Book Reviews

The Half-Lives of Pat Lowther Explicating this crime as a so cietal Christine Wiesenthal and literary phenomenon is the man- date assumed by Christine Wiesenthal Toronto: Universit y of Toronto in The Half-Lives of Pat Lowther. The Press, 2005. 489 pp. $65.00 cloth. title and profile images of the poet on the cover are appropriate metaphors Linda Rogers for what is still a mystery. In fact there Victoria are several mysteries, all of which Wiesenthal attempts to bring out of the hirty years ago, my husband shadows and into the more impartial Tand I were having dinner at the light of hindsight. Da Tandoor restaurant in Victoria The first mystery is why her death with the incomplete executive of the affected so many. It was a catalyst. League of Canadian Poets. All eyes Lowther was a significant impetus for were on the door. Would Pat Lowther, the League of Poets’s Feminist Caucus, co-chair, be arriving late? My youngest which brought forward feminist issues, son slept fitfully in his Moses basket mainly as they pertained to women and, senseless, wedged between rocks writers who had been sidelined in the at Furry Creek near Squamish, the emerging literary business. Women missing guest never did arrive. Today writers had difficulty in finding pub- Pat Lowther is an icon for spousal lishers, in getting reviews, readings, abuse, the fussing infant is an adult, and academic positions. They had also and our world is very different. been regarded as “meat,” protein to feed We are all now aware that domestic the insatiable male artistic ego, which violence is ubiquitous and reprehensible. brings us to the second mystery. Crimes of passion are no longer an That mystery is: why did she fall for acceptable legal defence. Pat Lowther’s a pretentious felon like Roy Lowther in death at the hand of her deranged the first place? The answer is simple. husband was a catalyst for that changing To a woman with low self-esteem and consciousness in our country. She was febrile ambitions, Roy Lowther was a poet and her voice was stilled. That an apparent power figure in the tiny was and still is a tragedy. Vancouver literary pond of the 1960s. Pat

bc studies, no. 151, Autumn 2006 97 98 bc studies was doing what women are biologically mythological power of writers like programmed to do. That she didn’t get Neruda, she wanted her own star in out of the marriage when her husband the firmament. To her inept hus band revealed his vanity and violence is also this was incomprehensible; and he statistically appropriate. Women don’t. destroyed what he could not understand. Instead of leaving the bully, she fell Wiesenthal doesn’t quite understand into the tender trap of a “same-time- either. She is an academic, and, in next-year” relationship with a poet this apparently intensely re searched of slightly higher profile in the years book (except for small but significant when League of Canadian Poets agms errors like her description of the provided romantic opportunities for courthouse, now the Vancouver Art fragile practitioners. Gallery, as being made of brick rather Wiesenthal chronicles Lowther’s than stone – the kind of error that attachment to flawed but apparently could cast doubt on the credibility of connected men and her struggle to her scholarship) she vacillates between travel in the wake of Pablo Neruda’s mysteries as Lowther did between her shooting star and Dorothy Livesay’s many functions as wife, mother, poet, listing mother ship. No one was going politician, and arts bureaucrat. What to help Pat Lowther. All she had were begins as biography and detective the words she squeezed out of her tor- story makes lateral moves into history mented life. and literary criticism; and we are still The third mystery is whether we unenlightened. There is no end to the would still be hearing of Pat Lowther story. The book ends abruptly, as did as a poet had her husband not bashed the subject. For Lowther, there is no her head in and left her broken and star. She is just a sad creature washed up bleeding on a beach where he had once on the beach, her bones now bleached made love to her. The sad poignancy and indistinguishable from all others. of her death has made Lowther a There are no marks on her and, because martyr for women who look, as she of her susceptibility to influences, her did, for a voice to lead them out of mark on our literature is still under the wilderness. Carol Shields, herself debate. a victim of prejudice against women Wiesenthal, encumbered by the bio- writers, unconsciously borrowed one grapher’s vulnerability, equivocates of Lowther’s titles for her own Stone in her judgments, but she does leave Diary. The annual Pat Lowther Award the dust balls alone. She may or may for the best book of poetry by a woman not have intuited that the Lowther asserts the validity of women’s writing. marriage was a metaphor for that Predictably, there are writers who argue oxymoron “the literary community.” that poetry evaluation should transcend Jealousy and competitiveness, the gender. Many fine writers, some of them enemies of true art, which should guide friends of Lowther’s, left the League us to enlightenment, are the microcosm of Poets because they were offended and macrocosm of Lowther’s half-lives. by the intrusion of gender politics in a I wish Wiesenthal had been able to craft organization. As she did in life, draw such conclusions, but she does at Lowther still stands in the crucible of least leave the evidence. It is all a matter conflict three decades hence. of housekeeping. Pat Lowther was anxious and Wiesenthal documents Lowther’s am bitious. Attaching herself to the notoriously unkempt domesticity and Book Reviews 99 the legendary story of the Maritime the universities of Victoria and British reading tour she made in her final Columbia, was then BC regional summer. The nervous poet’s bags director for cbc radio and had excellent had been lost, and, in her attempt publishing contacts. Carr, then acutely to recall and recite poems she had ill, was largely confined to bed, but packed in her mother’s suitcase, the her artistic impulses found expression real meaning of Wiesenthal’s book through recollections of her early life – comes clear. Pat Lowther attempted a continuing autobiography of “Small,” to navigate stars without a map. her pet name for herself. During this An ambivalent autodidact, she lived period she wrote Klee Wyck (1941), The vicariously, through books and men. Book of Small (1942), and The House of All Unlike those grounded peoples who Sorts (1944) and began writing sections learn the meaning of themselves, their of Growing Pains: The Autobiography of geography, and their culture from Emily Carr (1946), which was published songlines, she was distracted from the posthumously, as was Hundreds and West Coast environment she described Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr in her best poems. Hers was only a half- (1966). In effect, Carr rediscovered life, even while she was still living. (or recreated) herself and her past life Perhaps a fragmented record of her life in the process of writing her stories and work is an appropriate tribute. – stories that her correspondence with Dilworth, and Dilworth himself as editor, helped shape. Corresponding Influence: Linda M. Morra, who came across their correspondence while writing Selected Letters of Emily Carr her doctoral dissertation, is to be con- and Ira Dilworth gratulated for recognizing their literary Linda M. Morra, editor value and editing them. What an irascible, impossible, wonderful woman Toronto: Universit y of Toronto Emily Carr was. These letters show her Press, 2006. pp. 352. Illus. at her best – and worst. At her best, $60.00 cloth. she is wonderful. She stoically endures pain: “I stayed in bed all day after Xmas Sandra Djwa & most of yesterday – heart pains – I Vancouver let the girl have a good deal of time off & did too much” (81); she recognizes his wonderful collection of her own mortality without complaint Tletters describes a special friend ship and is always concerned for the welfare between Emily Carr and Ira Dilworth of the younger Dilworth, whom she between 1940 and 1945. Carr was already views fondly as a dear friend, mentor, recognized as a distinguished artist, and literary expert. At her worst, she but she had just begun to write prose, makes us quake, as for example when primarily because she was no longer she takes a pot-shot at her younger able to get into the forest to paint. male rivals when discussing some She was to become a forthright and drawings done by high school students spirited writer in the next few years, after reading Klee Wyck: “They were in large part through Dilworth’s indeniably Maxey [Maynard] and editorial support. Dilworth, a former Jacksie [Shadbolt] things[,] were all professor of English who had taught at show off[,] no observation[,] no Indian 100 bc studies feeling” (209). Nonetheless, it is Carr’s moment in its text. Flahiff extracts the wonderful honesty that is captivating. title proper from a specific entry in the “Everyone,” she tells Dilworth, “is writer’s mid-1950s “Paris diary,” which tremendously alone in this world when he has wisely included in his book: it comes right down to the core & there “Picasso had one of his caretakers jailed are so few cores that match – I often for destroying his doves … Today when marvel how everybody comes to be so I thought how hard it is for an artist different when they see & hear, smell to live at all my heart was filled with & eat the same things?” (89). Emily compassion. There is always someone Carr died content that she, her alter to kill the doves” (121). ego “Small,” her manuscripts, and her Ever mindful of the challenges of the paintings were in good hands. “Oh task Watson herself set for him (“I want my dear big trustor[,] I am so glad & at my story told,” she said, although she did peace that ‘Small” & all my M.S. are not appoint him the teller), Flahiff, in yours[.] It would have hurt to leave my his preface and elsewhere, makes patent children in un[-]understanding hands. his awareness that his book can only be, I’d rather but have burned them than as the subtitle suggests, fragmentary that” (91). (here again, fittingly, in the style of Morra’s editorial selection of letters Watson’s own prose) and that because is excellent in that it represents each of his lengthy friendship with her it stage of the literary relationship. The can also only be biased in her favour. editing and annotation of this text I found some of the sections in which must have been a substantial task as Flahiff inserts himself into the story of Carr’s spelling was unique and her his subject among the most compelling punctuation non-existent. Nonetheless, in the book. Furthermore, responsive the letters as they are presented here to memory’s complexity and pitfalls, read well, the editorial emendations are he contextualizes the recollections of not obtrusive, and Carr’s personality others; notes discrepancies in accounts rings loud and clear. not only of the same events by different people but also by the same person at different times; and draws on a Always Someone to Kill the healthy mix of sources, including interviews (with family, friends, and Doves: A Life of Sheila Watson colleagues), newspapers, books, records F.T. Flahiff of publishers’ queries, and the papers 2005 of Sheila Watson’s husband, poet and Edmonton: NeWest Press, . playwright Wilfred Watson. 352 $34 95 pp. Illus. . paper. As Flahiff also notes, his work is Ginny Ratsoy as much about her marriage as it is about Watson’s work, and the reader is Thompson Rivers University again privy to a variety of perspectives (including Sheila’s own) that converge ike Sheila Watson’s seminal on Wilfred’s difficult, domineering L– and quintessentially British personality. If the outsider cannot Columbian – novel, The Double Hook, resist the temptation to take sides, ff F.T. Flahi ’s book takes both its title it is Sheila’s side that will likely be and its epigraph from a particularly taken, and her husband’s infidelities, dramatic and thematically relevant periodic lack of support for her writing, Book Reviews 101 and insistence that they abandon is well chronicled: Dorothy Livesay, Edmonton upon their retirement Margaret Atwood, Northrop Frye, Jack might figure prominently in such an Shadbolt, and, particularly, Marshall assessment. McLuhan are a few among the many Time has assessed Sheila as the more whose relationship to Watson Flahiff influential writer in the partnership, chronicles. Furthermore, because and Flahiff does justice to her extra- Watson had a lengthy academic career ordinarily influential, although con- (as both student and professor), the spicuously small (two novels and several reader receives more than passing short stories) body of fiction in myriad glimpses into the business and politics ways. First, he very much evokes the of Canadian universities during a role of place on her writing, not only crucial time in their growth (scenes of her youth in New Westminster and set in and around the University of Vancouver but, more important, of Alberta’s Department of English in the two years she spent as a teacher in the 1960s and 1970s are particularly Dog Creek, British Columbia, which noteworthy). inform both The Double Hook and Of interest to literary academics, Deep Hollow Creek. In addition, he historians, feminist scholars, British details the evolution of all her works. Columbia specialists, book historians, With respect to her masterwork in and students of these fields, Always particular, we are afforded a sustained Someone to Kill the Doves: A Life of and vivid reminder of the business Sheila Watson, with its thoughtful of publishing – the accommodations inclusion of some of Watson’s sketches, the writer must sometimes make in photos (all too infrequent, alas), and order for her creation to reach public a bibliography of her writing (fiction distribution. Finally, Flahill discusses and non-fiction), makes a considerable the inspiration that the work provided contribution to various fields of study. for such writers as Michael Ondaatje, Perhaps Flahiff succeeds in writing a Daphne Marlatt, and, particularly, compelling life story precisely because Angela and George Bowering. he does not purport to tell the whole, One of the rewards of literary truthful story; instead, he delights in biography is that the backdrop on echoing Sheila Watson’s style, and which it is set often affords the reader he shares his subject’s belief in the rich glimpses into the history of the importance of textual absences. subject’s times through the prism of the artistic and literary scene. Flahiff’s study does not disappoint: Watson’s Paris diaries, replete with images of birds, flowers, music, and fine art, are further invigorated by incidents such as her attendance at the funeral of Maurice Utrillo, her visit to T.S. Eliot’s office in England, and her fly- on-the-wall account of Jean Cocteau’s behaviour in a shop (“His presence filled the whole room – and he knew that it did”) (138). Closer to home, the growth of the Canadian scene 102 bc studies

Contact Zones: consciousness. Johnson’s vividly hy- Aboriginal and Settler Women brid performance further served to undermine the colonial obsession in Canada’s Colonial Past with difference even as her writing Katie Pickles and suggested the superiority of Aboriginal Myra Rutherdale, editors women. Cecilia Morgan brings an 2005 analysis of Aboriginal women as public Vancouver: UBC Press, . spokespeople into the middle of the 256 pp. Maps, illus. twentieth century, focusing on the $85 00 $29 95 . cloth, . paper. work of Bernice Loft and Ethel Brant Monture. Both Loft and Monture built Mary-Ellen Kelm on Johnson’s successes but brought Simon Fraser University their own perspectives to the work of educating non-Aboriginals about his is a great time to be writing Aboriginal peoples, using history TAboriginal history. A decade of and biography to counter “savage” productive interplay between post- stereotypes. Monture, in particular, colonial studies, feminist analysis, and stressed indigenous adaptive abilities new methods of research has opened while decrying forced assimilation. new interpretive pathways to historians Morgan brings important insights of First Nations. This collection of from feminist theory to these two fi essays exempli es the promise of this liminal characters, recovering with interdisciplinary scholarship. them a particular Aboriginal space in Myra Rutherdale and Katie Pickles twentieth-century Canadian histori- have included some of the very best ography. scholarship on the contact zone between Articles by Sherry Farrell Racette Aboriginal and settler women in and, later in the volume, by Myra Canada; the table of contents reads Rutherdale, help us to see how dress like a who’s who in feminist and itself was a field of contact. Racette’s Aboriginal history. The volume itself superb article on Métis women’s is organized into three parts around artistic production of clothing makes the central theme of the body as a site clear the importance of the body, of colonial encounter, highlighting style, comportment, and fashion in how dress and performance, sexuality marking and making western Canadian fi and surveillance, and, nally, everyday masculine ideals. Rutherdale’s article encounters acted as potent points of exposes the conundrum faced by contact, places of colonial imposition northern women missionaries who, and subversion. on one hand, sought to demonstrate The articles on performance and dress the success of assimilation by the are among the best in the col lection. In sartorial transformation of their Inuit Contact Zones, Veronica Strong-Boag and Dene charges while on the other and Carole Gerson extend their previous hand missionaries themselves donned analyses of Pauline Johnson, arguing that parkas and snowshoes for practical and Johnson’s work repositioned Aboriginal publicity purposes. women to the ethical and moral centres Sexual conduct and conjugal relations of their own societies, highlighted their have long preoccupied the state, certainly ff economic contributions, and o ered since the mid-19th century. Several them as models for a new Canadian of this volume’s articles plot how the Book Reviews 103 sexual surveillance of colonial regimes Ironically, perhaps, it is incisive differentially impacted Aboriginal analyses of missionary and settler women. While Jean Barman delineates women that are underdeveloped in the dizzying array of behaviours that this volume. The discourse that places could get Aboriginal women labelled religious women into the realm of “prostitute,” Robin Brownlie and Joan psycho sexual dysfunction, as Jo-Anne Sangster demonstrate the power of Fiske shows, provides common ground the state in punishing women whose for those who address the damage of behavior was somehow disruptive to residential schools and those who seek patriarchal, capitalist and colonial out healing and justice. It nonetheless regimes. Sarah Carter’s chapter on the sexualizes and homogenizes the outlawing of polygamy explains the women religious and residential problems of eradicating what was, for school survivors, a result that Fiske the missionaries a practice considered might have historicized productively, abhorrent on moral grounds, but situating rather than naturalizing that had a certain unarguable social this discourse in its contemporary pragmatic. Adele Perry situates the rise context. In particular, we might ask of residential schooling in the flailing how such discourses challenged women attempts of missionaries on the North religious’ understandings of self, Coast to transform sexual and social calling, and femininity. Similarly, arrangements. Dianne Newell’s analysis of writing This volume, as a whole, recuperates by and about three women travellers the place of colonial relations in the on the North Coast experiencing formation of the Canadian nation. It is difference and danger in dramatically logical then to hope for a greater exam- varying ways seems hesitant to take ination of the extent to which colonial full account of the transformative relations were unevenly reciprocal – effects of those encounters. Septima influencing the colonizer as well as the Collis and Emily Carr, according colonized. There are glimpses of such to Newell, were insulated from the questions in many of the chapters. How coast, though it is hard to see how did the performances of Aboriginal this conclusion applies to Carr. In the women such as Johnson, Brant, and unfortunately titled “road kill” section Monture define “authenticity” in ways on the murder of Loretta Chisholm, that prompted settler women to mimic Newell cannot ignore the radical British figures in the parades that transformation of Chisholm’s body Pickles so vividly describes? Did the from schoolteacher to murder victim, women missionaries of northern Canada but the effects of that event on living find themselves changed by adopting settler women of the north coast elude the dress of Aboriginal people just as her. Rather, Newell dismisses Phylis they hoped to change Native women by Bowman’s local history of the events as altering their appearances? How were “inevitably reproduc[ing] the dominant definitions of “respectable” subject to masculinist narratives of conquest.” revision as groups of colonial men reaped Such conclusions indicate the clear the benefits of sexualizing Aboriginal need for more analysis on non-elite women? Articles in this volume lay the women’s writing of the contact zone. groundwork to move analyses of the It would be trite (and inaccurate) contact zone deeper both in Aboriginal to suggest that settler women were and settler communities. subject to transformations of similar 104 bc studies in tensity to those of Aboriginal men’s) have been a subject of concern, women, but clearly settler women scrutiny, anxiety, and surveillance in a were changed by their encounters variety of times and places across the with First Nations. Understanding world [is striking]” (4). The Pacific Muse further how these transformations were certainly extends these perspectives. As incorporated into the lives and societies a “gender-focused world history” (14), of those experiencing them will further Patty O’Brien foregrounds the female integrate Aboriginal and women’s body in her exploration of the colonial history in meaningful ways. Contact South Pacific. Zones contributes to a general bringing O’Brien takes an overlapping the- together of the fragments of past matic and chronological approach, intercultural encounters – fragments tracing the production of exotic that by the beginning of the 21st century femininity from its foundations in have been so torn asunder that we often antiquity through to the present have difficulty seeing how they were day. The first chapter examines the once part of a whole. This failure to lenses through which late eighteenth- realize the extent of the cross-cultural century explorers viewed femininity encounter in the past is a significant in the Pacific, heavily informed as historical erasure that volumes such as they were by the revival of classical Rutherdale and Pickles’ Contact Zones thought in the Renaissance and the are importantly beginning to undo. imperial experience in the Americas, Africa, and the Orient. Chapter 2 addresses colonizing masculinities, The Pacific Muse: charting the intertwined myths of “unfettered sexual freedoms” available Exotic Femininity and to “uncontrollable” Occidental men the Colonial Pacific in their Pacific exploits. In Chapter 3 Patty O’Brien , O’Brien explores the divergent portrayal and treatment of indigenous Washington: University of women across multiple Pacific frontiers, Washington Press, 2006. characterized by extraction, plantation, 347 pp. Illus. us$50.00 cloth. and pastoral economies. The ways in which images of the “natural Pacific Frances Steel woman” mediated European debates Australian National University about women’s “proper” role in the body politic informs Chapter 4. Finally, n their recent edited collection, O’Brien surveys the ongoing cultural IBodies in Contact: Rethinking Co- power of the archetypal “smiling lonial Encounters in World History island girl” in twentieth-century art, (2005), Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette literature, and film. Burton call for a renewed focus on The Pacific Muse is a history of the gender as a category of historical West’s “comfort” with the Pacific analysis, positioning “the body” at the region (269). It addresses colonial centre of colonial governmentalities. In representations of women in diverse attempting to make women and gender island settings, which were, for the more visible in world history, they most part, misrepresentations. O’Brien emphasize that “the extent to which is at her best in deconstructing the women’s bodies (and to a lesser degree, logics behind the mythmaking and the Book Reviews 105 cultures of the mythmakers themselves, exchange as a social rather than as tightly weaving her analysis into the an individual practice is buried in a fabric of everyday life. Given the footnote (286n69). This is, no doubt, a dramatically uneven power relations problem of source material, but without in Pacific Island colonial contexts, looking in more depth at the complex these misrepresentations had very of meanings colliding in these cross- real outcomes for very real bodies. cultural encounters, “the indigenous She shows how indigenous Australian body” often figures as little more than women, once exoticized in ways akin a static, blank surface upon which to women in Polynesia, soon lost this outsiders freely inscribed meanings. status as settlers linked sexual violence O’Brien situates the contemporary with control over land and resources. Pacific as a “soft,” friendly, benign The inclusion of these histories “other” to the “Islamic world” in the provides an important corrective eyes of rim states like the United States to the undue emphasis on Tahiti in and Australia (7, 268-69). Yet, as I write primary and secondary literature this review from Australia in mid-2006, as “the” site of Oceanic desire. The recent riots in the Solomon Islands image of exotic femininity circulated and East Timor have prompted Prime in metropolitan centres for other ends: Minister John Howard, predicting to contain European women within further regional troubles in the coming the domestic sphere. By including decades, to commit ten billion dollars Australia and, to a lesser extent, New to an expanded defence force. Very Zealand within a broader regional different bodies and very different imaginary, and by keeping Europe regional agendas, it seems, also define always in sight, O’Brien aligns herself Pacific “hot spots.” Overall, The Pacific with the growing body of historical Muse is an engaging, wide-ranging, scholarship concerned with tracking and insightful work, enhanced by the the circulation of people, commodities, liberal inclusion of excellent images. and ideas across imperial sites. It will appeal to scholars both in and O’Brien concludes: “This book has beyond Pacific scholarship, including sought to restore Pacific women to those interested in the history of a colonial history in which they are ideas, colonial history, the history of fuller historical entities than the vast gender and sexuality, anthropology, art majority of literature on the Pacific will history, and cultural studies. allow” (268). Towards the end of the book, she briefly surveys postcolonial engagement with and resistance to colonial stereotypes but provides little evidence of engagement and resistance in the preceding centuries. I was left no further ahead in understanding why, for example, Tahitian women approached European sailors with bared breasts (what meanings did nakedness hold in indigenous cultures?) or what the “sex trade” may have meant for those on the other side of the beach. A caution that many island societies understood 106 bc studies

Contesting Rural Space: Contesting Rural Space: Land Policy and Land Policy and Practices Practices of Resettlement on Saltspring Island, 1859-1891. In keeping with the of Resettlement on spirit of current scholarly convictions, Saltspring Island, 1859-1891 Sandwell embraces complexity, am- R.W. Sandwell biguity, and contradiction rather than seeking to impose a coherent and Montreal and Kingston: McGill- linear interpretation on the multiple Queen’s University Press, 2005. and uneven changes that she discovers 384 pp. $29.95 paper, $75.00 cloth. in studying the people, policies, and practices on Saltspring Island during Chad Gaffield the second half of the nineteenth cen- University of Ottawa tury. The book begins with a discussion of Sandwell’s rural gaze, which comes ne of the most unexpected from a “microhistorical eye” (3), and Oconsequences of the systematic her decision to study a setting in the social history undertaken in the 1960s Gulf Islands between the British and 1970s was a profound rethinking Columbia mainland and Vancouver of its initial focus on industrialization Island. The following chapters then and urbanization as the central features examine the land policies and ideals of modernity. By the 1980s, scholars of rural (re)settlement before moving had become less convinced that an to a systematic study of how diverse understanding of cities and factories residents actually came to grips with would be the key to interpreting the the social, economic, and cultural larger constellation of social, economic, challenges of this environment. cultural, and political characteristics Based on an impressively wide range considered to define so-called modern of sources, Sandwell contributes to countries; rather, researchers began key scholarly debates, including those focusing on the economic engine of related to landholding, rural capitalism, capitalism and the socio-cultural household structure, and intercultural changes associated with rural as relations. Throughout the analysis much as with urban mentalities and of these and other topics, Sandwell actions. One result has been a series emphasizes three central themes in of sophisticated and probing scholarly the Saltspring Island experience of debates that have problematized the later nineteenth century: (1) that concepts of individual and collective this distinctive rural world cannot be identity and behaviour through the understood in the interpretive terms intensive study of specific times and made familiar in research on cities; places. This granular approach has (2) that official policies and the ideals made microhistory a research strategy of dominant cultures should not be of choice among those attempting mistaken for the actual histories of to enhance our understanding of the diverse individuals, families, and large-scale forces that transformed the collectivities; and, specifically, (3) nineteenth and twentieth centuries. that “the process of learning land use” In innovative and stimulating is “the key to understanding the social ways, Ruth Sandwell has contributed history of settlement. Nobody, in significantly to this metaphysical other words, should prejudge for the and epistemological rethinking in settlers how their relationship to the Book Reviews 107 environment and culture would evolve” Stella: Unrepentant Madam 225 ( ). Taken together, these themes Linda J. Eversole emphasize the importance of studying the complex interplay of local and global Victoria: TouchWood Editions, forces by systematically examining 2005. 198 pp. Illus. $19.95 paper. the ambitions and practices of specific people in specific places as well as of Jenéa Tallentire those in a position to promote dominant University College cultures and social formations. Sandwell of the Fraser Valley concludes by suggesting that this microhistorical approach is the preferred inda Eversole’s biography of strategy for developing appreciations Victoria madam Stella Carroll 229 L of the “common pattern” ( ) that (1872-1946) is listed on the book cover characterized rural communities in the as fitting into two genres: “creative making of modernity. non-fiction” and “history.” It’s an In analyzing land records, census interesting division for an interesting enumerations, court documents, family book. Having spent more than twenty ffi records, o cial registers, oral histories, years researching the life of one person and many other types of evidence, through news papers, correspondence, Sandwell quite successfully negotiates archives, and interviews in five states the constructivist-realist (false) debate and one province, Eversole can certainly while also avoiding the interpretive claim a greater academic credibility pitfalls of sentimental attachment to than the term “creative non-fiction” one of the present-day world’s most might suggest. Of course, the site beautiful locations. Some readers may where creative non-fiction and history still be left unconvinced about the ways divide, or merge, is biography. To in which the history of Saltspring Island my mind, this is the best way to should revise current understandings of characterize Eversole’s work because British Columbia or Canada or North it partakes of the practices of creative America or other settler societies, while non-fiction and history. other readers may reject outright the Eversole tracks Carroll’s life and claim that the microhistorical eye can career from her humble Missouri see beyond limited contexts to perceive roots to the height of her career as any macrohistorical phenomena. All one of Victoria’s high-class madams readers, though, will enjoy this well- between 1899 and 1913. We follow crafted and smoothly written study, Carroll through various legal, financial, which provides unmistakable evidence and (ultimately ruinous) romantic ups in favour of emphasizing land, families, and downs to her last twenty years as and an integrated socio-cultural ap- landlady, housewife, and penurious proach to the great transformations of widow. Eversole sums up Carroll’s settler societies. life as follows: “She was a survivor. In terms of material wealth, she achieved much more than would have been expected for a woman from a small, rural Missouri town, and despite the difficult years at the end, she lived the life she wanted” (177). It is quite 108 bc studies important to Eversole, I believe, that amassed collection of personal papers, Carroll was an unrepentant madam. interviews, and newspaper and police Along with scores of other women, reports. Carroll took up the management of Eversole takes her narrative parti- a house of prostitution, seeing this as culars from a variety of uncited sources; a viable but difficult business venture it is clear that many of the rich details (one of the few that were truly open to that she includes, such as what a women during this period). Eversole certain lady wore at a party, would have has sought not just to enumerate the been culled from the society pages of various events and characters that Victoria’s newspapers. In fact, although moved through Carroll’s life but also she is obviously using material that to capture some of the subjectivity of a would normally be cited in a historical woman who lived – and lived grandly monograph, she tends to reserve her – on the margins of respectable society citations mostly for direct quotes – a and gender prescriptions. practice that may make the academic Eversole’s use of the subject’s per- historian frown but that does serve to spective rather than that of the omnis- make the narrative more smooth and cient historian narrator is compelling readable for the non-academic reader. and gives her work a wide popular Eversole’s study does not claim to appeal. But this does not mean that be, nor is it, a rigorous academic mono- this work is not of use to historians. graph on the history of the high-end The embellishments of biography are, sex trade in British Columbia before on the whole, anchored in solid sources. the Great War. Yet it does offer some For example, the book begins with important glimpses into the actual Carroll carefully dressing for another lives of women involved in the Victoria night as the madam of the finest “parlour house” trade as well as insights brothel in Victoria, an intimate private into how that trade worked. She moment that we think was surely not also seeks to tie Carroll’s business of documented – until we see on the pleasure with the business of politics in next page a picture of her in the outfit Victoria (and later in San Francisco), described in such detail. It is exactly noting the careers made and broken this mix of the intimately biographical on the wheel of vice-suppression and the factual that makes Eversole’s campaigns. This is a much-needed work appealing. British Columbian complement to Certainly, the author does take lib- Ruth Rosen’s discussions of madams erties with the narrative, bringing in major American cities in her classic in the necessarily fictional aspects study The Lost Sisterhood (1982), and of biography. Several passages about it is an urban counterpart to Charleen Carroll’s attitudes, intentions, Smith’s recent work on life in the and actions seem to rely on thin “boomtown brothels” in the Kootenays threads of supposition, and many are (in Jonathan Swainger and Constance apparently modelled only on Eversole’s Backhouse, eds., People and Place: understanding of Carroll’s likely re- Historical Influences on Legal Culture actions, based on correspondence and [Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003]). interviews. Yet, on the whole, most of In the end, this book is a good read the events and interactions between – as any biography (or history, for that the various characters are grounded matter) should be. Eversole has struck in research – Eversole’s carefully an effective balance that will appeal Book Reviews 109 to the general reading public while conference brought together a diverse yielding useful material to academic group of feminists to explore “the historians. connection between gender, place, and the processes that shaped the diversity of experiences in the Canadian west” 2 Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving the ( ). According to the editors, the col- lection seeks to illuminate how women West through Women’s History negotiated the complicated spaces they Sarah Carter, Lesley Erickson, occupied, particularly in the context of Patricia Roome, and colonialism and nation building in the Char Smith, editors Prairie provinces and British Columbia (4). Contributors include academics, Calgary: University of Calgary writers, and activists from many dif- Press, 2005. pp. 442. Illus. ferent walks of life and professional $44.95 paper. fields. The breadth of the book is note- Patricia Barkaskas worthy: it spans the period from the University of British Columbia late nineteenth century to 2002 and includes scholarly works, interviews, primary goal of feminist and personal reminiscences. While the A scholarship and activism is to inclusion of so many different women’s interrupt assumed notions about gender stories through such a long period and to intervene in the naturalization shows a commitment to diversity, of processes that perpetuate women’s it also makes the collection slightly op pression and subordination in less cohesive than are collected works patriarchal societies. Contemporary that cover shorter, more specific time feminist historical studies influenced by periods. Although at least two of postcolonial and critical race theory, such the chapters deal specifically with as Anne McClintock’s Imperial Leather: British Columbia, the regional focus Race, Sexuality, and Gender in the of the book is primarily Alberta. Colonial Contest (Routledge, 1995), have Thematically arranged, Unsettled Pasts also sought to deconstruct discourses moves back and forth chronologically; of racialization and the construction however, the book is divided into four of hegemonic femininities and mas- distinct sections, and a synopsis of each culinities within colonial projects. chapter creates relevant links between Situated within a broader context the specific story being told and the of feminist historical literature, but subject of each section. The editors taking a regional focus, Unsettled Pasts: do an excellent job of introducing Reconceiving the West through Women’s each chapter and linking it to the History highlights the importance overarching themes (the organization of using a micro-history approach to of the book and the wide-ranging explore theoretical developments in subject matter make this necessary). the field. Of these, constructions of The Canadian “frontier” is not an femininity and processes of racialization uncontested masculine or white space are the focus. in Unsettled Pasts (4). The stories in the Unsettled Pasts is a selection of papers book point out that many women were, drawn from a June 2002 conference in fact, negotiating the difficult terrain held at the University of Calgary. The between the boundaries of gender and 110 bc studies

“race” in what was, and in many ways work to make relevant links between remains, a shifting socio-cultural the past and the present. and political landscape. For example, Images of indigenous women in Patricia A. Roome’s examination of history also emerge from reading Henrietta Muir Edwards’ (of Famous colonial sources “against the grain” Five fame) life story does not read as (101). Kristin Burnett deconstructs a simple tale of success in the west. representations of indigenous women As Roome notes, Edwards dealt with in the writings of three Methodist contested categories of womanhood in missionaries: John Maclean, Egerton her attempts to form relationships with Ryerson Young, and John McDougall. indigenous women on the reserves where Drawing on Adele Perry’s argument in she lived. Further, Roome reframes On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race, Edwards through an intersectional and the Making of British Columbia, feminist lens, reconceiving her as an 1849-1871 (University of Toronto Press, individual struggling within complex 2001), Burnett argues that depicting systemic contexts that contributed indigenous women as unfeminine to her unique strategy of resistance (111, 114) allowed white women to and compliance, even while she was take a place, at least in the popular unable to escape her location as a white, imagination of the nation, as the Christian woman. penultimate example of womanhood. One of the most important con- This dovetails nicely with Muriel tri butions this text makes is in docu- Stanley Venne’s piece on her personal menting indigenous women’s histories. struggle to take up the word “Esquao” Indigenous women are highlighted as a challenge to the racist, colonial as “cultural mediators.” Lesley A. word “Squaw” and as a present-day Erickson’s comparative study of the reminder that indigenous women are lives of Sara and Louis Riel removes strong members of their communities Sara from her brother’s shadow. Sara, and that their presence will not be who was the first Métis Grey Nun, chal- forgotten or ignored. Sarah Carter’s lenges notions of indigenous actors in contribution explores the implications settlement and missionization work in of the Department of Indian Affairs’ Canada. Building on Sylvia Van Kirk’s (dia) attempts to change existing ground-breaking Many Tender Ties: patterns of matrimony and divorce Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870 in indigenous communities. Carter’s (Watson and Dwyer, 1980), Erickson’s analysis reveals that sexist and racist chapter reveals that indigenous policies guided the implementation of women continued to occupy vital marriage laws for indigenous peoples roles as mediators, bridging cultural through the dia and contributed to divides between indigenous and non- undermining women’s traditional roles indigenous perspectives that were often and power in their communities. amorphous and constantly changing. Carter, Erickson, Roome, and Char Cora J. Voyageur’s interviews with have selected essays that reveal how the Senator Thelma Chalifoux and former processes of gendering and racialization chief of the Fort MacKay First Nation, intertwine with embodied knowledge Dorothy MacDonald, in both the first and systemic power relations. The and final sections of the book, are resulting collection seeks to address further evidence of the diversity of the erasure of women in the past and, indigenous women’s experiences and as Elaine Leslau Silverman states in her Book Reviews 111 conclusion, draw attention to them in The Last Great West is an encyclopaedic the present, where women’s experiences narrative of the Peace River Country continue to be undervalued (370). With prior to 1914. While the first half of its postcolonial and intersectional the book concentrates on the region’s feminist analyses of the past and its development in relation to surveys, underlying commitment to social railways, boosters, and settlement justice in the present, Unsettled Pasts is schemes, the book’s second half details a meaningful contribution to the field the profile of development in specific of women’s history in Canada. areas within the Peace from 1910 to 1914. One drawback of Leonard’s approach is that readers are reintroduced to the The Last Great West: same developments within a given chronological period with each new The Agricultural Settlement theme or region and, thus, may feel of the Peace River Country to 1914 that they are continually retracing steps David W. Leonard already taken. Still, Leonard’s emphasis on the Calgary: Detselig, 2005. 758 pp. play of national railroad and settlement Illus., maps, $65.95 paper. policies in the opening of the Peace reveals that rising expectations almost Jonathan Swainger invariably outstripped results. Indeed, University of Northern it is all but certain that, while the British Columbia development of the Peace was a perennial subtheme in Canadian avid Leonard’s latest work domestic politics for much of the Don the Peace River country two decades before the First World of northern British Columbia and War, the region never truly occupied Alberta is distinguished from its centre stage. Further, while the federal predecessors by an emphasis on the government and promoters were often region’s agricultural history. Drawn enthusiastic, the heavy lifting of in part from documents profiling who developing the region was shouldered homesteaded, their origins, and their by those who homesteaded and achievements or failures, The Last Great started communities in the absence of West contrasts developers’, promoters’, consistent governmental expectations and settlers’ idealism with the record or policies. of what occurred in the struggle to From a BC perspective, Leonard’s ff transform dreams into working farms work o ers a number of intriguing and communities. Centred on the era points. Not least, The Last Great West before rail connections were forged is a reminder of British Columbia’s between the Peace and the great geographic and demographic connection interior plain, Leonard argues that, to the Canadian Prairies. Further, with on balance, the Peace homesteads had the exception of homesteading records a statistically greater chance of success housed in the provincial archives in than did homesteads elsewhere on the Victoria, almost all of Leonard’s work Prairies. is based on Albertan sources and Divided into sixteen chapters centred perspectives. And, while Leonard has on chronologic and geographic themes, overlooked BC sources on the Peace, it is rather striking that the region can 112 bc studies be understood, in a compelling way, West is a treasure trove for those drawn entirely from Albertan documents. to Peace River Country history and Indeed, Edmonton newspapers and the region’s place in the settlement those in the Alberta Peace offered history of the Canadian Prairies. The a constant stream of reporting and table has been set for future scholars commentary on the BC Peace for who are willing to explore these riches almost two decades before a newspaper in pursuit of a broader understanding appeared in northeastern British of what the particulars of this region’s Columbia. Although the case is apt to history says about the opening of be overstated, Leonard’s work supports western Canada prior to the First the notion that the Prairies were more World War. interested in the BC Peace than was British Columbia. At its best, Leonard’s book is an Royal City: extraordinary documentation of the primary sources existing on Peace A Photographic History River Country history. Indeed, it can of New Westminster, 1858-1960 be argued that Leonard probably knows Jim Wolf more about the primary records of the Peace than does any other living Surrey: Heritage House, 2005. scholar. Yet it is this obvious depth 191 pp. Illus. $39.95 cloth. of knowledge that raises one of the most frustrating aspects of The Last Patricia E. Roy Great West. In describing the history University of Victoria of agricultural settlement in the Peace, Leonard has not offered readers a oday, many residents of the broadly conceived argument about TLower Mainland know New what all of this means. For if it is true Westminster only as the site of traffic that Peace Country homesteaders had jams as they wait to get on to the a greater chance of success than those Pattullo, the Queensborough, and who took up the challenge elsewhere Alex Fraser bridges; Highway 401; or on the Prairies, what might this the Lougheed Highway. If they pass suggest about the region’s subsequent through on the SkyTrain, they see history and development? And, for BC densely packed townhouses and high- historians, that the Fort St. John region rise apartments covering much of the saw the greatest number of abandoned waterfront where once stood docks and homesteads in the entire Peace River warehouses. Yet, as Jim Wolf’s splendid Country certainly raises questions illustrated history demonstrates, New about how such a “fact” could have Westminster has a proud history, and informed that region’s sense of itself. transportation played an important role Essentially, Leonard too often relies in it. Settled by Sto’lo people who early on the expectation that this impressive on abandoned the site, it was briefly the cross-section of evidence speaks for capital of colonial British Columbia itself. Unfortunately, this is simply not and, until the arrival of the Canadian the case. Pacific Railway in Vancouver, the Accessibly written and well leading city of the mainland. It long stocked with photographs, maps, and remained the commercial centre for settlement-era images, The Last Great the Fraser Valley, with busy retail Book Reviews 113 stores and financial institutions lining destruction of most of the commercial the “Golden Mile” of its main street, area and some major residences as an Columbia. The economy was based on attractive subject. There are also some fishing, manufacturing (especially of nice shots of the fire that destroyed forest products), and transferring goods the Queen’s Park exhibition buildings from rail to ocean-going ships and in 1929 and of the 1948 Fraser River vice versa. Government institutions, flood. the British Columbia Penitentiary, Wolf mourns the conscious demo- and the Provincial Hospital for the lition of several handsome homes, Insane (later, Woodlands School) also such as those that formed Columbian provided employment. College. After the college closed, Among its residents were a number the city took it over for taxes and, of professional and gifted amateur in 1939, demolished it lest indigents photographers. Jim Wolf has delved take possession and, by establishing into this treasure trove of images and residence, qualify for municipal relief. includes biographical vignettes of Even major structures of the 1950s – St. nine of their creators. A few – Charles Mary’s Hospital and the Woodward’s Stride, Paul Okamura, and the talented store – have fallen to the wrecker’s ball. Norman Lidster and Horace G. Cox Yet others survive, the best example – spent their entire careers in the city; being the Irving House (1865), now Charles Bloomfield, John Vanderpant, the home of the New Westminster and Stephen Joseph Thompson moved Museum and Archives, repository of to Vancouver; and David Judkins, an many of the photographs shown here. American who literally floated in from The text goes some way towards Seattle, and Francis George Claudet, filling a void in BC historiography – a a British colonial official, were birds history of New Westminster. Although of passage. Their work and that of a a few theses, articles, and short books number of other photographers, some have been written on aspects of this of them unknown, justify the book’s city, this is the first serious attempt subtitle. at an overview. Wolf offers only The photographs are the raison glimpses of the city’s diverse social d’être of Royal City and may explain composition; the great strengths of his the bias of its focus. Thus, Wolf well-informed text are his sketch of gives considerable attention to civic New Westminster’s economic history festivities, including the annual May and his explanation of why Columbia Day, which has been running since Street, a frequently represented image, 1870; the Royal Visit of 1939; the was once a “golden mile” and why celebrations marking the end of the it declined. That the handsome art First World War in 1918 and V-E moderne Mc & Mc Hardware Store Day (but, curiously, not V-J Day); built in 1939 is now a Salvation Army and the construction and opening of thrift store is symbolic of the city’s such structures as the Fraser River changed status. Railway/Road Bridge (1904) and the Jim Wolf has made a wonderful start Pattullo Bridge (1937). Disasters are in telling New Westminster’s story; overrepresented. The Great Fire of let us hope that it will inspire him or 10-11 September 1898 and the start of another historian to make a definitive rebuilding occupy twenty-two pages study of the oldest city in British as several photographers saw the Columbia (incorporated 1860), whose 114 bc studies very full history is, in many ways, a symbolizes these cultures in their time microcosm of British Columbia and its and place, as opposed to being mere ever-changing economy and society. "crafts." This fact, combined with the beauty of the art itself in its many forms, pushes Canadian Aboriginal Canadian Aboriginal Art and art into the realm of artistic greatness, where it is able to stand on its own Spirituality: A Vital Link among the world's great art (ii). The John W. Friesen numerous and helpful drawings and and Virginia Lyons Friesen, photographs, combined with the de- Artwork by David J. Friesen tailed and passionate explanations, reinforce these points. Calgary: Detselig, 2006. 242 pp. Chapters 4 through 10 are the heart Illus. $49.95 paper. of the book, and they draw from historic and cultural sources to tell William G. Lindsay the stories of Canada's Aboriginal University Of British Columbia peoples. This is done by combining historical, cultural, spiritual, artistic, anadian Aboriginal Art and contemporary perspectives of C And Spirituality: A Vital Link Canada's different geographic-cultural acknowledges right from the start groups, and by presenting chapter- that Aboriginal art forms in Canada long summations for each. Aboriginal have historically been misinterpreted groups examined include the Maritime, as mere “craft” and that the all-im- Eastern Woodland, Plains, Plateau, portant spiritual foundations of such Northwest Coast, Northern, and, art have been consistently “discounted interestingly, Métis cultures. Each or ignored” (i). This text does its chapter provides brief descriptions part to reverse this trend, being part of local geography (important to the of the modern effort to dispel the influence of local art forms), pre- and above misconceptions and to force postcontact history, aspects of local commentators to realize that Aboriginal culture, local spiritual concepts and art deserves a place in the pantheon beliefs, and local art forms. At the of great art forms in the world. The end of each chapter is an annotated Friesens contribute to this effort with list of modern Aboriginal artists who their text, and their accompanying have been making a difference with biographies make clear that they regard to Aboriginal art in their local have worked with, written about, areas. This last section gives modern and respected Aboriginal peoples for relevance and context to the overall many years (235-36). The respectful discussion, showing that Aboriginal and informative tone of the text and art forms are not mere relics of the the liberal use of Aboriginal references past but, rather, that they live on and strengthen these assertions. flourish. Hence, although brief in their From a contemporary perspective, the respective descriptions, these chapters Friesens examine Canadian Aboriginal provide sketches of Aboriginal artistic, art within the context of spirituality, spiritual, historical, and cultural life history, and culture. To the Friesens, that will enlighten novice readers. Aboriginal art is directly intertwined More informed readers will enjoy with indigenous cultures and thus the discussion of art and spirituality Book Reviews 115 presented within a "big picture" story other recent academic texts that deal of Aboriginal history and culture. with Aboriginal peoples in Canada, BC Aboriginal groups are treated including the recent An Introduction to generously. Chapter 7 deals with the Native North America (2nd ed., 2004) Aboriginal groups and art forms of by Mark Q. Sutton. The Friesens' text the Plateau region. Chapter 8 deals builds on this story by focusing on exclusively with the Northwest Coast the artistic/spiritual components of and Aboriginal art, spirituality, history, Canadian Aboriginal cultures, and it and culture. Some art forms discussed does so in an engaging and informative here include the potlatch celebration, way. painting, totem pole construction, bone and horn tools, wooden masks and boxes, blankets, canoes, longhouse Winging Home: A Palette of Birds art, basketry, and crests. Readers will enjoy the descriptions and histories of Harold Rhenisch, this great and diverse art. The Friesens Illustrated by Tom Godin point out that so many different re- Edmonton: Brindle and Glass, gional artistic styles abounded in the 2006 256 $24 95 Northwest Coast region that certain art . pp. . paper. fi forms can be directly traced to speci c Travis V. Mason villages (141). This text thus dispels any stereotypical notion of Aboriginal University of British Columbia artistic "sameness" and exposes the great diversity of Aboriginal art. t the risk of categorizing an There are a few drawbacks to this Auncategorizable book, I feel com- book. The inclusion of maps that pelled to acknowledge a trend among clearly outline areas under discussion “nature poets” in Canada that sees many of them exploring in non- would have been helpful. As well, fi the accompanying drawings and illus- ction prose what they typically trations are done by the authors' son, reserve for poetry. Neither exclusively a talented artist to be sure but not an Canadian nor particularly recent, this Aboriginal (1). It would have been trend – a few poets shy of a tradition appropriate to have exhibited the – has nevertheless become increasingly work of Aboriginal artists in such an conspicuous during the past decade. Aboriginal-oriented text. Given the prominence of birds in Overall, this book is an entertaining Harold Rhenisch’s Winging Home: A and holistic depiction of Canadian Palette of Birds, I can be forgiven, I Aboriginal art discussed in spiritual, hope, for thinking about Don McKay, cultural, historical, and contemporary Canada’s best-known birder-poet, who has also begun examining the natural contexts. Aboriginal art has never fi been a mere "arts-and-crafts" sideshow world in non- ction prose. in the story of Canada's Aboriginal With this trend in mind, and re- peoples; rather, Aboriginal art forms calling McKay’s claim in Vis-à-Vis: Field Notes on Poetry and Wilderness were and continue to be an important 2001 pillar, "a vital link" in Aboriginal ( ) that nature writing “should life in general, as this interesting not be taken to be avoiding anthro- pocentrism, but to be enacting it "big picture" examination highlights. 29 It thus compares favourably with thoughtfully” ( ), I was nonetheless 116 bc studies put off initially by Rhenisch’s unabashed with few if any historical, literary, anthropomorphic tendencies (which philosophical, or aesthetic traditions, are visually echoed in Tom Grodin’s other than the stories we tell each other accompanying illustrations, or what over coffee. To avoid repeating the he calls extrusions). Though he admits colonial trap of importing the tools and early on that careless anthropocentrism metaphors of a foreign life and never has been used to colonize continents moving into this corner of the earth, and “can be addictive” (108), Rhenisch, I have worked towards the organic an accomplished poet, novelist, essayist, development of these traditions, out and editor, has no compunction about of the strong oral culture which showing off his linguistic dexterity. pervades this place” (haroldrhenisch. With a seeming overabundance of com/philosophy.html). In Winging metaphors, similes, and analogies, Home, Rhenisch attends less to a he combines literary prose with pop- human oral culture and more to cultural references and reflections on the evolutionary, ecological stories his home in British Columbia’s Interior, cultivated by successive generations of to often humorous and occasionally flora and fauna. poignant effect. If the style of Winging Home is at At approximately the midway mark, times restrained – short sentences though, something struck me about punctuate the fleeting nature of the craftily systematic way Rhenisch Rhenisch’s observations (often from overuses rote linguistic strategies, behind the kitchen window or while especially when considering the keen performing a necessary yet menial bit of observations he continually makes upkeep on the property) – it is in order regarding the behaviour of such birds to highlight the often florid, luscious, as robins, loons, and bald eagles. In and over-ripe passages elsewhere in the this book at least, Rhenisch’s thought- book. Such overabundance, coupled fulness about his anthropocentrism with Rhenisch’s rapid-fire allusions manifests less obviously than does the to myriad pop-cultural phenomena, anthropocentrism in recent works by makes his anthropomorphic gestures McKay and Tim Lilburn, for example. uncomfortably apparent. The result Winging Home offers an extension is an ironically subtle commentary of Rhenisch’s poetic and essayistic on humans’ relation to the physical attempts to write the Cariboo Plateau. world. How else to explain Rhenisch’s Like Tim Lilburn’s philosophical depiction of robins as “break-dancing, and poetical ruminations on Prairie bee-hopping, [and] hip-hopping in landscapes and questions of belonging imitation of the sound of pattering in Living in the World as If It Were rain” in an effort – proven successful Home (1999), but with less deference on evolutionary grounds – to lure to a Western monastic tradition, earthworms to the surface (23)? How Winging Home represents a continuing else to explain his comparison of attempt to feel at home in relatively new crows to German subalterns “milling surroundings. around in the background” of military On his website, Rhenisch shares photographs, five-star restaurant maître some notes on thinking and writing d’s, and the Nez Percé “yelling and from his particular historical and whooping it up” in a John Wayne movie geographical perspective: “The Interior (89) – all in the same paragraph? of British Columbia is a country Book Reviews 117

When, nearly three-quarters into woodpecker from destroying the the book, Rhenisch makes his most wooden frames around his windows overt appeal to readers’ environmental (217-24) or purple martins from sensibilities by admitting that, because perennially nesting in his attic (156- of urban development, “the Okanagan 59) by baiting them with poison and is not a haven for birds” (189), the shift thus enacting a tradition – far too in tone from hyperactive pop-cultural many instances beyond a trend, sadly ramblings to humble contemplation – of human colonization of the natural demands attention. Similarly, once world. But that would be too easy. That the din of allusions dissipates, one would merely complete the sentence can observe with fresh perspective anthropocentric language begins. The the potential poetry in the non- preposition in the book’s title, after all, human world Rhenisch observes. He allows the palette to belong both to the could easily have prevented a pileated author and to the birds.