BOOK REVIEWS

Voyage to the Northwest Coast of and Vancouver were, respectively, America, 1792: Juan Francisco Spanish and British commissioners sent to implement the particulars of de la Bodega y Quadra and the the Nootka Sound Convention. It Nootka Sound Controversy is no surprise that agreement could Juan Francisco de la Bodega not be met for Bodega y Quadra’s y Quadra. Edited by Robin vaunted demands were unacceptable and Vancouver held tenaciously to his Inglis and Iris H.W. Engstrand, own authorized position. It is thus foreword by Michael rather fascinating to read Bodega y Maquinna, translated by Quadra’s narrative alongside that of Freeman M. Tovell Vancouver’s, the latter printed in W. Kaye Lamb’s Voyage of George Vancouver, Norman: University of Oklahoma published in definitive edition by the Press, 2012. 192 pp. Illus. $34.95 cloth. Hakluyt Society. Barry Gough From our own distant viewpoint, the social gathering of mariners from Victoria rival empires meeting at what must have seemed like the ends of the earth, he heart of this work, and its on the margin of a great continent of Traison d’être, is the report of Juan as yet unknown value and one still Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, dated shrouded in geographical mystery, 2 February 1793 at San Blas, Mexico. seems but an enchantment in our time This document is not a diary or journal; and space. Maquinna and the First it was concluded six months after the Nations, observers and participants proceedings recounted and described. in the larger drama, and hosts to the The report was intended for the viceroy visitors in Maquinna’s Big House for of New Spain and for the king of Spain, hereditary dances, speeches of honour, and it is a useful summary from the and a sumptuous feast of the finest position of the Spanish commandant’s foods of ancestral lands and seas, meeting with Captain George could hardly have known that, over the Vancouver at Nootka in late August dinner parties aboard ship in which the the previous year. Bodega y Quadra Spanish supplied the “eatables” and the bc studies, no. 76, Winter 12/13 155 156 bc studies

British the “drinkables,” the destiny of Strait and waters north. There are Vancouver Island was being worked out. few revelations here. But the arrivals The outcome depended on a successful and departures assure us of how busy exchange of letters that might reach an Nootka was in those days for it was agreed conclusion. That proved to be the centre of North Pacific shipping, mission impossible. with tentacles to Alaska, the Hawaiian Bodega y Quadra’s charm exudes Islands, China, and Mexico, to say from this work, and in his opening nothing of European and American sentence he pats himself on the back by ports. The report notes the arrival saying that the king of Spain “thought of Vancouver’s ships, also that of the fit to support this part of America with goletas of Alcalá Galiano and Valdés appropriate honor,” and after consulting and their early departure south. the ranking authority, named Bodega y Evocative and carefully chosen Quadra commandant at Spain’s Pacific illustrations accompany this work, base at San Blas in 1789. When he principally View of the Bay of Friendly reached Vera Cruz, news had arrived Cove from the Spanish Establishment, that Martínez had seized British- courtesy of Archivo y Biblioteca, owned ships and property at Nootka. Ministerio de Asuntos Esteriores y de Bodega y Quadra hastened to San Blas, Cooperación. It shows six sailing vessels readied its warships, examined Russian anchored, with room for more, and a establishments in the far north, and few days later ten vessels were there, the sent means of strengthening Spanish greatest number ever collected together interests at Nootka and in the Strait in this sound. The artist of the cover of Juan de Fuca. It is clear that the illustration on the book is strangely Spanish had been caught flat-footed not signified in this work. Good maps for, having feared the Russians in the and a serviceable index aid the working north, they now found the British scholar and serious student of history. and the Americans trading on the The introduction for this work forms Northwest Coast from the Columbia the first part of the book and dwarfs River north to the Gulf of Alaska. the report itself. Instead of briefly Overcome by events, the Spanish introducing the main characters of this court sent instructions to Bodega y compelling story, with all its dramatic Quadra to proceed to Mexico City for sequence, and then dealing with the consultations and orders. He was told essential differences of the positions of to embark on a frigate for Nootka to Bodega y Quadra and Vancouver, we are meet the British there. Not thinking a treated with a reiterative narrative. That frigate enough, Bodega y Quadra added subject was examined elsewhere to great another frigate, a schooner, and two satisfaction by Warren Cook in Flood goletas, or small schooners. Bodega y Tide of Empire and in Freeman Tovell’s Quadra wanted a show of strength and Far Reaches of Empire, his biography of he arranged it to his satisfaction. In the Bodega y Quadra. A critical edition of afternoon of 29 April 1792 he anchored a document should necessarily provide in Nootka. The report recounts the footnotes to take up and discuss the arrival and departure of vessels, most issues brought forth in the document importantly H.M. storeship Daedalus, as and when they arise. with supplies for Captain Vancouver’s This handsome book takes its ships then making their survey of the rightful place as a classic in Northwest Strait of Juan de Fuca and Georgia Coast history. It is a great credit to Book Reviews 157 a devout team of translators, editors, reference to researchers working on and advisors who have made it into both sides of the border. a first-class book. As Chief Michael In general, the book is a report on Maquinna of Mowachaht First Nation, the analysis of materials collected Tsaxana, British Columbia, rightly during archaeological field school says in the foreword, this work helps investigations carried out in one area to rekindle interest in this period of (Operation D) of the English Camp history: “This publication of the journal site (45SJ24). Initial excavations of 1950, of Bodega y Quadra, an honored guest led by Adan Treganza of San Francisco of my ancestor in 1792, adds significantly State University, were followed by to our shared heritage.” those in 1988, 1990, and 1991 by the University of Washington. The purpose of both series of excavations was to Is It a House? Archaeological test a horseshoe-shaped depression suspected of being the remains of a Excavations at English Camp, Coast Salish house. However, upon San Juan Island, Washington excavation, deposits were found to lack Amanda K. Taylor and Julie house floors, post holes, and hearth features, which are commonly found Stein, editors in other house excavations in the area Seattle: University of Washington (e.g., Grier 2006). Despite the lack of Press, 2011. 182 pp. $30.00 paper. these features, the editors of this book asked all the contributors to consider Duncan Mclaren the spatial distribution of the materials University of Victoria being analyzed for evidence that could be used to determine whether this depression was indeed a house. ynthesizing archaeological Following an extremely brief Sresearch results from the Salish introduction to the volume and a Sea can be a time-consuming task review of household archaeology in the because of the international boundary region (Taylor and Stein), in Chapter 2 that currently divides the region. Faith presents a summary of research This is further complicated by the methods and results from the 1950 rise of cultural resource management field school. Chapter 3 (Parr, Phillips, archaeology on both side of the border, and Stein) provides a description of where few research results are published the research methods used in the and data repositories include state, later field schools. The difference in provincial, and federal agencies, all field methods between these two eras of which have different restrictions is striking. In 1950, no screens were to access. While it is possible for employed, excavation was primarily archaeologists to gain access to most by shovel, and no backfilling was of these documents, the hurdles undertaken. In contrast to this, field involved dissuade most of us from schools conducted in 1988 and 1990 used attempting to do so. For this reason, extremely fine-grained and detailed the publication of Is It a House? provides excavation methods. In 1991, these an easily accessible contribution to the rigorous standards were relaxed so as archaeological record of the region that to complete the excavation units that will undoubtedly be a point of common had been opened. 158 bc studies

Site mapping and the stratigraphy are more interpretive material than do presented in Chapter 4 (Stein, Taylor, the other chapters in this volume, and and Daniels). Overall, the stratigraphic her discussion of the sexual division of profile drawings are extremely detailed labour, and the reflection of this in the (every shell in the midden is depicted), lithic assemblage, provides much food but, for the most part, they seem to for thought. The last chapters in the lack clearly differentiated stratigraphic volume are for the most part descriptive divisions, scales, keys, and locations of lists of the objects found during radiocarbon samples. Photographs are excavations, with some consideration included but are black and white and of their spatial distributions. of such a poor quality that little can It is disappointing that the research be gained from them. Stratigraphic question that binds all chapters divisions, referred to in the volume as together, and is the title of this book, facies, are presented in Harris diagrams. is not answered in a satisfactory manner. Overall, however, the presentation Upon the completion of each chapter of these results in this manner is the authors seem uncertain whether unsatisfactory in a published document. the spatial distribution of materials The remaining chapters in the reflects that of a Coast Salish (or any) volume report on the analysis of structure. The concluding chapter materials collected during University (Taylor) provides no further guidance as of Washington excavations: sediments to whether this initial research question (Stein, Green, Sherwood); chipped has been answered. Overall, a great stone artefacts (Close); ground stone deal of time and effort has gone into artefacts (Chao); bone and antler this question, yet the answers given tools (West); mammal bones (Boone); are ambiguous. The publication of this bird bones (Bovy); shell (Daniels); volume will undoubtedly serve as a and fish bone (Kopperl). As with her cautionary tale to other archaeologists other work in the Gulf Islands (Stein desiring to conduct household 1992; Stein et al. 2003), Stein’s geo- archaeology on the Northwest Coast: archaeological approach to studying choose the location of your project shell middens is thorough and detailed carefully and be certain it is a house and employs methods rarely used before investing enormous amounts in Northwest Coast archaeology, of time and labour in excavation and including grain size analysis, analysis. measurements of pH, percentage of organic matter and carbonates, and the use of micromorphology. Close’s Works Cited approach to the analysis of chipped Bordes, François. 1961. Typologie du stone tools from the site is unique in paléolithique ancien and moyen. Northwest Coast archaeology, not so Bordeaux: Mémoire de l’Institut much because it examines the chaîne Préhistorique de l’Université de opértoire of lithics from English Camp Bordeaux I. Delmas. as because it draws upon Bordes’s Grier, Colin. 2006. “ Pol it ic a l (1961) Old World lithic typology and is Dimensions of Monumental written up in seeming disregard for the Residences on the Northwest Coast local cultural historical sequence and of North America.” In Palaces and typology devised by Donald Mitchell Power in the Americas: From Peru to (1971). Close’s chapter provides far Book Reviews 159

the Northwest Coast, ed. Jessica Joyce information has made it into the Christie and Patricia Joan Sarro, popular press. This volume is a start 141-65. Austin: University of Texas towards correcting this imbalance. Press. The book consists of seven chapters Mitchell, Donald. 1971. “Archaeology of written by academics working on- the Gulf of Georgia Area, a Natural site and/or serving the US National Region.” Syesis 4 (supp. 1): 1-228. Park Service in the Pacific Northwest. Stein, Julie K., ed. 1992. Deciphering a It begins with the historical background Shell Midden. San Diego: Academic and the founding, over the winter Press. of 1824-25, of Fort Vancouver by the Stein, Julie, Jennie N. Deo, and Laura Hudson’s Bay Company (hbc); it S. Phillips. 2003. “Big Sites – Short charts the post-1848 decline and the Time: Accumulation Rates in hbc fort’s transformation into the Archaeological Sites.” Journal of US military base Fort Vancouver, Archaeological Science 30: 297-316. which, in 1879, was renamed Barracks Vancouver; and it continues with the site’s reinvention as the base of the First World War Spruce Production Exploring Fort Vancouver Division, its emergence as a regional Douglas C. Wilson and Theresa centre of the Civilian Conservation E. Langford, editors Corps during the Depression, and its transformation into a training and Seattle: University of Washington administrative headquarters for the US Press, 2011. 128 pp. illustrations, Army during the Second World War. maps. $24.95 paper. The major theme of ethno-cultural identity is assisted by large and clearly Stanley A. Copp visible photographs of artefacts that Langara College illustrate discussions of the various historical identities of fort personnel his fine volume is truly a “must” and proximate populations. No less Tfor those with more than a passing than ten non-Aboriginal and thirty- interest in the origins of the multi- seven Aboriginal ethnic groups worked ethnic area of the Pacific Northwest in, or near, the fort during the fur Coast, from the Aboriginal inhabitants trade period (10). Of particular interest to the eighteenth- and nineteenth- is the identification and discussion century Russian, American, British- of gender and other stratifications French-Canadian, and even Spanish within the nineteenth-century colonial colonial powers and their impact on and multicultural society and their the formation of the far western coasts transformation by Victorian politico- of Canada and the United States. social-economic ideals. Academics and the general public Another interesting theme is interested in the fur trade history of this technological change in fur trade region can locate a plethora of books and military fort periods, from stone and articles, but finding publications tools to the lingering homemade that deal with its archaeological record medieval technologies of the hbc, is much more difficult. Archaeological to imported products of nineteenth- excavations have been conducted for century industrialism, to early mass- decades on fur trade posts, but little produced objects. Examples range from 160 bc studies hand-forged items produced by hbc Columbia – including several years blacksmiths, to nineteenth-century directing archaeology field schools at innovations like stamped metal nails, Fort Langley – this volume rekindled a to modern wire nails. Other artefacts desire to reread the historical treatises embedded with social meanings include I first encountered decades ago and glass beads, ceramics, and other items to find recent and sometimes obscure imported from Europe and Asia. works noted in the bibliography. Nineteenth- and early twentieth- Printed on high-quality paper with century globalization is a theme one numerous maps, illustrations, and might not expect in a populist volume. colour photographs, this volume is far The book considers, for example, a mid- more than just “eye candy,” and the text nineteenth-century teacup and saucer is an interesting amalgam of popular excavated at the hbc fort. Portraying and academic historical themes. As the the British East India Company and early nineteenth-century fur traders the Sino-British Opium Wars, the cup might have said in the then-common and saucer symbolize contemporary Chinook jargon: “This is one skookum syncretic acculturative movements book!” in which tea consumption was both a refreshment and a statement of political-economic and social status. Canada’s Entrepreneurs: From The ability of artefacts to elicit excitement and awe for specialists the Fur Trade to the 1929 Stock and laypersons alike is exemplified Market Crash: Portraits from in the book’s examination of health the Dictionary of Canadian practices and moral issues. An ethno- and historical-archaeological approach Biography provides a fascinating, but all too short, J. Andrew Ross and discussion of diet and disease from Andrew D. Smith, editors the fur trade era (when treatments for disease were startlingly primitive Toronto: University of Toronto to twenty-first-century eyes) to the Press, 2011. 580 pp. Illus. $39.95 establishment of base hospitals during paper. the second and first world wars. An Ted Binnema image of early nineteenth-century surgical instruments, including University of Northern British saws and drills for amputations and Columbia trephinations, accompanies a text that also considers the epidemics that nearly he editors of C a n a d a’ s exterminated Aboriginal populations TEntrepreneurs assembled this book on the Pacific coast. to appeal to a wide variety of Canadian The final chapters summarize and readers (including non-academics), to explain why, after more than six decades inspire instructors to incorporate more of archaeological investigations, Fort business history into their courses, and Vancouver’s history is significant for to showcase the Dictionary of Canadian an understanding of the past, present, Biography (dcb) (xxv). It is difficult to and future of the region. For someone predict whether these goals will be met, with more than a passing acquaintance but a review of Canada’s Entrepreneurs with fur trade archaeology in British is essentially a review of the dcb, for Book Reviews 161

Canada’s Entrepreneurs, aside from unless you consider the publication of a nine-page introduction, consists biographies of George Simpson that of sixty-one biographies previously supersede his dcb entry. The original published (but here published without dcb was made possible by a bequest the detailed references) in the fifteen of a Toronto entrepreneur, and other volumes of the dcb. In the preface to entrepreneurs have added their gifts the volume, the general editors of the over the years. Perhaps gifts from other dcb boast that the dcb is “generally Canadian entrepreneurs or government recognized as the most authoritative of departments will make possible its all national biographies” (x). Perhaps it updating. is more appropriate to quote someone Readers of this journal may be without a vested interest in saying so. interested to know that seven of the In his remarkable Champlain’s Dream biographies (those on Maquinna, John (2008), the Pulitzer Prize winner David McLoughlin, William Van Horne, Hackett Fischer stated: “By comparison Robert Dunsmuir, Fanny Bendixon, with the first British Dictionary of Francis Jones Barnard, and Chang Toy) National Biography, and the original have a primary or important connection Dictionary of American Biography, to British Columbia. Each of these the dcb/dbc is superior in coverage, biographies, and many others, are, of documentation, and quality of writing” course, also freely available online. (557). Fischer’s qualified praise gets at the current strengths and the weaknesses REFERENCES dcb of the and, thus, of Canada’s Fischer, David Hackett. Champlain’s Entrepreneurs. The biographies Dream (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf published in Canada’s Entrepreneurs, Canada, 2008). like the biographies in the dcb – including the freely available online version – have undergone nothing more than very minor revisions since they Kilts on the Coast: were originally published in the dcb The Scots Who Built BC (although the biographies in Canada’s Entrepreneurs are supplemented Jan Peterson by updated suggestions for further Victoria: Heritage House, 2012. reading). While many – even many 272 pp. $22.95 paper. of the older ones – are still the best available short biographies, others Jack Little have been superseded. Furthermore, Simon Fraser University because other national biographies are being updated, bold claims of the superiority of the dcb are growing espite the title, this is not a less convincing over time. Readers Dcomprehensive history of the might wonder whether this reality has Scots in British Columbia. The best influenced the choice of biographies. overview remains the BC chapter in The most prominent representative Ferenc Morton Szasz’s Scots in the of the Hudson’s Bay Company chosen North American West, 1790-1917 (2000), for inclusion is John McLoughlin, which the author, Jan Peterson, fails not George Simpson – an odd choice to cite. What we have, essentially, is a 162 bc studies series of biographical sketches of Scots their culture and give it relevance for who arrived on Vancouver Island as the next generation and those to come” Hudson’s Bay Company employees, (245), one is left to wonder if there some of them to work on the farms was a common sense of Scottishness established in the Victoria area but among these groups of settlers or most of them as coal miners in Fort whether this is simply a romanticizing Rupert and Nanaimo. Readers will product of later generations. Are find little new in the biographies of Highland games, Burns suppers, and elite figures such as James Douglas pipe bands sufficient proof that “the and Robert Dunsmuir, but Peterson Scottish tradition remains strong” does make use of the hbc archives as (247) in British Columbia, as Peterson well as the diaries and correspondence concludes, or are they essentially of lesser-known individuals such as reflections of a lingering sense of anti- the coal miner from Ayrshire, Andrew modernity in today’s homogenizing Muir (though we are not informed urban society? where his journal is located). We learn Finally, the subtitle suggests that about the specific community in which the west coast was essentially an each of these pioneers originated, the empty space, waiting for the arrival names of the vessels that carried them of the enterprising Scots to “build” a to the Pacific coast, who they and their society from the natural resources at offspring married, what jobs they did, hand. Despite the occasional reference what streets they lived on, how they to Aboriginal wives and Aboriginal died, and even who attended their labour (overshadowed by descriptions funerals as well as the names of their of Aboriginal atrocities), this is also more successful local descendants. The the impression created by phrases result is an impression of uninterrupted such as “Vancouver Island remained upward mobility (despite a propensity undisturbed for thousands of years for hard liquor), but there is no attempt until the Hudson’s Bay Company made to discuss broader social issues found its headquarters at Fort Victoria” (16). in studies such as John Belshaw’s In short, despite this book’s packaging, uncited Colonization and Community: it is essentially a local history aimed The Vancouver Island Coalfield and the largely at descendants of the Scots Making of the British Columbian Working pioneers of Victoria and Nanaimo. As Class (2002). such, it is not recommended for those In addition, the title implies that looking for a comprehensive, balanced, these Scots carried Gaelic traditions to or analytical study of the Scots in the west coast even though the majority British Columbia, nor is it written in of those examined were Lowlanders the engaging style one might expect from Ayrshire or Orcadians who did from popular history. However, it does not share the language, tartans, clans, provide interesting glimpses into the or bagpipes of the Highlands. Indeed, experiences of a number of pioneer apart from the cover illustration of immigrants who carved out new lives Charles Ross with his First Nations on Vancouver Island in the middle of wife and three of their children, there is the nineteenth century. not a kilt to be found in the book’s many family photographs. Despite the claim that the Scots’ “ability to assimilate new influences enabled them to maintain Book Reviews 163

Caring and Compassion: political, and economic conditions. A History of the Sisters of St. Joseph’s patient registers and the employment of Chinese men for kitchen St. Ann in Health Care in and grounds work, for example, adds British Columbia to our picture of the deeply entrenched Darlene Southwell racial segregation and tension that characterized late nineteenth-century Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, and early twentieth-century British 2011. 296 pp. $29.95 cloth. Columbia. Caring and Compassion is primarily a Lisa Pasolli popular (and celebratory) history of the University of Victoria Sisters of St. Ann, but in mining the Sisters’ archives Southwell brings out oday, Mount St. Mary Hospital, an important story about the history Tan extended care facility in of social welfare in British Columbia. Victoria, is one of the last visible In particular, we gain insight into the legacies of the Sisters of St. Ann’s private, religiously and community- contributions to health care in British based provision of caring services by Columbia. But for more than 150 women in the province’s early years. years, the Sisters were a vital presence As Southwell notes, the Sisters were in nursing and health care provision (and are) often an “invisible presence in in British Columbia. In Caring and health care” (61). In their home visits and Compassion, Darlene Southwell makes community-based work, the sisters were use of the Sisters’ rich archives to “forerunners to the modern public health recount in clear and engaging detail nurse and social worker” (55). But one of their role in St. Joseph’s Hospital and Southwell’s central themes is that the Nursing School in Victoria, Mount St. Sisters’ work should not automatically Mary Hospital, as well as in smaller be relegated to the sphere of feminine, hospitals in Campbell River, Smithers, charity-oriented – and thus somehow Oliver, and Nelson. Southwell’s study less professional – welfare provision. serves as a nice companion piece to They played an important role in the Edith E. Down’s A Century of Service: A modernization and standardization of History of the Sisters of St. Ann and Their health care services in British Columbia. Contribution to Education in British Several of the sisters, for example, Columbia (1999). were among the founding members of The history of the Sisters of St. Ann the BC Hospital Association in 1918; dates back to 1858, when four Sisters they regularly pursued postgraduate arrived in Victoria from Quebec. As education and accreditation; and St. their ranks grew over the next several Joseph’s was an important site for the decades, so too did the scope of their training of medical technologists and health care services. Southwell provides the adoption of modern techniques such thorough financial and administrative as blood transfusions in 1945 (the first histories of those services and peppers hospital in Canada to do so). Southwell her narrative with the life stories reminds us that, rather than occupying a of remarkable Sisters. The most place on the periphery, the Sisters’ story compelling parts of the study come when should be among the central threads of Southwell uses those stories as a lens the history of health care in Victoria and on British Columbia’s broader social, British Columbia. 164 bc studies

The Principal’s Office – And The second volume describes the Beyond. Vol. 1: Public School challenge of managing schools in the 1960s, a period of social upheaval. Leadership in British Columbia, In the 1970s, when the education system 1849-1960 was decentralized, the authority of Thomas Fleming the principal’s office was diminished. Fleming is critical of government Calgary: Detselig Enterprises, 2010. policies in the 1980s, particularly 448 pp. Illus. $33.95 paper. legislation that separated principals and vice-principals from teachers in collective bargaining agreements and The Principal’s Office – And allocated them to separate professional associations. He is scathing in his Beyond. Vol. 2: Public School assessment of the 1990s provincial Leadership in British Columbia, educational program known as Year 1961-2005 2000. He depicts the educational landscape today as a quagmire in which Thomas Fleming the provincial government and the Calgary: Detselig Enterprises, 2010. British Columbia Teachers’ Federation 360 pp. Illus. $33.95 paper. wrestle constantly for control of public education. He points to the teachers’ Patrick A. Dunae strike in 2005 as an example of a Vancouver Island University dysfunctional system. (This book was published before the 2011-12 teachers’ strike.) Fleming calls for a different his study considers the structure, built around single-school Tdevelopment of public education sites instead of school districts. in British Columbia mainly from “A new and deconstructed system built the perspective of school principals. around individual schools would move The author is a prominent scholar in school principals to a position front and the field of education history and a centre in public education,” he argues. provocative critic of education politics “In a system where elected or appointed in British Columbia. The first volume leadership has been absent for more describes an optimistic epoch that than three decades, and where district began with the Public School Act, 1872. administrators shuffle warily around The public education system flowered trustees and special interest groups, in the Edwardian years, flourished in the principal’s office as a platform for the 1920s, survived the Depression, leadership in the twenty-first century and emerged brighter than ever after cannot help but emerge as public the Second World War. Sharing the education’s best hope” (2:343). progressive visions of school inspectors This study is based on an extensive and senior bureaucrats in Victoria, range of sources, including interviews principals guided their schools through with retired principals. The ten chapters the baby boom of the 1950s. That in the two volumes are accompanied by decade, as Fleming describes it, was over fifteen hundred endnotes. But a golden age for public education endnote conventions are not consistent (1:383). The decades that followed were within chapters, and it is difficult to unsettling for school administrators. keep track of citations from one chapter Book Reviews 165 to another across the two volumes. administrators have experienced, while And, remarkably, this study does not offering some interesting ideas for have a bibliography; rather, it ends educational policies in the future. with a six-page appendix showing the names and dates of tenure of education ministers, deputy ministers, The Library Book: A History of and district superintendents. Most of that information is available in the Service to British Columbia Annual Reports of the Public Schools David Obee of British Columbia. A cumulative bibliography would be much more Vancouver: British Columbia useful to readers. On the other hand, Library Association, 2011. 264 pp. several statistical tables that have $50.00 paper. questionable value to the narrative could have been discarded, along with Tom Shorthouse irrelevant historical photographs. The University of British Columbia photograph on the cover of the book is also puzzling. It shows a group of ccepting the challenge to about sixty children standing in front Aproduce, within a fixed deadline, of a school. The archival image is not a comprehensive overview of the credited and the school is not identified, evolution of libraries in British but it looks like Beacon Hill School Columbia must have been daunting. in Victoria. Judging from the style of Works of this sort are most often the children’s clothes, the photograph destined to grow old, respected but may have been taken soon after this unread, in archival settings. But elementary school was opened in 1914. Dave Obee and a cross-section of It’s a nice picture but does not convey knowledgable people, working in the the focus or purpose of this study. field and beyond, have sidestepped that A photograph of William (“Bill”) fate, succeeding admirably in compiling Plenderleith (1:437) might be more a serious work of social history. appropriate for the cover. It shows a It is eminently informative, readable, nattily attired administrator sitting and yes, entertaining; a creditable at his desk with an open notebook production that celebrates libraries, and pen in hand, ready for action. librarians, and dedicated citizens who An exemplar of a twentieth-century combined to found and sustain what schoolman, Plenderleith served as a has become a major provincial public school principal, inspector, and assistant resource. Its publication coincides, superintendent before retiring from the appropriately, with the one-hundredth Department of Education in 1966. anniversary of the British Columbia He and his colleagues (including female Library Association. administrators) played a significant role The range of years explored in various in the development of British Columbia. levels of detail is broad, beginning with Thanks to Fleming’s engaging, well- descriptions of small book collections written study, their contributions that accompanied eighteenth-century will be more widely appreciated. No explorers and later, notably, those of the less valuable, The Principal’s Office Royal Engineers (1858), whose donated highlights some of the challenges that a volumes formed the basis of what is more recent generation of public school now credited with being the first formal 166 bc studies public library in the province: New personages as Alma Russell, Ethelbert Westminster (1865). Scholefield, Helen Gordon Stewart, Records indicate interesting Eliza Machin, Margaret Clay, and John restrictions and outcomes when book Ridington, to name a few. Among their stocks and financial resources were many accomplishments were the earliest limited. In Nanaimo, women were training course in librarianship (1913), allowed to borrow but children were the development of regional library not. In 1887 Victoria, a proposed systems, and the founding of the first referendum supporting a mostly free academic library – at the University library, in which young people could of British Columbia (1915). The era “spend a pleasant evening in other than also witnessed the establishment of the usual and seductive haunts” (23), a wide-ranging bookmobile system was initially defeated. In Vancouver, to serve outlying areas then lacking bookshelves were at one time closed library service. In years to come, the to the public and volumes had to be highly charged case involving one John retrieved by staff because, to quote an Marshall, who was fired from that early librarian, “bookworms had no mobile service at the height of the 1950s conscience” (26). “Red scare,” provides an instructive In those early years and into the parable on the continuing issue of new century, lending libraries were intellectual freedom. eventually established in all regions, The astonishing transformation of benefiting considerably by the passage, libraries during the past fifty years in 1891, of the Free Libraries Act. But forms the basis for the final one-third public institutions faced a host of of this volume. From manual card challenges: devastating fires, financial catalogues to digitized online formats, crises, world wars, epidemics, and, from stereotypically quiet enclaves especially, the Depression of the 1930s, to bustling civic commons, the many when public libraries afforded much- changes in all public, university, and valued warmth, congeniality, and college libraries and their extraordinary advice to unemployed men who, it is services are explored in detail. And reported, often left their socks “on the fascinating cast of characters, too the radiators to dry” (106) but whose many to list in a book review, who continued daily presence also reinforced proposed, collaborated, fought for, the value of reading in tough times. and shepherded this reinvention of the Many notable names in the role of libraries in our society, are duly pioneering years of British Columbia’s celebrated here as well. library world are memorialized in the A coffee-table-shaped volume, pages of this volume. Among them are this welcome history is profusely Andrew Carnegie, whose celebrated illustrated and indexed with excellent gifts to Canada of 125 public library timelines and appendices. It is highly buildings resulted in three permanent recommended. sites in the province. A fourth was offered but rejected in the City of Nelson on the grounds that many locals there disapproved of the donor’s “false and vicious economic principles” (49). We also learn of the vision, hard work, and resilience of such dedicated Book Reviews 167

Liberalism, Surveillance, and provincial governments created and Resistance: Indigenous interconnected governance structures intended to limit indigenous resistance Communities in Western to these changes. One of these Canada, 1877-1927 governance structures was the Indian Keith D. Smith Act, a powerful piece of legislation that has regulated most aspects of daily life Edmonton: Athabasca University in First Nations communities since its Press, 2009. 324 pp. $39.95 paper. inception. The Indian Act was enforced with the help of a far-reaching system Heather Devine of surveillance that employed Indian University of Calgary agents, police, clergy, non-Aboriginal citizens, and even First Nations people he negotiation and signing themselves to spy on their associates Tof the numbered treaties with and to report back to the authorities. First Nations groups in western Smith’s book examines the relative Canada, followed shortly thereafter effectiveness of government surveillance by the opening of the territory to through a comparative analysis of how Euro-Canadian settlement, served to these intelligence-gathering programs consolidate the country’s sovereignty were instituted in two adjacent, but very over the vast territories beyond the different, jurisdictions. He compares Great Lakes in the face of American government administration of the expansionism in the late nineteenth southern Alberta region, comprising century. The treaties also functioned the reserve communities of Treaty 7, as a means to provide unfettered to the southern interior area of British access to the land and natural Columbia, which later became the resources needed for the expansion of Department of Indian Affairs (dia) free market capitalism. Unrestricted administrative region known as the markets, facilitated by a limited form Kamloops-Okanagan Indian Agency. of government, became the means by Smith concludes that, due to the lack which ambitious, energetic individuals of a dia bureaucracy in the region, which might fully realize personal prosperity resulted in looser policy enforcement and enjoy the democratic freedoms of and community surveillance, the First speech, religion, and assembly with Nations of the BC interior had far more their fellow citizens. freedom of movement and cultural Or so the tenets of classical liberalism autonomy in their own traditional would have one believe. But as Keith D. territories than did the First Nations Smith points out in the introductory of southern Alberta. Because the First chapters of Liberalism, Surveillance, and Nations of the BC region lacked the Resistance, the benefits of liberal ideology protections negotiated through treaties were unevenly distributed among the and enforced via the Indian Act, masses. In particular, the colonization however, their traditional lands were and subjugation of indigenous peoples, constantly under threat by encroaching and the expropriation of their ancestral settlers. Conversely, the Treaty 7 lands, was what made liberal ideology, communities were confined to reserves, and market capitalism, feasible for the a regional dia bureaucracy was present, Euro-Canadian majority. In order to and policy enforcement and other sustain the new status quo, federal intrusions on aspects of daily life were 168 bc studies far more oppressive. On the other hand, is therefore twofold. First, she details they were able to fend off large-scale the development of these images, seizures of their territory. revealing that, while they may appear Overall, Smith concludes that to be relatively neutral and benign, “disciplinary surveillance” of Aboriginal they actually support a variety of racial, peoples, as employed by the federal gendered, and classed assumptions. The government, has persisted to the present very banality of these images hides their day, despite the evidence of sporadic critical role in shaping national identity. resistance by individuals and groups. Second, noting that many Canadians What makes this book even more have internalized these images, Francis timely is the fact that the Canadian examines the efforts of various artists government continues to monitor the to foster discussion about the public activities of Aboriginal people who secrets that lay at the heart of national resist incursions on their indigenous identity by critiquing and playing with rights and territories. Evidence of this these images. Each chapter follows this persistent surveillance is exemplified by two-part organization. recent newspaper advertisements placed The first three chapters on the by the Canadian Security Intelligence images of the beaver, the cpr, and Service in the spring of 2012, seeking to Banff are very strong. For instance, in hire speakers of Aboriginal languages the chapter on beavers, Francis traces for intelligence-gathering activities. how that image has been shaped by the fur trade, political cartoons, and slang usage. In each case, Francis reveals how Creative Subversions: the image of the beaver has served to legitimize a white, male, heterosexual, Whiteness, Indigeneity, and the and anglophone population as the National Imaginary “real” Canada. The chapters on the Margot Francis cpr and Banff are just as engaging and insightful. Francis’s analysis of the Vancouver: ubc Press, 2011. 252 pp. history of national parks in Canada $32.95 paper. and their meaning for national identity will ring particularly true to anyone Chris Herbert familiar with the substantial literature Grand Valley State University in the United States on its national parks system (a literature I wish she n Creative Subversions, Margot had engaged more substantively). IFrancis starts from the premise that Arguably, the heart of the book is some of the key images that inform Chapter 5, which deals with indigenous Canadian national identity, such as the responses to images of Indians. beaver, the Canadian Pacific Railway Throughout the first three chapters, (cpr), national parks, and Indians are images of Indians appear again and “public secrets” whose exploitative again. For example, Canadian settlers histories are known but not generally explicitly contrasted the supposed discussed. Unsurprisingly, Francis’s strong work ethic of the beaver (with analysis of these images reveals that whom they identified) against the Canadian identity was, and remains, an perceived improvidence and laziness assumed white, heterosexual, male, and of the Aboriginal population. Francis anglophone identity. Francis’s project therefore devotes an entire chapter Book Reviews 169 to exploring some historical and and the formation of culture and contemporary ways that Aboriginals identity in Canada between 1890 have challenged these images of and 1940. During this period, argues themselves, at the same time that they Donica Belisle, department stores, have sought to unsettle an uncritical especially Eaton’s, Simpsons, and the acceptance of multiculturalism that Hudson’s Bay Company (hbc), emerged often relegates indigenous peoples to as the dominant forces of Canada’s the sidelines, only to bring them to the retail scene. Through modern sales, centre when a demonstration of Canada’s advertising, and management tactics, diversity and tolerance is needed (think mail-order catalogues, bulk buying, of the quasi-Aboriginal mascots of the and cash-only policies, these stores 2010 Vancouver Olympics). positioned themselves not only at the Just under half of the book is devoted helm of the Canadian economy but to artistic responses to these images that also as leading players internationally, are, at times, compelling, shocking, becoming more profitable than many and hilarious but also fairly limited leading American and European giants. in impact. Performance art, videos, But to Canadians, department sculptures, and paintings reach a stores promised more than dry goods small audience, and, as is evident from and fancy frocks at competitive prices. Francis’s insightful analysis, fewer still In the early years of the country’s will grasp the critiques of national existence, they styled themselves imagery embedded in these works. But as heralds of modernity, builders if the art that Francis discusses falls of democracy, nationalism, and short of offering a meaningful path citizenship. Just “what kind of Canada to unsettling and overturning banal did department stores help to create?” national imagery, they do highlight the is the book’s underlying question contradictions and ironies embedded (240). The answer is well articulated, therein, opening the door for others to though it comes as no surprise: it advance their critiques and to begin to was a Canada of white, anglophone, unsettle the meanings of these images masculine and middle-class privilege, on a broader scale. in which women, minorities, and workers were alternatively victimized or instrumentalized in the construction Retail Nation: Department and promulgation of this vision. The book focuses on English-Canadian Stores and the Making of Modern stores, and, aside from occasional Canada references to Dupuis Frères or to Donica Belisle shoppers in St. Boniface, the particular dynamics of retail in French Canada Vancouver: ubc Press, 2011. 320 pp. receive little attention. Readers of this $32.95 paper. journal, in particular, will note Eaton’s belated arrival on the west coast, the Nicolas Kenny prevalence of local giants Woodward’s Simon Fraser University and Spencer’s in the BC market, as well as the significance of the1935 Vancouver etail Nation is a thought-provoking hbc store riot as part of a broader, but Rstudy of the intersection between largely unsuccessful, critique of mass a rapidly growing consumer economy retail during the period. 170 bc studies

Belisle draws fruitfully from a vast feminists, and labour groups, historiography on department stores, department stores ultimately saw their both Canadian and international. She heyday end as of the 1940s, with new adds to it by looking not at a specific forms of competition. Belisle astutely company or facet of the industry notes how the outpouring of nostalgia but, rather, by portraying the rise of provoked by the closing of Eaton’s and department stores more generally as the selling of the hbc to American a cultural phenomenon – one that interests at the turn of the twenty- was inspired by trends across the first century attests to the lasting West but that took a specific shape power of the close association between in Canada’s particular social, ethnic, mass retail and Canadian identity. and regional mix. Belisle’s rigorous In emphasizing the gender, race, analysis of the gendered, racialized, and and class hierarchies on which this imperialist language that permeated particular understanding of Canadian advertising material, labour relations, identity rests, and especially in shedding and interactions with customers allows light on the way business interests her to explore in detail the hierarchies continue to market an insidious and discriminations on which the “branded nationalism” in the country, stores self-consciously built and sold Retail Nation makes a timely and their vision of the nation. Of course, important contribution to Canadian these attitudes pervaded Canadian scholarship, one that is likely to attract life at the time, and historians have a broad readership. documented their prevalence among intellectuals and politicians, in places of work and education, and in theatres and The Good Hope Cannery: Life streetcars. Department stores fed into and reflected this broader discourse, and Death at a Salmon Cannery but there are parts of the book in which W.B. MacDonald Belisle gives the impression that it originated with the Eatons and the Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2011. Simpsons of the country, somewhat 215 pp. b/w photos. $26.95 paper. overstating this aspect of her argument. Kenneth Campbell The book’s undeniable strength lies above all in Belisle’s critique of the stores Victoria through an engaging recounting of the experience of shopping or working in ntil postwar tec h nolog y department stores. Citing customers’ Uallowed for the centralization of letters, memoirs, employee newsletters, salmon canning, the industry relied press accounts, and works of fiction, the on numerous canneries located close author takes us into the bustling aisles, to the fishing grounds. More than two exploring the feelings of anticipation hundred canneries were scattered along and disappointment that went along the BC coast, and apart from those in with consumerism as well as the urban centres, most were self-contained anger and frustration felt especially by seasonal communities in which several women, either as mistreated customers hundred people lived and worked or as commodified employees. for a few hectic months. Most of the Though widely criticized by canneries have vanished. One of the reformers, small business owners, few to survive is Good Hope Cannery Book Reviews 171 on Rivers Inlet. Unlike other survivors, making this a unique collection of however, such as North Pacific Cannery photographs gathered from diverse and on the Skeena River and Gulf of mostly private sources. Georgia Cannery at Steveston, Good Curiously, there are no maps. One Hope is not a museum. It lives on as a showing the locations of the canneries sports fishing lodge. in Rivers Inlet, all mentioned in the In The Good Hope Cannery, W.B. book, would have been helpful. Given MacDonald not only narrates the the importance of archival sources, it history of the cannery from its origins is surprising that a plan of the cannery in 1895 as one of Henry Bell-Irving’s village based on the 1924 Fire Insurance string of plants for the abc Packing maps was not included. There is no Company to its recreation as a fishing index, nor are the excerpted materials lodge by grandson Ian Bell-Irving specifically referenced, though a in 1970, but also takes us on his own bibliography and a list of sources give journey of discovery. He shares the some help for researchers. Overall, the experience of uncovering archival clues, book deserved more rigorous editorial ranging from the vital information he care as it contains several instances of has uncovered to the actual objects missing words from the text and factual that contain it. “The book itself is in errors (such as the location of Good superb condition,” he writes of an old Hope on the west, rather than the east, company letter book, “its spine straight side of Rivers Inlet). and strong and its pages intact” (43). The literature focusing on life in Fortunately, abc Packing is one of cannery villages is slim. K. Mack the best-documented of the fishing Campbell’s Cannery Village: Company companies, and MacDonald makes Town (2008), gives an overview, while good use of Bell-Irving’s notebooks the two museums have short histories held at the City of Vancouver Archives in print: Everlasting Memory for North as well as the extensive abc Packing Pacific (1995) and The Monster Cannery Company records at ubc Special for the Gulf of Georgia (2011). Michael Collections. In addition, there are Olson shares personal knowledge in numerous excerpts from published Porcher Island Cannery (2006). The Good sources, largely personal experiences Hope Cannery stands as a significant and memoirs, adding to the multiple addition. Written in a refreshing style viewpoints we get of Good Hope and and presenting a wealth of personal its Rivers Inlet context. memories and images, this is also the MacDonald also lets us tag along fullest treatment of a single cannery as he meets some of the thirty people village on coastal BC. he interviewed for the book, often describing the encounter as well as the stories they shared with him. The interviews are one of the strengths of the book, giving a variety of personal points of view. Complementing them are more than ninety images illustrating Good Hope and other establishments in Rivers Inlet. Only a handful come from institutions; the majority were contributed from family albums, 172 bc studies

Our Friend Joe: he, for example, attended Mass (as a The Joe Fortes Story good Catholic should), followed the tragedy of the Titanic with interest (as a Lisa Anne Smith and lifeguard ought), or had friends to help Barbara Rogers him move house (as a bartender might). In other words, mysteries remain. Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2012. Fortes was part of an early wave of 180 pp. $21.95 paper. immigrants who came to Vancouver John Douglas Belshaw before the railway, before the fire, before Vancouver incorporation. He is both typical and atypical of those around him in the city’s first days. Like his newcomer s one Daily Province journalist put neighbours, Fortes spoke with an accent it in 1916, “to write an article about A fashioned abroad. Global movement was English Bay without referring to Joe a ready possibility for this generation: Fortes, would be like Hamlet without the path to Granville took Fortes first the Prince” (118). For nearly forty years to Liverpool then around Cape Horn. the legendary lifeguard and erstwhile Like so many others, Fortes had to be swimming instructor was a fixture a jack-of-all-trades to get by. And he in the West End. His funeral was an had to get by in a colonial setting in enormous public event, and his legacy which power relations disadvantaged is recalled in a memorial at Alexandra non-whites. He had to fit in. Fortes’s Park, in the name of a Vancouver strategy, it seems, was to hide himself Public Library branch, and likewise in plain view, to be so obvious as to in that of a downtown restaurant. Few be part of the scenery. Few of his politicians of the era were similarly contemporaries, however, would find treated. This new biography sheds their image passed from hand to hand light on why Seraphim “Joe” Fortes is around the world on postcards. so deeply etched into the narrative of What was it that made Fortes early Vancouver. outstanding? Certainly he saved many What we know of Fortes is lives along the beach – the estimates circumscribed. He served drinks in a run from two dozen to more than a Gastown saloon (another job that put hundred – which is, of course, what him in the open) and lived in a tiny lifeguards do. And, despite Fortes’s tent/cottage on English Bay (which own efforts to address the problem afforded little privacy). His front yard of poor swimming skills among the was the beach, a public space. His size, general public, drowning was a much colour, and reputation made him stand greater risk in the Edwardian years out wherever he went. But his personal than it is now. His memorial states relationships, his relationship with his “little children loved him” because he family in the West Indies, his place demonstrated infinite patience, enjoyed and date of birth, his beliefs, even the teaching the basics of swimming, and pronunciation of his last name – was was something of a genuine hero of it For-tez or Fortz? – are uncertain. the sort we usually call “unsung,” all In Our Friend Joe phrases like “it is of which goes some way to answering safe to assume” recur throughout. We the question of why Fortes remains know a little about Fortes and it is interesting to us. safe to assume from those details that Book Reviews 173

And then there’s the issue of race. came his way, to be sure. Probably no Our Friend Joe does not attend to this other black Vancouverite has been head-on, and perhaps that is as it so weighted down with medals and should be. This is not a conventional honours and interviews, all of which “scholarly” text; remarkably, neither were richly deserved. And yet the Sherry Edmunds-Flett’s entry in the journalists who built Fortes’s reputation Dictionary of Canadian Biography nor – even those reporting on his final sports historian John Wong’s article fatal illness – consistently described “The Unbearable Lightness of Being him as the “coloured lifeguard” (135). Black” are cited. But it is a highly Nor, in some cases, could they resist sympathetic biography, and it is written transcribing his words into a drawl to be accessible to the widest audience. straight from the Old South; perhaps It will inform another generation’s a Trinidadian accent bounced off their understanding of the pre-Depression cloth ears, but it is more likely that, city and its people, and it does so with a in Vaudeville-era Vancouver, a black sensitive appreciation of not only Fortes’ man was meant to say things like “lil,” life but also his times. The authors “Ah’m alright,” and “the fus’ John show, too, how surprisingly tenuous Collins I ever mixed was fo’ George Fortes’s situation was throughout his Keefer … who said it was jus’ fine!” aquatic career, and they are able to This confusion carries over to Fortes’s make some sense of how Fortes became funeral, when Holy Rosary Cathedral’s worthy of his stature. organist (the delightfully named Adele But it cannot be denied, when his Heritage) gets things under way with contemporaries looked at Fortes, more Stephen “Camptown Races” Foster’s than any other thing they saw: a black blackface minstrel hymn, “Old Black man. Occupation, character, sexuality, Joe” (135). The same song rings out at creed, economic status – none of these the unveiling of the memorial fountain categories of perception could trump five years later (142). Not captured in skin colour in the age of “White Canada this book but worth noting are these Forever.” The authors speculate that the mealy words of inclusion offered by Anti-Asian movement that reached a the Province on the occasion of Fortes’s fevered pitch in the first decade of the death: “whitest heart in blackest skin.” century may have caused Fortes to feel He is, finally, “our friend, Joe,” the “some degree of concern on his own man with whom everyone appears to account. He had been subjected to the be on a first-name basis, an informality occasional derogatory remark” (84). that extends even to his headstone. Indeed, his whole life in Vancouver All very chummy until we remember was boxed in by derogatory, racially that he ought to be “Mr. Fortes.” framed practices. Fortes held a string It is impossible to escape the sense that of low-status jobs – for example, as Fortes was seen because he was black. “a porter and shoeblack … widely Would a white lifeguard have attracted considered to be among the lowliest, similar attention? Certainly none has. most menial of jobs” (30) – and even his Wayde Compton has written lauded career as a lifeguard was neither elsewhere on the ironic invisibility secure nor especially remunerative. of black Vancouverites. He observes: Fortes plunged into bureaucratic cracks “A scattering, an integration, partly where the police and the Parks Board forced, partly wanted, has made for no seemed happy to keep him. Recognition place, no site, no centres residential or 174 bc studies commercial, no set of streets vilified or it as non-normative. And when race is tourist-friendly, and no provincial or part of the story, they miss more. To federal riding that a politician would see answer that, Shah has undertaken the as black enough to ever rate the wooing formidable task of illustrating what of a community vote.” Was Fortes they have been leaving out, bringing somehow representative of this elusive to light a hidden history that has, demographic? Smith and Rogers claim nonetheless, unmistakably left its that Vancouver’s “coloured population” evidence. What he has to work with is showed up for the memorial unveiling the legal record – the instances in which and the Reverend U.S. Robinson – the law has dealt with a particular surely no Catholic? – spoke on their group of marginalized people. His behalf (143). Did Fortes’s selflessness subjects are South Asian migrants to purchase respectability for other black the United States and Canada whose Vancouverites or did his Catholic, stories emerge from civil and criminal West Indian identity separate him court cases in California, Washington, from black Protestants who hailed from and British Columbia. His period is Nova Scotia and the States? How, one the early twentieth century – the two wonders, did he see himself? The Sun or three decades that followed the first wrote approvingly of Fortes in 1925: “No arrival of South Asian migrants in these city, province or nation can afford to be jurisdictions. His period is defined by without its heroes.” In a city that has his sources, and this is justified because, made a cult of physical fitness, perhaps as Shah observes, the record dried up we can now see Fortes as he might have as the number of transient South Asian liked: as a man who was at home in his immigrants declined. body and who did great things with it. Shah explains that his research began in the University of Chicago Law Library with his discovery of a Stranger Intimacy: Contesting 1928 compendium of California sodomy cases. These involved Punjabi and Race, Sexuality, and the Law in Chinese defendants, and they led him to the North American West searches in California court records and Nayan Shah later British Columbia and, as his frame of reference grew, took him to murder Berkeley: University of California cases, divorce petitions, civil suits over Press, 2011. 347 pp. Maps and illus. property, citizenship cases, and business US$27.95 paper. partnership disputes. In these cases he has found material illustrating South Hugh Johnston Asians living on North America’s Simon Fraser University racial-sexual borderlands; and all this he has marshalled into a comprehensive ayan Shah observes that picture. The research he has undertaken Nhistorians get it wrong when they is formidable, in terms of number of privilege permanent populations over library and archival collections he transient, the nuclear family over other investigated, his energetic testing and domestic arrangements, and polarized sharing of his findings before going rather than various gender roles. He into print, and the specific instances complains – fairly – that historians omit he has uncovered. It appears that much vital human experience or treat he has identified nearly everything Book Reviews 175 that the legal record can yield – for Lillian Alling: example, more than one hundred cases The Journey Home of illicit sexual relations between South Asians and whites, Chinese, or Native Susan Smith-Josephy American males. Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2011. One might ask if this many cases has 272 pp. $24.95 paper. any statistical significance, in a record extending over two decades or more, PearlAnn Reichwein for a floating population numbering, University of Alberta at its peak, many thousands. But that is not the point. The stories that Shah tells of interracial marriages, n 1929, Lillian Alling reached the business partnerships, personal Icoast of Alaska on her way to Siberia. attractions, seductions, solicitations, Her three-year walk across North entrapments, betrayals, assaults, and America began in New York City souring disagreements are all richly and ended at Cape Wales, where her suggestive of the adverse social and footsteps disappeared after nearly ten legal environment that his subjects thousand kilometres. Did she ever had to negotiate. His descriptive get to Siberia? The diaries of formal writing about individual incidents is expeditions are noticeably absent from clear and straightforward, although his the story of an obscure working-class analytical sections can lapse into passive Polish immigrant who was likely constructions and loose generalizations. a domestic worker in Toronto and And the research, while amazingly New York. The book frames Alling’s extensive, is understandingly far from walk as a persistent journey home exhaustive. Shah has not caught up with rather than as a heroic epic. Her all of the secondary literature touching journey is not singularized but well on his ambitious project, nor has he situated amid reports of other walkers, fully plumbed the archival collections including women, who crossed through he has searched. That said, this is British Columbia to points north, an impressive book full of engaging often following Aboriginal trails or detail that lifts the veil on a realm of railways prior to road systems. Some experience we need to incorporate into solo travellers sought media notoriety, our general history. but Alling tried to avoid publicity on a migration far more private than public. Smith-Josephy rigorously excavates many local voices that commented on Alling and, simultaneously, the geographies along her route. Stories of Alling’s journey unfold other narratives about people and place. Her trip along the Telegraph Trail from Hazelton to Atlin garnered local attention and news coverage. Alling was observed most in regions with few people. In sparsely populated districts, Alling stood out on her quest to reach Siberia, and news travelled quickly up the telegraph 176 bc studies line despite a lack of roads. She left among the working class. Solo travellers few traces of herself. As a traveller, in northern environments were woven her story exists as an intertextual into wide social networks and cross- narrative told by others in newspapers, cultural interactions inflected by class, memoirs, recollections, and legends. gender, region, technology, and the It’s also documented in records of state – as stories of Lillian Alling her interactions with border officers, underscore. police, judges, and jails. Sidebars, maps, and references support the main text, along with excellent archival photo I Just Ran: Percy Williams, illustrations depicting the route. The author carefully probes and World’s Fastest Human tests the many accounts of Alling’s Samuel Hawley journey. Her research investigation through archival records, genealogy, Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2011. fieldwork, and other sources is explicit. 260 pp. $23.95 paper. Combined methodologies engage Russell Field readers in historical and speculative detective work that will appeal to University of Manitoba mystery solvers through popular history. Bizarre stories persisted about feature attraction at the 2012 Alling’s carrying a stuffed dog on A London Olympics was Jamaican her trip north. Fictitious first-person Usain Bolt’s attempt to repeat his feat accounts of meeting Alling were also of four years earlier in Beijing, when concocted by professional writers, as he won gold medals in both the men’s Smith-Josephy’s literary analysis posits. 100-metre and 200-metre sprints. Her careful deconstruction of tall tales, Canadians might be forgiven if they had legends, and myths is astute and well forgotten that, eighty years earlier, the researched. Los Angeles Olympic 100-metre sprints How did Alling’s story end? Smith- featured the final race of Vancouver’s Josephy hypothesizes that Alling Percy Williams, who, like Bolt, was reached eastern Siberia only to arrive trying to repeat Olympic sprint success. amid Soviet turmoil. Here the author Celebrated at the time as the “world’s takes account of indigenous travellers fastest human,” four years earlier from the Chukotka Peninsula who Williams had shocked the sporting frequented both sides of the Bering community by winning both the 100- Strait and acted as ferrymen, but she metre and 200-metre races at the 1928 stops short of indigenous oral history Amsterdam Games. Before his career sources, which future research might was cut short following a leg injury uncover. Based on Chukchi travel suffered in 1930 while winning the 100- patterns, stories of contemporaneous metre gold medal at the first ever British travellers, and unexpected information, Empire (now Commonwealth) Games, the author speculates that Alling reached Williams would retire from competitive her goal. Legends of Alling’s journey by racing as the 100-metre world record foot and the discursive production of holder (10.3 seconds). historic geographies along her route Williams’ unexpected rise to sports are reminders of global patterns of stardom and the status of national migration and intercontinental travel hero is the subject of I Just Ran, a new Book Reviews 177 biography by Kingston, Ontario-based Longboat, the early twentieth-century writer Samuel Hawley. Williams’s sport press constructed narratives of slight stature, his recovery from a public figures that often reinforced teenage bout with rheumatic fever, classed, gendered, and racialized and his sudden emergence as a world- stereotypes. The discourse surrounding class sprinter while still a Vancouver Percy Williams, the national hero high school student working with and amateur exemplar, reflected this Bob Granger, a part-time coach and process. school custodian, are the ingredients Hawley uses Williams’s competitive of the familiar underdog-makes-good career to shine a light on the life of narrative. However, if Williams was, the early twentieth-century amateur in the aftermath of his unexpected athlete, which, in contemporary victories in Amsterdam, “the flesh-and- accounts, was framed in altruistic light, blood representation of how the country with sport pursued by men (amateurism viewed itself and what it wanted to be” in its earliest incarnation was almost (4), his fame came with few monetary exclusively for men) just as interested rewards. And, as Hawley chronicles, in the values of healthy competition, Williams was as eager to leave behind fair play, and sportsmanship as in the strictures of nineteenth-century winning. Indeed, Vancouver reporter amateur sport for a career in business Robert Elston writes: “Percy Williams as he was to continue running in retains something of a classic international meets. amateurism in spite of all temptations” Throughout I Just Ran Williams (236). Williams, however, was not comes across as a reticent public immune to the financial temptations figure, weary at having his every that lurked beneath the surface of move chronicled and reluctant to amateur competition. According to reveal his private thoughts for public Hawley, even in the late 1920s, track consumption. Hawley consults the athletes were receiving under-the- runner’s diaries to make this private table payments from promoters eager figure public, but these often reinforce to enhance ticket sales at their meets the sense that Williams wanted his life by attracting high-profile competitors unexamined (and, in his exasperation, with “discreetly passed envelopes … the young sprinter also reveals moments typically containing just a few hundred of cultural insensitivity). To fully sketch dollars” (167). The rules of amateurism out the context of his character, Hawley and the harsh penalties for disregarding makes extensive use of contemporary them were administered from Toronto newspaper coverage. As a result, by the Amateur Athletic Union, and Williams-the-athlete-in-the-public eye east-west tension pervades Williams’s is very much the focus of this biography, running career. For Vancouver’s civic and considerably less attention is paid leaders and newspaper journalists, to his private life, post-sport career, Williams might have been a national and eventual suicide. Newspapers sport hero, but for their purposes he are also not entirely unproblematic represented the Terminal City. He was sources. As Bruce Kidd (Canadian British Columbia’s sprint champion Journal of History of Sport 14, 1 [1983]) “standing up to the arrogant East” (4). details in his examination of the press coverage of the Onondaga First Nations long distance runner, Tom 178 bc studies

V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s It would be a matter for some debate Downtown Eastside as to whether V6A is more sinned against than sinning, but it is without a John Mikhail Asfour and doubt more written about than written Elee Kraljii Gardiner, editors; from. This collection tries to right foreword by Gary Geddes the balance a bit. It brings together voices from the neighbourhood, Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, writers whose “humanity and craft” 2012. 150 pp. $19.95 paper. – not their public profile or press John Douglas Belshaw releases – recommend their work for inclusion. The common denominator Vancouver is the Carnegie Community Centre’s Thursdays Writing Collective, which was founded by editor Elee Kraljii 6A is a postal code prefix in Gardiner. This is where co-editor John VVancouver. It is, thus, an artificial Asfour encountered the circle and where geographical space defined by a the idea of an anthology took root. The bureaucracy housed far from V6A itself. thirty-three authors whose forty works It runs from Burrard Inlet south to False appear here include members of the Creek and Great Northern Way and collective, along with non-members; between Carrall Street and Clark Drive. about a third of the contributions are As it happens, V6A actually makes republished from other venues, from some sense. It neatly encloses the city’s which we may conclude that there are oldest neighbourhoods: Gastown, the accomplished authors in the group. dockyards below Alexander and Powell Given the number of actively productive streets, Chinatown, Strathcona, and writers in the dtes, the collection the commercial thoroughfares of Main, could easily run to several volumes. Hastings, and Cordova. It contains And this is another thing about the and has contained railyards, industry, V6A neighbourhood: is there any other gas works, shipyards, warehouses, community in Vancouver wherein one restaurants, big department stores, a finds so much creativity? Answer: No. street-level drug mart and high-end There is not a single offering in this shoe-tiques, million-dollar condos and book that will not touch the reader. In social housing projects, craft-breweries some cases (Cathleen With’s “Super and beer parlours, pretty tree-lined Phat Angel Baby” and Henry Doyle’s streets in a little village-like setting “Death Isn’t Lonely,” for example), and stunted freeway overpasses, ethnic the writing will touch the reader with enclaves, single room occupancy hotels, jumper-cables. Overall, this is not a schools, churches and temples, and most walk in the park (unless that park is of the city’s welfare industry. I could go Oppenheimer). The number of stories on. The point is that, of all Vancouver’s and accounts and poems that one postal codes, this one neighbourhood might categorize as positive, hopeful, deserves to be known principally as the or cheerful is tiny. There are haunted most socially, economically, culturally, nights, averted glances, horrifying and physically diverse. Instead it is surgeries, depression, the spectre of known across Canada as the nation’s suicide, and cruelty – always the cruelty poorest postal code, the downtown of people, fate, and gods. Poverty is eastside, or just the blighted “dtes.” a constant presence. Regardless of Book Reviews 179 whether one chooses an austere life in “Why, they seem to be saying, do the service of one’s art (as in the case our grandchildren and their friends of Michael Turner’s musicians at “441 – mixed, integrated, educated – care Powell”) or something that is the lot about this old alley so much, this place of poor immigrants, the mad, or the that seems to have been the least of our multiply-medicated, if resilience was achievements?” (117). truly a virtue these tales would rank Is there room for criticism of a among the most virtuous imaginable. collection of such heart and, in many Choosing a favourite is a bit like places, anguish? Possibly. V6A, as a picking out the most appealing pup neighbourhood, has always been about from a litter of scabby mongrels. There more than marginality. The editors is beauty and love but, sorry kids, broaden the geographic reach of V6A no transcendence in the work-a-day but they don’t get very far from the horrors that former school teacher Anne street. Would a contribution from a Hopkinson recounts in “The Eight Year John Fluevog or a Bob Rennie improve Olds.” Try to read it without crying. the lot? Who knows? Where, though, Go on. I dare you. Brenda Prince’s are the working women and men who “Dance Lightly” teaches us how not wait tables, bash metal, and run little to judge, no small feat in twenty-two shops? The editors decry the “poorest lines. “Immaterial,” by Jonina Kirton, postal code” epithet, what they call “a similarly shows us standing in the schoolyard nickname that won’t wear shadows and footprints of others: off,” and then present a collection of writings that exclude utterly any view what he does not know of the East End that suggests a robust is that days earlier and functional set of human relations. a man stood there only Gary Geddes is critical of a “rapacious to fall over the edge … and heartless” capitalism, and so the dead weight am I; but this is a neighbourhood that of his despair housed the city’s first sawmills: it is dragged him to the bottom where Vancouver capitalism began, where its main boulevard of commerce Lara McElhinney writes about once was, and it has a voice and a place invisibility in a way that is utterly in V6A as well. The end effect of the without mawkishness: “I wonder about collection is to confirm the stereotype: our religion that tells us we are so it’s a tough place to live. And maybe it small, dirty, insignificant, and wrong, is, but that’s not the whole story by a and yet so loved. It’s a pimp’s line, all long shot. right” (106). And Irit Shimrat, who, By way of a final comment, the “from gefilte fish / from Manischewitz editors might have addressed the issue wine and Strub’s pickles,” transforms of appropriation of voice. In an area “belongings” into something that that knows something of residential approaches “bearings,” of which we and commercial gentrification, there all lose a few along the way. Wayde is a risk that art might be similarly Compton provides a unifying comment overtaken. As a reader, I am carried about needless sentimentality in his by these poems and stories; as a social encounters with the memory of Hogan’s scientist, a voice inside keeps asking Alley (one of several ghost towns within about authenticity. Compton’s piece is V6A) and those who used to live there: the only sample of non-fiction inV 6A, 180 bc studies or is it? It isn’t necessary to say that this Earlier this year, King followed up with poem arose from the author’s own and a second volume, this one a reference real experience while this story did not; book: The Encyclopedia of Commercial rather, there is honesty and necessity in Drive to 1999. Less an easy walk down saying that this is a mix. And then one memory lane than a practical research may say: provenance be damned, all of tool, the Encyclopedia fills in the fine these contributions bring the reader details about each of the residents closer to the chequered soul of this city. and business owners (roughly fifteen thousand total) who lived and worked on the Drive during most of the last The Encyclopedia of Commercial hundred years. King gathered the information for the ten thousand-plus Drive to 1999 alphabetical entries by using a wide Jak King variety of local newspapers as well as such historical business and residential Vancouver: The Drive Press, 2012. directories as Henderson’s and the 584 pp. $40.00 paper. once popular library resource Criss- Vanessa Colantonio Cross. For many entries (e.g., Boulton’s Grocery or most of the residential Vancouver listings), he finds scant information, while for many others (e.g., Frank afes, pasta and pizza restaurants, E. Frost and his business Frost’s Dry Cvery affordable produce markets, Goods), his annotations are mini- carnivalesque community events, and biographies. In both cases, King draws grassroots political demonstrations: from the anecdotes of the first book, all of these are the kaleidoscope one from articles from the now defunct envisions when picturing the East neighbourhood newspaper the Highland Side Vancouver neighbourhood of Echo, and from the recollections of other Grandview. The retail and social long-time residents and local historians. artery of that neighbourhood has, for In his introduction, King points out well over a century (despite all of the that “there is no historical narrative changes over that time), been the busy or analysis here; just data about a very thoroughfare of Commercial Drive, specific place and time period” (4). True specifically between the major east-west enough, but between both of King’s streets – Venables, to the north, and books, particularly the Encyclopedia, Broadway, to the south. one can easily see a valuable research In 2011, author and long-time resident source for creating feature articles, of “the Drive,” Jak King, published documentaries, or even historical the first book in his series of very local fiction or film treatments. This is an histories about the neighbourhood: all-purpose resource that will benefit The Drive: A Retail, Social and Political many in the years to come. History of Commercial Drive, Vancouver to 1956. Very well received by BC and local historians, The Drive took one on a fascinating walking tour of the street, filled with stories and anecdotes about places and events, through good times and bad. Book Reviews 181

The Life and Art of Mildred and as a lecturer and advocate for First Valley Thornton Nations communities, Thornton defied the norms and expectations of her time, Sheryl Salloum straddling the line between mother, Ganges: Mother Tongue Pub- artist, activist, and public figure. lishing, 2011. 176 pp. $39.95 paper. Using historical documents, the artist’s own letters and journals, Erin Ramlo interviews, and stunning reproductions University of British Columbia of her canvases, Salloum crafts a detailed and nuanced image of Thornton, her career, and her heryl Salloum’s new book The Life reception by both the public and the Sand Art of Mildred Valley Thornton art world. The text approaches the explores why this important BC artist controversies and questions that has generally been ignored in the surrounded Thornton’s work, including historical record and cultural landscape the potential for appropriation of First of this province. Given that she was Nations iconography and her being a prolific local painter, with a career perceived as a dated figurative painter that spanned over forty years, Salloum in a world of burgeoning modernism. considers why Thornton may have been Salloum includes a detailed account of left out of our galleries and museums, Thornton’s struggle to sell her paintings our stories and our minds. With this before her death: she had hoped that text – at once biography, critique, and the works would remain as one large historical review – Salloum seeks to collection in a public institution and rectify this stunning omission from that the proceeds might fund First British Columbia’s artistic canon. She Nations educational scholarships. Her explores both the life and work of the work, however, was not sufficiently indomitable Mildred Valley Thornton prized by galleries, government, or – painter, author, and advocate for BC’s philanthropists at the time and, rather First Nations – in this newest edition than living on as a contiguous public of Mother Tongue’s Unheralded Artists historical record, has ended up mostly in of BC series. the loving hands of a diversity of private Born in 1890 in rural Ontario, collectors. Thornton settled in Vancouver in the This is certainly not a theoretical, 1930s and was captivated by the people or even an overly critical, art historical and spaces of this province. The result text. It is, however, an informative, was a collection of sweeping and well-researched, and engaging book evocative canvases detailing British about an artist whom history has, for Columbia’s First Nations peoples, the most part, forgotten. Salloum’s text communities, and landscapes, which seeks to recapture and reanimate these she continued to paint until her death beautiful paintings and the story of in 1967. Throughout this text, Salloum their artist, thereby allowing readers to builds the story of a woman who decide for themselves where Thornton believed strongly in the artistic, literary, should sit in the cultural canon of this and cultural legacy of her city and province and this country. Including, province. As a writer for the Vancouver as it does, beautiful full-colour plates, Sun, as a member of the Poetry Society Salloum revives interest in Thornton’s and the Community Arts Council, 182 bc studies painting in the best way possible – Stratford Shakespearean Festival of through the work itself. Canada opened its first season of plays For, as you flip through this text, and marked, for many observers, the there is no denying the painterly skill of beginning of the country’s sustaining Mildred Valley Thornton. There is no professional theatre. Susan McNicoll is denying the sweeping emotional impact correct in insisting that there was in fact of her portraiture or the sheer historical much professional theatre happening in significance of her collection. Politics Canada during the years preceding that and stylistics aside, these pieces capture “glorious summer” and that its stories a moment in our collective histories that need to be told – and celebrated. certainly should not be forgotten. And stories she has, many of them, of pioneering and colourful thespians struggling with few theatres in which The Opening Act: Canadian to perform and perilously miniscule budgets with which to work, nonetheless Theatre History, 1945-1953 staging well received productions of Susan McNicoll popular and, occasionally, Canadian plays. Most companies enjoyed only Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2012. 330 a scant golden year or two before pp. $24.95 paper. folding or transmogrifying into another James Hoffman company. An example, described in colourful narrative, is the Ottawa Thompson Rivers University Stage Society, which by its third play, the sell-out hit Shaw’s Pygmalion, had developed a winning “love affair” he writing of Canadian theatre with local audiences, surely abetted Thistory, as an academic field of by exceptionally talented actors such study, is a latecomer, with the first as the eighteen-year-old Christopher wave of academic articles and books Plummer. appearing only in the mid-1970s, along But by 1949, with expenses outrunning with the founding of the Association for box office revenues, censorship issues Canadian Theatre History. In the first (the company rented the La Salle decade or so, until wide applications of Academy, a Catholic boys’ school, critical theory added deeper cultural and had to submit scripts to a priest perspectives, many of the books, for approval), and failed appeals, articles, and conference papers were the company faced closure – only to little more than selected compilations be followed by the formation of the of raw historical data, usually presented Canadian Repertory Theatre, notable with a note of triumphant discovery – for premiering Canadian plays such as if to say, yes, we have a Canadian as Mazo de la Roche’s Whiteoaks theatre and here is convincing evidence (attended by the Queen Mother) that something important happened! but also sputtering away in financial The Opening Act, as a richly detailed indebtedness by the mid-1950s. record of a hitherto little recorded A major strength of the book is period in our theatrical history, follows McNicoll’s letting the players tell their this same course, chronicling many of own stories – indeed, it was the discovery the personalities and companies of the of theatrical clippings of her father, the postwar years until July 1953, when the actor Floyd Caza, that inspired the Book Reviews 183 book. Accordingly, she interviewed Architecture and the about fifty theatre folk, including major Canadian Fabric figures like Christopher Plummer, William Hutt, and Amelia Hall, Rodri Windsor Liscombe, whose testimony alone lends major editor credence to her point that significant Vancouver: ubc Press, 2011. 536 pp. professional stage work was done in $39.95 paper. this period and that it constituted an important training ground for Canada’s Christopher Macdonald subsequent, better known, professional University of British Columbia theatre. As Plummer states, in a chapter introduction: “It was one of the road in scope and filled with proudest, golden times of our kind of both insight and intriguing fact, identity and creativity.” B Architecture and the Canadian Fabric There are many more figures, lesser positions itself in a productive cleft known but important ones, some between architectural and political of whom will be familiar or at least discussion – discussion largely attentive certainly of interest to BC readers, such to the perennial interest in locating our as Thor Arngrim, Dorothy Davies, and elusive national identity. The breadth Andrew Allan, and there are finely of interest is revealed historically, detailed narratives of Vancouver’s ranging from European settlement three important companies in those through the present, and topically, formative years: Everyman, Totem, ranging from the progeny of vernacular and Theatre Under the Stars. This culture to aspects of our most privileged is an indispensable, highly readable material heritage. While varied to compendium of the essential characters an extreme, the contributions overall of a critical period in our theatrical demonstrate an originality of focus history. The book is richly illustrated and a persistent attempt to locate with around four dozen photos, many architectural production in a complex of them production shots, including and often nuanced formative realm. some of Floyd Caza, to whom the book In both the editorial introduction is dedicated. and subsequent commentary, the While McNicoll has done very overarching theme of the collected well in assembling the stories, she has essays is pointed in avoiding any claim not provided much either in the way to being comprehensive; rather, the of documenting her materials or in aim is to suggest that this miscellany acknowledging other pertinent sources. of highly specific examinations of She quotes around fifty people, for Canadian-built fabric carries an example, but nowhere indicates the implicit sense of nationhood and place sources or dates of the citations; in symptomatic of our collective mosaic addition, important published articles spirit. In the book’s inclusion of an on some of the companies are neither extraordinary range of topics, this tactic referenced nor suggested as further is no doubt successful, if at odds with reading, such as Denis Johnston’s an overarching clarity of purpose. article on Totem Theatre in Sherrill The project represents the outcome Grace and Jerry Wasserman’s Theatre and of a recent academic symposium and AutoBiography, or my own on Everyman retains evidence of the authors’ differing Theatre in BC Studies (issue 76). 184 bc studies degrees of confidence. Several chapters consideration of the relation between read as though they are transcripts of the messy realities of social practice dissertation defences, frustratingly and the production of this thing called interrupted by innumerable footnotes architecture. As such, it includes both and efforts to establish intellectual surprises and delights while providing provenance. This unevenness disrupts an important step forward in cultivating the ultimate continuity of the text critical discourse in an unquestionably and prompts a lingering question of fertile field of enquiry. curatorial discretion. Against the breadth of concern evidenced in the collection of writing, Edward S. Curtis, Above the individual chapters are remarkable for their extreme sense of introspection Medicine Line: and topical focus. Very few of the Portraits of Aboriginal Life in contributions, however, attempt the Canadian West to locate their interests within the larger critical gaze of the collection. Rodger D. Touchie For instance, the evocation of “big Vancouver: Heritage House, 2010. box” culture is timely and lucid in its 191 pp. $24.95 cloth. own terms, yet draws attention to a topic that could be usefully measured David Mattison against the wholesale renovation of Victoria our cities’ historical cores through the voracious creation of inner-city malls. The thoughtful review of the f all the dozens of professional emergence of the Quebec bungalow Ophotographers who have directed type is equally engaging, but how might their cameras at North America’s it be further enriched by reference to, first human settlers, no name is say, the contemporary artefact of the more synonymous with the words “Vancouver Special”? “Indian” and “photographer” than Without question a sense of that of Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952). collective context may be inferred by the During the first three decades of the accumulated reading of the chapters, twentieth century he embarked upon and the “what if” questions suggested and completed, at great personal and here constructively speak to an element financial sacrifice, a photographic of provocation in the writing. Yet and ethnographic documentation there remains a concern regarding this project of selected North American accomplished work: the question of an Aboriginal populations. His often truly intended audience. As a primer for a magnificent photographs, along with certain kind of interdisciplinary course oral testimony (including transcribed in cultural studies, some chapters serve songs he had recorded on wax cylinders as more explicit points of departure from village elders and others), was than others – whether in terms of supported by the writings of explorers research methodology, critique, or and ethnographers. Sold by subscription writing – but ultimately the whole as collector tomes, Curtis’s life work was remains decidedly uneven. published between 1907 and 1930 in a More positively, this collection series of twenty volumes simply entitled serves to entice a more sustained The North American Indian (nai). Book Reviews 185

Each volume was accompanied by a to glossy paper stock, is not intended as portfolio of photogravure plates. The an academic or scholarly reassessment Northwestern University McCormick of the Curtis legacy. In some ways, Library’s set, completely digitized though Ralph Andrews’s focus was and freely available online both there different, Touchie’s analysis and and through the Library of Congress admiration of the Curtis legacy, which (photographs only), comprises 1,506 has also undergone a new appreciation photographs in the volumes and 722 by some BC First Nations, reminded portfolio photographs. On 10 April me of Andrews’s book Curtis’ Western 2012, a complete subscription set of Indians (1962). I found myself often the nai was auctioned at Christies wondering about the dates of certain New York for $2.88 million, double the events and wished for a life chronology, previous record from seven years ago. including when each nai volume was The twenty-volume set originally sold published. Touchie addresses the for between $3,000 (1907) and $4,200 difficult linguistic issue of First Nations (1924). names by including a table of past and Touchie intended his work to fill a gap present usages for each of the BC and in the Curtis literature by concentrating Alberta populations visited by Curtis. on Curtis’s years in British Columbia While the index enhances the utility and Alberta. Around two-thirds of the of his slim volume, the bibliography, book covers British Columbia, chiefly which includes selected websites (one the coastal communities, and Alberta containing a detailed chronology), only First Nations. During part of his time covers works referenced by Touchie. in British Columbia in the early 1910s, Although he reproduces many Curtis Curtis also created the first motion images and, through captions, places picture centred around an Aboriginal them within their nai context, there is population. The Kwakwaka’wakw no real comparative analysis of Curtis’s people starred in a melodramatic work against that of other amateur screenplay entitled In the Land of the and commercial photographers who Headhunters, which premiered in were also documenting First Nations Seattle and New York in December cultures in British Columbia and 1914. This film has its own incredible Alberta. history and was restored and re-released twice (1974 and 2008, respectively) after a print was first located in1972 . The Taking My Life remainder of the book serves as an introduction to Curtis, the man and Jane Rule the photographer, and his remarkable Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2011. 277 pp. legacy, the fruits of which he did not $19.95 paper. live to enjoy since the project essentially left him financially ruined, divorced, Cameron Duder and at odds with his brother, Seattle Vancouver photographer Asahel Curtis (1874-1941), who also worked in British Columbia and, much earlier, in Alaska and Yukon n 2008, when researching during the Klondike gold rush. ICanadian women authors, Linda Touchie’s book, a fairly handsome Morra discovered an unpublished and heavy (for its size) presentation due autobiography written by Jane Rule 186 bc studies in the 1980s, just before her retirement (117). Although her anger towards from writing, in which, with frankness authority and her impetuousness meant and humour, she recounts her life up to that her interactions with teachers and the age of twenty-one. Taking My Life peers were not always smooth, Rule is a fascinating account of Rule’s early inspired considerable affection, and years and a glimpse into the influences her transgressions were often treated on her development as a writer. leniently. Jane Rule was born in 1931 in During her adolescence, Rule Plainfield, New Jersey. Her family gradually became aware of her desire moved often because of her father’s for women. At sixteen, she formed a employment, and the book describes relationship with an older, married their relocation to California, to woman, Ann Smith, whose portrait Chicago, to Missouri, and then again of Rule is the book’s cover image. to California. The importance of place Although it was an ambivalent and only in Rule’s life is apparent throughout, sometimes sexual relationship, it was particularly in her memories of the with Ann that she came to the clear family summerhouse, “South Fork,” realization that she was not attracted where her strong connection to nature to men. was established. Unlike many a lesbian, Rule did not Rule was a keen observer of people, have schoolgirl crushes but, rather, and the book is peppered with witty wanted to be “in the literal sense of anecdotes about family interactions. the word, remarkable” to her teachers She writes extensively about her brother (82). She became close to several of Arthur, whose erratic behaviour and her female teachers who shared her callousness caused the entire family intellectual and artistic interests. She great distress, and she reveals the pain responded to good teachers and, luckily, she felt as their closeness declined had several. She wrote: “I was arrogant and he became indifferent towards and hopeful, willing to earn their her. Rule subjects herself to similarly attention with hard work, passionately detailed observation, and she is very loyal to those who taught me well, candid about anxieties she suffered as a disdainful and rude to those who child and her struggles in adolescence. didn’t” (81). The bluntness for which She was mocked about her height – 1.8 Rule was known later in life is clearly metre (six feet) at age twelve – and her evident here, in these stories about her deep voice, and she stammered when younger self. nervous, resulting in her being fearful Taking My Life concludes when and socially awkward. Rule is a young adult and has gone Rule’s intellectual and moral abroad with her lover Roussel: “In the development is a recurring theme in the cold winter flat … I made my first real book. She was intellectually curious, but home, learned after a fashion to cook, she had little tolerance for subjects she to entertain friends, to live with a lover saw as of little use. Even as a teenager and to write my first, unpublishable she had a clear sense of purpose. To novel. In that process, I also began the dean of Mills College, where she to learn how to live with the baggage enrolled as a student a month before of my life, its rhythms of failure and her seventeenth birthday, she said: rebirth” (227). Morra suggests that “I [want] to learn to understand and then Rule’s autobiography should be seen tell the truth. I [want] to be a writer” as a Künstlerroman, a story of Rule’s Book Reviews 187

“moral, intellectual, artistic and sexual to dismiss. It’s popular history, after development. If we accept it as a all (academics, of course, preferring Künstlerroman, it becomes evident unpopular histories), by a freelance why Rule would conclude [it] with her writer whose many previous works twenty-first birthday: she had come of include children’s stories, tales about age, and had grown into her calling as shipwrecks and sea monsters off a professional writer and mature adult” Vancouver Island, and a science book (232). about spiders. Almost predictably, Taking My Life greatly increases our Mason makes no attempt to situate understanding of the formative years Long Beach Wild within any larger of an author whose contributions to literature; indeed, Bruce Braun’s The British Columbia were social, political, Intemperate Rainforest (2002), arguably and legal as well as literary. In addition the most influential academic work that to her writing, Rule became known for focuses on the same northwest coast of her speaking and activism on lesbian Vancouver Island, doesn’t even make it and gay issues, in particular the Little into the bibliography. But Mason’s take Sister’s Book and Art Emporium’s legal on Long Beach is more than “just” a case against Canada Customs. Rule popular history. Having lived in Tofino would eventually publish numerous for the past twenty years, Long Beach novels, short stories and essays, has basically been part of Mason’s but she regarded her first novels as backyard, and, as its subtitle suggests, unpublishable. Her breakout work, her book is a thoughtful “celebration” of Desert of the Heart (1964), which her attachment to the place and a look proved to be her most famous novel at others who have felt the same. and, in the 1980s, was made into an After a quick summary of the internationally celebrated film, was not area’s geological and Aboriginal published until Rule was in her thirties. history, Mason dedicates the bulk of By the age of twenty-one, however, her attention to the nineteenth and Rule had known she was a writer. twentieth centuries. Thus we learn of Taking My Life helps us to understand fur trading, gold rushes, shipwrecks, how she got there. ranching efforts, rcaf bases, resort tourism, hippies, and, finally, Long Beach’s transition into Pacific Rim Long Beach Wild: A Celebration National Park in 1971. The stories are told in a positive fashion, although of People and Place on Canada’s Mason does deal empathetically with Rugged Western Shore the forced relocation of Japanese Adrienne Mason residents during the Second World War and the displacement of long- Vancouver: Greystone Books, time residents like Peg Whittington Douglas and McIntyre Publishers, when the area became a national park. Inc., 2012. 192 pp. $24.95 paper. Peppered throughout are Mason’s personal experiences tramping all Philip Van Huizen over the “greater Long Beach area” as University of British Columbia well as little vignettes that explain the workings of such phenomena as sea ong Beach Wild is the kind of book otters, mud flats, and surf schools. Lthat academics are often quick 188 bc studies

Mason is at her best when she’s writing Texada Tapestry: A History about the type of things that have been Heather Harbord her bread and butter for a long time. She has a knack for making even sea Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, kelp and tree bark fascinating, and she 2011. 288 pp. $32.95 cloth. does a wonderful job of explaining how humans and the non-human world have interacted throughout Long Beach’s history. I’m not sure, exactly, what her Edge of the Sound: Memoirs of a argument is about this relationship West Coast Log Salvager between people and place, beyond that Jo Hammond one exists, but the stories are interesting enough that I often forgot about this Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2011. quibble. 272 pp. $24.95 paper. My larger criticism, though, has to do with Mason’s treatment of Aboriginal history in the area, which seems The Sunshine Coast from incomplete. As Mason herself tells the reader, the only people still allowed to Gibsons to Powell River reside in Pacific Rim National Park Howard White are the members of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations who live in Esowista, an Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, ancient village just a stone’s throw from 2012. 160 pp. $34.95 cloth. Long Beach. Their ancestors have a Howard Stewart prominent place in the opening chapters of the book, but the twentieth-century University of British Columbia history of the Tla-o-qui-aht who continue to call Esowista home is left eather Harbord’s Texada virtually untold. A better engagement HTapestry: A History is the only with the recent past of this community one of these three books that calls would have made for a more inclusive itself “a history.” Yet together they “celebration.” illustrate the remarkable range of local As it is, though, Long Beach Wild is a histories coming out of coastal British beautifully written book by an obviously Columbia. Jo Hammond’s Edge of the passionate resident. It will be of interest Sound: Memoirs of a West Coast Log to anyone familiar with the area as well Salvager is an intensely personal history as to those who enjoy Vancouver Island of forty years of life, love, and death history. while chasing stray logs on the shores of Howe Sound. Howard White’s updated The Sunshine Coast from Gibsons to Powell River is another in Harbour’s series of “coffee table books with content” on different regions around the inland sea, and it offers the usual bit of history along with everything else – geography, current affairs, gossip, and just plain interesting tidbits. Together the three tomes present a rich collage of Book Reviews 189 settler life on the east side of the Strait, mining and logging stories, on the one north of the big smoke. hand, and the “people’s stories,” on the “Texada Tapestry” is a misnomer; it is other, is too sharply drawn, and this more of a well-written patchwork than is the main weakness of an otherwise a tapestry: first a tiny bit of pre-contact well-wrought book. Harbord’s decision Aboriginal history and natural history, to organize her rich material this then a detailed history of resource way is understandable. Turning this exploitation on the Strait’s largest island, patchwork history into an integrated and finally an extensively researched hybrid would have taken considerably social history. Harbord’s own deep more time. Perhaps this will be the history as a former geology librarian second edition? at London’s Royal School of Mines Jo Hammond, like Heather Harbord, serves her well. The long list of mining is a transplanted Briton with a “royal” and quarrying operations that have connection (Hammond was in the transformed the face of Texada Island Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir). since the 1880s – iron, gold, copper, Hammond’s, like Harbord’s, is also limestone – is richly documented. a very local history. That’s where the We learn of the overblown “Texada iron similarities between the two books end. scandal” that brought down Premier Hammond’s memoir from the “edge of Amor de Cosmos moments after British the Sound” is a close-up story of the Columbia had joined Confederation life of an immigrant woman who meets and of the more substantive gold and a local log salvager and then embraces copper boom that put the town of him and his life of pulling valuable Van Anda on the map by the turn of stray logs from the chuck. I must admit the century. Harbord’s descriptions of I never watched the renowned Bruno these and many other mining stories are Gerussi’s version of life as a professional thoroughly researched and engagingly beachcomber on these waters, but I written. The island’s logging story, suspect that Jo Hammond’s account is though important for the place, is rather more accurate. This is a story, less unique on the shores of the Strait as environmental historian Richard of Georgia than is Texada’s prolific White would say, of people who knew mining. The logging section suffers a their environment through work not bit from the author’s greater distance play (though there are some fishing and from the subject. Could Texada’s forest hunting scenes too). There is clearly industry really already be reaping the love for the place, this beautiful western benefits of climate change? edge of the sound, but it is a place that On our way through the mining and serves humans and not the other way logging stories we learn a little about around: it is not a pristine wilderness the labour and racial tensions that to be cherished like brittle china. emerged among the island’s often large Most of the love in Hammond’s story communities of miners and loggers. But is for a person, not a place. In fact, her the real social history only starts when book reads more like a diary than a we switch to a chronological account memoir, and this is both its greatest of “Texada’s People.” Like the resource strength and its greatest weakness. It history, it is mostly an interesting is “herstory” and the story of the love read that reflects the author’s many of Hammond’s life, told not by a great interviews with several generations of writer but by a woman remembering island people. The division between the a rich life shared with one who is 190 bc studies suddenly no longer there. Along the Melon as anomalies. He hints that way we learn a lot about log salvaging such occasional incursions from the and life on the lower Sechelt Peninsula. industrial world outside – places where Despite a wealth of dialogue the prose “muckers” will spend their lives – are is curiously flat in many places. All not true reflections of the trenchantly is forgotten, though, in the reader’s independent, bohemian, and laid back fascination with Hammond’s final “loafer” soul of the place. I fear White is dialogue as her now dead husband indulging in wishful thinking here and begins to amiably haunt her with his that the personality of the place in the irrepressible mix of cryptic practical twenty-first century will remain rather advice and wry humour. more schizophrenic than that. The often Howard White’s book is a robust damp Sunshine Coast will continue to and quirky blend of pictures, facts, suffer fits of intense industrialization of and anecdotes about the Sunshine the sort one sees on Malaspina Strait Coast meant to help us see the bigger and Howe Sound, cheek by jowl with picture amidst a thousand smaller ones, the anarchistic, artistic, and sybaritic a cosmopolitan sweep all the way from impulses expressed by places like the eastern shore of Howe Sound to the Roberts Creek and Pender Harbour. southern reaches of Desolation Sound. No, struggles between the muckers and It reflects White’s life as a resident of the loafers are not done yet – witness the Pender Harbour, square in the middle Sechelt peoples’ inexorable dismantling of the coast about which he writes, and of the gravelly hills behind town. But his career as editor of the press that has this is probably not the right message published most of the histories written to incorporate in a book destined, by about it in recent years. its glossy format and despite its many As in this book’s 1996 edition, White cogent insights, to live far more on has mostly organized his material coffee tables than in university libraries. geographically from Gibsons, Sechelt, Pender Harbour, Jervis Inlet, and Powell River. This distribution betrays his bias in favour of those parts from Jervis Inlet south. Whatever the place, White makes masterful use of the stories of local residents – Aboriginals, writers, loggers, artists, loafers, entrepreneurs, and many more – past and present. Every page is graced with high-quality colour images that tell their own parallel stories, sometimes related to the text but more often not. In his long introductory section, White works hard to explain the unique character of this beautiful, convoluted stretch of shoreline. Like many over the years, he prefers to view the redolent histories of great industrial enterprises that have emerged in places like Van Anda, Powell River, and Port