival.com) a celebra- Down the hole for emphasis, didn’t charge for the callout tion of writers in and around the But told me I needed a new roof anyway, for about $10,000 Okanagan. She also runs writing workshops called Story Makers, a Now here is my dilemma: do I call in the repairman mentorship program that helps For everything? My out-of-control waistline? young writers find their My aching joints? My poor family relations? voice and confidence. My overloaded in-basket? My faulty memory? 978-1-896949-74-1 There are no doubt repairmen for all these malfunctions Listed in the online yellow pages awaiting my call Where do you draw the line between Trying to manage things yourself And turning your life entirely over to qualified professionals? I pick up my dad’s old screwdriver and move Toward the electric range, which has been Kerry Making a mysterious humming noise Gilbert Howard White From A Mysterious Humming Noise (Anvil Press $18) by Howard White, whose poems concern common and ev- eryday realities such as sinking docks, driving bulldozers, arguing about sand, baseball, pouring without a funnel, danc- ing in the street, thought guns, coition, brain farts, not sending sympathy cards, PHOTO not shooting your father, and sea

COURTS otters. White also writes about

writing. 978-1-77214-141-2 CAMILLIA

II. In The Ormsby Opening We lie on the bed, reading. You, British history and I, Review, poet and the collected poems of Jane Kenyon. reviewer, Chris- Fire crackles and pings in the stove topher Leven- the Cabin PHOTO

son admires the by Kate Braid while rain chimes over our heads. MENDEL “archetypal west It’s noon and we’ve been lying like this,

coast experiences” SUSAN reading the odd passage to each other, content, explored by Kate Braid I. lost in our books most of the morning. in Elemental (Caitlin We have come to the cabin after weeks $18), her series of poems in the smoke of city living, climb out of the car, Now your breathing deepens, the book slips and grouped by the five ele- crisp with caution. Peering suspiciously up at the you sleep. ments: water, fire, wood, sky, and earth. Braid, sunshine Across the room, green cedar sways lightly he writes, “deftly covers we sniff the honey of cedar and pine. through the big windows. Rain freshens. A blue jay a whole range of tones squawks. and of experiences, both Small trickles of ease as we open windows, sweep. You snore a little. The poet might say, personal and communal, It is in moving that our bodies come to know I was overcome with a fierceness of joy. to create her own world of where we are. I touch your side, feeling only wonder. curiosity and reverence.” 978-1-98791-563-1 The neighbour waves and our faces light. The fire snaps and sings.

40 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 BOOKSELLERS • SERVICES

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41 BC BOOKWORLD • SPRING 2019 LETTERS QUICKIES Smiles and wows Q I think it’s about time I expressed some gratitude for everything the BC A COMMUNITY BULLETIN BookWorld crew has done for New BOARD FOR INDEPENDENTS Orphic Publishers—such as Literary Landmark #123, archiving the new Orphic Review on the new Ormsby QUICKIES is an affordable advertising Review site, the wonderful author vehicle for writers, artists & events. spreads in your ABCBookWorld ref- For info on how to be included: erence pages and the exposure you have given us in BC BookWorld. You [email protected] have kept me from becoming little more than a cranky eccentric whose delusions alone keep him going. Right Water Window now, I’m preparing The Ventriloquist’s by Gloria Barkley Dummy Tells All: A Politically Incorrect bpNichol (1982) invites Gloria Novel for publication in Spring, 2019. Barkley and classmates to re- arrange/revise his one-page Ernest Hekkanen wording (Translating Trans- Nelson lating Apollinaire): Barkley adds her hallucination poems ✫

and photographs. BC BookWorld has performed a price-

$18 • ISBN: 978-1987589245 Holly Dobbie, author Published by Create Space less service over the years, for the full of Fifteen Point Nine Available on Amazon.ca ▼ range of BC writers. Three prolific (DCB Book, 2018) POETRY decades—that is amazing. A labour of heroic proportions. Well done! I have enjoyed reading most issues as Just received my copy of BC participants do not pay the Mudgirls A Secret Garden they became available at local librar- BookWorld in the mail, and for learning—rather the landowner The story ies, and still have a little treasure of couldn’t let another moment pays us for our facilitation work, and of Darts Hill participants pay for food. Garden Park back issues. pass without a “Wow!” and a Neill Jeffrey sincere thank you. Your article Further, and more glaringly, our by Margaret workshops do not cost $500—this is Cadwaladr Coquitlam about Fifteen Point Nine is on ✫ point, so to speak, and entirely mis-quoted from page 90 of our book ISBN: 978-1-9995465-0-2 BC BookWorld is dizzying in its exceptional. Thanks for promot- Mudgirls Manifesto, where we very $29.95 • dartshill.ca clearly take issue with those natural [email protected] breadth and depth. When a new edi- ing and informing, and helping the book find its way into the building workshops that charge par- LOCAL / GARDEN HISTORY tion arrives at the library it is time for celebration. I’m from Ts’elxweyeqw hands and hearts of the kids who ticipants “upwards of $500 per week” tribe territory, near Cultus Lake, over really need it, to come work their butts off to build The the Vedder mountain from Abbots- Holly Dobbie someone a house. Chocolate ford, but if one is travelling by road, Langley These details mean a lot to us. They Pilgrim through time, it’s half-an-hour from are fundamental to our history and ✫ philosophy, and we would appreciate by Marie Maccagno Chilliwack. I have problems with this Thanks again for the wonderful work it if you could publish a correction, or Fearless, honest. A must- statement: “ of Victoria read for those walking their has rocketed into you do for BC books and authors. I’ve this letter. Thank you for your care, own personal journeys. just pored through the latest issue of your time and your attention. Peace! 978-1-7750721-0-2 and territory with just $25 CDN/PB • e-book versions available her third novel.” To use Alice Munro BC BookWorld, enjoying the reviews The Mudgirls Natural mariemaccagno.com/books and Margaret Atwood places Esi Edu- and making notes on all the books Building Collective MEMOIR gyan in a women’s category, not an I must read—little gems I might not British Columbia author’s. You should have used Alice otherwise have found. I was sur- prised to reach the end and see ‘U is The High Beings Munro and M. G. Vassanji as they were both twice winners of the Giller. for Unity’ in the Who’s Who section. of Hawaii Thank you for bringing attention to OBITS By Tanis Helliwell Dianne Rose Cultus Lake my new novel in this delightful way. Encounters with mystical ancestors [The issue was printed before we knew It made me smile. This Hawaiian vacation turns Esi Edugyan had won her second Shelley Hrdlitschka into a humorous, heart-open- ing odyssey that is alive with Giller.—Ed.] North Vancouver beings from other dimensions. ✫ ISBN 9781987831146 • $19.95 Available on Amazon.ca I just received BC BookWorld in the Correction Body, Mind & Spirit • Shamanism • Huna • Ancestors mail. Wow. Wasn’t I surprised to see a good blurb about me and my book We’d like to address some errors on MS prominent on page 5, no less. contained in Build it and They Will PHOTO

1919 I was further impressed with your in- Chum (BC BookWorld winter issue). ORAF A Graphic History volvement with Luhombero in Africa. The founder of the Mudgirls Collec- of the Winnipeg Kudos to you. As funds allow, I will fire tive, who also wrote the introduction Edith Iglauer (1917-2019) General Strike author of Fishing With John. a little dough that way but definitely of the book under review, is Jen by The Graphic History • Gobby. Collective and David Lester have them in my prayers already. Jim Taylor (1937-2019) sports $19.19 Again, thanks for the good word. Also, as stated in the book, the columnist, author of 13 books. ISBN 9781771134200 Mona Houle object of our workshops is not to • Between The Lines Victoria provide “free labour” for clients, and See BCBookLook.com for full obituaries. www.btlbooks.com GRAPHIC NOVEL Send letters or emails to: BC BookWorld, 926 West 15th Ave., Vancouver, BC V5Z 1R9 [email protected] • Letters may be edited for clarity & length.

Anvil Press...33 Friesens Printers...43 Mother Tongue Publishing...19 SFU Writer’s Studio...30 Banyen Books...41 Galiano Island Books...41 Mulligan, Claire...41 Sub-Terrain Magazine/LUSH...38 BC Ferries Books...29 Goose Lane Editions...31 New Society Publishers...11 Talonbooks...17 BC Historical Federation...13 Graduate Liberal Studies (SFU)...37 New Star Books...34 Tanglewood Books...41 Bentley, BR...19 Granville Island Publishing...37 Orca Books...5 Tanner’s Books...41 Caitlin Press...9 Greystone Books...9 The Ormsby Review...6 University of Alberta Press...13 Chuckanut Writers Conference...2 Harbour Publishing...44 Penguin/Random House...6 UBC Press...12 AD Daly, Sean...13 The Heritage Group of Publishers...21 People’s Co-Op Books...41 WebexPress...43 Douglas & McIntyre...15 MAA Press...38 Printorium/Island Blue...43 Word On The Lake...2 Douglas College/EVENT...38 Marquis Printing...43 Ronsdale Press...34 Yoka’s Coffee...24 INDEX Federation of BC Writers...2 Mercer, George...30 Royal BC Museum...24 Figure 1 Publishing...12 Mermaid Tales Bookshop...41 Self-Counsel Press...25

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