Book Reviews 117

BOOK REVIEWS

On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race and the Making of British Columbia, 1849-1871 Adele Perry Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. 320 pp. Illus. $60.00 cloth; $24.95 paper.

SARAH CARTER University of Calgary

n this lively history, Adele Perry on and contributes to an international demonstrates that, despite pro­ body of literature that examines I tracted efforts to create an orderly connections between imperialism, White settler colony anchored in gender, and race. British Columbia fits "respectable" gender and racial be­ within a broader context of European haviours, during the years between colonialism in that it was a settler 1849 and 1871 British Columbia was a colony where dispossesion of the "racially plural, rough and turbulent" indigenous societies and resettlement place, where the inhabitants chal­ by a newcomer population were inter­ lenged the norms and values of main­ twined. While this is imperial history, stream nineteenth-century Anglo- it is not an example of the triumph of American society. British Columbia imperialism as in this era Aboriginal failed to live up to imperial expectations, peoples remained demographically Perry argues, because of the persistence dominant and socially central. Perry and resistance of First Nations and the provides compelling evidence for the unwillingness of White settlers. Perry importance of gender in understanding contends that many British Columbians the formation of this unique variant today cherish an idealized image of a of colonial society. Gender figured "White man's province" that never prominently in colonial critiques of was: "In contemporary newspapers Aboriginal societies and in the efforts and conversations, White British to remake British Columbia as a Columbians often long for the days White society. The gender roles and when our society was unquestionably identities in this setting departed from British, when our tea and crumpets and challenged imperial plans and were not disrupted by Asian neighbours ideals. This book also makes a valuable or First Nations demands for land and Canadian contribution to "Whiteness" recognition. When we do so we long studies. These studies have blossomed for a fiction of our own invention" (201). over the past decade and critically A recognition of the significance of examine the social construction of colonialism to BC history is central to Whiteness, which gained its meaning Perry's approach, and her study draws from encounters with non-Whiteness.

BC STUDIES, no. 136, Winter 2002/03 HJ Il8 BC STUDIES

These themes are explored in an culture. In characterizing these rela­ intriguing series of topics, beginning tionships Perry stresses the need to with White men and the "homosocial" look beyond the "happy stories," such culture that profoundly disrupted pre­ as the long marriage of James Douglas scribed gender organization. British and Amelia Connolly, that can "obscure Columbia's White society was over­ both coercive details and the larger whelmingly male because the resource- brutality of colonialism" (62). extractive economy, particularly gold, Seeking to regulate, reclaim, and attracted large numbers of young, reform British Columbia was a frag­ highly mobile workers. A vibrant mented collection of missionaries, culture was formed among White men politicians, journalists, and "freelance and was characterized by male house­ do-gooders." Efforts to reshape White holds; same-sex social, emotional, and homosocial culture included missions sometimes sexual bonds; and such to White men, YMCAs, mechanics in­ practices as drinking, gambling, and stitutes, and sailors homes as well as violence. This culture stood in sharp other means of replicating the political contrast to the White masculine ideal and social functions of the nineteenth- of the time, which stressed self- century middle-class home. For the control; temperance; discipline; and most part the targeted group responded heterosexual, same-race, hierarchical to these efforts with indifference. unions. Although moral reformers and Reformers adopted a number of tactics missionaries did not view these men that were aimed at regulating mixed- as fit representatives of imperialism, race relationships, including assimilation these White men saw themselves as to European sexual and social norms, superior and shared ideologies of racial the discouragement of mixed-race solidarity and exclusion. relationships, and the segregation of Intimate relationships between colonized from colonizer (particularly Aboriginal women and White men in urban spaces). There is fascinating further challenged visions of British material here on the astonishingly ela­ Columbia as a respectable White borate plans for a racially segregated settler society and were the cause of Victoria. All of these efforts failed, Perry great consternation and hand-wringing. contends, because both Aboriginals Perry concentrates on the way in which and non-Aboriginals resisted imported the women and the relationships were visions of a colonial society. Aboriginal denigrated and caricatured in nine­ people continued to live among Whites teenth-century texts. These rela­ and to have extensive social and tionships were symbols of imperialism intimate contact with them. gone awry, and they were constructed Efforts to radically reconfigure BC as deeply dangerous, especially for the society also involved schemes to attract men involved as both their morality White settlers and to encourage them and manliness were seen to be in peril. to become permanent agriculturalists Perry does not write a history of these living in model nuclear families. There relationships, noting the difficulties is an amusing section on the "not with available sources, but she does argue travel" literature on British Columbia that they were not confined to the fur - literature prepared by writers who trade and could be found in the city, had never been there. The introduction in the country, and in mining towns, of more White women was seen as a overlapping with White homosocial panacea for many of the ills besetting Book Reviews 119 this edge of empire: British Columbia for example, where there were similar would finally fulfill its destiny as a reshapings of gender roles and identities, stable, respectable White society. The along with reformers who abhorred presence of White women would such behaviour and attempted to compel White men to reject their impose stabilizing customs and to rough ways and would ensure com­ import White women. The theme of pliance with proper European gender the "social centrality and political roles. There were four assisted immi­ agency" of the Aboriginal peoples of gration schemes to bring White British Columbia could have been women to British Columbia, and each further developed. This is important boatload of women was eagerly anti­ to the central argument, and more cipated and celebrated. But these evidence of their initiatives and schemes too faltered as Perry argues responses would have permitted a that many of these women, like their richer account of cultural exchange male counterparts, frequently failed to and an enhanced sense of how the live up to the elevated standards ex­ Aboriginal foundations of British pected of them. Once again there was Columbia helped to create this unique a sharp disjuncture between colonial colonial variant. Efforts to alter gender discourse and colonial practice. Intro­ relations within Aboriginal societies ducing large numbers of single un­ must also have been an important married women into British Columbia component of colonial plans for posed delicate and difficult questions, British Columbia. particularly as the women threatened Perry weaves together the many to acquire a degree of independence. threads of her argument into a superb By the early 1870s, single White conclusion that reinforces the cen­ women were no longer seen as an trality of imperialism to BC society "unspeakable benefit" to the colonial but that also stresses the need to project: family migration was seen as appreciate the fragility of this colonial a better bet. project. The book is skilfully written Some themes and topics could have and nicely illustrated, and it should been further developed. While the enjoy wide readership not in only in British imperial framework is apt, one Canada but also among scholars of the should not lose sight of the North American West and those elsewhere American setting. This edge of empire engaged in the study of gender, race, had much in common with California, and empire. I20 BC STUDIES

Common and Contested Ground: A Human and Environmental History of the Northwestern Plains

Theodore Binnema Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. 263 pp. Maps. US$29.95 cloth.

MATTHEW EVENDEN University of British Columbia

HIS BOOK IS WELL NAMED: provides, fur traders appear as the Common ground because it is latest group to arrive on the Plains, in- T about a place - the North­ eluctably involved, however unwillingly, western Plains - that played host to a within the broader scheme of military variety of band societies of diverse rivalry. linguistic, ethnic, economic, and The time scale of this study is broad, military affiliation. Over time, different from about AD 200 to 1806. This leads groups sought out the rich bison Binnema to consult a wide range of resource of the Plains, hunting at first evidence and interdisciplinary research. without bow and arrow, and then, in He has examined ecological studies the eighteenth century, obtaining (albeit carefully, made his own judgments unevenly) gun and horse technologies. about the quality of current research Different groups intermingled, inter­ on bison migration, synthesized married, and demonstrated flexibility focused archaeological studies into a and fluidity in the face of changing broad panorama, and explained all of circumstances. Resource procurement this varied material clearly. This is no cycles were developed. Groups shifted small feat. While Binnema's time scale between ecological zones with the is broad, so too is his spatial scale. The seasons, in pursuit of bison herds and Northwestern Plains region has doors: hospitable environments. Contested at different points Binnema traces the ground because groups came into connections between groups tied to conflict in this shared world, seeking Missouri agriculturalists and fur advantage over one another; engaging traders on Hudson Bay. While he in internecine fighting over horses, points to the many groups drawn to guns, and trade; and reshaping the the Northwestern Plains, he also cultural geography of the region well attends to those centrifugal forces that before European groups asserted or drew them away or tied them to assumed dominance. The spread of peoples beyond. European-introduced diseases and the At the heart of this book is an rivalries of the fur trade certainly attempt to redress long-standing destabilized relationships in the approaches to Aboriginal history on region, but they did not erode cultures the Plains. Tribal histories, Binnema nor did they introduce entirely new suggests, pay insufficient attention to patterns. In the long view that Binnema interaction among groups. Each group, Book Reviews 121 he argues, had porous boundaries. For Binnema succeeds unevenly with example, Saukamappee (Young Man), this ambitious agenda. He has con­ whom David Thompson met in the vincingly demonstrated how groups 1780s, was a Cree-born Peigan leader interacted and overlapped, but he also whose life traversed the Plains and shows how group identities could crossed the divide between the pedes­ become fixed and potent during trian and equestrian eras as well as the moments of military engagement. time before and after the introduction And, with regard to the later period, of guns. A tribal or group-centred owing to the paucity of source material history cannot properly explain his com­ he can provide only a limited analysis plex political and ethnic provenance. of individual motivations and events. According to Binnema, Saukamappee, This is an important book that will and others like him, must be under­ set the terms of discussion for early stood within the context of the shifting Plains Aboriginal history for some set of group relationships that gave time to come. Its weaving of human form and meaning to his life. Binnema and environmental themes is parti­ also insists on the importance of at­ cularly revealing, innovative, and im­ tending to conflicts on the Northwest portant. I suspect that this aspect of Plains. Warfare happened. It is im­ the book, rather than the recounting portant to analyze it and to seek to and analysis of the numerous military explain it rather than to ignore it. To conflicts in the eighteenth century, will do otherwise is to do an injustice to mark its importance for a general the humanity and complexity of Plains readership. The book could be used in peoples. In general, Binnema would undergraduate seminars to good effect. like to transcend a "culturalist" approach Unfortunately, the maps have not been and to emphasize environmental, well reproduced, and the Aboriginal economic, and political factors. He maps are hardly discussed. Interested would also like to analyze the moti­ readers will have to turn to an intri­ vations of individuals within a broader guing essay about Aboriginal carto­ tapestry of events rather than simply graphy that Binnema has published to focus on group interaction and elsewhere.1 structural changes. In the background one senses the influence both of 1 Theodore Binnema, "How Does a Map Richard White's Middle Ground and Mean? Old Swan's Map of 1801 and the Arthur Ray's Indians in the Fur Trade Blackfoot World," in From Rupert's Land - two works that Binnema praises and to Canada: Essays in Honour of John E. Foster, ed. Theodore Binnema, Gerhard selectively emulates. Ens, and R.C. Macleod (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2001), 201-24. 122 BC STUDIES

Patterns of Vengeance: Cross cultural Homicide in the North American Fur Trade

John Phillip Reid Pasadena: Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society, 1999. 248 pp. US$39.95 cloth. Contested Empire: Peter Skene Ogden and the Snake River Expeditions John Phillip Reid

Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. 258 pp. US$29.95 cloth.

THEODORE BINNEMA University of Northern British Columbia

NYONE INTERESTED in fur trade aboriginal law. It examines a his­ history should take note of torical-legal curiosity: the Oregon Athese two intriguing studies Country during the period of joint for, by asking new questions about British and American occupation from how law functioned in places without 1818 to 1846. Like Patterns of Vengeance formal machinery for the enactment it scrutinizes the operation of unwritten and enforcement of law, John Philip law. In this period, neither the British Reid offers original and provocative nor the American government made or reinterpretations of legal and fur trade enforced law for Oregon, or even esta­ history. Reid's unsentimental studies blished a system for resolving disputes challenge many widespread assumptions in the region. Neither sent officials to about fur trade and western North the region. How, under such condi­ American history. tions, did the British and Americans It is not surprising that Reid puts regulate their activities and their law at the center of his analysis; his interactions? Reid answers this ques­ training is in law, not history. Reid's tion by examining one of the more skill as a historian, however, is apparent controversial fur traders, Peter Skene in both books. His conclusions, if not Ogden. He argues that the mountain unassailable, are well supported and men maintained order because of a significant. In Patterns of Vengeance general "lawmindedness" that they Reid examines evidence from the long shared. Researchers working in the fur and varied history of the North trade era of British Columbia history American fur trade to argue that ought to read these two important traders throughout North America books. usually relied upon aboriginal concepts In Patterns of Vengeance, the more of law and vengeance, not principles ambitious, Reid delineates patterns in of European or common law, after all of North American fur trade his­ aboriginal people killed non-Native tory. Because its bold generalizations traders. Contested Empire is not about are based on extensive but shallow Book Reviews 123 research in published primary and stantially. Even so, Patterns of Vengeance secondary sources, many specialists will have served its purpose. will find fault with Reid's conclusions. Patterns of Vengeance has its weak­ However, researchers should welcome nesses. In some cases Reid attacks Patterns of Vengeance in the spirit Reid decades-old studies that hardly represent intended - as a preliminary exploration today's scholarship, disparagingly quotes designed to open up a new field of recent scholarship which he really does inquiry, not as the last word on the not refute, or refutes arguments that topic (21). Contested Empire, a more scholars have never believed anyways focused and definitive book, relies on (see 22,118,121). He explains very well intensive research in published and why we should not use the words steal archival sources. Here Reid is more or murder but he always substitutes unequivocal, and his interpretive flair them, distractingly, with words like evinces itself in different ways, but conversion, appropriation, and homicide. both books are bold and original. Simple words like take or kill convey Patterns of Vengeance is organized his meaning just as well. thematically. Twelve chapters deal Fundamentally, Patterns of Vengeance with various aspects of vengeance and explores the nature and function of retribution that traders took after indigenous law in cross-cultural Natives killed one of their own. Much contexts, a subject of great relevance of the evidence is gathered from in Canada and the United States published Hudson's Bay Company today. Reid's insights are valuable, but (HBC) records, and much of that relates his book raises many questions. Curi­ to what is now British Columbia. ously, Reid avers that "there is no need Readers interested in the HBC and to make a fuss over words" (67). He British Columbia will find particularly does, however, state that "Indian law" intriguing the argument of Chapters cannot be law according to a narrow 8 and 9 that the HBC (and companies définition of that word (41). He then generally) were more likely to take proposes other definitions of law, vengeance against Indians, and were Indian domestic law and Indian generally swifter, harsher, and more international law. But how is a skeptic efficient in their vengeance, than non- going to respond to an argument that company traders. By adhering aggres­ Indian law existed only if we redefine sively to patterns of vengeance dictated law} Furthermore, if fur traders and by Indian law, says Reid, the HBC Indians did share concepts of law, actually averted escalating cycles of perhaps they also shared ideas of what violence that plagued regions where constituted a crime. Maybe there was traders and trappers did not have the such a thing as murder. Perhaps it power and organization to respond as would be useful to think about whether Indian communities expected. If Reid certain "homicides" might be more is successful, researchers will now precisely labeled as murder, feud, or delve deeper into the unpublished warfare. It might be worth fussing over documents to explore the questions he such distinctions if aboriginal law is has raised. These researchers would at to be taken seriously. least add nuance to our understanding That Reid's study is a flawed is of such dynamics, but they would very understandable. The task was enormous likely revise Reid's arguments sub­ and the existing literature scant. Much 124 BC STUDIES contemporary research into aboriginal Ogden, the son of a Montreal lawyer, law is centered on oral evidence, but was intelligent and wise enough to it would be a shame if this book did realize that if he remained in Lower not encourage scholars to examine Canada, his explosive temper and his documentary evidence to investigate violent tendencies might well put him the existence and the nature of abo­ on the wrong side of the law (16-18). riginal law before states asserted their In the employ of the North West own jurisdiction. Company (NWC) Ogden became one The famous confrontation between of the most feared and hated enemies Peter Skene Ogden and US trader of the HBC. Not surprisingly, then, after Johnson Gardiner at the Weber River the NWC and HBC merged few HBC in today's Utah in 1825 lies at the center traders wanted Ogden around. But of Contested Empire. During that HBC Governor George Simpson, Ogden's confrontation, Gardiner prompted Machiavellian equal, perceived Ogden's twenty-three freemen to leave the determination to remain a fur trader HBC's Snake River Expedition. Reid's and decided that Ogden had better be interpretation of the confrontation is on his team. Ogden's intelligence, unique and compelling. It certainly energy, and determination had earned puts to rest the stereotype that the him a place in the new order. In this confrontation symbolized what hap­ sense, the Snake River Expedition was pened when lawless American mountain the perfect place for Ogden. It existed men met law-abiding HBC men (122). in part to extend the employment of Reid seeks to unravel the legal aspects some of the officers, engagés and of the confrontation, but Contested freemen who might otherwise have Empire is not just a legal history. Reid caused the post-merger company shows a keen understanding of the problems. The HBC wanted many of world of the HBC freemen. He argues these men and their families away convincingly that the freemen who from its trading posts but not in the "deserted" the HBC did not do so to avoid service of its competitors. Despite his their debts - most of them paid their reputation for ruthlessness, however, debts immediately, or afterwards. More Ogden found the men of the expe­ than anything else, the confrontation dition difficult to control, and his of 1825 showed how ineffectively the flawed leadership nearly cost him the HBC competed with the Americans in expedition. Reid's interpretation may the Snake River country. But Reid not make Ogden any more likeable, explains that the confrontation was a but it makes many of his actions more significant turning point. Only a year understandable. later, even before its officials adequately The Snake River Expedition was understood the causes of the desertion, supposed to make a profit while Ogden faced American competitors destroying the beaver stocks south of again and prevailed. Deserters were the Columbia River. The HBC used trickling back. similar methods wherever it faced Although Contested Empire is not a significant competition. Reid explains biography, Reid offers a compelling, that the "fur desert" strategy was incisive, and insightful portrait of founded upon the logic that fur traders Ogden. Rather than blackball or were the vanguard of settlement. whitewash Ogden, Reid portrays him Officials believed that if the beaver was in shades of grey. According to Reid, extirpated, American trappers and Book Kemews 125 traders would abandon the Snake strategy had been poorly executed, but River country and Americans would because the logic behind the policy never settle there. Part of the Oregon was flawed. Country might be lost but the country Patterns of Vengeance and Contested north of the Columbia would remain Empire are valuable additions to the firmly in British and HBC control. This historiography of the fur trade. Anyone strategy, Reid argues, had its ironic interested in the operation of indigenous flaws. On one hand it was remarkably law, or in violence during the fur trade, successful. The HBC did drive American should read Patterns of Vengeance. trappers and traders out of the business. Contested Empire moves well beyond Instead, the Snake River Expedition legal history to offer fascinating itself provided some of the geographical reassessments of the Snake River information that American settlers Expedition and Peter Skene Ogden, needed. Furthermore, rather than topics of great interest to historians of retreat from Oregon to trap and trade British Columbia. More generally, elsewhere, many trappers settled in both books show that, when driven by Oregon's Willamette Valley. Thus, new and important questions, scholars ironically, "the mountain men, driven still tease valuable insights out of from their mountains, frequently familiar documents. We are fortunate became the original settlers; when they that this noted legal historian has did not, they were often the ones who turned his gaze to these intriguing guided the settlers" (203). The Oregon questions. country was lost not because the

The War on Weeds in the Prairie West: An Environmental History

Clinton L. Evans Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2002. xvii, 309 pp. Illus. (some col.). $29.95 paper.

TINA LOO Simon Fraser University

s CAROLYN MERCHANT points everything from postmodern theory to out, domination is a useful botany, and it raises important ques­ Aconcept for understanding tions about how we do history and how relationships among people and between we understand our relationship to nature. people and the environment. Readers Evans begins by arguing that his­ could ask for no better elaboration of torians need to be more attentive to this claim than Clinton L. Evans's The the role of the environment in shaping War on Weeds in the Prairie West. Exem­ human activity. While the natural plifying environmental history's inter- world certainly was a material and disciplinarity, the book is informed by imaginative obstacle to what people 126 BC STUDIES did and what they thought they could economic circumstances of farming in do, Evans insists it was also an agent Ontario and the Prairie west, which of change, actively responding to human made it difficult, if not impossible, to and non-human incursions and assaults practise the techniques of "good hus­ and "displaying patterns of learned bandry" that had been developed in behaviour'" (xiii). For instance, the Britain over the course of 500 years. As plants that Evans studies competed for he shows, the exigencies of frontier resources with other plants, provoked farming in Ontario meant that the changes in agricultural practice, grew bulk of farm labour was expended shorter and thicker stems after repeated clearing trees rather than weeds. mowing or grazing, and developed Moreover, stump-ridden fields pre­ resistance to herbicides. Given this, cluded any ploughing before sowing Evans argues that, in order to make or row-cropping, and the high cost of sense of the past, historians must labour meant that hiring hands to "confront their anthropocentric biases" weed was beyond the means of most (viii) and broaden their concept of farmers. Thus left to establish them­ agency to include both "human and selves unchallenged, Ontario's weeds non-human sources of causation" (xiii). also benefited from the necessity of Lest readers of BC Studies get the cultivating a cash crop and the absence wrong idea, The War on Weeds is not a of markets for other produce - factors manifesto for plants' rights; rather, it that worked against effective summer is an argument about the changing fallowing and crop rotation. All told, relationship between a particular group environmental and economic circum­ of plants and people over a century and stances in Ontario favoured the culti­ a half. From 1800 to 1945 Canadian vation of weeds as much as, or perhaps farmers and the country's agricultural even more than, they did wheat. establishment developed a deeply The situation on the Prairies proved adversarial relationship with weeds. to be even more favourable to "weed- Their attitudes and practices stood in friendly farming" (78): there, the absence marked contrast and were, in many of forest cover and the presence of the instances, a direct repudiation of those railway facilitated the spread of weeds, they had learned in Britain. A distinctive as did the National Policy, which lent "blindly oppositional" culture of weeds state sanction to wheat monoculture. At first emerged in Ontario and gained the same time, the importance of Prairie its fullest and most vitriolic expression commercial agriculture to both re­ in the Prairie west. There, it manifested gional and national prosperity heightened itself in draconian legislation - noxious the weedy threat. But, as committed weed laws that by the 1940s "rivalled as they were, both government weed various war measures acts" (no) in terms inspectors and farm instructors realized of the emergency powers they granted that legislation and education alone the state - vast and costly government could not win the war: the enemy would bureaucracies devoted to weed inspection only be repelled with the active co­ and education; and, by the mid-twentieth operation of ordinary farmers. Thus, century, a higher proportion of herbicide despite the findings of their own re­ use than anywhere else in the world (186). search into the benefits of crop rotation, Evans argues that this North American government bureaucrats chose not to culture of weeds was rooted in the parti­ call attention to farmers' own com­ cular environmental, social, and plicity in creating the weed problem Book Reviews 127 and, instead, kept their sights firmly commercial farming also shaped how set on eradicating these "arch-enemies people defined and addressed the of Canadian agriculture" (132). In so weedy threat. It is hard to imagine that doing, the state allowed weed-friendly state resources would have been agricultural practices to go unchallenged. devoted to fighting weeds to the extent Indeed, as Evans shows, not only did they were had farming not been so the state policy facilitate the kind of central to Canada's economic health. poor husbandry that had created the These small concerns aside, The War weed problem in the first place but, in on Weeds stands as a key contribution its support of herbicide development to the environmental history of North and use, it also actively sanctioned a America and, in particular, to our practice that was environmentally understanding of the relationship questionable. between people and the environment. Like all good books, The War on Weeds Postmodern theory has led many raises more questions than it answers scholars to ask questions about the - in this case, questions about science utility of classifying the world in terms and capitalism. I would have liked Evans of "nature" and "culture." While some to draw out his argument about the scholars argue that the boundary role of science and scientific experts between the natural and the cultural in shaping agricultural practice - as well is arbitrary, Clinton L. Evans makes as policy - a little more fully, linking the case that the notion of such a it to the interdisciplinary literature on boundary is not useful at all. Weeds the history of ecology. How did the are both cultural and natural, and they experts' emphasis on eradicating and are best understood as cultural arti­ then managing weeds square with the facts, being as much the products of ecological notion of the "balance of human imagination and practice as nature" that emphasized the intercon- they are of photosynthesis (16). To nectedness of organisms and the im­ insist that they are more the result of portant place and role each played in culture than they are of nature is to be an ecosystem? Second, although Evans anthropocentric and to deny their identifies the demands of commercial status as independent historical agents. agriculture as one of the reasons why Conversely, to insist that weeds are weeds flourished on farms in Ontario simply plants whose biology pre­ and the Prairie west, he does not disposes them to flourish in certain engage with the larger debate in kinds of environments is to deny the environmental history about the rela­ links between the cultural and the tionship between capitalism and en­ natural — a denial that allowed farmers vironmental change and degradation. to douse their fields with herbicide It's not that capitalism is responsible without changing how they farmed. If for weeds (!) but simply that market- the war on weeds tells us anything, it driven farming, along with all the other is that solutions to environmental factors Evans discusses, exacerbated problems will only come when we the weed problem by favouring mono­ dispense with the nature/culture culture. In addition, the importance of dichotomy. DV, J i UU1C3

Playing the Pacific Province: Jim Anthology of British Columbia Plays> 196J-2000

Edited by Ginny Ratsoy and James Hoffman

Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2001. 520 pp. $45.00 paper.

JERRY WASSERMAN University of British Columbia

HAT is A BC PLAY? A play history. "Once 'inordinately depressing,' set in British Columbia? the theatre scene in Vancouver is now What if it lacks specific one of the nation's most vibrant," an­ W 1 geographical or cultural referents? nounced a 2002 Globe and Mail article. Does a BC play nevertheless reflect a Playing the Pacific Province makes clear certain postcolonial, west-of-the- that vibrant theatre has been a hall­ Rockies sensibility, a peculiarly British mark of the province for thirty-five Columbian state of mind? Must it have years, and it does so in an exemplary been written by a British Columbian? manner. One who was born here? Or lived here In addition to useful bibliographies when (s)he wrote it? Ginny Ratsoy and and production photos for each play, James Hoffman wrestle with these ques­ Ratsoy and Hoffman, faculty members tions like Quebeckers at referendum at University College of the Cariboo, time or sportswriters deciding whether Kamloops, provide trenchant intro­ Barbados-born Stephen Ames, usually ductions, many intercut with new referred to as "a resident of Calgary," interviews: with playwrights John should be given boldface Canadian Lazarus, John Gray, Peter Anderson status in the golf scores. In Ames's case and Phil Savath, Morris Panych, Sally the solution is simple: when he scores Clark, David Diamond, Joan MacLeod, well, he's Canadian. In the case of the Betty Quan, Colin Thomas, Marie seventeen plays collected in Ratsoy Clements, and director Pamela Hawthorn. and Hoffman's splendid new anthology, In contextualizing each play the intro­ the verdict is much the same. Despite ductions also construct a composite their agonized efforts to theorize a theatrical history of modern British descriptive matrix of pur laine "uniquely Columbia. They chronicle, for example, British Columbia drama," the editors the development of theatre for young maintain sufficient flexibility to include audiences in relation to Dennis Foon's noteworthy plays and playwrights with Skin as well as the emergence of queer any BC connections at all. theatre in conjunction with Thomas's In light of recent anthologies from Sex Is My Religion. They offer histories Newfoundland, the Maritimes, Manitoba, of the Caravan Theatre with Anderson and the North, a BC play collection and Savath's Horseplay and of the seems necessary just to maintain public Firehall Theatre with Clements's The relations parity with other provinces Unnatural and Accidental Women. and regions. Indeed, one of its valuable functions is to showcase British 1 Alexandra Gill, "Lotusland in the Limelight," Columbia's rich and varied theatrical Globe and Mail, 15 June 2002, R9. UUVK. IVCVtClUJ J-^W

The plays themselves are delightfully and Skin; in Diamond's land claims heterogeneous. A few canonical works play NOXYA, created in collaboration anchor the collection: George Ryga's with Gitxan and Wet'suwet'en chiefs; The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, Sharon Pollock's in Quan's Mother Tongue, a meditation The Komagata Maru Incident, Gray's on language and family; and in The Billy Bishop Goes to War, Betty Lambert's Unnatural and Accidental Women, Under the Skin, and MacLeod's The whose awful story of the deaths of Hope Slide - all but Billy Bishop firmly Aboriginal women in Vancouver's grounded in local history and culture, Downtown Eastside is as fresh as the and all widely produced across Canada. daily news. Other major playwrights are repre­ As with all anthologies some obvious sented by lesser known works: Lazarus's candidates for inclusion are missing, clever Babel Rap, a staple of student pro­ among them Tom Cone, Rod Langley, ductions; Panych's marvelous first play, Nicola Cavendish. The most glaring Last Call', Margaret Hollingsworth's omission is Gwen Pharis Ringwood, monologue, Diving', Sally Clark's British Columbia's pre-eminent play­ bleakly funny Ten Ways to Abuse an Old wright until the arrival of George Woman. Perhaps most interesting are Ryga. Although she did her best work the plays that readers might be meeting pre-1967, she continued writing plays here for the first time: Beverley Simons's into the 1980s. And why begin with Crabdance, once considered a master­ 1967 anyway? Although reasons are piece but now largely ignored; Horseplay, suggested, the date is never clearly a witty Brechtian script nicely com­ justified. Still, seventeen plays is a plemented by Caravan Theatre's treasure trove. With all but two of the unique production style; Sherman writers still living, and eight of the Snukal's long-running 1980s comedy, plays authored by women, Playing the Talking Dirty; the smart and moving Pacific Province promises continued Sex Is My Religion. Race and ethnicity vitality and diversity in BC theatre for loom large in Rita Joe, Komagata Maru, years to come.

Faces in the Forest: First Nations Art Created on Living Trees Michael D. Blackstock Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001. 224 pp., Illus., maps. $44.95 cloth.

KATHRYN BUNN-MARCUSE University of Washington

N RECENT YEARS, a multidisci- this is accomplished through the plinary approach to the study of participation of scholars and artists I Aboriginal cultures has become a from varied backgrounds and fields. common model in museum exhibits Rarely is it found in a single-author and academic volumes. Most often, work. Michael Blackstock's Faces in the 130 t>U MUDItb

Forest is a much richer volume than professionals aware of tree art so that its book jacket classification - "Native it can be protected from logging (156). Studies"- suggests. Blackstock's training His allegiance to the secret and some­ as a forester and his Gitxsan heritage times sacred nature of tree art results inform his methodology at least as in his offering detailed discussions of much as does his familiarity with both the artworks without revealing their art historical and anthropological exact location. This lack of specificity methods - a familiarity gained during is not inherently problematic. Of his MA studies at the University of course, one wants to witness firsthand Northern British Columbia. This the carvings that Blackstock discusses book is an expanded version of his and illustrates, but the poor quality of master's thesis; it explores Northwest the images and the black-and-white Coast tree carvings, oral history, and reproductions that appear on the the concept of landscape as well as pro­ recycled paper on which the book has posing a new model for the preser­ been printed are less than satisfying. vation of "trees of Aboriginal interest" Given that the carvings are the heart within forestry practices in British of Blackstock's study, this is a distinct Columbia. drawback. The volume would have The foreword, by Antonia Mills, sets been much improved with good quality up the important nature of Blackstock's photographs illustrated on glossy stock. work, particularly with regard to the One can see just how much is lost Gitxsan community. First Nations when one compares the alluring full- communities can use documentation color image on the dust jacket with the of forest art and other culturally image of same tree presented in a modified trees in land claims and black-and-white illustration within forestry practice negotiations (xvii). the text (131). Thus Blackstock occupies a middle Blackstock prefaces his text with a ground between (1) an unwavering detailed discussion of his methodology acceptance of and respect for cultural and the ways in which art historical knowledge and adaawk (Tsimshian and anthropological theory can be com­ oral history) and (2) a defensible aca­ bined with a First Nations perspective demic position. The presence of the and oral history. He developed his model Gitxsan is felt throughout the book; through personal experience, research, Mills relates how Blackstock's thesis and a sensitivity to his own cultural defence took place in the village of epistemology and the difficulty of Kispiox in front of family, chiefs, and presenting it within an academic elders. His commitment to their discourse (xxi).The first chapters of the concerns and his respect for the book present Blackstock's "prepa­ knowledge the elders shared with him rations" for understanding. Each shines brightly throughout the text. preparation addresses issues related to Blackstock pondered the consequences tree art: the nature of Gitxsan art; the of publicizing tree art and worried that literature on tree art; the meaning of interest in the topic might endanger crests, poles, masks, and dolls; and the artworks. His decision to publish finally the role of the sacred tree as an stemmed from his desire to provide artistic medium. Chapter 3 takes a tour the knowledge he had gained to of tree art sites, mostly in British younger generations of First Nations Columbia with brief stops in the as well as from his desire to make Yukon and Manitoba for comparative Book Reviews 131

purposes. Most interesting in this approach is most apparent. While the section is Blackstock's comparison contrast between land-use plans, between the tree art's original purpose artists' reflections, and elders' stories and its "second journey of meaning," is sometimes jarring, the text proves which it has undertaken in recent years. that "Traditional Ecological Knowledge Interviews with elders provide a glimpse (TEK)" can be integrated into forestry into both these worlds: traditional practices. This is shown in how purposes and the little known but Blackstock uses TEK to bolster his new important role that these trees can play vision for a sustainable management in generating a renewed understanding plan. Faces in the Forest is a revealing of First Nations cultures and their text that discusses a little known art need to protect their lands. The final form, and it also offers scholars an chapter reflects on Blackstock's journey important model when attempting to and provides his vision for a new accord First Nations knowledge the forestry model, which includes an agency it deserves within academic artist's respect for the trees. It is here discourse. that Blackstock's multidisciplinary

All Amazed for Roy Kiyooka Edited by John O'Brian, Naomi Sawada, and Scott Watson Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002. 160 pp. Illus., US$15.95/CND$I9.95 paper.

DAVID HOWARD Nova Scotia College of Art & Design

OY KlYOOKA is one of the most decades, beginning at Regina College important yet most under- in the late 1950s and ending with his R analyzed Canadian artists of retirement from the University of the postwar period. Kiyooka, who was British Columbia in 1991. However, born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, in his career did not have the kind of 1926 and who died in Vancouver, spectacular visibility enjoyed by those British Columbia, in 1994 at the age artists associated with the Painters of sixty-eight was an accomplished Eleven or the Regina Five. As Roy artist in a variety of media, including Miki, one of the contributors to All painting, performance, music, poetry, Amazed for Roy Kiyooka, notes: "Though sculpture, photography, and film. He a central figure in whatever artistic was also widely known as one of localisms he moved in - from the Canada's most important studio important Regina years of the late instructors, influencing generations of 1950s, to the initial Vancouver years of young Canadian artists during a the early 1960s, and through the teaching career that spanned over five Montreal years that led to the Expo 132 BC STUDIES

'70 assignment, to Halifax, and back the bankrupt pre-empting of critical to Vancouver - he always remained thought that such lazy categorizing is that singular figure, 'of but 'not of the prone to promote. In Sheryl Conkelton's artistic and literary movements that chapter, for example, the tensions and would eventually be identified as the continuities within Kiyooka's work, 'nation'-based cultural mainstream" especially between his earlier large (74). This book is one of the first to begin colour field paintings and his later the process of examining Kiyooka's photography, are explored in such a entire corpus. While, at 160 pages way that one can begin to see the series (composed primarily of four essays and of themes and lifelong aesthetic a conference transcript), the book is commitments that resonate through frustratingly short, it provides future his oeuvre. Rather than seeing his writers and researchers with numerous career as crudely divided into an earlier provocative and stimulating insights. modernist phase and a later post­ Sadly, the book is the seventh and modernist phase, what one begins to last issue of a short-lived but remarkable see is a very complex critical attitude BC arts journal called Collapse, which towards modernity, whereby the very was an outgrowth of the Vancouver fragments and discontinuities in his Art Forum Society (founded in 1994). work and career become an interesting Published as a volume dedicated to the allegory of the relationship between remarkable career of Roy Kiyooka, its art and society at the end of the contents are drawn from a conference twentieth century. held in the artist's memory at the Roy Miki's well-crafted chapter Emily Carr Institute of Art and explores the subtle interchange between Design from 1 to 2 October 1999. The the personal and historical specificities conference organizers emphasized the of Kiyooka's art, as made manifest in need to bring together the worlds of his poetic work and which remains poetry and art located within Kiyooka's "concealed," as Michael Ondaatje has work and, as a result, have combined noted, in the formal complexities of serious scholarly inquiry with transcripts his majestic abstract paintings. The of his poetry. This helps to highlight criticality of Kiyooka's art, especially the dialogue and rich interplay between his photography, is developed in a the different media that are central to fascinating chapter written by Scott a fuller understanding of Kiyooka's Taguri MacFarlane, who focuses upon work. Kiyooka, who abandoned painting his photographic project at Expo '70 as his primary form of expression in in Osaka, Japan. Finally, Henry 1969 because of "the fucken [sic] art Tsang's chapter focuses upon his game," could easily be subsumed under memories of participating in some of the over-simplistic rubric of the Kiyooka's studio classes at UBC in the disenchanted modernist who abandons 1980s. the co-opted forms of abstract formalism While Kiyooka's career has not for a more heterodox approach - one garnered the same public visibility as that seemingly points to a radical have the careers of some of the artists rupture between modernism and and groups with whom he associated postmodernism. over the course of his life and work, However, while a self-described his legacy may yet demonstrate that postmodern who turned his back on he was one of the most astute and "progress," Kiyooka was also averse to critical artist/intellectuals that Canada Book Reviews 133

has produced in the last half of the blishing the full breadth of Roy twentieth century. This book is both Kiyooka's contribution to Canadian a valuable research tool and an im­ culture. portant stepping-stone towards esta-

Sights of Resistance: Approaches to Canadian Visual Culture Robert J. Belton Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2001. 398 pp. $59.95 hardcover with interactive CD-ROM and website .

DAVID MILLAR University of Victoria

ELTON'S BOOK/CD is a invoke closure. The CD contains the significant step forward in whole book in hypertext, allowing B Canadian art history and instant cross-reference to pictures, pedagogy. Like his predecessors text, and any part of the scholarly (Russell Harper [1966], Barry Lord apparatus as well as to online dis­ [1974], William Withrow [1972], Paul cussions at http://www.uofcpress.com/ Duval [1972], Douglas Fetherling Sights. This alone is a significant [1987], and Gerald McMaster [1992], achievement, but there is more. to name only a few), he provides a Structurally, Sights of Resistance sumptuously illustrated critical over­ contains Belton's introduction to view. Unlike them, he covers a range visual poetics, explaining his peda­ of art from fine to commercial, folk, gogical principles in exercises that help Native, and queer; architecture good one to discern form, content, and and bad, colonial and postmodern; context online at his website http:// photography, performance, and media www.arts.ouc.bc.ca/fiar/hndbkhom. (omitting only film and broadcast html), followed by a historical survey television). Unlike them, he claims no of Canadian visual culture, its chronology canonical status for his choices and from 5000 BC to 2000 AD, and a hundred allows the reader/student access to a case studies with full scholarly apparatus. diversity of competing critical theories In one of them, Shelley Niro's 1962 besides his own. The lavish illustrations photograph "Rebel," her fortyish (almost 100 in the colour section, Mohawk matron poses (mock-odalisque) indicated by a palette icon beside the on the trunk of a Nash. Belton com­ text or monochrome reproduction) are ments that "'Rebel' also operates as a juxtaposed with italicized quotations verb, deriving from the Latin word from contemporaries of the artists as meaning 'renew the war.' The in­ well as later theorists and Belton's own junction opens a site of'resistance' ... comments, which are based on decades The viewer is solicited, in effect, to of teaching and are intended to make war on white sexist oppression" provoke critical thought rather than to (296). Our White-man response to 134 BC STUDIES this lovely joke from the rez may be on the CD or website), while the bib­ puzzlement - is this Art? Jane Gallop's liography points to fourteen different theory of the "erotics of engagement" studies, including McMaster's Indigena, (suggests Belton) characterizes our Edward Said, and Alfred Young Man culture-bound response as "a search for (in the printed version as well as the meaning driven by the fear of castration CD). The entire hypertext glossary - that is, the critic's powerlessness maybe viewed either at Sights s website, [against the full humanity of the aware or in Belton's ongoing Words of Art at subject]" (296). He aims this Lacanian http://www.ouc.bc.ca/fiar/glossary/ critique lightly, but deftly, at con­ gloshome.html. ventional ways of seeing. A Mohawk Sights s regional coverage avoids the would already know that woman's usual aporia. Selections include the assent must never be taken for granted North, Atlantic, Ontario, Quebec, and because in sex, peace, and war she has the West. British Columbian readers the final say. No odalisque this, subject will find, among other things, a 3,600- to the masculine gaze. year-old Sechelt stone sculpture of The selections and interpretations astonishing power and ambiguity (20, in Sights of Resistance seek to make you 86, 114-5), clues to pre-Columbian aware of cultural blind spots: regional, sacred exchanges between Aboriginal ethnic, colonial or historicist, class- or cultures in the symbols on a Naskapi gender-based. Through juxtaposition skin (138,118-9), a Micmac cradle (142, of images, opposition of theories, 176-7), and Frances Hopkin's 1869 deconstruction of power positions, painting of her voyageur canoe (143, Belton's approach(es) force(s) readers 178-9). You are invited to look for to examine their own position(s), as meanings in a CPR Banff poster (152, well as the cultural clues in the work 230-1), an Ogopogo apple box (155, itself, in order to construct new questions 242-3), the snapshot of a Vancouver and to create a network of possible boatperson ("Tran due Van" 166, 312- meanings. This is very fine pedagogy. 3), or the Ismaili mosque in Burnaby Each of the 100 works selected is (164, 298-9). accompanied by its provenance, a Sights of Resistance is particularly rich glossary of critical theory, footnotes, in invitations to make your own com­ and bibliography. Controversy in social parisons between works - inter-regional, history and aesthetics is emphasized, intercultural, and over time. For not reduced to a univocal judgment. instance, the Mohawk "Rebel" of 1982 Sights is thus a model of critical may be compared with Francis Lennie's inquiry, intercultural comparison, and 1934 mountain-woman sculpture discovery. What is most exciting is "Repose" and Harold Kells's 1935 semi- that the CD hypertext (illustrations, porn art deco "Grecian Nocturne" glossary, notes, and bibliography) (237). It points to clues such as the allows computer-literate students to absence of real women and Abo­ make their own links and to have their riginals in Napoleon Bourassa's 1904- own online discussions, thus consti­ 12 "Apothéose de Christophe Colombe" tuting an electronic common room - blind spots that have particular limited in neither time nor space. importance in the Québécois nationalist The glossary for "Rebel" alone cites survivance ideology of that period but sixteen theoretical terms, ranging from that persist today in Euro-American "Althusserian" to "scopophilia" (found high culture at large. tfootz jxeviews 13^

Challenging the Conspiracy of Silence: My Life as a Canadian Gay Activist Jim Egan (compiled and edited by Donald McLeod) Toronto: Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives and Homewood Books, 1998. 157 pp. $15.00 paper.

BECKI ROSS University of British Columbia

TIM (JAMES) EGAN emerged as a for a more bucolic British Columbia in Canadian gay icon in the 1990s. 1964, Egan never lost his edge. From I He challenged the federal gov- 1981 to 1993 he worked as an openly gay Jnment's refusal to grant him, and his city councillor for Comox-Strathcona partner, Jim Nesbit, pension benefits on Vancouver Island, near his home under the Old Age Security Act. In in Courtney, British Columbia — a 1995, after eight years of lower court period during which he and Jack also wranglings, the Supreme Court of hosted a monthly drop-in for gay Canada ruled that the government had Islanders in their home. infringed on the rights of queer folks What is less well known is the early enshrined in the Charter of Human stirring of Jim Egan's passion for social Rights and Freedoms but that this justice in Toronto after the Second infringement was justified. However, World War. This is the strength of his the court also ruled that "sexual orien­ memoir, Challenging the Conspiracy of tation" must be read into the charter Silence. As Donald McLeod notes in as a ground of discrimination analogous his Preface to the book, Egan began to religion, gender, and race: a solid his crusade against discrimination step forward for queer Canadians.1 twenty years before the first gay Egan and Nesbit interpreted the organization was formed in Toronto Supreme Court's decision as a partial in 1969 - the University of Toronto victory - "a black cloud with a silver Homophile Organization. Egan's was, lining." Indeed, the ruling subsequently to cite McLeod, a "lone voice in the paved the path to subsequent pro- wilderness, and his actions were queer decisions involving same-sex nothing less than revolutionary" (n). equality rights (though same-sex Jim Egan was born in Toronto in 1921. marriage is still prohibited). Honoured As a young boy, he was an "omnivorous for his tireless activism, Jim (with his reader" who lacked any interest in lover Jack) was a marshall at Lesbian sport. A dark-haired, lean, and tall and Gay Pride Day in Vancouver and young man, he worked as a laboratory Toronto in 1995. Though he and Jack technician, assisted biologists in the escaped the swirl of activist Toronto production of vaccines, joined the navy for two years until the end of the 1 For more on this case, see Donald Casswell, Second World War, and later specialized Lesbians, Gay Men, and Canadian haw in the preservation and sale of marine (Toronto: Emond Montgomery, 1996), 371- biological specimens. Through travels 411. in the 1940s, Egan learned about the XJU UV, J1UU1LJ lively gay underworld in London, for the Globe and Mail, Toronto Telegram, Hamburg, and Sydney. Returning to Saturday Night, and Toronto Daily Star, Toronto in 1947, he explored the small, among others. And yet I would love loose web of local gay spaces: parks, to learn more about why he endorsed cafes, public washrooms, bathhouses, an essentialist (as opposed to social hotel beverage rooms, and private constructionist) view of a "homosexual house parties. At the bar in the Savarin personality" and of homosexuality as Hotel on Bay Street, Egan met Jack genetically determined - concepts Nesbit. Within two weeks, they'd energetically debated today. moved in together - a loving union In Chapter 5 Egan reflects on "gay that would last fifty-two years. characters" in Toronto in the 1950s and In careful detail, Egan describes the early 1960s. I found the profiles enter­ dangers faced by Toronto's gay demi­ taining and informative, but I won­ monde in the 1940s and 1950s. He dered about the absence of lesbians notes how homosexuality was perceived and bisexual women in the lives of as a sin, a sickness, and a sex crime, and Egan and Nesbit, and the barriers to how police routinely entrapped men and friendship between gay men and laid charges of gross indecency. Most women. I also wondered about the gay men and women remained deep queer men and women of colour who in the closet, fearful of police arrest, encountered the double jeopardy of job loss, rejection by family and friends, homophobia and racism.2 At the same and denied housing. Egan chronicles time, Egan's frank observations on a the homophobic coverage of gay life class-stratified gay (male) culture were in the mainstream press and the scandal refreshing. Noting that he and Jack sheets, luridly entitled Hush, True News belonged to the "lower orders," he Times (TNT), and Justice Weekly (the relates the ranking of "your opera precursors to modern-day pulp tabloids queens and highly educated university NationalEnquirer and Star). Headlines types at the top, and the ribbon clerks flashed: "Queers Flushed from 'Love' at Simpson's at the bottom" 70. As Nest" and "Unparalleled Orgies of much as Egan's recollections are Perversion Exposed." In 1949, enraged generously sketched, I would have by the anti-homosexual "gross inac­ enjoyed more extensive comment on curacies and libels" in the mass media, the couple's non-monogamy (after the Egan commenced a furious, voluminous letter-writing campaign that lasted 2 For pioneering efforts to consider the fifteen years. Ironically, he was able to history and present of queers of colour in convince the publishers of True News Canada, see Makeda Silvera, "Man Royals Times (in 1951) and Justice Weekly (in and Sodomites: Some Thoughts on the 1953) to run columns that he had Invisibility of Afro-Caribbean Lesbians," in Piece of My Heart: A Lesbian of Colour written in order to educate readers about Anthology, ed. Makeda Silvera (Toronto: gay stereotypes, gay bars, the Kinsey Sister Vision Press, 1991); Wesley Crichlow, Reports (1948,1953), and amendments "Buller Men and Batty Bwoys: Hidden to the Canadian Criminal Code Men in Toronto and Halifax Black Com­ regarding gross indecency law (which munities," in In a Queer Country: Lesbian criminalized homosexual sex between and Gay Studies in the Canadian Context, ed. Terry Goldie (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp, consenting adults). I admire how Egan 2001), 69-85; and Forbidden Love, NFB penetrated the media's silence and lies documentary, dir. Aerlyn Weissman and through letters and articles he wrote Lynn Fernie, 1992. J5oo/z reviews 137 first monogamous twenty years); Jim's National Defence and Foreign Affairs thoughts on the vexed relationship in the late 1950s. In Challenging the between feminism and gay liberation; Conspiracy of Silence, he makes brief and his views on ever more complex reference to similar, McCarthy-led cam­ queer identities, communities, and paigns inside the US State Department, political priorities in the 1990s. Also, but the shameful targeting of queers Jim's lover Jack Nesbit is a shadowy as threats to Canadian "national presence in the book, and I found security" is oddly missing from his myself yearning for insights into Jack's oeuvre.4 passions as a hairdresser, marriage In spite of my unanswered questions, counsellor, gardener, and dog lover. this book is a testament to the power Egan acknowledges the homophobic of community-based initiative. The social climate of the 1950s. But I wish Lesbian and Gay Community Appeal he had more to say about a culture granted editor and compiler Donald steeped in Cold War hysteria and in McLeod much needed financial sup­ images of heterosexual married bliss, the port, and, as co-publisher, the Canadian baby boom, nuclear families, and sub­ Lesbian and Gay Archives supplied urban consumerism.3 TV sit-coms Leave not only access to valuable memorabilia It to Beaver and The Honeymooners, and but also funds. McLeod succeeds in magazines such as Redbook, Good stitching together Egan's own words Housekeeping, Better Homes and Gardens, from numerous audio- and videotaped and Chatelaine, peddled rigid (and interviews, and from Egan's own unequal) gender roles, rewarded hetero- writings housed at the Canadian sexuality, and normalized Whiteness. Lesbian and Gay Archives and at the Happily, Egan's personal reflections on Metro Toronto Reference Library. The the postwar era are richly contextualized book's black-and-white photographs when read alongside two recent social are especially provocative, as are the histories: Mona Gleason's Normalizing covers of early gay magazines Gay and the Ideal: Psychology\ Schooling, and the Two, and copies of letters to and from Family in Postwar Canada (1999) and Egan. An appended chronology of Jim Valerie Korinek's Roughing It in Egan's life, together with three check­ Suburbia: Reading Chatelaine Magazine lists that catalogue Egan's publications in the Fifties and Sixties (2000). and correspondence between 1950 and Moreover, I'm curious about why Egan 1964, smartly round out McLeod's tells us nothing about the federal gov­ compilation. ernment's campaign to purge "alleged" Jim Egan died in March 2000 in and "confirmed" homosexuals from the Courtney at the age of seventy-eight. civil service and the Departments of His relationship with Jack Nesbit lasted fifty-two years, and their mutual 3 See Joanne Meyerowitz, Not June Cleaver: affection and respect is captured in a Women and Gender in Postwar America, moving tribute: Jim Loves Jack: The 1945-1960 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994); Doug Owram, Born at the 4 See Gary Kinsman, "Constructing Gay Right Time: A History of the Baby Boom Men and Lesbians as National Security Generation (Toronto: University of Toronto Risks, 1950-1970," in Whose National Press, 1996); and Joy Parr, Domestic Goods: Security? Canadian State Surveillance and The Material the Moral, and the Economic the Creation of Enemies, ed. Gary Kinsman, in the Postwar Years (Toronto: University Dieter Buse, and Mercedes Stedman of Toronto Press, 1999). (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2000), 143-53. 138 BC STUDIES

James Egan Story (1996) by filmmaker efforts of a White, gay, high school David Adkin. dropout named James Egan who dared In 2002 urban lesbian, gay, bisexual, to disrupt the profoundly anti-homo­ and transgender youth tend to take for sexual ideology of religious leaders, granted queer magazines like Xtra psychiatrists, journalists, and cops West, rainbow flags, the Queer as Folk more than half a century ago. Yet by TV series, Dykes on Bikes at Pride dismissing or forgetting James Egan's events, Toronto's Pussy Palace (women's contributions, we perilously ignore a night at the steambath), the Pink chunk of the foundation upon which Pages (telephone directory), and queer we stand. To me, Egan's extraordinary studies in colleges and universities. belief in the power of homo self- Less concerned about the right to marry acceptance and equality rights for all than the schedule for Vancouver's an­ makes him a queer hero, worthy of nual "Out on Screen" queer film festival, remembrance. youth might be quick to discount the

Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature and Culture Edited by Wayde Compton

Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2001. 315 pp. Illus. $24.95 paper.

SNEJA GUNEW University of British Columbia

HIS IS AN EXTREMELY important When I first arrived in Vancouver in collection and is well served by 1995 and was familiarizing myself with Tits editor, Wayde Compton. the extent of the presence of different The title itself, with its pun on both cultures in the city, I was often told "blueprint" and the "Blues" (that that, unlike eastern Canada, here there defining art form for the Black diaspora) was a dearth of Black people and that avoids any easy essentialist gestures, as this appeared to have been the case is illustrated by the following state­ throughout the history of British ment at the end of Compton's intro­ Columbia. Bluesprint effectively chal­ duction: "Much of the uniqueness of lenges this perception. the work in this anthology is exactly The collection begins with the the result of the shifting patterns of controversial figure of James Douglas, migration and the absence of a sharply sympathetically situating his writings defined regional tradition. If an and his dilemma (in relation to the aesthetic is in development, it may be acknowledgment of his "blackness") best to view it - from the ground floor within the ideologies of his times. As - as provisional rather than as a Compton expresses it in his own poem progression towards an essence" (37). "JD" at the end of the book (272): Book Reviews 139

O James Douglas, 'nigger' and they segregate you out Our own quadroon Moses, loud and clear. But the racism in Should I place a violet on your grave Canada is so subtle, and so elusive, you Or hawk a little spit can't really pin it down" (116). In the For your betraying ways? contemporary period one is constantly O white man, black when out struck by the performative nature of many of the offerings. There is always Of favour ... the sound of a distinctive voice, as in The collection also evokes the the poetry of Mercedes B aines: "I push fluctuating histories and circumstances through the sea of white eyes staring of British Columbia's Black residents. at / me on the bus / as if I were some In Compton's words: strange fruit / as if my vulva was hanging outside of my skirt whispering From the time of the first arrivals exotic / welcomes" (213); or of Nikola in the nineteenth century, BC's Marin, "Was it wolf or coyote who black history has been one of mounted me? She was the chicken I continuous exodus, immigration, wanted to steal by night / He is Eshu. settlement, exploration, desertion, He is primal energy He is trickster. miscegenation, communitarianism, Some people call him the Devil" (261); integration, segregation, agitation, or the extract from David Odhiambo's uprooting and re-rooting and re­ diss/ed banded nation, "he's swept into routing ... If there is a unifying a heavy crush of the doped hastening characteristic of black identity in towards fetid warehouse parties - raves this province, it is surely the talent — n' line-ups in front of hot nightclubs; for reinvention and for pioneering others nosing to cinemas or res­ new versions of traditional taurants or returning from lectures identities that such conditions about the exotic n' obscure" (233). demand. (20) Wayde Compton has expressed the As befits its stated intention of hope that the publication of B/uesprint paying respect to the orature at the will initiate a dialogue and generate a heart of Black cultures everywhere, the more informed debate around the anthology comprises an eclectic mix history of the Black presence in British of genres, ranging from letters and Columbia. The occasion was a sym­ journals to oral histories (for example, posium at Green College (University of relying heavily on the collection of oral British Columbia) in which Compton, accounts collected by Daphne Marlatt together with Kevin McNeilly, was and Caroline Itter in Opening Doors: interviewing George Elliott Clarke, Vancouver's East End (Victoria: Aural himself one of the pioneers of Black History Program, 1979). As readers literature in Canada. Judging from the would expect, the anatomy of racism ubiquity of Bluesprint in bookstores is a prevailing motif, and one notes the across Vancouver, and the fact that reiteration of distinctions made between there were enthusiastic reviews in the the versions that proliferate in the Georgia Straight as well as a centre- United States and Canada as exemplified page spread in the Spring issue (2002) in Dorothy Nealy's extract: "In the of BC Bookworld, one hopes that his United States, the Americans are so desire will be fulfilled and that the blatant about the racial prejudice. You book will reach those beyond the can fight it, because they call you academic world. Indeed, one hopes I40 BC STUDIES that this collection will help to Black residents certainly deserves overcome the usual rifts in communi­ wider recognition, and it has its cation that divide the academic world eloquent testimony in this dynamic from the general public. The distinctive collection. contributions of British Columbia's

NFB Kids: Portrayals of Children by the National Film Board of Canada^ 1939-1989 Brian J. Low Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2002. 288 pp. Illus. $29.95 paper.

REBECCA COULTER University of Western Ontario

s THERE A CANADIAN BOOMER alive narrative" (2). He argues that three who cannot recall those school different, though overlapping, approaches I days when the Bell and Howell 16 to children can be found in NFB films mm. projector came out and earnest but that, in all cases, the purpose was documentary films about salmon to promote "practices and principles fishing in British Columbia, wheat expected by childhood experts to farming in Saskatchewan, and fruit produce desirable outcomes" (16). growing in the Niagara were shown? In the earliest period, 1939 to 1946, Through the efforts of classroom when John Grierson was in charge of teachers, ever grateful for classroom the NFB, films were geared towards the resources of any kind that might hold goals of progressivism. The need for the interest of students, the National improvements in the conditions of Film Board (NFB) has been a ubiquitous rural education and an emphasis on presence in the lives of Canadian cooperative group efforts to enhance children. Now Brian Low convincingly community life were central themes. demonstrates that the NFB, for its part, Young people, under the suggestion had a deep and abiding interest in and direction of adults, were portrayed children. as learning about, implementing, and The film collection housed in the benefiting from cooperative team NFB Archives is clearly a very rich projects of various kinds. source for social historians and, if Within this context, readers of BC nothing else, NFB Kids serves to Studies will be interested in the chapter highlight this fact. In an impressive that describes how the children of display of research, Low viewed 250 Lantzville on Vancouver Island be­ films that contain substantial por­ came participants in the 1944 film, trayals of children and that, over a Lessons in Living. Designed to promote fifty-year period, have provided evi­ the acceptance of an activity-based dence of "transitions in ... imagery and pedagogy leading to acts of social Book Reviews 141 responsibility, this film recreated in structural-functionalist analysis, Low docu-drama style an event that was claims that families and communities reported to have taken place in Alberta were now marked by "disequilibrium." two or three years earlier. Indeed, a For the most part, Low seems to feel very similar tale of the way in which that this disequilibrium resulted from children, through a school project, the loss of male power and authority revitalized a whole community can be in the family and society - a loss that found in Donalda Dickie's 1940 text, was brought on by the (male) mental The Enterprise in Theory and Practice^ hygiene experts and the ideas of the although here the story is told by a early twentieth-century Swedish female school teacher who actually did author Ellen Key. Furthermore, Low it and not a male official from an takes the position that children were education department. captured by the feminists of Studio D, If, during the first period, children who promoted democratic family were portrayed as capable of actively forms and who valued girls. According participating in the redemption of to Low, these feminists ensured that, society, during the second period, 1947 during this third period, "females to 1967, they were portrayed as having emerge[d] to ideological dominance" to be saved through the tenets of the and that even "veteran male film­ mental hygiene movement. According makers" succumbed to the hegemony to Low, a new emphasis on child- of Studio D and "adopt[ed] the rearing and on building autonomous principle of featuring girls in strong youngsters is evident, and the focus of leading roles" (204). One shudders at films shifts to individual psychological the horror of it all. development and a concern for personal NFB Kids has much to recommend happiness and group acceptance. Low it. Although the many descriptions of argues that, during this period, adults film content grow tiresome, Low is (especially parents) began to lose their working with the considerable challenge authority and power while experts of of converting moving images, recorded various kinds prescribed methods for sound, and verbal narrative to paper. bringing up independent children. He alerts us to a wonderful source for Parents, particularly mothers, were historical research and provides a blamed if children experienced problems ground-breaking study with links to a with eating, friendships, behaviour, or limited portion of the key literature on other aspects of their lives. the history of childhood and youth. By the third period, 1968 to 1989, This book should encourage further NFB films were portraying children free studies that make use of the sophis­ from family controls. It is no wonder ticated theoretical insights of cultural then, Low argues, that the emphasis and film studies in order to more fully shifted to troubled youths and to social situate the NFB and its children within issues such as drug abuse, incest, the full complexity of their social family violence, mental illness, and context. suicide. Using an unacknowledged 142 BC STUDIES

Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood Wayson Choy

Toronto: Penguin, 1999. 352 pp. $18.99 paper.

The Chinese in Vancouver: The Pursuit of Identity and Power

Wing Chung Ng

Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999. 256 pp. $75.00 cloth; $29.95 paper.

LISA R. MAR University of Toronto

N TWO VERY DIFFERENT BOOKS, that Vancouver's Chinese population authors Wayson Choy and Wing developed five factions: older pre-1924 I Chung Ng contribute to our immigrants, postwar local-born Chinese, understanding of the forces that have postwar new immigrants, 1970s new shaped the development of ethnic immigrants, and 1970s Canadian-born. Chinese identities in British Columbia. Each faction was shaped by its unique Recent scholarship on the topic has historical circumstances as well as by often focused more on how others its interactions and competition for imagined Asians rather than on how influence with the others. He studies Asians envisioned themselves. These this conflict among generations by two authors richly analyze the history looking at an extensive body of ori­ of Chinese Canadian identity as seen ginal research data relating to Chinese from the inside. Choy and Ng see ethnic organizations, including copious Chinese identity in Vancouver as neither Chinese language sources and inter­ a linear path to assimilation over time views with many important com­ nor solely as the product of mainstream munity figures. opinion. Using a wealth of sources, Ng views Chinese organizations as they show how Chinese Canadian expressions of identity within a realm identities developed and evolved over that was controlled by Chinese. time in patterns far more interactive Though his main interest is in factions than one might assume. that competed to define the proper Both books add new dimensions to meaning of Chineseness, he grounds a central theme within immigration his discussion in histories of insti­ studies: the conflict among generations tutions and their origins, practices, and of immigrants and their Canadian- internecine competition for cultural born descendants. Ng's The Chinese in power. The result is an ambitious Vancouver shows how different groups analysis of intra-ethnic conflict covering within the Chinese population in a broad sweep of time. His vignettes Vancouver articulated many different delineate the struggle between immi­ positions about Chinese identity over grants and older immigrants as well time. Over thirty-five years, he argues as the Canadian-born in the 1950s, Book Reviews 143

Chinese involvement in the politics of his adoption, an event that leads him urban renewal in the 1960s, and to recall his childhood in Vancouver. Chinese engagement in the ethnic The majority of the book recounts his politics of Canadian multiculturalism life from his earliest memories to his in the 1970s. For each of these eras, he departure for Ontario at age eleven. has sketched a partial outline that will Later in life, he returns to his family help orient future research. members and friends to explore the The book's scope necessarily sacri­ meaning of his childhood, researching fices depth. There is little coverage of its details and contexts with a more individual group members or leaders, mature understanding. His narration and no individual accounts of identity, moves seamlessly from the present to which makes for a rather impersonal his childhood view of past events and study. It seems difficult to completely to the personal mysteries that, decades assess the meaning of these groups later, still haunt him. without paying closer attention to Like his previous best-selling book, their membership. In addition, women The Jade Peony, Paper Shadows joins the and gender are curiously absent from specificities of Chinese historical ex­ his discussion, despite women's visible perience in Vancouver with universal presence in community organizations childhood themes. In Paper Shadows, during this era. Further, the pivotal though, Choy constructs history, not pre-1945 backdrop to identity politics fiction, fusing fact and memory in for both older immigrants and the local- masterful prose. His use of detail and born could use further elaboration. acknowledgments testify to a meti­ Finally, Ng's focus on Chinese organ­ culously researched past through izations would be strengthened by a interviews and archival research. The more sustained analysis of how identity book ultimately integrates these per­ was linked with political power. spectives in ways he could have never In contrast, Wayson Choy's Paper fully understood as a young boy, im­ Shadows traces the question of Chinese mersing the reader in a finely crafted Canadian identity in the author's own portrait of his childhood world of family, life. Choy's deeply researched, poetic friends, and school. memoir of growing up in Vancouver The memoir serves as a rich educa­ revisits his early childhood, richly tional resource, particularly as an analyzing the personal and collective account of a son of immigrants. Like contours of his life as a young boy in other youth of his era, Choy chose to the 1940s and 1950s. The result is an rebel against his parents' attempts to astonishing historical narrative of teach him the Chinese language and personal discovery. His poetic style declared his intention to be "Canadian." effortlessly weaves sophisticated con­ Such matters of the heart, he soon textual analyses of the era into an discovered, are not so simple. China­ engaging story. Though a memoir, it town, his family, his friends, and his makes an important contribution to language never truly left him, and so, Chinese Canadian history, and it in Paper Shadows, he returns. History deserves a wide audience, including too proves to have more mysteries than the general public, children, and does a novelist's fiction. In the end, his Canadian historians. quest to discover the meaning of his Paper Shadows opens with Choy's own life and his family's past leaves middle-aged discovery of the secret of much to the imagination. 144 BC STUDIES

Both Choy's Paper Shadows and imagined their identities while being Ng's The Chinese in Vancouver attest to engaged in many layers of community the increasing maturity of Chinese interaction. More books like these Canadian historical writing. They would continue to build the nascent analyze identity as complex - rooted field of Chinese Canadian history and in time, generation, locale, and inter­ would also make important contri­ action with other Chinese and European butions to Canadian immigration groups. To sum up, Chinese Canadians history.

Ships of Steely A British Columbia Shipbuilder's Story T. A. McLaren and Vickie Jensen Madeira Park, British Columbia: Harbour Publishing. 2000. 288 pp. Mus. $39.95 cloth.

ROBERT D. TURNER

Curator Emeritusy Royal British Columbia Museum

and

KENNETH MACKENZIE Canadian Nautical Research Society

HIPS OF STEEL tells the story of the famous "Park" vessels, were designed the careers of two men, William for mass production, and, although S Dick McLaren and his son their construction produced a surge in Thomas Arthur McLaren, and is set shipyard activity, it did not prepare the within the context of British Columbia's industry for the postwar period. "The steel shipbuilding industry, from the experience," notes Arthur McLaren, 1920s through the 1990s. The McLaren "was doing the same ship fifty-five story begins in Scotland with the ship­ times, not building fifty-five different building endeavours of W.D. McLaren, ships" (69). The details of the wartime which included converting war surplus program are fascinating and well minesweepers into passenger vessels illustrated, but more credit should for the Union Steamship Company. In have been given to the way that H.R. 1927 McLaren moved to Vancouver MacMillan and his West Coast cronies and worked as a consulting engineer. stole the march on eastern ship­ The Second World War created an builders when establishing a Second urgent need for merchant ships, and World War shipbuilding program. W.D. McLaren served as manager of After the war Arthur McLaren the newly established West Coast decided, against sound advice, to Shipbuilders. His son Arthur, as a new establish his own shipyard. And, with graduate of UBC's engineering school, considerable perseverance and imagin­ joined him. The wartime ships, including ation, he succeeded in making it a Book Reviews 145

sound and innovative company. The supply vessels, ice-breakers, and book provides a detailed record of similar ships. Allied's production up to the con­ Perhaps one of the most useful struction of British Columbia's infamous features of this book is the many in­ "fast ferries," parts of which were built sights it provides into the nature of by Allied, but the discussion of these shipbuilding, ship design, ship con­ vessels and what went wrong with the struction for remote locations and the program is very limited. operation of a shipyard on the Pacific Ships of S'teel recounts the details of Coast. Offering numerous details and design and construction of many im­ perspectives that would be difficult or portant BC vessels, particularly from impossible to find in other published the post-Second World War era. These sources, the book includes appendices include the Sidney and Tsawwassen, the that list all the vessels built by Allied first vessels built for BC Ferries; the as well as by other shipyards in British îtxxyAnscomb, with a service record of Columbia. over fifty years on Kootenay Lake; the This highly recommended and very Omineca Princess, built in 1976 for readable book presents useful intro­ service on Francois Lake; the successful ductory and contextual material and a Spirit Class BC Ferries; and a host of large selection of diverse illustrations less obvious or little known, but col­ that depict not only a wide range of lectively very important, tugs, barges, vessels but also many aspects of ship­ special purpose craft, and fishing building. Our quibbles are minor: the vessels. organization of chapters, which are Although Ships of Steel may be a BC defined both chronologically and top­ shipbuilder's story, the book has broader ically, is sometimes confusing; no refer­ interest as Allied Shipbuilders became ences are included for the text; and particularly expert at building vessels some of the shipbuilding terminology that could be constructed, cut into may be too specialized for general sections, and then reassembled in remote readers. Finally, we must take issue with areas such as the Upper MacKenzie T.A. McLaren's comment, (50-1) "You River and the Interior of British don't build ships on the sides of hills," Columbia. Allied's accomplishments in to which Ken Mackenzie retorts, "Oh sending sectioned vessels to Waterways, yeah? There is a successful aluminum Alberta, were impressive, as were the shipyard halfway up Mt. Maxwell on many vessels it built for use on the Saltspring Island." Perhaps the Saltspring lakes and rivers of British Columbia. Islanders talked to Arthur McLaren Similarly, Allied became a major builder about the difficulties he had when for Arctic and North Sea oil exploration launching vessels on the flat lands in the 1970s and constructed many around Burrard Inlet. 145 BC STUDIES

Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerrilla

Ann Hansen

Toronto: Between the Lines, 2001. 493 pp. $19.95 paper.

Guilty of Everything

John Armstrong Vancouver: Transmontanus/New Star Books, 2001. 98 pp. CDN$i6/us$i2 paper.

SCOTT BEADLE Vancouver

HE AUTHORS OF Direct Action that were formed between some of the and Guilty of Everything made city's radical activists and punks in the Ttheir mark in BC popular late 1970s. culture during the first few years of the Although it is possible that Hansen 1980s. John Armstrong was a creative and Armstrong crossed paths at a punk force in Vancouver's independent rock concert at the Oddfellows Hall, or music scene, while Ann Hansen made rubbed elbows at the Smilin' Buddha her mark with a bang — literally — as a Cabaret, they probably did not know member of the urban guerrilla group each other at all. Armstrong and Hansen Direct Action, better known after their tell two different, but not necessarily arrest as the Squamish Five. opposed, sides of the punk experience. Authors Hansen and Armstrong Hansen's story is concerned with the revisit and confront their respective nature of political activism, commitment, cultural legacies. Both works are self-doubt, and the gritty day-to-day autobiographical and explore a narrow realities of being an urban guerrilla. segment of the authors'lives soon after Armstrong, mirroring the nature of his they had come of age. musical contributions, is totally Some reviewers will inevitably link unconcerned with punk's political Direct Action and Guilty of Everything dimensions; rather, he focuses on the with Vancouver's punk rock subculture romance of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle - indeed, that is why they are being and its outlaw mystique. Their stories reviewed together. In Armstrong's case are representative of the polarities of the punk link is self-evident because attitudes that existed at the core of the his story directly concerns his role in punk experience: one camp saw punk Vancouver's then developing punk as a musical and artistic rebellion - an scene. Hansen, on the other hand, is embattled, romantic reclamation of only distantly and accidentally related rock's lost passions; while the other to punk, so this linkage is a bit camp saw it as a socio-political misleading. However, Direct Action rebellion, an expression of the desire does offer a glimpse of the relationships for change, and an opportunity for noon i^evieivs ±4/

radical agitation. In punk's early days, Taylor was already a veteran of a these tendencies formed a more or less Yippie-inspired group called the natural alliance; but during the 1980s Groucho-Marxists. In 1977 Taylor the punk movement began splintering "pied" a visiting Joe Clark at UBC, the across these and other lines. first of several pie-throwing incidents While the audience for Guilty of for which the Groucho-Marxists were Everything will be more or less limited notorious in Vancouver. The Grouchos to those interested in the history of were a radical clique comprised of Vancouver's independent rock music, student activists, Yippies, former the appeal and significance of Direct Georgia Straight staffers, and founders Action goes well beyond its minor but of the anarchist paper Open Road. In interesting connections with Vancouver 1978 the Anarchist Party of Canada punk rock. It should be remembered (Groucho-Marxist) organized a May that, during their spectacular trial, Day anarchist festival in Stanley Park Hansen and her co-conspirators were that included a few local punk bands. nearly household names in Canada, The organizers followed that up with making headlines as the country's first an Anti-Canada Day punk rock concert post-FLQ_guerrilla group. In 1982 Ann in Stanley Park in July. These events Hansen, Brent Taylor, Doug Stewart, marked the start of a lengthy rela­ Julie Belmas, and Gerry Hannah tionship between this group of activists began a bombing and arson campaign and some key punk rockers. Two that eventually culminated in their members of this anarchist-Yippie axis, arrest in January 1983 on a highway just Ken Lester and David Spaner, became north of Vancouver. Dubbed the the managers of seminal Vancouver Squamish Five (after their place of punk bands DOA and the Subhumans, capture) by local news media, they respectively. were charged with blowing up a BC Future Direct Action members Gerry Hydro substation on Vancouver Island, Hannah and Julie Belmas were both blowing up a Litton Systems plant in active in the punk scene. Hannah, as Toronto, and helping to fire-bomb some Gerry Useless, was a bass player and one Red Hot Video stores in Vancouver. of the songwriters for the Subhumans. They were finally apprehended while Belmas also played bass, and, in 1980, in the final stages of planning an she co-wrote a punk "fanzine" called armed robbery of a Brinks guard in a Opposition. After Hannah quit the Burnaby shopping mall. Subhumans in 1981, the two began Hansen was an activist in the Toronto living together. It was Brent Taylor area in the mid-1970s. At a political con­ who introduced Hannah and Belmas ference in Toronto she met Vancouverite into the small circle of political Brent Taylor, and she was drawn to his activists that included Ann Hansen infectious energy and activist incli­ and Doug Stewart. nations. They became fast friends, and In Direct Action, Hansen weaves a a couple of years later Hansen visited tale that is very readable and perhaps Vancouver and looked up Taylor to surprisingly enjoyable. She carries the renew their acquaintance. Hansen reader effortlessly through a cinematic- stayed in Vancouver and eventually style narrative, populated by believably moved in with Taylor as their mutual complicated characters, and she builds political and intellectual attraction suspense like an accomplished fiction transformed into romantic involvement. writer. Its only weakness is that, 148 BC STUDIES because Hansen is from Toronto, she Where Hansen is able to describe inner is not able to provide a historical turmoil and self-doubt, Armstrong's background or context for Vancouver's writing is notable for its lack of anarchist-activist underground. She personal insight. There is little vulner­ engages in some slight fictionalization ability to Armstrong's Buck Cherry - for instance, a composite police in­ character; there is no awkward trans­ vestigator character was created to formation or embarrassing past. Any help tell "the other side" - but this does embarrassing revelations invariably not impede an essential sense of ac­ involve other people, not Armstrong. curacy. The quality of Hansen's writing One of the most interesting things is much greater than is usually expected about punk was the way that indi­ for works of this nature. viduals who were often outcasts or Sadly, the same cannot be said for misfits felt they could reinvent them­ John Armstrong's slim memoir. As selves, carve new personae, lifestyles, Buck Cherry, Armstrong was the and avenues for self-expression within singer, guitarist, and songwriter for the the precincts of an encouraging sub­ Modernettes, arguably Vancouver's culture. Armstrong seems to want us finest pop-punk band of the early to believe that he has always been "cool." 1980s. Guilty of Everything chronicles When Jean Smith's Ghost of Under­ Armstrong's career from his first band standing was released a few years ago, in White Rock in 1977 to his tenure in it was criticized for its lack of historical Los Popularos, a group that also insight into Vancouver's punk sub­ featured Armstrong's friend and culture. That criticism was a little mentor Art Bergmann. Armstrong's unfair as it was ostensibly a work of narrative ends abruptly when he quits fiction. However, it is not unfair, in this Los Popularos before its ill-fated move case, to say that Guilty of Everything to Toronto. He does not describe the suffers glaringly from a lack of his­ reforming of the Modernettes or his torical context. We learn littie or nothing semi-retirement into journalism (he about the other bands and individuals wrote for the Georgia Straight before that made the Vancouver punk scene becoming an entertainment columnist - and stories like Armstrong's - for a major daily newspaper). possible. Book Reviews 149

Mine Steven Collis

Vancouver: New Star Books, 2001. 116 pp. $18.00 paper.

ROBERT MCINTOSH National Archives of Canada

N 1849 THE HUDSON'S BAY only offer "gossip and family hearsay" Company began to mine coal on (92). Nor are the records of the state I Vancouver Island, where large particularly illuminating: "The civic collieries operated from the 1870s until archives are only hollow reminders of the mid-twentieth century. Highly what is missing - the unwritten lives prized as a source of power for factories, of the poor and history-less" (22). railways, and oceanic steamers, coal Records, Collis recognizes, are weak sur­ was also used to heat dwellings, rogates for the lived, experienced past generate electricity, provide light they document: "and I have only inherited (when burned as coal gas), and as a raw words / not who spoke them / not material for chemical industries. what they may have meant, robbed as Collis's book-length poem represents I am of context and propinquity" (82). his homage to mining men and women For his purpose this evidence is ultimately on Vancouver Island and, notably, to inadequate. Consequently, calling on his own forebears. He deploys an his gifts as a poet, he will "Imagine eclectic mix of verse and prose in a Ancestors" he "Cannot Know" (86). variety of voices, weaving stray images, Mine is structured in four parts snippets of song, explanatory narratives, ("Shafts"), each of which penetrates allusions to literature, a glossary of the past differently. In Shaft One, mining terms, a chronicle-like list of Collis reflects on the art of memory, events by date, and transcriptions from likening the origins of coal to the written records. His tone is earnest genesis of his poem. Shaft Two develops and reflective, at times angry. the "story": Aboriginal inhabitants Collis is preoccupied by the method­ reveal the presence of coal to the ology of constructing memory: "How European colonizers, immigrant miners to remember dismembered histories, arrive after the difficult journey from memories crushed under the collapse the United Kingdom, Robert Dunsmuir of time?" (20). The physical evidence is emerges as regional coal magnate. Shaft vague: "I drive into Wellington where Three recounts industrial strife and they lived. What remains? Strip mall. offers a quartet of individual state­ Shallow lake. Marsh land" (92). An ments - three based on Emile Zola and ancestor's dwelling leaves unclear what characters from his novel Germinal, and it housed in the past: "I do not know one on labour organizer Ginger what really raged in these now decaying Goodwin. Shaft Four focuses on an rooms" (102). Collis's forebears did not account of an accident in a mine and document their activity: "Generations "one man alive and alone in the vast die quickly, without passing their infernal network of the dead" (85). stories on" (21). Surviving oral accounts With what memory of the mine 150 BU SlUDltS would CoUis leave us? It is bleak: it is certain memories over others. Familiar a dangerous workplace, rent by mur­ elements of the mining community are derous explosions. The mine workforce unexamined: its vigorous social life is split by ethnic divisions, "hate and and range of leisure activities, miners' fear hidden behind humour" (41). The pride in their craft and in their mining community is scarred by class families. His account of the Vancouver divisions and violent strikes. It is a Island mining communities hesitates memory replete with images of strike­ to recognize that their residents, on breakers, the arrival of the militia and occasion, experienced joy, pride, or evictions from company housing, satisfaction. violence: "the battle / loot / smash" Like other contemporary poetry, (65), and the desolation of miners' this is an uncompromising, demanding families - "people starve" (64). book. But, with each reading, it offers Memory is marked as much by what fresh insights into the experience of it omits as by what it encompasses. the Vancouver Island mines. And it is unclear why Collis privileges