YOUR FREE GUIDE TO BOOKS & AUTHORS CANNABIS CANN LIT Amanda Siebert on marijuana 13 BC BOOK PRIZES BC Seven winners 7 FOOD CO-OPS BOOKWORLD Jon Steinman deconstructs your VOL. 33 • NO. 2 • Summer 2019 dinner plate 11 TURNING OVER A NEW PAGE

Introducing the new publisher of BC BookWorld, Beverly Cramp Page 5

WOLVES Fear & loathing throughout history 20-21 REPLACING THE INDIAN ACT Bob Joseph & his unlikely bestseller 23 TIED IN KNOTS Circumnavigating Vancouver Island 18 YASUKO THANH AROUND B.C. Her harrowing tale of street life 17 • Atlin • Victoria • Squamish • Port Alberni • Downtown Eastside 3-5

Illustration by Emilia Schettino

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2 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 AROUNDBC Downtown Eastside

ere in this Trumpish era of self-glorifi- cation, people measure their value by Facebook followers. Many persuade themselves they are progressive by advertising their moral superiority H in tweets—as if that constitutes a social action. Libby Davies is from a different era. Never mind that she can now be viewed as Canada’s first openly lesbian MP. From age nineteen onward, inspired by politicians Harry Rankin and Bruce Eriksen—with whom she later had a son—Davies worked tirelessly as a city councillor for Van- couver’s Downtown Eastside, running for mayor in 1993. In Outside In: A Political Memoir (Between the Lines $26,95), she says her biggest challenge as an MP, serving as Jack Layton’s House leader, was always maintaining “At the end of the her stalwart activism within her community, working day, like many of you, with the likes of Downtown Eastside poet/activist Bud Osborn to help establish the Insite safe injection site way love, work, and back in 2003. wanting a better world As a city councillor from 1982 to 1993, and as an NDP is what I strive for.” MP for Vancouver East from 1997 to 2015, Davies rolled LIBBY DAVIES up her sleeves, talked to people face-to-face, and did stuff,

with perseverance and integrity and no-bullshit idealism, PHOTO non-stop. BERSON Libby Davies never made herself into the story—not

until she retired. 978-1-77113-445-3 JOSHUA Port Squamish Alberni

he last major book on Salish uring his fifteen years as a weaving, by Paula Gustafson, reporter for the Alberni Valley Times, Shayne Morrow was in was published in 1980. Since D T Port Alberni in 1966 when the lifeless then, retired Canadian Museum curator body of eleven-year-old Jessica States Leslie H. Tepper and Janice George was found in the woods, beaten, after she had somehow disappeared while chas- (Squamish hereditary chief, Chepximiya ing foul balls at a local fast-pitch game. Siyam) have travelled to many countries Nineteen years earlier, twelve-year-old to visit museums housing Salish blan- Carolyn Lee had been abducted and murdered in Port Alberni while walking kets and together developed resources home from her dance class. Lee’s mur- that have helped revive Salish weaving. derer was not found. Willard (Buddy) Joseph (Skwet- While covering the States case, Mor- row had close access to investigators and simltexw), who is also Squamish, comes scientists who also took a renewed inter- from a long line of Salish weavers, and est in the Lee case, partly due to emerging he has worked for many years with DNA technology. Were the two murders linked? As Mor- Janice George to help revitalize the skills row reveals in of weaving. When they started in 2004, The Bulldog and only one Squamish weaver remained in the Helix: DNA and the Pur- the community of Squamish. Since then, suit of Justice the pair has taught over 2,500 weavers. in a Frontier Now Salish Blankets: Robes of Pro- Town (Heritage $22.95), Gurmit tection and Transformation, Symbols Singh Dillon was of Wealth by Leslie H. Tepper, Janice convicted of the George, and Willard Joseph (University murder of Caro- lyn Lee in 1998; then Roderick Patten of Nebraska Press $40) has accompanied was arrested a year later for the murder a UBC Museum of Anthropology exhibit of Jessica States. featuring ten Salish blankets from the Since 2011, Shayne Morrow has worked as a freelance writer for Ha- 1800s, loaned from museums around Shilth-Sa, the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal the world, with more than two dozen Council news service, and the publication Windspeaker modern Salish weavings. 9780803296923 Ray and Noelle Natraoro wrapped in Salish-weaved wedding blanket. . He has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. 9781772032505

3 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 Make reading an adventureTake your this Orca summer! books outside

9781459820708 • $10.95 BB 9781459814325 • $19.95 HC 9781459819924 • $29.95 HC  “A joyful, affi rming, pride-fi lled read.” “Infectiously delightful.” “Immersive.” —Kirkus, starred review —Kirkus —Quill & Quire

9781459822115 • $19.95 HC 9781459820913 • $19.95 HC 9781459817272 • $6.95 PB  “A playful marvel.” “A handy resource.”  “A beautifully written —Kirkus, starred review —Booklist page-turner about belonging.” —Kirkus, starred review

9781459816794 • $10.95 PB 9781459816916 • $19.95 HC “An engaging novel about “An intriguing book.” family relationships.” —Booklist —CM: Canadian Review of Materials

4 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 PHOTO Victoria BC TOP AROUNDBC

KORTSALO Unions matter

PIIA SELLERS s we all go digital, society barely Abats an eye as unionization of the J. Duane Sept workplace declines, and more and more Common Wildflowers of workers are hired under contract, with the Pacific Northwest no job security and few benefits. (Sandhill $14.95) Hence judges have selected On the Line: A History of the British Co- Eve Joseph lumbia Labour Movement (Harbour Quarrels (Anvil Press $18) $44.95) by Rod Mickleburgh as this year’s winner of the George Ryga Award Ian McAllister for Social Awareness. It reminds British & Alex Van Tol Columbians how integral trade union- Great Bear Rainforest: ism has been for social progress. A Giant-Screen Having documented the history of Adventure in the Land Canada’s most volatile and progressive of the Spirit Bear provincial labour force, Mickleburgh

(Orca $29.95) received the 15th Ryga Award in April

e at the new sxweŋxw ŋ t ŋ xee w James Jane Reid Bay Library branch, in Victoria. Freshly Picked: Runners-up were Chelene Knight A Locavore’s Love for Dear Current Occupant and Sarah Affair with BC’s Bounty Cox for Breaching the Peace: The Site (Caitlin $26) C Dam and a Valley’s Stand Against Big Hydro. David Starr Judges for the Ryga Award were Like Joyful Tears professor and author Trevor Carolan, (Ronsdale Press $18.95) Joe Fortes Library branch manager Ann Hui Jane Curry and Beverly Cramp. Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada’s A new phase begins Chinese Restaurants After 33 years, this publication has (D&M $24.95) its second publisher—me. Jon Steinman I’ve been working with Alan Kate Harris has won Twigg and designer David Lester Grocery Story the $30,000 RBC since I was executive director of the The Promise of Food Taylor Prize for BC Book Prizes in the late 1990s. Co-ops in the Age of Lands of Lost Borders: ▼ Along the way, I’ve worked almost Grocery Giants Out of Bounds on (New Society $19.99) exclusively as a freelance arts jour- the Silk Road. nalist in Vancouver, written several George Garrett books and edited a First Nations George Garrett: newspaper. Intrepid Reporter BC Book- (Harbour $26.95) World is a well- Atlin loved, widely- Iona Whishaw From Mars to Marco read marvel. PHOTO

A Deceptive Devotion: It’s lively and A Lane Winslow Mystery nable to realize her child- for literary non-fiction. non-elitist—the

(Touchwood Editions $16.95) SAWCHUK envy of other hood dream of travel- Not very many first-time authors get ling to Mars, Kate blurbage from the likes of Pico Iyer (“It’s provinces. It Charles Ulrich LAURA will remain Harris decided to a modern classic.”) and Barry Lopez, but Beverly Cramp The Big Note: A Guide that way, as trace Marco Polo’s then not very many can claim they live off to the Recordings of Frank the most important cog in the Zappa (New Star $45) Silk Road by bicycle the grid, outside of Atlin, on the Yukon U infrastructure that supports the in 2011, accompanied border, next to a glacier. These days Kate Larry Beasley B.C. book industry—according to by her childhood friend Melissa Yule. Harris resides with her partner in a tiny the Canadian Centre for Studies in Vancouverism A film called Cycling Silk documented cabin with solar panels–-when she’s not Publishing. (UBC Press $39.95) their ten months of travel, pedalling ten reporting on UN environmental negotia- I was born and raised in the B.C. M.A.C. Farrant thousand kilometres through ten coun- tions for the International Institute for Interior, so I will make sure these The Great Happiness tries, avoiding land mines, rock slides Sustainable Development or writing for pages are never Vancouver-centric or Victoria-centric. I will represent (Talonbooks $14.95) and prostrate pilgrims. Canadian Geographic Travel. the breadth of literary activity in To enter Tibet, they disguised them- Kate Harris has a degree in science Angela Crocker the province, as always, and I’ll selves as androgynous Chinese cyclists. from MIT, and in the history of science Vicki McLeod continue to have some fun doing it. & Harris’ first book, Lands of Lost Bor- from Oxford where she studied as a It is a great privilege to take Digital Legacy Plan: ders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road Rhodes scholar. over as the main gatekeeper for A Guide to the Personal the always enlightening deluge of and Practical Elements (Knopf $29.95), recalls her adventures The other B.C. finalists for the 18th new books for, by and about British of Your Digital Life in Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakh- RBC Taylor Prize were, Just Let Me Look Columbians and our province. Before You Die stan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan (the poorest at You: On Fatherhood by Bill Gaston; 35 My loyalty will be, first and fore- (Self-Counsel Press $19.95) ‘stan’ of them all), Kyryzstan, Afghani- Pieces: A Memoir in Music by Ian Hamp- most, to you, the reader. stan, Nepal, Tibet and China—leading ton; Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age — Beverly Cramp to her $30,000 2019 RBC Taylor Prize by Darrel J. McLeod. 9780345816771

Publication Mail Agreement #40010086 bookworld@telus.net Return undeliverable Canadian Annual subscription: $25 BC addresses to: BC BookWorld, 926 West 15th Ave., Vancouver, BC Canada V5Z 1R9 Contributing Editors: John Moore, BOOKWORLD Joan Givner, Mark Forsythe, We gratefully acknowledge the unobtrusive Produced with the sponsorship of Cherie Thiessen, Caroline Woodward. assistance of Canada Council, a continu- Summer 2019 Pacific BookWorld News Society. Writing not otherwise credited is by staff. ous partner since 1988, and creativeBC, a Volume 33 • Number 2 Publications Mail provincial partner since 2014. Registration No. 7800. Design: Get-to-the-Point Graphics Publisher: Vicki BC BookWorld ISSN: 1701-5405 McLeod Beverly Cramp Consultants: Christine Rondeau, Advertising & editorial: Sharon Jackson, Kenneth Li The current topselling titles from Editor/Production: BC BookWorld, 926 West 15th Ave., Photographer: Laura Sawchuk major BC publishing companies, In-Kind Supporters: in no particular order. David Lester Vancouver, BC Canada V5Z 1R9 Proofreader: Wendy Atkinson Simon Fraser University Library; Tel: 604-736-4011 Deliveries: Ken Reid, Acculogix Vancouver Public Library; UBC Library.

5 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 NATIONAL BESTSELLER

THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT THE INDIAN ACT

Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality NEW RELEASE

BOB JOSEPH

Congratulations to Bob Joseph, INSIGHTS, TIPS & SUGGESTIONS TO MAKE winner of the Bill RECONCILIATION A REALITY

BOB JOSEPH WITH CYNTHIA F. JOSEPH Duthie Booksellers’ AUTHOR OF THE BESTSELLER 21 THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT THE INDIAN ACT Choice Award

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See finalist books, tour photos, and more at www.bcbookprizes.ca

6 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 PHOTO

YAP BCBOOK PRIZES MELVIN Celebrating enrichment, engagement &

enragement BY BEVERLY CRAMP Hubert▼ Evans Non-Fiction Prize winner Lindsay Wong (above) will Ian Boothby and Nina Matsumoto also be among the 23 authors appearing at the Festival of the Writ- won the Christie Harris Illustrated nder rejuvenating ten Arts at Sechelt, August 15-18, along with Ethel Wilson Fiction Children’s Literature Prize for Sparks management from Prize winner Eden Robinson. Event host Shelagh Rogers at far right. (Scholastic), about a friendship be- Sean Cranbury tween an inventor named August who is and Sharon Brad- by Choy afterwards and he graciously (Nightwood Editions), Laisha Rosnau afraid of the outdoors and a pilot named ley, the BC Book told her he was proud of her. “He never said, “I didn’t prepare anything. I told Charlie who fears nothing. Prizes received an forgot me and read all my books,” says everyone I wouldn’t win because I’m in Presented to both an author and a additional boost Lee. “Every day of my life I think about such great company.” Rosnau singled B.C. publishing house for exceptional from the flexible and congenial host- what kind of author I want to be. I’m out her publisher Silas White saying, initiative, the last prize of the evening, U the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice, was ing of CBC’s Shelagh Rogers, who inspired by Wayson and the kindness “This is mine and Silas’ fourth time at easily smoothed the way for the 35th he represented.” the rodeo. Nightwood and [its affiliate] awarded to author Bob Joseph and annual gala. When presenting the Sheila A. Egoff Harbour are such amazing safe har- Page Two Books, a hybrid publisher, “There is so much good stuff being Children’s Literature Prize to Susin bours for Canadian writers.” represented by both Jesse Finkelstein produced in this province,” she said. Nielsen for No Fixed Address (Pen- For contributing most to the enjoy- and Trena White, for 21 Things You “What you do enriches, engages and guin Random House), UBC chair of the ment and understanding of the prov- May Not Know About the Indian Act, enrages.” Master of Arts in Children’s Literature ince, the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional in concert with Indigenous Relations The most popular winner appeared program Judith Saltman said, “The Prize went to the story of ordinary Press. [see review page 23] to be Lindsay Wong for The Woo Woo best teacher of children’s emotional lit- citizens standing up to B.C.’s most Joseph did not attend but sent a (Arsenal Pulp), recipient of the Hubert eracy and educated imagination is not expensive megaproject, Breaching the message: “Who knew a book about the Evans Non-Fiction Prize for her mem- the screen but children’s literature.” Peace: The Site C Dam and a Valley’s Indian Act could be a bestseller? … We oir about growing up with a paranoid Nielsen’s story is about a boy and Stand against Big Hydro (UBC Press / hope that the Government of Canada schizophrenic grandmother and a his single mother who must live out of On Point Press). “I think the only other will get the message to get rid of this mother who was terrified of the “woo- a camper van due to the high cost of thing I’ve won [before this],” said author archaic and colonial Act and put us on woo,” family slang for Chinese ghosts housing in Vancouver. He keeps their Sarah Cox, “was a box of peanut brittle the righteous path to reconciliation. who visit in times of personal turmoil. place of residence a secret. “I wrote this in Grade Two.” When we get there, you’ll be able to Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize pre- partly out of the rage I felt about what The Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for share in the knowledge that you made senter Jen Sookfong Lee took time to was happening in Vancouver,” Nielsen the best work of fiction went to Eden an important contribution to a greater reflect on the support she had received said, adding, “I’m so delighted that BC Robinson for Trickster Drift (Knopf Canada for our children’s children and from the late Wayson Choy, who died Book Prizes exists.” Canada), the second book in her Trick- beyond.” The publishers quoted the late on April 28. Reading at her first writers’ Winning the Dorothy Livesay Po- ster trilogy. She won the same award Richard Wagamese: “All that we are is festival in 2007, Lee was approached etry Prize for Our Familiar Hunger for Monkey Beach in 2000. story, from the moment we are born.”

7 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 new and timeless Ekstasis titles from the deep well of the imagination

What Can I Say? Hammers & Bells ENGLISH /RUSSIAN EDITION CHARLES NOBLE Red in Black RANDY KOHAN ISBN 978-1-77171-324-5 MANOLIS Poetry 148 pages ISBN 978-1-77171-299-6 $24.95 Poetry 205 pages ISBN 978-1-77171-320-7 $25.95 Poetry 184 pages $24.95 7eventy 7even A Blooming CHARLES TIDLER JUDE NEALE ISBN 978-1-77171-316-0 ISBN 978-1-77171-318-4 The Little Thief Drama 100 pages Poetry 90 pages ROBERT LALONDE $23.95 $23.95 ISBN 978-1-77171-307-8 Fiction 104 pages $24.95 Woman with Lost Aria Camera CARMELO MILITANO CORINNE LAROCHELLE ISBN 978-1-77171-312-2 ISBN 978-1-77171-297-2 Fiction 118 pages Poetry 74 pages $23.95 $21.95

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Neo-Hellene Poets Night Blues TRANSLATED BY MANOLIS YOLANDE VILLEMAIRE ISBN 978-1-77171-301-6 & CLAUDE BEAUSOLEIL Poetry 830 pages ISBN 978-1-77171-267-5 $55.95 Poetry 62 pages $23.95

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8 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 She now retroactively includes white colonial attempts to extinguish LIFESTYLE First Nations culture and their people; the destruction of old growth forests in the Purcells through unregulated clear-cut logging and dams; and the depression of the salmon runs and Going back spawning channels along Kootenay Lake by the Duncan dam, or by the hydro-imposed Kootenay Diversion, to back-to- which flooded agricultural lands and forested shorelines. the land What Forever Feels Like offers many nuances for the reader. We experience the crystalline silence of nature; and we What Forever Feels Like: witness the silence of people shutting A Memoir of Johnsons Landing each other out (including in Burt’s own by Ellen Burt (Maa Press $23) marriage). One of the dominant themes is the strength and stoical endurance BY LEE REID of women entrapped in parenting and work. In 1969, Ellen Burt The mudslide wiped out half the married and settled community, leaving a ghost-scape of in the hamlet of homes and dreams. Underlying much Johnsons Land- communal generosity and geniality, ing at the head Ellen Burt also describes a wordless of Kootenay Lake, I world of anger and loneliness experi- near Argenta. The enced by those who did not fit into the community was mostly developed in communal norms. the 1920s on land originally populated And, yes, there’s no apostrophe in by the Ktunaxa First Nation. Until the Johnsons Landing. 978-1-999554804 late 1950s, when a road was built, weekly supplies were delivered by the Lee Reid is a clinical counsellor in Nel- paddle wheeler SS Moyie. The nearest son. She facilitates groups of seniors towns were Kaslo, a half day’s drive, ▼ on creative aging and now, at age 73, and Nelson, a day’s drive away. she is an activist for intergenerational More recently, the community was We’ve got to get us back to the garden: Dan and Ellen Burt, circa 1970, Kootenays. education. Reid recently completed a partially buried by a mudslide in 2012 project that brought teens and seniors that killed four people and destroyed historical and cultural context of the the barn. Dan and I went to town twice from ages 15 to 95 together at L.V. Rog- five houses, a tragedy recalled by counter-culture of the West Kootenays a year. We didn’t have a radio. ers Secondary School in Nelson. Her Amanda Bath’s Disaster in Paradise: in the 1960s and ‘70s. “Race riots in LA? I may have heard most recent book is Growing Together: The Landslides in Johnsons Landing “During all those years in Johnsons a bit of it on the country and western Conversations with Seniors and Youth (Harbour Publishing, 2015). Landing,” she writes, “I had no aware- station, after we got our little transistor. (Nelson CARES Society Press, 2018). In What Forever Feels Like: A ness that I was also a baby boomer, a A man on the moon? Sounds hypotheti- Her previous books are From a Coastal Memoir of Johnsons Landing, Ellen hippie, a Back-to-the-Lander, part of a cal. The Vietnam War? Even though the Kitchen (Hancock House, 1980) and Burt includes buried truths of our mass social movement. In that life, my draft dodgers kept coming, it was not Growing Home: The Legacy of Kootenay own life story, particularly within the awareness extended no further than in my consciousness.” Elders (Growing Home Elders, 2016).

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Sound in Harmony Poetry by Metis author, Spencer Sheehan-Kalina with Indigenous connections to the Mowachaht/Muchalaht people. ISBN: 978-1-7753019-3-6 $14.95 DON’T GO TO THE CABIN ALONE!

AGAINST DEATH: SKIN HOUSE RAIN CITY BORDERLINE 35 ESSAYS ON LIVING a novel by Michael Blouin VANCOUVER REFLECTIONS by Marie-Sissi LaBrèche Edited by Elee Kraljii Gardiner Skin House is a story about two guys by John Moore Translated by Melissa Bull Against Death is an anthology of creative who end up in the same bar they Whether he’s talking about Vancouver’s Searing and lyrical, Marie-Sissi non-fiction exploring the psychological started out in. Maybe they’re slightly Coast Mountain skyline or a seedy Labrèche’s auto-fictional novel, shifts that occur when we prematurely better off than they were at the start. waterfront tattoo parlor; private down- Borderline, describes a young girl’s or unexpectedly confront death. These Or maybe not. They’re not dead, and town booze-cans of the city’s business experience growing up in Montreal’s pieces are incisive and articulate, avoiding that’s something right there. And elite, or the Faux Chateau enclave of working-class neighbourhood of the usual platitudes, feel-good bromides, they’re not arrested, which is the Whistler; pipe bomb attacks in the city, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. Raised by and pep talks associated with near-death quite surprising part. the Halcion days of Prozac and Serax or her “two mothers” — a stern grand- encounters. ISBN: 978-1-77214-118-4 • $20 the ‘progress’ of urban development, mother and a mother struggling with FICTION • JUNE ISBN: 978-1-77214-127-6 • $22 John Moore is consistently “that a--hole schizophrenia, the story’s protagonist, ESSAYS/MEMOIR • JUNE who’s always sticking his nose into Sissi, is artistic, feral, fragile, insightful, other peoples’ business.” and wild. ISBN: 978-1-77214-139-9 • $20 ISBN: 978-1-77214-143-6 • $18 ESSAYS/MEMOIR • JULY FICTION • JULY “Distinctly urban, with a twist!”

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10 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 FOOD REVIEW

meeting swung toward Deconstructing dinner retaining the surplus within the co-op.” The division of B.C. co-ops then and now management and workers vying for the same pot of money was Food-to-table is great—so is cooperate-to-plate unsettling. “It became clear that we would

Grocery Story: The Buffalo Mountain Co- way he’ll visit new food never see those loans

The Promise of Food Co-ops op in Hardwick, Vermont co-ops in North Caro- returned to the indi- in the Age of Grocery Giants viduals who had made started out by sharing a roof lina, Pennsylvania, Ten- ▼ by Jon Steinman them,” she recalls. De- (New Society $19.99) with a gun shop and a liquor nessee and Kentucky. store. “Under one roof” recalls Hamilton, Toronto and Elora There are approximately Grass had to continue BY GRAHAME WARE founding member Annie Gail- are his Canadian stops. 700 co-op businesses in her second job as secretary lard, “you could purchase a From Grocery Story one B.C. These workers are to make ends meet—and she or decades, pistol, a pint of Jim Beam and gets the sense that nothing is from the CRS Co-op and eventually left CRS. Jon Stein- By the 1990s, there were a pound of tofu.” going to stop Steinman’s work Uprising Breads, 1987. man has On the serious side, Stein- and energy at the grassroots fifty people on the co-op pay- been a man outlines social issues level. He is a social leader ✫ roll and they had each paid a two-thousand-dollar share to F digital such as the abuse of the label who ultimately succeeds in The Co-Op Revolution: Pied Piper “local” by Big Grocery. For convincing the reader that Vancouver’s Search For work there, money that was for food co- example, he details alleged food systems accountability Food Alternatives taken from their pay cheques. ops. On his website you’ll find abuse by Save-On of their and ecological transparency by Jan DeGrass When asked to increase their a Food Co-op Directory as well Western Family brand ham- are key issues going forward (Caitlin Press $24.95) share purchase to four thou- as constructive inspiration for burger patties. Under a federal for us all. sand dollars, plus take a ten an DeGrass starting and managing a co-op law, in 2013 Ottawa changed His work and writing are ’s percent pay cut, most opted The Co-op partially based on his experi- the definition of what could be rigorous, compelling and in- out. Revolution is A CRS manager has re- ence as a former board presi- considered local. Meat from spiring. 9780865719071 J dent for the Kootenay Co-op. Alberta was shipped west to largely a cau- called, “We closed arrange- Much of the content for Vancouver for processing and tionary tale of ments in November 1998 for his Grocery Story has arisen then sent back east to Nelson one specific co-op and how it the sale of CRS Holdings… from 39-year-old Steinman’s and called “local.” went sideways. We didn’t sell the co-op for a Deconstructing Dinner podcast This practice led to a pro- DeGrass came to Vancou- grand profit and then divvy it and video streaming series test by the Kootenay Co-op, ver in the 1970s and found a up…We had grown too fast to that was broadcast on co-op the local Kootenay MP and job with Tunnel Canary can- finance ourselves. The credit and campus radio stations the president of the National nery, a real fruit company in union was breathing on us.” across the continent for five Farm Workers Union. They North Vancouver that used Money from the purchase Ron Francisco years and 193 episodes. wanted a more meaningful honey instead of sugar in of CRS by was “With 50 U.S. and Cana- definition and coined it “True their jams that were marketed paid out to the shareholders dian radio stations rebroad- Local.” The Kootenay Co-op by Collective Services and and to the recent investors casting the weekly show,” he regulated itself and in 2018, Resources Workers Co-op, and $125,000 was sent to writes, “I gained a perspective $2.6 million was paid to True or CRS. CCEC Credit Union to sup- on the food system that few Local suppliers. Originating workers port other co-operative proj- journalists would have had at These days, Jon plunked down $100 ects. The Canadian Worker this time.” Steinman is a for a share, and Co-op Federation, a national It all began as a weekly hard guy to keep took paycuts. “We grassroots organization that radio show that Steinman up with. Start- were performing supports the development of wrote and hosted on Kootenay ing from his socially useful workers’ co-ops, also received Co-Op Radio CJLY from 2006- hometown of work,” she re- $75,000 of the money. 2010. Later, in 2013, Stein- Nelson in ear- calls. “We were [The Co-op Act was changed man became the writer, host ly April, he’ll not misguided in 2000 to enable co-ops to sell and producer of six episodes visit 48 cities hippies—we multiple classes of shares, for his television and web se- to promote were on the which would allow outsiders to ries Deconstructing Dinner: Re- his book, re- right path. It invest in a co-op. This legisla- constructing our Food System. turning to was the rest of tion could have enabled CRS With many charts and Nelson in the world that to survive.] graphics, Grocery Story is well- mid-July. was screwed After the co-op business researched, historically solid Along the up.” was acquired by Ron Fran- journalism chock-a-block Subsidized cisco, it morphed into a health with info, both historical by its staff for food distributor behemoth, and contemporary. We start-up capi- giving rise to The Horizon learn: “On Malcom tal, CRS Co-op Group. Island in B.C., a became a force Horizon services 1,800 Finnish community in the acquisition locations annually such as started the Sointula Co- and distribution Whole Foods Market, Save On op Store in 1909. It re- of health foods. De- Foods, Urban Fare, Overwait- mains the longest-running Grass only became ea Foods, PriceSmart Foods, co-operative in Western disenchanted as the Buy-Low Foods, Nester’s Mar- Canada and the lon- result of a divisive issue— ket, Shop n’ Save, Safeway, gest running the allocation of profit—at Sustainable Produce Urban food coopera- the annual general meeting Delivery (SPUD), Donald’s tive in North in December of 1978. Markets, Choices Markets, Ameri- “The surpluses in ques- Kootenay Country Co-op. And ca.” tion were for the years more. 1977 ($17,337) and 1978 The Co-op Revolution pro- ($39,730). In a lengthy and vides valuable minutae as to unsigned financial report it how idealism and capitalism appeared that the decision can appear to be ultimately had already been made to incompatible. allocate the 1977 surplus This wasn’t an easy story to management as a bo- to tell and I applaud Jan De-

nus… Grass for having the courage

“Though the financial to tell it. 978-1987915952 ▼ report recommended that Kootenay Pied Piper Jon Steinman the workers receive a Grahame Ware reviews bonus, the mood of the from Gabriola Island.

11 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 12 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 So next time your Mom complains “I▼ don’t dispute the about that back pain, and needs to go CANNABIS REVIEW see her Budtender (a term I’ve only re- research or the grand cently learned), you can send her along declarations made by with the knowledge she’s gained from The Little Book of Cannabis: According to Siebert’s research, Ammanda Siebert,” says The Little Book of Cannabis. How Marijuana Can Improve large doses can be problematic but It doesn’t compare with Jack Her- Your Life by Amanda Siebert low doses (the hip contemporary term reviewer Derek von Essen er’s The Emperor Wears No Clothes (Greystone Books $14.95) Andrew Struthers “micro-dosing” may apply) seem to be “but some may find a (1985) or ’ The BY DEREK VON ESSEN a win-win scenario for just about ev- Devil’s Weed/The Sacred Herb (New erything one could do in their waking counter-balance missing Star 2017). But to each his or her own. rying to convince hours—and it seems to be as effective I recall a time with friends when your Mom to sam- during the sleeping hours, too. from the content.” we were teenagers having mature con- ple some “Grand- The Little Book of Cannabis weighs versation the likes of, “pot relieves my daddy Purple” bud heavily on the medicinal and health Siebert’s pro-pot stance gets a little stress,” and “weed helps me focus,” and T for that infernal advantages of cannabis consumption, predictable and the overall “RAH! RAH! a multitude of other reasons justifying back pain might be a conclusion validated by a long list RAH!” gusto of it can tire one a bit. our favourite herb. easier when paired of professionals and the author. The That was until I reached one of the last In the end, we’d be rolling on the with The Little Book of Cannabis by research is presented well and in detail, chapters, “Easing the Aging Process,” floor in a fit of laughter as the state- Amanda Siebert. though not in so much detail as to turn when I realized who the ideal target for ments became more and more absurd, Siebert has presented a vast amount into doctor-speak. this book should be. degenerating as far as, “it makes it of information in an easy-to-read vol- Siebert lays out many situations There’s a bit of a generation gap easier to have a crap!” ume, with her chapter topics displaying where taking the high out of cannabis noted with the elderly being tagged as Well, as it turns out, that too is a subtle sense of humour. might benefit users. I admit to still skeptical of its benefits, but they’re also included in The Little Book of Canna- There’s many points made on the having difficulty comprehending the the largest group of new cannabis users. bis as one of the many attributes of CBD vs THC (Cannabidiol vs Tet- uses of cannabis without the bonus Perhaps the benefits covered by marijuana. 9781771644044 rahydrocannabinol) components of of feeling high from it. Would a non- Siebert would best serve the uninitiated cannabis that would help Mom better alcoholic bourbon be enjoyable or and one’s parents and grandparents, Derek von Essen is a graphic artist. understand why there is such a wide have any marketable success? But who may have been most influenced painter, and photographer of No Flash, selection in the variety of strains avail- not everyone wants to get baked when by history’s “war on drugs” and “Reefer Please! Underground Music in Toronto able for purchase. they’re healing. Madness.” 1987-92 (Anvil Press, 2016). Typical is Chapter 7, “An Effective Source of Pain Management.” Like much of The Little Book of Cannabis, this chapter is divided up into inter- views with people who’ve experienced the benefit of using cannabis (in this case, for relieving intense pain and CannLit discomfort). We also get a case study involv- ing the treatment of Tourette’s, with references to chronic and short-term pain management, treatment of infec- tions, and other prescribed uses that all end well. To her credit, Siebert does state that Amanda Siebert “the compounds in cannabis affect everyone differently because our endo- recommends sprinkling cannabinoid systems are all different.” Dr. Mark Ware, professor and marijuana on your director of clinical research at Mon- treal’s McGill University Health Centre, bacon, extolling speaks plainly on how it’s not the be-all its medicinal and end-all of pain management. His statements, and another alert- benefits. ing users to possible risk where there’s a history of psychosis or heart issues like arrhythmias, are two of the few negative associations to cannabis that I found in the whole book. The entire book is pro-cannabis, without a doubt. I don’t dispute the re- search or the grand declarations made by Siebert, but some may find a coun- terbalance missing from the content. The subtitle, How Marijuana Can Im- prove Your Life, is definitely the focus. Siebert tends to give permission to indulge for just about every reason under the sun: relief from anxiety, depression, and insomnia; for levelling mood swings, socializing, sex, and eas- ing creative blocks; for energy boosting, pain management, and easing effects of aging; for nutritional value, treating addiction, and extensive medicinal benefits … and much more. The chapter “Using Cannabis as a Superfood” is especially enjoyable and informative. “[I]f you thought bacon was already too good to be true, it can be made even more wonderful by sim- ply sprinkling a little cannabis on top while it’s in the frying pan.” This section is excellent at breaking Former down the nutritional value of various Georgia Straight forms of cannabis (fresh, dried, bud, cannabis editor leaves, seeds, etc.) and methods of AMANDA SIEBERT

PHOTOS suggests pot can be preparation. Or jump ahead to the last chapter, “How to Prepare and used▼ for easing the DIVES Use Cannabis,” for even more detailed aging process.

information. JACKIE

13 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 Available now at your local bookstore

FINALIST FOR THE 2019 LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR'S MEDAL FOR HISTORICAL WRITING SHARED HISTORIES WITSUWIT'EN-SETTLER RELATIONS IN SMITHERS, BRITISH COLUMBIA Tyler McCreary This is a primer for anyone wishing to understand the cumulative impact of colonialism on Canada’s Indigenous people. McCreary uses this collection of hidden histories to reveal how the Witsuwit’en people of northwest BC struggled under the brutal imposition of governance models totally alien to their own. JOY OF BEING RETIRED WTF?! (WILLING TO FAIL) With astonishing resilience, they withstood the 365 REASONS WHY RETIREMENT HOW FAILURE CAN BE YOUR attempts to destroy them as a people and have ROCKS – AND WORK SUCKS KEY TO SUCCESS 9781928195047 $24.95 pb Creekstone Press become a model for substantive reconciliation. Ernie J. Zelinski Brian Scudamore with Roy H. Williams If you've been thinking about retirement, Vancouver resident Brian Scudamore is the then this book might just push you over founder of 1-800-Got-Junk, a business that the edge with more than 365 reasons to spans North America as well as his other multi- leave the 9 - 5 working world. Get ready to million dollar companies that have made him transform yourself in preparation for a happy a model of entrepreneurship. Brian tells how and satisfying retirement with reminders and KHGLGLWPLVWDNHVDQGDOO+LVERRNZLOODႈUP advice from international best-selling author that you have exactly what it takes to succeed. Ernie J. Zelinski. 9781544501086 $19.95 hc Lioncrest/ 9781927452042 $18.95 VIP Publishing Ordinary 2 Exceptional Publishing

A BEE NAMED BOB OSMIA LIGNARIA Elaine Sedgman Here’s a fascinating nature book for children all about the adventure and life cycle of BROTHER XII Osmia Lignaria, a small Blue Orchard THE STRANGE ODYSSEY OF A Better LATE Than NEVER Common WILDFLOWERS Bee (BOB). Also known as a mason bee (because she builds her nest from mud), 20TH-CENTURY PROPHET AND OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST YET MORE ADVENTURES OF A COUNTRY VET this pollinator extraordinaire is a highly HIS QUEST FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER Dr. David Perrin BRITISH COLUMBIA WASHINGTON & OREGON HႈFLHQWLQVHFWWKDWFDQSROOLQDWHPRUHWUHHV John Oliphant Fans of the Don't Turn Your Back in the Barn J. Duane Sept DQGÀRZHUVLQKHUOLIHWLPHWKDQKXQGUHGVRI her honey bee cousins. Illustrated by the The story of the infamous BC cult leader was country veterinarian books will want to read this -XVWLQWLPHIRUWKHVSULQJDQGVXPPHUÀRZHU author who is an accomplished artist and featured recently on Global National News one—the last in the series. The late ‘Dr. Dave’ seasons—this new guide will enhance your Master Gardener—and admits to being and is as compelling a story now as it was has had a staunch following and this is one not appreciation for the wildflowers of British "bee-sotted" by native bees. decades ago. to be missed. Familiar and new characters, Columbia. Full of stunning photography and 9781999522001 $14.95 Bee Stories Publishing 9780978097202 $24.95 Twelfth House Press both human and animal, are central to Perrin's informative text, it's perfect to take on your next hilarious and heartwarming stories. Dave Perrin hike! See all of the Calypso nature series titles passed away in 2018. in your local bookstore. "ADULTING" SKILLS FOR GRADS! 9780986656996 $23.95 Dave’s Press 9780995226616 $14.95 Calypso Publishing

British Columbia COOKING without MOM MAP BOOK Series RIPE LOCAL FRUIT WHITEWATER COOKS A SURVIVAL COOKBOOK USE IT FRESH, PRESERVE THE REST GM Johnson Maps more beautiful food The Hen Party Ann Kask Shelley Adams These colourful Map Books are incredibly For 30 years, Cooking without Mom has easy to read. The use of brightly marked With bold, bright photography and recipes as The bestselling Whitewater Cooks More been a classic cookbook for those leaving double lined streets help map readers varied as halibut curry salad with apple & grapes, Beautiful Food is full of recipes to inspire home for the first time. In this revised distinguish between different types of warm brie with blueberry chutney, or grape & fans and delight newcomers to this fabulous edition, over 150 recipes better reflect roads. Many useful features are marked JRDWFKHHVHWUXႉHVWKLVLVDERRNWKDWVKRXOG cookbook series. Shelley's innate flair for today's cooking trends. It's also an important on the maps from golf courses and parks be in every kitchen library. creating and developing recipes have made survival guide to domestic life with useful to wineries . Preserving techniques include canning, freezing, her famous for turning home cooks into culinary information such as essential grocery rock stars. There are now 5 in the series - collect items, kitchen terms, food storage, how to •Easy to Read BC Map Book 9781770687271 $19.95 drying, juicing, and making jellies, jams, • Greater Vancouver & Fraser Valley Street Map marmalades, fruit butters and chutneys. them all at your local book store or kitchen shop. GRODXQGU\¿UVWDLGEDVLFV¿UHSUHYHQWLRQ Book 9781770687264 $19.95 Proceeds from the sale of this book go to support Watch for a new Whitewater cookbook to and more. Don't let your grad leave home • Victoria & Vancouver Island Street Map Book Diabetes Canada. come in 2020! without it! 9781770687257 $19.95 GM Johnson Maps 9781988872025 $24.95 Kask Graphics 9780981142432 $34.95 pb Alicon Holdings 9780920923122 $18.95 pb Sandhill Publishing Sandhill Book Marketing Ltd Distribution for Small Press & Independent Publishers Ph: 250-491-1446 • Fax: 250-491-4066 • Email: [email protected] www.sandhillbooks.com

14 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 MEDIA REVIEW

Rockwood Centre | Sechelt www.writersfestival.ca tel: 604.885.9631 toll free:1.800.565.9631 August

15-18 ▼ 2019 George Garrett and the Speedy Alka Seltzer News Cruiser, 1958 Of miscreants & media Randy Boyagoda Alicia Elliott George Garrett: Intrepid Reporter George Garrett is one of 29 recipi- Terry by George Garrett ents of the lifetime-achievement award Fallis (Harbour Publishing $26.95) for B.C. journalists from the Jack Web- Chantal BY MICHAEL SASGES ster Foundation. “Over the years I built Gibson up a list of contacts that was the envy or almost fifty years, of many of my colleagues,” he confides. Rachel Giese George Garrett, Frequency of broadcast was another as a solo reporter of his strengths. To please Speedy Alka Ian Hampton for radio station Seltzer, the sponsor of CKNW’s first CKNW from 1956 “news cruiser” in 1958, Garrett would Elizabeth Hay to 1999, gathered file eight reports per shift in the Down- F an unprecedented town Eastside. Many prominent news- Nazanine Hozar knowledge of copshop operations at makers have arisen from the Downtown Eastside—such as Larry Campbell, Hastings and Main, and the residual Ann goings-on at the Vancouver and New Libby Davies, the late Bruce Eriksen, Hui Westminster courthouses. He wit- the late Jim Green, Jenny Kwan, and nessed an endless parade of addicts Jean Swanson. Michael C. Klein and drunks and hookers and petty Garrett’s memoir sheds light on a thieves and street brawlers. less progressive era when police and Chelene Knight “I don’t know whether to condemn prosecutors daily criminalized the you or congratulate you,” Judge Les indigent. Vagrancy laws and liquor Keith Maillard Bewley said to one 50-year-old pros- regulation made for easy arrests and titute. prosecutions. His book alleges that Lee At 312 Main Street, the Vancouver drunks were often picked up and jailed, Maracle police station, miscreants were held, but never prosecuted, just so the con- judged and punished and also pitied. stables operating the paddy wagons Darrel J. McLeod “I can still picture Mr. Justice Harry could report they had been earning Sullivan, in black robes with scarlet their keep. Katherine Penfold trim, donning a black skull cap,” re- There is so much to learn from this lates Garrett in Intrepid Reporter, autobiography. 9781550178661 Adam Pottle “With tears streaming down his face, Mike Sasges is the author of Once Well Judge Sullivan said to [the murderer], Eden Robinson ‘I sentence you to hang by the neck Beloved: Remembering a British Colum- bia Great War Sacrifice, to be published until you are dead.’” The trial followed a Peter fatal shooting in a nearby nightclub in in the fall of 2019 by the Royal BC Robinson 1957—but the killer was not executed. Museum. Yasuko Thanh

On The Rocks with Jack Knox: More often, descriptions wax to- Rhea Tregebov Islanders I Will Never Forget ward poetry: “You can actually sniff by Jack Knox (Heritage House $19.95) out a good beachcombing tide, one Richard BY KEITH NORBURY where the telltale odour of rotting Van Camp seaweed and other flotsam is carried t’s often said that journalism on the south winds hammering in from Ian Williams represents the first draft of his- the open ocean.” tory. As a reporter, editor, and That’s Knox paraphrasing Barry Lindsay Wong columnist with the Victoria Times Campbell about how he hunts down IColonist daily newspaper for the last Japanese glass fishing floats that drift thirty years, Jack Knox has writ- ashore on the west coast. “It smells ten early drafts of a lot of the recent like glass balls are coming,” Knox history of Vancouver Island and its quotes the beachcomber, who once satellite islands. found 36 of the treasures on a single Best known as a humour columnist day in 1987. —his two previous books were long- On The Rocks consists of por- listed for the Leacock Medal—Knox traits of memorable folks Knox has Illustration by Carol La Fave also has a knack for serious reportage. stumbled across during the last three However, in the vein of Mark Twain decades. Many of them are people he and Matt Taibbi, Knox knows how to bumped into while travelling to re- turn a phrase in On The Rocks, and mote parts of the islands with Times will frequently colour even his most Colonist photographer Debra Brash. serious writing with bon mots: 9781772032666 “I will die contented if I never have to write another word about sewage Keith Norbury has worked full-time as treatment.” a journalist since 1986.

15 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 Summer Reads from Greystone Books

Discover the thrilling, fascinating legend of the Sasquatch in BC’s Great Bear Rainforest.

Vanishing Fish Rise of the Necrofauna Understanding Shifting Baselines and the Future The Science, Ethics, Northwest Coast of Global Fisheries and Risks of De-Extinction Indigenous Jewelry     The Art, the Artists, the History Foreword by   Foreword by     978-1-77164-398-6 • $34.95 •  978-1-77164-472-3 • $21.95 •  Foreword by   In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond 978-1-77164-297-2 • $24.95 •  In Search of the Sasquatch   978-1-77164-518-8 • $32.95 •  Naturally Great Books greystonebooks.com

GROUNDBREAKING BC ARTISTS

NEW GROUND ON THE CURVE DRAWBRIDGE

A MEMOIR OF ART AND THE LIFE AND ART OF DRAWING ALONGSIDE MY ACTIVISM IN BC’S INTERIOR SYBIL ANDREWS BROTHER’S SCHIZOPHRENIA NEW MEMOIRS & BIOGRAPHIES FROM CAITLIN PRESS WWW.CAITLIN-PRESS.COM

16 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 MEMOIR REVIEW

Thirty years apart, Yasuko Thanh’s frank memoir resembles Evelyn Lau’s Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid. They share the same literary agency. Lucky I’m sane

istakes To Run With, Yasuko Thanh’s aptly-titled third book, is a harrowing memoir of grow- ing up in Victoria as the child of M impoverished immigrants. Her Vietnamese father, who had studied in Paris, was a brilliant man, trained in business management and fluent in four languages. He found work as a shoe salesman and suffered from crippling depression. Her German mother was only seventeen when she married Thanh’s father who was 27 years old. She was profoundly unhappy Mistakes To Run With: and disillusioned A Memoir by Yasuko Thanh (Hamish Hamilton $24.95) with the new world but eventually found BY CAROLINE WOODWARD solace with evangeli- cal Christians. She grew lavender wherever they lived, which was mostly in low rent apartments. Little “Suko” was five years old when her brother was born and found herself demoted as secondary to the all-important son. No matter that she was an honour roll student and a talented gymnast at school, she did not feel loved for who she was, or even for what she achieved. There were rigid rules at home, where perfection was expected. Her friends were few. At the age of fifteen, Yasuko Thanh ran away from it all and, as the country songs lament, she went look- ing for love in all the wrong places. And that’s putting it mildly. A childhood habit which would stand her Yasuko Thanh has earned her living as a busker, in good stead was reading, and staying warm and punk musician, an opium dealer, a cleaner of PHOTO safe in libraries. goat pens, a bed & breakfast operator, a house- According to her publisher: “After a stint in jail DENTON

keeper, a prostitute and a panhandler. She now at sixteen, feeling utterly abandoned by her family, DON school, and society, Thanh meets the man who would lives with her husband, rockabilly musician become her pimp and falls in love. The next chapter choose controlling, abu- Hank Angel, and two daughters in Victoria. She Story, CBC, Quill & Quire of her life takes Thanh to the streets of Vancouver, sive companions in an will be appearing at the Festival of the Written and other heavy hitters where she endures beatings, arrests, crack cocaine, attempt to create a ro- Arts (August 15-18) in Sechelt. pronounced her a “writer and an unwanted pregnancy.” manticized home life, to watch.” Everyone no- Years later she would earn her Grade 12 Equiva- complete with vicious guard dogs. ticed her strikingly beautiful tattooed author photo. lency and, later still, a Masters in creative writing “It was easy to split myself in two. Shadow and One of Canada’s top literary agents signed her up. at the University of Victoria. As a child she had self. I’d been doing it my whole life. Being hurt at the After this auspicious beginning, Thanh’s readers developed focus and self-discipline in order to com- hands of a loved one was not an option for my alter were rewarded a few years later with a beautifully plete homework assignments in the unhappy chaos ego. When assaulted she had a knack for rational- written historical novel, set in French Indochina around her; as an adult, she taps back into that focus izing away her own victimhood…. The denial of her now known as Vietnam. This luminous achievement, in order to write about some of the hardest things own suffering helped her support the illusion that she Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains, won anyone--especially a deluded teenage was in control.” the Rogers Writer’s Trust Prize for Fiction and the hooker with mental health issues of While some memoirists are more Victoria Butler Book Prize. her own--should ever have to endure. oblique about their misery, Thanh is This is a writer blessed with talent in the genius There are some writers who come CAROLINE unsparing about her self-destructive category and with enough edginess—her exotic blend from privilege who slum and then re- choices. She is honest about present- of Vietnamese and German looks, an abundance of treat to their comfortable quarters to WOODWARD ing herself as a potentially unreliable tattoos, and her experiences as an after-hours punk write about their real and embellished narrator, too, which takes real courage. band musician—to be of interest to even the most encounters with the mean streets. Then there are To read about her love for her two children, and her jaded media. those who wrestle with addictions, survive beatings, compassion for her parents, is to join other readers Along the way, Thanh has been guided by literary hang on to their own acute intelligence, keep enough who are cheering every victory, every hard-won chunk angels and by reading just the right stories at just the of their good hearts intact, and get out alive to tell us of wisdom, every luminous work of fiction, every prized right time. One of Thanh’s favourite short story writers how and sometimes why. piece of second-hand furniture, every deadbeat abuser is Vancouver’s Caroline Adderson, whose own debut Those among us who are first-generation immi- shown the door, and every children’s birthday party collection, Bad Imaginings, was nominated for the grants often have to take on the role of ‘translating’ celebrated with the neighbourhood. Governor-General’s Award, among other accolades. the language and even trickier, the requirements of In Mistakes To Run With we marvel at the resilience Both books are on my top ten list of short story collec- Canadian schools, to our immigrant and refugee par- of the human mind and spirit—and that’s not entirely tions, with stories that haunt me still. 9780735234413 ents. Repression is the default parenting technique surprising. Although she is not yet a household name, for some unhappy people and their lack of control Thanh’s Journey Prize-winning short story Floating Caroline Woodward works as a lighthouse keeper and over their own lives ricochets around the rest of the Like the Dead led to her brilliant debut collection of is the author of nine books in five genres for adults household to destructive effect. short stories of the the same name, Floating Like the and children including, A West Coast Summer with Add to this, teenage boundary-testing and a taste Dead (Penguin, 2016). When the collection went on to Salt Spring Island artist Carol Evans and the 25th for illicit substances and, voila, it will come as no be nominated for national and provincial literary prizes, anniversary re-issue of the Arthur Ellis Best First surprise that a teenage runaway like Yasuko would winning an Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Short Mystery-nominated novel, Alaska Highway Two-Step.

17 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 MEMOIR REVIEW Tied in knots

While circumnavigating Vancouver Island in a sailboat, Brian Harvey reflects on a malpractice lawsuit against his dead father.

Sea Trial: chanical crises—leaking oil, broken Sailing After My Father starters, failing batteries and more. by Brian Harvey (ECW Press $21.95) Some writers would use these crises as an opportunity to suggest (or even BY THEO DOMBROWSKI underline) their prowess and fortitude. There is no swagger here. Dread, panic, nerves, anxieties—and self-criticism— The outline is simple inflect every gust and lurch. enough: the au- Pointy mountains and emerald for- thor records a two- ests pop up on cue, as do guest appear- month sailing cir- ances of puffins, wolves, dolphins, sea cumnavigation of Y otters, and whales, as Harvey provides Vancouver Island, an elegaic history of a coast dotted with while, concurrently, disappointed hopes and failed lives. going through a box of legal documents Eventually we approach the daunt- related to a malpractice lawsuit against ing kernel of the book: the malpractice his dead father, a neurosurgeon. suit. At the outset there is something Harvey takes pains to make a seam- almost “British” about the writing. less link between discovering the coast Self-deprecating humour, lightness of and understanding the documents. touch, and an inclination to give a wry Both the box of notes and his interest account of his own (substantial) fears in sailing are “gifts” from his father. and uncertainties make his a very easy THE WRITER’S Ultimately, the real purpose of the voice to listen to, whether chatting investigation, to discover the elder Har- about rocks and reefs, or lawyers and vey’s character, is movingly achieved. legalities. Only towards the intense conclusion STUDIO do the emotions become torrential. ✫ BRIAN HARVEY IS A SOCIAL ANIMAL. IN anchor- age after anchorage he sidles up to oth- ers for a chat. His capacity to describe, evoke, mimic, and mock (usually, but WORK WITH A MENTOR IN not always, affectionately) is one of this book’s most entertaining features. The funniest and most endearing A SUPPORTIVE COMMUNITY characters are the rest of the crew— Harvey’s wife Hatsumi, and Charley, Vancouver program starts January 2020 a schnauzer. Charley cannot swim. Charley’s bladder, other dogs, squirting clams, rich sports fishermen Applications accepted September-October and much else, are all drily recorded. Spotting a Japanese flag on a nearby boat, Harvey, ever the extrovert, proposes a visit. “But we don’t know

them!” Hatsumi avers. Not for the PHOTO

first—or last—time Harvey reminds us, HARVEY carefully, “Sometimes, my wife could be Brian Harvey

quite Japanese.” THEO His accounts of learning to sail are By the end of both “journeys,” exte- hilarious: “One gloomy video was a rior and interior, Harvey is wrung out. re-enactment of the death of an entire Appropriately, the book concludes, “we family from CO2 inhalation: the actors did the usual things with winches and rolled their eyes and went down like jib sheets, the sails filled again, and we tenpins” headed home.” The book is, however, arguably less Some might hear echoes of prob- about either a sailing trip or a legal ably the most seminal sea voyage in case, than it is about Harvey himself. Western literature, “The Rime of the So infused is he in everything he ob- Ancient Mariner:” serves, remembers, or discovers (in his He went like one that been stunned, father’s papers), that the overwhelming And is of sense forlorn: impression we are left with is of a man CANADA’S ENGAGED UNIVERSITY A sadder and a wiser man, at sea. He rose the morrow morn. sfu.ca/creative-writing ✫ VERY, VERY FEW READERS ARE LIKELY TO PUT 9781770414778 down Sea Trial and rush off to the nearest yacht broker to buy a sailboat. Theo Dombrowski of Nanoose Bay has The postcardy bits are overshadowed written and illustrated Secret Beaches Carys Cragg, 2014 graduate by Harvey’s vivid evocations of icy tem- of the Salish Sea, Seaside Walks of peratures, dripping, impenetrable fogs, Vancouver Island and Family Walks savage winds, treacherous currents, and Hikes of Vancouver Island (Volume malevolent rocks, and towering seas. 1): Victoria to Nanaimo, and (Volume 2): The trip is a greasy litany of me- Nanaimo North to Strathcona Park.

18 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 MEMOIR REVIEW

BC BookWorld, Volume 3, Issue 4, 1989

Stephen Collis pays A pledge homage to Fulford S WE WALK ALONG Harbour’s silent poet Phyllis Webb the difficult road of 1999 Ahealing and recon- ciliation together, I pledge to continue to emphasize books that reflect Indig- enous perspectives and foster dialogue and under- standing. To date there has never been an issue of BC Book- THE SOUNDINGS World, for more than 30 years, that didn’t high- Almost Islands: light books pertaining Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit OF HER SILENCE of the Unwritten by Stephen Collis to Indigenous issues. In (Talonbooks $24.95) 2005, its publisher wrote BY SHARON THESEN Webb, he says, is “her strength to re- is present in this book’s often-elegiac Aboriginality, still the only tone. It was Gail who, during a walk main alone …. her resolute withdrawal, book in Canada that is n the 1960s, Phyllis her ability to dwell in the glare of her with Collis in Vancouver, had given Webb chose to leave fragments and failures. It is a form of him the advice that set his compass entirely about Indigenous behind a promis- resistance that continues. Islanded. westward, toward Phyllis Webb and authors from one prov- ing and lucrative Bulwarked, But open, curious.” Salt Spring Island: “Poetry is your way ince. broadcasting ca- Both Phyllis Webb and Stephen Col- of writing all ways at once. It is your I Our ABCBookWorld reer at the CBC lis were born in Victoria (she in 1927, revolutionary path.” in Toronto, where he in 1965); both enjoyed relatively Collis’ lavish, loquacious, zigzag public reference service among other things she created and privileged upbringings and private essaying-forth across the “peninsula” provides information on co-produced the weekly series, Ideas. schools; both were imprinted by the of Collis’s own literary and political In the 1970s, Webb’s interest in coastal landscape of southwest B.C. geography for Almost Islands enables more than 1,000 titles per- politics swerved toward west coast The forty-year age difference be- Collis to raise urgent questions about taining to First Nations. Indigenous art, including the ancient tween them is another way they are writing, ecological devastation and BC BookWorld has now intertidal rock art found on Salt Spring “almost islands,” but this distance dis- colonial violence. It also includes some written about 286 B.C. Island, named “Wilson’s Bowl” after solves in the matrix of mutual attrac- advice—including to not write at all, anthropologist Wilson Duff. tion and curiosity. They are West Coast for a while at least—from other poets Indigenous authors — and She chose to make her home on the poets engaged with West Coast realities and friends. counting. south coast of British Columbia where —geographical, political, ecological, “I exist to tend the flow of language,” This is evidence that the she insisted on living and writing on and aesthetic—except Webb appears to he says. her own terms, without aspiring to an have lost or forsaken her voice. “The terror of Webb’s ‘No,’” for Col- growth and awareness of admirable public voice. This has been Webb continued to publish es- lis, is that “it is not spoken by her, but Indigenous literature▼ has one of the things I most cherish about says— Talking (Quadrant Editions, to her.” been extraordinary in B.C. her, along with the beautiful, sideways 1982) and Nothing But Brush Strokes The meditations on mortality and power of her work. (NeWest Press 1995)—and a book of silence that conclude the book I found It will be my privilege to I was first drawn very strongly to “ghazals and anti-ghazals”, Water and deeply affecting. Collis describes the continue to keep readers Phyllis Webb’s Wilson’s Bowl in the Light (Coach House 1984) into the difficulties of transferring the body of informed as we publish early 1980s. It inspired me to contact mid-1990s, but she stopped writing his sister to her pine coffin. “The cof- Webb and visit her at her home on Salt poetry as such. It was noted that she fin could not be got through. So we on the unceded territory of Spring Island—the beginning of a de- had stopped writing poetry, and began carried her out. Like furniture. Such the Coast Salish Peoples,

cades-long and continuing friendship. painting, after the death of her mother. beloved furniture. Such precious wood including the territories of

e e for the fire.” e At that time, I hadn’t so far encoun- At this point, Webb felt that words, that W tered a Canadian female poet whose poetry, had “abandoned her.” Collis writes, “In each and every the x m θkw y m (Mus- work had such an impact on me, that The question of silence, of the con- poem I write, I pick my sister up, carry queam), Skwxwú7mesh

lit so brightly my own path as a writer. tent of the unwritten, of the failure her across a page or two, and lay her (Squamish), Stó:lō and

e Now Stephen Collis’ ekphrastic down again. It is method and ritual and e to write one’s “good masterpiece of S lílw ta?/Selilwitulh project, Almost Islands, arises from a work” (Webb quoting the unfortunate the very practice of everyday life.” This similar respect. One poet’s immersion anarchist activist Nikola Sacco), and final section of the book is where I feel (Tsleil-Waututh) Na- in the art of another, it spins out a web the questions that arise from such Collis is converting silence and failure tions. of connections from Collis’ 2007 study a decision, or gift, or catastrophe, is to hiddenness and immanence. of Webb’s poetics, Phyllis Webb and the what Collis attempts to unpack, in a The felicity of Phyllis’ surname im- Common Good (Talon, 2007), taking number of directions and dimensions, bues Almost Islands—a web of connec- great care to blend politics and poetry. in this book. tions fleshed out by the “beyondery” of Collis’ ongoing attraction to Webb’s In its Montaigne-like spirit of essay- imagination. 9781772012071 Beverly Cramp poetics and her presence is the fun- ing forth, Collis explores the “silence” damental image of this book: his trips that both threatens and educates the Sharon Thesen has written eleven Publisher on the ferry to Salt Spring Island, her writer. A prolific writer himself, and a books and chapbooks. She is professor greeting him in her home, and their serious political activist, Collis is ap- emeritus of creative writing at UBC’s settling in to exchange news, talk, and palled by the prospect of silence—of Okanagan Campus. She edited the BC compare notes within the so-called being silenced or of self-silencing. Governor-General’s award-winning The BOOKWORLD “silence” of Webb’s art. Collis had earlier confided this fear Vision Tree: Selected Poems by Phyllis What keeps drawing Collis back to to his sister Gail, whose death in 2002 Webb.

19 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 human-made context. It is not a simple ques- Wolf swimming tion of a fallacy, as Wild puts it, “that healthy NATURE REVIEW North American wolves do not pose any danger after buck in to humans.” It is a question that we cannot ex- Lakeland pect to have healthy wolves, or healthy humans, in an increasingly endangered and ecologically Return of the Wolf: Provincial Park, “unhealthy” wilderness. Conflict and Coexistence by Paula Wild Wilderness is a mirage in the Canadian (Douglas and McIntyre $32.95) Alberta. psyche, not unlike “the imaginary Indian.” We BY LOYS MAINGON assume that “The True North” still exists, and that the all too numerous mega-resource proj- ects like Site C or the Athabasca Tar Sands can olves have been as successful continue infinitely without having a cumulative as humans in populating vanishing impact on the very wilderness which every continent except Ant- jingoistic national pride claims as “the Canadian arctica. Like homo sapiens, experience.” W they are extremely intel- In so doing we forget the fragility of nature, the ligent and adaptable. The elusiveness of wilderness, and the individuality history and mythology of all of wolves, wolf populations, and wolf families. cultures records our competition and coexistence Wild devotes much of her book to convincing with wolves. Wolves have been an integral part the reader that communities can come to live of humanity’s evolution. with “the wolf.” She provides good examples and As we enter the age of biodiversity collapse, case studies, such as the community program or as biologist E.O. Wilson names it the “Eremo- on Cortes Island, to educate the public on how cene”—the age of loneliness—understanding how to dissuade wolves from preying on pets and and why we need to further that coexistence is humans. more important than ever. Paula Wild’s Return of the Wolf: Conflict and Coexistence is a very timely guide to un- derstanding wolves, and how we might adapt our human behaviour to co-exist with them. After its virtual extirpation over the last cen- tury-and-a-half in America and Europe, the Grey wolf (Canis lupus lupus) and its smaller cousin, the coyote (Canis latrans) are re-distributing throughout their previous domains, and even colonizing new environments. There is a growing concern about human interaction with these wild carnivores, in ecosystems increasingly shaped by, and managed by, people. Wild’s book aims to encompass the Grey wolf’s distribution in America and Eurasia, but the focus is predominantly North American. It does not include extensive work done in Russia. ✫ ▼ RETURN OF THE WOLF OPENS BY DISCUSSING HUMAN Red Riding Hood, from Les Contes de attitudes to wolves, followed by chapters on 19th Perrault by Gustave Doré, 1867 and early 20th century extermination and wolf behaviour. Wild includes considerations of the The techniques of exclusion she proposes are individuality and personality of “the wolf.” known as “hazing” (the benign use of noisemak- Lest the reader get too sentimental, Chapter 5 “Writing about ers, harmless projectiles, repellants, etc.), which describes how these carnivores make their living are growing in popularity in North America as with their extraordinary sense of smell, and their Wild’s wolves wolf and coyote encounters increase. These have ability to work with ravens to find and kill prey, wolves is writing been used with general success with coyote which feeds both wolves and ravens as well as populations, which have been increasingly set- attending carnivores. tling in urban centres. Chapter 6 gives a good overview of the com- about death.” These techniques work in the early stages, plex relationship of wolves with domestic dogs but research also indicates that they may and coyotes, on whom wolves preferably prey, lose their effectiveness as wolves and coyotes though they will occasionally mate with either, PAULA WILD become increasingly habituated to urbanized PHOTO as numerous genetic studies have shown. environments, to the point that their genetics

Chapter 7, entitled “Wolf Wars,” is the pivotal SMITH change. & wilderness point in Wild’s narrative. “Writing about wolves The undiscussed problem is that with our is writing about death,” she writes—namely the DAVID own population growth, we are turning rural death of wolves whose interests clash with those it into words. It was a feeling of the wild that I’d Paula Wild provides a good general introduc- opment is clustered around the 49th parallel, the landscapes into a vast economically and eco- of ranchers and hunters, and even hikers. never imagined existed and it has stayed with tion but she homogenizes First Nations’ interpre- natural resource exploration and infrastructure logically unsustainable suburbia. Negative wolf- Here she introduces the key work of Troy me ever since. tation of the wolves as though all First Nations that supports our cities, extends all over our encounters should be taken as symptoms of an Bennett, a shepherd who is largely responsible “A huge fallacy is that healthy North Ameri- cultures interpreted “the wolf” in the same way. would-be “wilderness.” “unhealthy” environmental condition driven by for the reintroduction of the wolf in France, can wolves do not pose any danger to humans,” She also resurrects as fact Ernest Thompson We rate among this planet’s highest per capita mankind. Wolf-hazing should only be considered and for much of the legislation that has made Wild writes. The wolf as a potential predator on Seton’s fictitious tale of Lobo, without taking into energy consumers, and we have a disproportion- as a stopgap measure until humans learn to the controversial return of the wolf in Europe humans becomes the explicit topic of the last account the famous controversy over “nature ately high impact on wilderness. The state of manage their own behaviour and the associated possible. four chapters (9 through 12). faking” that it sparked among the giants of “na- Canadian ecosystems can be measured not only destruction of wilderness. What Wild does not include in her discus- Absent from the discussion is why this so- ture writing” from John Burroughs to Theodore by the impacts of the Athabasca Tar Sands Proj- Meanwhile, Return of the Wolf should be read sion of Bennett’s work is the crucial question called “huge fallacy” may not have been a fallacy Roosevelt before the First World War. ect, or Site C, but by the disappearance of iconic and welcomed as an invitation to rediscover that that drove Bennett to become an advocate for for the previous two to three hundred years in At a time of global biodiversity collapse, as flora and fauna accompanied by an increase in green inner fire known only to the wolf and the wolf conservation. Bennett describes his first America. There are no healthy wolves outside of recently pointed out in a study fittingly en- after-the-fact “management by crisis.” mountain. 9781771622066 encounter with a wolf that had been killing his their healthy habitat. The proper habitat of the titled, Protect the last of the wild, Canada is In B.C., spotted owls, a wilderness conserva- lambs as a life-changing discovery of “the other” wolf is wilderness. In order to adequately discuss nevertheless the second most important of only tion emblem, have collapsed to a population of Dr. Loys Maingon is an avid naturalist and a in wilderness, and it is worth quoting: the status of the wolf one has to weigh the less five nations still blessed with “relatively intact” less than a dozen. Caribou populations across professional biologist. He is the current webinar “Our eyes met and were locked, I was drawn considered question of the current health of our ecosystems. Canada are collapsing, largely due to decades of host for the Canadian Society of Environmental into them. People talk about the wolves’ stare and wilderness. Meanwhile, as reported by the World Wildlife forestry and oil and gas extraction. The general Biologists. Maingon owns and operates an en- how it holds you, how it holds its prey. When a ✫ Foundation, Canada has lost a staggering 60 attitude is that they are “too expensive to save.” dangered plant nursery and oversees a number wild wolf looks into your eyes it looks deep and WILDERNESS IS AS MISUNDERSTOOD AS THE WOLF percent of its wildlife since 1970. Wilderness Half of B.C.’s Chinook salmon populations of regional conservation programmes on the you cannot look away. Something holds you itself, in our increasingly suburbanized and continues to be eliminated to this day at a rate have been found to be “endangered” by COSE- Tsolum River near Merville. He is also research there. Whether it is hypnotism or fear or some- digitalized global, largely disconnected, society. unprecedented since the great Cretaceous ex- WIC (the Committee on the Status of Endangered director of the Strathcona Wilderness Institute thing else is unsure. I didn’t feel fear, but I was In some cultures, such as First Nations, there tinction. Wildlife in Canada), at a time when the future and runs the environmental impact consulting held. In that look I felt something change in me, is traditionally no “wilderness,” because wilder- Between them, Russia, Canada, Australia, of iconic resident killer whales of the Salish Sea firm, Aardscan Biological and Environmental Ltd. PHOTO I felt an exchange of information, I don’t know ness is co-extensive with cultural meaning. For the USA, and Brazil house much (70 percent) of hangs in doubt through Chinook collapse, inten- Arrested at Clayoquot Sound in 1993, Maingon what the wolf took from it, but I was left with “hunter-gatherers” the wolf is a totemic animal, the 23 percent global wilderness that remains sified recreational and commercial boat traffic, remains a strong advocate of social, economic, something, a gift, as it were. I have deliberated and to be human is to be a potential wolf and a today. While Canada’s position as a wilderness and the threat of future oil tanker traffic. and environmental change. He contributed a

LITTLEJOHNS over it many times, something primeval that was possible member of a wolf clan as deeply socially champion may sound reassuring to Canadian The declines of polar bears and caribou are chapter to Clayoquot & Dissent (Ronsdale, 1994). dormant in me was awakened that day; it’s not knit to kin and place as is the wolf family in a ▼ TOM readers, the practical reality is far more chilling. just the most widely publicized concerns. If there His complete, 5,000-word review of Return of the something I can write about, I cannot even put space shared with the human family. Wolf and grizzly fi ght over a deer carcass in Montana. While most of our urban and agricultural devel- is a fit for “the wolf” today, it is in this precarious Wolf is accessible on-line via The Ormsby Review.

20 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 21 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 BLANK PAGE MÉTIS REVIEW

Teenagers Maria Bachelor Bannock, and William Auger with violin and guitar, all a from 1939 to today community dance needed in 1958. PHOTOS

AUGER Constance Brissenden pays tribute to a Métis

settlement sustained by the land—physically, MARCEL

emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Bachelor Bannock recipe: Preheat

oven▼ to 350°F (177°C). In mixing Memories of a Métis Settlement: Eighty Shortly after taking the bowl, combine 3 cups flour, 1 table- Years of East Prairie Métis Settlement bread out of the oven, I slath- spoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt, , editor by Constance Brissenden ered butter and gooseberry 1 teaspoon sugar. In another bowl, (Theytus Books $14.89) jam over its warm surface, mix ½ cup milk and ½ cup water and BY ANGIE TUCKER embraced a cup of hot tea, beat in an egg. Pour the liquid into the and sat down to meet the bowl of dry ingredients and mix. Add arly East Prairie set- residents—both past and water until it looks like cake dough, brings atten- school and church were erected, and tler and bachelor present—of East Prairie Mé- and then pour it into a greased pan. tion to the the road into the settlement was built. George Harvey tis Settlement, northwest of Bake about one-half to one hour, camaraderie Electricity was brought into the settle- was a veteran of Edmonton. depending on the thickness of dough. and connec- ment in the late 1960s. According to E the First World Published by Theytus tion that the elder Margaret Supernault, life is now War. He lost an eye Books in Penticton, Brissenden’s lat- residents have continued to practice much easier but the closeness of the in the war and was est book speaks to the beginnings over the past eighty years, not only community has diminished now that wounded in other parts of his body; and transformations of numerous with their human kin, but also with people are losing their “old-ways” for thereafter he wore a glass eye. families within the East Prairie Métis their non-human relations. survival. Harvey had a war disability pension Settlement. Generational stories of Community members experienced I recommend this book to anyone in- and helped others when they were in the Bellerose, L’Hirondelle, Auger, Be- flooding, shortages of food and provi- terested in the Métis diaspora that now need. In return, they looked out for audry, Desjarlais, Dumont, Patenaude, sions, financial inadequacies, and a lack extends throughout British Columbia him, bringing him his “bachelor ban- Supernault, and Haggerty families of roads and schools for their children. and western Canada. 9781926886503 nock.” address larger themes of resilience However, by living and working together When I first received Constance and collaboration, while the book also as a community, the residents shared Angie Tucker is Red River Métis from Brissenden’s Memories of a Métis outlines the specific failures and suc- their harvested crops, meats, medi- the Poplar Point/St. Anne’s area in Settlement: Eighty Years of East cesses of the settlement. cines, and labour. Despite their hard- Manitoba. As an Indigenous feminist Prairie Métis Settlement, I earmarked Clearly the land sustains Métis ships, they worked together to create a and cultural anthropologist, she is cur- Theresa Auger’s recipe for Bachelor people—physically, emotionally, men- successful and enduring community. rently enrolled as a Ph.D student in the Bannock. In preparation for reading, I tally, spiritually—and informs our Over time, floorless log cabins Department of Native Studies at the made a batch. basis for natural laws. This book also turned into modern housing, a bridge, University of Alberta.

Sea Trial Brian Harvey

After a 25-year break from boating, Brian Harvey circumnavigates Vancouver Island with his wife, his dog, and a box of documents that surfaced after his father’s death. John Harvey was a neurosurgeon, violinist, and photographer who answered his ]Q\PI[]UUWV_ٺLWWZILMKILMQV\WZM\QZMUMV\\WÅVLI[PMZQ It was a malpractice suit, and it did not go well. Dr. Harvey never got over it. The box contained every nurse’s record, doctor’s report, trial transcript, and expert testimony related to the case. Only Brian’s father had read it all — until now.

“Harvey has serious skills, and his riveting story is impossible to put down.” Cruising World

978-1-77041-477-8 | $21.95 AVAILABLE NOW

22 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 IINDIGENOUS REVIEW

Acting OUT

Bob Joseph’s 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act has won the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award.

21 Things You May Not Know to rectify the latter situation. Joseph About the Indian Act: Helping simply wants to tell non-Indigenous Canadians Make Reconciliation with Canadians why the Indian Act doesn’t Indigenous Peoples a Reality by work—and he delivers, in 21 ways.

Bob Joseph (Raincoast Books $19.95) The Indian Act has come to sym-

bolize many things to many different BY DANIEL SIMS ▼ people, with some Canadians ruled n my wallet is a piece by it and other Canadians unaware Bob Joseph’s follow-up, Indigenous Relations: Insights, Tips & Suggestions to Make of plastic issued by of its existence or what it means. Reconciliation a Reality (Page Two $19.95), co-authored with Cynthia F. Jo- the federal govern- First passed in 1876, it consolidated seph, offers an eight-part process to help business and government work ment that clearly previous pieces of colonial (pre-Con- more effectively with Indigenous Peoples. 978-1989025642 identifies me as federation) legislation that formed the I “an Indian within nucleus of Canadian Aboriginal policy. predate the Indian Act and do not need and the structure of 21 Things is suited meaning of the In- Numerous amendments have followed, the Act to exist or provide legal weight to its intended audience. Joseph begins dian Act, chapter 27, Statutes of with the most recent ones made on to them. by briefly explaining the Indian Act is, Canada (1985).” It reflects that I have December 22, 2017 to try to remove A hereditary chief of the Gwawae- followed by 21 outrageous and unbe- 6(1)(a) status and my status number sexism from the laws that determine nuk Nation, part of the larger lievable aspects of it. is 609XXXXXXX. who can get status. Kwakwaka’wakw Nation, Joseph is the His conclusion, that the Act should To someone familiar with the Act, Simply repealing the act is prob- founder and president of ITCINC blog, be replaced by Indigenous self-gov- and Indian status in particular, I just lematic, as was revealed in 1969 when a major source of information for the ernment, should come as no surprise. told you how I got status (technically Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and public about Indigenous topics. In fact, 9780995266520 no one is born with status) and what his Minister of Indian Affairs, Jean the title and use of a list of “top” 21 items region and First Nation I am from. To Chrétien, proposed to do so. They ran reveal the online origin of Joseph’s book. A member of the Tsay Keh Dene First someone uninitiated with the Indian into the complexity of the things the Joseph wrote this book in an ap- Nation in British Columbia, Dr. Daniel Act, what I said makes little sense. Act legitimized and with which it was proachable, accessible manner for Sims is assistant professor in History Bob Joseph’s 21 Things You May associated. I say legitimized rather than readers with little to no understanding and Indigenous Studies at the Univer- Not Know About the Indian Act aims created because treaties, for example, of the Indigenous situation in Canada; sity of Alberta’s Augustana Campus.

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

Catch Jean Walton at the Vancouver Historical Society,

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

23 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019

ART REVIEW Malcolm▼ Island image by Nicola Weston. An exhibition of Weston’s paintings from Love of the Salish Sea Islands was held at Merchant Mews, Salt Spring Island. But having grown up on a large island and having lived for extended periods on smaller ones—Crete, and a small island off the west coast of Ireland—I know they can also be insular. Gary Geddes, who lives on Our idyllic isles Thetis Island but writes here about Texada Island, quotes songwriter Valdy: “Islands are differences of opinion surrounded by water.” Des Kennedy echoes this, remembering his 40 writers sing the praises of 26 islands in the Salish Sea early years on Denman Island, half a century ago, learning the rules, spoken and unspoken. He also recalls island life at its best: “Oh, and the dances that rocked the old community hall in those days! Love of the Salish Sea Islands: Chris Arnett describes Salt Spring Island: “People There’d be chairs lined along the perimeter and the New Essays, Memoirs and Poems by 40 Island have lived on Salt Spring Island for so long that there centre jammed with the flailing bodies. Doug and Writers by Mona Fertig (editor) and Gail Sjuberg is a soil type called Neptune that is the accumulated (introduction) (Mother Tongue Publishing $23.95) the Slugs, Pied Pear and other bands on the hippie dark sediment of people and their activities in a single circuit squeezed onto the little stage and played long BY THERESA KISHKAN location over thousands of years. Some of these de- into the night. Halloween dances were especially wild posits are meters deep and cover acres of land.” extravaganzas of outlandish costumes and question- first encountered the term “islo- Taiaike Alfred recalls tiny Temosen, or Tumbo able behaviour. Little kids would sleep safely on a bed mania” in Lawrence Durrell’s Island: “No human presence remains on the island, of coats in the corner.” Reflections on a Marine Venus, or rather, there is only remnant settlement, an old The stories of how people his memoir of living on the Greek house and collapsing barn that settlers abandoned are drawn to islands can be island of Rhodes. The islomane, a century ago. When I am there, amidst the col- I fascinating. But it’s even according to Durrell, is someone lapsed settlement and nature taking back her rock, more interesting to consider who is intoxicated just by the I feel fully immersed in an unfolding, uncertain and why they remain, how they thought of being on an island. What better place to ancient future.” build lives, build houses and suffer that condition than Greece? Linda Rogers remembers summers on Savary Is- gardens, build community, Well, how about the entire archipelago of islands land, watching “basket-makers from Tla’amin paddle

and work to preserve the within what has become known as the Salish Sea? past, imagined swans as graceful as ballerinas and

integrity of place. Mother Anyone who has spent time on BC Ferries or other remembered the proverb, ‘They thought they were ▼ Tongue Publishing has pro- craft or else flown over the Strait of Juan de Fuca, burying us, but we were seeds...’” vided us with a wonderful Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia has seen these Clearly, islands can make people contemplative. Mitlenatch Island con- palimpsest; adding to stories islands strung out like seaglass, blue, aqua, bottle- And poetic. tributor Alison Watt written on rock, beach glass, green, tawny gold; some of them rough-hewn and Diana Hayes, on a sailboat in the Strait of Juan leaves of grass, old barn wood and Neptune soil. craggy, some of them smoothed by wind and tide. de Fuca, watches “the sky revealing Orion’s Belt/our The anthology concludes with Lasqueti Island poet As a child growing up on Vancouver Island, I faithful compass.” Sue Wheeler’s brief “Moonlit Night, January:” camped with my family on Salt Spring, rowing to Ann Eriksson remembers Retreat Island, off Bootprints in snow abandoned farms in my father’s little dinghy. Later in Galiano Island: “blue-eyed Mary and calypso orchids from the porch my life, I visited others in the archipelago—Gabriola, left to blow in the wind.” to where the truck Galiano, Saturna (for one of their legendary lamb Alison Watt describes her stint as a naturalist on had been parked. feasts), Thetis, Penelakut, Quadra… Mitlenatch Island, “its meadows … embroidered with So, it was with delight that I opened Love of the wildflowers, camas and chocolate lilies, sea blush and Tire tracks turning east Salish Sea Islands and spent a few hours transported brodiaea, blue-eyed Mary. Its shore … seeded with not west, out of the driveway. by forty writers, hearing, as I read, the clamour of gulls sea stars, chitons, snails, mussels, clams; the island So few secrets on an island. following the herring, and the sound of ferries greet- set like a heart coupled to light, quickened by spring, ing one another as they sailed through Active Pass. slowed by winter.” Islands included in Love of the Salish Sea Islands The contributors share their islands with generous Rex Weyler follows the life-cycle of a dragonfly, are Bowen, Cortez, Denman, Gabriola, Galiano, Gam- and often lyrical attention, many cognizant of the past. specifically a Pachydiplax longipennis, or blue dasher, bier, Hornby, Lasqueti, Lummi, Mayne, Mitlenatch, Nancy Turner, retired to Protection Island, cir- as he muses on names and the act of naming, specifi- Newcastle, Penelakut, Pender, Prevost, Protection, cumnavigates her island in a rowboat: “It doesn’t cally Hernán Cortés, the namesake of Cortez Island, Quadra, Retreat, Salt Spring, Saturna, Savary, Sena- take much imagination to put myself back in the days a Spanish conquistador who never saw the island. nus, Texada, Thetis, Thormanby and Tumbo. before the Europeans arrived here, to picture Snuney- On Savary Island, Mona Fertig conjures idyllic 9781896949734 muxw families spread all along the channel, pulling summers: their cedar dugout canoes onto the beaches, camping ...you glide past summer cottages and Theresa Kishkan lives on the Sechelt Peninsula. Her under framework shelters covered with dense mats of wide-porch houses, 15th book will be The Marriage of Rivers, a novella cattail and tule, harvesting their food, preparing their where old gardens of corn and potatoes from Palimpsest Press, due in the spring of 2020. She fishnets and duck nets of stinging nettle fibre, and were once fertilized by dogfish and starfish runs a small press devoted to the literary novella, Fish teaching their children the right way to do things.” where towels dry on rosemary bushes... Gotta Swim Editions, with author Anik See.

24 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 ART REVIEW New from University of Toronto Press

Mungo Martin “David B. MacDonald incites the reader & hippie virtuosos to do some serious soul searching about

Out of the Woods: been spared the de-programming of the true nature of Woodworkers along the Salish Sea Kwakiutl beliefs and shamanistic prac- Canada…The Sleeping by Pirjo Raits (Heritage House $34.95) tices by the Potlatch Law and residen- BY GRAHAME WARE tial schools. As a chief, he taught the Giant Awakens is a craft of carving totems at Thunderbird catalyst for necessary history of Salish Sea Park in Victoria. carvers and wood- Mungo Martin taught and influenced change.” workers is long many, including Godfrey Stephens, overdue. Out Bill Holm (the Seattle art historian who – Shelagh Rogers, OC, of the Woods: married his daughter), Bill Reid, and TRC Honorary Witness, Chancellor, A University of Victoria Woodworkers Tony Hunt. Martin’s belief in seeing along the Salish native objects as art was buttressed Sea by retired newspaper through the empathy and intellectual editor Pirjo Raits is a treat to the eyes understanding of UBC anthropologists, “Borrows’s work and hearts of West Coasters. With pho- Harry and Audrey Hawthorn, who moves beyond the tography by Dale Roth and Michele provided tremendous support. Ramberg, it surveys 26 craftsman The second line of influence can be binary, divisive, and and artists whose “truth to material” traced back to Jan Zach (1914-1986), linear ideologies is wood derived from the bio-region a Czech artist and teacher who moved skirting the Salish Sea. from Brazil via New York City to Vic- dominating A deep spiritual empathy for the for- toria with his B.C.-born wife, Judith, est and the sea binds the sculptors and in 1951. the Indigenous intellectual landscape in Canada.”

– Deborah McGregor York University

“…shedding much- needed light on current debates surrounding Indigenous−settler relations.”

– Bruce Granville Miller University of British Columbia PHOTO

RAMBERG

MICHELE

AND “Words Have a Past is

ROTH

an outstanding piece ▼ DALE of scholarship that Godfrey Stephens working in his Zach advocated and proselytized Esquimalt studio, from Out of for the use of driftwood not only as a brings impressive the Woods (Heritage House). “truth to materials” element, but one that was distinct to the larger Pacific levels of depth and carvers of the Salish Sea (once called Northwest region—ultimately leading to rigor to the study of the Strait of Georgia and neighbouring a fascinating mix of “hippie virtuosos” Juan De Fuca Strait). They tap into whose works are also well represented Canadian Indigenous wood’s timeless and ancestral quality, in this book. boarding schools.” which surely is a primary source of Sculptor Godfrey Stephens, fea- human artistic expres- tured on the cover of Out – Andrew Woolford sion. One has to look of the Woods, has been University of Manitoba only to the oldest piece of at it for over forty years recorded sculpture or idol and is rightfully the elder in the world, made over statesman of this book. 11,000 years ago—the Stephens was previously Shigor idol from Siberia, the subject of Gurdeep a seventeen-foot log of Stephens’ Wood Storms/ Siberian larch. Wild Canvas: The Art of There are two lines Godfrey Stephens (D&I of origin for West Coast Enterprises, 2014). wood sculpture. The first 9781772032604 utorontopress.com | @utpress line is that of Mungo Mar- tin (1879-1962) and In- Grahame Ware digenous people. Martin ▼ reviews and carves was old enough to have Mungo Martin, 1962 from Gabriola Island.

25 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 FICTION REVIEW WestMeetsEast

Philip Huynh’s brilliant short stories range from Vancouver to Vietnam.

The Forbidden Purple City by Philip Huynh large copper statue of General Tran the chalkboard: le chat, le chien, au (Goose Lane Editions, $22.95) Hung Đao, a once-revered relic that pays, and other short words arranged BY CHERIE THIESSEN he saved from the Communists and like little bonbons on a plate.” Or brought with him to Canada, is now CHERIE from The Tale of Jude the description hilip Huynh’s stunning collection no longer wanted by anyone. THIESSEN of a strand of ivy on a building as “a of nine stories is bigger than it Short stories are a challenge to single vine of ivy like a raised vein.” looks. There’s a lot to relish and write but in Huynh’s hands they seem Nine words but suddenly you see it think about in these stories by to flow seamlessly off the page, leaving an afterglow so clearly and get what it implies. a second-generation Canadian behind. None of these stories have cut-and-dried Most of these stories have been published in Ca- P endings—they are simply frozen, waiting for the nadian literary journals, as well as in two editions whose parents fled Vietnam dur- ing its civil war. reader’s verdict. of the Journey Prize anthology. Collectively, this is Now a lawyer in Richmond, Huynh easily sets his Huynh easily handles various points of view as he a brilliant debut. stories in New York, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Jeju Island describes relationships that range from father and These are not stories primarily about prejudice or in Korea, and Hue and Hoi An in Vietnam. son, mother and son, husband and wife, friends and about victims. They are quite simply and exclusively In an unforgettable story that flirts with magic sweethearts, strangers, and even between the living tales of human nature, and therefore one never knows realism, The Abalone Diver, a young Vietnamese and the dead. The stories set in North American span what will happen next. Chekhov and Alice Munro bride—who was forced by poverty to leave her country from 9/11 to the present. would thoroughly approve. 9781773100784 and marry a stranger—tries to find a sense of com- There are memorable descriptions on nearly every Cherie Thiessen writes from Pender Island. munity on an isolated Korean island by befriending, page: “The French kindergarten teacher is writing on and eventually joining, a bizarre coterie of crones who dive for abalone and double as a tourist attraction. In the title story, The Forbidden Purple City, a man who escaped his homeland in 1980 recalls the glories of Hue, the old imperial capital that was leveled in 1947. Vietnam’s Nguyen (NWEE-en) dynasty in cen- tral Vietnam had its own ‘forbidden city’ that housed thirteen emperors until its final emperor abdicated in 1945. The walled palace was desecrated by the Communists after their arrival in 1968. The story’s narrator was employed as historical consultant with the impossible task of reviving the splendor. The remains of fifty buildings consisted of some floor tiles, a stairway and a pair of brass can- nons. There were no historical photos for reference but the pretense of refurbishment kept him employed and fed. In his old age he recalls he had no adequate tools or supplies to undertake proper renovations. Ruefully he must accept that the wonders of The Forbidden City can only survive in his imagination. In Toad Poem, Diem, now 64, is similarly returning to Hoi An after 45 years to honour his parents with a Toad Poem, based on a well-known Vietnamese folk tale. His poem must rouse the heavens and memorial- ize his parents. In a new suit bought with his meager life’s savings, he travels to his parent’s village as a pilgrim to the past. Such exotic tales of displacement and regret, however, are not typical; and one can argue the title of the volume is somewhat misleading in terms of its content. Equally compelling—and more numerous— are Huynh’s deft portrayals of younger Vietnamese Canadians as they try to balance awareness of their parents’ values and attitudes with their need to forge their own identities. In Mayfly, narrated in the second person, readers meet a Caucasian boy who gradually becomes em- broiled in a Vietnamese gang in Vancouver. It’s a fas- cinating and ultimately chilling tale about the perils of gradually belonging to those who don’t belong. The “When I grew up in Vancouver mayfly in nature only lives for 24 hours. The nameless boy flourishes, flirts with the hierarchy of the gang, in the 1970s and 1980s, I felt and falls afoul of violence with an inevitability that the isolation of being a Viet- feels almost macabre as he meets his mundane end. namese person quite poignantly, The Investment on Dumfries Street The first story, , and I think these feelings have is a perfect example of Huynh’s technique of rendering informed some of my writing. filmic vignettes. Gradually the young protagonist dis- covers the truth about his father’s shady investments. I don’t think I would feel the The disappointing truth is completely convincing: same way growing up in shoddy grow-ops in the basements of unoccupied Vancouver now as a Vietnamese, houses. PHOTO where the pho restaurants seem The tensions and complexities of living with a foot in each world, and two generations sometimes uneas- to outnumber the Starbucks.” SAWCHUK ily co-existing, are masterfully crafted and entirely — PHILIP HUYNH

convincing. In Gulliver’s Wife, a man discovers that his LAURA

26 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 EĞǁƟƚůĞƐĂǀĂŝůĂďůĞƐŽŽŶĂƚLJŽƵƌůŽĐĂůŬƐƚŽƌĞ KIDLIT REVIEW

978-1-989467-00-8 978-1-926991-94-8 Available Jul 1, 2019 Available now

Karen Autio and

▼ Loraine Kemp in Wild Horse PHOTO Canyon, 2018. PRESS

CRWTH A ponderosa pine 978-1-926991-14-6 978-1-926991-01-8 Available Sep 1, 2019 Available Jul 1, 2019 Booklovers: time capsule Please visit our Published and distributed by website to see more of our books. Authors: Check our hybrid model of publishing there to learn History through the growth of a tree. about our services. granvilleislandpublishing.com Toll-free: 1-877-688-0320 Growing Up in Wild Horse Canyon that the most devastating effects came by Karen Autio, art by Loraine Kemp with the arrival of gold miners and (Crwth Press $25.95) Ages 7-10 settlers in the valley, not in the time of the fur trade. BY KEN MATHER I also question the assertion that “the gold rush era was devastating t the heart of Growing in the Okanagan Valley. It drastically up in Wild Horse altered rivers, creeks and fish popu- Canyon is the il- lations which wreaked havoc on the lustrated story of Okanagan people’s way of being.” A the life of a Pon- This greatly exaggerates the impact derosa Pine from of miners in the Okanagan Valley dur- a seed in the year ing the gold rush years. There were 1780 to its death in the Okanagan Park short-lived gold rushes to the Similka- fire in 2003. As the tree grows, the story meen in 1859 and to Rock Creek in is told of the history of the Okanagan 1860, and a minor rush to Mission Valley and the Syilx people, who have Creek near present-day Kelowna in seen profound changes to their culture 1860. But to state that these early during the same period of time. gold mining incursions devastated The story uses Wild Horse Canyon, rivers, creeks and fish populations of located on the east side of Okanagan the Okanagan Valley is not accurate. Lake, as the location of its episodes, Finally, I would question the state- which include the arrival of the first fur ment that “raising cattle and hogs traders in 1811, the fur brigades that became the main industry in the travelled the valley in the first half of Okanagan Valley.” To my knowledge, the 1800s, the B.C. gold rush era, the few hogs were raised in the Okanagan arrival of Father Pandosy in 1859, the in the years before orchards began to arrival of settlers, the sternwheeler era, replace cattle ranching. logging, the Kettle Valley railway con- Despite these questionable interpre- struction, the round-up of wild horses tations of history, the book is an excel- to sell to the Russians in 1926, and the lent resource for students as well as use of the Wild Horse Canyon area for adults who are interested in Okanagan training Chinese commandos in 1944. history, particularly in the recent his- Although only 25 pages long, the tory of the Syilx people who had lived ongoing story provides an overview here for thousands of years before their history of the Okanagan Valley with culture was, indeed, eventually devas- particular emphasis, respect and sen- tated by the colonists. 9781775331902 sitivity toward the Syilx people. Despite the book’s considerable Ken Mather retired in 2013 after 42 Book 4 in the award-winning Dyed In The Green strengths and fine illustrations, a few years in heritage research. Manager of historical inaccuracies mar the otherwise the Historic O’Keefe Ranch from 1984 ILFWLRQVHULHVDERXWRXUQDWLRQDOSDUNV well-researched presentation. For ex- until 2014, Ken is now curator emeritus ISBN: 9780987975461‡ ample, Karen Autio asserts that the fur of O’Keefe Ranch and was awarded trade, “… radically altered the traditional the Joe Martin Memorial award for his www.georgemercer.com practices of the Okanagan people.” contribution to B.C. Cowboy Heritage in While it is important not to diminish 2015. His latest book is Ranch Tales: $YDLODEOHDWLQGHSHQGHQWDQG,QGLJRERRNVWRUHVDFURVV&DQDGD the impact of white intruders on the Stories from the Frontier (Heritage $OVRDYDLODEOHDVDQHERRNIURP$PD]RQDQG.RER Syilx people, it must be emphasized House $19.95).

27 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 ћђѤȱѓџќњȱџюёђѤіћёȱќќјѠ

A PICTURE BOOK FROM OLIVE SENIOR AND LAURA JAMES, the creators of the bestselling Anna Carries Water—a New York Public Library Best Book, a Canadian Children’s Book Centre Best Book and a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year.

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“The bestselling duo of writer Olive Senior and artist Laura James team up again (to) follow a young girl as she learns to love her “snappy, nappy, wavy, crazy” ’do . . . Jamaican-Canadian writer Senior uses playful rhymes to speak directly to young readers who may struggle with standing out from other kids their age . . . The artwork L by James—of Antiguan heritage—is an explosion of colour and energy, with each one of her illustrations perfectly echoing the vibrancy of Jamilla’s ever-changing electric and kinetic hairstyles.”—Quill & Quire

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May 2019 / 72 b&w photos, 4 maps / paperback

Vancouverism Larry Beasley “Larry Beasley takes us on one of the most intense and transformative city-building journeys of our time. 9DQFRXYHULVP is a tale of breathtaking conversion – of principles, ideas, and players – that saw a rather provincial town come of age on the global stage.” -HQQLIHU.HHVPDDW&(2RIWKH&UHDWLYH+RXVLQJ6RFLHW\ DQGIRUPHUFKLHISODQQHURIWKH&LW\RI7RURQWR

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28 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 • DNA • Gold Rush YOUNG ADULT REVIEW • ART • Cougars When a kiss is dangerous

The hazards of escaping a polygamous life

Lost Boy “…Charlie tosses me a beer, and I by Shelley Hrdlitschka snag it out of the air. I shouldn’t have (Orca $14.95) another one. I’ve already had a few and BY CAROL ANNE SHAW have to work in the morning, but I’m Beau Dick: Revolutionary the only one here who has to get up Spirit by Darrin J. Martens early, so it’s not like I’m going to get any ach day is much like (Figure 1 /Audain Art sleep anyway. The couch is my bed, The Bulldog and the Helix: the previous one in Museum $40) and it’s groaning under the weight of DNA and the Pursuit of Unity. Seventeen- the people crowded on it. Now I know year-old Jon must Justice in a Frontier Town Shortlisted for the Haig-Brown why this place is called a butt hut. spend hours toil- by Shayne Morrow Regional BC Book Prize, this E …I’m on the couch with my arm (Heritage House $22.95) tribute to the art and life ing in fields, work- around Belle. She’s snuggled in deep. ing construction, of Indigenous carver Beau Pot always makes her mellow. I hope An reporter traces the role caring for younger siblings, and study- Dick presents eighty of the she’s planning to stay all night on this of DNA evidence in two ing the scriptures under the watchful artist’s finest masks. It both couch with me.” eye of The Prophet. cases involving murders of Bright and compassionate, Jon contextualizes his work The Prophet cannot be questioned. young girls killed two decades must not only learn how the “real over fifty years within But, at seventeen, Jon finds himself apart in the same town. This world” works; more importantly, he Kwakwaka’wakw traditions wondering why a man should have Port Alberni story traces has to learn who he is without the and reveals how Beau Dick at least three wives before he can get how police used new genetic narrow-minded programming of The sought to incorporate into heaven; why short-sleeved shirts tools for convictions for both Prophet. This story credibly shows are forbidden, along with listening to Western influences. how easy it can be to fall into hard cases from decades before, music of any kind. times when you have no real sense of marking a breakthrough for After being caught kissing a girl, Jon who you are. criminology in Canada. decides he must leave Unity before he Compelling and well-written, Lost is banished. Boy had me on #TeamJon right from That’s the set-up for Lost Boy, Shel- the get-go. The novel ends with poten- ley Hrdlitschka’s sequel to Sister Wife tial for a third story about the young (Orca, 2008) which was set in the same people who grew up in Unity—the girls fictitious polygamous community. in particular. After hitchhiking to the nearby 9781459816374 town of Springdale, Jon is taken in by Abigail, a former Unity member Carol Anne Shaw who has made it her mission to is the author of help the “polgys” or “lost boys.” the “Hannah” She, too, has strict rules, but un- books, all from like The Prophet’s, hers are fair Ronsdale Press. and evenly balanced. Everyone She lives in the is treated with kindness and Cowichan Val- respect. ley on Vancou- With Abigail’s encourage- ver Island. ment, Jon manages to find work in construction. He discovers he Raincoast Chronicles 24: Claiming the Land: British is way out of his depth. He Cougar Companions: Columbia and the Mak- misses his family, and he Bute Inlet Country and ing of a New El Dorado misses the predictability the Legendary Schnarrs of his former days. His by Daniel Marshall new world is foreign and by Judith Williams (Ronsdale Press $24.95) (Harbour Publishing $26.95) unsettling. A stranger to Focusing on 1858, the year formal schooling, Jon An illustrated history of the of the Fraser River gold rush, falls behind with his Schnarr family, their pet Daniel Marshall has won the studies. He has never cougars and their neighbours been taught to think Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for critically. It isn’t long in Bute Inlet, this Raincoast showing how the foreign before Jon finds him- Chronicles #24 features rare miner-militias from the U.S. self spiraling into a photos, diaries, oral history crossed the 49th parallel, taking life of drugs, alcohol, and interviews to respect and the law into their own hands, and homelessness. illuminate homesteading conducting extermination raids While Jon’s de- on the remote BC coast when against Indigenous peoples, scent into addiction it was more populated. forcibly claiming the land. is quick, it feels au- thentic. Lost Boy is told in first person/pres- ent tense—a style that Thought provoking books places the reader right in the middle of the drama available on and action. Part two begins with a bit of a jolt. Jon has clearly hit the skids. He’s living in a crappy apartment, drinking at Shelley work, smoking pot, and there Hrdlitschka▼ Selected by Alan Twigg are girls.

29 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 Ann M. Pavlick Her story in the FREE ebook from KOBO.com POETRY REVIEW So You Think You Need A Lawyer? A search for marvels “Advocating for the brain injured SO YOU THINK goes to Griffin glitter remains Ann’s YOU NEED A LAWYER? passion. Her rea- sons for helping The Committee for the disabled are Social Justice Eve Joseph’s private quarrels go public

revealed in Victoria, British Columbia September 2018 the story.” Quarrels of life. Or, as poet Jack Spicer once by Eve Joseph (Anvil Press $18) confessed, “I am thinking that a poem ISBN: 978-0-2285-0163-3 BY PAUL FALARDEAU could go on forever.” Truth is not set in stone but left e make out of the to the reader to construct and decide quarrel with oth- upon. One particularly exquisite ex- ers, rhetoric, but ample starts as “Light stutters down of the quarrel with the closed blinds and builds a spine, ourselves, poetry.” one vertebrae at a time.” This blind is W —W.B. YEATS transformed into “a door that could That quotation open but remains closed.” Curious, at the outset of Eve Joseph’s Quar- Joseph’s explorations of the minuti- rigorous, and rels leads us into short prose-poems ae of life are vital. “The trick is to return interdisciplinary. about the conflicts within herself. She to the moment. To smell the butts in the Literature, politics,   focuses on moments when she must ashtray, the air freshener dangling from philosophy, humanity. vindicate the coexistence of the infinite the mirror. Stairway to Heaven was Graduate degrees in liberal and the finite. playing on the radio. God arms himself MA Part one of Quarrels is a series of with his smallest creations.” studies. Explore GLS. meditations. Part two reflects upon The final chapter is the payoff as the photography of Diane Arbus. Part Joseph takes the same approach to three is an extended sequence that capturing moments she shares with engages with the death of her father. her father, connected by the inescap- Ultimately, death is one of the able fact that they are his last. This themes that links all three parts. Jo- concluding chapter reveals the height seph’s parents make frequent appear- of her prowess for observation and ances in the early poems. reflection. For all the talk of eternity,
 Along the way, Joseph frequently in- there is still a hollow Hallelujah. cludes references to the ocean, such as Joseph wonderfully ends Quarrels her room with a view, or Demosthenes by retelling the events of her father’s shouting at the sea with pebbles in death to his horses, and recognizing the his mouth. catharsis in the moment when “their

    There are many birds throughout long heads bow in consolation.” and also plenty of booze (wine, rum, Joseph’s private quarrels in Quar- gin) that is shared during visits from a rels reflect and accept the uncertainties plethora of artists and mythical figures, of perception. The closer we look at one from Aeschylus to Al Purdy. moment, the more we see that there is A quote from American cultural no such thing. The more we try to be in critic Joan Acocella fittingly opens one the present, the more we can appreci- Graduate Liberal Studies section of the book, but helps with our ate the past and the future, as well. receptivity to all of it: The closer we are to understanding, the “The goal of art was not the truth more we must let go. 9781772141191 Looking back to look forward. but the marvelous —indeed the marvel- SFU Vancouver: ous was the truth.” Paul Falardeau is a poet, essayist and The intellectual Like lotus blossoms, these poems journalist who has published in The open from a central image into some- Ormsby Review, Pacific Rim Review heart of the city. thing seemingly limitless as Joseph of Books, and subTerrain. He lives in “quarrels” with the infinite complexity Hastings-Sunrise, East Vancouver. www.sfu.ca/gls

THE RISK THEATRE MODEL OF TRAGEDY: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected

Why are tragedies endearing to the human heart? This question has haunted inquiring minds from Aristotle to Hegel and Nietzsche. Edwin Wong reveals that tragic heroes, by making delirious wagers, trigger unintended consequences. Tragedy functions as a valuing mechanism. Because tragic heroes lose all, audi- ences wonder: how did the perfect bet go wrong? The Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Competi- tion—inspired by this book—is hosted by one of

Canada’s oldest and most respected theatres. It is the world’s largest playwriting competition for ▼ the writing of tragedy (risktheatre.com). 378 pp • ISBN: 978-1-5255-3756-1 Eve Joseph of Victoria is one of three Canadian finalists for Seeking a Canadian Distributor, contact Munro’s Books, Bolen Books, the handsomely-endowed 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize for her Amazon, Chapters, and B&N [email protected] $22.95 collection Quarrels. The winner—to be announced in early June —receives $65,000 and runners-up are accorded $10,000 each.

30 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 POETRY REVIEW Born in Kamloops, Stephanie Warner grew up in Kimberley.

A Violent Streak The pleasure in A Violent by Stephanie Warner Streak is knowing Warner will (Fitzhenry & Whiteside $15) The kinked garden hose of push the limit; just short of a BY ELEE KRALJII GARDINER game of literary chicken, she is never out of control. Warner’s tephanie CATASTROPHIC THINKING thrill is the intensity of her im- Warner’s ages and settings. In “Surface” debut col- she describes a childhood dare lection of The pleasure in A Violent Streak is knowing from boys to let fire ants crawl poetry, A up the speaker’s body: “the Violent Stephanie Warner will push the limit. ants clotted/ like pomegranate S Streak be- seeds, sequining my legs, until gins with the title poem de- another slap/of God-water, scribing the hard living in Some of the poems, such as a tip, as you pin more fire, a superhero flick, elec- like a sheet of tin, scraped “Fort McMoney,” her term for as “The Queen of Spades,” and more of your life tricity dosed, scorched earth, them.” Fort McMurray. track the speaker’s experi- to the axis of a cool crease, and ultimately, “the kinked Stephanie Warner’s A Vio- where all their best boys go. ence in Dawson City, home of on the snap of sheets garden hose / of catastrophic lent Streak is cutthroat and Return two years later the infamous Downtowner’s perfectly set, and the cer- thinking.” clever, never pretentious and with a souped-up Chevy, pickled toe drink, made with tainty that any odour We know fast cars do never hobbled by shame or stereo-surround and oxblood the actual frostbitten human (jizz, stale wine, fags in the damage: to the environ- preciousness, which makes seats, missing a hand. digit, where the speaker has: toilet bowl, black-out sex) will ment, the parking lot, wild- me love it all the more. Written in triplets this a job chamber maiding, and be trumped by the chemical life. “The Heart Land” is 9781554554461 poem sketches a northern life you try to muster up spray making progress in one of the best (meaning of “ex-Hutterite kids, out of the prospector’s zeal, as your lungs. viscerally accurate) poems Elee Kraljii Gardiner’s most their minds on moonshine” your hands crack, bleed ✫ I’ve read about a collision recent book is Trauma Head and “A nephew mangled in a folding sheets straight out IN “FIRE SEASON,” WE READ THESE with a deer, referred to as (Anvil, 2018). She co-edited bailer; others dismantled more of the industrial dryers. associative words: flicked ciga- a “dowry of wasted meat; V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s elegantly / by drink and the Already half-cut on the rettes, good fires, lightning- its blood purling, still hot/ Downtown Eastside (Arsenal Bashaw casino.” mickey left in your last struck, lava flows, carrier oil, through the sagging glass.” Pulp, 2012) with John Asfour.

In the Shade of the Tractor’s Wheel by Peter Christensen ▼ Each day my mother she popped the seal delivered to the fields from the jar where my father toiled with the edge of the golden lid a mid-day meal poured it of hard-boiled eggs let the fragrant liquid cool coarse wheat bread before he sipped the edge buttered yellow as barley of the green glass cup

and slathered in wild raspberry jam Strained muscles dust sin and sweat Coffee in mason jars washed away by that sweet drink sweetened with molasses followed by a little sleep thick with cow’s cream in the shade of the tractor’s wheel all wrapped in newspaper and towels From Oona River Poems (Thistledown Press $20), a collection intended to be an antidote to the hot to touch plethora of information, propaganda, and opinion with which we are confronted every day. 978-1-77187-190-7 Peter Christensen

31 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 NEW from B.R. Bentley

Take a flamboyant banker, a rakish CSIS Intelligence Officer, and an ambitious British REVIEW Columbia premier. Add a dash of Chinese POETRY money laundering, a gangland contract, a sudden disappearance, and the dynamic global LNG shipping industry—and what do you have? These are some of the ingredients in B.R. Bentley’s latest novel, The Banker’s Box. The book’s multifaceted plot, with threads stretching from North America to Asia, will appeal to local and international readers alike. Set in the worlds of high finance, politics and crime, The Banker’s Box provides a fascinat- ing view into the crumbling foundations that frequently support power’s elegant façade.

978-1-5255-4859-8 (Hardcover) 978-1-5255-4860-4 (Paperback) 978-1-5255-4861-1 (eBook)

PURCHASE E-BOOK & PRINT COPIES THROUGH LINKS AT

www.brbentley.com John▼ La Greca Greca wrestling with truth

Homeless Memorial: dot on St. Catherine Street One January Poems from the Streets of Vernon by Evening; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf John La Greca (Ekstasis Editions $23.95) Now?; Margot Kidder and Former Topics BY PHYLLIS REEVE of Conversation; Woody Allen, Now That He is near Death; A Moment with Dos- I’ve been a client of government toevsky before I Chainsaw the Crucifix social agencies since I was 13. My Up above Bella Vista; On the Song ‘I Will grandmother evicted our family Always Love You.’ just before Christmas that year. My The last is one of my favourites, mother’s mental illness was caus- a thoughtful, felt and tightly written Dolly Parton ing antagonisms. It didn’t help that comparison of ’s original Whitney Huston my father assaulted my mother’s with ’s cover version brother while he was drunk…. I from the film The Bodyguard. I think cracked up when I was 17. I took a the poem would move me even if I did year off after Grade Eleven. I was not know that Dolly Parton is alive and finding that I was a painter and a well, and Whitney Houston isn’t. The long poem Homeless Memorial, writer.—JOHN LA GRECA, AT AGE 64 which gives the book its title, refers to ohn La Greca was a rock placed in Polson Park in Vernon literally tearing his —where he mostly lives—and an an- hair out for years nual civic ceremony organised by the due to an obses- well-intentioned First Baptist Church sive compulsive as a means of “enabling our homeless disorder. He briefly population to remember friends and J attended four uni- loved ones who have died in the past versities: UBC, Okanagan College, year.” Guelph, McGill. Eventually, having The poet listens to and tells people’s been homeless, he shared his poems stories, and offers no solution but is with his sister, his mentor the artist sure the memorial is not it. “The home- Sveva Caetani (who employed him less deserve more than memorials, / for fifteen years as her gardener in Photo-ops or editors using them as Vernon), and Vernon Library’s poet- political footballs / To beat both sides in-residence, Harold Rhenisch who of the issue/ without proposing attacks helped him compile his first book. on the problem/ And solutions that WINCHELL PRICE MASTER PAINTER Several of his poems tell stories of have a political will.” railway workers and machine operators John La Greca’s book has been pub- THE LIFE AND WORK OF A with whom he occasionally worked, but licised and celebrated in Vernon and DISTINGUISHED ROYAL CANADIAN most are vignettes, character sketches, around the province. He emerges from ACADEMY ARTIST and conversations featuring his fellow his writing as very much an individual, by Kevin Robert Turner homeless citizens—vagrants, addicts, but also on the edge of a community In WINCHELL PRICE MASTER PAINTER, Kevin hookers. or several communities, each in need Brandi Robert Turner offers an intimate glimpse into The latter included , “the of what he has to offer. the life and work of the Royal Canadian most confusing woman I have ever He reflects, “I have always felt talked to,” who wanted domesticity but Academy Artist with added first-hand stories denied as an outsider. In the prison suddenly died of natural causes, or from the years his parents, Melburn and Pearl and the psychiatric ward, I was seen cancer, or maybe it was AIDS. “Brandi’s Turner, served as patrons and care-givers for as a delusional person with grandiose dead, and she’s still in my head./ She’s thoughts about his own value. I always the painter. Price’s own memoirs, friend and the gift that keeps giving back.” knew that I could contribute.” fellow artist Roy Grandy’s commentary on Greca’s poet’s voice is matter-of- 9781771712750 selected works, press clippings, photos, and fact and colloquial but highly literate, catalogue of work round out this in-depth “cosmopolitan and democratic.” A retired librarian and co-founder of the study of Price. Poems in Homeless Memorial in- bookstore at Page’s Resort & Marina, [email protected] • To order: www.winchellprice.com clude, Terry Gilliam’s Revenge, or Move Phyllis Reeve lives on Gabriola Island $49.95 CAD h/c • 5 Star IR Rating Over Montezuma; The Killer Breasts of where she continues to interfere in the Tchaka’s Body Guards; Waiting for Go- cultural life of her community.

32 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 Sara Cassidy: “Keeping a diary since I was eight years old ▼ has a lot to do with my WHO’S becoming a writer.” WHO BRITISH COLUMBIA PHOTO A IS FOR AGUIRRE RAIN

The early plays of Chilean Canadian

Carmen Aguirre about the “hardships, KATRINA horrors, and heartache of exile” have $4.95); Nevers (Orca $10.95); and been collected into a triad for Chile Scalliwag on the Salish Sea illus- E IS FOR EMILY Con Carne and Other Early Works trated by Mike Deas (Heritage $10.95). (Talonbooks $19.95). As preliminary With fourteen titles, Cassidy has Woo, The Monkey Who Inspired Em- works to her recent plays, Refugee Ho- kept a lower profile than her sister ily Carr: A Biography (D&M 2019) by tel (premiered at Langara’s Studio 58), Anne Giardini, a novelist and SFU Grant Hayter-Menzies respects the Broken Tailbone, Blue Box and The Trig- Chancellor. Cassidy’s novel Skylark enduring relationship with a Javanese ger, these works supplement her two was shortlisted for the Bolen’s Book macaque whom Carr adopted in 1923 memoirs Something Fierce: Memoirs of Prize in 2014; A Boy Named Queen was after she spotted the greeny-brown a Revolutionary Daughter and Mexican nominated for several awards in 2016. primate in a Victoria pet store. Hayter- Hooker #1 and My Other Roles Since the Helen’s Birds: 9781773060385; Menzies suggests that Woo was like Revolution. The three revitalized plays The Moon: 9781459818644; Nevers: a surrogate daughter, a reflection of 9781259821637; Scalliwag: 978-1772032789 are Chile Con Carne, ?QUE PASA with herself, a piece of the wild inside her LA RAZA, eh?, and In a Land Called I boarding house because Carr was Don’t Remember. 9781772012286 D IS FOR DAWKINS never able to reconcile her wild and Co-owner of Vancouver’s Lattimer Gal- passionate nature with the stifling mo- lery, Alexander Dawkins has written res of the well-to-do Victorian society Understanding Northwest Coast In- in which she was raised. After Carr digenous Jewelry (Greystone $24.95) was hospitalized due to heart failure,

to convey that his subject is an art she arranged for Woo to be sent to the

form that goes beyond bracelets, rings Stanley Park Zoo where Woo died a year later. 978-1-77162-214-1 and pendants. With more than 100 ▼ photographs, he analyzes designs, Woo by Emily Carr (circa 1932) delves into the history of the art form, F IS FOR FIONA

highlights the traits of the most com-

mon animal symbols and includes For six-and-a-half years North Van- ▼ biographies and works from more than couver-born Fiona McQuarrie was a music critic at the Vancouver Sun and Cassandra Blanchard fifty of the Coast’s best-known jewel- ers. Northwest Coast artist Corinne The Province. Her lifelong interest in Hunt, who co-designed medals for pop music has led to her first book, B IS FOR BLANCHARD the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, Song Book: 21 Songs from 10 Years wrote the foreword. (1964-74) (New Haven Publishing $18) Born in Whitehorse, Cassandra which tells the stories of how and why 978-1-77164-297-2 Blanchard of Duncan has a BA from some of her favourite songs were writ- UBC with a major in gender, race, ten by the likes of Randy Newman, The sexuality and social justice. Dissecting Beach Boys, Tim Hardin, Donovan herself and the transient life she once and Split Enz. 9781912587155 knew, including time on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside as a drug addict, Blanchard writes candidly about vio- G IS FOR GOTTFRIEDSON lence, drug use and sex work in her de- A rancher and professional breeder of but Fresh Pack of Smokes (Nightwood quarterhorses, Garry Gottfriedson $18.95). “This night in Oppenheimer grew up in Kamloops, the son of In- Park Dan asked me to shit-kick this digenous parents who were both at the chick in the face as she owed money forefront of community activism in the and I said no because I didn’t know era of George Manuel. “When you’re who she was and I wasn’t about to play born Indian,” he says, “you are born with fire so he sat on the bench then into politics.” Gottfriedson, with a stood up and did a flying kick twice to Masters in education from Simon her chin and she convulsed and passed Fraser University, has taught at out he said he didn’t want to spill blood Cariboo College. He has developed because she had HIV…” 978-0-88971-352-9 his own teaching method for the Shuswap language, one that C IS FOR CASSIDY “I remember when I was writing my requires physical responses to learning individual words. He Sara Cassidy has been a human rights first▼ book, my editor would often say, has served as a councilor and witness in Guatemala and won a Gold consultant for the Kamloops National Magazine Award. Having pre- ‘You know that you can go on here for Indian Band. viously promoted other authors as the much longer, right? We really want to Gottfriedson’s ninth co-director of the Victoria Festival of book is Clinging to Bone Authors, Cassidy can finally gain her get into this character’s head.’ That (Ronsdale $17.95), a rightful share of the creative spotlight was such a great revelation for me! collection of poetry with four new titles released in 2019. that examines be- Those titles are Helen’s Birds illus- Right! I can go ON! It was wonderful.” trayal, grief, love and trated by Sophie Casson (Groundwood CARMEN AGUIRRE survival. $12.95); The Moon is a Silver Pond 978-1-55380-563-2 illustrated by Josee Bisaillon (Orca

33 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 N IS FOR NARSIMHAN WHO’S WHO BC Mumbai-born Mahtab Narsim- han immigrated to Canada in 1997 H IS FOR HUBER and worked in On- When asked what he knew about tario’s IT industry French cooking just as he was about prior to receiving a to open Le Bistro, Bruno Huber joked, Silver Birch award “French fries, French onion soup, in 2009 for her de- French desserts, French wines.” But but YA novel, The Mahtab Narsimhan Huber actually understood that he was Third Eye, the first getting into haute cuisine, an “alchemy in her Tara trilogy for Dundurn. In for the senses.” With a partner named her latest book, a story of cultural Aldo, Huber believed he was realizing transplantation in reverse, Embrace a dream when the two took over a the Chicken (Orca $9.95) focuses on defunct French restaurant, in Vancou- a young student, Shivani, recently ar- ver’s West End just months before the rived from Mumbai, who fears being 2010 Olympics. Huber recounts his embarrassed at her new Canadian hopes and ambitions in Folly Bistro school when her mother volunteers to (Granville Island $19.95), including cook one of her “stinky” Indian dishes tales of temperamental chefs, wayward for the school’s annual fundraiser. love affairs between the staff, difficult Mahtab, in Persian, means moonlight. patrons, touchy health inspectors and 978-1-4598-1973-3 above all, precarious cash flow. “The money that would painstakingly come O IS FOR OLGA in the front, left out the back faster than it came,” writes Huber, who had Seventeen years ago, after listening to a invested all his RRSPs and savings radio programme about second genera- into the venture. Selling the bistro at tion Holocaust survivors, Olga Camp- a loss two years later, Huber had no bell experienced repressed feelings of regrets. “It was a fantastic time and we grief and sorrow. All members of her entertained all our friends, and my wife mother’s family had been murdered in loved the bistro.” 978-1-989467-00-8 the Shoa but no details ever emerged. Campbell’s A Whisper Across Time (Jubaji Press $32) depicts her family’s I IS FOR INDIGENOUS experience of the Holocaust as an in- 2019 is the Inter- advertent legacy of trauma. Described national Year of as a healing ritual, a Shamanic Soul Indigenous Lan- retrieval and a celebration of life, A guages, a United Whisper Across Time resulted in an Cover art of Folly Bistro from a poster by French artist Roger Blachon. Nations observance art exhibit last November in conjunc- to raise awareness tion with the Jewish Book Festival in of the consequenc- Ann M IS FOR MATWICHUK Vancouver. 978-0-9812911-2-3 es of the endanger- Kujundzic: ment of Indigenous feminist, Every life is full of close calls, is it not? artist, P IS FOR PAWLIK-KIENLEN Spencer Sheehan-Kalina languages across So, the debut poetry collection of Laura the world, “with an activist Matwichuk has a beguiling title, Near Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen writes in her aim to establish a link between lan- Miss (Nightwood treehouse overlooking the ocean in guage, development, peace, and rec- $18.95). Subjects Vancouver. Her experiences with a onciliation.” B.C. publishing has long for this SFU Writers schizophrenic mother, foster homes, led the way for books for, about and Studio grad range family estrangement, attempted rape, by Indigenous people. A new imprint, “from actual cata- infertility, and three years teaching Rebel Mountain Press, is launching K IS FOR KUJUNDZIC clysms such as me- in Africa taught her that choosing to Michelle Sylliboy’s Kiskajeyi—I Am teor collisions and grow forward is essential—especially Ready ($19.99) which blends her po- In 1993, Talonbooks released George volcanic eruptions when you can’t go back. Her degrees etry and photography with Mi’kmaq Ryga’s posthumous writing, Sum- to everyday failures are in psychology, education, and so- (L’nuk) hieroglyphic poetry and Spen- merland, a collection of essays and and accidents.” As cial work. In Growing Forward When Laura Matwichuk cer Sheehan-Kalina’s picture book excerpts that reflects Ryga’s deeply we go about our You Can’t Go Back (Bethany House (kindergarten-grade 3) Nootka Sound political nature and his abiding sympa- fragile, miraculous, ever hopeful lives $12.99), she shares stories of contem- in Harmony: Aboriginal Connections thy for the downtrodden. The book was on planet Earth, we hope someone will porary and biblical women who tran- ($14.95) which uses poetry to highlight edited by Ann Kujundzic, a guiding indulge in a tempting headline: Near scended extraordinary pain and grief. the beauty of the Nootka Sound and the force within the George Ryga Society Miss is a Hit. 978-0-88971-353-6 9780764232176 animals that live there. in Summerland until it was disbanded Kiskajev 978-1-7753019-2-9; in 2014. Born in Scotland, Kujundzic Harmony 978-1-7753019-3-6 married artist Zeljko Kujundzic at age nineteen. They immigrated to Canada J IS FOR JANICE and raised five children. The couple Janice Strong, who lives on a rural went on to help establish the Koote- property outside of Cranbrook, is a nay School of Art in Nelson. Her latest hiker, snowshoer, skier and photog- book New Ground: A Memoir of Art in rapher whose images are widely pub- the Kootenays (Caitlin Press $24.95) lished. She has led hikes for the City covers her life as a feminist, artist and of Cranbrook’s Parks & Recreation activist fighting for women’s reproduc- department for many years and written tive rights and social justice. She later Mountain Footsteps: Hikes in the joined the Raging Grannies. East Kootenay of Southeastern Brit- 9781773860015 ish Columbia (Rocky Mountain Books L IS FOR LIU $30). A fourth edition in 2018 has been revised and updated, including The Museum of Anthropology in Van- enhanced colour maps and photos, as couver is home to approximately 800 well as bike trails. The trails and routes objects pertaining to Cantonese opera are between the Rocky Mountains in as it was performed in early British the east and the Purcell Range in the Columbia, giving rise to April Liu’s west, including trips in the Cranbrook, work of art history and anthropology, PHOTO Kimberley, Creston, Invermere, Ra- Divine Threads: The Visual and Ma- FUNG dium and Fernie areas. Also featured terial Culture of Cantonese Opera

are the BC Provincial Parks Akamina– (Figure 1 $60). She traces the history of JOHN Kishinena, Top of the World, Height of Cantonese opera via costumes, props, Xin Qunying opera troupe performing in a temporary matshed theatre in the Rockies, Elk Lakes, St. Mary’s Al- instruments, printed media, and vinyl Pak Sha Wan, Hong Kong, 2012. From Divine Threads: The Visual and Material pine and Bugaboo Glacier. 9781771602464 recordings. 9781773270234 Culture of Cantonese Opera (Figure 1) by April Liu.

34 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 EVENT Magazine’s 32nd Annual NON-FICTION CONTEST

Cash Prizes $1,500 • $1,000 • $500 Deadline: October 15

Non-Fiction Contest winners feature in every volume since 1989 and have received recognition from the Canadian Magazine Awards, National Magazine Awards and Best Canadian Essays. All entries considered for publication. Entry fee of $34.95 includes a one-year subscription. We encourage writers from diverse backgrounds and experience levels to submit their work. Visit eventmagazine.ca

LSD room at Hollywood Hospital, 1965, from Psychedelic Prophets: The Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond (McGill-Queens). Q IS FOR QUEBEC T IS FOR TIMMINS

It was Gordon Campbell’s regime Covering topics as that instructed ICBC to become more different as domes- litigious when British Columbians ticity, sensuality try to get compensation as accident and disease, Leslie victims. Possibly it says something Timmins’ debut about his popularity, after a decade- collection of poems long premiership that included the Every Shame- Winter Olympics, that the first critical less Ray (Inanna, book to examine his legacy isn’t B.C.- $18.95) has been 20 plus published. From the McGill-Queen’s Leslie Timmins described as one Yoka imprint in Quebec, UNBC professors that “shimmers varieties J.R. Lacharite and Tracy Summer- with a radiant engagement of life.” is reading & ville have gathered 368 pages of critical The poems are arranged in three linked recommends: essays for The Campbell Revolution? movements ending with a meditation After Life: Power, Politics and Policy in British on the visual artist Henri Matisse. Ways We Columbia (MQUP $31.46). 9780773551039 Timmins’ poems have been shortlisted Think About for the Montreal International Poetry Death Prize. Timmins’ currently reviews for by Merrie-Ellen R IS FOR ROSS Event magazine, and is a member of Wilcox Elizabeth Ross’ poetic primer for the powerX6 writing collective. (Orca Books). 978-1771335775 new mothers, After Birth (Palimpsest ISBN: 9781459813885 $18.95), the messy moments and dis- tasteful discoveries she writes about U IS FOR YOU include “not having the water birth you planned” and coming to terms with a So You Think You Need a Lawyer?: daughter’s Cinderella obsession. Plus, Committee for Social Justice (free there’s the unanticipated burden of Kobo download) by Ann M. Pavlick caring for a parent or perhaps develop- tells the true story of her struggle as an ing “an unhealthy fixation with Real- advocate for those with a brain injury. tor.ca.” Piercingly apt, wry and a tad Before her brain injury, Pavlick was disturbing, Ross’ second book “taps a special education teacher and was into the contradictions of creation—joy, instrumental in the development of distress, lassitude.” 9781989287125 the Peabody Language Kits for disad- vantaged children. After her accident #5 - 1046 Mason St. Victoria, B.C. V8T 1A3 S IS FOR SEXTON she co-authored, with her late hus- (just off Cook Street) 1-250-384-0905 band Leon E. Pavlick, former curator • Hand sorted for premium quality • Full selection of exotic teas James Sexton of UBC is one of six of botany at the Royal B.C. Museum, • B.C. honey and Belgian chocolates • Mail orders welcome PremiumAffordable Quality Pricesat editors of Psychedelic Prophets: Red Pines on the Ridge. They were also The Letters of Aldous Huxley and able to draft two further nature books www.yokascoffee.com Humphry Osmond (McGill Queens —Foxes on the Ridge and Aspens on the $75), an 800-page scholarly edition Ridge. For further information about examining the letters of Osmond, a her work to promote change to protect British psychiatrist who is known for the brain injured, see acquiredbrainin- inventing the word psychedelic, and juryawareness.com 978-0-228-50163-3 Huxley, author of Brave New World. Correspondence includes references V IS FOR VO to Al “Johnny Appleseed of LSD” Hubbard, Hollywood Hospital’s Medical With the forthcoming release of the Director J. Ross McLean, and vari- second in her Crow Stories trilogy for ous CBC programs. According to B.C. the 4-8 years old crowd, The Ranger Archives: “The Hollywood Hospital was (Groundwood $17.95) a follow-up to founded in 1919 in New Westminster, The Outlaw, Nancy Vo is one of six B.C. B.C. as the Hollywood Sanitarium. It writers with books from Groundwood was a private hospital for the treatment Books. The author/illustrator will be of alcoholics and patients with other joined in the fall list by B.C.-based addictions.” Bill Richardson, McLean experimented with the use Anne Fleming, of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs Scot Ritchie, Sara in the treatment of alcoholism and per- Cassidy and Slava sonality disorders. However, the LSD Kolesar. Vo’s new treatments were viewed suspiciously story explores the by the wider medical community and nuanced friendship the provincial government, and by 1975 between a ranger McLean had been pressured into clos- and a fox. ing the hospital.” 9780773555068 Nancy Vo 978-1-77306-128-3

35 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 WHO’S WHO BC Z IS FOR ZOE Catherine Jameson published her first book Zoe and the Fawn (Theytus $19.95) after studying children’s fiction W IS FOR WASSERMAN writing at Penticton’s En’owkin Centre’s Indigenous Creative Writing graduate Our favourite title of the year is Teach- program. Written in English and of- ing in the Age of Disinformation: fering Syilx Okanagan translations for Don’t Confuse Me With the Data, My each of the animals mentioned in the Mind is Made Up! (Rowman & Little- story, this picture book is aimed at field $39) by the unstoppable Selma readers aged 3 to 5. It’s about a little Wasserman, born in 1929. Don’t tell girl that stumbles upon a fawn in the the Russians, but in an era of alternate forest while out walking with her father. truths and outright lies, she provides Wondering where the fawn’s mother is, teachers with research-tested methods little Zoe goes on a quest in the forest for developing students’ abilities to de- to find her, encountering many other cipher what the heck is for real on the PHOTO animals along the way. Illustrations

Internet, social media, television and are by award-winning, Cree-Métis art- SHEA the press. We assume the title Bullshit ist Julie Flett, and translations are by Detection was considered and dropped. GREG Richard Armstrong, a Syilx traditional Cecil Paul and Briony Penn on Maple Leaf Island, Stories from the Magic Canoe of Wa’xaid Wassermann is professor emerita in knowledge/language specialist. They- the Faculty of Education at SFU and Mountain Books $30) as told to Briony tus Books is now distributed by Orca she has also published four series of Penn, who is also releasing her own Y IS FOR YU Book Publishers. 9781926886534 books for children. 978-1475840988 400-page book, A Year on the Wild Born in Vancouver Side: A West Coast Naturalist’s Al- as a fourth gen- Julie Flett’s cover art X IS FOR XESDU’WÄXW manac (Touchwood $26). eration Canadian, from Zoe and the Fawn “My name is Wa’xaid,” Cecil Paul Born in 1931 in the Kitlope, Cecil Paul, with a Ph.D in his- (Theytus Books). says, “given to me by my people. ‘Wa’ also known by his Xenaksiala name, tory from Princeton is ‘the river’, ‘Xaid’ is ‘good’—good Wa’xaid, is one of the last fluent speak- University, Henry river. Sometimes the river is not good. ers of his people’s language. At age ten Yu first published I am a Xenaksiala, I am from the Killer he was placed in a residential school Thinking Orientals: Whale Clan. They call it the Kitlope. It is run by the United Church of Canada Migration, Contact, called Xesdu’wäxw (Huschduwaschdu) at Port Alberni where he was abused. and Exoticism in for ‘blue, milky, glacial water’. Our Henry Yu After three decades of prolonged alco- Modern America destination is what I would like to talk hol abuse, he returned to the Kitlope (Oxford University Press, 2001) which about, and a boat—I call it my magic where his healing journey began. He won the Norris and Carol Hundley canoe. It is a magical canoe because has worked tirelessly to protect the Prize as the Most Distinguished Book there is room for everyone who wants Kitlope, described as the largest intact of 2001. Yu is a professor at UBC and to come into it to paddle together. The temperate rainforest watershed in the a board member of the Chinese Cana- currents against it are very strong but world. In his late 80s, he resides on dian Historical Society of B.C. He is I believe we can reach that destination his ancestors’ traditional territory. currently working on a book entitled and this is the reason for our survival.” He is the co-author of Stories from Magic Canoe: 9781771602952 How Tiger Woods Lost His Stripes: the Magic Canoe of Wa’xaid (Rocky Wild Side: 978-177151267 Finding Ourselves in History.

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37 BC BOOKWORLD • SUMMER 2019 LETTERS QUICKIES Memory, Lane Q Thank you for this award. It is most kind. Nice too to have the ceremony A COMMUNITY BULLETIN here in Victoria if it can be arranged. BOARD FOR INDEPENDENTS As you might know, I’ve been ill these Lorna Crozier (above) holds a past three years with an ongoing, civic proclamation in honour of undiagnosed inflammatory disease Patrick Lane who died on March QUICKIES is an affordable advertising which has attacked my immune sys- 7, only two weeks after learn- vehicle for writers, artists & events. tem, I am on prednisone among many ing he was the 26th recipient of the George Woodcock Lifetime For info on how to be included: other pernicious drugs. The meds Achievement Award. Novelist [email protected] leave me a bit challenged, but short Esi Edugyan (right) pays tribute of being in hospital I will be there… to Patrick Lane at a memorial It is nice to be associated with attended by 250 people at UVic on George Woodcock. He wrote a chap- April 20. A plaque of B.C. marble Pure book summary of my poetry back in will be added to the Vancouver Pilgrimage mid-career and compared my verse Public Library’s Walk of Fame. A Journey Back to Self, Using Personal Truth to poets such as Yeats, which, God as Your Compass. knows, was excessive in the extreme, thirty-plus years, but despite all of May to July to provide enough water by Chental Wilson but still nice to imagine it might echo the dire predictions about the death of to float the tugs and barges that car- This is a journey into the some small qualities of such a master, the book, here we are: people are still ried, and continue to carry, seasonal clarity of who you really are. a poet I admired when I was young ISBN 9781999013417 • $17.99 reading, books are being published re-supply materials to river communi- Chentalwilson.com and still do… in even greater numbers thanks to ties and the Western Arctic. Amazon.ca • Amazon.com SELF-HELP Patrick Lane the Internet. The old fashioned book Site C will further reduce, and Victoria review, in my humble opinion, is more probably eliminate, peak flows. An- important than ever. other important factor is that the A Secret Garden Bohemian rhapsody Heather Graham Peace has always been critically de- The story Graham Island pendent on snow pack for its water. of Darts Hill BC BookWorld helps me to keep my With climate change, that snow pack Garden Park sanity! I feel I’m not the only one dig- Passionate reader is endangered and instead of having by Margaret ging deeper, asking questions, and a reliable annual snow fall, quantities Cadwaladr kicking the fences. Every issue goes My wife and I are avid readers of BC year by year have materially changed. ISBN: around in my Bohemian Household BookWorld and The Ormsby Review. It is only infrequently that the Rockies 978-1-9995465-0-2 $29.95 • dartshill.ca for weeks and weeks, moves from Together, they fill a tremendous void will see an “historic” snow pack. [email protected] kitchen table to bedside to purse and in a world where literary culture is not Lack of seasonal water will prob- LOCAL / GARDEN HISTORY back. Articles are discussed, wish- sufficiently cherished, not supported ably mean greater retention by Site lists made, reviews ripped out and by the plutocracy. C in order to cover generation re- ‘magnetically’ attached to our fridge I am about as passionate about quirements, thus less water through The -yay, paper! It finally ends up, full of Canadian literature as I am of wil- the spillways for downstream needs. Chocolate coffee and wine stains, in the wood derness, and I cannot overstate my Also, climate change has materially Pilgrim stove or cat litter box. BookWorld thankfulness for your many contri- reduced the forest capability to retain by Marie Maccagno is my tangible sanity experience. butions. water. Trees killed by the Mountain Fearless, honest. A must- Thank you! Loys Maingon Pine Beetle, and then logged, do not read for those walking their own personal journeys. Titia Jetten Courtenay contribute to the land’s ability to mod- 978-1-7750721-0-2 Ladysmith erate water delivery. $25 CDN/PB • e-book versions available mariemaccagno.com/books Peace offering What has bothered me in all of this MEMOIR Humble opinion is that the GNWT government seems Thank you for such a great publica- blissfully unaware of the perils associ- Even after all these years, I always tion. I appreciated the review of Dam- ated with these changes. I have never Direct Action look forward to receiving BC Book- ming the Peace and its identification seen a protest by them about the B.C. Gets The World. I love following what’s going of a background agenda for the proj- government’s actions. Goods on in the book business. ect, as well as serious downstream Last year they called an interna- A Graphic History of In 1982 I started a little second- environmental issues in Peace River tional tender for four new double hull the Strike in Canada hand bookstore on May Street, in Vic- Country. barges. This $19.5 million fleet of by The Graphic History Collective toria’s Fairfield neighbourhood, called Neither the book, nor the review barges, paid for by Ottawa, may have Maystreet Books. Two years later I a very short working life. $14.95• 9781771134170 seems to appreciate the devastating im- Between The Lines teamed up with Diana Leeming, who pact the new dam will have on the Lake Christopher Wright www.btlbooks.com had been working at Ivy’s Bookshop in Athabasca wetlands, water levels in Digby, Nova Scotia, Purported GRAPHIC NOVEL Oak Bay for years, to start Hawthorne great Slave Lake and the probable end Scallop Capital of Canada Books, which was located just off Fort of the Mackenzie as a navigable river. Street on Cook Street. The Peace has always been a major OBITS... 1919 We were the first shop in Victoria hydraulic contributor to Lake Atha- A Graphic History to carry both new and second-hand basca, and downstream lakes and riv- Joe Rosenblatt (1933–2019) of the Winnipeg J. Michael Yates (1938-2019) General Strike books, which doesn’t sound so un- ers. The construction of the Bennett Patrick Lane (1939–2019) by The Graphic History usual now, but was rather revolution- Dam materially changed peak flow Collective and David Lester ary at the time. rates, that were critical for the Lake Wayson Choy (1939-2019) $19.19 In 2005 I started another book- Athabasca wetlands. Keith Harrison (1945-2019) ISBN 9781771134200 Greg Younging (1961-2019) Between The Lines store, this time in Port Alberni. Navigation on the Mackenzie River www.btlbooks.com A lot has happened in the past has also depended on peak flows from See BCBookLook.com for full obituaries GRAPHIC NOVEL Send letters or emails to: BC BookWorld, 926 West 15th Ave., Vancouver, BC V5Z 1R9 [email protected] • Letters may be edited for clarity & length.

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