BOOK REVIEWS

On the Line: A History of the Mickleburgh begins with John Lutz’s British Columbia research on the inclusion of Indigenous Labour Movement workers at the beginning of European settlement in BC’s major resource industries and then their exclusion with Rod Mickleburgh mass European settlement. Exclusion also characterizes Asian migrants, despite Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Pub- 2018 320 $44 95 labour market inclusion: such as Chinese, lishing, . pp. . , cloth. Japanese, and South Asian resource workers. Only political groups like the Robin Wylie Industrial Workers of the World and Douglas College the Communist Party’s Worker’s Unity League challenged this, though Canada removed these barriers after the Second n the Line is an account of BC World War. O trade unions by the BC Labour What strikes the reader immediately Heritage Centre (an offshoot of the is how violent labour relations were as BC Federation of Labour) written by unions were established – as chapters retired Vancouver Sun labour reporter on the Great Vancouver Island Coal Rod Mickleburgh. In a well-illustrated Strike in 1912 or Ballantyne Pier in the and lively manner, he tells the story of 1930s illustrate – and continued court workers’ organizations and struggles, repression with ex parte injunctions (with from Vancouver Island coal miners in jail sentences for union members) until the 1850s to teachers’ struggles today. the 1970s, when the NDP government The author tells three stories in twenty- established the Labour Code and the four chapters: settler-Aboriginal relations Labour Relations Board. in the labour market; the rise of craft and Legalization of unions, compulsory industrial unions in the private sector – dues collection, collective bargaining, often divided by anti-Asian racism and and labour standards have usually been the politics of reform or revolution; and established elsewhere in Canada and the ascendency of public-sector unionism then reluctantly acknowledged in British since the 1970s, which raised gender Columbia. This speaks volumes about equity as more women entered unions. the small business nature of provincial bc studies, no. 204, Winter 2019/20 205 206 bc studies politics in dealing with dominant certifications, and the general decline of resource corporations. private-sector unions are largely missing. What also stands out is how important And contextualization could be improved socialist politics were to worker self- with a few tables outlining the scale and organization. From the Socialist Party composition of the workforce, union of British Columbia, to the IWW, to the density, and strike patterns. Communist Party, to new leftists in the More important, when the author independent Canadian union movement describes new pressures and tactics, of the 1970s, socialist militants risked the politics need to be discussed. In serious, sometimes deadly, reprisals to particular, why has the general strike establish unions and bargain contracts. arisen as an economic response to Later, international unions and social government interventions – from the 1965 democrats purged or expelled leftists as BC Federation of Labour mobilization threats to union and state stability. But for oil refinery workers, to Operation that hasn’t meant comfortable relations Solidarity, to the looming showdown with NDP administrations in legally with the Liberals in 2005 over contract containing workplace conflict, with stripping? How do unions develop fixed essential services and social accords interests over time that lead to rank- that offered equity without investment and-file rebellions, up to and including (i.e., wage controls). independent movements like the Service, Another theme is how the unionization Office, and Retail Workers Union of public-sector workers clashed with of Canada for women bank workers Social Credit and Liberal governments’ in the 1970s, which the established commitment to the market through trade union movement refused to legislation that tried to de-unionize the support? What about the often difficult BC Government and Service Employees’ relations between unions and movements Union and the BC Teachers’ Federation like the Solidarity Coalition and the and unilaterally altered agreements. In environmental movement in 1993’s War 1983, Bill Bennett tried to end job security in the Woods over Clayoquot Sound? and destroy the social safety net in a On the Line is a good introduction to package of twenty-six “restraint” bills: BC organized workers’ struggles, but then Gordon Campbell stripped job more needs to be debated. As a college security and working conditions from faculty association president in 2005 and health workers and teachers’ contracts chair of the provincial college bargaining in the early 2000s. committee, I can assure the reader that Ultimately, by 2016, the Supreme such debates happened. Court of Canada ruled that union rights were protected rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Despite the decline of union density in the province, as Mickleburgh states, unions remain critical to the well-being and rights of the waged majority. In narrative terms, some gaps exist. Craft unions (other than the building trades under siege since the 1980s), the 1994 NDP Korbin Report establishing sectoral bargaining to extinguish local Book Reviews 207

Sonny Assu: A Selective History racist colonial policies. Other series, such as The Longing and Artifacts of Sonny Assu, with Candice Authenticity, touch on the importance of Hopkins, Marianne Nicolson, cedar to the Kwakwaka’wakw and how Richard Van Camp, museological display affects the perceived and Ellyn Walker value of art. In Billy and the Chiefs and Ellipsis, Assu’s vivid imagination Victoria: Heritage House, 2018. 224 $34 95 is applied to honouring significant pp. . paper. aspects of Kwakwaka’wakw history: in Alexandra Phillips this case, the recording of traditional Emily Carr University songs for academic purposes that were of Art and Design simultaneously banned from performance by colonial laws. his comprehensive In Interventions on the Imaginary, Assu survey of inserts Indigenous ovoids, U-shapes, and Sonny Assu’s work is prefaced formline designs into scans of historical byT four incisive essays by prominent works by artists such as Emily Carr Indigenous scholars and curators. This and others, disrupting their depictions beautifully designed and thoughtfully of the unpeopled landscape as “terra organized book covers significant nullius.” The artist conceives these phases in the Kwakwaka’wakw artist’s interventions as “acts of resistance toward career, punctuated by key quotations the colonial subjugation of the First illuminating his artistic philosophy. People.” Throughout these works, Assu’s Among the texts the most poignant critical awareness, his mastery of form, words are the artist’s own reflections and fearless remixing of traditional and on his personal history, beginning with contemporary themes provides a wealth his deep affection for his grandfather of opportunity for aesthetic and scholarly – a seine boat fisher who early on appreciation. recognized that his grandson would In addition to the essays, the book is take a different path. Unknown to the liberally illustrated with full-page, full- senior Assu, who encouraged him to colour photographs of the artist’s works. pursue a law career, Sonny’s activism There are multiple selections from each of on behalf of his people would emerge his series. Sonny Assu: A Selective History is in the studio and not the courtroom. a necessary addition to an understanding The book traverses the significant of this artist’s work and contemporary works and series that make up the artist’s Indigenous art in Canada and beyond. production over a period of roughly fifteen years, beginning in 2002. Included are early pop culture-infused works such as Coke-Salish (a theme to which he would later return), iterations on drums, and sculptures such as his rough-hewn solid cedar masks and his grandmother’s school desk. In the Propaganda series the artist describes his explorations of Indigenous iconography intermingled with typographical elements that critique 208 bc studies

At the Bridge: James Teit and an Columbia (29–58), origins in the Anthropology of Belonging Shetlands (59–87), life and work as an anthropologist and activist (essentially Wendy Wickwire all of the book). But it is more than Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019. this. This book is an intervention into 400 pp. $34.9, paper. the debates of anthropological history. It is a revisionist take on the canon. It Charles R. Menzies is a political intervention into academic University of British Columbia practice. It is a manifesto for a plain language community-based approach to scholarship. ames Teit was an amazing We see this best in Wickwire’s community-based engaged anthro- explication of Teit’s invisibility in the pologistJ long before such labels anthropological canon. Often described were invented. Wendy Wickwire’s as simply a research assistant by his anthropological life story of Teit is a contemporary anthropologists (and latter consummate account, and indeed, as day commentators), Wickwire shows how the top of page advertisement exhorts, Teit was very much more than a mere it is “a must read.” Wickwire weaves assistant. Some significant portion of together personal biographical details the book is taken up with the detailed of Teit, the political economy of his and nuanced approach to Indigenous life Shetland Island homelands and colonial that Teit practised. Wickwire doesn’t just British Columbia, ethnographic details tell us: we are guided through almost of the Indigenous peoples Teit worked line by line. For example, in the chapter with and lived among, and a wider “Dwelling,” Wickwire documents Teit’s political analysis of both anthropology careful and thorough work as opposed to and Canadian political history. This the “white supremacist rhetoric” common is an accomplishment that shows the in the prose of those such as Hill-Tout decades of work it took to amass the (158). Wickwire moves us through Teit’s knowledge and understanding of the The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, place and the person that resulted in which she describes as subtle and precise, this book. holding value “as an endless source of Wickwire has produced an exemplary insight and illumination” (162). postmodernist life history – one that, On the subject of use and occupancy, had it been written in time, would consider: “Teit’s description of Nlaka’pamux have found a place in Marcus and occupancy as dependent on movement Fisher’s Anthropology as Cultural Critique and movable lodges spread across the (1986). Wickwire’s expertise as an full territorial base – touching that anthropological ethnographer is clear in base sensitively, that is, through careful her treatment of Teit’s life and practice. cultivation, selective harvesting, and Rather than simply recounting life events, managed forest fires – challenges the Wickwire shows us how “Teit’s story can settler-colonial model of occupancy as be understood only in light of the push a permanent and continuous presence and pull of the forces of colonialism and in a discrete spot” (164). This is an dispossession” (85). understanding years ahead of the field. It This, though, is no simple biography. is what we as Indigenous researchers (and The reader is served the requisite some of our allies) are now documenting. biographical details: arrival in British It varies from place to place, but the Book Reviews 209 underlying truth – that Teit was able to of Indian Affairs, Jim Prentice in 2010 see – is that we dwell in our places in [156–57]). Or to explore in more detail the ways that are not tied to the individualist ways in which Teit’s work could be used as capitalist logic of fee simple alienable an exemplar for helping us to understand ownership. the wider political economy of colonial Wickwire uses Teit’s disciplinary states like Canada and British Columbia. invisibility to critique both early twentieth- But this is a simple book review, and one century anthropological practice and her ought to leave an in-depth discussion to contemporary anthropologists. Much a campfire, a classroom, or a long ride of the discussion of Teit’s work and life down the highway where one can engage is framed around the question: Why is in detail this amazing book and even the formal discipline of anthropology so more amazing man. silent on his existence and work? This is Wickwire’s account of Teit’s life, work, framed as the outcome of an encounter and significance is engaging, provocative, between two very different scholars: “one and, as Audra Simpson is quoted as urban, classically trained … the other a saying, “a must read.” community-based intellectual and man of action” (90). Wickwire goes further, describing the youth and childhood Return of the Wolf: experiences of the two. Teit is described Conflict and Coexistence as having “spent his teens surrounded by extended family in a town-and-country Paula Wild setting populated by working-class and Madeira Park, BC: Douglas and merchant families [while Boas] spent his 2018 272 $32 95 teens largely in a city setting with his McIntyre, . pp. . cloth. immediate family.” These differences K.R. Jones in origin and training become a means University of Kent of contextualizing the different life courses of these two settler scholars, one n his famous study Of Wolves and of whom accomplished great things and Men 1978 has been largely forgotten, the other of ( ), Barry Lopez pertinently whom is presented as an uncomfortable notedI that “the wolf exerts a powerful fieldworker but is remembered as the influence on the human imagination. founder of the discipline. Underlying It takes your stare and turns it back on you.” Paula Wild’s new book, Return Teit’s invisibility within the discipline, it of the Wolf would be fair to infer, is a class bias that , eagerly demonstrates that, mirrored (and continues to mirror) the forty or so years after Lopez’s classic exposition, we are still equally (perhaps structure of academic production. Canis lupus. There is so much more one could even more) enthralled by say about this book and the man at the A Courtenay-based nature writer with a proven track record of publication centre of it. I would love to comment on 2013 Teit’s inherently anti-colonial socialism on large canids (The Cougar [ ]), and consider the ways it contrasted with Wild offers here an engaging study of Boas’s more urbane abstract socialism and a captivating and endlessly reinvented anti-racism. Or to parse why Boas seems species over millennia, tracked both to take more heat than white colonial through animal biology and a long apologists like local historian Susan testimonial trail of human-animal Allison (celebrated by former Minister encounter. As she points out, wolves 210 bc studies share a domestic lineage with the dog, collisions (though it is at times a little but they also stand as a modal binary, a simplistic in its declentionist treatment carrier of the “wild” in all its fearsome of science as an objective bodyguard and attractive capacities. More than any of public sentiment). Throughout, the other animal, Wild contends, the wolf wolf appears as a resilient and adaptable has become embedded in our psyche species. Homo sapiens, on the other hand, (4). Breathless in its scope, informed, comes across as rather less benign and and certainly readable, Return of the certainly inflexible. Even today, with Wolf tracks this story through Greek Canis lupus enshrined as the alpha symbol mythology and across the Russian of environmentalism, as Return of the Wolf Steppes in “The Big Bad Wolf of the Old notes, there remains a sense of what Wild World” before turning to a New World nicely refers to as “primal uneasiness” (7) human-lupine entanglement as expressed when it comes to their up-close presence. through the likes of Cherokee storytellers Her guiding question is thus a salient and the fireside yarns of nineteenth- one: Can humans adapt to wolves? century wolf bounty hunters. We learn, too, much about “the life of the wolf” – its eating and sensory habits – as well as At Home in Nature: about the complex negotiations that have A Life of Unknown Mountains taken place in areas where wolves have returned (either through their agency or and Deep Wilderness government reintroduction programs) to Rob Wood ancestral haunts. A blend of natural history, Indigenous Vancouver: Rocky Mountain Books, folk tales, and personal anecdotes, 2017. 286 pp. Illus. $22 paper. this book spends considerable time exploring the social dynamics of the pack, debunking some of the hoary Grizzlies, Gales and Giant misconceptions about wolves along Salmon: Life at a Rivers Inlet the way. As such, it not only offers a useful focus on the animal itself but Fishing Lodge also chronicles the diverse ways in which different communities have Pat Ardley treated wolves on the global stage. Madeira Park, BC: Harbour The range is expansive and the writing Publishing, 2018. 351 pp. $19.95 paper. spirited (though necessarily using a broad brush for historical explanations). Andrew Scott Dominant in the latter is an exploration Sechelt, BC of the paradigms of reverence (typically associated with Indigenous communities any people dream of “getting and conservationists) and revilement away from it all” (“it” usually (espoused, most often, by architects of beingM some version of congested urban European colonization and those living life). Few of us realize this dream, of close to Canis lupus in areas devoted to course, and only a handful write about pastoral subsistence and ranching). The the experience. British Columbia is well subtitle of Wild’s study, Conflict and represented in this handful. BC authors Coexistence, helps to anchor this story from M. Wylie Blanchet to Roderick of misunderstanding and territorial Haig-Brown to Gilean Douglas have Book Reviews 211 helped make autobiographical writing of stumps into a sophisticated dwelling set in remote locations a West Coast powered by a micro-hydroelectric specialty. turbine. As time passes, the household Two recent books show how variable becomes more and more self-sufficient; this literary subgenre can be. Rob Laurie’s garden, “the heart of the Wood’s At Home in Nature follows the homestead” (211), expands to include a author from the Yorkshire moors, where meadow, orchard, barn, tractor shed, he developed a love of rock climbing, chicken run, and workshop. Two healthy, to rugged Maurelle Island north of happy children are raised on this island Campbell River. Here, in 1975, he and farm. Sadly, perhaps, of the co-op’s ten a group of friends, inspired by BC’s original families, Rob and Laurie are dramatic coastal beauty, buy a quarter- now the only full-timers. section of logged-over waterfront and At the same time the Woods are establish a land co-operative. setting up their co-op, another story The book is arranged as a sequence of outdoor adventure is unfolding of questions and answers, organized by 250 kilometres northwest, on windswept theme. This format is unwieldy at times, Addenbroke Island, where a young but it allows Wood to focus on topics couple, George Ardley and his wife- he considers important. The writing to-be, Pat, start work as junior lighthouse is intelligent and passionate, especially keepers. Grizzlies, Gales and Giant Salmon when the author describes guiding is Pat’s intensely readable account of her climbers in the nearby mountains. The forty-year career on the BC coast, most camaraderie of the co-op’s early years of it spent in Rivers Inlet, just south of receives lyrical treatment, though the Addenbroke, where she and George build narrative bogs down when it ventures and operate a celebrated fishing lodge. into environmental politics and attempts The book is also a touching love story. to analyze our social ills. Despite her fears (of the ocean, small Of more interest are Wood’s pantheistic boats, darkness, freezing weather – and spiritual beliefs: much of the text pays combinations thereof), Prairie-born Pat homage to his trust in the rejuvenating, turns out to be a surprisingly good fit for transformative powers of nature. Many wilderness work. She is a creative cook of the planet’s problems, he feels, are the and gardener, smart, brave, and hard- result of the inadequate harmonization of working. George, like most long-time human consciousness with the energies of Rivers Inlet residents, is a problem-solver: the surrounding natural world – a defect he can build anything, fix anything, and he ascribes to “inappropriate cultural is a good man in an emergency. All these conditioning” (274). Even the author’s skills will be tested in the years ahead. aortic rupture and his wife Laurie’s breast Ardley’s writing style is straightforward cancer were, he suggests, “most likely and descriptive; she has a fine sense caused by some uneasiness inherent in of humour and, while occasionally our lifestyle. Something in our lives must introspective, is not given to lengthy have been out of balance” (190). Both philosophical digressions. Life in the quickly return to idyllic island life after inlet provides her with a seemingly successful treatment in urban hospitals. endless supply of stories. She writes Wood has impressive construction about eccentric wilderness characters and skills and five years’ training as an encounters with bears and whales. Boats architect, and it’s fun to watch the family break down and giant waves threaten; residence evolve from a shack in a field construction deadlines loom and lodge 212 bc studies staff misbehave. On the bright side there as causing the housing crisis. are great friendships and parties, and The negative effects of population exciting expeditions to isolated beaches decline seem to have been on the minds and islands. Her relationship with George of the West Vancouver Historical becomes deeper and more complex. They Society’s book committee when they are married by a sea-going minister and commissioned Francis Mansbridge to raise a family. Their floating fishing write this, the third book in its series lodge, where summer visitors fly in “celebrating and preserving various hoping to hook giant chinook salmon, aspects of West Vancouver’s history.” grows in size and stature. Everyone (I should add here that I am not the knows the Ardleys. Peter Hall acknowledged as one of the Then tragedy strikes. In his late fifties, individual contributors who made the George is diagnosed with esophageal book possible.) cancer and dies suddenly after a short Mansbridge’s readable account illness. Pat struggles on, with the help of provides ample and well-deserved fodder her two children, and runs the lodge for for the argument that the exclusionary nine more years before selling up in 2012 practices of the few are to blame for and moving to West Vancouver. A series of the inability of the many to attain heart-wrenching letters, in which Pat pays affordable housing. Where I would tribute to an extraordinary partnership, push the author – and his local sponsor- concludes this remarkable book. audience – is on the diagnosis of the institutional arrangements that enable these exclusionary impulses and, hence, Dreamers and Designers: The on the policy prescriptions. Shaping of West Vancouver Perhaps one of the most fascinating tells in the book is the way that Francis Mansbridge Mansbridge describes the lineage of West Vancouver’s first British settlers. Madeira Park, BC: Harbour We learn, for example, that Reeve Joe Publishing, 2018. 208 pp. $29 95 Leyland, co-author of the district’s . cloth. first zoning bylaw, was the second son in a family that traces its origins to the Peter Hall Simon Fraser University Norman Conquest. I am sure this fact was selectively valued by past archivists; what it also reveals is how British laws etween 2011 and 2016, the and customs of primogeniture helped to population of the District of West shape this place half a world away. VancouverB declined by one-half of Appropriately, Mansbridge places the 1 percent. In contrast, the population of question of land use, and the community Metro Vancouver grew 6.5 percent; even values that inform that use, at the centre the comparably wealthy West Point of his story. Through multiple episodes Grey neighbourhood of Vancouver grew of development application, rejection, by 2.1 percent. In a region where house and approval, Mansbridge doesn’t pull prices are out of reach for almost all any punches. We learn that the people local earners and rentals are increasingly of West Vancouver have, at times in their unaffordable, West Vancouver’s history, not liked the idea of living with: population decline is exhibit A when Indigenous Canadians, vacationers, Jews, residential supply constraints are cited black people, Chinese, renters, density, Book Reviews 213 industry, through traffic, working Children of the Kootenays: women, and people who didn’t grow Memories of Mining Towns up there. In other words, the people of West Vancouver are lot like the rest Shirley D. Stainton of us – except that here institutional Vancouver: Heritage House, 2018. arrangements have encouraged and 320 pp. $22.95 paper. enabled the preference for homogeneity. While many of these exclusionary Duff Sutherland practices have thankfully been overtaken Selkirk College by social change, some, notably the limits on density and industry, remain. And that’s not good for the incumbents. hirley D. Stainton’s Children of In concluding, Mansbridge describes a the Kootenays: Memories of Mining situation in which long-time residents STowns describes her own and her brother cannot afford to retire-in-place; where Ray’s childhoods in West Kootenay immigrant children are growing up in mining communities during the 1930s physical, linguistic, and social isolation; and 1940s. Stainton’s father, Lee Hall, and in which working people, from was a cook who worked in camps municipal employees to housemaids, and towns across the region as mines must commute long distances by bus, opened and closed. Hall’s working a service the municipality has rejected life reveals the effects of capital’s improving. intensive, transient development of So, how far can West Vancouver go the Kootenays’ mineral veins. His jobs to heal itself? Here I am not persuaded rarely lasted for more than a few years, by Mansbridge’s invocation of Richard and he moved on with his family as Florida’s idea that a diverse creative class working conditions deteriorated or can fuel innovation. The price of entry companies abandoned operations and into West Vancouver is simply too high workers and their families dispersed. for any hungry innovator-entrepreneur. Among other communities, Hall Indeed, it has always been so: Mansbridge worked in Sandon; Camborne, in the shows convincingly that West Vancouver remote Incomappleux Valley; and in has, since colonization, been a place that Sheep Creek south of Nelson – a place fortunes made elsewhere are brought that reached a population of a thousand to be enjoyed. Instead, we have likely before the companies closed the town’s reached a state in the Lower Mainland mines during the Second World War. where we not only need to strengthen Stainton deeply admired her father and the power of regional agencies and/or her mother, Jennie, who worked hard the province to ensure that individual and, despite economic uncertainty, kept municipalities are fully integrated into their family together and gave their regional transit systems but also to ensure children happy childhoods. Stainton that these municipalities accept their notes: “I never questioned our moving share of affordable, rental, and social around; I just went with my brother and housing; industry; and other locally my parents wherever ‘that’ was. I have unwanted land uses. always been grateful that they never left me behind” (72). In the 1940s, when the companies abandoned Sheep Creek, Stainton’s parents moved to Nelson, where her father eventually found 214 bc studies work with the Nelson Street Railway sports, and social activities; and to life as Company. By that time, Stainton was a high school student in wartime Nelson. boarding in the city to attend Nelson Stainton remembers a generally happy High School. Ray had also left home childhood in the Kootenays while also and was planning to become a miner. referring to her family’s grief at the loss In 1943, however, he was sent overseas of her brother and of the difficulties of with the Seaforth Highlanders and growing up in any era. was killed in action in the Liri Valley Shirley Stainton’s memories return in 1944. life to working-class communities of Stainton’s memories of her growing the West Kootenay before the Second up, assembled by her daughter and World War. Many family and community granddaughter, make a significant photographs illustrate her detailed addition to West Kootenay social descriptions. Stainton’s memories also history. Writers about the region have provide information for the book’s emphasized the hard-rock mining important townsite sketches of the frontier’s “roaring days” of the 1880s and abandoned communities of Camborne 1890s, which saw capital develop mines, and Sheep Creek. The townsite sketches smelters, and railway lines; the emergence suggest the life of the communities where of Nelson, Rossland, and Sandon as Stainton grew up. They also point to the significant cities; and the creation of a precariousness of work in communities working class of miners and their union. that companies abandoned because, as Stainton’s memories, on the other hand, Stainton puts it, “the mine was no longer portray life and work in West Kootenay profitable enough … to keep … open” communities as the hard rock mining era (120). Children of the Kootenays describes was coming to an end during the 1930s well what it was like to grow up in these and 1940s. She recalls communities made communities; it also evokes the memories up of families and single men of Canadian of a fun-loving brother and of hard- and northern European background; of working parents. close friendships with the children of neighbour families and with her brother; of houses with few pieces of furniture and with no indoor plumbing, siding, Suffer the Little Children: or insulation; and of her enjoyment of Genocide, Indigenous Nations her few toys, gifts, books, and the pieces and the Canadian State of stylish clothing made for her by her mother. Stainton notes that her mother Tamara Starblanket dreamed of a house with a bathtub, that Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2018. the children of Sheep Creek played in a 374 $29 95 creek polluted with arsenic and cyanide pp. . paper. by the mines, and that her father quit Carling Beninger his job when the companies tried to University of Alberta reduce costs during the Depression by providing inferior food to the miners. amara Starblanket At the same time, Stainton feels that her is a family’s regular moves led to her spirit of Nehiyaw (Cree) legal scholar adventure and ability to throw herself into fromT Ahtahkakoop First Nation and is trips to the Slocan Valley, Nelson, and currently dean of academics at Native Manitoba to visit family; to schooling, Education College in Vancouver, Book Reviews 215 located on the traditional territories draws on the work of Raphael Lemkin, of the Musqueam, Squamish, and who coined the term “genocide” and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Suffer the Little drafted the UNGC, to place her analysis Children: Genocide, Indigenous Nations within his two-step process of genocide: and the Canadian State is an important “the destruction of the national pattern addition to the ongoing discussion of of the oppressed group; the other, the genocide in Canada. For decades, many imposition of the national pattern of Indigenous peoples have called on the the oppressor” (41). She further contends Canadian government to recognize that intergenerational trauma, including residential schools as genocidal. the loss of traditional parenting skills, However, as stated in Stephen Harper’s continues to affect Indigenous people 2008 apology to residential schools today and that the genocidal process survivors, the Canadian government is still occurring with the continued identifies residential schools as part of a removal of Indigenous children from policy of assimilation. In 2015, the Truth their families and their placement in the and Reconciliation Commission of child welfare system. Canada’s (TRC’s) final report concluded Starblanket’s book is comprised of four that the residential school system was a main chapters. In Chapter 1, “Naming form of cultural genocide, which is not the Crime: Defining Genocide in recognized under international law. International Law,” Starblanket, utilizing Starblanket refutes both the TRC’s and testimony from the UNGC travaux the federal government’s conclusions, préparatoir as well as international and arguing that residential schools were national case law, and drawing on the indeed sites of genocide. work of Lemkin, explains that cultural Starblankets’s book is personal. In genocide, despite protests from other her introduction she explains that she is countries, was removed as a form of a “product of this genocidal reality” (22). genocide from the UNGC during the Her grandparents and parents, as well as drafting process. She argues that Canada their siblings, went to residential schools, supported this removal because it is a and she is the only member of her birth settler colonial state and because the family alive. She further explains that inclusion of cultural genocide, as Lemkin it is her obligation as a Nehiyaw to tell intended, would implicate the country in the story: “To do so is an honouring, an genocidal acts. expression of my love and respect not only Chapter 2, “The Horror: Canada’s for my family, but for the Nehiyaw, and Forced Transfer of Indigenous Children,” for all Indigenous Peoples, our children, draws heavily on the work of Ronald their children and for every coming Chrisjohn, Sherri Young, Michael generation” (23). Maraun, and Ward Churchill. The Starblanket convincingly argues that chapter establishes the residential school Canada committed genocide under system as an institution in which forced the United Nations Convention on removal and indoctrination was a violent, the Prevention and Punishment of the dehumanizing, and traumatic process Crime of Genocide (UNGC) with the for Indigenous children – a process forcible transfer of Indigenous children that included torture, disease, sexual into residential schools, in which forced torture, forced starvation, and forced indoctrination of Western Christian labour. Residential schools devastated ways caused serious bodily and mental the identities of Indigenous children, harm and identity destruction. She with the long-term effects affecting 216 bc studies generations and resulting in collective country needs to cease genocidal practices serious bodily and mental harm and immediately. She sees self-determination trauma (127). Here, Starblanket links as the way forward for Indigenous people: the genocide of the residential schools “The road home entails the right of self- to the continued forced removal of determination as subjects in international Indigenous children and their placement law, which is a fundamental aspect of in the child welfare system: “there is no healing and recovering our way of life. distinguishing one residential institution In fact, it is the only solution for peace from the other as one directly feeds off and for true justice” (280). the other” (139). Suffer the Little Children, although In Chapter 3, “Coming to Grips based on her master of laws thesis, is with Canada as a Colonizing State: accessible to other disciplines. Given The Creator Knows Their Lies and the technical nature of the legal analysis, So Must We,” Starblanket, drawing without a prior knowledge of the UNGC on the cognitive legal theory of Steven some readers may feel out of their depth. Newcomb, evokes the metaphor of Throughout the book, Starblanket relies a brainwashing machine to further heavily on block quotes, which some demonstrate how the residential school might see as a drawback; however, system dominated and dehumanized this approach allows readers to reflect Indigenous children as part of colonialism on the source material. Despite these and the genocidal process (196). Canada minor criticisms, Starblanket’s book is used doctrines of racial superiority, an important, thought provoking, and colonial legal frameworks, and policy to timely interdisciplinary contribution to isolate and destroy Indigenous children the fields of law, history, and Indigenous through demonization, dehumanization, studies, and it will push readers to and forced indoctrination of the Western reconceptualize colonization and perspective. residential schools as genocidal. In Chapter 4, “Smoke and Mirrors: Canada’s Pretense of Compliance with the Genocide Convention,” Starblanket Assembling Unity: Indigenous argues that Canada violated the Vienna Politics, Gender, and the Convention by adopting a limited definition of genocide in its Criminal Union of BC Indian Chiefs Code, which she effectively concludes was Sarah A. Nickel done on purpose so that Canada could evade guilt and culpability in genocide Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019. (222). In addition, Starblanket points out 236 pp. $32.95 paper. that, after the ratification of the UNGC in 1948, Canada continued to engage in Mercedes Peters genocidal acts with the forcible transfers University of British Columbia of Indigenous children to residential schools and the child welfare system. arah Nickel’s Assembling Unity: Moreover, as Ian Mosby uncovered Indigenous Politics, Gender, and in 2013, officials conducted nutritional Sthe Union of BC Indian Chiefs is a experiments on Indigenous people. significant contribution not only to In her conclusion, Starblanket argues the history of Indigenous affairs in that Canada should be held accountable British Columbia but also to Indigenous for its crimes of genocide and that the history as a field overall. Focusing on Book Reviews 217 a period of increased and widespread strategies in individual battles against pan-Indigenous organizing between the Canadian settler state, such as the 1960s and early 1980s, Nickel The Same as Yesterday: The Lillooet explores the history of the Union of BC Tribal People Chronicle the Takeover of Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), Indigenous Their Territory by Joanne Drake-Terry women’s groups like the BC Indian (1989), but works such as these have Homemakers’ Association (BCIHA) not connected more local histories to and the BC Native Women’s Society national and even international trends (BCNWS), as well as other grassroots that would have been influential at the organizations and movements, to time. This is what Nickel works to do interrogate how the concept of unity in Assembling Unity. Conversely, works was mobilized to achieve political goals that focus specifically on pan-Indigenous for Indigenous nations in the province. movements and their relationship with Nickel’s analysis rests on a foundation the Canadian state, like Laurie Meijer of interviews with former members of Drees’s The Indian Association of Alberta: these organizations, primary sources A History of Political Action (2002), have drawn in large numbers from the neglected to capture the unique needs and UBCIC archives, and Indigenous identities of the nations that make up the theoretical frameworks – specifically organizations under study. Nickel’s focus Glen Coulthard’s theory of recognition on multifaceted Indigenous organizing (Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting in British Columbia specifically provides the Colonial Politics of Recognition a great vantage point from which to [2014]), Audra Simpson’s theory of connect provincial Indigenous politics refusal (Mohawk Interruptus: Political to broader trends and movements (like Life across the Borders of Settler States Red Power), and it also highlights [2014]), and, more broadly, what Nickel the complexities and internal debates calls “new Indigenous feminisms” that occurred as very diverse groups of (11). In particular, the Indigenous Indigenous people worked together. feminist approach allows her to take a This study of UBCIC’s desire to decolonial and intersectional approach achieve unity as a tool to combat settler to analyzing the actions of the UBCIC colonialism and assert Aboriginal rights and related organizations. Working tackles the “messiness” of Indigenous with these frameworks as a base, and politics head-on, and it does not try prioritizing Indigenous understandings to smooth out the dissentions and of the past, she argues that achieving a disagreements within and between kind of unity among BC Indigenous UBCIC and other BC Indigenous nations in order to have their voices organizations. Nickel argues that heard in settler colonial spaces was a this challenges a “double standard” complex and often “fraught” process of applied to Indigenous politics (169), an negotiation between Indigenous groups assumption that imperfect alliances with unique needs and interests (15). mean that Indigenous people are not Nickel’s analysis is particularly able to participate in politics at the same important because it challenges how calibre as are settler-Canadians. In this Indigenous political organizing has book, Indigenous people are afforded the traditionally been done in Canada. privilege of having their complex political As Nickel explains, there have been structures and organizations recognized, community-based studies focused on and this reflects a reality few works on late specific nations’ and bands’ political 218 bc studies twentieth-century Indigenous politics By Law or In Justice: have thus far portrayed. The Indian Specific Claims In another large departure from Commission and the Struggle for previously published studies on Indigenous organizing in Canada, Nickel Indigenous Justice studies the concerns and actions of the Jane Dickson BCIHA and the BCNWS in the same 2018 240 context in which she studies the more Vancouver: UBC Press, . pp. male-dominated UBCIC. In doing so, $32.95 paper. she is able to critically interrogate the David Milward heteropatriarchial colonial structures University of Victoria imposed upon and, in some cases, replicated by some First Nations political organizations during this era. She also he foundation of Professor Jane uses this tactic to demonstrate the Dickson’s book, By Law or In significant role these Indigenous women’s TJustice, is her work as a commissioner for organizations played in negotiating how the Indian Specific Claims Commission UBCIC would represent First Nations from 2002 to 2009. The commission within British Columbia. This, as itself endured from 1991 to 2009, with Nickel so aptly describes, challenges the mandate to conduct inquiries into the traditional “decontextualization” of numerous Indigenous grievances with Indigenous women’s political organizing respect to treaties, land settlements, by acknowledging how much influence and fiduciary obligations held by the their work had on pan-Indigenous politics Crown to look out for the best interests more broadly (11). Overall, Nickel’s work of Indigenous peoples. pushes studies of Indigenous politics The commission itself could not make in new and exciting directions and, orders binding on the Crown, but it could importantly, provides an easily accessible come to factual conclusions based on its historical narrative that challenges deep- inquiries and at least try to bring parties seated colonial conceptions of what together for negotiated resolutions. Indigenous politics looks like. Add in that the commission itself was a creation of the federal government in Ottawa, and there is an obvious problem. References Those two realities together already Coulthard, Glen. Red Skin, White Masks: scream conflict of interest from the very Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. start, but the problems hardly end there. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Dickson details numerous tactics 2014 Press, . employed by the Crown, including Drake-Terry, Joanne. The Same as Yesterday: The Lillooet Tribal People Chronicle the spurious delays designed to wear down the Indigenous participants Takeover of Their Territory. Lillooet, BC: Lillooet Tribal Council, 1989. (contrary to the ostensible policy Drees, Laurie Meijer. The Indian Association being a timely resolution of claims); of Alberta: A History of Political Action. conveniently spinning legal arguments Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002. to the present benefit of the Crown, Simpson, Audra. Mohawk Interruptus: Po- litical Life across the Borders of Settler States. where previously the prerequisites for the arguments were brought about Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. by previous Crown misconduct; and Crown lawyers purporting to dictate to Book Reviews 219 the commissioners what the outcome route is that a court can make decisions would be. binding on the Crown and that the Dickson also weighs into other judiciary, at least in theory, is supposed illuminating facets of the commission’s to be impartial towards both the work. For example, she relates how Crown and the Indigenous litigants, legal standards and protocol, although thereby removing the conflict-of-interest centred around procedural fairness and problem. At the same time, litigation propriety, can sometimes amount to real itself requires enormous time and encumbrances in very ironic ways. One monetary resources. That in itself has example concerns the time she made been a driving force behind initiatives like direct contact with a hired researcher the Specific Claims Commission, which in an effort to ascertain the answer to was meant to provide a less expensive and a question that had been on her mind. more expeditious route for addressing The end result was a great deal of the claims. Comparing and contrasting hand-wringing and stress as the proper the two pathways would have given the protocol was to present the question to reader a greater appreciation for the legal legal counsel for the commission, who, landscape and the commission’s place in turn, would set the researcher to the within it. task. And yet certainly the more direct Another minor issue is the approach seemed more practical and aforementioned point about treating expeditious by comparison. Another Indigenous witnesses with kid gloves. example concerns Indigenous persons, Dickson almost assumes that Indigenous Elders in particular, being treated with witnesses are willing to shrug off the kid gloves, as though they needed to adversities of the system and are eager be protected from the harshness of to tell their stories. Issues of cultural cross-examination in adversarial justice faux pas and the lack of legitimacy systems. Dickson felt that very often, of adversarial systems for Indigenous more than anything, those Indigenous peoples is a real issue, and the concerns participants wanted an opportunity to can be felt acutely when it comes to tell their stories, even if this had to be Indigenous Elders. The topic has received accompanied by cross-examination. treatment in other literature, particularly Dickson ends the book with some with reference to American tribal courts, final reflections on the commission itself and from well-known scholars such as it wound down and on the relatively as John Borrows. I am not saying that new Specific Claims Tribunal Act. She Dickson is wrong in her assessment of notes that the latter does not appear to what she observed first-hand, but a more have amounted to an improvement in complete treatment of a quite sensitive practice, but she holds out some hope issue would have been appreciated. that the Crown can reverse course and Another concern is that, despite begin acting in a manner truly fitting Dickson’s best efforts to reach a lay its honour and its fiduciary obligations audience, I am not entirely convinced towards Indigenous peoples. that she will succeed. Although she By Law or In Justice is an excellent probably should not be faulted for that. read, although I do have a few minor The complexity of the field and its points of concern. One is that I would knowledge base make the use of jargon have appreciated some consideration of and specialist language unavoidable. I Indigenous rights litigation, particularly recommend this book as a solid read for with respect to treaty rights. The two anyone interested in learning more about selling points for going the litigation this particularly pressing subject matter. 220 bc studies

Breaching the Peace: The Site C abject disregard for political process, Dam and a Valley’s Stand First Nations, or local property owners. against Big Hydro In Breaching the Peace, journalist Sarah Cox adroitly introduces the reader to the Sarah Cox Site C dam, the aggressive tactics employed by BC Hydro to promote it, and the Vancouver: UBC Press, 2018. 312 pp. $24 95 local residents and First Nations fighting . paper. against it. Peopled with vivid characters, Cox’s compelling narrative explores the impacts of the Site C project through the Damming the Peace: The Hidden eyes of those most affected: Treaty 8 First Costs of the Site C Dam Nations members and local Peace Valley landowners. At stake in the struggle over Wendy Holm, editor the Site C dam are some of Canada’s Toronto: Lorimer, 2018. 272 pp. finest hectares of farmland, hundreds of significant ecological and cultural sites, $22.95 paper. and Indigenous treaty rights. Zander Albertson People, their livelihoods, senses Western Washington University of place, and connections to the land and each other feature prominently in this book, which makes convoluted tate-sponsored impoundment politics and a challenging subject and “improvement” of rivers matter accessible and engaging. Though isS nothing new, and much ink has Cox focuses primarily on the human been spilled documenting the social, dimensions of the controversy, she weaves ecological, and fiscal impacts of dams. together a tapestry that emphasizes the In spite of growing awareness of these relationships between people and the costs and declarations from scholars natural world: disregard for families 1990 that the s marked the end of the and communities is inextricably bound dam-building era, climate change up with environmental destruction, as is concerns and economic development the failure of the BC government to view have fuelled a resurgence of interest the project as the extension of a sordid in hydroelectric dam projects in many history of violence and dispossession countries around the world. These amid asymmetric power relations. Cox megaprojects can be understood as situates the project within relevant “high modernist” projects, underpinned history, explores the biogeography of by a faith in the rational ordering and the Peace Valley, and documents the administration of nature and society to dubious tactics employed to push the transform and improve society. Scott project forward. 1998 89 ( , ) argues that this vision goes This work is sure to appeal to scholars awry “when it is held by ruling elites interested in natural resource politics, with no commitment to democracy or colonialism, and Indigenous politics, civil rights and who are therefore likely and it could serve as a textbook for to use unbridled state power for its university courses in those subject achievement.” The Site C hydroelectric areas. Importantly, Breaching the Peace dam in British Columbia’s Peace River is accessible and engaging enough to Valley is one such project, thrust entertain interested lay readers and forward by the BC government with compel them to action. In his preface Book Reviews 221 to the book, Amnesty International’s looking to make a rational case against Alex Neve writes: “Past injustice does the dam – but this approach also serves as not excuse more of the same; rather, it a shortcoming. At times, authors appear makes it imperative to break with that to embrace the notion that scientific disgraceful history” (xii). Cox’s book is facts unequivocally inform the proper a rallying cry, told with compassion, course of action: to counter BC Hydro’s against “Big Hydro.” “statistical confusion, misrepresentation Individuals inspired to learn more of facts, creative distractions, false about the Site C project (perhaps inspired comparisons and invalid modelling” (122), by Cox’s Breaching the Peace) will find a an assemblage of data and calculations similarly titled volume to be of interest are presented to help correct the as well. Damming the Peace is a collection aforementioned manipulations. Yet, as an of writings by journalists, planners, and ample body of literature has pointed out, policy professionals that explores Site a reliance on data to “prove” a position in C’s many facets. In her introductory an environmental controversy obfuscates chapter, editor Wendy Holm hopes her but does not obviate the value divergence book will serve as “both a rallying cry at the heart of the disagreement and a roadmap” to empowering critical (e.g., Sarewitz 2004). discussions about the impacts of the Sarewitz (2004, 399) asserts that dam (27). “progress in addressing environmental The fifteen authors explore a wealth controversies will need to come primarily of topics, including: alternatives to from advances in political process, rather hydroelectric energy (Guy Dauncey); than scientific research.” To this end, climate change (David Schindler); both books highlight the subversion violence, trauma, and Indigenous resistance of accepted political mechanisms for (Andrew MacLeod); biodiversity (Brian decision-making and call attention to Churchill); food security (Wendy Holm); the serious abdication of considering the data manipulation (Joan Sawicki); public interest in the case of Site C. If hydromorphic and geologic impacts Scott (1998, 88) is correct that a necessary (Andrew Nikiforuk); trust and human element for high modernist plans to health (Warren Bell); water geopolitics succeed is “a weakened or prostrate civil (Joyce Nelson); cumulative impacts on society that lacks the capacity to resist First Nations in the context of larger these plans,” the two books reviewed dispossession (Briony Penn); the necessity here are sure to invigorate the requisite of social licence and its absence in the Site Canadian civil society to help halt C proceedings (Reg Whitten); the sunk- construction at Site C. costs fallacy (Zoë Ducklow); Canada’s REFERENCES weak legal institutions for environmental protection (Silver Donald Cameron); and Sarewitz, Daniel. “How Science Makes democracy (Rafe Mair). Taken together, Environmental Controversies Worse.” these chapters offer a wealth of arguments Environmental Science and Policy 7, no. 5 (2004):385–403. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. and data against the dam. 2004 06 001 The style found in Damming the Peace envsci. . . . Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How is decidedly activist and is likely to be Certain Schemes to Improve the Human appealing to a wide audience, including Condition Have Failed. New Haven, NJ: those with little background on the topic. Yale University Press, 1998. The wealth of data presented makes the volume a useful compendium for those 222 bc studies

Sustenance: Writers from BC and soup, making golden sauces with honey Beyond on the Subject of Food and almonds, mixing slabs of crumbling cheese, fermenting fruit, stewing fava Rachel Rose, editor beans, cutting rockfish, enjoying sea-lion Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2017. 256 pp. stew – as Rose wanted to build diverse $25.00 paper. tables, not walls, so as to allow us to “sit eye to eye in the sacred relationship of Gigi Berardi guest and host, mutually obliged and Western Washington University interdependent” (13). The introductory poem, “Cooking ith its over 250 prose and Lesson: Kebbeh” (excerpted) is respectfully poetry narratives, biographies, humble and tender: andW recipes, Sustenance: Writers from BC and Beyond on the Subject of Food is Blend the mixture either in a a timeless anthology edited by Rachel machine that is not to be found in Canada, or with the hands. Rose, Vancouver’s poet laureate of 2014. During her tenure, Rose wanted Cook the meat separately, though in Aleppo we eat it raw. to produce a book such as Sustenance to “engage those outside of the poetry Do you have any Canadian friends community as much as those within 13 yet? I ask, and you both shake it” ( ). To complete the project, she your heads. enlisted colleagues – gifted poets and We came here as refugees; we will teachers – to interact with people in stay refugees … Vancouver and elsewhere to find the poetry and other narrative treasures (17–18, attribution is given as that appear in the book. Rachel Rose, trans. Raed Rose and colleagues were successful Al-Jishi) in finding a diverse array of authors The poetry is beautifully visual, as in – unpublished writers, grade-school 132 students, well-known chefs, instructors Diane Tucker’s “Oregano” ( ): “Oregano and professors, émigré prize-winning has overrun everything / Let your vision essayists, grade-school teachers, college puddle and spread and you’ll see the little students, residential school survivors, mistresses, the honeybees, waving”; and writing fellows, and arts activists. Rose political, as in T’uy’T’Tanat-Cecelia “Cease” Wyss’s “A Fish Camp Story from envisioned the project as contributing to 16 64 social change not only via its educational My Childhood” ( – ), which describes value but also via its financial significance. her mixed heritage and what that cost her Contributors donated their honoraria parents in court hearings in which they to the BC Farmers Market Nutrition defended their rights to cultural food Coupon Program, which provides fishing. The “recipes,” when written in vouchers to low-income and refugee prose, are quite remarkable, rendering families in the province to procure local unforgettable images rather than merely instructions, as in Kathryn Alexander’s fresh produce. 182 83 The topics in the book are wildly “Making Marmalade” ( – ): “Stir the varied – cooking in refugee kitchens, bitter stories / until they froth and rise heating a pan of oysters, preparing like fruity lava / to set like jewels on a mushy peas and carrots or chicken-foot cold spoon.” Book Reviews 223

Rose, however, is cooking up more related to labour market activity in late than food with this anthology: “Words twentieth-century Canada. Galer’s of pain and hope from within our argument is that advances in labour fractured literary community sing on market activity for disabled people these pages, as we collectively struggle to were not the result of a series of find a way through our own complicated progressive developments but, rather, inheritances” (13). Rose recognizes that of a series of repeated waves of public she (and many of the contributors) lives and political awareness. In this process, and works on the unceded homelands of an uncalibrated cacophony of disability First Nations people. Further, part of the voices interacted to construct and motivation for the project comes from reconstruct efforts aimed at needed Rose’s profound experiences supporting changes. refugee families. In Sustenance, she has Three voices loom large in this succeeded in compiling the contributors’ ensemble: families and family advocates, emotion-stirring prose around refugee the rehabilitation-industrial complex, themes, as with Terrie Hamazaki’s and disability activists. The central role “Eggs” (111–12) or Claire Sicherman’s of families and family advocates in the profound “Fragments” (114), which deinstitutionalization movement and the describes her grandparents’ concentration development of the voluntary sector is camp experiences in the vitally important explored, illustrating the emerging (and activity of food bartering. new) discourse surrounding disability Sustenance is a must-have book for and work (chap. 2). This is largely at any teacher, student, poet, or consumer odds with the almost complete control of food. If, in fact, “food, art, and the rehabilitation-industrial complex kindness can change the world,” as one (deeply rooted in the medical model author (A.L. Carlson) writes in her bio of disability) had over the sector – a (57), then Sustenance should do much to complex that was most concerned with advance such change. maintaining its authority (chap. 3). As Galer details, disability activists challenged these approaches, arguing for disability organizations to be led Working towards Equity: by disabled people and geared towards Disability Rights Activism and independent living (chap. 4). Employment in Late Twentieth- The interactions of these three often conflicting voices are traced through the Century Canada role and evolution of sheltered workshops 5 Dustin Galer (chap. ), the role played by employers in the economic integration of disabled Toronto: University of Toronto people (chap. 6), and in the evolution Press, 2018. 328 pp. $32.95 paper. and impact of disability rights on the structure and policies of the Canadian Mario Levesque Mount Allison University state, including the influence of political ideologies (chap. 7). Readers will find it both informative and shocking to orking towards Equity examines learn about the efforts taken to build W the intersection of the contested cooperative and collaborative working nature of disability movements and relationships among various state and activism and decision maker actions non-state actors in the 1960s, 1970s, and 224 bc studies early 1980s, only to have them disintegrate influenced the province’s disability in the 1990s when various governments, movement throughout this process? especially Ontario’s Mike Harris Questions also surround Galer’s Progressive Conservatives, adopted the lament that the newer disabled generation neoliberal state. The tenuous relationship has not picked up on disability activism between disability activism and the as older disabled generations have labour movement, highlighting how been phased out. Until newer disabled disability activism posed challenges for generations situate and find fault with unions, bookends this volume (chap. 8). their starting points, define their The strength of Working towards Equity identities and whether or not they wish is the rich narrative the author weaves. to engage in activism, they may remain Detail surrounding the intricacies and content with the progress made to date. complex relationships among the various It is also hard to find fault with families disability voices is provided, ensuring that and family advocates who did not this volume will be well cited for years fully engage in a newer model of to come. Even better is the fact that it is disability, given their central role in grounded in the employment experiences the deinstitutionalization movement. of thirty disabled people over a period No doubt many were simply tired and of forty years. It is the first chapter that decided to leave that fight for others draws the reader in to learn how these rather than continue to push for more individuals characterized employment changes. Still, newer generations may as a central element of their identities. simply engage differently. Certainly, To Galer’s credit, these experiences the election of Stephanie Cadieux, are further integrated into the various Sam Sullivan, and Michelle Stilwell chapters to tease out meaning (with to provincial office (British Columbia) more information on these individuals suggest as much. So does the election of provided in an appendix). Readers will BC’s Carla Qualtrough, who has become also enjoy how Galer integrates various a powerful minister in Justin Trudeau’s films and television shows into the cabinet. narrative, such as The Disability Myth, Working towards Equity is an excellent Hurry Tomorrow, The Littlest Hobo, and volume and a welcome addition to the the Best Years of Our Lives. disability literature. It is a must read for While there is much to like about its fresh perspective, especially for those Working towards Equity, this reviewer interested in the disability movement is not convinced that the fragmented and activism side of the employment and contested nature of disability voices equation. necessarily held progress back. Rather, disability crosscuts other movements (e.g., the women’s movement, the The Hundred-Year Trek: A environmental movement) and, as such, History of Student Life at UBC needed time to build a base from which to act. Moving forward, the diversity of the Sheldon Goldfarb disability movement and activism may be Victoria: Heritage House, 2019. its greatest strength. This is an important 304 $32 95 consideration as British Columbia moves pp. . paper. closer to the enactment of provincial Dale M. McCartney accessibility legislation. For example, University of British Columbia to what extent has this intersectionality Book Reviews 225

o borrow an old joke, institutional in the history of higher education, histories can often be the sofa beds The Hundred-Year Trek can feel like a ofT historical writing. Neither good missed opportunity. For example, there as a sofa nor as a bed, institutional is very little discussion of how and why histories can often find themselves UBC’s student population has changed trapped between academic and local over time. The arrival of women on the audiences, and can become the worst of campus in the 1920s and 1930s gets a few both worlds. To the credit of Sheldon brief mentions but very little discussion Goldfarb and the UBC student society (though there is a bit more attention in (called the Alma Mater Society, or the post–Second World War era); the AMS), The Hundred-Year Trek has expulsion of Japanese Canadian students avoided this trap by committing to in 1942 receives one paragraph, half of be a popular history of the student which is about a 2012 apology (70); the association’s operations at UBC. The veterans flooding onto the campus after result is a very readable, beautifully the Second World War merits only two illustrated coffee table book that offers small paragraphs (80); the changing racial an incredibly detailed account of the makeup of the campus is only discussed foibles of the student union at BC’s through the lens of AMS elections (96); largest university. Although historians the changing class position of UBC might be disappointed that the book students after the war is noted only does not contribute to the existing obliquely and in passing in a discussion literature as much as it might have, of funding (112). Readers hoping to get former students of UBC will likely a deeper sense of the history of higher enjoy the invitation to wander the Main education in British Columbia will Mall again, as captured in hundreds often find themselves wishing Goldfarb of photos of UBC over its century of had offered more analysis of the events existence. being described. Moreover, the emphasis The book is formatted as a year-by- on students’ perspective is at times year account of the goings-on in the underdeveloped. The book would have AMS. Goldfarb, who is the archivist been improved by using its deep dive into for the AMS, is a lively writer who student life to offer students’ perspectives works in a good joke here and there, on some of the issues in the existing and the book moves quickly. The higher education literature, or even to majority of the material is drawn from offer a new perspective on some of the the pages of UBC’s student newspaper most important events in UBC’s history. The Ubyssey, with a special focus on In sum, this is a well-written, attractive AMS politics. Goldfarb traces several book that will appeal to any UBC alumni themes throughout the years, including looking to reminisce about the institution. the ways in which UBC students drew But it perhaps misses the opportunity on Indigenous symbolism, the student to use its source material to make larger campaigns to develop the campus, and arguments about the history of British the changing culture of the AMS itself. Columbia and UBC’s place in it. The book’s perspective, which places students and their union at the centre of the story of UBC, is unique and valuable. For readers who are more interested in the social history of British Columbia, though, or who are especially interested