BOOK REVIEWS

Home Truths: Highlights from Encountered” relies heavily on BC History archaeological and ethnographic Richard Mackie and Graeme studies, as well as on the reports of the Sproat and McKenna-McBride Wynn, editors commissions, to describe the rapid transition from a densely settled canyon Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2012 460 $26 95 in the early nineteenth century to one . pp. . paper. in which the Indigenous population J.I. Little was radically reduced in size as well as Simon Fraser University culturally dislocated. Daniel Clayton, also a historical geographer, shifts the focus northward to the lower Skeena, s co-editors of BC Studies, examining how the Coast Tsimshian Richard Mackie and Graeme “became ordered as objects of discourse” WynnA surveyed all the articles published in the three major settlements of Fort in the journal since it first appeared in Simpson (a fur trade post), Metlakatla 1968 before deciding to focus on what (a missionary settlement), and Port they concluded were two dominant Essington (a salmon-canning town). and complementary themes for this That discourse shifted from an interest volume of “highlights” – namely, the only in Aboriginal peoples’ collective search by newcomers for a home and economic motivations to an expressed the concomitant struggle by Aboriginal desire to change their daily lives as peoples to resist dispossession in individuals and, finally, to attempts to the face of the colonialist onslaught. subject them to government regulation. Reflecting the fact that BC Studies is an With Michael Thoms’s chapter on interdisciplinary journal, the majority fishing and colonialism at Pennask of the eleven chapters in Home Truths Lake, we have a worthy example of were not written by historians, but – in the exciting work being done by the keeping with the subtitle – the approach province’s environmental historians. in most cases is a historical one. The story Thoms relates is not only one To begin with the four chapters of the displacement of a traditional on Aboriginal history, Cole Harris’s Native food fishery by a group of wealthy skilfully written “The Fraser Canyon American sport fishers in 1929 but also bc studies, no. 80, Winter 13/14 165 166 bc studies of the hubris involved in attempting to century Irish and Scots who migrated engineer the lake to produce larger fish in kin groups to the eastern part of the for the fly rod. The displacement theme country as economic refugees – many shifts to Vancouver, with Jean Barman’s of those coming to British Columbia article on the “unsettling” of Kitsilano were seeking to escape the confines of and Stanley Park. She describes how the “Home.” The fictional characters whom Squamish families on the eighty-acre Bowering discusses may be looking (32 hectares) Kitsilano Reserve (known for a home, but it is generally one that as Snauq) were essentially cheated out of is utopian or Arcadian in nature and, their land by the provincial government therefore, not attainable. in 1913, and how the Kwakiutl totem The utopian theme is central to poles erected on Brockton Point in the Finnish settlement of Sointula 1923 marked the removal of the last of on Malcolm Island, though Mikko Stanley Park’s Aboriginal residents as Saikku’s article describes how that ideal well as replacing what Barman refers was eventually abandoned by those to as “indigenous Indigeneity” with a who sank roots there. As we learn from sanitized Indigeneity imported from Nelson Riis’s article on Walhachin, the elsewhere. It is rather ironic, then, environment proved to be even more that the Squamish recently decided challenging for the genteel English to generate revenue by erecting giant settlers who attempted to create an commercial billboards on the ten acres Arcadian orchard economy in the arid (4 hectares) they reacquired from the Thompson Valley prior to the First Canadian Pacific Railway under the World War. Victoria’s Chinatown was Burrard Bridge. certainly no Arcadia or Utopia, but the In choosing the theme for the other article by Dunae, Lutz, Lafreniere, part of this collection, the editors were and Gilliland applies GIS technology inspired by George Bowering’s literary to demonstrate that, in 1891, it was also essay, included in the volume, which far from being the insular ghetto of argues that the “unifying and informing popular imagination. In their words, symbol” for this province’s culture is it was instead “a transactional space “Home, or more specifically, the attempt for social and commercial interactions to find or make a home” (53). This would between Victoria’s Chinese and non- seem to be a given for any colonization Chinese residents” (212). Twenty-five zone, but Bowering himself points to percent of the city’s Chinese residents what I (as an “immigrant” from eastern lived outside Chinatown, presumably Canada) feel is more characteristic motivated by the same desire for home of the non-Indigenous population of ownership that made Vancouver what this mountainous continental fringe Deryck Holdsworth’s article describes – namely, a sense of rootlessness. as a low-density suburban landscape. Referring to the principal characters The frequency with which Vancouver in the novels he examines, Bowering addresses were changed, however, writes: “People in BC are less likely to suggests that owning a house did not feel trapped in their families than to necessarily bring an end to the sense of be several thousand miles from them dissatisfaction and rootlessness. or working with them on a patch of And the sense of rootlessness was land out of sight of the next family” particularly marked among the men (54). Implicit in this statement is the described in this volume’s final two sense that – unlike the early nineteenth- articles. Megan Davies studies the Book Reviews 167 problems faced by, and posed by, the strong sense of time and place but also “lonesome prospector,” as well as the stimulate readers to think about the many unmarried loggers and fishers, cultural identity of this province. once they reached old age. She suggests that the state provided relatively generous assistance to these old men Discovering Indigenous Lands: in recognition of their pioneering role The Doctrine of Discovery in the in the province’s extractive industries, but she also finds that it began to English Colonies play a more intrusive role in their Robert J. Miller, Jacinta Ruru, lives with the professionalization of 1930 Larissa Behrendt, and social work in the late s. Finally, Tracey Lindberg we have Peter Harrison’s first-hand sociological account of the summer Oxford: Oxford University Press, he spent in a logging camp on Haida 2012. 320 pp. $us40.00 paper. Gwaii in 1979. The key elements of the subculture he found there were an Daniel Clayton emphasis on toughness, or “manliness,” University of St. Andrews the insistence on a degree of freedom or independence at work; and the sense that work was central to the men’s self- his brilliant volume of identity. The older men, in particular, comparative law is written by expressed little interest in the search for fourT distinguished Indigenous legal “home,” at least if one defines it as life academic specialists, from the United with a wife and children in a permanent States (Eastern Shawnee Tribe), New or semi-permanent residence. In fact, Zealand (Maori – Ngati Rawkawa and there is not a single article in this Ngati Ranginui), Australia (Eualayai/ collection that focuses on the theme of Gammilaroi), and Canada (Cree – family or domestic space. Neheyiwak). It is concerned with the In short, while I can agree with historical and ongoing significance of the editors’ claim that “the struggle the Doctrine of Discovery in European, to belong, to overcome the sense of and principally English, colonialism, homelessness, has been particularly and each of the authors has two chapters acute” (42) in British Columbia, I on his or her respective country. would add that there is considerable Historians have written much about evidence in these articles that the how the legal armature of European newcomers also placed a high value on conquest and colonization in the New independence and material gain, and World and elsewhere shaped and that many continued to feel restless served processes of “othering,” with and dissatisfied long after arriving Indigenous peoples deemed to lack what here. In fact, one inescapable feature Europeans possessed – Christianity, of this province, surely, is the degree law, government, civilization, ideas to which owning a home outside the of private property, and a commercial First Nations reserves has represented (profit) ethic. In the Introduction, a speculative investment in real estate. Robert Miller shows that the Doctrine But the editors are to be congratulated of Discovery was (and remains) at for selecting essays that not only provide once a legal tenet and an ideological broad geographic coverage and create a (ethnocentric and racial) façade at the 168 bc studies heart of these processes. The volume particularly eye-opening. In the examines the evolution of the Doctrine Canadian context, Tracey Lindberg’s from the fifteenth century onwards two chapters are richly documented and how it provided Europeans with and politically salient reminders of commercial and property rights in the “the degree to which presumptions of lands of Indigenous peoples, even while infidel/Indigenous inhumanity were recognizing their continuing right to captured and perpetuated in Canadian occupy and use land. Miller sees the law,” running roughshod over both definition of the Doctrine in the1823 US Indigenous legal sensibilities and Supreme Court case Johnson v. M’Intosh contemporary Canadian multicultural as a legal milestone in this regard (3-6, rhetoric (124). 52-58). Yet title and ownership rights I was hoping for a fuller evaluation of construed on the basis of the Doctrine the relations between the legal cultures were not developed in identical ways in and commercial and geopolitical orders different parts of the English colonial of empire (the type of analysis pioneered world, and the authors argue that by historians such as Anthony Pagden differences between the Indigenous and Lauren Benton). Much more could contexts in which Discovery arguments also have been said, following the work were deployed played a key role in of historians such as John Darwin and fostering variations in the Doctrine’s James Belich, about the specificity of application. legal regimes in English settler colonies For me, the two core and compelling qua those in British India, the West contributions of the volume are, first, Indies, and Africa. The chapters on its fastidious historical recovery of New Zealand come closest to this kind similarities and differences in the of discussion. But these limitations do application of the Doctrine in English not detract from the volume’s many and settler colonies and, second, its considerable scholarly and analytical comparative attempt to find patterns achievements. Discovering Indigenous in the development of this body of law Lands brings the duplicitous legality over time. The authors identify ten of English settler colonialism into “constituent elements” of the Doctrine full view, and it is a very significant – first discovery, actual occupancy, contribution to a comparative legal pre-emption, Native title, Indigenous understanding of how Indigenous limited rights, contiguity, terra nullius, peoples were dispossessed. Christianity, civilization, and conquest – and argue that “the comparative framework illustrates graphically just how deeply rooted the legal fictions of Discovery are in our legal systems” (265). They see more similarities than differences in the legal systems of the four countries studied. Indeed, they seem unsurprised that the Doctrine is “still today part of the property and constitutional regimes of all four of our countries” (23, 265). I found Miller’s analysis of the ties (despite appearances) between American and English law Book Reviews 169

Mystery Islands: Discovering community members. Unfortunately, the Ancient Pacific in his latest work, Koppel explores the Tom Koppel peopling of the Pacific Ocean from the essentialized perspective of cultural Suva, Fiji Islands: University of the tourism, in which Indigenous culture South Pacific Press, 2012. 373 pp. is crafted for the consumer. The reader of course is not told this directly (except $25.00 paper. in the acknowledgments) but soon Chris Arnett surmises. Typically, clients observe University of British Columbia and participate in activities associated with the tour that may be “traditional,” but only in the context of what these rawing on experience gained tour companies actually are: local from travel writing assignments, D businesses that cater to the demands of Salt Spring author Tom Koppel tackles twenty-first-century tourists. The tour an ambitious subject, the peopling guides, as in the New Zealand example of the Pacific Ocean, with a book of recounted by Koppel, are authentic interesting anecdotes and information natives; they dress in early nineteenth- set within a larger, less successful century native style for the tourists, and narrative culled from his study of the their stories are locally authoritative archaeological and historical literature and culturally specific. But a three- on the South Pacific. While he does hour tour is not good cultural data an admirable job of sketching out the outside of its twenty-first-century parameters of current archaeological localized representation, no matter how knowledge, the text frequently wanders emotionally engaged one is with the from its subject into areas in which a guide. better grounding in the anthropological Koppel’s brief encounters with and historical literature, particularly the contemporary Christian elements of work of Marshall Sahlins, Ranginui Polynesian society predispose him to Walker, Rawiri Te Maire Tau, and think that Indigenous people adopted numerous others would have helped the religion without any coercion, but he him avoid some of the unfortunate ignores the insidious, pervasive effects stereotypes of Polynesian culture of colonialism articulated by Hawaiian that surface with jarring regularity scholars such as Lilikala Kame’eleihiwa. throughout the text. The great body Force was not always overt (if one can of Polynesian oral traditions is all but say the effects of demographic collapse ignored, and Polynesian whakapapa are not overt), but to understand how (genealogies), the fabric that unites people would accept such change the Polynesian universe, are barely requires an explanation more nuanced mentioned. than fickleness or the desire to be free Koppel’s interest in the South Pacific of the “routine savagery” (235) that was sparked by his first book,Kanaka: Koppel believes characterized daily The Untold Story of the Hawaiian life in the ancient Pacific, contrary to Pioneers in British Columbia and the other received versions of history. Gross 1995 Pacific Northwest ( ), an important generalizations are inappropriate for contribution to the historiography such a culturally diverse area. of British Columbia that drew upon Anthropological fieldwork, archival research and interviews with which includes archaeology, seeks 170 bc studies to understand and disentangle the the people of Gitanyow. In order to get outward appearance of culture to reveal the chiefs of the village of Gitanyow, something of its moment in historical formerly known as Kitwancool, to process. Travel literature/writing is not permit their totem poles to leave the anthropology, but this is not to say that village for preservation, the museum it should not aspire to a similar rigour. in Victoria carved replicas of each pole removed and returned them to be erected in Gitanyow. But the unique Discovering Totem Poles: A aspect of the agreement was that Traveller’s Guide the Gitanyow required the Province of British Columbia to publish a Aldona Jonaitis book that recorded the histories, territories, and laws of the people and Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2012 112 $19 95 that the subsequent publication be made . pp. Illus. . paper. available to students and teachers at the Alan Hoover University of British Columbia. The Histories, Territories Royal British Columbia Museum result was Duff’s and Laws of the Kitwancool (1959, 1989). Perhaps the most unusual pole that his well-illustrated and modest Jonaitis includes in her tour of the coast in size guidebook presents totem is the Sitka Wellbriety pole carved by polesT that a tourist could see on a trip Tlingit carver Wayne Price. Wellbriety from Seattle, Washington, to Juneau, is a neologism combining parts of the Alaska. The focus is not on totem words “wellness” and “sobriety.” It poles as art objects displaying carved refers to a Native American recovery crest figures but, rather, as objects program that combines the Twelve that reference an interchange between Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and Indigenous peoples and the invading Native spirituality. It honours all people colonizers. Jonaitis argues that her recovering from the ravages of addiction book differs from what one finds and abuse. in the extensive literature on totem Although Jonaitis gives more poles because she does not confine emphasis to totem poles that document herself to a discussion of aesthetics “intercultural” relationships, earlier and iconography but, rather, presents publications have not completely information that places poles within a ignored such poles. Viola Garfield “broader social, cultural” context. She and Lin A. Forest, in The Wolf and begins her discussions in Seattle by the Raven: Totem Poles of Southeastern looking at three poles that were stolen Alaska (1948), discuss the history of the by whites from supposedly abandoned two Tlingit poles that commemorate villages. Two of the poles have since events involving the US revenue cutter been returned from the Burke Museum Lincoln and Secretary of State William under the aegis of the Native American H. Seward. George MacDonald Graves Protection and Repatriation comments in Haida Monumental Art Act, which was passed by the American (1983) on two carved figures atop Congress in 1990. the front corner posts of a house An interesting example drawn from in Skidegate. They represent Judge the upper Skeena River involves the Pemberton of the Victoria Police Court late anthropologist Wilson Duff and and George Smith, the Victoria city Book Reviews 171 clerk. They were placed there in the Seekers and Travellers: 1870s to ridicule them for their part in Contemporary Art of the Pacific the jailing of a chief from this house. Northwest Coast Jonaitis recognizes that totem poles in a variety of forms predate European Gary Wyatt contact, but then she claims that “these earliest poles had a distribution limited Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre; Seattle: University of Washington to the Tsimshian and Haida” (ix). This 2012 160 $29 95 statement appears to ignore the inside Press, . pp. . paper. house posts drawn by John Webber in Martha Black 1778 at Yuquot (Friendly Cove). It is a Royal British Columbia Museum curious omission for someone who has published on the famous whaling shrine eekers and Travellers at the same location. Jonaitis must have is the final meant that free standing memorial or Svolume in a trilogy of popular house frontal poles first appear in late publications by Gary Wyatt that eighteenth century Euro-American showcase contemporary Northwest Coast art. It follows the format of the records on the northern Northwest Faces: Contemporary Coast and did not spread toward the previous books, Masks of the Northwest Coast (1994) and south until later in the nineteenth Mythic Beings: Spirit Art of the Northwest century. Coast 1999 Jonaitis’s book is an excellent guide ( ), pairing extended captions to totem poles in museums, an airport with excellent full-page photographs (Vancouver International), a ferry by Kenji Nagai and including an terminal (Horseshoe Bay), and various introduction by Wyatt. The text for each public outdoor and indoor locations in of the thirty-six works was written by, Seattle, Victoria, Vancouver, Duncan, or with, the artist. This may be unusual Alert Bay, Prince Rupert, Ketchikan, for an art book, as Wyatt claims, but Sitka, and Juneau. By including the is a common strategy for exhibition Wellbriety pole (which references labels. And the book’s resemblance to the great harm that accompanied an exhibition catalogue is not surprising colonization) and the Wooshkeetan since Wyatt is a proprietor of one of the pole in Juneau (which documents world’s foremost commercial galleries egregious bad behaviour by the agents for contemporary First Nations art and of the colonial state), Jonaitis gives the the works presented were presumably reader a fresh understanding of totem shown at, and perhaps sold by, his Spirit poles as social documents. Wrestler Gallery in Vancouver over the past fifteen years: the earliest work included is Joe David’s Revered Enemy from 1996, and most were made between 2000 and 2011. Most of the works featured are masks, headdresses, and other wood carvings, but mixed media constructions, weavings (including Meghann O’Brien’s T’lina Ravenstail Robe and William White’s innovative cedar bark and wool basket), argillite 172 bc studies figure groups by Christian White, Seattle markets for Northwest Coast art masterful bracelets by Shawn Hunt and in the 1960s and the roles of collectors in Richard Adkins, and glass sculptures their subsequent development. It would by Preston Singletary are here as well. be interesting to know specifics of this Short artists’ biographies contribute to history. Because of the unexplained the book’s value as a reference. Wyatt’s role of the Spirit Wrestler Gallery in Introduction, however, is less useful. the availability, and perhaps creation His accounts of early migrations and of, the works showcased here (Isabel settlement, origins of the art form, Rorick, whose Spring Emerging Purse European contact (which focuses Bag was made for an exhibition at the on Alaska, perhaps for American gallery, is the only artist who mentions readers of this co-publication with the connection), some insight into how University of Washington Press), and Wyatt and other dealers work would even the section on contemporary be welcome as well. Perhaps Wyatt’s Northwest Coast art are perfunctory. next book will tell us more about the Most puzzling is the classification significant market that he helped to of works as Traditional, Cross- create and continues to develop, which Cultural, or Contemporary. Similar has made this useful compendium of works appear in each category and contemporary work possible. the thematic divisions seem arbitrary. Robert Davidson’s Shark Mask, for example, is classed as Traditional, Company, Crown and Colony: his comparable Dogfish Mask as Contemporary, while his Butterfly The Hudson’s Bay Company Headdress (Sdla k’amm) is for some and Territorial Endeavour in reason Cross-Cultural. While Ehwep Western Canada Syuth (To Share History and Culture) by John Marston commemorates a Stephen Royle cultural exchange with New Guinea London, UK: I.B. Tauris, 2011. and is clearly cross-cultural in imagery, 320 $115 00 materials, and intention, other works pp. . cloth. appear to have been categorized as Barry Gough Cross-Cultural because of the artists’ Victoria mixed ancestral influences. Is it imagery that has become associated with the repatriation of ancestral remains across n essence, this is a study of cultural and national boundaries that governorship, or governorships makes Davidson’s Butterfly Headdress –I Richard Blanshard to Frederick Cross-Cultural? One wonders if it Seymour, with Sir James Douglas as the was Wyatt or the artists who made the centrepiece of description. The addition categorizations. of many charts and tables lend it an My other questions concern contrasts expectant aura of historical geography. between an artist’s expressed intention The sources used are the Colonial Office and the results, the insistence on papers, the printed Parliamentary Papers elaborate symbolism, the absence of of the age, the files of the Hudson’s Bay critique, and the mechanics of the Company (hbc), and various refugia art market. Wyatt touches on the such as Roderick Finlayson’s histories establishment of the Vancouver and and accounts of Fort Victoria and the Book Reviews 173 occasional letters found in the archives Island under the charter. In fact, as of the National Maritime Museum, Galbraith explained, it had been the Greenwich. Online resources have been hbc that necessarily had to protect its used, notably shorter biographies that trading monopoly under licence and appear from the Dictionary of Canadian needed to find a way to satisfy the Biography – George Blenkinsop being Colonial Office of its suitability as a one and Robert Dunsmuir another, colonizing agent. The author accepts though that of the quizzical Walter too readily the antagonistic views of Colquhoun Grant does not appear. This James Edward Fitzgerald, but certain book shows the depth of Vancouver it is that Fitzgerald’s proposal received Island’s colonial history in documents, far more attention than it deserved. and that rich basis is a tribute to the Lacking capital, with no experience in systematic methods that Sir James colonizing remote regions, and having Stephen, the permanent undersecretary no knowledge of Aboriginal affairs or of state for the colonies, devised in the obligations, Fitzgerald was out of his years immediately preceding the grant depth even in making a suggestion of the Colony of Vancouver Island to along Wakefieldian lines. Royle’s book the hbc (13 January 1849). Although one turns so much on the personality, is hard pressed to think of documentary character, and circumstances of sources missed by the author, the Governor Blanshard that Douglas reviewer is saddened, even horrified, to is presented as a rival, which in a see the following not cited or referenced: way he was, given the financial and Richard Mackie’s extensive master’s managerial responsibilities of the thesis on the topic, John Galbraith’s latter and his reluctance to promote prodigiously important Hudson’s Bay colonization. Ancillary persons nicely Company as an Imperial Factor (1957), and enter the account, notably the Reverend the reviewer’s own Royal Navy and the Robert Staines, James Cooper, and Northwest Coast (1971) and, particularly, Edward Langford – all of them in Gunboat Frontier (1984), which examines opposition to Douglas during his Aboriginal rights, the Douglas Treaties, governorship. The rivalry of Victoria and above all – and significant to Royle’s and New Westminster as to the new discussion of Blanshard and the Fort capital on the occasion of the Union Rupert murders – the troubling events of the Colonies is covered and follows near that northern post of the hbc and conventional lines, Governor Seymour the intervention of the Royal Navy being adequately treated as far as his under Blanshard’s guidance. official papers are concerned. As a student of imperial islands as It is sad in a scholarly treatise to see so places for historical study, Royle, who many errors. There are editorial lapses is professor of island geography and – incomplete or awkward sentences. director of the Centre of Canadian There are misspellings – Herman Studies at Queen’s University Belfast, Merivale, the famed Colonial Office has written about St. Helena and undersecretary, is given incorrectly other outposts, but he does not express as “Merrivale.” British “Colombia” a strong appreciation of naval and appears at least once. The Admiral’s maritime aspects of the imperial name is Phipps Hornby. There is, sadly, story. His view is that the hbc was no bibliography, which would have been coerced by the Colonial Office in useful to future students. One would undertaking the colonization of the have liked to see some discussion of 174 bc studies the smallpox epidemic of 1862. The Blanshard was doomed from the outset. labour difficulties at Fort Rupert This book is worth close attention, not need greater analysis. Bride ships are least for the coverage it gives to the conspicuous by their absence. The Métis issues of colonial governorship. character of many of the early families is not addressed adequately, another feature reflecting lack of knowledge Gathering Places: Aboriginal of published work. These matters give and Fur Trade Histories pause for concern. This book is the first full-length Carolyn Podruchny and Laura study of the Colony of Vancouver Peers, editors Island. It adds considerably to our ubc 2010 344 knowledge of the subject. It shows an Vancouver: Press, . pp. $34 95 excellent knowledge of documentary . paper. sources, notably those of the Colonial 305 Scott P. Stephen Office ( ). Although copies of Parks Canada, Winnipeg colonial correspondence exist in the British Columbia Archives in Victoria, Royle is absolutely correct in saying cademic publishers seem to be that the originals contain nuances shying away from festschriften of interpretation that the copies in theseA days, but there are good reasons Victoria cannot provide. As he explains, for ubc Press to buck that trend with a certain in-letter would contain a this book. The long-standing academic folded-over corner upon which officials tradition of a scholar’s colleagues and would write in cramped hand their former students contributing essays views about what was happening to a volume in her or his honour in the distant colony. For instance, illustrates the web of personal and on one occasion Merivale remarked intellectual relationships that are that he found Blanshard’s complaints integral to the pursuit of knowledge against the hbc an inconvenient habit and understanding. For thirty years, – that is, a nuisance requiring more Jennifer S.H. Brown has fostered such work in Whitehall. And on the back relationships without regard to age, of a similar letter there was the wry academic training, or disciplinary request of the hbc for some other boundaries: all who have wanted to gentlemen to be recommended for the travel the path of critical inquiry have appointment as governor in Blanshard’s been welcome. And it is appropriate stead. Needless to say, the appointment that this volume should be published by went to Douglas, where, perhaps, it ubc Press, which originally published should have been placed all along. and recently reprinted Brown’s now By the way, we will never know what classic Strangers in Blood. caused the Colonial Office to shy away The articles collected here seek from Douglas’s candidacy to be made a balance between the fine details permanent, though it may be imagined of everyday life and the broader that it was Fitzgerald’s opposition brush strokes of the “big picture.” (which had considerable nuisance value The articulation and negotiation of in imperial political affairs) that led to identities are examined through the it. Fitzgerald may have had immediate meanings and uses of partially denuded satisfaction, but the effort in sending trees known as lobsticks (Carolyn Book Reviews 175

Podruchny, Frederic W. Gleach, and traditional knowledge, landscapes, Roger Roulette) and through burial material culture, and so on – to address dress and grave goods (Cory Willmott many kinds of questions. Thanks in part and Kevin Brownlee). Heidi Bohaker to recent efforts to place Aboriginal examines the social and political peoples at the centre of scholarly meanings of Anishinaabe totemic inquiry, we now “read” such evidence signatures on treaties, while Elizabeth with greater awareness of cultural Vibert explores the many meanings of and cross-cultural meanings, of issues food. Germaine Warkentin outlines of power (past and present), and of former fur trader John McDonald of the complex forms and functions of Garth’s 1857 proposal for an independent language. The sophisticated and subtle federal union of First Nations in – sometimes even intimate – ways in western North America. which the authors approach their topics The second half of the volume illustrate the opportunities for analysis addresses even more directly two issues and storytelling that these very complex that have been key to the scholarship issues have to offer. of Jennifer Brown and of many of her students. How do we know what we know (or what we think we know) about Finding a Way to the Heart: Aboriginal peoples? And how do we Feminist Writings on Aboriginal represent those peoples, both in the past and in the present? Heather Devine and and Women’s History in Canada Susan Gray discuss issues of subjectivity Robin Jarvis Brownlie and and personal relationships in research, Valerie J. Korinek, editors while Theresa Schenk, David Miller, Laura Peers, and Bob Coutts examine Winnipeg: University of Manitoba representations of Aboriginal peoples Press, 2012. 273 pp. $27.95 paper. in personal and governmental identification, in ethnographic writing, Frieda Esau Klippenstein and in public commemoration. In all Parks Canada, Winnipeg of these discussions, the boundaries between identities, between nations, s recently as forty years ago, and between categories or disciplines Sylvia Van Kirk sat in the Hudson’s emerge as complex but often quite BayA Company Archives in London and arbitrary. Brown makes the same asked a completely new question of observation in her fascinating the business papers of this iconic and afterword, in which she muses on her long-standing company: “Where are “academic ancestors.” the women?” It is difficult to imagine Only Vibert’s article on food and how audacious a question that was, identity in the fur trade deals explicitly inundated as we are today with popular with the region now known as British and scholarly works exploring virtually Columbia; about half of the articles every aspect of the topic. At the time, focus on the Anishinaabe/Ojibwa/ however, for Van Kirk to examine the Chippewa. However, all of the pieces North American fur trade in terms of have much to offer readers beyond their the roles of gender, race, identity, and specific subject matter. The contributors colonization was revolutionary, and the use many kinds of “documents” – influence of the work was pervasive. archival fonds, archaeological retrievals, How pervasive? The editors of Finding 176 bc studies a Way to the Heart effuse: “It is probably Patricia McCormack examines the impossible to acquire an undergraduate persistent fur trade society of Fort history degree in this country without Chipewyan; and Victoria Freeman encountering some of [Van Kirk’s] and Angela Wanhalla extend the writings” (8). discussion of interracial intermarriage The twelve chapters within this to the United States, New Zealand, and volume emerged from a forum in honour Australia. of Sylvia Van Kirk at the 2007 meeting This is, unabashedly, a tribute, and of the Canadian Historical Association. one that effectively portrays how Van With an eloquent introduction, editors Kirk’s career went beyond academic Robin Jarvis Brownlie and Valerie contributions to matters of the heart. J. Korinek provide historiographical The subject matter, for starters, involves context and introduce Van Kirk as the intimate relationships between advancing “the feminist project” (11). Aboriginal women and Euro-Canadian In an appropriate recognition, the traders, which are characterized largely volume’s single photo of Van Kirk as bonding sexual and social unions has her posed with her friend and of permanence and economic import. colleague Jennifer S.H. Brown at the The heart is also involved in Van Kirk’s Orkney Islands in 1990 (2). Brown working relationships with others also contributes the first chapter, an within the university world, where, with engaging description of how her paths her characteristically relational and non- crossed and intersected with Van Kirk’s competitive style, she won the respect over a period of almost four decades. of mentored grad students, academic The serendipitous meeting in 1972, the colleagues, fellows on committees, collaboration, and the dialogue between and others. University of Toronto these two path-breaking scholars gave colleague Franca Iacovetta recounts them courage in their pursuit and lessons learned from Van Kirk, noting helped shape their work. Van Kirk’s especially her patient, methodical work “Many Tender Ties”: Women in Fur- for change on committees and hiring Trade Society in Western Canada, 1670- boards. Speaking most directly on the 1870 (Winnipeg: Watson and Dwyer) theme of heart, Adele Perry speaks appeared to wide acclaim in 1980, as did of the possibilities (and pitfalls) of a Brown’s Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade personal connection with research Company Families in Indian Country subjects and sources. She describes (Vancouver: ubc Press). a “historiography that breaks your Finding a Way to the Heart is a heart” and the possibility of scholars pleasure to read and is remarkable as vulnerable, empathetic observers for the consistently high quality of within a “located, embodied, and the contributions. The chapters also empathetic scholarly practice” (81). have considerable range, most on Van Kirk demonstrated this in various work inspired by Van Kirk’s subjects ways, but especially in her passion for and methodologies. For example, the “real people” of history, which Kathryn McPherson explores colonial recently includes various prominent, societies after 1860 in terms of race mixed-race families of colonial British and gender; Katrina Srigley presents Columbia, including the Connolly- a Northern Ontario case study to Douglas family. illuminate contemporary definitions There is much here in these “feminist and expressions of Aboriginality; writings” to shake contemporary young Book Reviews 177 women out of their complacency. Even permanent settlement on the lands it that such a simple premise – that there had been granted on Vancouver Island. were women in the fur trade and that Craigflower Manor and Schoolhouse they mattered – could possibly have are now heritage sites managed by been revolutionary, begs us to question the Heritage Branch of the provincial what else our contemporary blinders Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural stop us from seeing. Resource Operations. The “Stories and Reminiscences” section of Craigflower Country provides Craigflower Country: A History personal glimpses of the farms, livestock, of View Royal, 1850-1950 cottages, characters, and First Nations people of the area – mostly from the Maureen Duffus first half of the twentieth century. Some of the storytellers were descendants First published by View Royal of the first settlers, and some spent Historical Society, 1993; Victoria: 2011 198 idyllic summer vacations with relatives Town and Gown Press, . pp. and grandparents; others stayed and $27 95 . paper. attended Craigflower School. The Deidre Simmons school bus, for some, was the milk van. Victoria A bit of a mystery to some Victorians is the site of the first sawmill established by the hbc in 1847 at the mouth of raigflower country was the what was then called Rowe Stream. area of greater Victoria between It is clearly marked on one of several theC waters of the Gorge waterway helpful maps included in the text. The and Esquimalt Harbour. Today it is stream flowing into the northwest end within the town of View Royal, to the of Esquimalt Harbour is now called northwest of the city. “Craigflower” Millstream, but the sawmill, with was the name of the Puget’s Sound its later addition of a flour mill, has Agricultural Company farm established long since disappeared into the coastal 1853 by Governor James Douglas in rainforest. It was vital until 1860, with to provide fresh farm produce to lumber being shipped from Esquimalt the nearby Hudson’s Bay Company Harbour to Victoria and California. post at Fort Victoria. It also helped The area where the mill was located provision the naval establishment was also approached by the trail that at Esquimalt. It was one of three ran inland to Victoria and later became farms (and later four) operated by the the Island Highway. A bridge was built company in the area. Craigflower was over the “stream” near the mill by one of 1853 1866 successfully farmed from to the millwrights, who also built a hotel by Kenneth McKenzie, twenty-two at the location. Parson’s Hotel became farm labourers, and their families, well known as a way station and a pub, who arrived together from Scotland the oldest in the province: Six Mile Pub. Norman Morison on the under five-year Another pub, closer to Craigflower and contracts with the company. With the near the centre of town of View Royal, fur trade fading and competition for was the Four Mile Pub, which started land rights from the United States, the life as a coaching stop. Both are still hbc was being directed by the Colonial in operation to provide focal points for Office in England to encourage visits to the area. 178 bc studies

Maureen Duffus prepared the first in 1886, he extended it south to Russell’s edition of Craigflower Country in Station in Victoria West and north to his 1993 to acknowledge the upcoming coalmine at Wellington. Immediately, sesquicentennial of the purchase people in Victoria petitioned for an of land by Douglas by treaty with extension from Victoria West, and the Songhees First Nation in 1850. on 29 March 1888 a passenger train The second edition is enhanced with rolled across the swing bridge and additional photographs, better-quality into downtown Victoria for the first paper, and updates to the text and time. The Victoria Colonist called it “a format. Her research and personal red letter day in Victoria’s history – a memories add to the reminiscences day always to be remembered.” Daily of current and former residents to passenger service started at Wellington provide a comprehensive exploration of near Nanaimo in the morning and a residential area that built up along the headed south, crossing around Cobble rocky shoreline of Esquimalt Harbour Hill with the passenger train heading and on either side of the highway, which north from Victoria. This service was for many years was the only access to up- everything people wish for today. Island. Local histories such as the ones Donald MacLachlan’s popular Duffus has written (A Most Unusual narrative of the E&N concentrates Colony: Vancouver Island, 1849-1860; Old on the working history of the railway. Langford: An Illustrated History, 1850- Although he discusses the constitutional 1950; and Beyond the Blue Bridge: Stories controversies surrounding its from Esquimalt) provide the reader with establishment – the 1871 Terms of an intimate and educational exploration Union between British Columbia of familiar territory. and Canada required the completion of a railway to the Pacific seaboard – his focus is on the early day-to-day The Esquimalt & Nanaimo operations. MacLachlan’s own private Railway: The Dunsmuir Years, experience as a lifetime employee of the E&N, alongside that of his father 1884-1905 and brother, coupled with his use of Donald F. MacLachlan rare dispatcher’s records and invaluable personal communications, creates an Victoria: British Columbia Railway intimately detailed history. He fills Historical Association, 2012. First his stories with the names and careers published 1986, Sono Nis Press. of engineers, conductors, and even 168 pp. $29.95 paper. baggage handlers. He has organized this Bruce Hodding account along topical lines suggesting a working and intimate history, such as Victoria “Survey and Construction,” “Weather, High Water, and Wreck,” and “E&N riginally, Robert Dunsmuir, Presidents and Other Personalities.” Othe founder of the Esquimalt Regarding MacLachlan’s discussion of & Nanaimo Railway (E&N), had the birth of the City of Duncan because 47 intended the southern terminus to be of the railway station ( ), I am able to Esquimalt and the northern terminus to add from my own research that Chief be Nanaimo, as the name suggests, but Charlie Quitqarten of Somena, who before he had completed construction addressed Prime Minister Sir John Book Reviews 179

A. Macdonald, wanted the station at telling history. Within three months of “Duncan’s” to benefit his own people. its official launch, David Wong’s Escape Anyone interested in the history of the to Gold Mountain: A Graphic History of E&N, Vancouver Island, or Canadian the Chinese in North America made the railways in general should read this bestseller list of the Association of Book book. Publishers of British Columbia and the A work of this type has, of top seller position in three Amazon.ca course, certain inherent drawbacks. categories. Wong joins a growing list MacLachlan makes no attempt to of talented artists, including Chester place the history of the E&N within a Brown (Louis Riel: A Comic Strip larger interpretive framework, whether Biography) and Willow Dawson (Hyenas of labour, railway, or Canadian history. in Petticoats: The Story of Suffragette Despite a short bibliography, the book Nellie McClung), who have published lacks documentation and footnotes, their interpretations of Canadian but perhaps it is unfair to expect this history in panels of illustration and of a non-academic work aimed at a minimalist text. Alyson King has local audience. The many wonderful recently pointed out that graphic photographs benefit from the book’s texts convey history differently from size, but, oddly, the designer has placed written texts because they forefront quotations in shaded boxes so that they “the physicality of actions, subjects 1 appear to be sidebars rather than part and events.” As such, graphic texts of the main text. can be a more efficient way to convey In 2011, the E&N discontinued to readers the highly complex premise passenger service because of the that historical knowledge is embedded condition of the railway, but it expects in materiality. This is particularly to restore passenger service some time useful in telling histories of racism later this year. We can only hope and oppression, where experience is that the E&N will also restore daily tantamount to finding the balance passenger service in the morning between acknowledging oppression heading south into Victoria as well as and attributing agency to the subjects north from Victoria, as the schedule was of that oppression. originally established. Escape to Gold Mountain offers a historically accurate, albeit selective, account of keystone events in the history Escape to Gold Mountain: A of the Chinese in North America, 170 Graphic History of the Chinese in which spans years. The author describes his work as “a fictional story North America … based on facts” (11). Wong has taken David H.T. Wong creative liberties to weave a biographical story that follows three generations of Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, one family’s journey in North America 2012. 256 pp. $19.95 paper. through this chronology. Nonetheless, LiLynn Wan the story is set in a rich and carefully researched historical context, the Dalhousie University

1 raphic texts are becoming Alyson King, “Cartooning History: increasingly popular as a way of Canada’s Stories in Graphic Novels,” G History Teacher 45, 2 (2012): 212. 180 bc studies bulk of which is presented visually, of the Japanese in Victoria before through images. The meaning that the Second World War. With their these images can convey is immense, expulsion in 1942, their history was and it is refreshing to see Chinese forgotten, but it has now been revived people in the past portrayed in such a and can be savoured with the publication human fashion. Most of the images of of this book. the early Chinese in North America Excellent general histories of that exist in the archives – many of the Japanese in Canada have been which Wong has cleverly incorporated written by Ken Adachi, Roy Ito, into his own illustrations – are, in one and Toyo Takata, and studies are way or another, distorted by a colonial available for Chemainus, Cumberland, lens. When these are the only images of Mission, Vancouver’s Powell Street, the past that we see, even in a carefully and elsewhere, but this is the first contextualized academic context, they comprehensive history of the Japanese can become normalized. To be able to in Victoria, which predated Vancouver visually follow the characters in Escape as the main gateway to Asia. The to Gold Mountain through more than Switzers left no stone unturned. They two hundred pages as fully formed interviewed former residents, friends, and central actors in history is a highly and relatives. They corresponded by entertaining and enjoyable step towards post and e-mail, conducted phone decolonizing our history. In addition interviews, read old newspapers in to being of wide popular appeal to both English and Japanese, and visited audiences of all ages, this book will archives, libraries, and individuals make an excellent teaching tool in in their homes. With numerous high schools and universities when documents, anecdotes, and black- used in conjunction with appropriate and-white photographs, the Switzers supporting material. establish their claim that Victoria was Canada’s first Japanese community. This book, a clear and definitive history Gateway to Promise: Canada’s of the Japanese community in Victoria, First Japanese Community is also a pleasure to read. Unlike Vancouver, Victoria had no Ann-Lee Switzer and “Japan Town.” The Japanese were not Gordon Switzer concentrated in any particular area but lived in various districts of Greater 2012 396 Victoria: Ti-Jean Press, . pp. Victoria. Their occupations included $29 95 . paper. farmer, teahouse owner, merchant, boat builder, and fisher. Victoria’s Masako Fukawa and 150 Stanley Fukawa Ross Bay Cemetery, where the Japanese pioneers are buried, reflects Burnaby this integration: unlike cemeteries in Vancouver, Prince Rupert, Nanaimo, he authors, Ann-Lee Switzer Cumberland, and Chemainus, there is Tand Gordon Switzer, are both no section specifically designated for historians and writers with an interest Japanese graves. in the Japanese-Canadian experience. The first section, “History: Japanese Gateway to Promise: Canada’s First in Victoria,” provides an overview of Japanese Community is a rich history local, provincial, and international Book Reviews 181 events that affected the Japanese in accounts of twenty-one families and an Victoria. Chapters 8 to 17, “Public additional eighteen shorter sketches of Space: The Japanese Influence,” present former residents. None of the 273 pre-war specific topics, such as the non-Japanese Japanese residents returned to Victoria. residents who befriended the Japanese, It would have made a storybook the role of the Christian churches, ending had the Switzers been able to the sports teams, the planting of the declare that Victoria-born Toyo Takata, cherry trees, and the first shipment of eldest son of the family that built and mikan (Japanese oranges) to Canada. operated the Japanese tea garden, Of particular interest is the search for had decided to return to the city he Manzo Nagano as the first Japanese loved. Takata visited from Toronto at immigrant. Or was he? We also learn every opportunity before his death in that First World War veterans were 2002 due to his love for the classmates exempt from evacuation (115) and from his Esquimalt schooldays, but that Mikuni Point on Saturna Island not even he moved back. Those who was named for Victoria entrepreneur left Victoria unexpectedly in 1942, like Kisuke Mikuni, who was listed on a Takata, found themselves exposed, in voter’s list. The authors do not reveal, the rest of Canada, to communities however, if the list was for a municipal that were not as rabidly anti-Japanese or a provincial election (132). as were those in the Pacific province. Powell Street in Vancouver, which BC politicians almost succeeded in boasted Japan Town, was a destination leading the Canadian government to for all things Japanese before the ethnically cleanse the province of all war, and, since 1977, it has celebrated Japanese (“No Japs from the Rockies annually with the Powell Street to the Sea” was the slogan of federal Festival. Less known is the fact that cabinet minister Ian Mackenzie). the tycoon Shinkichi Tamura, who Many who moved to eastern Canada established the Japan-Canada Trust learned that they did not have to build and Savings Company and the New up individual relationships to overcome World Hotel, which is still standing an “inferior” racial status; rather, they in Vancouver, had his beginnings in were granted a social status that was Victoria working for Charles Gabriel, based more on their occupational a friend of the Japanese. And although qualifications. Some Japanese vowed Hide Hyodo Shimizu is remembered never to set foot in British Columbia as the first Japanese Canadian to be again, and they died upholding their hired, in 1926, to teach in a public vow. Some questioned the intelligence school in British Columbia, Annie of those who returned to British Kiku Nakabayashi graduated from Columbia, where they felt racism the Victoria Normal School five years continued to keep their people down. earlier and was appointed as a teacher The influx of Japanese to Victoria in for public school education in the recent years suggests that times have church-run Oriental Home. In 1942, changed and that there is now, in the the Oriental Home was closed and its twenty-first century, less racism to eighteen Japanese children and two contend with than there was in the women sent to a church boarding home twentieth century. in Assiniboia, Saskatchewan (144). The The Switzers have written with last section, entitled “Private Space: warmth and humour about everything Family Stories,” contains detailed they uncovered about the Japanese 182 bc studies in Victoria, including a recipe for daughters, Sarjit and Jackie, went on the cake served at the Japanese Tea to become pioneering Indo-Canadian Garden (200). What is missing in this doctors who fulfilled their parents’ readable and enjoyable book is an index, dream of creating a hospital in their which would have been most helpful maternal ancestral village of Aur, in in locating the many nuggets that the the Punjab. reader might want to retrieve. A meticulous researcher par excellence, Johnston once again draws upon his voluminous knowledge of Jewels of the Qila: The pertinent primary source materials, Remarkable Story of an Indo- including family memoirs, newspaper and magazine accounts, and Canadian Family photographs. He also dips into his Hugh J.M. Johnston own archive, including transcripts of interviews, which he has gathered Vancouver: ubc Press, 2011. 332 pp. and collected from within Vancouver’s $32.95 paper. Punjabi community over four decades. Ali Kazimi He graciously acknowledges building on the research of his friend and York University community historian Sarji Singh Jagpal’s landmark Becoming Canadian: ewels of the Qila: The Remarkable Story Pioneer Sikhs in Their Own Words Jof an Indo-Canadian Family, finds (Harbour Publishing, 1994) and on the Hugh Johnston, the leading expert research of his own graduate students on early South Asian migration to at Simon Fraser University. Canada, on familiar terrain. This time While the book moves chronologically, Johnston provides a rare familial and Johnston deftly weaves personal stories social history of Kapoor Singh Siddoo, of historical characters associated with a Sikh man whose rise from a penniless the Siddoos into his main narrative, immigrant in 1907 to lumber magnate and he moves back and forth in time in British Columbia is pieced together with these smaller stories. Jewels of the in a sprawling century-long narrative. Qila is a rich and engrossing history Unlike most of his Punjabi compatriots that sheds light on the nature of who arrived in early twentieth-century interactions within the community as British Columbia, Kapoor was well well as those with white Canadians. educated and fluent in English. He It is the latter that I found particularly used his familiarity with Anglo culture fascinating: stories of Anglo-Canadians and his innate business acumen to who rose above the widespread racism negotiate “the extreme prejudice and of the time and became employers, discrimination that he and other South colleagues, employees, and good Asians faced” (2). Systemically racist friends. A few fair-minded bureaucrats immigration laws kept the community and politicians also provided support. to less than two thousand people, and Our much-vaunted Canadian values of few women were allowed. Kapoor and tolerance and human rights are found his wife were apart for sixteen years, in these uncommon individuals whose until 1923, yet their deep cultural and support and friendship made the lives religious values allowed them to rebuild of a beleaguered community tolerable. their family. Their bright and tenacious Johnston has done a great service by Book Reviews 183 naming and bringing to light the impact Epidemic Encounters: Influenza, of these extraordinary white Canadians. Society, and Culture in Canada, Johnston locates Kapoor and his 1918-20 fellow Punjabis squarely as settlers and pioneers, albeit on the margins Magda Fahrni and of the white settler state. By placing Esyllt Jones, editors this narrative within a nation-building Vancouver: ubc Press, 2012. 204 pp. framework, the book avoids dealing $34 95 with the flip side of this process – the . paper colonization and displacement of First Megan J. Davies Nations. Nor does it offer any insight York University into how Kapoor, who was committed to freeing British India, felt about pidemics Canada’s colonial process. Naming call out the ambulance- and acknowledging this paradox would chaser in all of us, and for health require an entirely different paradigm. historians,E there is none more attention- 1918 20 Moreover, with little critique of the grabbing than the - influenza family or its values, the book veers pandemic, mistakenly dubbed the towards the celebratory. And while we “Spanish Flu,” the only infectious do learn of their stoic perseverance, we disease to stop the Stanley Cup playoffs. never learn how anyone in the family or In my second year introductory community felt about the daily slights course on health, I use epidemics as of racism that Johnston acknowledges a topic for my first lecture, tracing a they endured. broad historical brush from the Black sars 1918 20 Johnston has again paved the way for Death to . But it is the - flu more personal histories to be produced that anchors the class. Why is this? within, and documented for, the South Because the disease illustrates the Asian diaspora in Canada. One emerges multiple facets of global pandemics that from the book with a feeling of having are so comprehensively covered in this been deeply immersed in an epic multi- fine volume: the role of the state; the generational drama that spans three professional picture; civic engagement generations, extends from the colonial with disease; the impact on families; to the postcolonial era, and moves the way in which infectious illness effectively between Canada and India. intersects with place, class, ethnicity, and gender; and the emotional terrain of sudden, unexpected death. The introduction, written by editors Magda Fahrni and Esyllt Jones, is a wonderfully comprehensive and thoughtful overview of the topic, set in national and global contexts. The chapter authors – historians, health geographers, and medical anthropologists – provide a range of interpretations and perspectives on the pandemic. Epidemic Encounters is thus a welcome Canadian contribution to a 184 bc studies burgeoning international scholarship in Mali is undermining efforts to thwart on the 1918-20 influenza epidemic. the spread of Guinea worm disease, a Some of the topics covered in this terrible parasitic infection. We should wide-ranging collection cover aspects of be following such stories and thinking the epidemic familiar to most Canadian about them in context. In this fashion, health historians: the shortages of the chapters in Epidemic Encounters hospital space and professional nursing serve as a useful set of cautionary care, the closure of churches and movie tales in the age of sars, Avian Flu, theatres, and the use of home folk political unrest, and growing global and remedies in the face of limited medical domestic inequality. responses. But importantly, Epidemic Encounters also provides careful micro- histories that debunk accepted ideas The Amazing Foot Race of 1921: about the pandemic as a “democratic” Halifax to Vancouver in 134 Days illness. D. Ann Herring and Ellen Korol’s meticulous mapping of the Shirley Jean Roll Tucker epidemic’s path through the City of Victoria: Heritage House, 2011. 224 Hamilton, for example, demonstrates $19 95 the unequal social and economic pp. . paper. impact of the opportunistic disease. PearlAnn Reichwein Similarly, Karen Slonim employs the University of Alberta concept of syndemics to demonstrate how the legacies of colonialism facilitated the rapid and devastating hree teams left Halifax in a spread of the flu through vulnerable 5866 km (3,645 mile) pedestrian Aboriginal populations. Epidemic raceT to Vancouver in 1921. Amateur disease, like serious accidents, leaves the sportsman Charles Burkman was first survivors trying to find sense in trauma to head west on 17 January, followed and tragedy. This work of “making a few days later by Jack and Clifford meaning” of the train wreck of illness Behan, a father-and-son team. Two – a process poorly understood by most weeks later, Frank and Jenny Dill who formulate health care delivery – joined the race. This book unabashedly is the focus of chapters by Esyllt Jones frames the race as “a made-in-Canada and Mary-Ellen Kelm. Sources for the adventure story with genuine Canuck study of the influenza epidemic as a heroes,” yet boastful promotion from cultural event will never be adequate the transcontinental marathoners to the task at hand, but the effort to holds much in common with trash- interrogate the void between public talking athletes. Colin Howell has forgetting and private grief is to be highlighted interwar sports in Nova commended. Scotia’s Atlantic borderlands with New Do I recommend that BC Studies England, such as the Bluenose’s races readers pick up this book? I think for the Halifax Herald’s International they should, but not because of the Fishermen’s Trophy in competitions BC content; rather, I follow medical initiated in 1920. The trophy races and historian Charles Rosenberg’s argument the transcontinental hike flourished that epidemics reveal the fault lines of a together as media events in postwar society. I am reminded here of a recent Canadian sports nationalism, yet this newspaper article detailing how warfare background related to the foot race Book Reviews 185 sponsored by the Herald is overlooked. often operating outside a national sports The hike also positioned British media mill fed by the Halifax Herald. Columbia as a distal Pacific border. Vancouver was the scene of the big Hikers traversed Canada westbound finish in June 1921. The Behans were first along railway lines, while their reports crossing the line, but the Dills placed to newspapers, fuelled by the Halifax an unbelievable first for the shortest Herald, circulated nationally. Raging number of days to reach the Pacific. winter storms, cougar attacks, wolves, All records were smashed. Athletic and near misses with locomotives were Burkman was beaten but rose to a published as staples of epic travel, along surprise new challenge at the end of the with generous home-cooked meals, race – a rematch walk from Montreal footsore nights, and hockey games. to Halifax. Along with public acclaim, Their stories were retold to listeners – the hikers faced financial hardships on in telegraph shacks, churches, ymcas, their return home. More epilogue and Kiwanis clubs, and even on Parliament citation would extend research use of Hill – as the currency of travel. Mayors, this readable book, which recaptures sportsmen, MPs, veterans, and ladies’ the news archives and drama of an aid societies embraced the racers who amazing race. “described minutely and vividly every feature of the hike” (202). Racers hoped to best Beresford Who Killed Janet Smith? 1895 Greatland’s record. Adding sizzle Edward Starkins to newspapers sales, sports writers praised Burkman for his handsome Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2011. 404 physique and Jenny Dill as a “plucky” pp. $24.00 paper. young heroine. Pace, strategy, and health were key factors in the marathon. John McLaren The Dills gradually gained from the University of Victoria back of the pack, driven by the resolute Jenny, who dared to race with her n late 1924 husband. July in a house in British Columbia’s role as a national Ithe upper-crust neighbourhood of terminus emerges throughout the Shaughnessy Heights, Vancouver, story. It first appears as an impossible around midday, a Scots nursemaid was marathon goal, then, in a push to the found dead in the basement by the Pacific, it becomes the finish line of a Chinese “house boy” Wing Fong Sing. coast-to-coast sports narrative. Racers She had a gunshot wound to the head stopped at cpr stations at Hector on and serious fragmentation of the right the Great Divide and, at Walhachin on side of her skull. In a comedy of errors of the Thompson River, were welcomed Keystone Kops proportions, members by local railway agents who were of the diminutive Point Grey Police Maritimers. On the stretch west from Force, in a thoroughly incompetent the Rockies, fatigued hikers found examination of the corpus delicti and of fewer free meals and less hospitality the location of the body, hastily jumped among Interior British Columbians to the conclusion that Janet Smith had who were, presumably, like their rural committed suicide. Moreover, through francophone Quebecois counterparts, a miscommunication, the body was sent to a funeral home where it was 186 bc studies embalmed rather than to the city until then a rising star in the firmament mortuary for a post-mortem. With of provincial Liberal politics. this inauspicious start, and the social, Using the various stages of the political, and cultural turmoil that criminal justice process, the author would surround the case, as well as the provides a detailed and clear narrative profound disagreement that existed on of the human background of the case the cause of death, the justice system and its roller coaster progress. In doing proved unavailing in its attempts – so, he highlights the social, political, assuming the Attorney General’s and economic climate in which the Department was correct in believing story unfolded, and the roles of the this to be a case of murder – to identify various groups and interests who both the culprit or culprits. reacted to it and kept it alive. We As Ed Starkins demonstrates in his learn of the immigrant community book (a reissue, under the banner of (especially the Scots and the United the City of Vancouver’s Legacy Book Council of Scottish Societies), which Project, of a work originally published was fired by the belief that Smith was in 1984), the death of Janet Smith has either murdered by Sing or was the lasting historical importance because of victim of an upper-class conspiracy what it reveals about the political, social, associated with drug dealing and use; economic, and legal realities of British of the elite Baker family, the owners Columbia and, especially, Vancouver of the house in Shaughnessy, and their during the 1920s. For one interested, as wealthy friends who were concerned is Starkins, in putting the facts of the to stay out of the spotlight, claiming Smith case into their broader context, that the deceased had shot herself by its byzantine twists and turns provide accident; of the Chinese community, a rich record of events, institutional on the receiving end of the endemic dynamics, individual and community and widespread racism of the time, attitudes and prejudices, and human which was anxious to protect one of frailties. During the year and a half its own; of the newspapers, given, that the case was in the public gaze it at best, to speculation rather than produced no less than: two coroner’s sound investigative journalism and, inquests; one exhumation and a belated at worst, to yellow journalism of the post-mortem; two abductions of Sing deepest dye; of a balkanized policing by private detectives (in what look system (more fragmented than today), like instances of domestic rendition); in which the line between detection preliminary hearings on four separate and vigilantism was easily crossed and kidnapping charges against the rough justice handed out in order to gumshoes, Point Grey police officers, secure confessions; of a political arena, commission members, a newspaper party-based but fissured as leading editor, and even a special prosecutor, politicians jockeyed for position; and of and three resulting trials; a preliminary a prosecutorial system, despite its claims hearing and grand jury investigation of professionalism and competency, into a charge of murder against Sing; capable of egregious manipulation (in and a trial of the newspaper editor on a this case charging a man with murder charge of criminal libel. Its coils were to entwine and ruin the political career of Attorney General Alexander Manson, Book Reviews 187 in order to lead to the real culprit) as in each chapter, rather than footnotes, desperation at lack of progress set in.2 is unfortunate for the reader who Starkins has written an engaging might well be interested in following and well-crafted popular social history up detailed aspects of the narrative. of Vancouver during the ostensibly Those scholarly criticisms aside, this hopeful, materially buoyant “flapper is a very worthwhile and informative era” between the end of the slaughter case study, one that is likely to keep of the Great War and the onset of the the conundrum in the title alive and to Depression. He reveals the serious encourage further research on the topic. fault lines and profound anxieties And who did kill Janet Smith and of a community emerging in this why? Despite the author’s attempt to decade from both its recent frontier follow up as many leads as he could past and a costly war and becoming a find, the answers remains elusive. settled North American city. The social Despite the presence of a smoking historical analysis is not invariably gun, whose hand pressed the trigger profound as it glosses over detail and is still a mystery, although in an context that a social historian would updated afterword Starkins warms to consider important (e.g., the fuller one explanation – an explanation that pattern of discriminatory legislation should remain, for now, a mystery. and regulation against the Chinese and other Asian immigrants, and the more precise character and effects of Bluebacks and Silver Brights: economic inequalities and class division A Lifetime in the BC Fisheries in the latter years of Vancouver’s gilded age). On the legal side the systematic from Bounty to Plunder use of the word “attorney” in place Norman Safarik with of “lawyer,” “solicitor,” “barrister,” or “counsel” grates with a Canadian Allan Safarik reader. The narrative, which is full of Toronto: ecw Press, 2012. 382 pp. detail, begins to wear on the reader as $22.95 paper. the book runs to four hundred pages. This might have argued in favour of Kenneth Campbell being more concise in relating the Victoria story and of including a chronological list or diary of major events as well or sixty years the Campbell as a dramatis personae of the major FAvenue fish dock on Burrard Inlet players in this complex human tale. was the hub of Vancouver’s fishing The use of short bibliographical notes industry, home to numerous fish plants, smokehouses, and floats where the boats

2 tied up. The Safarik family business, Nineteen twenty-four proved to be an Vancouver Shellfish and Fish Company, annus horribilis for the Attorney General’s Department. The death of Peter Vasilevich or simply Van Shell, was the first tenant Verigin, the Lordly, the first leader of the and one of the last to go. For most of Canadian Doukhobors, in October of that those years, Norman Safarik worked year in an explosion on the Kettle Valley among the fishers, plant workers, big Railway remains, like the Smith case, company executives, and fish buyers. unresolved. Police investigative bungling Bluebacks and Silver Brights was a contributing factor in that case, too. is See www.canadianmysteries.ca. a collaboration between Norman 188 bc studies

Safarik and his son Allan, a poet in a fish deal or to get revenge for a bad whose publications include the recent transaction. collection of west coast poems entitled A second thread, woven through The Day Is a Cold Grey Stone (Hagios the stories of hard work and crazy Press, 2010). Norman, after retiring escapades, is a serious environmental in his eighties, began to record his message. (The publishers classify the memories in longhand. Through a book as Environmental Conservation lively process, which Allan describes and Protection rather than as British in his Preface, they worked together Columbia History.) Behind the to complete this decade-long project. anecdotes lies a profound sense of loss The result is a successful alliance of not only of the diversity of products Norman’s vivid recollection of his harvested from the sea but also of the experiences at Van Shell and Allan’s quality available to us. Much of what subtle structuring of his father’s stories. we find in the fish market today, says Many of Safarik’s tales feature Safarik, is “only really fit for the bin” the memorable personalities who (32). frequented the waterfront. The book, The Gulf of Georgia, once rich with though loosely chronological, is built cod and salmon, is today “a barren sea,” around these intriguing characters, and Safarik reflects on the reasons for giving rise to many of the chapter titles, this. “After working in the fishing such as “The California Con Man” and industry every day for over sixty years,” “The King of Fishmongers.” he concludes, “I believe the loss of our Of note are the stories about the great resource can be attributed to a lack ground fisheries, from the trawlers of feed for the major food fish species. that caught the cod, halibut, and other Frankly, there are not enough herring ground fish, to the buying, pricing, and around” (32-33). processing at the plant, and, finally, to There are plenty of published sales to local peddlers and high-end memoirs of British Columbia’s fishing fishmongers. Safarik also deals with industry, but none quite like this. Most other ocean resources that passed are told by the fishers and generally focus through Van Shell’s plant, including on the salmon fishery. Safarik, however, clams, crabs, sturgeon, dogfish, and brings a unique insight into the diverse herring as well as the salmon species fisheries that British Columbia’s coastal featured in the book’s title (bluebacks waters once sustained and the people are sockeye, while silver brights are who caught, processed, and bought the chum). ocean resources. A thread running through the memoir is the ongoing tension between the small companies like Van Shell and the big players – particularly BC Packers, which had a plant on the dock – and with federal fisheries officers. “It was no secret in the industry,” writes Safarik, “that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was almost an adjunct of the big companies” (309). Some of the most tensely paced stories are of one side trying to better the other Book Reviews 189

A Wilder West: Rodeo in the late nineteenth and early twentieth Western Canada centuries, especially in the United Mary-Ellen Kelm States, where they represented a popular pantomime of frontier settlement. The ubc 2011 312 Calgary Stampede (which began in Vancouver: Press, . pp. 1912 $24.95 paper. ) was modelled after them, but it was also made up of rodeo events that J. Edward Chamberlin were inherited from ranching, the staple Halfmoon Bay economy of local (and increasingly, with the collapse of the buffalo herds) tribal communities in the Canadian his is a book about people in small west. Kelm outlines when and how Ttowns in the west and the rodeos rodeo became more regulated and that have provided ways to negotiate eventually more professional, mirroring their complex social, economic, and changes in other sports and requiring cultural relationships with each other performers to be on the road for nearly and with the animals that are part as long as their forebears, the old-time of their ranching heritage. These cowboys. And she is clear that, while rodeos celebrated the values of both some of the impulses behind rodeo individualism and community; and they were colonial, they were as often as not represented a fusion of work and play in matched by values that were communal. which horses have always been central, Performers (in the first half century of beginning several thousand years ago rodeo) came to rodeo primarily from on the steppes of Asia. The legacy of the ranches of the region and included this is with us well beyond rodeo for not only cowboys of British heritage horses are the only animal to take part but also Hispanic gauchos and vaqueros with humans in the modern Olympics, from Argentina and Mexico as well as which began about the same time as African Americans, who made up a the rodeos that Mary-Ellen Kelm talks quarter of the cowboys on the western about. And equestrian events are the plains after the American Civil War only ones in which women compete (and, incidentally, composed many of on an equal footing – or seating – with its best known songs, such as the old men. standard “Riding Old Paint,” the last Kelm outlines the ways in which song to be played at dances in rodeo rodeo performed many of the dynamics country when I was growing up). And of gender and race and class that shaped contrary to a myth that Kelm nicely (or warped) western communities, and deconstructs, many of these rodeo although her book is at times overloaded cowboys were in fact Indians – hardly with postcolonial jargon, hearing Judith surprising, when you think about it, Butler and Homi Bhabba quoted in a since the Aboriginal peoples of the book about rodeo provides its own kind plains constituted one of the great horse of entertainment. Kelm’s account is cultures of the world, rivalling those rich with details about the community of the Asian steppes and the Arabian organization of rodeos in Alberta and desert. The winner of the bucking British Columbia, which offered a bronco competition at the first Calgary welcome and affordable alternative to Stampede was Tom Three Persons, a the large-scale extravagances of the Kainai (Blood) Indian of the Blackfoot touring wild west shows that decorated Confederacy. And this was only the 190 bc studies beginning of his success as well as that specific events at a typical rodeo. of many Aboriginal men and women Among other things, this would who also provided much of the skilled have consolidated its connection labour on ranches in those years on the with ranching and have qualified Prairies and in the foothills of Alberta. the fashionable commentary (which Kelm dates the beginning of Kelm, to her credit, takes up uneasily) institutionalized local rodeo early in regarding the supposed performance the twentieth century, but the events of masculinity. It would have made it that came to constitute rodeo were obvious that a successful rodeo cowboy played out considerably earlier. For has to have a gymnast’s balance and a instance, in the spring of 1885 the dancer’s timing, with a sensitive and biggest round-up that the Canadian sensible understanding of animals, for west had ever seen got under way, rodeo performers are never as strong gathering cattle from the open range or as fast as the animals they ride – just south of Calgary all the way down and when it comes to horses, seldom as to the Montana border. This was the smart. beginning of the “beef bonanza” of the The best of the rodeo cowboys were 1880s, when cattle companies attracted very good horsemen, and they needed the same kind of interest as “high-tech” good horses, bred to the conditions stocks did in the 1990s. In 1881, there and challenges of the range, with the were nine thousand cattle in the whole intelligence to understand what cattle of the North-West Territories. By 1886, were going to do before they did it, the there were 100,000 in the grasslands of stamina to work long hours in all kind the foothills alone; and by the turn of of conditions, and a sense of balance the twentieth century, there were half and timing (which is mirrored in rodeo a million. The cowboys and Indians at events). Breeding cow ponies therefore that big round-up, and at others that played a significant role in the business followed, would certainly have taken of ranching; and, as rodeo came into its time to show off their skills and to test own, so did breeding rodeo stock. And the skills of others; rodeos, after all, rodeo country took pride in its best, were a round-up for the cowboys as with horses (and later, bulls) celebrated well as the cattle. My grandfather (John for their performances almost as much Cowdry) was living in Fort Macleod as the riders. So when a horse named in 1885, right at the heart of it all, and Midnight, bred in southern Alberta, he told about regular bucking-horse became the greatest bucking horse of and calf-roping competitions out on the day, the entire west took notice. the range. By the time he became the Midnight was a horse that no one first mayor of the newly incorporated could ride – not even the renowned Macleod in 1892, the competitions – Pete Knight, who tried four times not necessarily always advertised as (probably chuckling over their names rodeos but including most of their as he picked himself up off the ground). events – were part of seasonal activities, Kelm writes about Knight, chronicling with the horsemen of the North-West his remarkable career and its sad end in Mounted Police watching on – and, 1937, when he was stomped on by a bronc when they moved into ranching after and died at a rodeo in California. His their indenture was over, taking part. passing was commemorated all round It would have been useful to have rodeo country, just as Midnight’s had included a bit more description of been when he died a year earlier. Both Book Reviews 191 the famous rider and the infamous horse Flyover continues Harris’s trademark were celebrated in song and story. large-size book style with many The best rodeo announcers, some arresting photographs, several of them rodeo cowboys, and a few of those full page. Harris describes the book’s sitting around the bucking chute make purpose as “photographing a visual rappers sound tongue-tied, combining narrative of the aviation industry and the nonchalant intensity of a poet legacy in the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast” with the quick wit of a comedian, (5), while also capitalizing on a new all the while ready for a sudden turn vertical viewpoint for his photographs: into serious trouble, for rodeo is a “I loved the aerial perspective for the dangerous workplace and playground. different way of seeing: fresh, new, So I would like to have heard more of inspiring, and invigorating. Most of Kelm’s conversations with participants my flying time was spent searching for in contemporary rodeo, knowing their those decisive moments when subject delight in language. But the hard matter and light unite to form beauty” (7). work and hard travelling that she put The excellent visual quality extends into this book is its own image of the Harris’s reputation as one of British dedication to craft that is rodeo; and she Columbia’s outstanding outdoor opens up its story in western Canada photographers. Rich in colour and with insight, new information, and detail, the photographs provide an fascinating photographs. When she excellent perspective on this vast and speaks in her own voice, and gives us thinly populated region of British the voices of the people about whom she Columbia. In a section called “Beauty in is writing, her book brings rodeo and an Unknown Landscape” (170-81), Harris western Canada to life. describes some novel photographic techniques he employed. “By shooting downwards and eliminating the Flyover: British Columbia’s horizon, I had lost all understanding of the landscape … What I wanted Cariboo Chilcotin Coast – to do with this landscape was invite An Aviation Legacy people into the images, to look deeply at the form, colours and textures, and be Chris Harris and Sage 180 Birchwater visually stimulated and intrigued” ( ). Since this is one of the strong elements 105 Mile Ranch: Country Light of the book, making it more than just a geographical record of the area, Harris Publishing, 2012. 224 pp. $39.95 might have included this section on paper. photographic technique earlier. In Jay Sherwood a concluding section, Harris writes: Vancouver “I searched for a way to portray to the world the land’s vastness, remoteness, and beauty, the very elements that drove n his latest publication, Chris these pilots to fly there in the first place” Harris views the Cariboo, Chilcotin, (208). However, the dominant motif andI Coast region of south central British in the photographs is summer and Columbia, the base for his numerous blue sky. With almost no photographs books, from a new perspective derived taken in wintry or stormy weather, from a series of flights over the region. the book lacks a sense of the variety 192 bc studies of weather and seasons. Moreover, the attention to how its economy and social book contains very few photographs of geography were shaped by different the airplanes that transport people to kinds of transportation, from sailing places where they work or live. vessels and trails to wagon roads and But Flyover is not just a book of railways. However, automobiles and the photographs. It contains more text roads they travel along have generally than Harris’s previous books, much been neglected. Daniel Francis’s new of it provided by Sage Birchwater, book about the province’s trucking long-time Williams Lake resident industry is intended for a popular and author, who interviewed several audience; nevertheless, it makes a pioneer pilots to derive the aviation valuable contribution to the literature history of the area. He also outlines on this oft-overlooked aspect of the the prominent aviation families and province’s modern history. the role of aviation, both airplanes and The only previous book-length helicopters, in the Cariboo, Chilcotin, study on this topic is Andy Craig’s and Coast today. While Birchwater’s Trucking: A History of Trucking in British text includes interesting historical Columbia since 1900 (1977), which is narrative, there are only a couple of mostly a retired truck driver’s personal historical photographs, making it more reminiscence about the period between difficult to get a sense of the aviation 1930 and 1960. Francis’s book helps fill legacy that is the book’s subtitle. The out our understanding of that period, second half of Flyover contains chapters but it is especially valuable regarding on the role of aviation in the region’s the period between 1950 and 1990. industry; but, again, the photographs It draws on a wide range of secondary are all contemporary. In the last part and primary sources, including articles, of the book the text consists mainly of theses, websites, government reports, short sections on a variety of topics that industry journals, and a series of do not relate closely to the photographs. interviews Francis conducted with Despite some shortcomings in Harris’s people who have been involved in photographs and Birchwater’s text, British Columbia’s trucking industry. Flyover provides an innovative and There are no citations, but a useful intriguing perspective on British bibliography is included and the reader Columbia’s Cariboo Chilcotin Coast. usually gets a good sense of which sources are being drawn upon. To call this book “lavishly illustrated” would be Trucking in British Columbia: an understatement for there are fewer than a dozen pages without some kind An Illustrated History of picture on them. Daniel Francis The focus is primarily on long- distance freight hauling, with occasional Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, sections about truck logging and urban 2012. 208 pp. $39.95 cloth. delivery trucks. A chapter about the Ben Bradley province’s highway network since the turn of the last century is followed by University of Toronto a chapter outlining the evolution of truck and trailer technologies. British istorians of British Columbia Columbia is rarely thought of as a place Hhave devoted considerable where automobiles were produced, Book Reviews 193 but Francis draws attention to British mystery. Similarly, Francis identifies Columbia-based truck manufacturers the 1950 national railway strike as an like Hayes and Western Star. Chap- important catalyst for the growth ter 4 is about the work of trucking. It of the trucking industry in western emphasizes the difficult conditions Canada but, thereafter, says little encountered when driving in British about competition between railways Columbia, including long, steep grades and truckers for the province’s freight and wildly varying climatic conditions. market. Truck driving, Francis shows, has This book belongs in the library typically involved working alone and of anyone who is interested in the spending extended periods away from economic and business history of home. However, questions about pay twentieth-century British Columbia. and working conditions are not pursued Francis has done an admirable job in depth, and unions like the Teamsters of balancing popular appeal with a are only touched on briefly. Coming scholarly approach, and students of after chapters about difficult roads British Columbia will findTrucking and powerful machines, this chapter in British Columbia an engaging and reads a bit like a celebration, valorizing informative read. truck drivers as archetypal “rugged individualists.” The last three chapters are about the Liquor, Lust and the Law: The 5 trucking business. Chapter describes Story of Vancouver’s Legendary some of British Columbia’s biggest and longest-lasting family-owned trucking Penthouse Nightclub companies. Chapter 6 outlines the Aaron Chapman various associations that carriers formed in order to advance their interests – Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, for example, lobbying the provincial 2012. 272 pp. $24.95 paper. government for better roads and Vanessa Colantonio modifications to the licensing system. Chapter 7 is about the regulation and Vancouver deregulation of British Columbia’s trucking industry, with the British p until now, local venue histories Columbia Motor Carrier Commission have not been in great supply. taking centre stage. Francis does not ShouldU they become a trend among BC shy away from some of the industry’s historians, Aaron Chapman’s Liquor, problems in these chapters, like the Lust and the Law may be seen as a widely publicized rash of deadly pioneering effort. As much a family accidents that occurred during the 1990s story (of the Fillipones, founders on the heels of deregulation. However, and owners) as it is a history of the even though the book is not meant to Penthouse Nightclub in downtown be a critical business history, this reader Vancouver, this book has a warmth that hoped to learn more about the nature of many local history books lack. competition within British Columbia’s Liquor, Lust and the Law is the end trucking industry. Companies are product of many years of research – repeatedly shown absorbing or merging the Fillipone family kept an extensive with other companies, but how and why archive of photos, notes, newspaper this was the case is left something of a articles, and memorabilia – and is also 194 bc studies based on interviews with many of the A much different and arguably players, including current Penthouse more subdued venue reopened in early heir Danny Fillipone and various 2012, with local indie band shows and members of the liquor and vice squads community events. Are the Penthouse’s from the venue’s days battling for an best years behind it or have they yet to alcohol licence (1960s) and arguing in happen? Once again, Chapman leaves court against the Crown’s charges of us to see for ourselves. running a common bawdy house (1970s). Chapman gives us a rare glimpse of Vancouver’s mid-twentieth-century In the Mind of a Mountie nightlife, including the major jazz acts and Hollywood celebrities T.M. “Scotty” Gardiner coming through town, such as Oscar Victoria: Agio Publishing House, Peterson, Duke Ellington, the Mills 2010 680 $31.95 Brothers, Frank Sinatra, Vincent . pp. paper. Price, Errol Flynn, and others. They Bonnie Reilly Schmidt played or appeared at places such as Simon Fraser University the Commodore Ballroom, the Cave Supper Club, and the Orpheum, and then retired to the Penthouse for .M. “Scotty” Gardiner’s memoir, drinks and, in the very early days, a In the Mind of a Mountie, fits jam session or, years later, a floorshow. nicelyT into the genre of heroic Mountie Chapman features candid photos literature that has enjoyed a popular of celebrities visiting the Penthouse readership since the late nineteenth alongside Fillipone family portraits century. Gardiner, who served with – an appropriate pairing considering the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that this clandestine space was a (rcmp) at a number of postings across combination of family guest parlour Canada between 1952 and 1983, offers a and Hollywood hangout. We witness highly readable account of his career the struggles and ups and downs of the as a Mountie, as members of the rcmp Penthouse business and the strains on are colloquially known. This lengthy the Fillipones’ marriage. Later, with memoir (680 pages) is based on events the untimely deaths of most of the men culled from his diaries and police behind the business, we seem to witness notebooks. The material is organized the passing of some golden era. into 131 short chapters, each featuring 2011 Then there is the late fire, a specific theme, event, character, or which could have spelled the end of crime. The narrative is supported by a the club, but Chapman depicts, almost number of photographs and crime scene tenderly, the phoenix-like rebirth of sketches to illustrate that Mounties, the Penthouse. The author should be as the popular saying goes, always get commended here, and throughout the their man. book, for narrating with a light touch: Gardiner’s recollections as a rookie he stands back and lets Danny Fillipone police officer at his first posting in describe the death and resurrection of Manitoba, where general duty officers the Penthouse as he might that of a handled all types of investigations, loved one saved from the brink by some provides the most engaging reading. miracle. These stories range from murder investigations, bank robberies, and Book Reviews 195 cockfights to seizing stills, transporting factor Gardiner fails to acknowledge. prisoners, and investigating the theft of Gardiner also omits any reference to the gold bars from the Winnipeg airport. hiring of women (and married men) for They are peopled with colourful the first time in 1974, one of the most characters from small towns who taught pronounced and controversial changes Gardiner the value of using common to the rcmp during his service. In spite sense when dealing with civilians, who of his status as a commissioned officer often aided the police in solving crime. at the time, he does not mention his As the years progressed, Gardiner also interactions with female police officers discovered that effective police work under his command. was sometimes the result of chance and In general, Gardiner avoids good luck. This was the case with the commenting on the inner workings Samarkanda, a ship that was carrying of the rcmp and the politics of police thirty-two tonnes of marijuana to culture, with one exception. In the Canada from Mexico in 1979. Gardiner, final chapter, he refers to a paper who was the commanding officer in he wrote for the rcmp in 1974 that charge of the investigation, recalled warned of a growing lack of self- that, as the ship’s crew was off-loading discipline and personal integrity among bales of cannabis in a deserted inlet the leadership, a circumstance that on Vancouver Island, they failed to would ultimately lead to “a creeping notice that the tide was going out. lessening in our code of conduct” (654). Their miscalculation of tidal changes Gardiner sees his original call for a stranded them and their cargo on the return to self-discipline as a solution shore, resulting in the largest drug to the rcmp’s current problems, a seizure in Canada at the time. response some readers may find to be There was a darker side to life an outdated and simplistic approach as an rcmp officer, however, that to the many complex issues the force Gardiner does not address, particularly is currently experiencing. Despite the the long hours of work, marriage lack of a comprehensive and balanced restrictions, poor pay, alcoholism, analysis, Gardiner never sets out to multiple transfers, and uncompensated write anything more than a narrative overtime. For example, Gardiner filled with engaging stories about his describes “the country shift” as a two- time as an rcmp officer. His memoir week period during which officers often delivers just what the title suggests: a worked twenty-hour days policing rural glimpse into the mind of a Mountie. communities with little or no sleep. He sidesteps these questionable safety hazards in which the rcmp expected its men to engage, commenting only that it was an enjoyable experience (61). In fact, it was the rcmp’s insistence on continuing these practices that sparked a great deal of labour strife over working conditions for a younger generation of Mounties. Indeed, thousands of Mounties began to organize across the country for the right to form a union in 1973 as a result of these policies, a 196 bc studies

Pinboy first chapter we never go back inside George Bowering the bowling alley; instead, the book is spent largely outdoors under the baking Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2012. Okanagan sun. We learn a lot about 320 pp. $29.95 cloth. summer life in the orchards picking apples and peaches and hiking in the David Tracey dry hills looking out for rattlesnakes Vancouver and cactus. The action may be hot and sweaty from the fruit picking or inboy is a tender account of an occasional sexual encounter, but the P adolescent penis growing up in scenery is often lovely and a worthy the South Okanagan around 1950. evocation of the region. Because it is attached to a gawky, Bowering is also deft at describing bright, funny boy who loved reading the landscapes of the bodies of the enough to carry cowboy novels or women fuelling his physical obsessions: sports magazines in the back pocket his girlfriend, the daughter of a British of his corduroys, and because that boy orchard owner; an enigmatic classmate grew up to be the first Poet Laureate who mistakes Bowering’s noble interest of Canada, naturally we’re interested. for voyeurism (but may be right after A tad daunted, perhaps, if we’ve all); and a teacher with a short, wide, never read him, because isn’t a Poet but nonetheless muscular body that is Laureate supposed to get all erudite and athletic enough to be alluring. overwrought and determined to wrench A master of self-deprecation, even the deepest significance out of what about his own writing, Bowering’s might seem like everyday occurrences style as a memoirist is often to step to us lesser attuned beings? back from the scene he’s about to Thankfully, not when it’s British depict to explain his own reluctance or Columbia’s own George Bowering, inability to capture what it was really as fiercely democratic a literary artist like. This is especially so for the sexual as you could hope to find. He may be episodes in which he dawdles on the the author of dozens of books, winner page, then tells us he’s dawdling, then of two Governor General’s Literary finally gets into the juicy details of the Awards, and an Officer of the Order encounter. “Well, I have to tell you that of Canada, but you can leave your I don’t have any power of imagination,” dictionary on the shelf and settle in for he warns us early on: “I am not re- an amiable tale full of nostalgia and creating any of this stuff. I think it all 23 humour. A tale not just about a penis, happened” ( ). of course, although it seems that way, That may be so. And George given its prominence in the life of a Bowering may be the only boy in fifteen-year-old trying to be a good boy history to be ordered to read aloud a while a hormonal tide floods within Wordsworth poem on Dionysian rites him. while his teacher introduces him to The title refers to one of Bowering’s fellatio. I am ready to believe it, just odd jobs as a “skinny, hopeless jerk” as I’m ready to believe the rest, as he setting pins in the Oliver Bowling navigates the tricky path to sexual Lanes while secretly ogling the bodies maturity and embarks on an adulthood of the female customers, including some in which words and feelings would serve of his teachers. Curiously, after the him very well. The formative years Book Reviews 197 surely helped him develop the skills the same time, to write her life story necessary to write a book recapturing in a way that was appealing to a reader a time long gone in ways that still ring interested in chronological sequence true. It’s the best kind of nostalgia – and in how Page’s life’s work as a writer the kind that makes you think wistfully and visual artist meshed with her life’s back on your own fifteen-year-old life. events. It would not work if the author were not As Sandra Djwa brings out this still infused with some of that teenager’s first and fascinating biography of verve and decency and wit. The boy is P.K. Page, she locates the question of still very much a part of the man, and Page’s identity in diverse contexts: in we’re all the better off for it. the exciting social history of Canada through a time of two world wars and much change, especially in the lives Journey with No Maps: and careers of women; in the evolution A Life of P.K. Page of modernism among Canadian writers and artists; and in the global setting of Sandra Djwa humanity in the space age. The biography is the product of more Montreal and Kingston: McGill- than a decade of work, following Page’s Queens University Press, 2012. 424 $39 95 invitation to Djwa to undertake the pp. . cloth. project in 1996. Much earlier, however, 1970 Barbara Colebrook Peace in , the relationship of friendship Victoria and mutual trust between the two women had its beginnings when Djwa, a professor of English at Simon Fraser “ ho am I,” asks the narrator University, invited Page to read to her Win an early poem, “Arras,” by students. It is evident that even before P.K. Page, “or, who am I become...?” she undertook the project, there had (144). It’s a question Page was to return been many years of listening on Djwa’s to many times in both her literary part, at a very deep level, to Page’s work. and visual art. But it wasn’t a simple Page gave her biographer carte blanche: question the way Page posed it, and it “you would be free to interpret as you didn’t make possible a simple answer. see fit.” 286( ). She gave her extensive Page’s thinking about herself and her interviews and complete access to identity was not the usual sort: she was documents: correspondence, diaries, not asking the question simply to try to journals, early manuscripts, personal situate herself as a woman, a Canadian, and family photographs, and images of or an ambassador’s wife, or, indeed, as a her visual art. It was a great act of trust, poet, a writer, or an artist. Rather, she especially when one considers that, was asking how “I” bring something throughout her work, Page expressed a into being, asking who is the self who fear of containment. Would she be, in engages in perception, asking about a sense, confined, defined, limited by the multiple selves, asking about the the biography? relation of the temporal self to eternity, I think Sandra Djwa’s greatest asking about the individual spirit in achievement in this biography is that relation to the unmapped infinite. The she does the opposite of confining her challenge for her biographer was to subject. Instead, by her scrupulous meet Page in that inquiry and yet, at opening of the story to the larger 198 bc studies

questions Page was posing; by her I come away from the book with sympathetic, non-judgmental and non- many new insights into Page’s life and intrusive style of narration; and by work. It is much to Djwa’s credit that her frequent inclusion of many voices, she did meet the challenge of engaging especially Page’s own voice, she brings with Page’s evolving philosophy, her about a book that opens door after door questions about perception and the in our understanding of Page’s essential self, and her Sufism. Admirably, she being and her life’s work. manages to do this at the same time This biography is outstanding for as sustaining the reader’s interest the amount of meticulous research in the story of Page’s life, keeping Djwa put into it: the “Notes to Pages” it suspenseful and engaging on an section at the end of the book alone emotional level. One knew from Page’s runs to fifty-two pages and, together poetry that she had known heartbreak. with the comprehensive bibliography But because her life was externally so and index, forms about a quarter of the successful, the surprise for the reader book’s length. The way she substantiates may be to discover how much Page the stories with documentary evidence had to overcome, her loneliness and gives the reader total confidence in discouragement, and her need to find a the factual accuracy of the narrative. way with no maps. Here is a biography Moreover, in matters of interpretation that is moving, thought-provoking, and – psychological, literary, or artistic visually stunning – one that succeeds in – Djwa’s strategy of transparency loving the questions themselves. in laying out the evidence (often “Who am I / or who am I become...?” interviews or correspondence with The fact that Page’s poem “Planet Page) gives the reader the chance to see Earth” was chosen to be put into space the basis for her view. by the United Nations is testament to One of the interesting features of the the fact that she became someone who biography is the way in which Djwa grew beyond the borders of British explores Page’s autobiographical and Columbia or Canada. This timely semi-autobiographical writings. She biography will help readers remember brings her own observations, enters her and will deepen our understanding into dialogue with Page, and fills in of her life and work. It deserves to some gaps in the story where Page said find an international readership and to little: for example, her relationship endure as a fascinating story of one of with F.R. Scott or the fact that she the great poets of the twentieth century. did not have children. The result is a It is pleasant to imagine that some book that contains a wealth of hitherto day, someone in space, in the vast and unpublished aspects of Page’s life and unmapped universe, may be reading her work. The reader becomes much more work – indeed, may be consulting this aware of the struggles Page faced and very biography. overcame. All this is handled with tact, compassion, and respect. Djwa adds to this her erudition as a professor of literature, some insightful close readings of Page’s poems, and an ability to place the writings within the context of Page’s life story – something that is original and unprecedented. Book Reviews 199

Patriot Hearts: Inside the window onto the administration and Olympics That Changed a promotion of sport as a global capitalist Country enterprise and as a nationalist mission. The main characters in the story are not John Furlong with Gary Mason the athletes themselves, although many are given enthusiastic recognition. The Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2011 344 $32 95 main characters are the builders of the . pp. . cloth. Games – a huge cast of Canadian and international sports administrators, sponsors, corporation presidents, media Bob Lenarduzzi: A Canadian executives, politicians, entertainment Soccer Story impresarios, and thousands of Bob Lenarduzzi and Jim Taylor volunteers. Furlong is both generous in acknowledging the contributions vanoc Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, of ’s many partners and blunt in identifying perceived weakness and 2011. 224 pp. 40 b&w photos. $28.95 error. He is particularly aggrieved by cloth. some of the media coverage, which, from the author’s perspective, turned glitches into national disasters. A Season to Remember: The Furlong takes us into the high- Vancouver Canucks’ Incredible pressure world of sports administration 40th Year at this level: a complex management process is undertaken in a fish bowl, Grant Kerr under the intense and unforgiving gaze of media, politicians, and taxpayers. Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, The ceo is trying to coordinate a 2011. 232 pp. 60 colour photos. vast array of unstable elements, each $19.95 paper. with its own agenda: international Eric W. Sager sports federations, the International University of Victoria Olympic Committee, the Canadian Olympic Committee, three levels of government, television corporations, his ohn Furlong’s book is neither an own management team, and an element Jautobiography nor a history of the beyond human control but requiring 2010 Winter Olympics. It is a personal rapid remedial efforts nonetheless – ceo memoir by the of the Vancouver the weather. This is a world ruled by Organizing Committee for the Games events both unexpected and tragic. vanoc ( ), written with the assistance The ceo can cope with a symphony of journalist Gary Mason. Since it orchestra that refuses to perform and is not an autobiography, the account even a hydraulic arm that fails during of Furlong’s life and career before he the opening ceremonies. He can do became involved in the bid for the nothing to soften the grief following Olympics is brief (a mere twenty-nine the death of an athlete in a training run pages), focusing mainly on his youthful on the luge course. enthusiasm for sports prior to his For the historian of the future emigration from Ireland to Canada. who attempts to write a history of The memoir offers a highly selective these Games, or the history of sport 200 bc studies as capitalist enterprise in the early number of participants, allows itself twenty-first century, this book will no discursive claim to identity with the be a valuable primary source. For nation. Lenarduzzi has never claimed what it includes and what it omits, to touch the soul of Canada; he played Furlong’s account is deeply revealing. football, he coached and managed The Cultural Olympiad merits a mere teams, and he promoted his sport. two paragraphs (254-55). The importance Yet he tells us much more than does of Aboriginal construction companies Furlong about the world of professional is acknowledged, but Furlong ignores athletes and the commitment that the role of Aboriginal leaders in the participation can inspire; and his sport initiation of the bid for the Games, and has as much to tell us about Canada and readers learn nothing about the debates our sports culture as does athletics or over the Games’ appropriation of hockey. Aboriginal cultural images. Protesters “I will talk soccer with anyone” (9), appear briefly, but one hears nothing Lenarduzzi tells us, and so he shares of the debates they unleashed over stories that are “too heartwarming and ballooning security costs, the Sea- funny to be locked away in memories” to-Sky Highway, Vancouver’s notorious (10). There was Willie Johnston, who levels of poverty and homelessness, and once preceded a corner kick by buying whether or not low-cost housing would a greenhouse from a nearby fan; and be a Games legacy. The naysayers are Robbie Campbell, who dumped his either silenced or briefly caricatured, unwanted pasta behind Lenarduzzi’s their opposition drowned out by the mother’s stereo speakers; and the tsunami of Canadian patriotism that Whitecaps’ coach, who blamed the sustains Furlong and guides his vision team’s slump on the “poisonous” effect for the Games. “The Olympics That of sex. There are larger stories too, born Changed a Country,” trumpets the of their time and place: the game in book’s title. “Our mission was to touch St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1985, at the soul of the country,” declares its which the Canadian team defeated author (96). Hyperbole, to be sure; Honduras and earned a place in the but perhaps no lesser motives can World Cup finals; and the last game explain the commitment, individual ever played by a Canadian team at the and collective, that allowed this project World Cup, which fans back home to occur. Furlong’s book is valuable could not watch because the television not least because it is testimony to the broadcast was pre-empted by Sesame power of sport to equate itself with Street; and the World Cup qualifying national interest and national identity. matches at Swangard Stadium, where Bob Lenarduzzi’s Canadian Soccer the majority of the crowd cheered for Story, when read together with the visiting team. Furlong’s memoir, offers a reminder Lenarduzzi takes us from the original of the peculiar historical impact of Whitecaps of the North American capitalist sport and its alliance with Soccer League, to the Vancouver 86ers media capitalism in Canada. Where of the Canadian Soccer League, to the a Winter Olympics or an ice hockey new Whitecaps of Major League Soccer final can saturate the media and claim in our own time. He is a genial and witty to represent “patriot hearts,” the most guide, but humour evaporates when he popular team sport in the world, comes to analyze the sorry condition of and also in Canada in terms of the the men’s national program today, the Book Reviews 201 structural problems of the Canadian Soccer Association, and our amateurish approach to player development. While our American neighbours invest vast sums in a campaign to win the World Cup, Canadians take themselves out of the world’s major sports event and do not even seem to care. The women’s program offers more hope, grounded in both numbers and an unparalleled history of dedication and determination. But here, too, Lenarduzzi’s analysis is sobering: the needs are the same as for the men’s program. “If we stand still, we’re doomed” (199). Lenarduzzi gives us a very enjoyable read, some cogent analysis of the state of his sport, and a very Canadian story. Grant Kerr, journalist and hockey coach, has produced a fine gift book for fans of the Vancouver Canucks. If you want an expert guide to the team, the players, and their progress through the 2010-11 season, here it is. If you want an account of the riots in Vancouver that followed defeat to the Boston Bruins, or if you want any insight into the dysfunctional corporate cartel that dominates this sport at the professional level, look elsewhere. This is a book for fans, beautifully illustrated and well produced, as one has come to expect from Harbour Publishing. Here are three very Canadian sports books, each with its own merits. Preferences will vary, but if I had to choose a pleasurable read, I would take the memoirs of the Italian-Canadian kid from East Vancouver who became one of Canada’s finest soccer players.