BOOK REVIEWS

Native Art of the Northwest Coast: some missionaries, by recording A History of Changing Ideas languages and collecting Native art, were paradoxically preserving Charlotte Townsend-Gault, what they themselves were seeking Jennifer Kramer, and to destroy. Ki-ke-in, editors What is so fascinating about these essays and the appended : ubc Press, 2013. 1120 pp. $195 00 documents is the evidence they . cloth. provide to show that Aboriginal Maria Tippett people were, in Barker’s words, not Cambridge University only “active players in their own histories” but also “put their new he essays and the many previously religious identity to creative as well published texts gathered together in as destructive uses” (235). During the thisT weighty tome demonstrate the extent late nineteenth and early twentieth to which, over the course of the past 250 centuries, for example, William years, “the idea of Northwest Coast Native Beynon and George Hunt, among art has been historically constructed many other Aboriginal persons, through texts as much as through the contributed enormously to the global diaspora of the objects themselves” work of ethnologists and collectors. (1). Thus we have Ira Jacknis’s learned Conversely, the Kwakwaka’wakw article on the writings of explorers and peoples at Fort Rupert (Tsaxis), in ethnographers during the early years of resisting conversion by the Order European exploration on the Northwest of Oblate missionaries, thereby Coast (1770-1870). Andrea Laforet puts fostered carving, painting, and into context the way that ethnographers winter ceremonies. Martha Black like Franz Boas and amateur collectors takes the discussion to the end of like Charles F. Newcombe – all active on the twentieth century by showing the Northwest Coast between 1880 and how collaborative exhibitions curated 1930 – gave accounts of the culture they by non-Native and observed and the objects they collected. people have become the norm and, In “Going by the Book: Missionary in her words, “are no longer the new Perspectives,” John Barker shows how museology” (795). bc studies, no. 85, Spring 15 193 194 bc studies

Indeed, a good example of this long gallery would have strengthened the overdue collaboration is right here, in the essays concerning the involvement production of Native Art of the Northwest of Native artists in the production Coast: A History of Changing Ideas. Two of and display of their work. For in the book’s editors, Jennifer Kramer and 1953, Tsimshian Hatti Fergusson and Ki-ke-in, are Aboriginal persons, as are Haida Ella Gladstone had organized other contributing writers, curators, and – with the assistance of and artists like Gloria Cranmer Webster, Ellen Neel – the Arts and Handicrafts Marianne Nicolson, Douglas White, Show, comprised entirely of the work and Daisy Sewid-Smith. Nicholson of contemporary Native artists.1 demonstrates the ways in which the Admittedly, the exhibition was a flop relationships between the ethnographers in the view of its Native organizers (as observers) and Native people (as – attendance was low, there was subjects) have recently been reversed. In no catalogue, and the sales were writing about the Nuu-chah-nulth artist insignificant. Lamenting the lack of and writer George Clutesi, White supplies newspaper reviews, Hatti Fergusson the obvious reason that his great-uncle pointedly told a gallery official: prudently did not oppose the potlatch in “Contrary to what most people his public writings: “In 1947, participating think, Indians appreciate practical in – or even merely encouraging someone to criticism.”2 participate in – a potlatch was criminalized There are not only omissions and prohibited as a statutory offence under here. Despite the authors’ attempts Canada’s federal Indian Act and had been to avoid making anachronistic value since 1885” (633-34). In one of the most judgments, these nevertheless creep erudite essays in this volume, Jennifer into the essays of even the best writers Kramer explores the relationship between in this volume. Ronald Hawker laws governing Indigenous property and assures us that the United Church the arts, be it the display and ownership minister George Raley’s writings of crest designs, the performance of songs were shaped by the “unfortunate and dances, or even the use and types of paternalism of the time” (380). Ira artistic techniques. Jacknis, rather surprisingly in view There are, however, some failures of his own erudition, writes that of perspective. Largely a product of “the first century of Euro-American social scientists and museum curators, contact with Northwest Coast art and of artists and gallery curators, was partial and shallow” (54). In Native Art of the Northwest Coast lacks curator Scott Watson’s view, Emily historical underpinning. Thus several Carr’s Native productions were writers exaggerate the novelty of the simply “faux,” and Alice Ravenhill, Vancouver Art Gallery’s 1967 display of who ran the BC Indian Arts and contemporary and historic Aboriginal Welfare Society in the late 1930s and art in the Arts of the Raven: Masterworks early 1940s, belonged to “a group of by the Northwest Coast Indian. Yet they ‘do-gooders’” (351). All of these and might have been noted that, as early as 1941 1 Maria Tippett, Bill Reid: The Making , the Vancouver Art Gallery showed contemporary and Native Art, borrowing of an Indian (Toronto: Random House, 2003), 80-85. works from the provincial museum in 2 Hatti Fergusson to J.A. Morris, 7 July Victoria. Furthermore, acknowledging a 1954, Vancouver Art Gallery Archives, second previous exhibition at the same box 107. Book Reviews 195 other claims brashly reflect twenty-first in numbers of speakers of Indigenous century politically correct thinking rather languages around the world.3 In than showing sensitivity to historical response, Indigenous communities, context. supported by linguists, educators, One of the book’s editors, Ki-ke-in (Ron language activists, and agencies such Hamilton), perhaps deserves the last word. as unesco, are implementing efforts In his poem, “Box of Darkness,” the Nuu- to maintain, reclaim, and revitalize chah-nulth artist tells non-Native museum their languages. Such efforts are and art gallery curators, anthropologists, frequently aligned with human rights photographers, and art historians: “You movements attempting to reverse live and work in our graveyard / Picking the effects of colonizing forces and/ the last remnants of flesh and blood / From or discrimination. They can thus my mother’s bones” (517). First published contribute, often significantly, to in BC Studies in 1991, this “barbed critique” increasing people’s sense of identity warned non-Native people associated with and connection to their land, to the production, display, and interpretation the health of individuals, and to of Northwest Coast art to “Take your their communities, cultures, and sweaty palm from my face” (515, 517). economies. The essays and appended documents in Academics and non-academics Native Art of the Northwest Coast mark a are increasingly considering what beginning, a start. But the “sweaty palm” factors – historical, social, political, has not yet entirely disappeared. educational, cultural – play a role in language revitalization. Barbra Meek’s We Are Our Language, We Are Our Language: An an ethnographic account of Ethnography of Language revitalization efforts in the Kaska- speaking community in the Yukon Revitalization in a Northern between 1998 and 2008, is an Athabaskan Community important academic contribution to this area of inquiry and action. Its Barbra A. Meek detailed description and discussion Tucson: University of Arizona Press, of the historical and contemporary 2010. 232 pp. $29.95 paper. context of Kaska language use provide an illuminating picture of Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins the successes, value, and challenges University of Victoria of language revitalization efforts for Kaska specifically and for many other Indigenous languages more s laid out in the First Peoples’ Report on the generally. Cultural Council’s The primary purpose of Meek’s AStatus of BC First Nations Languages (2010), 1800 book is “to show how the practice since the s, there has been “dramatic and ideologization of Kaska decline in the number of fluent speakers” have influenced Kaska language of First Nations languages in British revitalization” (x). The first chapter Columbia: as of 2010 only 5.1 percent of the population of BC First Nations 3 are fluent speakers of their ancestral See, for example, Nettle and Romaine 5 2000 and unesco’s website on en- languages ( ). This decline parallels drops dangered languages. 196 bc studies presents the history of colonization in the Status of BC First Nations Canada pertaining to language shift, Languages 2010. First Peoples’ the history of language revitalization in Heritage, Language and Culture the Yukon, and ways in which economic Council. Brentwood Bay, BC. factors affect language use and revaluation Available at http://www.fpcc.ca/ in Kaska-Dene communities. Chapter 2 language/status-report/. focuses on the role of social environment Nettle, D., and S. Romaine. 2000. in language revitalization; considers Vanishing Voices: The Extinction literature on, and theoretical background of the World’s Languages. Oxford, for, language revitalization, including UK: Oxford University Press. work from linguistic anthropology and unesco. Endangered Languages. language socialization research; and points http://www.unesco.org/new/en/ out the extent to which social, political, culture/themes/endangered-lan- and ideological considerations affect the guages/. outcomes of language revitalization efforts. Chapter 3 turns to an extended illustration of Kaska language use and roles, especially A Tsilhqút’ín Grammar among children, at home, in public institutions, and in classrooms. In Chapter Eung-Do Cook 4, the documentation of language and the production of materials for language Vancouver: ubc Press, 2013. learning are considered, with particular 670 pp. $165.00 cloth. attention to how language materials are presented and how this affects the use and Sonya Bird valuing of Kaska, while Chapter 5 focuses University of Victoria on representations of language in programs and bureaucracies and considers how ung-Do Cook’s ( 2013) these affect revitalization goals. Chapter 6 A Tsilhqút’ín Grammar is the concludes by asking how “we conceptualize Eculmination of his research on the language revitalization and success” (162). language, spanning forty years. It Meek’s description and analysis centres provides a very thorough, albeit quite on the notion of “disjunctures,” defined technical, overview of Tsilhqút’ín as “everyday points of discontinuity and linguistic structure. contradiction – between social or linguistic Overall, the grammar is very groups, within discourses, practices or well laid out: it begins with an between them” (x). Her analysis raises introduction to existing Tsilhqút’ín crucial questions about gaps between the research and to some of the most ideals of revitalization and its reality and, notable features of the language. in the process, provides insight into ways The bulk of the grammar includes of critically evaluating and transforming ten chapters covering phonology the “sociolinguistic landscape” (163). (Chapter 1), word classes (Chapter 2), verbal morphology (Chapters REFERENCES 3-4), syntax (Chapters 5-7), and a selection of more complex morpho- Amrhein, H., S. Gessner, T. Herbert, X. D. syntactic topics (Chapters 8-10). The Daniels, M. Lappi, D. Hamilton-Evans, grammar ends with three annotated 2010 Report on and A. Wadsworth. . texts. These provide a good sense Book Reviews 197 of how various structures and processes data using a different (constraint- discussed in the grammar are realized based) theoretical framework. Given in the language itself. It is a shame that the complexity of the derivations the texts are not accompanied by audio provided, one wonders whether an recordings, which would have completed alternative analysis, under a different the grammar very nicely. theoretical framework, might be Cook’s grammar is best suited to possible, and what kinds of insights linguists already familiar with Athabaskan it might provide into the structure of languages and interested in the linguistic the language. nuts and bolts of the Tsilhqút’ín language. Cook does not draw extensively For example, Chapter 4 spans seventy- on the Athabaskan literature in five pages on verb classes, including his grammar, as is reflected in the an extremely thorough discussion of relatively short bibliography. For the morpheme co-occurrence restrictions purposes of comparison, reference within the verbal complex. This makes is made primarily to Dëne Sųłiné, it a wonderful resource for linguists who with which he is also familiar. This are specializing in Athabaskan verbal may well have been an intentional morphology and who are comfortable decision on Cook’s part in order to with the terminology used to describe the keep the grammar a manageable Athabaskan verbal complex. For novice size. Nonetheless, it is something readers (e.g., community-based speakers to be aware of: readers interested in with little formal linguistic training), comparative Athabaskan linguistics Chapter 4 – and indeed the grammar will have to do their own research more generally – would likely be somewhat to see how Tsilhqút’ín linguistic overwhelming. structures compare to those in other On a related note, the line is sometimes related languages. One concrete blurred between description of the facts consequence of this decision is and analysis of the facts. Cook himself is that readers may be left with the a phonologist, and, as a result, there is a impression that certain puzzles noted strong focus on phonological (Chapter 1) by Cook would not be puzzling in and morpho-phonological (Chapter 3, §3.2) reference to other related languages. aspects of the language. Throughout the For example, in introducing the grammar, illustrative forms include both particles in § 2.9, Cook states: “The underlying forms (indicating morphological particles exemplified below (and structure) and surface forms (indicating many others not listed here) should actual pronunciation), and a number be properly subclassified according of complex phonological derivations to their grammatical functions are provided to illustrate how one gets when more is known about them. from the underlying to the surface form In the meantime, they are lumped (e.g., 2.11 on page 187). This approach is together here” (122). Consideration of very useful, at least for formally trained similar particles in other Athabaskan linguists, since the relationship between languages may well clarify how the underlying and surface forms is often Tsilhqút’ín particles presented in not transparent. However, it assumes a §2.9 should be categorized. particular mechanism (ordered rules) within Finally, Cook is very forthcoming, a particular theoretical framework (rule- in particular in Chapter 2, about based). A single mention is made (on page variability (and change) in the forms 195) of the possibility of analyzing the that he has elicited from fluent 198 bc studies speakers, and he does not attempt to Dictionary abstract away from this variability for the purpose of descriptive simplicity. Timothy Montler This is refreshing, as it presents a very Seattle: University of Washington realistic view of the fluctuating state of Press, 2012. 1008 pp. $85.00 cloth. the language and of the current state of Cook’s understanding of the facts. It also Suzanne Urbanczyk provides ample scope for future research University of Victoria on the language in order to confirm that the illustrative forms provided throughout imothy Montler’s Klallam the grammar are (still) recognized as Dictionary is much more than grammatical by fluent speakers and to aT listing of words in Klallam and further explore individual uses of the English. It is a beautiful, solid language’s complex morpho-syntactic volume of information that has the 4 structure. potential to be useful to a wide range A In summary, Eung-Do Cook’s of people. Looking through it is fun. Tsilhqút’ín Grammar is a very impressive It provides detailed information piece of work, documenting the complex about the meaning and structure of linguistic structure of the Tsilhqút’ín words, how sentences are formed, language in great detail. It provides an and the culture from which this excellent resource to linguists interested Salish language has risen: it is the in furthering their understanding of language of the Klallam people of Tsilhqút’ín (and other Athabaskan Becher Bay on Vancouver Island languages), and it is a very good basis on and Washington State’s Olympic which to conduct further research on this Peninsula. The structure of the wonderfully rich language. dictionary includes eighteen pages of front matter in addition to the 983 pages that make up the bulk of the work. The front matter contains a breadth of information about how the dictionary came about and the speakers who shared their knowledge, and it ranges from the earliest documented records of the language to the present-day speakers. Lineages of the speakers are provided where known, which is useful for historians. After presenting information about “Contributing Native-Speaking Elders” (viii-x) comes “A Brief Introduction to the Klallam Language” (x-xiii). In this section, Montler describes 4 I know that questions have been raised within the sounds of the language, word the Tsilhqút’ín-speaking community about the structure, and the basics of how grammaticality of some of the illustrative forms sentences are constructed. While provided in the grammar. this is useful in terms of getting a Book Reviews 199 sense of how the language is structured, with a particular type of . In it seems directed at those who have some some cases, the entries are quite familiarity with Salish language structures. extensive.1 For example, the entry for It includes a few example words to illustrate –t (“basic transitivizer”) lists over sounds as well as a few technical terms two thousand words that are formed such as “,” “infixation,” and with that suffix. “metathesis.” The final section of the dictionary An essential section to read prior to contains the Klallam Root Index delving into the dictionary itself is that (815-983), listing all the words for on the “Organization of Entries” (xiv-xvi). each root in the language. This can Entries in the Klallam Dictionary contain be useful for linguists and language a vast amount of information about each learners interested in knowing how word, such as its root, the source elder’s concepts are related in Klallam. For initials, a grammatical analysis, illustrative example, the entry for √qway (“talk”) example sentences, acceptable variant contains thirty-nine entries, with forms, and, in some cases, special cultural meanings ranging from “talking,” notes and reference to other entries. “language,” “telephone,” “manage to A detailed List of Abbreviations and talk,” to “mind.” References (xvi-xvii) concludes the front In sum, the Klallam Dictionary matter. goes beyond listing words and The Klallam-English dictionary is543 includes a wide range of information pages long, with Klallam words arranged related to word structure. This book in alphabetical order and with a wealth will be an excellent resource for a of information about word structure in range of readers, from historians addition to English translations of Klallam and language learners and teachers concepts. An English-Klallam index to linguists. (545-751) follows the dictionary, with an alphabetical listing of English concepts and a range of Klallam forms that express those concepts. An interesting feature of Chinuk Wawa: Kakwa nsayka Klallam is that some concepts that are ulman-tilixam ɬaska munk- expressed in English with one word can be kəmtəks nsayka/As Our Elders expressed in Klallam by what are referred to as lexical suffixes. For example, the Teach Us to Speak It concept “abdomen” is expressed by a word The Confederated Tribes of on its own ( ac) and by two different lexical w suffixes=iq ( ən and =ank s). Grande Ronde If readers wants to learn more about the Seattle: University of Washington Klallam forms, they can look up entries Press, 2012. 400 pp. $29.95 paper. for words in the Klallam-English section or the Klallam Affix Index (753-814). Dave Robertson There are three categories of in Spokane Klallam – prefixes, suffixes, and lexical suffixes – which are each given a separate n an obscure 1978 dissertation, a subsection in the affix index. This type linguist named Samuel Johnson of organization is quite informative, and demonstratedI that most of the it allows linguists interested in word countless lexica structure to find all instances of a word compiled over two hundred years 200 bc studies form a few distinct lineages.5 Joining the astute presentation choices enhance ranks of definitive dictionaries identified the ability of cheechakos to understand by Johnson is this spectacular new lexicon this dictionary. A grammar sketch of our historic Northwest intercultural solidifies the prefatory matter, language, published by the Confederated making this one of the first overt Tribes of Grande Ronde in Oregon who, statements of the very real rules for uniquely, adopted “Chinuk Wawa” as their speaking this pidgin/creole language mother tongue in the nineteenth century. well (30-51). Example phrases and How do you say Alki, Washington sentences breathe life into every entry. State’s Chinuk Wawa motto? We have The real coup de grâce is an enormous long lacked reliable pronunciation guides section of texts in the Chinuk Wawa to Chinook Jargon. It has been recorded of fluent elders (357-485). Nothing following English spelling conventions, could more powerfully guide, and with the attendant ambiguities. The appropriately challenge, the learner compilers of this new dictionary wisely than these mostly autobiographical recognize that most readers are literate glimpses into the life and history in English, a language from which many of the vibrant Chinook Jargon- Chinuk Wawa sounds are absent. Therefore speaking community at Grande they innovate, judiciously adding letters Ronde, Oregon. ɬ ( , q, x̣) for Aboriginal-derived sounds Any shortcomings in this and adding accents to show a word’s main monumental piece of Northwest stress, a modification that hugely improves scholarship are trivial compared on anglophone practice. The net effect is to to its huge achievements. One boldly transcend 150-year-old traditional might wish for a marginally clearer spellings so that learners can finally statement of the orthography used pronounce confidently. (25), adding the forms “ng” and “z” The compilers also banish another bane and simplifying “dj” to the unused “j.” of Chinookology – bowdlerization. Surely A linguist might note that “doubling” delighting anyone who realizes this was and (reduplication, 44) as a grammatical is an everyday language, words long absent device makes a predicate distributive from Chinuk Wawa dictionaries re-emerge and that the inanimate “it” has no here. This is done tastefully: multi-syllabic Chinuk Wawa pronoun. Inexplicably, synonyms for body parts and functions a few words are isolated at the end of serve as English translations. the alphabet under the glottal-stop ʔ The two centuries of Chinuk Wawa letter “ ”, when they are really vowel- literature consists almost exclusively of initial (259-260, 304). word lists. (The main exception is a Chinuk This dictionary is the finest Wawa trove in a distinct British Columbian resource in existence on Chinook alphabet, researched by this reviewer.) Jargon. Readers who have long Contemplate anglophone students of wished for a clear picture of what French trying to use only a textbook’s this well-known “trade language” vocabulary index to communicate in was like, and for knowledge of the Quebec, and the violence this lexical background of the many Chinuk approach does to any fluency in Chinuk Wawa words that have entered our Wawa becomes obvious. As well, some region’s English, have now had their

5 wishes granted. To paraphrase a Samuel V. Johnson, “Chinook Jargon: A comment I once heard in Victoria: Computer Assisted Analysis of Variation “Skookum book, eh?” in an American Indian Pidgin” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 1978). Book Reviews 201

Father Pandosy: American government. Yet even Pioneer of Faith in the Northwest as he fulfilled these roles, Pandosy expressed grave misgivings about the Edmond Rivère, broader colonial project to which they translated by Lorin Card contributed. He alienated settlers, government officials, and even his Vancouver: Midtown Press, 2012. 176 $19 95 clerical superiors by criticizing their pp. . paper. treatment of Aboriginal people, Timothy P. Foran and his identification – assumed or Canadian Museum of History ascribed – with Yakama political resistance prompted a contingent of the US Army to destroy his mission ver the course of a ministry and to threaten him with lynching. that spanned nearly half a century, His life story is thus an eloquent CatholicO missionary Jean-Charles Pandosy example of missionary ambivalence witnessed and participated in one of the towards colonialism. most dramatic regional transformations To relate this life story, Rivère in human history. Whereas in 1847 draws primarily on letters and Pandosy described his mission field as a reports penned by Pandosy himself. wilderness inhabited by des sauvages, four These sources provide rich insight decades later he noted that the region had into the missionary’s professional sprouted towns and cities teaming with and personal life, and Rivère des hommes civilisés; that its landscape quotes them at length throughout had been reshaped through agriculture, the biography. Regrettably, he is logging, and road construction; and insufficiently critical of these sources that its southern and northern parts had and devotes little attention to their been integrated into the American and inherent biases, assumptions, and Canadian federations – the former as the agendas. Although this tendency State of Washington, the latter as the does not result in hagiographical Province of . Missionary eulogizing – Rivère strives for a involvement in this transformation has warts-and-all portrait – it does attracted scholarly attention since the have the effect of perpetuating publication of Vincent J. McNally’s a nineteenth-century missionary The Lord’s Distant Vineyard in 2000, and discourse about Aboriginal people. now Edmond Rivère’s translated biography Hence, Pandosy’s early converts are of Pandosy introduces a general readership described as inhabiting a “no man’s to important aspects of this history. land” and are noted for their “material Perhaps the greatest contribution of this debauchery,” their “tendency to biography is its revelation of the scope and completely neglect basic hygiene,” complexity of missionary roles in the early and their ignorance of “the well- development of Washington and British founded principles governing the Columbia. Pandosy’s career extended far rules for maintaining good health” beyond the altar and the confessional: (28, 44, 54). Compounding this he worked variously as a farmer, an problem is the awkwardness of a text irrigator, a viticulturist, a carpenter, a that bears telltale signs of a hurried teacher, a healthcare provider, a musician, translation from the French original, a lexicographer, and an intermediary first published in 2002 – overuse of between Aboriginal groups and the the historical present, word-for-word 202 bc studies renderings of French idioms, and jarring he visited North America first in 1884, references to the wisdom of “Ciceron” and a trip during which, according to his the pontificate of “Leon XIII.” daughter’s summary many decades Despite these serious shortcomings, later, “the New World had claimed Father Pandosy is a first step in introducing him for its own” (8). Spalding details a general English-speaking readership to a his grandfather’s move to Pender critical chapter in the history of the Pacific Island in 1886, where, with the help of Northwest. It reveals a complex colonial a small but necessary allowance from process through the lens of a fascinating his family back in England, he began life story. establishing his 364 hectare farm. In 1888, Arthur met Lilias Mackay, who came from a family with long roots Put That Damned Old in the British Columbia fur trade Mattock Away and in the province’s Indigenous and colonial history. Chapters describe David J. Spalding the slow growth of the farm and family in “the Early Years” (the Pender Harbour: David J. Spalding, 1890 2013 195 $19 95 s) as well as its expansion in “the . pp. . paper. Middle Years” (between 1900 and 1910) as they emerged from pioneer R.W. Sandwell University of Toronto conditions. We are provided with many details of daily life and labour for all family members on this n Put That Damned Old Mattock mixed, semi-subsistence farm, so Away, long-time Gulf Island resident characteristic of the Canadian rural DavidI Spalding draws on oral histories, experience in the pre-Second World a variety of archival documents, and his War period. A separate chapter is grandfather’s delightfully written and devoted to the never-ending, often illustrated diary (1914-32) to explore life dangerous process of “Clearing Land on Pender Island between 1890 and 1940. and Collecting Firewood.” Chapters 7 10 His goal was to write a “history of the to take a different chronological farm, with [his] Grandfather’s diaries trajectory, providing sections on and sketches as the principal focus,” spring, summer, fall, and winter, with the goal of commemorating “[his] with detailed descriptions of an era in grandparents’ lives … on South Pender which daily activities, most of which Island, the farm they created and the were focused directly or indirectly on family they raised” (xv). He succeeds not the local environment of the world only in providing a detailed, often poignant outdoors, were profoundly affected portrait of their lives but also in painting a by the seasons. “The War Years” rich and detailed overview of the rhythms details the profound effect that the and textures of everyday life in settler First World War had on British British Columbia. Columbia’s economy and society, as The book follows a roughly chronological seen through the lens of one family’s framework, beginning with the birth in intense experience of a conflict that 1863 of Arthur Reed Spalding, the youngest was occurring half a world away. of six children of a well-to-do mercantile Lest readers get the impression that family near London, England. Inspired by work consumed all of settlers’ lives, the idea of pioneer life and a love of nature, Spalding devotes a chapter to the Book Reviews 203 leisure activities of the family and Gulf Home to the Nechako: The Island communities. “Winding Down” River and the Land returns to the chronological narrative of Spalding’s grandparents. “Years of Sorrow” June Wood details the illness and death of Arthur Victoria: Heritage House, 2013. Spalding, along with that of other family 176 pp. $17.95 paper. and friends, and the difficulties that the Great Depression further imposed on the family at this time in its history. It also explains the book’s title. A Trail of Two Telegraphs: It is the diary of Arthur Spalding that And Other Historic Tales of the holds the book together. His diary entries Bulkley Valley and Beyond frame and shape his grandson’s narrative, while his poems, his illustrations, and their Jane Stevenson humorous and insightful captions, give us Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, perhaps the most vivid reflections on his 2013. 192 pp. $26.95 paper. experience of Pender Island and of those he loved. All in all, through the eyes of a remarkable, ordinary family, this book succeeds in animating the history of daily Pioneer Daughter: Footnotes life in early southern British Columbia in on a Life in Northern British an era so different from our own. Columbia Vesta Foote Leslie Philpott Prince George: Lake Shannon Printing, 2013. 128 pp. $20.00 paper. Jonathan Swainger University of Northern British Columbia

he risks involved in writing local history are many. Readers areT frequently presented with celebratory accounts of the virtues of a community or region – accounts that offer little save for the claim that they somehow demonstrate local character. Such histories tend to dwell on local “firsts,” anomalies, setbacks, or achievements. Although this applies to far too many local histories, it should not be understood as a condemnation but, rather, as an observation on how often authors sell themselves short by failing to even 204 bc studies tentatively reflect on questions pertaining be read as implicitly asking whether to what these histories can tell us about a balanced view of development context, the endless variety of human ought to include a more respectful experience, and the extent to which our accounting of its consequences for communities are representations of larger the local environment and the people stories and currents. To varying degrees, who live there. It is a question that this is a timidity that these three books still resonates throughout northern share. British Columbia. June Wood’s Home to the Nechako is a In her A Trail of Two Telegraphs, passionate and often thoughtful portrayal which brings together a series of of the environmental history of the articles previously published in region straddling the Nechako River Northword Magazine, Jane Stevenson in north-central British Columbia. It is relays a selection of intriguing an account centred on the Kenney Dam stories about life in the west-central construction in the early 1950s; the heavy- interior of British Columbia, which handed dispossession of the Cheslatta extends from Prince George to First Nation just hours ahead of the rising Prince Rupert. Ranging from Simon flood water; the ecological repercussions McGillivray’s account dispatched of reversing the Nechako in order to from the confluence of the Skeena supply power generation for the Alcan and Bulkley rivers in the summer (now Rio Tinto Alcan) smelter built near of 1833, through the completion of the “instant” community of Kitimat; the the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway in later and still ongoing fight against the 1914, to the work of Prince George- Alcan Completion Project; the struggle based photographer Wally West, to preserve and increase the dwindling and to the wildcat strike at Kitimat white sturgeon stock in the river; and the in 1976, Stevenson’s stories provide pine beetle epidemic that swept through engaging snapshots of how people northern British Columbia in the late and communities constructed their 1990s and for the decade that followed. individual and collective senses of self More than the other two authors, Wood in northern British Columbia. Here, is aware that, beyond the geographic too, we see the region portrayed proximity to the Nechako River and its as a testing ground, a land where drainage basin, these events are linked by one might start anew, a geographic northern British Columbia’s historic and or physical space to be endured contemporary provision of raw material if not conquered, a homeland for to interests operating in an international the region’s original peoples, and a marketplace. Be it hydroelectricity, timber, place where residents were regularly animal pelts, mineral resources, oil, or reminded of the thin margins and natural gas, northern British Columbia sometimes idiosyncratic meanings has, for over two hundred years, been a of success. As with Wood, one can theatre for the playing out of such dramas. recognize in Stevenson an individual And, all too often, the legitimate concerns consciously aware of the larger of local residents and their environment context, even if she chooses not have been pushed to the margins in favour to interpret its many possibilities. of outside agencies and their interests. This Rather, her goal is seemingly to does not mean that Wood can be read as tailor her vignettes to a reading an unbowed opponent of development of public drawn to intriguing, amusing, every sort, but it does mean that she can or even bewildering anecdotes. Book Reviews 205

Still, Stevenson recognizes that, while lives lived, opportunities pursued, these accounts of life in northern British and challenges answered but also Columbia often cast the region as a symbol to the growing realization among or a quest, those who stayed and persisted northern British Columbians that, if in their own pursuit of the good life were they fail to take up the task of writing responsible for transforming an ideal into their own histories, then others, a lived reality. whose interests may lie elsewhere, Finally, in Vesta Foote Leslie Philpott’s will do so for them. Pioneer Daughter we are offered a personalized remembrance of growing up in northern British Columbia around Fraser Lake that, in its detail, underlines for readers the fact that the testing experiences of non-Native settlement in the region are not relics of a long forgotten past. The conditions on distant and often isolated farms, along with the equally challenging circumstances encountered in some of the small communities in the northern interior within the past seventy- five years, contribute to a chronicle not quickly forgotten. Observing that life was “hard” fails to adequately capture what “hard” meant, particularly to women whose lot was to keep the home fires burning through depression, war, and peace. That Philpott is an enthusiastic amateur historian shines through on every page, but even if this might cause some readers to turn away, she nonetheless offers us glimpses of the human experience – of extraordinary yet ordinary people who, even if they did not scan the horizon in search of a context within which to understand the hand they had been dealt, nonetheless played that hand in a manner that said something about the expectations of those living in a pioneering region. Taken together and read within the evolving body of literature on northern British Columbia, these three books can point readers towards the question of how the region has reacted to and attempted to shape the world in which it developed over the course of the twentieth century. They expose readers to an assortment of intriguing, aggravating, and sometimes amusing histories that speak not only to 206 bc studies

This Day in Vancouver policemen, on the other. Poses were struck, fists were shaken, damage was Jesse Donaldson done, and the whole business wound Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2013. up in court. In the end, Ludgate won 416 pp. $38.00 paper. his appeal to the Privy Council and the island was completely denuded. Seize the Time: Vancouver No mill would ever rise on the site, however, and the few residents would Photographed, 1967-1974 be chased off for good. Vladimir Keremidschieff. Af- Three of the four books before me cover this tempest and each does so terword by Jamie Reid in its own way. What’s more, a fifth Vancouver: New Star Books, 2013. 2013 imprint on Vancouver history 128 pp. $24.00 paper. – Sean Kheraj’s Inventing – examines it as well. Indeed, Haunting Vancouver: the Deadman’s Island War has been a favourite of local historians for A Nearly True History many years. Chuck Davis and Eric Mike McCardell Nicol both related the story in their own respective ways years ago. It Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, is a fact: these events happened. 2013. 256 $32 95 pp. . paper. But as Pirandello points out (and I have E.H. Carr to thank for this Vancouver Was Awesome: reference), a fact is like a sack – A Curious Pictorial History it won’t stand up unless you put something in it. How these three Lani Russwurm authors address the facts of the Ludgate Affair is, thus, illuminating. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013. 160 $24 95 For Jesse Donaldson, author pp. . paper. of This Day in Vancouver, the arrest of Ludgate and his men on John Douglas Belshaw 25 1899 Thompson Rivers University, Open April is outstanding for Learning its newsworthiness. The affair is important to us precisely because it was important then. (And the tale here are some stories about is enriched by Donaldson’s inclusion Vancouver that bear retelling. Take of comments by Ludgate’s terrified theT tale of Theodore Ludgate, an American wife.) Donaldson’s collection covers capitalist in the lumber trade who arrived 356 days’ worth of events (sorry, no 1899 in the city around with a lease for accommodation for leap years) and the whole of Deadman’s Island. He was is driven by what dominated talk intent on logging its stand of trees and around the figurative water cooler. establishing a mill there for the duration. If it made it to the front page, it City officials demurred as they had other had a good chance of making it into plans for the islet in Coal Harbour. There This Day. Which is fair enough. was a confrontation between Ludgate These were the issues that stirred and his employees, on the one side, and public interest, at least on the local Mayor James Ford Garden and a platoon of level, and we certainly get a sense of Book Reviews 207 what newspaper editors felt would excite is an exercise in trying to make their readership and expand their sales. history interesting to an audience Whether Vancouverites obligingly joined that requires entertainment to ease in with a chorus of applause or jeers is digestion. The effect is jarring. Surely seldom stated. That’s not the point. Stories there is no other history book freshly like these, when they happen, become the in print that uses the word “braves” people’s property and shape their sense of to describe Aboriginal males and the city and their place within it. “OMG” to indicate surprise. I surely By contrast, Lani Russwurm positions hope not. (And if you must write a the logging of Deadman’s Island within a tongue-in-cheek spectral history of longer narrative of conflict and mortality. Vancouver then please make room From pre-contact-era mass executions and for Ghost-Buster’s Towing.) gravesites through Ludgate’s axe-men to To demonstrate how academic or the occupation of the islet by the Canadian scholarly history handles the same military, it comes across as a place where topics, Kheraj’s recent monograph not much nice has happened. Russwurm, provides a helpful example. He’s whose Vancouver Was Awesome arose from writing from the perspective of the historical research he contributed to environmental concerns. For Kheraj, the similarly named Vancouver Is Awesome what happens at Deadman’s Island website, is expert at pulling on one thread in 1899 is indicative of ongoing and showing how it connects to another. tensions between city and wilderness, Deadman’s Island is not one story: it is nature and nurture, resources and several. And the ability of so many of recreation. Value systems in conflict Vancouver’s stories to reveal depth and are played out in Stanley Park, the breadth is what, one has to conclude, gives touchstone of the Vancouverite the city its awesomeness. identity. Inventing (enough with the Mike McCardell’s contribution to gerunds already, ubc Press) is richly this discourse stands significantly apart theoretical and nuanced, but it is not from all others. The gimmick of this where Vancouverites will go if they book is that the first-person narrator is are looking for an interesting tale a corporeal ghost, a sapper from beyond about their town. the grave with a passable complexion Indeed, local histories serve a and a long-term interest in the Lower variety of audiences and purposes, Mainland. He journeys about, chatting which is why they are so delightfully up historic figures, sharing historical diverse in their approaches and so experiences, and reporting on them. distinct from the academic variety. Mostly he does so in a voice that is far They offer access points – visual more millennial than Victorian. As to stimulation, a reminiscent tone, a Ludgate (“a rotten guy”) and Deadman’s note of celebration, an authoritative Island, McCardell stretches out the story voice, the development of a tiny over eight pages, drawing on Aboriginal detail that will appeal to a niche accounts of its use as a deathscape, various demographic the existence of which newcomer plans for nineteenth-century few suspected – in a manner that is Coal Harbour, the logging fiasco, its use neither the purpose nor bailiwick of as a smallpox quarantine station, and then most scholarly work. the assignment of a military presence. We learn as much about a city from McCardell doesn’t scrimp on content the purported audiences of “popular” but it is eclipsed by his style: this book histories as we do from the histories 208 bc studies themselves. For example, if we recall Alan the dominance of brown and grey Morley’s 1961 Milltown to Metropolis or Eric – of damp Vancouver skies rather Nicol’s 1970 Vancouver, the tone of both is than summer sunshine. Those who boosterist and the theme is maturation never witnessed and experienced from troubling adolescence into manly or the events recorded by Vladimir’s womanly adulthood. Both are vindications Pentax will probably see them as a of the visions articulated by the city’s kind of sepia representation of their founders. Is it unfair to say that this is what parents’ history and life. Those who the city needed at the time? Morley was were present will be seeking tokens writing when local economic expansion of remembrance”(120). Just as every was finally escaping the gravitational pull generation gets its own “gap,” it is of the Depression and the war years; by also entitled to its own nostalgia. To Nicol’s day, those darker memories were quote Reid once more: “The survivors fading and one could begin entertaining of the sixties protest movements lofty notions of “destiny.” Too, these … might well now be asking how authors were writing guidebooks for a much their idealism, effort and rapidly expanding population, one made sacrifice has actually accomplished up very heavily of newcomers from postwar in terms of effecting positive social Europe and post-dustbowl Prairies. At the change over the past half-century” same time, Vancouver and Milltown capture (120). There is something smug the scriptural high ground for a largely about this comment that wants bourgeois city in which growth was good, underlining: most generations feel the ccf/ndp was mostly bad, the town’s that, in their youth if not at some rough-and-tumble days largely behind it other time, they had hoped to create (and therefore safe to wink at now), and its a better world, whether one in which future safe in the hands of the Kerrisdalean there is no Third Reich or one in establishment. which no interior towns are without To get a sense of how much this has electricity. The baby boomers never changed, one has only to pick up a copy had a monopoly on hope, whatever of Vladimir Keremidschieff’s Seize the arrogant claims were made at the Time. This is the latest local reflection time or since. Having said that, on the 1960s and early 1970s. While Nicol this collection of photographs of was grinding out columns at the Province, placards, politicians, and pop stars Keremidschieff was capturing the news on will rouse memories and stimulate film for the Sun. Nicol was looking back at conversations among people who a glorious past while Keremidschieff was may see in it proof that History with boldly throwing himself into the crowds a capital “H” is not just something and marches that demanded a better that involves other people. future. Keremidschieff’s Vancouverites Indeed, the Donaldson and – certainly those on these pages – are Russwurm compendia and even young and not very impressed with what the McCardell ghost-narrative the city had accomplished. The book’s contribute something similar in this photographs are not consistently well regard. History, as these four authors presented, nor are the captions always present it, is something in which legible, but it comes with a remarkably good everyone has a place and a role, or afterword by Jamie Reid. The poet/activist at least an entry point. No surprise and contemporary of Keremidschieff on that front, perhaps. Not so long observes of the photographs: “One feels ago everything that wasn’t politics Book Reviews 209 was trivia to historians. Keremidschieff’s Flight Was in His Spirit: very intense young protesters of the The Life of Harry Burfield sixties shout (perhaps chant) this out on every page. Now that big league politics Marion Ann Burfield itself has descended into parody, other Kamloops: Rikkur Publishing, topics move to the forefront, jostling for 2012. the attention they possibly deserved all 167 pp. $29.95 paper. along. A generation nourished on a diet of discomfiting disclosures of abuse of children and metropolitan/senatorial First Tracks: The History of kleptocracies, one that sees through Skiing in Revelstoke shopworn phrases like “national interest” and eschews the ballot box for the blog is Revelstoke Museum and more likely to attend to stories that don’t Archives easily fit into a bankrupt master narrative. Revelstoke: Revelstoke Museum McCardell’s ghost-writer is an everyman 2012 203 who takes people pretty much as he finds and Archives, . pp. $45 00 them, and mostly they’re a collection of . cloth. yutzes. A few are gold-plated or at least bronzed but not to the extent that they First Tracks: are elevated far above the wet Vancouver pavement. Russwurm’s Vancouver is special Whistler’s Early History because its people do special things. They are individually extraordinary. The Florence Petersen can-you-believe-it? quality of This Day Whistler: Whistler Museum and similarly hands the reader an opportunity Archives Society, 2012. 205 pp. 365 to say, “There are stories in the Terminal $20.00 paper. City. This is one of them…” In short, it lays claim to a historical vitality that stands David A. Rossiter comparison with any burg. Western Washington University That’s what you get for being a World Class City. It invites opportunities to tudents of British Columbia’s celebrate many things but it also demands past who wish to explore histories that the city shows some character. ofS outdoor recreation in the province Or characters. The English television are faced with a rather thin scholarly personality and former Squeeze front literature. A 2011 special issue of BC man, Jools Holland, returned home from Studies on park history, edited by 86 Expo ’ and quipped: “Vancouver is a city Ben Bradley and Jenny Clayton, and without a soul.” In these four books we find Mark Stoddart’s Making Meaning out something of a reply to that canard. of Mountains (2012), provide points of REFERENCES entry into a vast and fascinating topic but leave readers looking for more. Kheraj, Sean. 2013. Inventing Stanley Park: While academic attention has not An Environmental History. Vancouver: yet been sufficiently stirred to create ubc Press. a wide-ranging scholarly treatment, Morley, Alan. 1961. Milltown to Metropolis. amateur local historians such as Vancouver: Mitchell Press. Stephen Vogler (for Whistler) and Nicol, Eric. 1970. Vancouver. New York: Francis Mansbridge (for Hollyburn) Doubleday. 210 bc studies have stepped in to fill a void and provide his accidental death in 1971, Burfield detailed and intimate portrayals of places spent all of his energies either on and peoples shaped by the pursuit of his skis or in efforts to get others recreation in the province’s varied and outside and sliding on snow. To rugged terrain. Three such works published present this story, Marion Burfield in 2012 illuminate key aspects of the history chose a coffee-table-style book, of skiing in British Columbia: Marion with text captions contextualizing Ann Burfield’s memorial treatment of reproduced archival material such her famous father, champion skier Harry as letters, photographs, race results Burfield; a history of skiing around sheets, and newspaper clippings. Revelstoke published by that city’s museum The overall effect is attractive and and archives; and Florence Petersen’s accessible, although the heavy detailed account of the peoples and reliance on the presentation of activities at the settlement of Alta Lake primary materials leaves much prior to its transformation into the resort interpretive responsibility with municipality of Whistler beginning in the the reader. A benefit of this style 1960s. Although each book focuses on its of presentation, however, is that it immediate subject, taken together they rewards a close reading, particularly suggest common themes around which by those with some knowledge of the a more robust academic literature on the broader history of skiing in British history of skiing in British Columbia might Columbia. For, while this book is be developed. clearly about Harry Burfield, the Marion Ann Burfield’s volume, materials used to tell his story show dedicated to her late father Harry, details that his exploits and enterprises the influence the champion skier had upon intersected with many of the people the development of the resort landscapes and places key to this history. of the ski industry in British Columbia. One such place is Revelstoke, Born in Revelstoke in 1915 to parents Burfield’s birthplace and site of involved with railway operations, Burfield several of his successes on skis. moved around the province several times With First Tracks: The History of throughout his life, following first his Skiing in Revelstoke, the Revelstoke parents and then later opportunities offered Museum and Archives has provided by mountains and snow. In the early 1930s an accessible and attractive in Nelson, he took up alpine racing and overview of a century of skiing in ski-jumping and experienced considerable and around the mountain town on success at competitions throughout British the edge of the Columbia River. Columbia and the US Pacific Northwest. From Scandinavian immigrants Then, for two decades following the on “Norwegian snowshoes” in the Second World War, Burfield and his 1890s, through the ski-jumping craze young family occupied a prominent role in of the 1920s and 1930s, to the rise of the development of the Hollyburn Ridge alpine skiing in the years following area above West Vancouver as owners and the Second World War, this volume operators of the Hollyburn Lodge (now demonstrates that skiing provided part of Cypress Mountain Resort). By the a steady recreational outlet for the mid-1960s, the Burfield family had moved working-class citizens of a town to the Kamloops area to participate in the more well known for its role in the development of skiing at Tod Mountain mining and rail industries. It also (now Sun Peaks Resort). Until the time of highlights the role of Revelstoke as Book Reviews 211 a ski destination to which “ski trains” from by First Nations, prospectors, and Vancouver travelled for competitions and trappers in 1900 came increasingly other events during the 1930s, 1940s, and into the orbit of metropolitan 1950s. While its status as a destination Vancouver as transportation links faded in the late 1960s, due in part to and middle-class affluence (among the rise of Whistler, which provided a host of other reasons) drove the people in metropolitan Vancouver with early settlement of Alta Lake into an easily accessible mountain resort, local the recesses of time and made way for skiers carried on and worked to keep ski the international destination resort of operations financed. Interestingly, this Whistler. volume has been published as Revelstoke Whistler might be considered has once again become a destination with the present apex of the development the opening of the extra-locally financed of skiing in British Columbia. Revelstoke Mountain mega-resort. However, beneath that peak lies a While Burfield’s biography and the lot of bedrock waiting to be exposed. Revelstoke account both deal with the While each book reviewed here has foundational role of skiing in shaping a different subject of immediate people and place, Florence Petersen’s First focus, taken together they suggest Tracks: Whistler’s Early History addresses at least three themes that might the half-century of non-ski activity that be pursued by scholars interested took place around Alta Lake prior to the in undertaking the excavation. formation of the Garibaldi Lift Company First, Burfield’s story (reinforced by and the advent of the ski resort of Whistler the Revelstoke volume) highlights Mountain in the 1960s. As such, Petersen’s the interconnected nature of ski volume explicitly addresses a topic that development across the province: the first two volumes considered in this people, organizations, and events review only imply: ski landscapes, and the connected disparate and distant people who created them, were frequently places. Second, all three books in some sort of relationship with those highlight relationships between involved in natural resource extraction or urban spaces and ski landscapes: land development work. The most detailed urban connections to sites of skiing and least glossy of the three books, First are clear in these accounts. Larger Tracks begins by meticulously tracing towns and cities provided skiers, the lives and spaces of the early trappers, ideas, materials, or financing. Finally, miners, loggers, and small-scale farmers the histories considered here are who connected the valley around Alta Lake largely local and regional in nature: to the settler societies and economies of they are stories of development the in the first decades undertaken largely for the benefit of of the twentieth century. Petersen then local and regional citizens. However, moves on to tell the story of the many each of the main ski operations fishing resorts opened around the lake highlighted in these volumes has and valley from the 1920s through to the become strongly international, either 1950s as well as, beginning in the 1930s, in ownership or the make-up of the arrival of Vancouverites looking for skier visits, as we have moved into summer “getaway” properties. Through the twenty-first century. These her narrative, then, Petersen exposes the common themes demonstrate that gradual evolution of land use over a half the very valuable local histories century: a remote valley known mainly that have been produced over the 212 bc studies last few decades could be drawn together Stefano examines the relationships into a scholarly study (or a series of between these people and their them) that enables us, in our efforts to environment, specifically through understand the development of society and their participation in the fur trade, environment in British Columbia, to place mining, and the railways. our consideration of recreational land use Di Stefano argues that the threat on an equal footing with our consideration of avalanches compelled workers and of resource industries such as forestry and mountain communities to develop mining. knowledge about how and where slides occur, to share strategies of REFERENCES avoiding avalanches with newcomers, and to band together when tragedy Bradley, Ben, and Jenny Clayton, guest struck. Using a vast array of personal editors. 2011. “Provincial Parks.” BC Studies 170 accounts, newspapers, and court . cases, Di Stefano also shows that ideas Mansbridge, Francis. 2008. Hollyburn: The Mountain and the City of risk and responsibility changed as . Vancouver: mines and railways increasingly Ronsdale Press. industrialized the mountain regions. Stoddart, Mark C.J. 2012. Making Meaning Out of Mountains: The Political Ecology of When victims of slides challenged Skiing. ubc corporations’ claims that they had Vancouver: Press. no legal liability, it became clear 2009 Only in Whistler: Vogler, Stephen. . that the law lagged behind changing Tales of a Mountain Town . Madeira Park: industrial relationships. Though the Harbour Publishing. early court cases ultimately ruled in favour of railway companies, they eventually led to workmen’s Encounters in Avalanche Country: compensation laws. For much of this book, the A History of Survival in the Canadian side of the story is Mountain West, 1820-1920 an afterthought. There are brief mentions of British Columbia in the Diana L. Di Stefano chapters on the fur trade and mining, but it is not until the experiences of Seattle: University of Washington cpr Press, 2013. 192 pp. $34.95 cloth. the Canadian Pacific Railway ( ) near Revelstoke that Di Stefano Heather Longworth incorporates an in-depth analysis of Fort St. John North Peace Museum primary sources from north of the border. She expertly analyzes the 1889 1910 inter in the western and avalanches in Rogers mountains Pass and their aftermath but barely of Canada and the United States is mentions what a poor choice this aW challenging time of year. Encounters in Avalanche Country pass was in the first place – a costly provides insight into decision that plagued the cpr with the experiences of the trappers, miners, avalanches for the first thirty years railway employees, and communities that of operation. coped with avalanches. Studying a period Surveyors like Sanford Fleming of time when various industries brought proposed the Yellowhead Pass through settlers to the mountains, Diana L. Di the Rocky Mountains, a route that Book Reviews 213 had moderate curves and grades. Both the and insightful memoir. Canadian Northern Railway and the Grand The book covers White’s early Trunk Pacific later took this pass. Major family years and his part in the Rogers knew of the problems of avalanches emerging milk-trucking business in in the pass that bears his name when he and around Abbotsford during the investigated the route and even went so far Depression – a path that ended in as to suggest tunnelling under it. However, his retirement from contract truck the cpr opted for Rogers’s route because logging at the tail end of the Second it was one hundred and sixty kilometres World War. With the deft editorial shorter, near the American border (and so touch of his son Howard White, would cut off American competition), and the author’s distinctively affable could be built quickly at low cost. Thecpr conversational tone is set centre stage. paid the price for taking this shortcut with Veterans of The Raincoast Chronicles, costly avalanches, expensive snowsheds, particularly those who remember and, eventually, the very pricey Connaught Frank White’s “The Way It Was with Tunnel, which was completed in 1916. Set in Trucks” (1974), will find much here to this context, the questions of liability for the their taste. 1910 Rogers Pass avalanche are all the more Milk Spills fits into the niche compelling. known as the regional press working- Encounters in Avalanche Country is a class memoir, a genre that celebrates thoughtful and well-written addition to the rough and independent spirit. the environmental history of the western Embodied by a rough and savvy mountain ranges of North America. It businessperson of one stripe or provides us with an interesting examination another – a genre exemplified by of the relationship between humans and Gordon Gibson and Carol Rennison’s their environment at a time when “natural” Bull of the Woods (1980) – these rugged disasters are again coming to the fore owing individuals survive by grace of wit and to human-caused climate change. good humour, navigating emerging industries on the edges of civilized society. As White details, with the Milk Spills and One-Log Loads: emergence of affordable trucks, Memories of a Pioneer Truck Driver transportation industries premised upon the railway were destabilized Frank White and allowed the canny – if occasionally underhanded – upstart to break into a Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2013 256 $32 95 previously established business before . pp. . cloth. being squeezed out by the big money and their own bigger hubris. White’s Patrick Craib Victoria own business and social associations with free-wheeling frontier characters ilk Spills and One-Log Loads comes with a price as he ends up is the shouldering much of the risk and M first of two autobiographical volumes work, providing the book’s dramatic relating the life of Frank White, one of tension. the early fixtures of British Columbia’s While the romantic image independent trucking industry. Profanity of the independent operator is a and profundity are laid out in equal frequent trope of rough memoirs, measure, resulting in an entirely enjoyable this folksy retelling of the pratfalls 214 bc studies of trucking culture is more than just an The Wired Northwest: extended reminiscence. Milk Spills is The History of Electric Power, unique for how cannily White interprets 1870s-1970s the often exploitative relationships and unforeseen consequences stemming from Paul W. Hirt independent life. Whether employed or independent, operators like White worked Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2012. 461 pp. on the margins, eking out a living on vague $49 95 promises and handshake deals, and often as . cloth. not came out behind. The author possesses a refreshingly sarcastic attitude towards these “good old bad old days,” and he relates Water without Borders? stories of screwing-and-being-screwed with Canada, the United States, and a certain playful ruefulness. Shared Waters Aside from the conclusion of the book, which, while thematically appropriate, Emma S. Norman, Alice brings it screeching to a disorienting halt, Cohen, and Karen Bakker, there is little worth complaining about editors here. Milk Spills has no pretensions either to absolute fact or to exclusivity of experience, Toronto: University of Toronto and it is wonderfully written. White has Press, 2013. 275 pp. $32.95 paper. gifted us with a colourful contribution to our industrial heritage and a damned fine read, one that ought to be of interest to The Columbia River Treaty academics, grousing old-timers, and the Revisited: Transboundary wider public alike. River Governance in the Face of Uncertainty Barbara Cosens, editor Corvallis, OR: University of Oregon Press, 2012. 453 pp. $29.95 paper. Meg Stanley , Calgary

hese three books are bound together by their examination of waterT as a managed transboundary resource. The first is a narrative history in monograph form. The other two are meaty collections of essays that address history and contemporary policy issues. Paul Hirt’s The Wired Northwest: The History of Electric Power, 1870s-1970s Book Reviews 215 is a chronological history of electrical to modernize the treaty, but the State power utility development in the Pacific Department has not yet announced Northwest, including Oregon, Washington, how it wants to proceed. If the treaty Idaho, and British Columbia from the late is cancelled and renegotiation is nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. not successful, then the Boundary In Water without Borders: Canada, the Waters Treaty, 1909, will – with some United States, and Shared Waters, editors exceptions – once again govern future Emma Norman, Alice Cohen, and Karen management of the Columbia River. Bakker present twelve essays on the Regardless of what happens, British Canada-United States Boundary Waters Columbia, which is responsible Treaty of 1909. The essays are divided for administering the treaty on the into two parts: “Issues, Approaches, and Canadian side, is required to provide Challenges,” and “Flashpoints, Conflicts, flood control for the life of its facilities and Co-operation,” which are bookended on the river. with an introduction and conclusion. The In a field previously dominated by third volume, The Columbia River Treaty narrower and often institutionally or Revisited: Transboundary River Governance river-based studies, Hirt’s The Wired in the Face of Uncertainty, edited by Barbara Northwest provides a detailed and Cosens, focuses on the past and future of nuanced history of power systems the Columbia River Treaty. Its twenty-one in the continental northwest and, in essays explore four themes: “The 1964 Treaty the process, provides insights into and Changing Voices since 1964,” “Changes how, within a capitalist/democratic Informed by Science,” “Rethinking the context, a blended public-private Columbia River Treaty,” and “Governing power system has evolved. This Transboundary Resources in the Face of is neither a declentionist nor a Uncertainty.” This volume also includes an triumphalist narrative: those looking introduction and a copy of the treaty for for uncritical affirmation of a ready reference. All three books are indexed particular perspective will not find and well documented. it here. Readers familiar with H.V. British Columbians will be especially Nelles’s The Politics of Development interested in these books because the (1974) or Matthew Evenden’s Fish vs. future of the Columbia River Treaty is Power (2004) will find Hirt’s approach currently being reviewed by the relevant familiar. While the Columbia River authorities on both sides of the border. Treaty is not Hirt’s focus, he provides When it was drafted, the treaty made a framework for understanding it and provision for flood control and power its place in the history of the regional generation benefits; it came into force in power system. 1964 following Canada-US and then British Hirt very effectively builds Columbia-Canada negotiations. Under on an expanding environmental the treaty, in 2014 the parties can give ten history literature, showing us how years’ notice to terminate it, and 2014 is the institutions that built Richard the first opportunity to revisit the treaty White’s “Organic Machine” were since its signing. So far, British Columbia created in the northwest. One word has indicated a desire to work within the that Hirt is not afraid of is “progress,” context of the existing treaty to modernize and, in his conclusion, he addresses management of the river. In the United the changing meaning of progress States, regional consultations have produced within the context of the development a recommendation to the State Department of the northwest’s power systems. In 216 bc studies this way he points to the effect of changing Canadian power systems, especially values on how the system’s “success” is British Columbia’s, will benefit from judged. the ready access to the literature Hirt The current discussion around the future has furnished. of the Columbia River Treaty tends to focus For Hirt, the past is the prologue: on changes to environmental values. There is for the essay contributors in Cosens less discussion of change, or lack of change, (Columbia River Treaty Revisited) and in questions of finance. In this context, one Norman et al. (Water without Borders?) of the more thought-provoking insights for the most part the past is important Hirt offers is that widespread support for background that is deployed with power system development in the northwest varying nuance. Cosens’s collection fell apart in the 1970s and 1980s not only contains more historically focused because of rising environmental awareness essays than does Norman et al.’s. In but also as a consequence of dissatisfaction a well-written introduction, Cosens with increasing rates and declining profits. lays out the contours of the theme of In Hirt’s narrative, these factors and “uncertainty” in the context of the others contributed to the re-examination Columbia River Treaty. The question and restructuring of the system. Will the lying at the heart of Cosens’s essays is treaty’s restructuring likewise be informed how to define and achieve efficiency by seemingly contradictory forces? In the and equity on the river in the face of end, what Hirt offers are insights into how changing values, legal circumstances, an immensely complex system has evolved and scientific knowledge. In more and changed – sometimes successfully and accessible language, this means how sometimes not. to include environment, salmon, One of Hirt’s stated ambitions is to Aboriginal rights, climate change, write a regional history that includes power needs, and local communities British Columbia as well as the US Pacific in an international agreement. For Northwest. The idea is admirable and offers the most part the focus is on the tremendous potential for extending such a Columbia Basin, but the essays in the transnational analytical reach to questions section on governance look inward related to the impact of differing governance as well as outward for models. Some structures and economies within the authors argue that the treaty is a broad frame of the two neighbouring model agreement that has delivered democratic/capitalist states. As with any remarkable returns to the region ambitious project, this one is not perfectly (variously defined); others disagree. executed; there are factual errors and John Shurt’s lengthy analysis of the omissions – for example, Hirt (350) lists future of the treaty is an especially Revelstoke incorrectly as a Treaty Dam. good summary of the questions Moreover, Hirt’s Canadian analysis relies explored in the essays and of the too heavily on a limited range of published diversity of perspectives likely to sources. Apart from his broadly applicable animate discussions regarding the conceptual insights, Hirt’s achievement in treaty on both sides of the border. The Wired Northwest for the Canadian reader Anyone interested in the Columbia lies in his detailed synthesis and careful River Treaty and the future of the analysis of power utility developments Columbia River should read it. south of the border, a narrative that is In the final collection of essays, often weakly understood in Canada. One Water without Borders? editors can only hope that future writing about Norman, Cohen, and Bakker cast Book Reviews 217 a wider net than do Hirt or Cosens exclusively on a particular point of to explore the 1909 Boundary Waters view or story (as with a number of Treaty between Canada and the United the essays presented by Cosens), the States. Their focus is on exploring “new editors asked experts from both sides forms of water governance that are not of the border to contribute articles on constrained by geopolitical boundaries” “flashpoints.” The result is a nuanced (15) and documenting the demise of “old presentation of perspectives from models” (11) that are inappropriately both sides. scaled and that do not adequately address These books illustrate the important contemporary issues. There is fascinating and dynamic nature of the an undeniable idealism (and hence appeal) past and present of transborder water to the editors’ concluding argument in management. The “old” treaties offer favour of a paradigm shift “that departs up possibilities as well as problems. from the fragmented policies generated Whether they are antiquities to be by geopolitical boundaries to strategic, cherished and carefully rehabilitated integrated shared water governance or junk to be cast aside in favour of models” (256). new tools is a question for the present The tension between the idealism and and the future. reality, as described in the various essays, is part of what is interesting about this collection, but it is also part of what makes Fishing the Coast: Water without Borders? a bit frustrating. As A Life on the Water the case studies and the essays document, and as the editors acknowledge in the Don Pepper conclusion, reality is always messier and more complex than the application of Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2013. 224 pp. ideals. And, in the end, what is really $24 95 compelling in the case studies are the . paper. diverse ways that cross-border water Kenneth Campbell management has evolved both inside and Victoria outside the boundaries of the existing treaty. For those interested in the future here are no books of the Columbia River Treaty, the essays on how on the efforts of the International Joint to catch fish for a living,” Commission to reinvent itself as an expert writesT Don Pepper in his preface to Fishing the Coast 10 body that integrates local knowledge . “None” ( ). What much more systematically into its work might seem a bold statement is, is especially stimulating. Likewise, the upon examination, accurate. In the failures at Devils Lake, where the treaty numerous books about commercial has not been invoked, illustrate how fishing in British Columbia, not local interests can be limiting rather than one author sets out to fully describe empowering. One of the more engaging the processes and skills used to aspects of this book, which sets it apart harvest salmon and other species. from the other two, is its approach to Many illustrate the techniques and cross-border content. Instead of leaving equipment used to catch fish, but individual Americans and Canadians to Pepper goes beyond the gear to understand the cross-border perspective reveal the local ecological knowledge and history as best they can, or to focus learned on the fishing grounds. 218 bc studies

In the past, the stories in Pepper’s nar- acquire a set as close to the line as rative might only have been heard on the possible. Pepper recounts his Blue docks or around the galley table. However, Line experiences in the 1980s when as Pepper notes in his acknowledgment to he was fishing with his life-long the skippers with whom he worked, he is friend and fishing partner Byron “not apprehensive about revealing their Wright aboard his vessel Prosperity. knowledge and secrets, as their time and In the final chapter, this personal their fisheries (and mine) are now long connection focuses the book on past” (217). For much of his early fishing 2004, when the Prosperity and the life, Pepper was beach man on a number old crew made one last voyage in of seine boats. But his other careers, search of sardines in a memorable including economist with Fisheries and trip that ended up circumnavigating Oceans Canada and executive director of Vancouver Island. the Canadian Pacific Sardine Association, Fishing the Coast has an index and bring an added insight to his personal is fully illustrated with photographs narrative. Central to the stories are the and drawings of boats, nets, and geographical variations that affect fish logbooks. Charts and maps allow behaviour and, consequently, fishing the reader to locate the narratives. behaviour. The stories are set in particular Pepper’s interest in the importance locales, reflecting Pepper’s experiences, of local knowledge, along with the such as fishing the Nimpkish dog salmon technological changes that occurred in the strong tides of Johnstone Strait in in the postwar salmon fisheries, 1953, making a curious set at Koeye River in make this a significant contribution 1956 and repeating it forty-five years later, to the history of commercial fishing or seining roe herring among the tricky on British Columbia’s coast. Foote Islands of Spiller Channel in the 1980s. In a salmon fishing career spanning the 1940s into the 1970s, Pepper witnessed Railway Rock Gang major technological changes, particularly Gary Sim the transition from table seining through 2013 the puretic power block to the advent of the Vancouver: Sim Publishing, . drum seine. A detailed chapter on building 196 pp. $99.98 cloth. a seine net in 1953 reveals the depth of skill Robert D. Turner and knowledge required for a successful Royal British Columbia Museum fishery. Pepper also demonstrates some of the unwritten rules followed on the ary Sim worked seine boat fishing grounds, such as taking for BC Rail turns making a set and the length of time rock gangs from 1978 until 1987. allowed before closing up. HeG gained first-hand experience of Of particular interest is the description many facets of railway operations of the highly competitive “Blue Line” and maintenance that formed the fishery at the entrance to Juan de Fuca gangs’ day-to-day work: blasting, Strait. From the 1960s into the 1990s, only tree falling, rock drilling and scaling, the elite fisher vied for lucrative sets along using heavy equipment, and rigging the Bonilla-Tatoosh fishing boundary, massive blocks and tackles. otherwise known as the Blue Line. It took This was hard, physical work, often skill, preparation, and some conniving to undertaken in the most difficult of Book Reviews 219 circumstances and extremes of weather. 84), including a fascinating variety of Rockslides, derailments, mudflows, floods, technical terms, slang, place names, and slumping slopes seldom happen on and some tongue-in-cheek references beautiful spring afternoons; usually they such as “blackfly” or “wasp.” It follow heavy rains, snowstorms, or other includes more than just definitions, extreme weather events, and often in and it adds depth and interest to bone-chilling cold or exhausting August incidents and general background to heat. Yet the BC Rail rock gangs attained working on the railway. a remarkable safety record, achieving All of the photos are by the author, 69,840 person-hours in six years without a as are the drawings and paintings, lost-time injury. This achievement earned which are included throughout the them the BC Safety Council Gold Medal book. For the author, taking photos in 1986, reflecting professionalism and great was a secondary concern because he attention to detail and safety. was fully occupied with the work at BC Rail was a well-run organization hand. Nonetheless, the photographic with a highly skilled and experienced record is surprising and insightful. workforce. Moreover, the railway’s The book is nicely printed with clear personnel knew that the day-to-day text and with good reproduction. operation of the railway was important. As Technical references and an index Sim notes, “what made it all worthwhile complete the volume. was being one of the team of people who I am very pleased to see this kept the track open. The railway is of account by Gary Sim of his work with immense importance to the interior of BC. BC Rail. The writing is articulate, If the trains are rolling, a huge swath of enjoyable, and interesting, and it interior of BC is ‘business as usual’” (10). provides a detailed insight into the The railways are still predominantly a day-to-day work essential to running place of male workers, and in jobs such as a railway transportation system. The those undertaken by the rock gangs, those book is a welcome contribution to involved are often younger men working the history of BC Rail and, more under experienced foremen, such as Fred generally, to our understanding of Hunter (to whom the book is dedicated) the work that is carried out in British and Mel Tutush, who oversaw the work and Columbia beyond the limelight and made sure the men got home. The railway outside of urban centres. depended on them, but most of us seldom appreciated their contributions or just how challenging their work could be. Gary Sim worked along the steep slopes of the Coast Mountains, on the dry interior route to Kelly Lake, and also on the railway line to Tumbler Ridge in northeast British Columbia. He recounts many projects and incidents and the routines and challenges involved. Some jobs were unexpected, such as the salvage of three wrecked locomotives in the Cheakamus Canyon in 1986 (9-31). Railway maintenance of way work developed its own specialized vocabulary. The book includes a lengthy glossary 115( - 220 bc studies

Mac-Pap: Memoir of a Canadian from interviews with him, before he in the became unhappy with the process. He 1974 Spanish Civil War died in without seeing it in print. The Spanish Civil War was Ronald Liversedge, edited by Liversedge’s second in Europe, David Yorke and he rarely romanticizes the day- to-day fighting experience. Their Vancouver: New Star Books, 2013. 224 $19 00 boat having been bombed en route, pp. . paper. some comrades didn’t even make it to Spanish shores. In seeing the Todd McCallum Dalhousie University Canadian survivors of the Battle of Brunete (July 1937), Liversedge “could not remember seeing men first read Mac-Pap: Memoir of a quite so drained of all vitality in Canadian in the Spanish Civil War in France in the First World War” (77). manuscriptI form thanks to the invaluable “Our friends who made it through labour-related holdings of the Special Belchite [August-September 1937] Collections Division at the University troubled us,” he writes. “All were of British Columbia Library. While I changed; even their facial expressions don’t think it is of the same quality as were changed … War is an obscene Recollections of the On Liversedge’s earlier atrocity, and no man comes out of it to Ottawa Trek 1973 (Montreal, ), I remain the same as before” (83-84). While haunted by a sentence in its conclusion: “I detailing organizational conflicts with am equally certain that each [Mac-Pap] Americans and others, Liversedge thought of the experience as the one really remains silent on the brutal Stalinist 159 clean and noble thing in his life” ( ). subversion of the war effort. The significance of this volume lies in Liversedge’s book belongs to several registers. Worthy of first mention a wider genre of leftist historical is the truly impressive contextual material writing of the Cold War era – one provided by editor David Yorke and largely untouched by New Left and New Star Books. Most of the Mac-Paps New Communist ideas. Thanks – members of the Mackenzie-Papineau to the works of (old) Communists Battalion who fought on the anti-fascist such as Steve Brodie and McEwan, Republican side in the Spanish Civil War – ccfers such as Stanley Hutcheson and their supporters took part in numerous and Dorothy Steeves, and almost political and labour struggles during unknown figures like Alf Bingham 1930 the s; Yorke provides biographical of the Common Good Co-operative information for almost every named Association, British Columbia has person, Canadian or otherwise, in the an abundance of histories of the manuscript. The introductory chapter leftist activism of the 1930s. It is details Liversedge’s difficulties finding a small shelf, true, but one larger a publisher for his account, which he than survives for many provinces. 1966 completed in . The Communist Party In recognizing Liversedge and of Canada reversed a decision to publish his compatriots, we recognize the it after a short selection had appeared centrality of the subjects associated Marxist Quarterly in in the same year. with the Great Depression to the Liversedge turned to Vancouver historian emergence of a vibrant social history Irene Howard, who added material drawn on the Left Coast and elsewhere. Book Reviews 221

Tales from the Back Bumper: The book is divided into eight A Century of BC Licence Plates thematic and generously illustrated chapters. The first outlines the Christopher Garrish origins and general development 2013 trends of licence plates in North Victoria: Heritage House, . 2 168 pp. $19.95 paper. America. Chapter is about the production of licence plates in British Ben Bradley Columbia. Automobile owners had University of Toronto to make their own plates until 1913, when the provincial government deemed it necessary to have a y parents still have a set of standardized form, which led to the white-on-blue licence plates in mass production of plates. Garrish 1980 theirM garage, kept from the mid- s, shows that political patronage played when British Columbia switched to the a key role in plate manufacturing blue-on-white plates with waving flag that until 1931, when production moved have now been standard issue for almost to Oakalla Prison, where it remained Tales from the Back Bumper thirty years. until the Social Credit government explains the appeal of these old plates: they contracted it out in 1984. are souvenirs of a time when affixing new Chapters 3, 4, and 5 are about plates was an annual routine, and when passenger licence plates. They cover BC motorists looked forward not only to questions of design (including a new set of digits every year but also to colours, graphics, and slogans), regular colour changes and the occasional distribution, validation, and format new logo or slogan. management. A few sections are Christopher Garrish is an enthusiastic somewhat technical, but the glossary collector of BC licence plates, as evidenced provided at the end of the book by his award-winning and encyclopedic proves helpful. Many readers will 8 website www.BCPL S.ca. He is also gravitate towards Chapter 5, which a trained historian whose research on is about personalized plates. Six- cooperative fruit marketing has appeared digit vanity plates were introduced Tales from the Back in this journal. With in British Columbia in 1979, but Bumper , he aims to provide a social and for decades prior to that the Motor institutional history of licence plates in Vehicle Branch had had a “special British Columbia that avoids getting request” policy whereby motorists caught up in details about colour, design, could stake a claim on specific sets and bolt-hole placement – details that of plates. Favourites included plates he acknowledges are “like catnip for with low numbers, lucky numbers, 19 collectors” ( ). He very much succeeds in and street address numbers. Anyone his aim. This book will appeal to a popular could apply, but Garrish alludes to audience, most of whom use passenger preferential treatment for the well- plates on their vehicles and are unaware heeled and politically connected. of just how complicated and diverse the Chapters 6 and 7 focus on licence licencing process has been. It is also plates for commercial vehicles of use to historians who are interested like trucks, taxis, and buses. Here in government agencies, bureaucratic Garrish steers the reader through monitoring, and the everyday iconography a complicated narrative involving of British Columbia. multiple scales of jurisdiction 222 bc studies within and beyond British Columbia The Grande Dames of the as governments strove to regulate Cariboo competition, to ensure safety, and, above all, to make commercial vehicle operators Julie Fowler pay a fair share towards road maintenance 1970 Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, and construction. By the s, many 2013. commercial vehicles veritably bristled 224 pp. $24.95 paper. with special plates, municipal plates, miniature plates, and decals, but this Maria Tippett clutter was gradually swept away by Cambridge University regional reciprocity agreements and then the Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement. ar too little is known about This discussion of the regulation and artistic activity in the interior of deregulation of commercial road transport BritishF Columbia – past and present in British Columbia neatly complements Trucking alike. Julie Fowler seeks to fill this that found in Daniel Francis’s lacuna by examining the lives of in British Columbia (Harbour Publishing, 2012 two mother-and-daughter artists: ). The final chapter of the book is about Vivien Cowan (1893-1990) and Sonia licence plate collecting as a hobby. Cornwall (1919-2006). They spent This reader would have appreciated most of their lives on the 4,452 more information on how licence plates hectare Onward Ranch near 150 Mile were used to monitor British Columbia’s House in the Cariboo. motoring public, whether by the police in The author makes it clear from criminal and traffic enforcement contexts or the outset, in this nicely produced for banal purposes such as the registration book, that she wishes to free herself of guests at motels and campgrounds. That Tales from the Back Bumper “from traditional essay structure said, covers and to explore different ways to a great deal of ground and suggests that tell a nonfiction story” 14( ). Armed historians of British Columbia would with a video camera and a tape do well to turn their attention towards recorder, Fowler constructed The topics like motor vehicle testing, driver Grande Dames of the Cariboo over a licencing, and the issuance of health care six-year period. Thus she attended a cards. This soundly researched book, with memorial service for Sonia Cornwall its bibliography and meticulous endnotes, in 2006. She interviewed artists like will be helpful to anyone pursuing these Joe Plaskett, Tako Tanabe, and topics. others who had visited Onward Ranch following the Second World War. She sought out Cowan’s and Cornwall’s surviving relatives. Moreover, she orchestrates a series of fictive interviews with Vivien Cowan. Based partly on Cowan’s unpublished autobiography and partly on the author’s own imagination, the “interviews” tell us Book Reviews 223 little of the pioneer life on Onward Ranch, some interesting letters from Jackson which was established in 1919; little of the to the younger woman; and there are trajectory of Cowan’s later artistic career – ample illustrations of Sonia’s work. she only began painting after her husband’s Though both women were clearly death in 1939; little of Cowan’s activities disciples of Jackson, the daughter with the Cariboo Art Society, which she was the more imaginative artist. The established at Williams Lake in 1945; and reproduction of The Onward Barn virtually nothing about the oil-on-board (undated) demonstrates that Sonia paintings that are scattered throughout even ventured, with some success, the book. into abstract painting and that far What the reader does get, in abundance, from being on the periphery of the are the author’s imaginary encounters art world she was very much in touch. with the artist. Vivien Cowan’s smile In 1965, most of Onward Ranch is predictably “charming” (205). When was sold to the Oblate Brothers. the American-born Cowan first saw the Vivien, now over seventy, moved to Cariboo shortly after the First World War, a house near Williams Lake. Sonia “the bare brown hills seemed forbidding kept a few acres of the original to me, being a lover of colour” (66). Few farm and lived there until her death surprises, then. Upon meeting her future in 2006. Though her mother had husband Charles Cowan in 1918, “It was predeceased her by sixteen years, truly love at first sight” (58). Fowler, who she is very much alive in the pages runs Island Mountain Arts and the Arts of this book. “I would love to visit Wells Festival, is not shy about working you,” so Julie Fowler reports her as herself into imaginary exchanges with her telling her, “but I don’t travel too deceased friend. Thus Cowan tells Fowler: much anymore” (80). Sonia and “The work that you are doing up there [in Vivien can be considered lucky to Wells] is probably part of what makes have their memories kept alive in a you feel so passionate about it” (68). In book that gives a new meaning to the another of their cozy conversations, Cowan term “ghost-written.” obligingly advises the novice author: “Do not be discouraged by your first efforts”18 ( ). One of the interviews that Cowan Svend Robinson: posthumously granted sheds a benign A Life in Politics light on her encounters, in the mid- 1940 s, with A.Y. Jackson, who “was a Graeme Truelove most delightful and unassuming man 78 79 Vancouver: New Star Books, 2013. and a pleasure to have as a guest” ( - ). 346 $24 00 During further posthumous musings, pp. . paper. Vivien Cowan passes on a few tips about Joseph Tilley painting methods: “Learning to really see Simon Fraser University shapes and colours in ordinary things, 137 in an active way” ( ). Adopting a more vividly remember conventional research strategy, Fowler when I adds to her portrait of Cowan by quoting first heard the name “Svend her contemporary letters to such artists as IRobinson.” I was attending the A.Y. Jackson and Joe Plaskett. wedding of a distant cousin I had And what of Vivien Cowan’s daughter, never met before and have not seen Sonia Cornwall? The author reproduces since. At the reception, in Burnaby, 224 bc studies the best man made a speech replete with One of numerous things that will crudely homophobic quips about the strike readers is just how many of the local member of Parliament – and the “radical” and “controversial” policies audience responded with enthusiastic Robinson advocated over his twenty- laughter. Over two decades later, such five years in Parliament are now re- blatant homophobia is much less socially ality in Canada’s legal landscape. acceptable. This is partly thanks to the Truelove notes “there has yet to be legacy of Svend Robinson, who made his an exhaustive study of that impact” name not only as Canada’s first openly (5) – work to be taken up by future gay MP but also as one of the most political historians. controversial and principled politicians Readers will learn a great deal British Columbia has ever sent to Ottawa. about Robinson, his motivations, Written with access to Robinson’s per- his colleagues and friends, and sonal archives and informed by a wide will gain multiple valuable insights range of interviews (for a nominal list, see into the internal workings of the 306), Graeme Truelove’s highly readable political system during one of the Svend Robinson: A Life in Politics is the most tumultuous eras in Canadian, first biography of Robinson and will be of British Columbian, and ndp his- interest to scholars and lay readers alike. tory. Without passing overt judg- It is timely, too, given that cynicism about ment, Truelove also documents, in politics is at a record high level and almost unsparing detail, the downright any mention of politicians prompts an ex- appalling behaviour of the main- asperated, “They’re all the same!” That is stream media, including incidents not something that could ever be said about that led to Robinson winning libel Robinson, a politician who not only “talked suits. The book is quite revealing – the talk” but “walked the walk” and, as indeed, each of the twenty chap- Truelove extensively details, often did so ters contains surprises – and ranges at great political and personal risk. widely from Robinson’s physical Born to a Danish mother and an abuse by his father, to the horrific American father, Robinson’s troubled early hate mail he regularly received, to his years saw his family moving to various regrets about some of the decisions places in Europe and the United States he made (such as his failed 1995 bid before finally settling in Burnaby in 1966. for the ndp leadership). Robinson’s His mother’s roots in Scandinavian social staunch commitment to integrity democracy naturally translated into sup- included rejecting his advisor Olivia porting the New Democratic Party (ndp). Chow’s bizarre recommendation to Both mother and son canvassed for its cam- manipulate the convention process paigns. While others leaped onto Pierre by instructing some of his delegates Trudeau’s bandwagon, Robinson lauded to vote for rival Lorne Nystrom on Tommy Douglas as the real progressive the first ballot to ensure his own vic- leader worthy of support and adulation. tory on the final ballot 192( ). When it First elected in 1979 at the age of twenty- became evident he would face Alexa seven, Robinson quickly began doing what McDonough, not Nystrom, in the any good MP of the left should be doing: last round and likely lose, he instead challenging existing orthodoxies, giving chose to concede early and to support voice to marginalized people and issues, her as a gesture to unite the party. and articulating what can and should be That decision resulted in angry criti- done to make the world a better place. cism from many of his supporters; he Book Reviews 225 now deems it a “mistake” (196). This is but a years later he appeared in the results taste of the unexpected candour Robinson of a survey conducted by the Beaver, displays in this book. now Canada’s History magazine, Today’s ndp has turned its back on its as one of the ten worst Canadians. roots and fully embraces the same neo- Scott has returned from the dead, liberalism and continentalism it used to then, to set the record straight and to rail against. In 2013, the commitment to choose Abley, himself a gifted poet, democratic socialism enshrined in its journalist, and non-fiction writer, constitution was replaced with a bland, as someone “who will be able to poorly written successor statement that, as appreciate my work from the inside, Truelove puts it, renders the ndp a “hollow as it were. I mean my real work, of and superlative imitation of the Liberal course” (17). Scott’s real work was Party” (304). In this context, it is almost apparently his poetry. hard to believe that there were politicians In this work of creative non- like Robinson in the not-so-distant past. fiction, Abley has Scott’s ghost drift After finishing Truelove’s book, many in and out of his narrative, engaging readers, regardless of personal politics, will in conversation, explaining himself, undoubtedly have the same feeling I had: and asking for understanding. Abley I miss Svend Robinson. Canadian pol- is critical of dia policy throughout, itics is a much more monochrome place especially the shameful treatment of without him. Indigenous children in residential schools and the continued effects of that treatment on families and Conversations with a Dead Man: communities decades later. He The Legacy of also demonstrates that Scott and his contemporaries, even in their Duncan Campbell Scott literary work, underestimated the Mark Abley strength and resilience of Indigenous cultures. At the same time, Abley’s Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, primary concern in this study is 2013. 264 pp. $32.95. to work through the apparent contradictions between Scott’s Keith D. Smith poetry, which he sees as sympathetic Vancouver Island University to Indigenous people, and his work for the dia. While certainly there is ark Abley was understandably little compassion evident in Scott’s alarmed when an impeccably dressed official correspondence, Abley seems apparitionM appeared in his living room not to entertain the notion that claiming to be Duncan Campbell Scott. sympathy too, like dia policy, can An accomplished and respected poet, Scott be an expression of power, feelings spent over fifty years working in Canada’s of superiority, and a colonial attitude. Department of Indian Affairs dia( ), an From this perspective, perhaps office he led for almost two decades before there is not such a gulf between retiring in 1932. From his position at the Scott’s poetry and his writings as a helm of the dia, Scott oversaw some of the bureaucrat. most oppressive policies and legislation in Abley notes that, because “this Canadian history. While he was generally is a book intended for readers, respected, even after his death in 1947, sixty rather than academic specialists, 226 bc studies it is not weighed down by lengthy pages We Are Born with the Songs of footnotes” (223). Nonetheless, Abley Inside Us: Lives and Stories of has consulted a remarkable range of First Nations People in sources in the creation of this work and a bibliographic essay is provided for each British Columbia chapter. With this depth of research it is Katherine Palmer Gordon puzzling that Abley seems not to have consulted Scott’s writings in the massive Madeira Park: Harbour Pub- dia document inventory in Record Group lishing, 2013. 248 pp. $24.95 paper. (RG) 10 available at Library and Archives Sarah Nickel Canada and on microfilm at various sites Simon Fraser University across the country. His research does, though, allow him to carefully explain the intellectual, e Are Born with the Songs Inside political, and social milieu within which Us is an important and long Scott operated and to illustrate the overdueW book about contemporary racial attitudes prevalent in Canadian First Nations experiences in British society and elsewhere, including the less Columbia. Using narrative interviews than egalitarian views held by Winston with almost two dozen First Nations Churchill and Mohandas Gandhi. But people, Katherine Palmer Gordon Scott was far more than a product of his seeks to break down dominant time or a man just taking orders from discourses of tragedy and despair his political superiors. He pursued a that often punctuate literature on policy of cultural suppression with much First Nations peoples by offering more enthusiasm than did most of his alternate stories of cultural strength, contemporaries. Nonetheless, Abley empowerment, and humour. is correct in stating that Scott did not To bring coherence to this multi- operate in a vacuum. Perhaps the greatest vocal work, Gordon begins by contribution made by Conversations with a creating an analogy of First Nations Dead Man is that it reminds us that, while historico-cultural experience by it is easy to blame particular individuals referencing a presentation on birds for past and present injustices, we must by Salt Spring Island naturalist John all assume responsibility for educating Neville. Neville argues that, while ourselves regarding the situations now birds are “born with a song inside faced by Indigenous communities and for them,” young birds must hear their working actively to right those wrongs songs from their fathers in order to instead of waiting for politicians or fully learn them. Noticing parallels bureaucrats to do it for us. to First Nations lives and histories, Gordon argues that many First Nations peoples were disconnected from their culture through government policies and projects and that, like the young birds, many were unable to learn from their parents. Rather than focusing on settler colonial oppression and culture loss, however, Gordon’s work shares and celebrates accounts of First Nations Book Reviews 227 peoples who have reconnected with or however, my only criticism of this preserved their cultural identity or their work is its failure to truly engage “songs.” with some of the most pertinent This book is organized into sixteen and controversial political questions chapters, each dedicated to an individual’s facing First Nations peoples in British story. Through their interviews, narrators Columbia today. For example, while speak about their work as artists, educators, many of these stories address treaty or lawyers as well as about family and negotiations, they provide little direct culture. Many use their interviews to engagement with the continued comment on and to dismantle prevailing opposition to the treaty process in stereotypes and misconceptions about many First Nations communities. In Aboriginal identity and culture, Indian this sense, some of the descriptions Act benefits, substance abuse, and First of Aboriginal politics seem one-sided Nations government corruption. In the or oversimplified. text, Gordon expertly weaves together While this book will appeal to her own voice with those of the narrators, multiple audiences, many First allowing the reader to experience the Nations readers will see glimpses, conversations between the author and if not mirror images, of themselves narrator as well as the personal reflections and their experiences. For instance, of each person. While Gordon leaves as a non-status First Nations large pieces of the interviews intact, she person of Secwepemc ancestry, I also interjects at key moments to provide was immediately struck by how important historical or political context and Lisa Webster-Gibson, a woman to note personal or thematic connections of Mohawk and Scottish descent, between chapters and individuals. For experienced the Department of example, she includes a short summary of Indian and Northern Affairs’ hiring the Tsawwassen treaty alongside the story process. At her interview for an of former Tsawwassen chief and treaty environmental assessment position negotiator Kim Baird (Kwuntiltunaat), some years ago, Webster-Gibson which deepens the reader’s understanding was shocked when the human of treaty issues and Baird’s experiences (118- resources person exclaimed that 20). there were only three Native women Gordon achieves a nice balance by in her professional field and that the proposing this work as a counter-narrative department had now hired two of to the abundant stories of Aboriginal them (23). I had a similar experience oppression without obscuring the impact at an academic conference, where my and legacy of the colonial experience. “Indianness” seemed more important Many of the stories are steeped in the than my professional qualifications histories of culture loss and abuse caused by or abilities. This book, then, truly the residential school system and Canadian captures the messy and at times Indian policy as well as by the pervasive contradictory experiences facing racism that continues today. The focus, Aboriginal peoples in their daily lives, however, remains on how First Nations while concurrently creating a shared peoples in British Columbia are grappling sense of community and delighting with these continued legacies and using the reader with rich, multilayered, their cultural strength to achieve personal and important narratives. and collective success. Despite addressing both positive and negative experiences, 228 bc studies

Women Caring for Kamloops, pay off family debts, these young 1890-1975 women moved to Vancouver and took up positions as domestic servants. Andrew Yarmie Daughters in the City focuses in Kamloops: Textual Studies in Canada particular on the two “Girls’ Homes” and Kamloops Museum and Archives, that became the centre of social and community life for these Mädchen 2013. 235 pp. $19.95 paper. (maidens) – the Mary Martha Home and the Bethel Home. The oral Daughters in the City: Mennonite interviews collected by Siemens and Maids in Vancouver, 1931-61 her research assistant Sandra Borger provide fascinating glimpses into Ruth Derksen Siemens the Mädchen’s efforts to navigate the (with Sandra Borger) uncertainties and unknowns of the “evil city.” But the centrepiece of the Vancouver: Fernwood Press, 2013. 93 $24 95 book is undoubtedly the voluminous pp. . paper. photographs, which offer a rich visual history of life inside the Girls’ Lisa Pasolli Trent University Homes and the ways in which the Mädchen sustained each other with friendships, leisure activities, and n many ways, Ruth Derksen Siemens’s shared workloads. IDaughters in the City: Mennonite Maids In Women Caring for Kamloops, in Vancouver, 1931-61 and Andrew Yarmie’s Yarmie highlights women’s roles Women Caring for Kamloops, 1890-1975 in five of Kamloops’s voluntary are very different books. The former is organizations: the Ladies’ Auxiliary an affectionate history, one that centres to the Royal Inland Hospital, the on oral histories and photographs, of Women’s Christian Temperance the many young Mennonite women Union, the Red Cross, the Council who worked as domestic servants in of Women, and the Young Women’s Vancouver’s middle- and upper-class Christian Association. The women homes. In the latter, Yarmie digs into local who were part of these organizations archives and newspapers to write a more provided crucial health, educational, academically oriented history of women’s cultural, and social services to voluntary organizations in Kamloops. Kamloops citizens over several Both books, though, are local histories decades, and, as Yarmie argues engaged in similar projects: recovering throughout, they were just as crucial and recognizing the often invisible work of to the development of this frontier caregiving, domestic labour, and voluntary town as were the pioneering men labour carried out by women. often given more credit in historical The daughters ofDaughters in the City narratives. While this is largely are women and girls who settled with a history that celebrates women’s their families in various parts of western contributions, Yarmie does not Canada during two waves of Mennonite romanticize their work. He points immigration: the first, in the 1920s, as out that these middle-class women refugees from Russia; the second, after often operated with racist and class- the Second World War, arriving from based assumptions that precluded Europe. Seeking to make money to help them from offering the same level Book Reviews 229 of care to all members of the community, in society, and in adding to what we particularly to Indigenous peoples and know about immigrant experiences, immigrants. these books together paint another Both books address important themes small corner of the rich, varied, and in women’s history, though Yarmie does complex portrait of BC women. so much more explicitly by rooting his analysis in the pertinent historiography. He draws in particular on scholarship around Rural Women’s Health maternal feminism in the early twentieth century. The Kamloops women who Beverly D. Leipert, Belinda worked in voluntary organizations, Yarmie Leach, and Wilfreda E. shows, negotiated the potential tensions Thurston, editors between their public and private lives Toronto: University of Toronto by translating their “natural” caregiving 2012 472 $39 95 roles into the public sphere and, in this Press, . pp. . paper. respect, were part of a much larger British Megan J. Davies Columbian and Canadian story. His York University analysis of women’s organizations in the latter part of the twentieth century could his volume is benefit from the same kind of scholarly a rare and framework (the work of Margaret Little important collection of ground- and Wendy McKeen comes to mind). breakingT work on a topic too often Like their foremothers earlier in the ignored in Canadian academia. I century, Kamloops women in the 1960s was delighted when I was asked and 1970s were part of a larger story about to review this collection, simply to feminist activism and, particularly, about ensure that it would find a place the intersectional complexities of women’s on my bookshelves. And I was experiences of motherhood, paid work, equally pleased to find old “friends” poverty, and domestic violence. Attention in its pages – academic colleagues, to this wider context would, for example, community research partners, and enhance Yarmie’s somewhat thin analysis unknown scholars whose work has of the ywca in the postwar years. informed my own research on rural The most significant value of local women in British Columbia. There histories such as these is that they are twenty-two chapters in all, in five complicate generally accepted narratives subsections: Research, Policy, and about women’s history. In tracing a strong Action; Health and the Environment; lineage of women’s voluntary work over Gender-Based Violence; Population more than eighty years, Yarmie shows Health, Health Promotion, and (as have many historians) that women’s Public Health; and Theorizing Rural activism was not, in fact, in retreat between Rurality and Gender. Reading Women’s Health the two “waves” of feminism. Likewise, in is like attending a highlighting the experiences of Mennonite three-day conference at which every women, Siemens helps to deepen our second speaker makes you rethink understanding of the lives of immigrant your approach, your suppositions, women who were always expected to work and your understandings of the topic despite the dominant prescriptions against on hand. Truly, the editors are to be women’s wage-earning. In challenging commended for producing a volume the ways we think about women’s place that both communicates critical 230 bc studies scholarly findings and fosters research and of British Columbia, this volume activist collaborations. is an important introduction to our Although a historical image of the remote and rural regions – the vast quintessential Prairie women – poke- pieces of the province that we fly over bonnets, wagons and horses – adorns the or utilize as a seasonal playground book cover, I found little history inside. (always in search of a decent cup of Instead, we are presented with the work coffee) – and to a rural mindset and of psychologists, sociologists, geographers, way of life. I would like to have seen and anthropologists, set alongside more work on Indigenous women, experiential perspectives from dieticians, central to the rural story in Canada, community care workers, nurses, patients, but acknowledge limitations of space. and mothers. The blend of theoretical And, clearly, this book is much more and experiential perspectives, and the than a typical academic presentation. presentation of a diversity of rural women It is a political statement about the across the spectrum of ethnicity, age, and loss of well-being – the cutting off regions, are key strengths of the book and of state support from a way of life make it a valued teaching resource. And that our federal government likes there are important contributions from key to portray in nostalgic “Canadiana” scholars from outside Canada, deepening moments. One imagines the editors the book’s insights into the well-being of not at the computer keyboard women from rural and remote regions. but, rather, splitting and stacking A reader in British Columbia will find many firewood, ordering seeds in the dead points of comparison and intersection here. of winter, carrying the groceries in Such richness suggests celebration, from the car. They know, and they but it is evident that the editors see much care, and their passion ignites the cause for concern. The high-water mark volume. of research and policy interest in rural My criticism of this book sounds women’s health in this country was the late slightly absurd: Why is it a book? 1990s and early 2000s. Since then, funding Book lover that I am, I do not think cutbacks have decimated promising it should be a book at all. I cannot research programs and deprived rural help but think that Rural Women's women of much needed access to health Health will inevitably fall short of services. The Canadian universities at the aspirations of many of its authors, which the study of rural women’s health is especially the ones located outside a vital, live thing can today be counted on the academy. Picture the volume that the fingers of one hand: the University of I have described as a website replete Northern British Columbia, the University with links to statistical data, art, of Regina, Guelph University, and seed catalogues, photographs, audio Memorial University. British Columbia and video interview clips, blogs, is well represented with a total of seven and places to create petitions and to authors from the province. upload links and documents. I read Urban Canadians (and there are a lot recently about “citizen science,” a of us) have difficulty understanding the process whereby American academic ramifications of mental health services or scientists are calling on the general prenatal care being two hours’ drive from public for research assistance, in our front door, and this book serves the one case, in mapping the impact useful purpose of making us see the world of fracking on the Pennsylvania from the rural perspective. For scholars environment. Here the distance Book Reviews 231 between the academic and the activist is of women in Canadian politics. This potentially narrowed. One of the great might explain the telling name of the twentieth-century tragedies for rural book: Stalled. These boxes will prove Canadian women was the demise of useful for teaching purposes. Women’s Institutes as a critical source In her foreword, Sylvia Bashevkin of rural female solidarity and civil does a fine job of setting up the engagement. Imagine pairing this book book and introducing the Canadian and twenty-first-century technologies to political landscape, while Jocelyne recreate “The Institute” – as it was known Praud’s “When Numerical Gains to countless women in rural and remote Are Not Enough: Women in areas of the country – in virtual form, British Columbia” provides a strong fostering community, deeper and wider overview of women’s gains in BC understandings between rural women and politics. She notes that: “numerically scholars who care, and a strong public call and symbolically speaking, British for funding to address the rural health care Columbia can be identified as a “deficiencies” so clearly outlined in this vanguard province” (55). However, book. when we dig deeper we see that gains did not necessarily mean substantive changes for the status of women or Stalled: The Representation of more policy change. Thus, British Women in Canadian Governments Columbia is a good example of how we need to focus on policy changes Linda Trimble, Jane Arscott, and that positively influence women’s Manon Tremblay, editors lives in the province. Well written and appropriate for ubc 2013 360 Vancouver: Press, . pp. lay and academic audiences, Stalled $34 95 . paper. is the perfect addition to classes in gender and politics, to upper- Janni Aragon University of Victoria division courses in comparative politics focused on the status of women and politics, and to Canadian his book is a must-read for people history courses. Chapters convey the interested in Canadian history, differences and similarities between gender,T and electoral politics in Canada. the provinces and territories and Stalled The I cannot say enough about : offer a great argument for why the Representation of Women in Canadian Senate should not be abolished. Governments , which includes chapters Why? Many gains for women in written by well-known scholars, features Canadian politics have been made a strong cross-section of expertise in through Senate appointments. And Canadian political science, covers virtually this only scratches the surface of the every province and territory, and contains book’s contents. Stalled also contains the different constituent groups within a chapters dedicated to the House Canadian context. Each chapter tackles of Commons and Senate and to hard questions about progress to date Indigenous women and their status and what is next for particular regions within formal Canadian politics. or provinces. The informational boxes at The meta-backdrop of the book the start of chapters offer a sketch of the suggests that we have made gains history, and sometimes the lack of progress, but not enough of them. The various 232 bc studies chapters offer glimpses of what is needed; The authors build on an impressive but, ultimately, we need to understand that legacy of geological study and candidates, parties, the electoral system, research, opening the book with and socialization are all at play with the thoughtful references to the works status of women in Canadian politics. We of G.M. Dawson, Hugh Nasmith, have lots of work left to do. Hugh Bostock, C.C. Kelly, and others. From here they follow a straightforward approach with a chapter on geologic concepts and followed by a chapter that relates those Okanagan Geology South: Geologic broader concepts to the Okanagan Highlights of the South Okanagan, region itself. The substance of the text moves south to north and uses British Columbia the overlay of settlement landscapes Murray A. Roed and as points of reference. This is a clever and effective strategy for a Robert J. Fulton, editors guidebook. First, the valley itself Kelowna: Okanagan Geology Com- trends north-south, so this format mittee and Sandhill Book Marketing, follows established transportation 2011. 256 pp. $24.95 paper. routes and thereby helps facilitate the authors’ explorations of the Wayne Wilson geological wonders illustrated. Kelowna Second, residents and visitors congregate in and move between uidebooks present risks. Some points of settlement. Roed and authors inadvertently lead readers Fulton have capitalized on this. They intoG the minutiae that are their passion. ease the reader from place to place Others find themselves indulging in by making ready reference to towns, editorial or polemic. Yet others lose their roads, bedrock features, landscape readers in what might be described as a changes, and geological highlights. kind of organizational dementia. In this With the local setting and context case, the authors of Okanagan Geology established at a regional level, 5 9 South have avoided these pitfalls; rather, chapters through go on to present they have crafted a pleasant journey across a pleasant contrast in the form of 5 the time and space of the Okanagan Valley thematic explorations. Chapter from Summerland south to Osoyoos. plumbs the sensational topic of At the outset, Roed and Fulton are clear geological hazard, which is clearly that this is a “non-technical” review of the dominated by all manner of slope bedrock and surficial geology of one of failure, landslide, debris torrents, and 6 the province’s most distinct landscapes. rock falls; while Chapter examines That said, they provide a handy though the region’s thin but exciting brush adumbrated glossary and a list of references with mining, especially the hard to offer context and to back up their work. rock boom-and-bust mining complex In this way, these technical specialists represented in the Camp McKinney have given us a foundation upon which to and Fairview areas. unfold the geological complexity revealed From the settlement era forward, in compelling vignettes and plain language water has played an increasingly descriptions. important role up and down the Book Reviews 233 semi-arid Okanagan region. Fully two chapters concern the groundwater and surface water that will invariably inform the rate, form, and direction of settlement and development in the region in the foreseeable future. Avoiding the political implications of water management decision making, the authors are nevertheless clear that the area’s hydrological circumstances present a kind of limit to growth for the region. No guidebook on the Okanagan Valley’s geophysical setting would be complete without a chapter on wine and geology, and this volume offers an overview of the topic; however, in the end, this discussion reads a little like a tourist guide to a few select wineries. Nevertheless, while the topic of terroir is highly contextualized and surrounded by its own mystique, Roed and Fulton have at least opened this door and recognized the need for more research on the topic. The authors have employed at least two strategies to make their work as accessible as possible. Throughout the text they have included sidebars to highlight a range of topics and themes that illustrate their points. Perhaps even more important is their willingness to include pertinent historical photographs, maps, and artwork that help reveal their clear passion for what is often glossed over as simply the rocks and dirt of the region. In 238 pages, Roed and Fulton have successfully distilled a complex, sprawling, and disparate range of data into an eminently accessible volume that is essential reading for everyone from tourism providers and educators to hobby geologists and those who have a curious nature about the world around them. Added to Roed’s 2004 volume on the geology of the northern reaches of the Okanagan Valley (Okanagan Geology, British Columbia), this book completes the picture – and does so in a captivating manner.