Bob Hunter writing aboard the first Greenpeace protest vessel Phyllis Cormack, 1971.

WinnerWinnerGEORGE RYGA AWARD For Social Awareness in British Columbia Literature.

Robert Hunter (1941-2005) and photographer Robert Keziere collaborated on the first authoritative report on the Amchitka protests by Greenpeace in 1971, but Hunter’s original manu- script was rejected by publisher Jack McClelland of Toronto in On behalf of her late husband, favour of a picture book. Recently Keziere’s partner Karen Love Roberta Hunter accepts “The Censors’ Golden Rope” from retrieved the lone copy of Hunter’s eyewitness report and took sculptor Reg Kienast. The it to Brian Lam at Arsenal Pulp Press. Published last year as sculpture is given annually to George Ryga Award recipients. The Greenpeace to Amchitka: An Environmental Odyssey, the chronicle of idealism, bad weather, weird karma and personal tensions has been selected as the winner of the second annual George Ryga Award for outstanding social awareness. . KIENAST

REG The award was presented at the Vernon Performing Arts Centre

BY on July 27 during a celebratory concert, hosted by CBC’s Paul SCULPTURE

Grant, to mark the 73rd anniversary of George Ryga’s birth.

AWARD The shortlist included Redress (Raincoast) by Roy Miki and A Stain Upon the Sea (Harbour) by a collection of authors.

Sponsored by the George Ryga Centre (Summerland), (Kelowna) and Okanagan College.

Information: [email protected] CLASSICSBC This article is the fourth in a series celebrating enduring B.C. books.

Chilcotin pioneers Norman Lee, his wife Agnes and In 1898, hoping to raise their son Daniel. enough money to return to Eng- land, Chilcotin rancher Norman Lee, son of an Oxford-educated vicar, decided to take 200 cat- tle on a 1500-mile trek to the Klondike gold fields. After five months, winter forced Lee to butcher the herd. He loaded the meat onto scows but the entire shipment was lost on Teslin Lake, 500 miles short of Dawson Creek, his destination. Only one companion, his driver and scow captain William 'Bill' Copeland, remained with Lee for the “It seems to be the chance of a lifetime duration of his doomed expedition. to make a few dollars. I do not see much Copeland said his boss was “more like a chance to lose anything.”—NORMAN LEE brother” and always “honest about what he wanted and what he said.” Copeland and Lee barely made it to Wrangel, Alaska, from which they took steamers south, to Victoria and Nanaimo TheThe RancherRancher TakesTakes aa HerdHerd respectively. “As funds were getting short again; mers with other boys. and as my clothes were in rags,” Lee THE INCREDIBLE BOVINE “I was also one of those kids,” Elliott wrote, “I did not care to look up any of recalled in 2005, “who happily read the my aristocratic friends in Victoria.” Lee books Mr. Lee pressed us to read and made it to Vancouver with a roll of blan- one of those kids to whom he talked so kets, a dog and one dollar. JOURNEY OF NORMAN LEE easily and grammatically that none of us Undaunted, Norman Lee returned to have ever forgotten him.” his “Chicken Ranch” in the Chilcotin ✍ Chilcotin for more than 50 years, arriv- Elliott described Lee as a small, ath- and became a successful cattle rancher Norman Lee left behind a self-illus- ing two years after his brother. Laurie letic man with a kind heart and a wry known to the Chilcotin Indians as “Old trated manuscript, completed around received permission from Lee’s widow to sense of humour, a thinker ahead of his Lee” because he was the first member of the turn of the century, based on jour- read excerpts on her CBC program Party times, unusual for his “racial tolerance.” his family to arrive. nal notes he had made while undertak- Line and agreed to serve as her agent. Klondike Cattle Drive: The Journal In 1902 he returned to England, ing his cattle drive in 1898. Months after being presented to of Norman Lee (Mitchell Press, 1960), witnessed the coronation of Edward Nine years after Lee's death, Eileen Princess Margaret in Williams republished in 1991, and again in 2005, VII, and married his second cousin Laurie of CBC Radio in Vancouver Lake during the town's Centennial fes- is the fourth title in TouchWood Edi- Agnes 'Nessie' Lee, who had re- arrived in Quesnel in June of 1948 to tivities, Agnes Lee died at age 87 in De- tions’ Classics West Collection, $12.95. luctantly ended a holiday in Ireland af- attend an art show—and began to hear cember of 1958, having never realized 1894898141 ter receiving a telegram from her brother: stories about Lee's legendary cattle drive. her ambition to have her husband’s jour- “Please come and help entertain our She later interviewed Mrs. Agnes Lee of nal published. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY cousin Norman Lee, from Canada.” Hanceville, Norman Lee's widow, in Soon afterwards the wife of Vancou- Agnes Lee became one of five white 1954 in conjunction with a province- ver book designer and publisher COMING NEXT ISSUE… women residing in the Chilcotin upon wide program from Vancouver that Robert R. Reid heard Eileen Laurie Having served for five years as the referee her arrival. Affectionately known as broadcast authentic stories by B.C. pio- read excerpts of Lee's journal on the for an annual contest that chooses the best “Gan-Gan” by the Chilcotins, she be- neers. CBC, whereupon Reid approached Canadian first novel or fiction collection by The following summer Laurie and came fluent in Chilcotin and managed Howard Mitchell of Mitchell Press a new writer, W.P. Kinsella answers the local store for decades. her husband visited the Lee's log house with a proposal to co-publish Klondike our questions as to what heck goes on in Norman Lee remained as a fixture in and store in the Chilcotin and read Nor- Cattle Drive with an introduction by the fiction judging game. Is it wise to be the Cariboo, living at Hanceville on the man Lee's journal. She also came to SFU English professor Gordon R. cynical? Is geography really your destiny? Chilcotin Plateau, until his death at age know Penrose Lee, Norman Lee's Elliott, who grew up in Williams Lake Should all storytellers move to Toronto? 77 on March 16, 1939. brother, who had been a rancher in the and had visited the Lee’sranch in the sum-

Contributors: Mark Forsythe, Joan Givner, Sara Cassidy, Louise Donnelly, Carla Lucchetta, Heather Ramsay, INDEX to Advertisers Hannah Main-van der Kamp, Sheila Munro. BC Writing not otherwise credited is by staff. BOOKWORLD Proofreaders: Wendy Atkinson, Betty Twigg Anvil Press...8 HarperCollins...8 Ronsdale Press...10 Deliveries: Ken Reid Royal BC Museum...12 Spring Issue Vol. 20, No. 1 Design: Get-to-the-Point Graphics Arsenal Pulp Press...26 Heritage House...14 Banyen Books...40 Hignell Printing...42 Save-On Foods...38 Publisher/ Writer: Alan Twigg We acknowledge the BC Book Prizes...35 Houghton Boston...41 Self-Counsel...17 assistance of Canada Council Editor/Production: David Lester and the Province BC Civil Liberties...41 Julian, Terry...41 SFU Writing & Publishing...36 of British Columbia, through the Ministry Bolen Books...38 Leamcom Press...41 Sidney Booktown...30 Publication Mail Agreement #40010086 of Community, Aboriginal, Sono Nis Press...18 Return undeliverable Canadian and Women’s Services. Book Warehouse...7 McClelland & Stewart...4 addresses to: BC BookWorld, Caitlin Press...12 Multicultural Books...41 Talonbooks...11 3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 Crown Publications...39 Morriss Printing...42 Temeron Books...30 Douglas & McIntyre...43 New Star Books...30, 40 Terasen...2 Produced with the sponsorship of Pacific BookWorld News Society. We acknowledge the Douglas College/EVENT...40 Northstone...12 Thomas Allen Publishers...12 Publications Mail Registration No. 7800. financial support of the Government of Canada Douglas College / Summer Oolichan Books...26 Thomson, Ann...41 BC BookWorld ISSN: 1701-5405 through the Book Publishing Industry Institute in Historical Fiction...41 Orca Books...24 Transcontinental Printing...42 Advertising & editorial: Development Program (BPIDP) for this project. UBC Press...20 BC BookWorld, 3516 W. 13th Ave., Ekstasis Editions...36 People’s Co-op Books...41 Vancouver, B.C., V6R 2S3 Ellis, David...41 Playwrights Canada Press...30 University of Alberta Press...30 Tel/Fax: 604-736-4011 First Choice Books...42 Printorium...41 Vancouver Desktop...41 Email: available on request . Friesens Printers...42 Propp, Dan...30 Woewoda, James C....41 Annual subscription: $12.84 Granville Island Publishing...42 Raincoast Books...3 Yoka’s Coffee...39 All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online at www.abcbookworld.com Hedgerow Press...30 Random House...16 TO ADVERTISE CALL Harbour Publishing...44 Ripple Effect Press...19 604-736-4011

5 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 FICTION

Just as William Gibson became the darling of rock stars and Hollywood during the nineties, ex-Vancouverite Sean Stewart is positioned to be the flavour-of-the-decade in Hollywood’s new fictional realm that merges science fiction and virtual storytelling.

orn in Lubbock, Texas Shakespeare and John Donne and Tim O’Brien, Ovid and Iain (“the buckle of the Bi- Banks and Puccini and ble Belt”) on June 2, Bladerunner. I wrote every genre char- B acter ever invented, I think—bounty 1965, Sean Stewart moved hunters and kept women and a bad guy to a fatherless home in Edmon- made of nightmares, religious zealots and angry teenagers and streetwise hack- ton at age three. Introverted, ers.” Among the computer-geek set, the without siblings, he says he had maze-like mystery of widespread clues “an unremarkable childhood of supposedly became as popular as the movie A.I. roughly the usual length.” SEAN’S This Internet project was followed by Stewart graduated from reading The a new quest game in July of 2004 called Hobbit at age seven to a broad appetite I Love Bees. Another Internet-depend- for serious fiction (Jane Austen, ent Alternate Reality Game (ARG), this James Joyce, William time Stewart helped design I Love Bees Faulkner) and a passion for high as an adjunct promotion for a new video school fencing. Then came girls and game called Halo 2. theatre. The Beast and I Love Bees have ap- “From my drama teacher I gained parently succeeded where other on-line many valuable insights, such as the fact games to promote other films (such as that if you salt the donuts at your con- Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes, cession stand, those who purchase be- Swordfish and X-Men) have failed, gen- tween the first act and the second will PENin English as well as an Arthur Ellis gaming mysteries, working with pro- erating scads of chat groups and would- be back for a pop between the second Crime Writers Award for debut fiction, grammers from Microsoft’s Entertain- be detectives picking up messages in and third.” but his big break came from White ment Business Unit. designated phone booths around the world. Still not setting the world or his hair Dwarf Books. The owners of Vancou- Born as a marketing campaign to ✍ on fire, Stewart graduated from the Eng- ver’s leading SF store urged the local sales hype the Steven Spielberg movie lish program at the University of Alberta, representative for Ace Books to read Pas- A.I. (Artificial Intelligence), Stewart’s It’s possible ARGs are the fiction of married his high school sweetheart “and sion Play. collaboratively-produced Alternate Re- tomorrow—already happening today. put in the requisite years of writing very A copy reached Ace Books senior ality Game was dubbed The Beast be- Meanwhile in Stewart’s latest novel, badly and getting rejected, followed by editor Susan Allison and soon Pas- cause the first draft of an ‘art asset’ list Perfect Circle (San Francisco: Small Beer the requisite years of writing half-de- sion Play appeared from a major U.S. came to 666 items. Press $18), William “Dead” Kennedy has cently and continuing to be rejected.” publishing outlet in 1994. It has been “The game was freaking pastiche Ar- problems. He’s haunted by family, by He worked at a variety of jobs (roofer, followed by a fantasy novel Nobody’s Son mageddon,” Stewart has written on his dead people with unfinished business, busboy, computer specialist), wrote in- (Maxwell Macmillan, 1993) in which a website. “It started from a Spielberg and by those perfect pop songs that you teractive fantasy games and moved to village commoner breaks the centuries- script inflected with Kubrick notions can’t get out of your head. He’s a 32- Vancouver where he worked for the old Ghostwood’s spell, wins the princess from a Brian Aldiss short story with year-old Texan still in love with his ex- Vancouver Cultural Alliance. for his prize, and then his problems be- echoes of Dune and Clockwork Orange, wife. He just lost his job at Pet-Co for Stewart eventually published the fifth gin—plus six more novels. for God’s sake. Political tracts. Corpo- eating cat food. His air-conditioning is novel he had written, Passion Play That’s the end of Act One in Sean rate boasting. Sex-kitten catalogues. Mys- broken, there’s no good music on the (Beach Holme/Tesseract, 1992), en- Stewart’s success story in progress. terious Oriental Gentlemen. Wistful radio, and he’s been dreaming about dorsed by William Gibson. Stewart has since moved to midlife crises. Suicide notes. Gibsonian ghost roads. Passion Play received the 1992 Au- Monterey, California where he has be- cyberpunk. The novel was shortlisted for this rora Award for best Canadian SF novel come a rising star in the field of Internet “I stole or hot-wired or tweaked up year’s Nebula Award. Perfect Circle 1931520119

16 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 ENVIRONMENT BUDDY, CAN YOU BY BEVERLY CRAMP tion. The alternative—simply pondering the status quo—is a great deal less in- ump down the volume, folks. spiring. Relocalize Now! suggests a com- SPARE A TURNIP? “Oil and other forms of big energy, Ppletely new way for society to such as natural gas, nuclear, large hydro- electricity dams and coal, have enabled operate by ensuring our needs are met ising gas pump prices affect more than a car trip. locally. humans to strip mine the earth,” write Its trio of authors, two of whom live The cost of oil is factored into our food, furniture, Darley & Co. “We have managed to in Vancouver, acknowledges change will scrape the ocean bottom of fish, mow require experimentation and time, and appliances, clothing and just about everything else down trees from the mountains and poi- son the biosphere with pollutants while that mistakes will be made along the way, that needs to be trucked, shipped or flown. but revising our consumerist lifestyle in increasing our numbers to six billion North America is inevitable: Relocalize Now! Getting Ready for Climate Change (and counting). Our massive use of fos- sil fuels cause the Earth’s temperatures “There are no perfect answers or so- and the End of Cheap Oil (New Society $21.95) by lutions to these problems, only re- to rise and the beginning of climate change like nothing we’ve known be- sponses,” they write. “Finding what Julian Darley, David Room and Celine Rich is a forthcoming “post- responses might work for each individu- fore.” Rcarbon guide” that will outline ways people can create local money, And in the process, some executives al’s locale will require a fantastic experi- in Canada’s oil and gas capital, Calgary, ment, a post carbon experiment... we are energy and food systems to obviate our reliance on oil. working to manifest dreams of an en- will still tell you that petroleum use does joyable and invigorating future that not cause global warming. It wasn’t so seems about as remote and different long ago that tobacco companies denied from our current existence as one could completely isolationist. Where economic and is developed while the existing glo- smoking causes cancer, either. imagine—a future without cheap oil and projects require more resources than a bal system is still operating) ✍ natural gas, without limitless energy and community has, regional cooperation • community supported manufactur- Julian Darley has a MSc in environ- growth and without huge corporations.” will be required. In opposition to “this ing (a partnership of mutual commit- ment and sociology from University of In a world where corporations con- global behemoth we have created,” there ment between the makers of life’s tools Surrey, UK, which led to a published trol many of our provisioning choices, will be far less material wealth. It has be- and a community of supporters. Sup- thesis examining the coverage of com- employing large numbers of people, come imperative to “reduce and produce porters cover the factory’s yearly operat- plex environmental issues in current af- these can be seen as incendiary words. 90 per cent less, then make the rest.” ing budget by purchasing a share of the fairs programmes at the BBC. He also Yet the authors say they are not politi- Like any screed that promotes radi- production. CSM members make a com- has a MA in journalism and communi- cal; they just don’t see a reasonable vi- cal change, Relocalize Now! contains mitment to support the factory through- cations from the University of Texas. sion for the future coming from the many new or not well-known terms: out the year and assume the costs, risks Celine Rich has a MA in design for political right or the political left. • peak oil (the high production point and bounty of manufacturing along with the environment from the Chelsea Col- Regardless of one’s political orienta- after which all future oil production will the factory workers). lege of Art and Design, England; a BA tion, Relocalize Now! calls for a radical begin decreasing and energy will get Strange new concepts for most peo- in fine arts from the Emily Carr Insti- makeover of society, including the more expensive) ple to be sure, but such ideas will give tute of Art and Design, and a Certifi- butchering of some sacred cows. Take, • parallel public infrastructure (a new people something to think about when cate of Marketing from Kwantlen for example, the so-called free market: provisioning infrastructure that uses the watching the price numbers tick over College. “It is important to note that these local model and new forms of ownership, while refueling their cars at the gas sta- Darley and Rich are a Vancouver notions are human con- couple who have re- structs: they are devel- cently co-founded oped, rationalized, and the Post Carbon In- promulgated by people. stitute, an educa- Operating systems are tional think tank not divine truths cast in that explores the stone that can never be theory and practice altered even though cer- how cultures, gov- tain ideas become so em- ernance and econo- bedded in common mies will function beliefs that they are re- without (non-renew- garded as undeniable re- able) hydrocarbons ality. Such is the case with as energy and chemi- free market economics.” cal feed-stocks. In the authors’ brave David Room has new and environmentally a MA in engineering sustainable world, the fu- economic systems ture will be in the hands and a BSc in electri- of clusters of self-govern- cal engineering from ing, self-provisioning Stanford University. communities that are not 0-86571-545-9

Beverly Cramp is a Julian Darley, freelance writer who Celine Rich and edits the Musqueam Dave Room have linked more than Newsletter. 50 “post carbon outposts” around the globe.

8 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 NOW IN PAPERBACK PROFILE The NATIONAL BESTSELLER and WINNER of the GOVERNOR GENERAL’S AWARD FOR NON-FICTION THE A FATHER’S HEROICS GOLDEN INSPIRE HORRORMEISTER SLADE n attorney in more than 100 murder cases, Jay Clarke has also co-written eleven ‘psy- cho-thrillers’ under the pseudonym Michael SPRUCE Slade. In Swastika (Penguin $24), he hunts through the annals—and factories—of World AWar II history to expose a Pentagon cover-up with links to rocket scientist Wernher von Braun.

Clarke’s new thriller is di- the Bavarian Alps? Are the “A powerful rectly inspired by the WWII thickets reminiscent of how the work that will archives of his father, Jack Black Forest used to feel? Is it “Johnny” Clarke, an art- the sense of Lebensraum in its change how ist who volunteered for the wide-open spaces, the yearning RAF in September of 1940. for elbow room that drove the many people He flew 47 combat mis- Nazis to invade Russia? think about sions against the Third Reich Whatever it is, German ac- and participated in the Battle cents are everywhere in the nature.” of El Alamein. Jay Clarke Cariboo today, and that made —Sebastian Junger Clarke links his father’s war the Aryan just one among record (which he says he found behind many.” a false wall in his mother’s linen closet in As for using Swastika to link the Ger- 2003) to a delusional killer named The man-born ‘American’ scientist Wernher Aryan who arrives on the West Coast von Braun to Hitler’s war crimes involv- and heads to Barkerville in search of Hit- ing slave labour, Jay Clarke claims, “Von For 300 years, a mythical golden spruce on the ler’s gold. Braun’s war record was ‘inconvenient’ Queen Charlotte Islands was sacred to the Haida, “What is it about the Cariboo that for the Pentagon’s post-war missile plans. appeals to the Germanic mind?” Slade So, to subvert the Nazi restrictions in respected by loggers, protected by environ- writes. “Are the mountains evocative of Project Paperclip, he was slapped with mentalists, and loved by all who saw it. more whitewash than Tom Sawyer and his dupes put on that fence. Then one man deliberately felled it “By the time I was a kid in the mid-1950s, you could and mysteriously disappeared. sit on the floor wearing your Davy Crockett coonskin cap and see von Braun on Disney’s TV show. JOHN VAILLANT “His design for the rocket ship in Tomorrowland was “[Like] Jon Krakauer and Sebastian Junger, based on his V-2. By Vaillant deftly peels away the surface story to the time he died an explore the psychology below ... an intense American ‘hero’ in mystery and a sweeping history ... a terrific read.” —National Post

VINTAGE CANADA “Fascinating ... a gripping wilderness thriller ... Essential reading.” —The Georgia Straight

A TRUE STORY OF MYTH, Flight Lieutenant Jack “Johnny” Clarke disappeared in an MADNESS AND GREED airplane crash during Jay Clarke’s youth

16 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 Take control of your finances! Smoke & Mirrors: Financial Myths That Will Ruin Your Retirement Dreams • Updated third edition! • Retire comfortably – it costs less than you think! • Stop making RRSP payments – pay down debt first

Canadian best-seller!

The No Smoke & Mirrors Workbook Overcome the Financial Myths That Will Ruin Your Retirement Dreams • Based on the best-selling book • Plan your personal finances according to David Trahair’s principles Swastika is an unusual Michael Slade novel because it alleges a Pentagon • Avoid common myths cover-up of SS Major Werner von Braun’s links to the deaths of 20,000 and achieve your prisoner-of-war slaves who died while the Nazis built V-2 rockets for Hitler. financial goals Von Braun is pictured on the cover of Time Magazine in 1958.

1977, he’d been given a medal by Presi- 2003) marks a return to the landscape Personal Budgeting Kit dent Ford... of Slade’s second novel, Ghoul, selected Learn to budget, save, and invest “During the Red Scare years after the by the Horror Writers’ Association as • Trim your spending painlessly war, von Braun became essential to one of the 40 top horror novels of all America winning the arms race. So the time and named one of the best novels • Understand where your cash Pentagon brought its own iron curtain by the A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Kill- goes and how to keep down between Nordhausen—the over- ers (Simon & Schuster, 1997) along with flow camp—and the Dora Mittelbau V- Silence of the Lambs and Psycho. In Bed more of it 2 factory tunnels, less than five miles to of Nails, a local crazy called The Rip- • Set realistic financial goals – the north. Dora was written out of his- per—who believes he’s Jack the Rip- and achieve them tory, and the cover-up persists today.” per—plots revenge on Inspector Zinc ✍ Chandler. A car chase with guns blaz- Jay Clarke, aka Michael Slade, can trace ing in Vancouver and a World Horror his origins as a writer to his fascination with Convention in Seattle lead the Mountie EC Comics in the mid-1950s—and the to a cannibal island climax in the South encouragement of bookseller Bill Duthie. Pacific, where Survivor is the game, and “I was fascinated by the criminal Chandler is an unwilling contestant. Clarke is willing to consider his fasci- mind,” he says. “First I drew comics, and Divorce Dollars: than I wrote a book, 13 Tombs, when I nation with horror could be somewhat was thirteen. linked with the disappearance of his fa- Get Your Fair Share I typed it out in signatures and ther, a Trans-Canada Airlines pilot, Financial planning before, during, stitched them together like the guts of a whose flight from Vancouver to Calgary and after divorce in 1956 crashed into a mountain near book. From age ten I had haunted Duthie • Understand exactly how Books, so I showed my work to Bill Chilliwack during a storm, killing all 62 Duthie and left it with him to read. people aboard. The plane went missing divorce will affect you Imagine how wowed I was when he on December 9, 1956 and wasn’t found financially gave it back to me a week later, bound until May. “What you do is you plumb in hardcover, with the title and my name your life,” he told the Georgia Straight’s • Negotiate the settlement in gilt on the spine. ‘Now you’re pub- Steve Newton in 2003, “and you that is right for you lished in a limited edition of one,’ he come up with whatever the scariest • Discover how to preserve said. ‘One day, I want to see your books things are. Now, I don’t know, maybe sold in my store.’” your parents lost you in the woods. your security ✍ Maybe Uncle Charlie took you out and Born in Lethbridge in 1947, Jay sexually assaulted you behind the wood- Clarke specializes as a lawyer in cases for pile. Maybe you drowned and had a the criminally insane. Most of his recent near-death experience. It will be differ- novels are co-written with his daughter ent for every single person, but there’ll Rebecca Clarke, who studied lit- be something in your life which you erature and history at UBC. Their col- have to carry with you, and you’ll carry Available in bookstores & online: www.self-counsel.com [it] with you ’til the grave.” laboration for Bed of Nails (Penguin 0-14-305325-6

17 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 FIRST NATIONS

Christopher ALSO NEW Walmsley reprints a chronological list of 16 Nuu-chah-nulth ethnographer Ron residential schools in B.C. Hamilton contributed the introduction and and their years of operation: 14 drawings to the first, cooperatively written St. Mary’s Mission 1863-1984; product of the Barkley Sound Language Coqualeetza (Sardis) Development Project, the Nuu-chah-nulth 1888-1941; Phrase Book & Dictionary: Barkley Sound Kamloops 1890-1978; Dialect (Bamfield: Barkley Sound Dialect Kuper Island (1890-1975); Kootenay (1890-1970); Working Group, $15.95), designed and Port Simpson (1890-1948); typeset by Maggie Paquet of Port Cariboo (1891-1981); Alberni. The Language Development Team Alberni (1891-1972); of Hilda Nookemis, Deborah Cook Kitamaat (1893-1941); Christie (1900-1983); and Denny Durocher worked for 18 St. George’s (1901-1978); months with representatives from the Huu- Squamish (1902-1960); ay-aht, Ucluelet, Toquaht and Uchucklesaht Ahousaht (1904-1939); First Nations to produce the 192-page, Sechelt (1905-1975); Lejac (1910-1976); pocket-sized book in an effort to revive a Alert Bay (1929-1975). rarely spoken language. 0-9735641-0-5 ✍ Long active in the indigenous peoples’ rights movement, Jeannette Armstrong Yesterday & today: St. Mary’s residential school and November, 2005 newspaper headline. participated in the Opening Plenary of the Third World Water Forum at the Kyoto Conference organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in March of 2003. First published on UNESCO Canada’s website, Unlucky 713 her water poem for that conference, ‘Water is Siwlkw,’ has been republished at the boriginals constitute less than four disturbing backdrop of systemic abuse and irresponsibility. outset of Sky Woman: Indigenous Walmsley, who joined the staff of the School of Social Work Women Who Have Shaped, Moved or percent of the population in B.C., and and Human Service at Thompson Rivers University in 1996, Inspired Us (Theytus $24.95), an anthology yet Aboriginal children constitute 40 emphasizes that considerable progress was made in the 1990s of writing and art edited by Sandra after public attention was focussed on the death of five-year- Laronde. 1-894778-19-7 percent or more of the children in old Matthew Vaudreuil, a ward of the Ministry of So- stateA care in western and northern Canada ac- cial Services throughout his short life. The resultant Gove Report, issued in November of 1995 cording to Christopher Walmsley in Protecting during the tenure of Joy MacPhail as NDP provincial Minister of Social Services, led to new legislation such as the Aboriginal Children (UBC Press $85). Child, Youth and Family Advocacy Act to ensure an independ- Hence the recent furore over the unexamined deaths of ent system of advocacy for children. more than 700 children in British Columbia—including 19- With Aboriginals constituting 35 percent of the children month-old Sherry Charlie of Port Alberni who was placed in B.C. government care in 1997, plans were made to gener- in a home where her uncle, who was known to be violent, ate a special advocate for Aboriginal services, but the advo- beat her to death in 2002—has particular relevance to First cacy office was eliminated and its legislation repealed with the Nations communities. election of a Liberal government in 2001. Based on his interviews with nineteen B.C. child protec- In conducting his panoramic examination of contempo- tion workers, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, conducted rary social work in the field of Aboriginal child protection, in 1998-1999, Walmsley has examined the Aboriginal child Walmsley was not able to find a male Aboriginal child protec- th protection system in B.C., from residential schools in the 19 tion practitioner with a social work degree. 0-7748-1171-4 century to foster homes in the 1990s. “Throughout its history, the residential school system was ✍ chronically under-funded and provided substandard educa- “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” said tion, housing, health care and child care,” he writes. Despite Samuel Johnson. As an education faculty member at widespread physical and sexual abuses, only one public in- York University, Celia Haig-Brown has co-edited With quiry into residential school conditions in B.C. was undertaken Good Intentions: Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal Relations prior to the 1980s—a coroner’s inquest after eight-year-old in Colonial Canada (UBC Press $85), an examination of whites Duncan Sticks ran away from the Williams Lake Resi- such as James Teit who recognized colonial injustice and Cover art for Sky Woman by dential School in 1902 and was found dead the next day. responded in constructive ways during the 19th century and Maya Christina Gonzalez Allegations of state negligence since 2002 therefore have a the first two decades of the 20th century. 0774811374

Wordscapes: British Columbia Youth Writing Anthology 2006 Ripple Effect Arts and Literature Society Wordscapes features a diverse mix of poetry, short stories, essays and artwork by some of British Columbia’s best and BOOKtopia youth authors and artists. present the Wordscapes 2006 Launch Party Young Adult, ISBN: 1-894735-10-2 1/4” 1/4” 192 pages, trade paper, 5 x 8 Featuring readings by Wordscpapes 2006 authors, $15.00 Available now. youth art gallery, dee-jay, and free refreshments. Wordscapes includes all the winners from Ripple Effect’s 7:00 pm, Friday, April 28th, 2006. annual B.C. Provincial High School Writing and Design Contest. 48 students from across B.C. share $8000 and West Vancouver Memorial Library publication in the annual Wordscapes anthology. This 1950 Marine Drive, West Vancouver year’s contest deadline is May 31st, 2006. Free admission.

For more information, contact us at: For contest guidelines and how to order Wordscapes past [email protected] and present, visit: Ripple Effect: 604-879-7327 www.rippleeffect.ca BOOKtopia: 604-925-7408

19 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 LETTERS Bible thumping My hobby is picking up old books at garage sales and library book sales. B.C. BookWorld has been my Bible for 18 years. I really like the BC Classics sec- tion. M. Wylie Blanchet’s Curve of Time was number three [BCBW Winter 2005] and Andrew Roddan’s God in the Jungle was number two. But what was number one? Bud Macleod Sunshine Coast [First in the series was Simon Peter Gunanoot: Trap-Line Outlaw by David Ricardo Williams. That article is stored at www.abcbookworld.com. Just enter: David Williams.] Breakfast of champions

Thank you Peter Such & for Sara Cassidy’s Joyce Kline insightful and sensitive inter- view about Peter Such’s novel Earthbaby [BCBW Au- tumn 2005). Just one tiny correction: Not only is our B&B, Earle Clarke House, not closed, we have just been voted #3 “Best Break- fast in Canada” by Arrington’s Inn Traveler, the Bible of the B&B industry. Joyce Kline Victoria Straight talk on Curve Greetings from history-phobic Rich- mond where in Steveston many First Nation sites have allegedly been de- stroyed in the last few years (i.e. devel- opment of the packers’ site and a chief’s home site near Garry Point Park). Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet [BCBW Winter 2005] describes plun- dering First Nations sites as they sail for 15 summers, dreamingly collecting ar- tifacts. There is an inference that this was okay because it was a different, innocent time. But how would they [the Blanchet family] react if their ancestors’ grave sites were plundered? Many people and government policies are still oblivious to other cultures, past and present. Artifact hunting is destroying human history, sometimes while making money. Modern plunder has not changed much since the ‘50s. There are many examples: Local building codes have allowed a new home to be built on or next to an old midden at the end of Lyall Har- bour on Saturna Island as millions are be- ing spent by the federal government to create park land for new occupiers. Paul Bruhn Richmond Chomsky at the bit That article on the Allen Bell/Noam Chomsky book [BCBW Autumn 2005] is truly amazing and I just see people all over the place reading it. It has been a fantastic way to get Chomsky’s words out into the public sphere much more so than the book itself. Lynda Gammon Victoria

Letters or emails contact: BC BookWorld, 3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 email: [email protected] Letters may be edited for clarity & length.

20 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 FICTION & THEATRE Red light district novelist hits green lights By writing nightmarish tales of Bombay, Anosh Irani is living the Canadian dream

n October of 2003, the Arts Club of Vancouver Before that can happen, Guddi’s brother will die in street violence, Chamdi will have to outwit a deadly crime boss to produced Anosh Irani’s first full-length save Guddi’s life, and the crime boss will order Chamdi to cut out his own tongue. play, The Matka King, a darkly comic tale about As Irani once told Georgia Straight threatre critic Colin Thomas, “If we are lucky enough to live in a place like a witty eunuch who operates a Bombay brothel Vancouver, we sometimes forget that there are people who are living in hell.” andI keeps his severed penis in a jar. Irani has once more invented a spiritually wounded pro- tagonist who carries a talisman—only this time it’s the blood- Five months later, in Irani’s debut novel, The Cripple and stained cloth that swaddled him as a baby. His Talismans (Raincoast $29.95), a detestable and unnamed The Song of Kahunsha is another literally fabulous tale narrator went searching for his severed limb after waking in a about finding God; a fable about self-completion that evokes Bombay hospital to discover his left arm was inexplicably miss- the precious need for love in a labyrinth of sorrow and cru- Janet Michael and Lisa Dahling await Prime Minister ing. elty. Laurier in the Belfry Theatre production of Ernestine He proceeds to carry a leper’s finger through a dizzying, Far from bleak, this Oliver Twist Goes To India culminates Shuswap Gets Her Trout, by Tomson Highway, 2005. absurdist and deeply commercial world of lepers and cock- in tenderness and hope. About the only things to criticize roaches, peacocks and prostitution, rainbows inside whiskey are the huge margins and overall layout that have inflated a Tomson Highway bottles and chickens that practice black magic. 200-page book to 300 pages. “The novel’s restless vision of Bombay,” commented one ✍ on the Thompson River dazed but impressed reviewer, “occasionally feels like a mo- Born in Bombay, Anosh Irani was raised as a Zoroastrian torcycle tour of the Louvre.” near Bombay’s red light district. As an only child in a Parsi ommissioned by Western Canada Having had another play, Bombay Black, open in Toronto colony, separated from both Hindus and Muslims, he used Theatre and the Secwepemc at Cahoots Theatre in January, Anosh Irani has now released to tell stories to his pet cockatoo, Polly. Cultural Education Society, his second novel about a nightmarish quest, The Song of Having worked as a dancer and advertis- C Kahunsha (Doubleday $29.95), in which a ten-year-old ing copy editor, Irani moved to Van- Tomson Highway’s play Ernestine boy runs away from an orphanage, hoping to find his couver with several friends in 1998. Shuswap Gets Her Trout (Talonbooks $15.95) father. After attending Capilano College, is set in Kamloops during the visit of Prime While dreaming of an idyllic paradise he calls he read unsolicited scripts for Arts Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier to the Thompson Kahunsha, “the city of no sadness,” this young Club Artistic Director Bill seeker named Chamdi befriends a brother and Millerd, who became his River Valley in August of 1910. The central sister who are beggars. playwriting mentor. characters are four women, representing the four Amid Bombay’s 1993 religious riots, in which At age 29, while Irani was en- seasons, preparing a feast for Laurier’s visit. 2,000 people were killed, their plan to rob a rolled in UBC’s Creative Writing Highway came to Kamloops to help produce Hindi temple literally explodes in their faces. program, he became a Canadian the cabaret-style play with an Aboriginal cast in “One day, all sadness will die,” Chamdi citizen. 2004. It was also the subject of an hour-long whispers to Guddi, “and Kahunsha will “I had always heard of an Bravo! television documentary,Tomson Highway be born.” American dream,” he wrote in Gets His Trout, from Getaway Films, directed the Globe & Mail. “The by Tom Shandel, who describes Highway’s one that Canada offers writing as “at once light-hearted burlesque and angry agitprop.” is better.” Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout was Cripple 1 55192-651-2; Kahunsha 0-385-66228-9 produced to mark the importance of a treatise written in 1910 by James Teit, on behalf of 14 chiefs of the Thompson River basin, to assert their collective rights to land and resources. Written in the Tomson Highway spirit of Shuswap, a “Trickster language,” Ernestine Shuswap has production notes that advise, “Think of the exercise as just a bunch of kids, the kind you were when you were five years old, playing in and with a chest filled with old clothes and objects. . . .” To make clear his feelings on the issue of “Aborginals Only” theatre (ie. only Aboriginals should depict Aboriginal characters), Highway has pleaded “in my Cree heart of hearts” for an end to political correctness, if, for no other reason, than it will enable him to have his plays produced more often. ✍ The eleventh of twelve children, Tomson Highway was born in a tent near Maria Lake, near Brochet, Manitoba, in 1951. After six years in his nomadic Cree family, he attended a residential school in The Pas where his introduction to music escalated into ambitions Anosh Irani to become a concert pianist. Twice a recipient of the Dora Mavor Moore got his start with Award, Highway is Canada’s best-known PHOTO Bill Millerd at the Aboriginal playwright and the first Aboriginal

SHROFF writer to receive the Order of Canada. Arts Club Theatre. 0-88922-525-7 TUSHNA

15 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 INTERVIEW DON’T KILL THE UMP When it comes to the game of picking winners and losers in the field of fiction, W.P. Kinsella has had his innings.

as-nails story of lesbian love and sacri- fice, This Place Called Absence, did not win. I felt it was the best novel of that year by a wide margin. I very much like Open Arms by Ma- rina Endicott, Blue Becomes You by Bettina von Kampen, The Beautiful Dead End by Clint Hutuzlak, and Stay by Aislin Hunter. These people are very tal- ented and could become major players in Can-Lit. However, my favorite first novel of all time was a runner-up in 1976 to something long forgotten, The True Story of Ida Johnson by Sharon Riis. It was summed up by Margaret Atwood as “... a flatfooted waitress caught in the eerie light of the Last Judgment.” It is a novel I re-read several times a year, always find- ing something new. ✍ BCBW: Do you sometimes think we should place a moratorium on publish- ing novelists under age 35? Retired novelist and full-time KINSELLA: Definitely. It got so bad Scrabble whiz W.P. (Bill) Kinsella that for a couple of years I added my lives just above the Fraser River own Bottom Drawer Award for novels in Yale, B.C. with his partner PHOTO

whose manuscripts should have re- Barbara Turner-Kinsella. mained in the bottom drawer with or- TWIGG ange peels, cracker crumbs and condom For five straight years, , BCBW: Are the first novels from larger wrappers. W.P. Kinsella publishing houses any better, or differ- The worst offenders are the publish- the outspoken author of Shoeless Joe (aka Field of Dreams, the movie) has adjudi- ent, than the first novels from smaller ers trying to qualify for future grants by cated all rookie novelists from sea to sea to sea for the Amazon/Books In Canada publishing houses? publishing a certain number of books First Novel Contest. “I haven’t seen any Fifth Businesses or Stone Angels,” he says, KINSELLA: I’d say the novels I see each year. They end up publishing any- “but previous winner Martin Sloane by Michael Redhill is world class, as is this year’s from Knopf Canada, Random House thing with a pulse. Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden which was passed over for both the Giller and and Doubleday are usually quality ones. BCBW: So should everyone attending Creative Writing courses be encouraged the GGs.” They are more consistent in quality than [ones from] the smaller publishers, pos- to get jobs delivering pizzas instead? There are two main national awards for fiction in Canada—the venerable Gover- sibly because they have money for bet- KINSELLA: No. I’m a graduate of nor General’s Awards and the swanky, Toronto-centric Giller Prize. Kinsella—who ter editors and proofreaders. the University of Victoria Writing De- never received either—views the Governor General’s Awards as “a farce” but sug- BCBW: If you were writing a first novel partment and the Iowa Writers’ Work- gests, “until this year the Giller people have shown uncommon good judgment in today, what small press would you send shop. picking winners.” it to? When I went to UVic I was like a Now that Bill Kinsella is opting out of his gatekeeper job for the First Novel Con- KINSELLA: I would go with Great baseball pitcher with a wonderful fastball Plains Publications, a relatively new firm who threw every third pitch into the test, we thought some questions might be in order about the state of fiction in Canada. out of Winnipeg. Their books are all stands. Bill Valgardson, Robin Skelton, beautiful and they give the impression Lawrence Russell and Derk Wynand BCBW: On a provincial basis, where BCBW: Do you sometimes ask your- that they really care about their prod- coached me until I was publishing regu- have most of the new novelists in Eng- self if there are too many books? uct. larly by the time I graduated. lish come from? KINSELLA: I think there have always BCBW: And what large press would Iowa gave me two years of freedom KINSELLA: Over five years Ontario been too many books. Unpublished writ- you send it to? to write, and I was beginning Shoeless Joe writers produced 46% of the first nov- ers may whine otherwise, but nothing, KINSELLA: I’d first try Knopf when I received my MFA. Only one or els submitted to the contest, followed by absolutely nothing even remotely good Canada. two bad novels came from graduates of B.C. with 19%, Alberta with 10% and goes unpublished. BCBW: Can you explain to me how writing programs, while several very Newfoundland with 8%. Literally hundreds of books both fic- anyone writing or talking in Canada can good ones emerged, especially from the BCBW: What’s the average age of first- tion and non-fiction are published each pronounce, with complete confidence, UBC Writing program, which has a time novelists in Canada? year that should never see the light of that the novel they have just read is some- phenomenal rate of published novelists. KINSELLA: I’d say it’s late 30s. day, are read by virtually no one, and how the ‘best’ novel of the year when It has always been that in a class of BCBW: Has the gender ratio for nov- would never be missed had they not that person has likely read less than 10% 15 writing students, on average only one elists changed since you published your been published. of the novels published? will ever achieve any success. I do think first fiction book in 1977? BCBW: The pop music industry has KINSELLA: Something like that is Writing Departments should be more KINSELLA: The female-to-male ra- been ruined by the music video. Do you a judgment call. What it means is that diligent in weeding out the obvious non- tio of published novelists has increased. detect any corresponding trend towards the novel compares favorably with many performers, but the problem is age-old; The novels I’ve read in the past five years publishing novelists who ‘look good’ excellent novels of the recent past, there- the departments get paid by the student, were equally divided 50/50. rather than write well? fore it must be one of the best of the so anyone with diligence and a smatter- BCBW: Does the old maxim ‘Write KINSELLA: I don’t see any correla- current crop. ing of ability can get a degree, which ul- about what you know’ still apply? tion. If looking good meant anything BCBW: You’ve already cited Susan timately cheapens the degrees of the KINSELLA: I don’t think ‘Write there would be far more well-designed Juby as a ‘writer to watch.’ What other talented writers. about what you know’ has ever applied. covers. There are only two or three good emerging first novelists have impressed That was my chief complaint with The best novels are works of imagina- covers a season, the rest often appear to you? Iowa where I saw students use the same tion, the worst are full of autobio- be designed by artsy-craftsy incompetents KINSELLA: The first year I picked 60-page, unrevised manuscript they used graphy. who have no knowledge of lettering, and the short list I was very disappointed that to gain entry to the workshop as their ✍ probably just got their first computer. Lydia Kwa’s beautifully poetic yet tough- Graduate Thesis Project. FEATURE REVIEW BY MICHAEL M’GONIGLE

explore the larger context, SFU was part of the biggest building boom in the his- tory of universities. Across North America and Europe, new suburban PARIS IN BURNABY universities drove an expansion in higher education. York and Trent, Calgary and the Looking back at an angry campus University of Victoria—all were founded in the same era. What happened in those he scene is unimagina- Arthur Erickson and Geoff somnambulance of the 50s into the rau- years laid the foundation for what be- Massey. But this vision of a whole uni- cous marches of the mid and late 60s. came today’s knowledge economy. ble today—900 stu- versity hewn out of the forest had to be Vietnam and anti-war demos. Ken Though it still escapes notice today, the dents gathered in the delivered in short order. Despite the vi- Kesey and the cross-continental acid result was the creation of a “higher edu- sionary design, no one had a plan—just trip. Janis Joplin and the cation industry” on a grand scale. Simon Fraser University an impossible schedule. Between the Beatles. Peace and love, riot police What that new industry would look mall with revolution on conception and the execution, the dec- and tear gas. like was really what was at stake during ade quickly awoke from the lingering Although Johnston does not much SFU’s infancy. continued on page 10 Ttheir minds. And willing to do something about it. Jim Harding: But as recounted in Hugh the man who kissed Gordon Johnston’s period history, Radical Shrum’s shoes. Campus: Making Simon Fraser Univer- sity (D&M $45), that was part of nor- mal life in 1968. It was the age of protest and, in June of that year, SFU’s coun- ter-culturalism culminated with a mass demonstration of students to demand the resignations of the university’s presi- dent and board. The goal of these students is equally unimaginable today as were their tac- tics—a university led by its faculty and students. Three weeks earlier, students in Paris had launched their now famous May uprising that brought the city and the government of Charles de Gaulle to a standstill. Around the world and atop Burnaby Mountain, there was real excitement about what was possible. As Johnston tells it, an older student, “a mother of five,” incited the SFU crowd with a loaded question: did they want “another Paris?” The roar came back: “Yes!” Right from its title, Radical Campus is both disapproving of this history, and proud of it. Johnston’s conflicted stance is not surprising. This lengthy and de- tailed tome is really an unofficial biog- raphy of Simon Fraser University. And it is a fitting tribute, even in its ambiva- lence. Along the way Johnston has an eye for the telling vignette. He recalls, for instance, the graduation ceremony for doctoral candidate and student activist, Jim Harding. As he received his di- ploma, Harding, a co-founder of the SDU (Students for a Democratic Uni- versity), surprised the crusty SFU chan- cellor Gordon Shrum by kissing Shrum’s shoe. This was no act of gratitude: Harding later explained he had learned at uni- versity to kiss the boots of the authori- ties. ✍ Setting up an “instant university” was the whim of Premier W.A.C. (Wacky) Bennett in 1963. B.C.’s long-serving province-builder, Bennett had a penchant for mega-projects, from dams to highways to universities. And he liked to get his way. His designate for the SFU job was the equally colourful, and determined, Gordon Shrum, a UBC physics professor turned politician. It started with a big architectural competition that led to the classical mountaintop design of architects

9 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 HISTORY

Next time you stroll or cycle come to mine gold. They returned to fishing and took Squamish wives, rais- near the totem poles at ing their families in the park. Brockton Point, keep an “They were very much working men, HOI contributing to the economy,” says Bar- eye out for a lone lilac man. “Three generations later, they were beside the Stanley Park living very enterprising, worthwhile lives. W But they were inter-racial, between so- shoreline. Spare a thought for cieties, and so people didn’t know quite what to make of them.” , the young Martha Smith HOI The courts eventually bride just out of residential pushed everyone out. It was a drawn-out process. school who planted the shrub at & HOI POLOI In 1923, for example, her new home more the City of Vancouver launched a suit against than 100 years ago. WJean Barman recalls shameful evictions of pioneer families Mariah Kulkalem and eight heads of re- Martha Smith’s home has been long- maining families at Brockton Point, de- forgotten until the release of Jean manding they prove they had title to the Barman’s Stanley Park’s Secret: The land. This step was taken to enable the Forgotten Families of Whoi Whoi, government to evict the families with- Kanaka Ranch and Brockton Point out providing any compensation for the (Harbour $36.95), a “pre-history” of one loss of their homes. of North America’s most famous The trial of 1923 was well-covered parks. in the newspapers. Thomas The area now known as Stanley Park Abraham gave his testimony in “a was inhabited for thousands of years, Squamish dialect” and reportedly and logged extensively, before the Do- stamped his umbrella stick on the floor minion government created Stanley Park of the witness box to make his point. His with the stroke picture appeared under a headline, “So of a pen in Old He Forgets When He Was Born.” 1888. Barman But the decision against the alleged has skillfully re- “squatters” was a foregone conclusion. trieved the col- Barman has gained a firm grasp of lective history of the prejudices that were entailed, and the First Nations she has documented the injustices, but MARK FORSYTHE and hybrid her book concentrates on celebrating families who individuals such as August Jack were evicted from their homes by gov- Khatsahlano, William ernment officialdom. Nahanee (who shared his family his- DUNCAN

It took until 1958 for the last mem- tory with Major Matthews), the ber of these many families to be forced Gonsalves family, Tim Cummings

out. It took another 46 years for their LLEWELLYN (the final resident of Stanley Park) and

OF collective story to be told. their descendants such as Rose Cole ✍ Yelton. COURTESY Two years ago I invited Jean Barman Martha Smith’s Brockton Point lilac to be a guest on Almanac to learn more PHOTO will still push out blossoms this spring. about the pioneer Joe Silvey, cen- Of the Brockton Point families, only the Gonsalves children Matilda, age 16 and Elizabeth, age 14 1-55017-346-4 escaped the residential school system. tral character in her book, The Remark- Mark Forsythe is the host of able Adventures of Portuguese Joe Silvey. Almanac on CBC radio. Among other subjects, we discussed how Drawing on family stories, numerous ments existed on the peninsula, the most Silvey and his Aboriginal wife photographs, notes from Vancouver’s recent at Whoi Whoi (near present-day Kwahama Kwatleematt had first archivist Major J.S. Lumberman’s Arch) and nearby lived with the Squamish people in Matthews, and various court docu- Chaytoos. They didn’t stand a chance Stanley Park. ments, Barman proceeded to cast light against the colonial imperative. “People remember Gassy Jack on the communities that disappeared “Even before the park is created,” Dayton,” Barman told me, “in part, be- into the park’s shadows. Barman says, “there was a Reserve Com- cause he was British and English and ✍ mission that went around laying out re- more like us, whereas Portuguese Joe was Both Squamish and Musqueam lived serves, and for reasons I think are very a fisherman. He was from Portugal and on the site for thousands of years, but inappropriate, the families at Whoi lived on the edge of the water in the pe- their middens were dug up and hauled Whoi and Chaytoos were denied re- ninsula that would become Stanley Park.” away to build the first road around the serves at that point, and thereafter they Afterwards, Barman received a tel- park. At least eight First Nations settle- were treated as squatters.” ephone call from a listener whose family Kanaka Ranch had also lived in the park. This led to a was perched near meeting between Barman and the call- the water on present er’s mother, Olive O’Connor, a resi- day Denman Street, dent of the Fraser Valley. occupied by Hawai- SMITH “She worked very hard during a won- ians who mostly had FAMILY derful afternoon,” Barman says, “to per- Squamish wives. HERBERT

OF suade me to write about the families in KEAMO Brockton Point was

OF Stanley Park. She was descended from home to a mixed COURTESY the families that lived at Kanaka Ranch, population, mostly COURTESY just outside today’s park at the foot of men from the PHOTO

Denman Street, and also from the LETTER Azores (like Silvey) Martha Smith in front of her Stanley Park Brokcton Point families." Residents of Stanley Park always got mail despite their controversial status. and Scotland who’d home around the time of the 1923 trial.

13 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 reviews

MEMORY CHIWID’S AND who moved her solitary camp PREJUDICE according to the seasons, pro- WILDERNESS Killing Time by Hank Schachte tected only by a tarp. (New Star $18) Chilcotin: Preserving Pioneer Memories Born as Lily Skinner, she was by The Witte Sisters (Heritage $39.95) the daughter of Luzep, a Chilcotin deaf mute from n Hank Schachte’s short ever mind Arthur Redstone, and Charley Skinner, novel Killing Time the main Erickson’s SFU, the a white settler in the Tatlayoko- Icharacter loses his N Marine Building or the Eagle Lake area. Chiwid mar- memory and his ability to form BowMac sign. The top engineer- ried Alex Jack and they had new memories in the after- ing feat of B.C. is either Mungo three daughters, but her life math of a car accident. Martin’s 39-metre totem in Bea- changed irrevocably when he What follows is an unusual con Hill Park or Rudy Johnson’s beat her mercilessly with a heavy bridge, erected without govern- chain. story which slips backward, ment support in 1968. Remorseful, Chiwid’s hus- chapter by chapter, eventu- Rudy Johnson purchased the band drove several head of cat- ally revealing the complicated 200-ton, 300-ft.-long steel bridge tle to Chezacut and sold them relationships between Richard in Alaska and re-assembled it to Charlie Mulvahill to raise and his brother and his broth- across the Fraser River, with the money to send his beautiful wife er’s lover, Cindy. help of engineer Howard Elder, to Vancouver for treatment, but As the plot unravels and Ri- in six months for only $200,000. thereafter Chiwid left her hus- chard’s short-term memory It allowed him to cut 30 miles band in order to roam the off his trips between his Buck- Chilcotin, from Anahim Lake to slowly returns, the reader re- skin Ranch and Williams Lake. Riske Creek, sometimes with an mains one step ahead of the Johnson is one of countless old horse and a dog. Many peo- character in realizing his past do-it-yourselfers featured in ple in the Chilcotin tried to as- identity as well as what the fu- Chilcotin: Preserving Pioneer Memo- sist her, offering firewood, food ture holds in store. ries, a 432-page Who Was Who Chiwid: rumoured to have spiritual powers & lived life mostly outdoors or clothes, but Chiwid main- that was assembled, as much as tained her independence, fear- written, by the three Chilcotin- able to urbanites, but unfortu- rode side-saddle for 400 miles to ing she would become sick if she born Witte sisters—Veera, Irene nately his entry remains slight. get there in 1887, and the more remained too long indoors. and Hazel—all raised at Big The Witte sisters’ research for remarkable loner Chiwid, a Ill, aged and blind, Chiwid Creek. their original 1995 collection of Chilcotin Aboriginal woman spent her final years in the Stone Eric Collier, author of the profiles has yet to be updated who lived outdoors for much of Creek Reserve home of Katie backwoods classic, Three Against or revised. her adult life. Rumoured to Quilt, where she died in 1986, the Wilderness, is one of the few The Witte sisters recall the have spiritual powers, Chiwid and became the subject for a characters in Preserving Pioneer first white woman in the (also Chee-Wit, or book published by Sage Memories who might be recogniz- Chilcotin, Nellie Hance, who “Chickadee,”) was a crack shot Birchwater in 1995. 1-895811-34-1

All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online at JEWISH ROOTS UNVEILED www.abcbookworld.com Hank Schachte

Pioneer Jews of British Columbia by Cyril Leonoff, Geoffrey Castle, Sarah H. Tobe, August of 1858 in order to plan observances of the Jewish New Year Schachte’s background in Christopher J.P. Hanna, Leopold Levy (Jewish Historical Society $20) and Day of Atonement. film is evident—using long, • Wholesale liquor merchant Simon Reinhart paid a record price ccording to in Pioneer Jews of British Cyril Leonoff of $3925 for a choice lot in June of 1859. loose sentences, often with Columbia, the first Jews known to have reached Vancou- • The first Jew to serve in a Canadian legislature was also British minimal punctuation, the au- ver Island were adventurers of Polish, Prussian and Ger- Columbia’s first government auctioneer, Selim Franklin, elected to thor attempts to mimic the manic origin, stirred by gold fever in 1858. A the Legislative Assembly of Vancouver Island in 1860. free-flowing nature of visual The earliest Jewish organization in Western Canada, the First • As Victoria’s second mayor, Selim’s brother Lumley Franklin memory. Hebrew Victoria Benevolent Society, was formed in 1859; and was the first Jewish mayor elected within British North America, Part of the impetus for this the first Jewish burial ground (still in use today) was conse- in 1866. literary mystery was crated in 1860. • Miss Ray Frank became the first woman to mount the Schachte’s interest in examin- By the time Moldavian-born Israel Joseph Benjamin pulpit of Temple Emanu-El of Victoria as a lay cantor, hired ing the constructs of time and passed through Victoria in February of 1861, Victoria boasted from Oakland, California, in 1895. memory. “I have always been 2,500 white inhabitants, 5,000 Indians and one synagogue. The ✫ interested in the particularly wandering scholar and historian observed, “The beginnings of human perception of time,” the city of Victoria are really due to the Jews. For, no matter Co-written by Cyril Leonoff, retired archivist; he says. “The story explores this how many persons streamed to the island at the outbreak Geoffrey Castle, researcher; Christopher idea of memory as a form of of the gold-fever, they scattered again, for the most part, J.P. Hanna; the late Leopold Levy of Trail; to all corners of the world when their disillusion fol- and researcher Sarah H. Tobe, Pioneer prejudice—how memory and lowed only too quickly. Jews was printed in California as a joint pub- experience influence our per- “The Jews, however, held their ground, set up lication of two Jewish periodicals, Western ceptions of the present mo- tents for residence and booths for shops; for they States Jewish History and The Scribe. With ment and our construct of soon realized that this place had a great com- footnotes and illustrations, but lacking an in- personal reality.” mercial future. This was to be deduced, dex, it appears as plans for a 1,500 square- Schachte, a screenwriter, is easily enough, from the situation of the foot permanent exhibition of B.C. Jewish also the author of a non-fiction island, which lies between the Sand- history are reaching fruition. book, Vagabond Fitness: A wich (Hawaiian) Islands, California [No ISBN; JHSBC 604-257-5199] Field Manual for Travelers, pub- and China.” lished by Orca in 1995. His fea- Having studied Jews around the As a project of the Jewish Historical So- ture film, Silence, screened at globe, including Africa, the worldly- ciety of British Columbia, a new mu- the Sundance Festival in 1999 wise Benjamin judged gold fever to seum facility is slated to open in the and a new novella is the sub- be pernicious, and warned against spring of 2006 on the third floor of the ject of a screenplay under de- rampant materialism. Two years later Jewish Community Centre of Greater velopment. Schachte, who be- there were 119 Jewish families in Vic- Vancouver. It will house more than London-born Henry came a licensed pilot in 1958, toria, totalling 242 people. Nathan Jr. became the 100,000 photographic images from the flies his own Cessna and lives first Jew elected to the archives of the Jewish Western Bulle- on Saturna Island, where he is Pioneer Jews records: House of Commons when tin newspaper, the Jewish Federation an aficionado of vintage • The first meeting of the nascent British Columbia joined of B.C. and photographers Leonard Confederation in 1871. Saabs. 1-55420-019-9 Jewish community occurred in the Frank, Otto Landauer and Fred Schiffer. drygoods store of Kady Gambitz in

32 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 reviews NON-FICTION CEEPEECEE HAD NO CBC

Raincoast Chronicles Fourth Five edited by Howard White (Harbour $39.95)

f there’s a typical entry in on the bi-monthly arrivals of the boat skippers in the days before the 400-page Raincoast Maquinna and a radio wireless search and rescue. IChronicles Fourth Five, edited that used only Morse code. Classic West Coast raconteurs by Howard White, it might be Al- “Mr. Lee, the Chinese cook, Dick Hammond, Arthur Mayse, der Bloom’s memoir that begins, and his helper served tasty and Bus Griffiths and White himself “It was late August in 1937 when abundant meals for the crew,” add some levity. I first sighted Ceepeecee, or Boom writes. But the most es- Other sub- should I say when I first smelled sential citizen turned out to be jects include it.” a little Scotsman who could shipyards, Ceepeecee, or CPC, was an squeeze out tunes on his little squatters, log abbreviation of California Pack- accordion. barging, fishing ing Corporation, an American Bloom fondly recalls how superstitions, company that built a processing Scotty went to the hotel on the Pisces sub, plant for pilchards (sardines) on weekends so the few girls in town Howard White West Coast pa- the West Coast of Vancouver Is- could do their fast steps with any triarch Claus land, southwest of Tahsis, ‘be- of the boys who could keep Carl Daniel Botel, pioneer pho- hind’ Nootka Island, in 1926. up—and Bloom wasn’t one of tographer Hannah Maynard and Eight years later this plant was them. the ‘mega-village’ of Kalpalin on sold to Nelson Brothers Fisher- “One Sunday morning, the shores of Pender Harb- ies who added a salmon cannery. Scotty didn’t check in for his re- “Everything was our. “It was very smelly,” recalls duction plant shift so a search very Spartan but Margaret McKirdy recalls Bloom, “but so are most indus- was started. Scotty travelled in how her mother placed The Peo- trial towns, each in its own way. his own little skiff and tied it up we did have ple’s Home Medical Book alongside To someone looking for work, at the unloading dock. He had running water, a the Eaton’s catalogue and the the smell meant money.” to climb a ladder to get to the Bible—and its influence was After stints as a carpenter at dock and somehow he fell. sewer running greater than either. More fun- McBride Bay, Nootka and Port “We found him at low tide out to the damental than even the Joy of Albion, as well as working at resting on the bottom below the Alder, Bob Cooking, this 1919 treatise, Gibson brothers’ logging camps, ladder. Scotty was everybody’s saltchuck and and Florence known in many households as Bloom at Bloom returned to the cluster friend and he gave more pleas- simply ‘the Doctor Book,’ ad- electric lights.” Ceepeecee, of wood-framed buildings ure to the crew than anyone in —ALDER BLOOM 1946. vised that most means of contra- known as Ceepeecee in 1941, to camp. In a place where radio re- ception were injurious to a work for Del Lutes, the virtual ception was very poor, his little woman’s health. king of the town, who kept ‘dry accordion was a godsend.” smiled. A few minutes later Some were left to rot; ✫ laws’ in place. Another godsend was Flor- Bloom was in the company Ceepeecee’s buildings were de- “Lutes ran a very strict camp One of several contributions ence French. One day when store, she glided in, smiled stroyed by fire in 1954. but he had to relent a little dur- by Douglas Hamilton, ‘Who Bloom was picking up supplies again, bought her cigarettes, ✫ ing the war years,” Bloom recalls. Shot Estevan Light? A Tradition- from Ceepeecee in the fall of and left. “Esperanza Hotel, just 15 min- White’s fourth compilation of alist Returns Fire’ returns to the 1940, she noticed him and Two years later they utes away by boat, was a Raincoast Chronicles-—begun in controversial subject of why the became the first of sev- modern building with a 1972—also features Pat Wastell Estevan Point Lighthouse was eral Ceepeecee couples good-sized beer parlour.” Norris’ reminiscences of Alert shelled on June 20, 1942. to tie the knot. Their first Zeballos, two hours Bay along with her book-length Hamilton refutes claims son Bob was born in Port away by boat, had cafes, history of Telegraph Cove (re- made on Fifth Estate by Alberni in 1943. hotels, a doctor and a leased as Raincoast Chronicles 16). lightkeeper Donald Graham The Blooms left bawdy house, described Among the longer entries that the attack on “the boldest, Ceepeecee in 1946. With by Bloom as a frontier ne- Fourth Five also reprints Stephen most beautiful lighthouse in the sudden disappear- cessity, but cannery hours Hume’s Lillies & Fireweed British Columbia” was instigated ance of the pilchards in made the trip prohibi- (Raincoast Chronicles 20), a pano- by the Canadian government in the late 1940s, shore tive. rama of some noteworthy B.C. order to incite public alarm. workers like Florence women. Citing Bert Webber’s Retali- ✫ could no longer be sure Douglas Hamilton recalls the ation: Japanese Attacks and Allied Prior to refrigeration, to work four-month stints worst fire aboard ship in B.C. Countermeasures on the Pacific Coast most canning had to of 12-hour days at 35 history when the steamer Grap- in World War II, Hamilton states, occur near the fishery. cents an hour. pler sank in Seymour Narrows in “A number of daring raids on Therefore the denizens Ceepeecee closed in After his 40 years in the fishing industry, Alder 1883, with more than 100 lives the west coast of North America of Ceepeecee were iso- 1951, along with other Bloom amassed an extensive photographic archive, lost. Conversely, Doreen were carried out by Japanese lated at the head of wooden cannery commu- including this cannery worker with a vacuum-sealer. Armitage recalls rescues by tug- submarines in 1942.” Tahsis Inlet, dependent nities along the coast. 1-55017-372-3

All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online at MAPPING THE SALISH SEA www.abcbookworld.com

Islands in the Salish Sea: A Community Atlas (Touchwood Editions $44.95) couver-based regional planner Doug Aberley in Boundaries of Home, Mapping for Local Empowerment (New Society, 1993). “Map it and save it,” says Briony Penn, a proponent of Community mapping is obviously a laudable concept but the community mapping. “Mapping is a great excuse to talk to the format of this book is too small to represent the detailed work. neighbours, old-timers and local kids, and listen to tree frogs The type is tiny on many of the maps, rendering them mostly and barred owls, even in the city.” Having gained her Ph.D in decorative. Islands in the Salish Sea is a lovely advertisement Geography from Edinburgh University, Penn has provided the for an idea that has been spread too thin, like one of those foreword, and some of the inspiration, for Islands in the Salish pizzas called De Woiks, with sprinklings of everything adding Sea: A Community Atlas, edited by Salt Spring Islanders Sheila up to a forgettable taste. 1-894898-32-X Harrington and Judi Stevenson, in order to generate TOILET INSTALLATION EXPLAINED: “What I hoped to do protective awareness for 17 of the largest islands in the Strait of with this installation was create a bold symbol of the threats Georgia, 12 of which already have their own land trust or con- that urbanization poses to the sensitive ecosystems of the Salish servancy organizations. Approximately 28,000 people live on Sea—a toilet. The indoor toilet is also a symbol of our separation from our waste and other impacts on the these 17 islands from Quadra in the north to Saturna in the south. environment. Waste can be flushed down a drain and simply The Salish Sea Community Mapping Project, which arose disappear from view and from thought. The idea was inspired by a 15th century Flemish masterpiece by Hans Memling called from Salt Spring Island, extends the concepts raised by Van- The Voyage of Saint Ursula’s Relics.”— BRIONY PENN

31 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 reviews FICTION TENDER IS THE PLIGHT A ballerina tumbles into Post Traumatic Stress Disorder--and we read about it to feel less alone

BY DIANE ATKINSON (To a point. The novel could small gift shines warmly, like a Although the would-be bursts, Sympathy’s prose is cin- Sympathy by Dede Crane be criticized for a certain ro- small sun. healer, Dr. Myatt, has some ematographically transparent. (Raincoast Books $15.95) mantic—i.e. unlikely—gloss: In that none pass through problems himself, the care with Crane writes simply, so you are she’s a world-famous ballerina; life unscathed, and some us are which he watches over his flock, unaware of the story as writing— ritic Anatole Broyard her parents are well-off and still more scathed than others, and making minute notes on their rather, you experience it di- once suggested that the together. At thirty-four, she was given that grief, shock, and progress, must in itself be heal- rectly. C one fundamental ques- a happily married homeowner PTSD more often than not go ing, no matter the specific con- (Do you know who wrote, tion to be asked about a new with a child. She had more in inadequately acknowledged, let tent of his theories. “One shouldn’t be aware of the novel is, “Is it necessary?” place before she lost it than alone treated, in our society, this We should all be so lucky, in writer turning pirouettes on the This remark is famous, I many people ever get. But then, novel could be balm for the our hour of need, to be booked page?” John Updike, of all peo- think, because of its tendency to pain can’t really be compara- wounded. (T.S. Eliot: “I read to into the plushy, caring, private ple! The greatest pirouetter of stick in the mind. I’ve toyed with tively evaluated.) feel less alone.”) Rosewood Clinic! them all.) it over the years, as if turning a Margaret Atwood has said Simply written In Housekeeping, the church hard candy over and over in my that it is unrealistic for a writer in short, easy to ladies who come to visit and of- mouth with my tongue. What to strive for resolution at the end pick up and fer their condolences murmur makes a book necessary? And, of a novel. “Insight alone is suf- put down a plainsong that rings in my necessary to whom? ficient.” She adds, “Insight alone head. “The world is full of sor- ✫ is an achievement.” row.” The rejoinder: “Yes, it is.” Sympathy, by Dede Crane, is Sympathy succeeds in en- And because it is, Sympathy is nec- a tender, luminous novel of sym- gaging the reader in the essary. pathy for those among us who troubled emotional worlds As readers, we can be thank- are most emotionally wounded. of its characters. We try on ful this author has made us a gift Set in the Post Traumatic their traumas (“How of her careful observations, hon- Stress Disorder wing of the would I cope if this hap- ouring the small details of life— Rosewood Clinic, it’s the story of pened to me?) and we institutional life, in particular— a ballerina grieving her husband root for them to unfurl, and thankful for the goodness and son, both of whom died in to forgive themselves in her heart, from which this a car accident. and reach out, at the finely-wrought work clearly It’s also the story of the three very least toward life’s springs. 1-55192-781-0 or four other patients of hand- small pleasures. some Dr. Michael Myatt, an ide- Unlikely alliances Novelist Diane Atkinson has alistic empath with some occur: a stout, black recently returned to live in unresolved identity issues of his nurse dotes on a British Columbia. own. gangly, pimpled, Partly set in the Pacific white teenager. Northwest and dealing, as it She leaves him does, with shock and grief, Sym- oranges, which pathy may remind some readers he loves, on of Marilynne Robinson’s House- his bedside keeping, this reviewer’s favourite table. In novel. the grey Working out at the gym this hospital morning, I thought of the pro- room, the tagonist, Kerry, doing her physi- cal repatterning exercises as devised and supervised by Dr. Myatt. It took me a few minutes to recall she’s a fictional charac- Dede ter! I felt I shared her experi- Crane ence.

All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online at HOOKED ON LETTERS www.abcbookworld.com Portrait of a felon clinging to the life raft of the alphabet

BY CHERIE THIESSEN like school at all... He gets into educa- Bernadette gets Simon Austen admittance to a gentler prison Alphabet (McArthur & Co. $14.95) tion, big time. Eighteen months later he’s facility with a therapeutic focus, but the love-stricken killer at first functional and hooked on the alpha- doesn’t want to go. At the new facility he begins to make some hile packing for a move from London, England, Kathy bet.” headway in self-recognition but eventually his aggressive behav- Page discovered a novel she had abandoned almost Austen forges tentative relationships iour with a superior does him in. After a year in the new prison, W ten years earlier and decided to resurrect it. “Time with women; first writing to the alco- he’s spirited away in the middle of the night. Imprisoned for ten had performed its magic—a kind of alchemy—and it was sud- holic academic, Vivienne, under a false years, he must readjust to a seamier and a more dangerous denly easy to see what to jettison and what to keep,” she says. and carefully crafted artistic identity. environment. Happily ensconced in her new, solar-panelled writing space When his deception is discovered, he This convincing portrait of a felon clinging to the life raft of the on Salt Spring Island, complete with a view, Page proceeded to tries a second time with Tasmin. This time alphabet arose from Page’s experiences as a writer-in-residence finish her grim novel, Alphabet, about a fictional felon, Simon he tells her who he really is and she at a men’s prison, three days per week, for about a year, where Austen, who is serving a life sentence in Britain for murdering his doesn’t mind. Even better, she gives her job mostly consisted of encouraging the inmates to write and girlfriend. him the gift he most needs for his new supporting other creative projects. “When a character like this arrives,” Page says, “you obsession—a typewriter. “The prison was both fascinating and dreadful,” she says. “It can’t throw him out. Just as in a real relationship, you have to Trouble is, Tasmin has lied to him. was a place of frighteningly intense feelings, and, at the same keep going until whatever you came together for is complete.” She is way underage and he is way in time, given there was no outlet for them, one of utter stultifica- A young, illiterate carpet layer, Simon Austen likes to com- trouble. tion. It was about as hard a reality as you could get, yet nowhere mand his girlfriend to do things, then he watches. In spite of her Along comes Bernadette, the new else could fantasies and delusions grow so thick and fast.” entreaties, they have not yet had sex. He strangles her when she prison shrink. She calls him courageous. Having also undergone lengthy training as a counselor and takes off her clothes but refuses to put on her glasses. The increasingly devoted Austen has psychotherapist, Page—also a qualified carpenter and joiner, As Austen later comes to realize in therapy, he liked to turn that word courageous painfully tattooed with an M.A. in Creative Writing—found she was well-positioned her on and off like she was a television screen and he had the on his chest to join the numerous other to revisit her abandoned manuscript in the relative tranquility of remote. Brutal, manipulative, damaged, intelligent and occasion- words that wrap around his body. It’s the Gulf Islands. Her seventh novel since 1986, and Page’s first as ally charming, Austen was abandoned by his mother and abused the first word that’s positive in a world a new Canadian, Alphabet was nominated for the Governor as a child in foster care. Kathy that has branded him otherwise: waste General’s Award for Fiction. 0 75381 861 2 A widower with time on his hands volunteers to teach Austen Page of space, a threat to women, stupid, how to read in prison. “He’s got all the time in the world and it isn’t callous, bastard and murderer. Cherie Thiessen writes from Pender Island.

29 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 reviews ART

Czech mated: John Koerner and Lisa Birnie

THE IMPORTANCE OF PHOTO

CRAMP J BEING OHN BEVERLY There are three reasons why John In the art game, modesty is not always the best policy Koerner has yet to emerge as a A Brush with Life by John Koerner (Ronsdale $39.95) time Leon Koerner changed the name of Western hem- big name in Canadian art circles. lock lumber to Alaska pine in order to make it more at- Brush with Life avoids the pretentious gobbledy- tractive to European markets. First, from Picasso to Shadbolt, from Madonna to David gook of contemporary artspeak but John Alaska Pine and Cellulose Ltd. was sold to Rayonier Beckham, artists and celebrities of the 20th century in- Koerner does court posterity by baring his Inc. of New York in 1954, three years after John Koerner creasingly recognized the need to reinvent themselves, pride: had left the family firm to paint. In the 1950s, Koerner like actors taking on new roles, in order to continually A“If I had a dime for every person who has asked me, began teaching at the Vancouver School of Art where provide or serve as ‘new’ products. ‘Are you still painting?’—as if I really should be doing his friendship with the principal teacher, Jack Shadbolt, John Koerner’s nuanced landscapes have re- something less self-indulgent and more responsible—I’d blossomed until 1980. Koerner began to feel estranged mained, in his own words, “totally different from any- from what he calls Shadbolt’s “critical expectations, and thing that could remotely be described as ‘cutting be doing well.” edge.’” His modest nature has prompted him to observe, Born in Prague in 1913, John (Jan) Koerner was raised quite materialistic values. He also had a flamboyant tem- “As I look back on my sixty years of work, I can see some among well-to-do Jewish free-thinkers and sent to Paris perament and was the strongest atheist I had ever met.” slight changes, but they are mostly of a technical na- for two months, at age 15, in order to learn French. There Throughout the 1950s, Koerner had mixed with col- ture.” he spent much of his time in the Louvre, thrilled by Cu- leagues such as Molly and Bruno Bobak, Don Jarvis and Reading between the lines in his new memoir, A Brush bism and Surrealism, and he made several visits to the Orville Fisher, as well as Abe Rogatnik and Alvin Balkin With Life, it’s easy to see how the perception of a lack of Montparnasse studio of Paul Colin. who opened the New Design Gallery, “but I always had dramatic transformation in his work has been a profes- Aware of their son’s budding passion for art, his par- an uncomfortable feeling I was not a very welcome new- sional drawback—even though Koerner’s art has ents didn’t object to sending him to Italy the following comer,” he writes. evolved through clearly discernible stages of varying summer. There Koerner developed his lifelong admira- After teaching at UBC from 1958 to 1962, Koerner content for anyone who cares to look closely. maintained the greatest af- It also hasn’t helped Koerner that he has a surname tion for the colours and lu- that reminds some British Columbians of a wealthy fam- minosity of Giorgione. “Instead of questioning finity and respect for Bert ily. After studying law in Binning, noting that Binning Koerner’s uncles Leon, Otto and Walter Koerner were Prague and Geneva to the meaning of life, I came to should have been accorded brothers who fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 and started please his father, he moved better treatment by Ian M. Alaska Pine Company in Vancouver, selling out to back to Paris in 1937, in- ask what meaning I could give Thom in Masterworks from Rayonier Inc. of New York in 1954. trigued by Socrates’ aware- to life.” British Columbia. “It was a sav- Leon and Thea Koerner subsequently established the ness of the human soul. “I —John Koerner age blow to me when Bertie Koerner Foundation to support charities and the arts; intuitively felt that these [Socrates’] ideas were related died suddenly in 1978,” he writes. Walter Koerner, in particular, was an extremely gener- to my love of painting, but I didn’t know how,” he recalls. Although Koerner has had a large mural permanently ous and important patron of arts and culture, playing a displayed in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre since 1986, and fundamental role in the preservation and rejuvenation Returning to Geneva, Koerner met the Swiss publisher of First Nations work. of Bo Yin Ra in Basel and bought each of his 30 titles, one of his works was installed in the classical record store Thirdly, Koerner has maintained a steadfast resolve works that he still reads seventy years later. The Magic Flute by its original owner David Lemon in 1993, to represent the spiritual truths he has absorbed from “Instead of questioning the meaning of life,” he writes, he has received more support from writers than painters. the little-known writings of Bo Yin Ra, pseudonym for “I came to ask what meaning I could give to life.” Although he formed collegial relationships with the German mystic Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken (1876– In 1939, John Koerner returned from the Prague uni- West Coast pantheon that includes Jack Shadbolt, Bill 1943), whose prose Koerner first encountered in his late versity library to find nobody was at home. Responding to Reid, Gordon Smith, Joe Plaskett and Tak Tanabe, teens. That makes it possible to dismiss Koerner as a bit of instructions left for him, he hurriedly made his way to Koerner has noted-—with an exclamation mark-—that a kook—which would be a very superficial assessment the Prague airport to meet his uncles Walter and Leon. only Plaskett ever purchased one of his paintings. of him. They boarded a DC-3 that his uncle Otto had chartered, “With the exception of Doris and Jack Shadbolt and “The direction that Bo Yin Ra indicates is not an easy later Bert and Jessie Binning and Lawren Harris,” path,” he writes, “but after all these years I still believe in having evacuated most Koerner family members to Paris his advice. His books are guides to a perception of real- the day before. Koerner writes, recalling his formative years on the West ity that neither philosophic speculation nor dogmatic Walter Koerner and his wife Marianne relocated the Coast, “my overtures of hospitality to fellow artists were faith can attain. I have attempted to produce work that family business in London, but Leon Koerner and his wife not returned.” would be in complete accord with this reality; a task that Thea went to western North America to scout opportu- Admired by Jane Rule, David Watmough, Max hasn’t been too difficult as I have lived fully wrapped up nities in the timber business. Upon their purchase of a Wyman, Linda Rogers and Vaclav Havel (who bought in it.” sawmill in New Westminster, John Koerner was requested one of his paintings in Prague), John Koerner’s Japanese- The three-syllable name Bo Yin Ra has no literal mean- to put aside his Bohemian existence in Paris as a painter style brushstrokes rarely convey their sensitivity if repro- ing, nor any connection with eastern religion or philoso- in order to temporarily assist the family firm in B.C. duced in black & white. Nonetheless Koerner did allow phy. Like the word Kodak, the pen name Bo Yin Ra was When war broke out, Koerner volunteered with the his coastal miniatures to decorate the colourless covers created for its tonal qualities alone. Divorced from ra- of BC Studies from 1985 to 1993, something he doesn’t tionalism, Koerner’s paintings are likewise evocations of Canadian militia but was rejected on medical grounds. “tonal qualities.” Koerner worked in the family’s Marine Building offices mention in the book. in downtown Vancouver for twelve years, during which continued on page 28

27 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 reviews WESTCOAST GROUP OF ONE UP THE INLET WITHOUT A FATHER A Journey with E.J. Hughes by Jacques Barbeau (Barbeau Foundation / D&M, $50) A Tofino kayaker takes us for a bi-cultural spin in a brooding climate

Jacques Barbeau first saw a repro- BY CHERIE THIESSEN duction of an E.J. Hughes painting on the cover of the Vancouver tel- Silent Inlet by Joanna Streetly ephone directory in 1958. While (Oolichan $22.95) working as a lawyer, Barbeau spent the next 35 years amassing the ive years ago, Hannah es- world’s most comprehensive collec- tion of Hughes’ art. “Hughes,” he pre- caped from Hansen dicted, “will become the Canadian FSound, a storm-wrapped, artist of the century. He will eclipse isolated sliver of a village on Van- both the Group of Seven and Emily couver Island’s west coast. She Carr... To have that discipline and to fled north to train and work as a still be able to emote—that’s magic.” Not to be confused with a coffee nurse, perhaps desperate for table book that was produced in the reliable rays of a Yukon sun. conjunction with a Vancouver Art In the sopping bi-cultural Gallery retrospective in 2002, home of her birth, the sun is a Barbeau has re-released A Journey rare occurrence, especially at with E.J. Hughes. For more on Hughes, see www.abcbookworld.com 1-55365-153-7 the darkest time of the year, the winter solstice, the time when she returns. This time Hannah is escaping from an abusive re- JOHN KOERNER lationship in Whitehorse, carry- continued from page 27 ing bruises and bumps, one of John Koerner met his first which is not going to go away wife Eileen Newby on a blind anytime soon. date in 1943. When she died While the story of a prodigal more than fifty years later, daughter returning home hum- Koerner’s artistic nature became bled and pregnant is not new, stalled in the spring of 2000. there is nothing clichéd about “Throughout her illness,” he re- Hannah or the home to which calls, “I was totally unable to work she returns. Joanna Streetly’s Si- and after she was gone I fell into lent Inlet unfolds slowly and be- a desperate state of grief.” Ulti- lievably through the thoughts mately Koerner found solace in and actions of four people: the advice of Bo Yin Ra (“All suf- Hannah and her mother, Harry, fering is evil, but it must be sur- (short for Harriet); and two Abo- mounted”) and a letter from his riginals, Big Mack Stanley and long-time friend Jane Rule (“It his nephew, Lonny. was your last gift to her, to out- Writing from a male view- live her”). point with a different cultural Then John Koerner was in- outlook would be challenging troduced to retired journalist for most, but Streetly knows what and author Lisa Birnie who had she’s doing, having had a seven- lost her husband around the year marriage to a Tla-o-qui-aht same time Koerner had lost his carver. She obviously learned wife. “Lisa changed my life, and more than just a new language. invigorated my mind, soul and Having lived in Clayoquot body,” he says. Sound for 16 years, she has had Koerner and Birnie married time to absorb the tang and blus- Joanna Streetly: four months after they met. ter of a sodden Tofino winter. Trips to Vietnam and Australia ✫ Drawing on the left followed. And Koerner’s work Having arrived in Canada in side of the country has had a resurgence. 1990 as an immigrant from A Brush with Life, a coffee ta- Trinidad and England, Streetly alter the way she sees the Streetly’s approach to writing the corners, returning the smile. ble book containing 65 full-page also knows what it’s like to be world. a first novel was literally pictur- He smiles harder as a sense of joy colour prints, and 50 b&w prints, connected to two cultures, Big Mack has no idea what esque. “When I began this book, and love run into him.” published in association with never fully belonging to ei- happened to his mother when I didn’t write,” she says. “I drew. But Joanna Streetly’s uner- Paula Gustafson and Artichoke ther—just like some of her char- she disappeared when he was a I drew people, houses, floor ring sense of place is one of the Publishing, is edited by Birnie. acters. young boy. His father went on a plans, maps, maps and more strengths of the novel, along John Koerner has outlived “Harry,” a self-reliant loner binge and before they knew it, maps. I named every street in with her sensitive exploration of nearly all of his peers, and fallen who lives on her own small island the children were dispersed. town and every river in the the ambivalent feelings between in love again for about two hours by boat from the Now in his late 30s he is again Sound. Hansen Sound came mother and daughter. Guilt and good measure. No village, was a single mother who living in his father’s home, try- alive for me, even though it is love and fear and pity and an- doubt Bo Yin Ra brought up her daughter, ing in turn to be father to two completely fictional.” ger meld into one inescapable would approve. Hannah, to be like she was. As boys, one of whom, Lonny, is as The sudden revelations that bond. At 92, John a young teenager, Hannah good as orphaned. appear in a world where every- ✫ Koerner is still rebelled and went to live in Lonny is the son of one of Big thing must happen in its own In addition to being an art- painting. town, staying with a loving but Mack’s brothers, in jail for mur- time, and where ways of think- ist, Streetly is also a kayak guide, 1-55380-032-X childless couple, Jack and Ada, dering Lonny’s mother. Ten- ing will only alter over genera- the author of Paddling Through in order to attend school. year-old Lonny is on the tions, can sometimes run a bit Time and the editor of the west Ada is dead, but brink—so which way will he tee- thick. For example: “Hannah is coast anthology Salt in Our Blood. Jack’s home is still ter? On the side of love, open- suddenly overcome by the way A kayaker moves slowly and Hannah’s and he ness and the optimism of sadness can be everywhere and knows the land in a way that oth- remains her surro- childhood or toward the cynical, nowhere; present, yet invis- ers never will. And that’s gate father. Hannah despairing ennui of those who ible.... It makes her feel con- Streetly’s approach to narrative. never knew or have gone before? nected on a different level, as if She has used her experiences on PHOTO wanted to know any- A frightening accident sud- this thread of sadness binds the water to provide depth to the

CRAMP thing about her birth denly puts pressure on all these them together.... For someone brooding setting of the novel. father who left with- fragile relationships. who has always been a loner, the For someone reading in Eu-

BEVERLY out even knowing he A fifth character is the set- feeling is strange, but she wel- rope or South America or To- had planted a seed, ting itself—the rain, the storms, comes it.” ronto, Silent Inlet would no doubt but now, contemplat- the quality of light and smell of Or for Big Mack: “From a fara- be an exotic story; for those of John Koerner ing single mother- the sea, the remoteness. The way corner of his brain, he feels us on the west coast, Streetly has hood herself, Hannah Sound blankets the inhabitants, his mother’s smile creeping out made an earnest attempt to tell wants to know more warming, chilling, imprisoning at him again. It beams at him for it like it is. 0-88982-207-7 about her past. What and freeing them. a few seconds and then vanishes. Cherie Thiessen reviews books she learns will slightly ✫ Mack feels his own mouth lift at from Pender Island.

28 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 reviews POETRY

“Something is rising in the black throat of the sky. Something THE ACCESSIBILITY OF DREAMS draws me into the earth by my Surrealistic sleepwalking with Jen Currin eyes. Just beneath them the ava- lanches of flesh begin. The lan- The Sleep of Four Cities by Jen Currin reader. That’s true for all art but re-imagine Koyczan’s cadences guage of a man alone in the (Anvil Press $15) in these kinds of poems it’s im- as you read the poems. Mother bush goes the colours of boulder- perative and also the reason why Press Media plans to produce ometimes a traveler, ex- fields and lichen.” many readers say they don’t more artists who “breach the ploring a foreign city, ex- Distinctly the poetry of con- “get” contemporary poetry. boundaries of genre.” Perhaps periences a disorientation templative fishing in northern S The plethora of striking im- this new publisher might con- places (Alaska, Queen Char- that no map or guide can shake. ages, many surreal, is anchored sider a reversal: put out CDs of The choice then is to assidu- lottes), Hongyun includes the somewhat by Currin’s use of con- complete performances and at- ously pursue an understanding stunning Great Bear Lake Medita- ventional punctuation and for- tach a small sample of print. Ei- of the layout and ambience of tions which remain as fresh now mat. After all that dissonance, a ther way, I look forward to more. the place or to abandon at- as they were groundbreaking puzzled reader is grateful to 0-9738131-0-5 tempts at orienting oneself and four decades ago. Also in- come upon a recognizable land- just keep walking and noticing, cluded, his Book of Interrogations mark. Hongyun, New and Collected Shorter without a route, just taking it all is both rambling and erudite, a Some poems, different ones Poems, 1955-2005 by J. Michael Yates in. (AuthorHouse $18.45) series of aphorisms on the art of Amanda Lamarche: “getaway for different readers, will re- on all fours” Reading Jen Currin’s poems, writing. Sometimes prophetic, main behind locked gates. Some sometimes irascible, this one is faced with a similar “AN IMAGE IS ONE OF AN INFINITE will give up secrets reluctantly Ecclesiastes of Poetics is an choice: the first leads to drudg- number of entrances to an DANGER PAYS while others will evocative summing ery and dead-ends. arena where some- The Clichéist by Amanda Lamarche open wide vistas in up by a mature poet The second, the only vi- thing ineffable has al- (Nightwood Editions $15.95) memory and desire. who hasn’t compro- able option, is to keep ways been going on.” Call these inaccessi- mised his aesthetic, ou know you are in for a wonderful reading, abandoning Or so says J. ble or, alternately, though it metamor- set of poems when the first poem any expectation of lin- Michael Yates. In the Y toss out the nostalgia phosed constantly. causes your heart to skip a beat and ear sense. sixties he was a black- for interpretive clo- Yates, a former then you look again at the cover illus- In The Sleep of Four leather-jacketed-mo- sure and just go for publisher and prison tration and it’s the visual translation of Cities, you can let MAIN-VAN torcyclist-poet who that poem. Now you know what a splint HANNAH the adventure. guard, has earned Currin’s language take DER KAMP taught Creative Writ- to keep the heart still looks like. “Yesterday on the pier his place in the pan- you down alleys, over ing. Since then he’s The poems in Amanda I saw a ship with five sails. I theon of influential bridges and through gates, with- constructed different Lamarche’s first book illustrate one of saw another with none. B.C. poets and this is out a destination, and you are personas and careers J. Michael Yates: “to J. Michael Yates’ aphorisms: “Art must I turned back to my book. a welcome collection. overtaken by surprise and vari- but J. Michael Yates know for a certainty summon a weather of danger.” There when I looked up, the sail-less “Time and tide, are no clichés in The Clichéist. Anyone ety. You may not be able to say has kept on writing. with the blood” ship had blossomed—two exhaling here, now, planning to fell a tree, please first read where the poems took you but This volume is a rep- handsome triangles fluttered, after the long breathing-in of the fifteen-poem section, A Tree Falls you were certainly taken. resentative sampling of new and white as nursery bed sheets. And being young. Here on the sub- In The Woods. I traded my spirit for a handful collected work of an original as I sat there, the wind read the siding side of both time and tide, “Here’s my trick for staying alive. of nails. / Bliss pinched my el- presence on the West Coast writ- Don’t think like a man when you plan book rapidly, with no regard for among the clear pools full of bows. / The stars climbed back ing scene; and it proves his po- your escape route. Think like what lives rhyme.” 1-895636-70-1 things waiting for water to re- upon the roof/ and the sky said, etry is standing in the forest. Sniff things out. Make friends turn, the steel-coloured sea- “hurt me.” the test of with the idea of a getaway on all Visiting Hours by Shane Koyczan blade carving far out and Currin’s poems have the ac- (Mother Press Media $16.95) time. fours.” 0-88971-20-5 cessibility of dreams which re- almost out of sight, falling quire relinquishing paraphrase. and falling and almost PERFORMANCE POETRY IS THE NEW KID In this debut collection there at low-slack. Time ALSO RECEIVED on the poetry block, a kid with isn’t a single predictable line or now to say inside it is attitude. Fun, entertaining Songs of the Spirit by Verna Benjamin image. One can detect certain almost good to even, spoken word poets are (First Choice Books) 0-9739013-0-6 obsessions: know for a certainty winning new converts at a time ------Clouds / moon / light / wind / with the blood: I when literary poets face dimin- The Charlatans of Paradise by water and fish / ponds / rivers can die.” 1-4208-2770-7 ished audiences. Spoken word Arthur Joyce (New Orphic Publishers) / wells. poems are alive when per- 1-894842-07-3 There is a stubborn discon- Hannah Main-van ------formed but on the page, in com- nect between the titles and the der Kamp’s most re- Lunar Drift by Marlene Cookshaw parison, they pale. Fortunately, individual poems and no con- cent collection of po- (Brick Books) 1-894078-46-2 the Mother Press Media, “an un- gruity between poems within etry is According to ------conventional press for uncon- each of the four sections. If con- Loon Bay (The St. Paradise City by Daniel Rajala ventional artists,” includes a CD nection is to be located in this Thomas Poetry Series). which reveals Koyczan’s sly hu- elusive writing it has to be per- mour and great vocal timing. Lis- sonally constellated by the ten to the CD first, then

Jen Currin: “the wind read the book rapidly with no regard for rhyme” All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online at www.abcbookworld.com

33 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 LOOKOUT #23 • a forum for & about writers 3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 • [email protected] LOOKOUTLOOKOUTLOOKOUT HEN I FIRST STARTED STUDYING ORANGUTANS IN THE APE POPULATIONS IN populations that are increasingly vulnerable to local ex- great tropical rain forests of Indonesian Bor- tinction. Local extinctions are common. In the African Wneo (Kalimantan), all that science knew about DECLINE WORLDWIDE nation of Togo, once 33 per cent forest, the forest is now these enigmatic red apes in the wild might have filled a almost gone. Not surprisingly, the western chimpanzee page. That was almost 35 years ago. We now know much recently went extinct in Togo. In Nigeria and Cameroon, more about orangutans but, unfortunately, we also know BY BIRUTÉ MARY GALDIKAS the Cross River Gorilla has the lowest population of any African great ape with only 150-200 left. In China, due that orangutan populations have declined precipitously he foremost protector of orangutans on the planet, Biruté over the last few decades and that 80 per cent of orangutan to recent industrial development, the call of the Hainan Marija (Mary) Filomena Galdikas, is invariably de- habitat has been decimated. T gibbon can only be heard in captivity. On the island of scribed as the third woman sent by paleontologist Dr. Louis B. Along with the African chimpanzees and gorillas, the Java the endemic gibbon is found in only two protected to study primates in their natural habitat, after Asian orangutans are great apes, our closest living rela- Leakey Dian mountainous areas and numbers less than two thousand. tives in the animal kingdom. Chimpanzees are so closely Fossey and Jane Goodall, and is known as one of “Leakey’s In Sumatra the orangutan population is critically endan- related to humans that their genome differs by only 1.2 Angels.” Galdikas is an Officer of the Order of Canada and also gered; some populations number only in the dozens. per cent in terms of single nucleotide changes and, once the only foreign-born person ever to win the Kalpataru, Hero of ✍ the Environment Award, from the Indonesian government. blood types are matched, chimpanzees can receive blood Jane Goodall has been on the road tirelessly since 1986 transfusions from us and vice versa. Gorillas, the greatest While studying orangutans for more than thirty-five years, championing chimpanzee conservation and animal rights. of the great apes in terms of size, are also very closely re- Biruté Mary Galdikas has taught as a professor in the Dept. of Yet chimpanzee habitats are shrinking. In West and Cen- lated to humans who, in some ways, are just another Afri- Archaeology at Simon Fraser University. tral Africa, chimpanzees are just meat for the pot. Unless can ape. politicians, rock stars, and governments embrace the cause All great apes share with humans high cognitive abili- stroying habitats and accelerating the extinction of plants of great and small ape extinction in a major way, apes will ties, similar emotions, foresight, excellent memories, self- and animals as well as the destruction of traditional hu- go extinct within the next 50 years. recognition and self-awareness, and are capable of man communities that co-existed with and sheltered the The one bright spot remains the mountain gorillas. symbolic communication, insight, imitation and innova- ecosystems in which the apes lived. Dian Fossey gave up her life in 1985 for the gorillas. The tion as well as generalization, abstract thought and prob- The prognosis for all ape populations in the wild is tourist industry that followed helped provide stability and lem solving. When we look into their eyes, we see bleak. As habitat loss con- money, allowing for a 17 per cent increase in gorilla num- something there that we recognize. Their eyes reflect our tinues, ape populations bers since the last census. It costs $50 for a park ranger to own. decline and frag- guide you to the cabin where Dian lived and the grave Less known are the small apes, gibbons and the ment, creating where she lies buried. It costs $350 per day for one hour siamang. After the great apes, the small apes are our clos- smaller with the gorillas. The mountain gorillas are as expensive est living relatives. Found only in Southeast Asia and as some lawyers. That has been their salvation. China, small apes are territorial, monogamous, and the I’m not saying we need more martyrs to ensure the acrobats of the primate world, swinging from tree to tree survival of the great and small apes but the Holly- like the “flying young man on the swinging trapeze” and wood movie, Gorillas in the Mist, sure helped. And then soaring mid-air as they let go of one branch and fly International Orangutan Awareness Week also prob- to reach another. Certainly, this soaring locomotion is their ably helps hold back the tide. It could be a lot worse. form of genius. Gibbons are also known for their soprano Orangutans could be extinct throughout their en- vocalizations. Gibbons don’t use tools and don’t perform tire range and not just locally. We need a Mission well in laboratory tests, scoring below some monkeys on Impossible like those led by Bono and Bill Gates in intelligence tests. But studies of their brain show cerebel- their fight against global poverty and disease. We lums that fall on the great ape side of the divide. And I need to pressure our governments to save the great personally have seen one captive gibbon, to my amaze- and small apes. An occasional billionaire would ment, use tools, twigs, to scratch himself. I think gibbons help, too. are underrated. They are as flighty, edgy, and fragile as Why save the apes? I could give ecological and the birds with which they share the treetops. But they even economic answers but the truth is greater. The are brighter, smarter and more adaptable than they great and small apes represent who we once were and have been given credit for in textbooks. where we came from. They are not our ancestors but Unfortunately, all apes, great and small, are our siblings, brother and sister species, and our cous- in dire straits. All face extinction as their habi- ins. They led the way and we followed, eventually tats are destroyed. When I first arrived in overtaking them as we became human, and then Borneo over 90 per cent of the island con- we left them behind. That separation should sisted of primary tropical rain forest, the not be their death sentence. What conso- world’s second-largest continuous ex- lation solitude if we remain the only panse of forest afterRosamond the Amazon Ba- Norbury species in our family left behind on sin. But now Borneo’s forest is in a planet endlessly spinning with no retreat, like the forests of equato- close kin to call our own? rial Africa, under relentless pres- sure from the forces of the global economy. Like a high- “The“The mountainmountain Biruté Galdikas’ new book is speed locomotive with no gorillasgorillas areare asas Great Ape Odyssey (Harry one at the controls, the glo- expensive as N. Abrams $65), with bal economy hurtles reck- expensive as photographs by Karl lessly into the future, somesome lawyers.lawyers. Ammann. For more info overwhelming every- ThatThat hashas beenbeen www.orangutan.org or thing in its path, de- theirtheir salvation.”salvation.” www.ioaw.org. 081095575X —BIRUTÉ—BIRUTÉ GALDIKASGALDIKAS

DIANE LUCKOW PHOTO

21 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SPRING • 2006 COVER STORY

YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN:

word. But I have a tin ear. Dad’s always amused Jeremy has come back to haunt his life. by my attempts.” “I expected Blood Sports to go in a very differ- EDENEDEN ROBINSONROBINSON While Eden Robinson is the first Haisla novel- ent direction. I had plots, plans, but the charac- ist, her uncle Gordon Robinson, author of ters evolved in a way I hadn’t outlined. Originally HAISLA NOVELIST BY VICKIE JENSEN the non-fiction Tales of the Kitamaat in 1956, was I was picturing something lighter, maybe superfi- the first Haisla writer to be published. “I think cial or glib,” Robinson says, “so my characters were I’m the only full-time writer in the village now al- really safe in the first couple of drafts. Then I The gritty urban world of Eden Robinson’s new novel though others on the reserve are getting interested, started torturing them. I really didn’t have a especially when they hear tales of six-figure ad- choice. When my characters solidify themselves, Blood Sports (M&S $34.95), set in Vancouver’s vances! But most don’t really know what writing they pretty well take over.” for a living is all about. There’s no basis for under- The main character in Blood Sports has an 11- Downtown Eastside, is far removed from the Haisla standing. They just think it’s like what they see in month-old daughter. “I don’t know where she the movies—you finish the book, you hand it in, came from!” she says, “And I never planned for village of Kitamaat (pop. 700), the setting for her it gets published and you get a big cheque. I try to the main character to have a mental breakdown.” explain about the long hours writing, the edits and The brutal parts were hardest to write. “I’m really first novel Monkey Beach (Knopf, 2000). But whether the copy edits. Or that making money at writing squeamish so the violence was really a surprise.” is so sporadic. People do understand if I compare Robinson is depicting inner city grime or the eerie Even so, the book is not as dark as some earlier it to seasonal fishing. But they don’t understand versions of the manuscript. “I went back and cut beauty of a remote inlet, her characters all find them- that writing is usually just me on my ass in the the torture scenes to one or two and the deaths basement, glued to the computer for hours on went from eleven to four.” selves drawn into a death-grip struggle for emotional end.” The traditional storytellers from her village have Recently a battery of tests confirmed Robinson advised Robinson to stick to the storyline but it and physical security. Vickie Jensen visited Eden suffers from celiac disease, an intolerance to glu- hasn’t been easy to follow their advice. “In Mon- ten that has sapped her energy, left key Beach they wanted to know defi- Robinson in Kitamaat and she sends this report: her prone to depression and caused “So when I write, I nitely, did Lisa’s brother live or did constant gastrointestinal pain. “I hermit. People in the he die? I tried to explain that I de- HREE YEARS AGO EDEN ROBINSON ran out but by then we were so busy going places, didn’t think it was celiac disease be- liberately wandered off track with moved back to the Haisla reserva- collecting food and scouting archaeological sites cause all the people I know who village are sometimes the story. We’ll see what they say tion in order to live with her par- that by 6 p.m. I was in my tent snoring! I think have it are really skinny,” she says, surprised to find that about Blood Sports since it really goes ents in their quiet home that looks that was the first time in my life that I didn’t use “but it doesn’t work that way for me. I’m here because they all over the map.” out onto the upper reaches of the conditioner. We bathed in a glacier-fed river, so I It’s hard to explain this level of con- Robinson describes the new nov- TDouglas Channel. Framed photographs of Eden just rinsed the soap out of my hair as fast as I could!” stant fatigue to healthy people. Here haven’t seen me. For el’s structure as “a little haywire.” and her sister Carla, the first Aboriginal Around the village, the elders know Eden as my aunties aren’t in the best of me, writing is a pas- Each of the different sections cor- anchorwoman for CBC TV news, are prominently Vicki Lena Robinson. “I was named after a cousin health so we can share colonoscopy sion. It doesn’t feel responds to the main character’s dif- displayed everywhere. Her father Johnny who choked to death in her crib on a bottle,” she stories. There’s a real openness about ferent mental states. Robinson says like I’m working 18 Robinson suffers from Parkinson’s and it looked explains. “Unfortunately there were five other medical conditions.” the book will work best for people like the disease was advancing rapidly. Fortunately Vickis in the village at that time, and I got tagged Once the diagnosis was con- hours. I want to do it.” who like puzzles and piecing things most of his symptoms turned out to be side effects with Big Vicki. Little Vicki didn’t like her name firmed, Robinson adopted a strict together. “I wanted this new book to from medication. much either,” she laughs. “So, I always thought wheat and gluten-free diet. Sticking to the diet be a straightforward mystery but it fell flat when I After two months back on the rez, Robinson that someday I’d change my name to something when she’s on the road or when she attends any of tried to make it a traditional narrative,” she says. realized that she really didn’t know her parents as like Rebecca or Anastasia. Anyway, my first year the local feasts or parties is a challenge since most Whereas she thinks Monkey Beach was fairly adults and staying on in the village was an oppor- of college I was telling that to someone who said, of the foods served are wheat-based, but now she easy to market because readers were interested in tunity to remedy that. “My folks both have a lot ‘Oh, you’ll never change your name.’ And I de- packs her own snacks and reads labels. The disci- northern life and native families, she feels she’s tak- of things they want to share,” she says, “although cided, ‘Yes, I will. I’m… Eden Robinson.’ I don’t pline is paying off—much of the pain is gone and ing a chance with Blood Sports. “This new book I don’t think they want to see them published!” know where that name came from! That was 20 she can already feel her energy level did a lot of things I didn’t want it to do. It’s cer- Coming home was the sixth move in the last years ago now—it was part of a mental switch, of shifting. tainly more extreme, and the form is not incred- three years for Robinson, who’s still unpacking seeing myself differently. I wasn’t ‘Big Vicki’ any “This is a good time in my life to just be,” she ibly commercial. I think it’s going to be a really boxes and recovering from the success of her first more.” says, “to get my life, my finances and my own health tough sell. I’m just hoping it gets banned—that two books. Published in five countries, her short Asked how she learned so much about the in order. I have a low energy level because of my would be great for sales!” story collection Traplines (Knopf, 1996) won the world of pimps, prostitutes and drugs for her new illness, but each day there’s a certain time period Now with three notable books to her credit, Winifred Holtby Prize for best first work of fic- novel, Blood Sports, she says, “I used to live in East when I can go to town on the writing; if I miss Robinson is well aware that the business of writ- tion in the Commonwealth and was featured as a Vancouver. I’m part of the arts community and that, it’s a shot day. So when I write, I hermit. Peo- ing demands two personalities from every author. New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Mon- we always need to seek out the cheapest rent pos- ple in the village are sometimes surprised to find “There’s the personality you need to write and the key Beach won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and sible!” More seriously, Robinson says she knows a that I’m here because they haven’t seen me. For personality you need to promote. Without the her- was nominated for the Giller Prize and the Gov- lot of people who live in me, writing is a passion. It doesn’t feel like I’m mit side, I wouldn’t get any book finished, but with- ernor General’s Award. the downtown core or working 18 hours. I want to do it.” out the ham side, the book wouldn’t get published. After years of city living, travelling, touring, and work in re-hab clinics. If writing is what makes Eden Robinson hap- “It took a lot of effort for me to be able to func- working as writer in residence, Robinson says the “It’s a severely different piest, she’s also the first to say that it’s often a strug- tion in public, but I was pretty damned deter- transition to life on the rez was a huge culture mind set, an environment gle. “Some people have tremendous control over mined so I took voice lessons, acting lessons, shock. “I didn’t realize how much of an urban where addictions are the their novels. I don’t seem to be one of them.” desensitivity training, counselling—I worked my Indian I was. I am so bad at bush living! People norm. In some parts of Robinson was working on a different novel when ass off to make it look like I was comfortable in think I must be Lisa in Monkey Beach—they for- Vancouver, people reg- Blood Sports took over. It grew out of her novella front of an audience. Before, I was focused on how get that I made her up. I’m completely incompe- ularly discuss stock port- “Contact Sports,” a story in Traplines that took her awkward I was, how shy. Once I could do small tent at living off the land. The characters in Monkey folios—there people talk ten years to complete, and 34 drafts. “It was my talk, it just opened up my world.” Beach are modeled after a number of my cousins about treatments or apprenticeship,” she says. “Everything I needed Robinson describes herself as “a bit of a con- who are really into it. I’d starve!” fixes.” to write Monkey Beach I learned in that novella— trol freak” so learning to trust her instincts rather Robinson contends there are different types of Robinson’s education switching time periods, changing voice, structure than trying to rigidly control everything was a intelligence. “Me, I’m smart with books, but I’m also spans two worlds. Af- of the story.” huge leap of faith for her. “It’s a scary freedom,” really dumb if I try to start a boat or set up a tent. ter wrestling with a no- For Blood Sports, Robinson revisits her original she says. “I fought it for about two years and fi- PHOTO The first time I went to the Kitlope as part of a talent assessment at the cast of characters from “Contact Sports”, five years nally just started writing. Once I gave in, the book Haisla Rediscovery Camp, I brought my hair University of Victoria, she later in their lives. The tangled web of addiction, started to flow.” 0-7710-7604-5 JENSEN dryer. Someone asked me where I thought I was went on to complete a revenge and human relationships in Blood Sports going to plug it in and I told them I figured if I Masters in Creative Writ- VICKIE is stark and violent. Tom Bauer, now in his early Photojournalist Vickie Jensen’s nine books most re- could bring my laptop, I could bring a hair dryer.” ing at UBC (where Monkey Beach served as her Eden Robinson with 20s, has fathered baby Melody with fellow ex- cently include The Totem Poles of Stanley Park (Van- PHOTO Robinson’s laughter spills out as regular punc- Masters thesis), but she also values her Beaver Clan Johnny Robinson and junkie Paulina, but he comes home from work to couver: Westcoast Words and Subway Books, 2004). Winnie Robinson find that Paulina and the baby have disappeared. tuation to her thoughts. “Of course, after three heritage and the Haisla storytelling tradition. “I’m POWELL She and Jay Powell have co-authored 40 native lan-

days, my laptop packed it in because the batteries trying to learn Haisla,” she says, “word by painful JAY At the same time his controlling, abusive cousin guage and culture texts.

22 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SPRING • 2006 23 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SPRING • 2006 ENDPAPERS PHOTO

CAMPBELL

Playwright Lucia Frangione leads the way for fellow cast members Donna-Lea Ford and Dirk VanStralen for Pacific Theatre’s production of her play Cariboo Magi. (Talonbooks). BRIAN

Cruikshank gapore, County Clare, Costa Rica, the investigates his- Eastern Himalayas, Siberia and the is for Argent torical and con- is for Frangione Lofoten Islands in the North Atlantic. temporary 0-670-04422-9 Having prepared booklets for genealogy encounters with First produced as a full-length play in research on a province-by-province ba- glaciers in Do Gla- 2001 by the Pacific Theatre, post-femi- sis, Judith Argent of the Cloverdale ciers Listen? Local nist actor and playwright Lucia is for Huey-Heck Library has compiled Planning a Gene- Knowledge, Co- Frangione’s Cariboo Magi alogy Trip to the Vancouver Area (Sur- Julie Cruikshank: lonial Encounters (Talonbooks $15.95) follows a makeshift The Spirituality rey Public Library $15), a handbook ice escapades and Social Imagi- troupe of would-be theatricals who at- of Art (Northstone listing resources for family history records nation (UBC tempt to mount a Christmas Pageant for $39) by Lois in the Lower Mainland. Genealogical au- Press $29.95), an examination of a newly the Theatre Royal in Barkerville during Huey-Heck is thority Angus Baxter has declared designated World Heritage Site that the Cariboo gold rush. They consist of a the fourth title in the Surrey Public Library system “has the spans the borderlands of Yukon, north- very pregnant child star cast as the Vir- a series that has so finest collection of genealogical material west British Columbia and Alaska. gin Mary, an inept and drunken Angli- far examined the in the province.” 0-9692197-5-X 0774811870 can preacher, a cunning Madame named spirituality inher- Fanny and a mixed-blood poet who Lois Huey-Heck ent in enjoying claims he’s the last of the Mohicans. wine, gardening is for Blair is for Drabek Frangione worked in Barkerville for four and labyrinths. Her co-author and part- years. 0-88922-527-3 ner, Jim Kalnin, is an Okanagan art- Using locations that include Granville In 2005, Jan Drabek returned to ist who teaches Fine Arts at UBC Island, Sea Village, Bridges Pub, Har- the Czech Repub- Okanagan. They live in Oyama. bour Ferries Ma- lic for the launch is for Glavin 1-896836-78-X rina and the Royal of his 15th title, Vancouver Yacht Hledani Stesti u Wildlife advocate Terry Glavin leads Club, Michael Cizaku [Search- us hopefully into the Sixth Great Extinc- is for Ilsley Blair’s third mys- ing for Happiness tion epoch with Waiting for the Macaws tery novel, Over- with Aliens], co- (Penguin $35), a superb survey of our George K. exposed incidental with the fellow species, some of which Ilsley’s first col- (Dundurn posthumous pub- are dearly departed. lection of edgy Jan Drabek Michael Blair: $11.99) concerns lication of his fa- This is an even more gay fiction, Underwear conundrum a commercial pho- ther’s novel engaging book Random tographer who Podzemi [The Underground]. than Glavin’s Acts of PHOTO wakes with a hangover to discover wom- preceding Hatred STERN . en’s underwear in his dishwasher and a panorama of (Arsenal P corpse on the roof of his floating home. is for Egoff the North Pa- Pulp, George K. Ilsley Blair’s preceding mysteries are If Looks cific because 2003) has Could Kill and A Hard Winter Rain. Hosted by Bill Richardson, the an- we glean natu- been followed by ManBug (Ar- 1-550002-582-1 nual BC Book Prizes gala on April 29 at ral history facts senal Pulp $19.95), a fragmented the Marriott Pinnacle Hotel in Vancou- during his vis- exploration of a tempestuous love ver will be dedicated to the memory of its to Sin- between a former entomologist, Se- is for Cruikshank the late Sheila Agnes Egoff, the bastian, who suffers from Asperger’s pioneering critic and supporter of Ca- Syndrome, and a “spiritual bisexual,” Whereas Aboriginals viewed glaciers as nadian children’s literature, after whom Tom, who may or may not be re- sentient and animate in their oral histo- one of the prizes is named. An Officer cruiting Sebastian for a cult. ries, Europeans have tended to see them of the Order of Canada, she died on Terry 1-55152-203-9 as inanimate and subject to measure- May 22, 2005, in her 88th year, in Van- Glavin ment and scientific investigation. Julie couver. continued on page 38

37 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 ENDPAPERS

continued from page 37 selves or others. The moral measure of man is: for what will he risk all, risk his is for Jiwa life?” 1-894345-95-9 For Margin of Terror: A Reporter’s is for Neering Twenty-Year Odyssey Covering the Tragedies of the Air India Bombing Having won the Vancity Book Prize for (Key Porter $26.95), co-written with writing about courageous and uncon- screenwriter Donald J. Hauka, ventional women, Rosemary Province reporter Salim Jiwa has up- Neering has looked appreciatively at dated his 1985 book about the two Air the contributions of courageous and India bombings with new information conventional homemakers in The Ca- on the 20-year Air India investigation nadian Housewife: An Affectionate and the 19-month trial that resulted in History (Whitecap $29.95), a cornuco- a verdict of not guilty for the accused in pia of coping with insects, recipes, can- 2005. 1-55263-772-7 ning, children, paternalism and Lysol for birth control. 1-55285-717-4 is for Kraulis

Born to Latvian parents in Stockholm is for Onley in 1949, J.A. Kraulis is a Montreal- raised photographer whose bilingual, Photographer Yukiko Onley has col- large format coffee table book Grand laborated with poet E.D. Blodgett Landscapes of Canada (Firefly $49.95) in Elegy (U of Alberta Press $24.95), a provides 200 images, many taken from work inspired by Onley’s husband, Toni the air. 1-55407-036-8 Onley, a landscape watercolourist who died on February 29, 2004, when he crashed his plane into the Fraser River is for Livingston while apparently practicing landings and take-offs. 0-88864-450-7 In Billie Livingston’s second novel, Cease to Blush (Random House $34.95) a woman discovers her late mother, renowned as a crusading femi- is for Porter nist, had an extensive and diverse sexual history in Las Vegas during the Sixties. Pamela Porter’s second junior Livingston, according to her publisher, novel, The Crazy Man (Groundwood now “drives the bumpy road from the $9.95), has won the Governor Gener- burlesque stages of Rat Pack Vegas to the al’s Award for Children’s Literature bedroom internet porn scenes of today, (English text). Told in free verse, it’s the exploring just how far women have re- story of twelve-year-old Emaline who is ally come.” 0-679-31322-2 injured in an accident with a tractor driven by her father on the family farm in Saskatchewan in 1965. Grief-stricken is for Musgrave and guilty, her father leaves Emaline and her mother to fend for themselves. Much Susan Musgrave’s amusing and ir- to the disapproval of neighbours, resistibly thoughtful personal essays in Emaline’s mother hires a friendly, red- You’re in Canada Now… (Thistledown haired giant from the local mental hos- $18.95) are provocative in style and con- pital, Angus, whom local kids teasingly tent: “In our culture, these days, there is call the gorilla. As the “crazy man” of the no core, no authenticity to our lives; we title, he helps Emaline overcome her have become dangerously preoccupied despair. Pamela Porter lives in Sidney, with safety; have dedicated ourselves to B.C. Her husband’s family has operated ease. We live without risk, hence with- a family farm near Weyburn, Saskatch- out adventure, without discovery of our- ewan, for generations. 0-88899-695-4 PHOTO

SUN

Billie Livingston: VANCOUVER / recently shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award BATTISTONI

for poetry. PETER

38 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 ENDPAPERS

In work we trust: from The Canadian Housewife: An Affectionate History (Whitecap)

is for Quill & Quire is for Underwood

Okay, so Canada’s venerable publishing Jan Underwood has won the 28th trade periodical, Quill & Quire, doesn’t 3-Day Novel Writing Competition with have a new book out, but they do have a Day Shift Werewolf, a story about an new format, having resurrected them- unproductive werewolf, Warren, who is selves as a magazine. demoted to an undesirable shift among other underdogs in the increasingly high-tech horror industry. It’s forthcom- is for Reed ing from Arsenal Pulp Press later this year. 1-55152-208-X In the 69-year history of the Governor General’s Awards, 12 Francophone au- thors have won three times each; nine is for Vaillant Anglophone authors have won three times each—the latest being Montreal- One night in January of 1997, former based translator Fred A. Reed for timber-scout Grant Hadwin Truth or Death: The Quest for Immor- plunged into the Queen Charlotte Is- tality in the Western Narrative Tradi- lands’ Yakoun River, towing a chainsaw tion (Talonbooks $29.95) by Thierry behind him, and methodically cut down Hentsch. Only five-time recipient K’iid K’iyaas, a “Golden” Sitka Spruce Hugh MacLennan and four-time that was more than recipient Michael Ondaatje have 300 years old. won more often than Reed. In his ac- Conserved by knowledgements for Truth or Death, MacMillan Reed credits Davinia Yip, who works Bloedel, the 50-

0-88922-509-5 PHOTO for Talonbooks in B.C. metre-tall Golden Spruce repre- DEITCH sented to Hadwin DAN is for Suzuki John Vaillant the hypocrisy of the logging indus- David Suzuki: The Autobiography try. Before he disappeared under suspi- (Greystone $34.95) is the second instal- cious circumstances, avoiding being ment of David sentenced, Hadwin also dismissed the Suzuki’s life relevance of Vancouver Island’s Cathe- story, expanding dral Grove as merely a “circus side-show” on earlier material and a “corporate set-aside.” John in Metamorphosis Vaillant first wrote about Hadwin’s and also covering extremism for The New Yorker, then he his accomplish- produced a larger pastiche about ments after age Hadwin, the Haida, the coastal fur trade David Suzuki fifty. 1-55365-156-1 and the West Coast logging industry, The Golden Spruce (Knopf $35), to win the 2005 Governor General’s Award for English Non-Fiction. At the awards cer- is for Thompson emony in Montreal, Vaillant observed his was the first book about British Co- T is for Thompson, as in David. Easily lumbia, written by a British Columbia the most admireable of the fur trading resident, to receive a Governor Gener- personnel who reached B.C. in the early al’s Award since Emily Carr. 19th century, David Thompson is George Bowering’s Burning Wa- the subject of an important exhibition ter and Jack Hodgins’ Spit Delaney’s at the Spokane Museum as well as Jack Island, both set in British Columbia, Nisbet’s The Mapmaker’s Eye: David have also received Governor General’s Thompson on the Columbia Plateau Awards. 0-676-97645-X (WSU Press $29.95 US). 0-87422-285-0 continued on page 40

39 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 Killing Time ENDPAPERS A Novel by Hank Schachte Find it here

Blackberry Books Duthie Books People’s Co-op Bookstore PB Cruise Bookseller Abraxas Books Magpie Magazine Gallery Chapters Indigo Books + Music

1-55420-019-9 Published by New Star Books

$1,500 Creative Non-Fiction new & established writers Contest Three winners will each receive $500 plus payment for publication in Event 35/3. Other manuscripts may be published. Final Judge: Charles Montgomery, photojournalist and author of The Last Heathen, Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in Melanesia which won the 2005 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. Writers are invited to submit manuscripts exploring the creative non-fiction form. Back issues of Event with previous winning entries and judges’ comments are available for $7.49 (inc. GST). Note: Previously published material cannot be considered. Maximum entry length is 5000 words, typed, double-spaced. Include a separate cover sheet with the writer’s name, ad- dress, phone number/email, and the title(s) of the story (stories) enclosed. Include a SASE (Canadian Postage/IRCs only). Douglas College employees are not eligible to enter. Entry fee: Each entry must include a $29.95 entry fee (includes GST and a one-year subscrip- tion). Those already subscribing will receive a one-year extension. American and overseas R.G. Willems: Veterinary affairs entries please pay in US dollars. Deadline for entries: Postmarked April 15, 2006. The Douglas College Review continued from page 39 P.O. Box 2503, New Westminster, BC V3L 5B2 more than twenty years to look at her Phone: (604) 527-5293 Fax: (604) 527-5095 entire oeuvre. Comeau, head of English e-mail: [email protected] is for Willems at Windermere Secondary in Vancou- Visit our website at http://event.douglas.bc.ca ver, describes how Laurence turned to Targets of Affection (Cormorant the epic mode to create her master nar- $21.95) by Abbotsford’s R.G. ratives of loss, exile and redemption. Willems features a veterinary nurse Xiques 1-55002-579-1, Comeau 0-88864-451-5 named Shelby James who reluctantly ex- plores links between animal abuse and Ligatures child abuse. The more she gets to know is for You by Donato Mancini Miranda Wall, a woman who maintains a menagerie of needy animals, the more For having stumbled all the way, possi- Find it here Shelby is unnerved by Miranda’s silent bly wondering whether or not we could daughter and her stalking husband. It’s find an author with a surname begin- Spartacus Books the first instalment of Willems’ projected ning with X or Z. People’s Co-op Bookstore series of mystery novels about veterinary Duthie Books medicine. 1-896951-98-8 Magpie Magazine Gallery is for Zuberi PB Cruise Bookseller Having conducted in-depth interviews Abraxas Books is for Xiques with hotel workers, particularly room Watermark Books attendants employed by the same mul- Donez Xiques has included a pre- tinational hotel chains in downtown viously unpublished short story by Vancouver and Seattle, UBC’s Dan Margaret Laurence in her new Zuberi has compared and contrasted Published by New Star Books 1-55420-017-2 biography Margaret Laurence: The American and Canadian social condi- Making of a Writer (Dundurn $40), a tions in Differences That Matter: So- work that focuses on Laurence’s appren- cial Policy and the Working Poor in the ticeship years in Africa and Vancouver, United States and Canada (Cornell a city she once described as a boring University Press $23.50). Daniyl In our 36th year of swamp. Coincidentally independent Mohammad Zuberi received his Ph.D scholar Paul Comeau’s Margaret from Harvard in 2004. 0-8014-7312-8 Offering the Perrenial Beauty of the Laurence’s Epic Imagination (U of Al- World’s Spiritual & Healing Traditions berta Press $34.95) has been described as the first critical study of Laurence in . Also Noted: Margaret The 2006 Biennial Conference of the Associa- Laurence felt tion of Italian Canadian Writers will be held at swamped in the University of British Columbia in May, 2006 Vancouver. ✍ Anthony Dalton has taken on the presidency of the Vancouver Branch of the Canadian Authors Association. Dalton’s most recent Banyen BOoks books are Wayward Sailor: In Search of the 3608 West 4th Avenue Real Tristan Jones and J/Boats, Sailing to Suc- at Dunbar, one block east of Alma in Kitsilano, Vancouver cess. Books 604-732-7912 Music/Gifts/Tkts 604-737-8858 ✍ Out-of-town orders 1-800-663-8442 Editor/writer Fernanda Viveiros is the ex- Open Mon-Fri 10-9, Sat 10-8, Sun 11-7 ecutive director of the Federation of B.C. Writ- www.banyen.com ers; her predecessor Merrill Fearon is now an editor for Pacific Educational Press at UBC.

40 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 KIDLIT GRUFF GOAT-MAN

stensibly a children's book, Barbara Ann Lambert‘s Oself-published The Mystery of Billy-Goat Smith (Trafford $9.99) recalls the hermit who resided on a 160-acre homestead at Jim Brown Creek, at the head of Powell Lake. Aka Billy-Goat Smith, Robert Bonner Smith came to Powell River in 1910 and died in 1958. A crude sign on his property read: “Powell River People and Dogs Please KEEP OFF.” Local residents suspected Smith was complicit in the much-publicized high society murder of architect Stanford White in the United States in 1906. There was speculation that millionaire Harvey Thaw had hired a hitman—the reclusive Smith, who had subsequently fled to Canada—as inferred by an article in Colliers magazine. The sensational story became the basis of a movie, The Girl in the Red Shelley Velvet Swing, in the 1950s. Hrdlitschka and The Powell River News also Diane Tullson speculated he was the unacknowledged have both partner in a 1932 robbery of the Patricia received ALA

PHOTO Theatre by notorious criminals William honours. Bagley and Gordon Fawcett. TWIGG After Smith received more than $6,000 Bird flew in compensation for flooding of Powell Blue ribbon for Red Sea Lake, he kept his money in glass jars •aving volunteered for the Wild hidden in the dirt floor of his root house. Hlife Rescue Association of BC, Lambert was prompted to write The Diane Tullson’s Red Sea (Orca 2005) has been named Best Book Diane Haynes has combined mystery Mystery of Billy-Goat Smith after sifting for Young Adults by the American Library Association. The ALA’s and suspense for Flight or Fight (Walrus/ through a family trunk and finding two Whitecap $8.95), first in her projected letters signed Billy Goat. Both were written annual lists for best books also include three Orca Soundings nov- Jane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series. before Smith kept goats, indicating he had els—Something Girl by Beth Goobie, Charmed by Carrie “I watched a scoter get smashed acquired his nickname for a different Mac and Dead-End Job by Vickie Grant—as Quick Picks for against the Stanley Park seawall because reason--probably because he was known it couldn’t lift its wings out of the wa- to be a sharpshooter who could hit a goat the Reluctant Young Adult Readers list. Six recent Orca titles have ter,” says Haynes, after a canola oil spill from a half-a-mile away. 1-4120-7311-1 been named to the Popular Paperbacks list: two novels by Shelley in 2000. “When we got it to the shelter, Hrdlitschka—Kat’s Fall and Sun Signs—and four Orca Sound- there were volunteers working around the clock to save hundreds of oiled ani- CRABBY CRAB ings novels for teen reluctant readers—Snitch by Norah mals. It changed my life. I’ve been a vol- McClintock, Truth by Tanya Lloyd Kyi, Hit Squad by unteer ever since.” n her 80th year, Ruth Howard has self-published what one young reader James Heneghan and Home Invasion by Monique Polak. Flight or Fight’s main character Jane Ray is a shy, reluctant heroine who takes Ihas called “a real Grandma story.” an oiled bird to the (fictional) Urban It’s Crabby Crab (Trafford $9.99), a The vampire ate Institutions in British Columbia that Wildlife Rescue Centre after a 200,000- very simple tale about a shore crab that respond specifically to children and gallon spill. Thrust into the national gets trapped in the red plastic sand •my homework families affected by Fetal Alcohol Syn- media, she pits her will against the oil bucket of two children digging on the drome, such as Sunny Hill Health Cen- beach, taken home for show ‘n’ tell, then aving survived cancer at a very company at fault. tre for Children in Vancouver and the Haynes has crossed Canada on a replaced in the ocean. young age, James McCann H Asante Centre in Maple Ridge, can’t Raised in Fredericton, Howard worked became a children’s book specialist who speaking tour for the book, talking to possibly reach every family that needs in fisheries research and later continued uses mapmaking in his creative writing teenagers. “Animals aren’t statistics to assistance. her appreciation of marine life from a workshops. In McCann’s teen novel them,” she says. “They’re real, live, feel- Therefore Sara Graefe first wrote ing creatures. Kids love them. They saw cottage at Hopkins Landing.1-4120-1432-8 Rancour (Simply Read $16.95), a were- Parenting Children Affected by Fetal Al- Wabamun Lake. They get it.” 1-55285-658-5 wolf named Rancour and a vampire cohol Syndrome: A Guide for Daily Liv- ✍ named Shay enter the life of Alix, a high ing in 1994. school student who had previously A second bilingual edition in 1998, Designed for younger readers Sally mostly worried about finding a date for also sponsored and published by the Rogow’s compilation of true stories of the prom. Alix must cope with the thou- Society of Special Needs Adoptive Par- rescue during World War II, They Must sand-year-old rivalry between the two ents (SNAP), sold more than 40,000 Not Be Forgotten: Heroic Catholic violent combatants, while making sure copies across Canada and abroad. Priests and Nuns Who Saved People she gets her homework done. 1-894965-31-0 Graefe’s updated third edition enti- From The Holocaust (Holy Fire Publish- tled Living With FASD: A Guide for ing $11.99 U.S.) documents heroism rec- If you drink, Parents (Groundwork Press $24.95) ognized and honoured by the Yad • marks the 15th anniversary of a land- Vashem and the Catholic church. 0976721163 don’t mother mark Fetal Alcohol Syndrome confer- ✍ nfortunately Sara Graefe’s ence that was held in Vancouver. Born in Mexico, Elisa Ubook has become a bestseller— As well, Living With FASD is being Gutierrez is the Vancouver-based because so many parents don’t know reiussed on the 30th anniversary of the author and designer of Picturescape where to find help for raising children first North American research article (Simply Read $19.95), the story of a boy with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. that made the connection between ma- who finds himself magically transported There is currently no laboratory test ternal drinking during pregnancy. on a cross-Canada journey after he visits Illustration by Helen Downing Hunter that can confirm whether or not a child 0-9735444-1-4 a local art gallery and admires works by has FAS. [Publisher info at abcbookworld.com] Canadian artists. 1-894965-24-8

25 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 INDIES The call of The call of the road former medical doctor in Burns A Lake and the Arctic, John Dale the game of Nelson has released Notes from a s the best announcer in the league Sidecar (Daedalus $24.95), a light- for the worst team, veteran sports hearted yet detailed examination of Aplay-by-play broadcaster Jim 20th century philosophy. His account Robson has been wooed for years to pro- takes the reader on a motorcycle/side- duce a book. At 69, finally agreed to allow car trip on a Vulcan 1500 Kawasaki, with Jason Farris, a 38-year-old software busi- Hannigan sidecar, around the Selkirk nessman, to compile Robson’s memora- Loop in B.C., Washington and Idaho. bilia for Hockey Play-by-Play: Around the It simultaneously concerns the vague- NHL with Jim Robson (Granville Island ness in philosophy in relation to every- Publishing $44.95), a scrapbook-styled cof- day decisions and encourages being fee table book. The much-loved Robson, known for his “message to hospital patients comfortable with inexactitude. and shut-ins” and other people who couldn’t get out to the games, retired from radio in Remnant of the statue of Constantine the Great 1999 and last called a hockey game on CKNW radio when the Vancouver Canucks lost game seven to the New York Islanders in the 1994 Stanley Cup finals. The barmaid & Jesus “The business has changed quite a bit,” Robson told Iain MacIntyre of the Vancou- According to Terry Julian in his eighth non-fiction title, Helena, ver Sun. “It’s entertainment now and I was never an entertainer... I think the kids today mother of Constantine the Great, the Christian ruler who brought Motorcycles and the art of would find [my broadcasts] dull.” Although prosperity and order to the Roman and Byzantine empires during philosophy maintenance Robson was the voice of the Vancouver Canucks for 25 years, long-time British his 21-year-reign, was possibly a Sicilian barmaid. She later became Dale studied with Wittgensteinian Columbians remember Jim Robson just as pious and revered as the alleged discoverer of Christ’s cross in Jeru- philosophers. His book does not require fondly as the voice of the Vancouver a detailed prior knowledge of philoso- Mounties baseball team in the Pacific salem. It’s just one of the details explored by Terry Julian in phy but the author suggests “it will tax Coast League. Constantine, Christianity, and Constantinople (Trafford $19.95). your brain to read it.” 1-4120-5910-0 That era of Robson’s ca- Constantine was not baptized until he lay on his death bed because, reer has yet The call of the cattle to be docu- according to Julian, “Baptism in those days was taken very seriously “Land, my boy,” mented. and it was common to defer it as late as possible so that there was Mac Annable 0-9739016-1-6 less chance of committing mortal sin subsequently.” 141207003-1 once told his grandson Andrew McCredie, Hong Kong hell “land and live- Although an editor could have improved Gordon Fairclough’s stock. It’s all I’ve text for Brick Hill and Beyond ($13), his homespun autobiography is Andrew McCredie ever known.” remarkable for its all-too-brief account of walking halfway across Asia as Ranching the an escaped prisoner during World War II. Kootenay District in the Rocky Moun- While defending an anti-aircraft gun site at Brick Hill Peninsula, on tains in 1899, Annable operated a Gordon Fairclough the island of Hong Kong in 1941, Gordon Fairclough was taken prisoner 5,000-acre cattle ranch and lumber at age 22 and sent to the North Point Prison. The flies were so bad he company between Trail and Rossland. was ordered to spend several hours a day swatting them. “A six-foot barrack table would Having served in the Assiniboia Assem- appear to move,” he recalls, “I remember counting the flies that I had killed with one swat, bly when Saskatchewan and Alberta and the result was 49 flies.” Sickness was taking its toll. Outrageous cruelty from the joined Confederation in 1905, he finally A young Japanese guards and a starvation diet prompted Fairclough to decide “it was a 50/50 retired to Valdes Island. McCredie, a Jim Robson chance of survival whether we stayed as prisoners or attempted to escape.” He and several others managed to free themselves by trekking across China and into Burma, an North Vancouver-based newspaper- astonishing feat he describes with remarkable restraint. man, has written The Laugh That When Fairclough returned to England as a captain in 1945, after service in India, he Shook The West! G.M. ‘Mac’ Annable, was awarded the Military Cross from King George VI. Troubled by recurring nightmares Rancher/Politician (West Vancouver: until 1951, he immigrated to Canada in 1953 and now lives in Tsawwassen. 0-9736019-0-6 Ancan Pub. $19.50). 0-9738895-0-0

Publisher addresses for books on this & ’s Walking page are at www.abcbookworld.com Bethan Davies Ben Cole the Camino de Santiago (Pili Pala Press A Langley resident since 1979, Warren $25) provides a step-by-step guide to Sommer, with a master’s degree from UBC in walking an ancient pilgrimage route that historical geography, has written his third book goes for 700 km. across northern Spain. about his hometown, Frail Memorials: The The co-authors re-walked the camino in Cemeteries of Langley (Corporation of the 2005 prior to releasing their lighter, second Township of Langley, $24.95). 0-9682654-1-3 edition that includes some city maps and ✍ accommodation options. The Vancouver- based imprint was started in 1993 to A member of the second generation of “Vancouver publish walking guides to the Iberian School” photographers, Evan Lee premiered a Peninsula, including Walking in Portugal. retrospective of recent photographs at the Pila Palal is Welsh for butterfly. Presentation House Gallery in January, curated 0-9731698-2-6 by Bill Jeffries. The exhibit entitled Captures: Selected Works 1988 to 2006 (Presentation Memorial cross by the side of the road House $20) included a catalogue that has text in the Pyrenees surrounded by crosses by Christopher Brayshaw, Peter Culley, left by pilgrims is part of walking the Jeff Wall and William Wood. 0-920293-68-9 Camino de Santiago in Spain.

34 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 INDIES ALSO RECEIVED The call of the lake Robert G. Anstey’s umpteenth self- rriving in the Okanagan from Lon- published title, Beatles’s Gigs (Sardis: West Adon at age eight, mainly because his Coast Paradise $12.95) proceeds from the mother was eager to try homesteading, Fab Four’s metamorphosis as the Quarry Men Roger John Sugars commenced and the Silver Beetles to the end of their touring days in 1966—and beyond. “The a series of diaries that he maintained from Beatles were possibly the hardest-working 1905 to 1919. Sight-unseen, his father band that ever was,” says Anstey, songwriter bought 160 acres on the west side of and poet, “as they Okanagan Lake for $500, staying there not only performed for until 1917. Raised near present-day up to seven hours at Fintry in a lakeside wilderness, Sugars a time, seven days a was educated by his father, a scholar and week in Hamburg, pianist. they often performed one, two and even

PHOTO three gigs a day from

1961 to 1963 in

CROSSEN Great Britain.” Also Robert Anstey in 2005, Anstey WAYNE released a personal Roger This teacher is one of 12 Kenyans featured in Inside Kenya—Creating Tomorrow celebration of life, Poems from Tuscany. John (West Coast Paradise, $14.95). Sugars in Gigs 1-897031-16-5; Tuscany 1-897031-23-8 1948 Society (A.C.C.E.S.), a British Colum- bia-based non-governmental organiza- The call of Denman ✍ tion that funds education scholarships aving examined the surrealist With 30 archival photos, Vernon Storey’s Learning to Teach: Teacher Preparation and literacy centers in Kakamega, Kenya. movement in the United States for H in Victoria, BC: 1903-1963 (Faculty of He worked in logging camps and on After six months in Kakamega, a poor Surrealist Subversions (Autonomedia), Education, University of Victoria $23) traces fruit ranches before shipping overseas to community with high unemployment in Ron Sakolsky has collected his vari- the development of formal teacher training in serve in France and England during the Western Province of Kenya, where ous writings since the turn of the 21st Victoria, from the Victoria Provincial Normal WW I. John A. Sugars of Westbank has only forty-two percent of children at- century for Creating Anarchy (Fifth Es- School years to 1963, to mark the 40th edited the diaries for publication as An tend primary school, Harper wrote In- tate $15 US), “all bathed in the subver- anniversary of the University of Victoria and Okanagan History: The Diaries of side Kenya—Creating Tomorrow sive light of anarchy and mad love.” the 100th year of post-secondary education Roger John Sugars (Sandhill $24.95). (Hawthorne $19.95), twelve portraits of With chapter headings such as Re- in Victoria. Storey, a professor of Leadership 0-9738153-0-2 Kenyans she met and admired. fusing the Marketplace, Why Consent to Studies at UVic, was a teacher, principal and Specifically these twelve Kenyans, be Ruled at All? school superintendent. His other books having been given the opportunity to at- The call of Kenya 1 and Anarchy in a include The Home: From Orphan’s Home to tend post-secondary education in Diasporic Key, Family Centre, 1873 to 1998. s the second installment of J. Canada, were back in Kenya, educating Sakolsky presents a AGordon Mumford’s trilogy others. All proceeds from her independ- collage of ideas What Goes Up Comes Out by Ian Rudkin (Brio Books) covering the east-African period from ently published book go to an and images mostly ------1949 to 1958, Drums of Rebellion: A.C.C.E.S. Scholarship Fund. published previ- From Top To Bottom...and Back by Peter Hicks (Peter Hicks $14.95) 0-9737606-0-5 Kenya in Chaos (Zebra House $24.95) 0-9734986-1-7 ously. ------is set against the backdrop of the notori- Without A Blueprint by Zolten S. Kiss Ron Sakolsky In a piece enti- (Sandor Press $35) 0-9738361-0-5 ous Mau-Mau uprisings and Kikuyu The call of the Kettle tled Dancing ------rebellion. A Year On The Garden Path by Carolyn Waves, Sakolsky briefly looks at compari- Herriot (Earthfuture $22.95) 0-9738058-0-3 Mumford visited many remote areas .F. Garden’s latest railroad book, sons to be made between Denman Is------of east Africa as an Assistant Engineer The Crow and the Kettle: The Eyewitness by Mark Johnstone 0-9737945-0-X J land and the Orkney islands off the ------for the East African Posts and Telecom- CPR in Southern British Columbia northern tip of Scotland. Rough Justice by Mark Johnstone (Trafford) 1-41204440-5 munications Administration, working in and Alberta, 1950-1989 (Footprint / “Only after I’d left my old landlocked ------the field on the radio repeater survey Sandhill $69.95), looks at the modern Prisoners Under Glass by R. Patrick Illinois life behind and moved here lock, (Scroll Press) 0-9735422-2-5 routes throughout Kenya, Tanganyika era of the famous rail line that ran from stock and barreled,” he writes, “did I dis------Awake! A Spiritual Primer by and Uganda. 0-9736297-1-1 Medicine Hat to a switch on the CPR Elizabeth cover that Canada’s most well-known an- Blakely (Isis Moon $28.95) 0-9686765-3-7 mainline at Odlum, then across the archist philosopher George ------Fraser River from Hope. Built by way In The Wilds of Western Canada by Tyrone The call of Kenya 2 Woodcock was a frequenter of Danlock (Trafford $37) 141203447-7 of the Crowsnest Pass, Kettle Valley and Denman on his way to neighboring ------Meditations on the Paintings of Carle s a retired elementary school prin- the Coquihalla Pass, this all-Canada Hornby Island to visit his good friend, Hessay by Leonard A. Woods (Trabarni/ Acipal, overcoming the loss of her route was designed to thwart American the painter, Jack Shadbolt—a fact Treeline) 1-895666-27-9 eldest son to leukemia, Sandra interests in southern B.C. It crossed that appealed to my sense of anarchist Publisher addresses for books on this volunteered to assist the Af- three major rivers and seven mountain Harper synchronicity.” page are at www.abcbookworld.com rica Canadian Continuing Education summits. 0-9691621-8-9 0-9772258-0-1

35 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 INTERVIEW

degree in the West Coast history of na- SYLVIA OLSEN tive-white relations. So now the burning questions in my mind are around that. steps off the construc- BCBW: In my experience, the separa- tion site looking like a tion between First Nations and non-First ACROSS Nations is stark. It creates not just igno- million bucks. rance but allows for forgetfulness. OLSEN: Yes, ignorance in the sense At 51, the mother of four is the THE ROAD & that we just don’t know each other. That’s construction manager for the the core of the problem. In Canada, we have set up two separate worlds, Them Tsartlip First Nation on southern and Us. It serves political purposes for Vancouver Island, but she’s also THE everyone, but in the big picture, as far as I’m concerned, it has not served ei- constructive as a writer, working ther side well. between four and seven in the There are many, many mixed-blood DITCH children in this country. There are many mornings, for the past ten years, more people with a mixed experience producing a series of impressive OVER than this Us and Them separation would books drawn have us believe. I’m just a voice that says, if you want to talk stark separation— from her First SYLVIA OLSEN confronts motherhood issues well, that’s certainly part of the overall Nations mi- conversation. I, however, want to have traveling to the exotic places of the world issues that include sex, relationships, the conversation that’s happening in the lieu. to get cultural experiences. I walked birth control, abortion, pornography, middle. It’s important in our country to Her first across the road and over the ditch and self-image, and parenting. have a look at where the coming-to- SARA CASSIDY book, No Time to then stayed for 33 years and got an im- Currently building social housing for gether happens. Say Goodbye, re- mersion in cross-cultural life.” low income families, Sylvia Olsen was in- BCBW: And you feel support for that calls the experiences of First Nations chil- Upon learning that up to 70% of new terviewed by Sara Cassidy. viewpoint? Emphasizing exchange? dren who were sent to Kuper Island families in some Coast Salish communi- ✍ OLSEN: Oh, yeah. How do we learn residential school. Girl With A Baby was ties are being started by teen parents, about ourselves? By seeing ourselves in inspired by her daughter’s experience of Sylvia Olsen obtained support from the BCBW: Are you Coast Salish by mar- reference to others. That’s the enrich- becoming a mother at 14. Catching Aboriginal Healing Foundation to learn riage? ment in life. As opposed to isolating our- Spring and Yellow Line are juvenile nov- more. With First Nations community OLSEN: I’m a status Indian by mar- selves and looking only from our own els about Aboriginal youths learning to worker Lola James, she organized thirteen riage. That’s what the official thing is, perspective. Some may disagree and I cope with maturation and racial ten- young Coast Salish mothers for events, but I’m from down the street, across the think disagreement is great! Let’s just sions. such as picnics and birthday parties, as road, whatever it is. have a rich discussion instead of one that White Girl is based on Olsen’s own ex- well as conversations, giving rise to Just BCBW: Is it a tension that confronts is afraid and making it up because perience as a non-Aboriginal who moved Ask Us: A Conversation with First Na- you daily, your cross-cultural existence? we’re not really being honest about to live on the Tsartlip reserve at age 17. tions Teenage Moms (Sono Nis $22.95). OLSEN: Yes and no. I’m intellectually ourselves. “When I got married and started living Just Ask Us shares the experiences of attached to it, not just experientially. I BCBW: In my generation, there’s some on reserve,” she says, “all my friends were teenage mothers facing a wide range of went to university and got a Masters awareness of colonialism, but there’s also

“There are many, many mixed-blood children in this country.” Sylvia Olsen with her daughter Heather and granddaughter Yetsa.

6 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006 Location,

a reluctance to ask, to run the risk of re- we have ambitions and plans for every violating. In a way, the title of your book, child. That’s really strong. Location, Just Ask Us, reflects that. BCBW: How do you feel these days OLSEN: Yes. The young mothers said, when you hear another teenager in your just ask us: if we want to know about each neighbourhood is pregnant? Location, other, just ask us. OLSEN: Because I’ve been here a long . . . and great prices! BCBW: Why did you want Just Ask Us time, I don’t throw my hands up. I just to be a community-based study and not know that that child can be fine if there scientific research? is the support. It really is about the sup- DOWNTOWN NEW! OLSEN: Scientific method uses a lot port the child and her mother get. But I of statistics and statistics are harsh. They do worry, because I know immediately 552 Seymour St haven’t served us very well in this com- that that girl is going to be in distress munity. That is not the kind of discus- right away. And I want that child to have 604 683-5711 sion you want to have with young moms. the same opportunities as other children. When you read statistics to When my daughter young people around here, had her baby, I could see it’s a very, very hard thing to there were more things hear. But another reason is that could happen to set because I really believe con- her back. In our family, YALETOWN versations are the best way the baby was able to be for us to get to know our- cared for very well, but a 1068 Homer St selves and others. It’s better beautiful fourteen-year- 604 681-5711 than statistical analysis. old girl who is now a BCBW: But you do point mother, who has to nego- out the context for their par- tiate her way through the enthood—poverty, experi- stigma and the stere- ences of abuse, high rates of otypes… well, the baby is drug and alcohol addiction, going to depend so much WEST END families deeply ruptured by on that mother, so it is im- residential schools. portant that the mother is supported 1051 Davie St OLSEN: For our community, we have and that she is on her feet. That baby’s 604 685-5711 all these plans and aspirations and yet success depends on it. So we have to re-building community is a very difficult make sure the mother matures, that she chore when you have so many teenagers doesn’t get her maturation truncated. taken up with raising babies in a really BCBW: Are you generally a commit-

difficult situation. The communities ted person by nature or does the com- seller for 25 years need the mothers so badly, because we’re munity ask you to get involved? BROADWAY re-building broken-up communities. OLSEN: It’s the nature of me to attach BCBW: You quote Kim Anderson who to the burning social issues of where I am. 632 West Broadway notes that “when a people are under I figured that out after a while. So when 604 872-5711 siege it is imperative to re-produce.” But a person like me lives in a community that you also write of “a lag time” between is so needy and where there are so many the modern First Nations young mother questions, there’s no getting up and leav- and the cultural structure. ing. Because these are the burning ques- OLSEN: Yes. Like many of the Abo- tions of our country. These are Canada’s riginal women here, I didn’t graduate questions. They aren’t First Nations ques- KITSILANO from high school. I had my children, then tions, they are questions that need to be went back to university. I am now work- addressed no matter who you are. 2388 West 4th Ave ing, like many of my peers, building com- BCBW: Anything you’d like to add? 604 734-5711 munity. Most of the strong women my OLSEN: Yes. The answers to these age are out, they’re doing health care, problems are really, really simple. They’re they’re building houses, they’re the com- about communicating. Right from the munity workers. And our children are start, if we communicate with our er’s independent discount book having babies, and we aren’t there, we’re daughters and our sons and each other not there supporting. We’re just not there. cross-culturally… if we have decent, UNIVERSITY/PT GREY There are some empty spaces in our mature, honest, tolerant conversations homes now. It’s a difficult equation. about the real subjects, rather than the 4444 West 10th Ave Vancouv I would say, living in a First Nation extraneous junk, than we will either not 604 221-5711 community, there is more activity, more have as many [babies born] or when we consciousness of making community, do we will cope with them. So, my big than there is anywhere else. There is thing is, let’s talk about things and talk huge thinking going into it, in every about the stuff we don’t like talking field. First Nations are working to capac- about… [laughter] I think that’s my ity, they’re maxing out. So young girls theory for everything! NORTH SHORE with their babies… it’s out of season somehow. But there is a really, really Sara Cassidy is a freelance writer and 1524 Lonsdale strong feeling that we want every kid and interviewer based in Victoria. 604 904-5711 SYLVIA OLSEN BIBLIOGRAPHY No Time to Say Goodbye: Children’s Stories of Kuper Island Residential School co-authored by Rita Morris & Ann Sam (Sono Nis, 2002) 1-55039-121-6 The Girl with a Baby (Sono Nis, 2003) 1550391429 Catching Spring (Orca, 2004) 1-55143-298-6 White Girl (Sono Nis, 2004) 1-55039-147-X Open late every day! Just Ask Us: A Conversation with First Nations Teenage Moms www.bookwarehouse.ca (Sono Nis, 2005) 1-55039-152-6 Murphy and the Mouse Trap (Orca, 2005) 1-55143-344-3 Yellow Line (Orca, 2005) 1-55143-462-8

7 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006