BC BookWorld, Vol 38, No. 4, Winter 2024

BCTOP SELLERS

Shelley Adams & Connor Adams

Whitewater Cooks: The Food We Love (Sandhill Book Marketing $38.95)

Daniel Marshall Untold Tales of Old British Columbia (Ronsdale Press $24.95)

Mikaela Cannon

Foraging as a Way of Life: A Year-Round Field Guide to Wild Plants (New Society $44.99)

Perry Bulwer Misguided: My Jesus Freak Life in a Doomsday Cult (New Star $26)

Ed Willes Never Boring: The Up and Down History of the Vancouver Canucks (Harbour $28.95)

Richard Wagamese & Bridget George

The Animal People Choose a Leader (D&M $24.95)

Mercedes Eng cop city swagger (Talonbooks $19.95)

Brian Antonson, Mary Trainer, Rick Antonson

Slumach’s Gold: In Search of a Legend—and a Curse (Heritage House $32.95)

PEOPLE

FROM BLUE COLLAR TO WHITE LAB COAT

HTrina Rathgeber & Alina Pete Lost at Windy River: A True Story of Survival (Orca $19.95)

Jowita Bydlowska Monster (Anvil Press $22)

Diane Morrisseau with Elisabeth Brannigan

One Second at a Time: My Story of Pain & Reclamation (UBC Press $24.95)

Susan Blacklin Water Confidential:

Witnessing Justice Denied— The Fight for Safe Drinking Water in Indigenous and Rural Communities in Canada (Caitlin $24.95)

aving come of age in the 1950s and 60s during the space age, Bob McDonald watched “not only the first moon landing but all six of them,” he says in his memoir Just Say Yes (D&M $34.95). Science, and what it could make possible, excited him. He just wasn’t very good at studying or doing it.

Yet McDonald went on to carve out an immensely successful life through reporting science stories and he is best known as the host of CBC Radio’s Quirks and Quarks, with a weekly audience of 800,000. He has racked up many awards and there’s even an asteroid named after him.

McDonald, who now lives in Victoria,

came from an unlikely background for a science celebrity: his father only made it to grade eight, his mother to grade five. After high school, McDonald was working in construction when his girlfriend at the time urged him to apply for a demonstration job at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto. McDonald drove to the centre to meet the person in charge of hiring and, before anyone saw his application, with all the exuberance he is now known for, McDonald introduced himself in person.

“Pure enthusiasm got me the job,” he says.

“Overnight my entire life changed. My bluecollar shirt became a white lab coat.”

As doors opened, McDonald stepped through. His memoir details how he did it.

Safety, care & Mayor Sim

pon considering scholar Christina Sharpe’s question “can an account of care have an analysis of power?” Mercedes Eng has written her latest volume of poetry, cop city swagger (Talonbooks $19.95). It’s a searing indictment of Mayor Ken Sim’s promises to hire 100 new police officers and 100 mental health nurses as a way to make Vancouver a safer city. Eng also takes aim at Sim’s repeated comments about bringing back “swagger” to Vancouver as one of his key goals.

Cop city swagger, she says “takes a deep dive into the words ‘safety’ and ‘care,’ conducting an inquiry into whose safety matters in the City of Vancouver.”

One hundred new police won’t do it, Eng says “because people of colour with mental illnesses are not safe from the police who hurt and kill us, who do not leave us / intact, unharmed, in good health, still alive.”

Eng provides a long list of what she says care actually looks like, including: “100,000 new social housing units/ 1,000 new public washrooms ….”

9781772016321

9781771624206

Kootenay-style meets Venice Beach cuisine

Bestselling author of the Whitewater Cooks series, Shelley Adams, has produced a seventh cookbook, this time co-written with her son, Conner Adams, Whitewater Cooks: The Food We Love (Alicon/Sandhill $38.95).

Shelley, who still lives in Nelson, BC has combined her Kootenaystyle culinary magic with Conner’s recipes, influenced by his experiments cooking for friends in Venice Beach, California.

Publisher publicity says, “Think Wild Mushroom and Gruyere Tarte, Sweet Potato Thai Green Curry and Luscious Blood Orange and Cardamom Cake or the Best Key Lime Pie Ever.”

It’s already on the BC Bestseller list.

9780981142456

Shelley Adams and her son, Conner Adams

Mercedes Eng

Bob McDonald

Alina Pete

All Eyes On Us

Home Truths is the definitive book on the Canadian housing crisis.

KAREN CHAPPLE, director, School of Cities, University of Toronto

“ Cheung’s writing, whipsmart and unflinching, is timely, insightful, and illuminating.

LINDSAY WONG, author of The Woo-Woo

“

Part Agatha Christie, part Icarus, part Bonfire of the Vanities, and all painfully magnetic. Adam Dodek is a brilliant storyteller.

ROSALIE SILBERMAN ABELLA, retired justice of the Supreme Court of Canada

Available at ubcpress.ca or from your local bookseller

Indigenous RIGHTS champion

As the commissioner of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, Thomas Berger (1933–2021) did something few had done before when he heeded the wishes of Indigenous residents; he recommended that no pipeline be built for at least ten years, essentially stalling industrial development. He compiled 40,000 pages of documentation, visited all 35 communities along the Mackenzie River and held hearings in six Indigenous languages.

Berger’s legal work enhanced the concept of self-government for Indigenous Canadians, but also Indigenous rights in pioneering cases in the USA. Now his many cases have been compiled in Against the Odds: The Indigenous Rights Cases of Thomas R. Berger (Durvile & UpRoute $37.50) written and edited by Drew Ann Wake with Thomas R. Berger, Michael Jackson and Jean Teillet

Against the Odds also features unpublished colour photographs of the Dene and Inuvialuit, taken by Michael Jackson, Special Counsel for the Berger Inquiry, and portrait photographer Linda MacCannell

9781990735486

What if the Canucks WON the Stanley Cup?

Arespected Vancouver sports writer, Ed Willes doesn’t ask this question in Never Boring: The Up and Down History of the Vancouver Canucks (Harbour $28.95). He does, however, ask other “what if” questions about the roller coast ride the hockey team has taken while coming oh-so-close to the ultimate prize at least three times since its inception in 1970.

“Through all the misery, all the losses and indignities that have befallen the team,” he writes, “there has been one constant in the life of the Canucks: their fans. That congregation … has endured much over the years, with only meagre, sporadic reprieves to comfort them: an out-of-the-blue Stanley Cup run in 1982;

Game 7 losses in the 1994 and 2011 Cup finals.”

Willes, who worked at The Province for 20 years, as well as contributing to the New York Times, airs the Canuck’s “dirty laundry” regarding “mismanagement, illconceived trades, appalling draft picks” and more. He also reminds us of the first white-towel-waving incident that became a craze for hockey audiences across the NHL (hint: it involves the Canucks’ coach of the 1982 Stanley Cup finals, Roger Neilson.) 9781990776892

JUDI & RICH

In 1991, Judi Tyabji became the youngest MLA ever elected to the BC Legislature. She was also the first MLA to give birth while in office. After losing her seat, Tyabji worked for a time as a television host for CHEK television in Victoria. She also wrote books and Tyabji’s first three titles, all about BC politics, became national bestsellers. Now she has self-published a fourth title: That’s Rich: the Rise and Fall of the BC Liberals: A Biography of Rich Coleman (FriesenPress $20.99).

“I never expected to be writing this book because I did not like Rich Coleman,” she says in the introduction. Tyabji notes her political and personality differences with Coleman as he was a “high-profile conservative” whereas she considers herself a “fairly opinionated, progressive ethnic woman.” Nevertheless, Tyabji didn’t believe many of the criticisms that had been leveled at Coleman during his 24 years of elected service as an MLA, cabinet minister, deputy premier and interim party leader. She thought Coleman deserved to set the record straight and took on the task to write his biography.

9781038322616

Songs & Secrets of Women

iving on Vancouver Island, far from the lands of her Métis ancestors on the Prairies, Maia Caron has carved out a writing niche about women’s untold stories of the past.

Her well-received debut novel, Song of Batoche (Ronsdale, 2017) is a fictionalized account of the 1885 Northwest resistance led by Louis Riel against the Canadian Government and European settlers.

“In 1885, my Métis ancestors fought with Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont to protect their lands and identity,” says Caron on her website. “The Métis lost this fight and the women buried grief in their hearts. I grew up with the breath of their loss in my mouth—this loss a secret, it was not safe for them to speak.”

Caron chose to tell the Batoche battle story through women’s eyes, in particular the rebellious Josette Lavoie. The story was praised for its research and compelling writing.

For her second historical fiction title, The Last Secret (Doubleday $25), Caron takes on two separate eras in different geographical regions—World War II in Poland and Salt Spring Island in 1972. The protagonists are Savka Ivanets, a young mother working as a medic for the Ukrainian resistance during the war and Jeanie Esterhazy, a traumatized woman living in semi-isolation on Salt Spring Island in the 1970s. Caron weaves together their stories in a surprising way that ultimately testifies to the resilience of women. The book has already landed on The Globe and Mail’s bestselling list of Canadian fiction.

Song of Batoche

Thomas Berger

Camelot at its peak: Kevin Bieksa after a Canucks goal in the second game of the 2011 Western Conference final. The Canucks destroyed the Sharks 7–3 to take a 2–0 series lead.

Judi Tyabji

COVER REVIEW

BY SENURI WASALATHANTHRI

As a newly engaged woman planning her own wedding, I was excited and a little amused when I was asked to review a novel named The Wedding. “The timing is impeccable,” I thought. Then, I saw that the novel was written by a fellow South Asian. Although Gurjinder Basran is Indian and I am Sri Lankan, our cultures share many similarities.

In a nutshell, the story delves into the complex dynamics of two South Asian families as they come together for a lavish wedding set in Vancouver and Surrey. The book starts off with an invitation to the wedding of Devi, the bride, and Baby, the groom—making the reader feel like an insider.

As soon as you turn the first page of the book you’ll also find the list of characters and their roles (e.g. Bhajan, father of the bride; Gurjot, brother of the bride). I found this helpful as the story has a huge cast of characters, many of whom don’t appear frequently.

Each chapter centres around a different person who is somehow involved in Devi and Baby’s wedding, providing backstory to their intricate lives as they plan their marriage day. Devi is a marketing major, detail-oriented, loves to gossip (but despises it when it is about her, ironically), has a taste for luxury, and tends to always get her way, sometimes at the expense of others. Her family owns the “Blueberry King” farms and is well-known and respected within the local Sikh community. The rub is that Devi and her family frequently insinuate that the groom’s family is of a lesser standing.

“The Dosanjhs [Devi’s family name]— so they liked to say—paved the way for other Indians to come to Canada, Indians like the Atwals [Baby’s family name],” writes Basran. “The way Devi’s grandmother had said it made Baby believe he and his family, with their humble beginnings, were supposed to be grateful.”

One of the Dosanjh family secrets is that despite being treated “like royalty,” they are more than a little dysfunctional. Devi’s father is an alcoholic who is physically violent toward her mother. Despite knowing this, Devi’s paternal grandmother, the mastermind behind the family’s successes, does not interfere. And, like most women who know little about life outside their marriage, Devi’s mother stays and hides her situation. As a little girl, Devi saw her mother putting makeup on her bruises after a bad beating from her husband. “[Her] eye was a patchwork of green and blue, and Devi, sitting on the bathroom counter, stick legs dangling, watched as her mother layered concealer on her face,” writes Basran. “When Devi asked why she was doing that, her mother said, ‘To look beautiful, of course,’ and playfully dabbed cream onto her daughter’s nose.”

In contrast, the groom, Baby, studies medicine and prefers a simple, minimalistic lifestyle. Baby’s family

FOR BETTER or FOR WORSE

A

story of the union of two South Asian families shines a light on their family secrets and ultimate clashes.

owns the “Baby Nanak’s Sweet Shop.”

Baby is close to his brother, Gobind, who, after an unfortunate accident involving the wrong crowd, is confined to a wheelchair. Baby’s parents seem to favor Gobind, which makes Baby feel guilty for being the first to marry as there is an impression in the family that any marriage prospects for Gobind are bleak after the accident (which might not be true).

Another big secret is that both families are spending beyond their means for the wedding. They are doing it as much for Devi’s demands for an over-the-top wedding as that, in South Asian cultures, social status is directly correlated to family wealth. But Devi’s family is struggling financially because her father has mismanaged their farm; whereas Baby’s family, reeling from Gobind’s accident costs, have also been expanding the family business. Money is tight on both sides but no one wants to say so.

To add to the woes, both the bride and the groom are having second thoughts about marrying each other. The stress and anxiety of planning the wedding and meeting everyone’s expectations has brought out unappealing characteristics in Devi and Baby, making them realize that they are quite different personalities and they want different things. They fall apart so much that Devi starts to have feelings for a “bad boy”—and eventually acts on them. This bad boy, Jessie, is a past friend of Gobind and has made a promise to him that “should have been enough to keep him away from Devi too,” writes Basran, “but then [Devi] texted him, and then she sent a nude, and then she started calling him late at night, and then last night she showed up at his place practically begging for it.”

Like a good Bollywood film, The Wedding is rich in family drama

and steeped in tradition. It is an ode to love in all its forms, from romantic to familial, and it navigates the intricate dynamics that come with such relationships. Basran’s storytelling is imbued with humour, nuance and honesty, making the novel both entertaining and deeply reflective. Basran doesn’t shy away from exploring complex themes such as desire and expectation, suffering and judgment, and class and race. Through these undercurrents, Basran provides a candid look at the immigrant experience, the clash of traditional values

with modern aspirations, and the ways in which a community can both uplift and ensnare its members.

While reading Basran’s novel, I came to the obvious realization that love is a choice. And a huge part of that choice is continuously working on evolving and growing as a person, so that your flaws and shortcomings don’t end up hurting your partner and leading to resentment.

So, do Devi and Baby actually end up together? You’ll have to read the book to find out. Also, can a hotshot movie producer/director please acquire the movie rights for this book?

9781771624169

Senuri Wasalathanthri is a Vancouver-based publishing assistant, writer and student.

The Wedding: A Novel by Gurjinder Basran

MEMOIR REVIEW

BY ODETTE AUGER

In From a Square to a Circle, renowned Haida weaver Ilskyaalas , Delores Churchill explores the art of communicating about family, culture, community and place. Part memoir, part how-to weaving guide, Churchill generously gifts her knowledge to next generations.

An award-winning weaver, her life’s work has been to preserve ancestral techniques. As a lecturer, consultant and researcher, she has taught weaving in many countries and has helped museum curators identify works.

Beginning the way old stories start, Churchill writes: “This is what I was told, and how I know it to be.” Weaving is an ancient tradition throughout the world, likely, says Churchill “in use before pottery or carved containers were made.” Through a Haida lens, this represents for Churchill one of the concepts of yah’guudang (respect)—that all things are connected. “Weaving belongs to all of us. Weaving connects to all other cultures and people.”

The author explains her intention is to support Haida instructors, although she has taught weavers of many cultures around the world and has learned that “weaving techniques are actually common to weaving worldwide.” However, the materials and the particular ways these techniques are executed by the Haida “are unique and it is our intellectual property,” she says. Churchill notes that while copyright laws do not properly protect Indigenous property rights, the Haida “own intellectual property in the collective through maternal inheritance.” With that in mind, Churchill and her mother’s weaving classes include a respectful request to “non-Haida students not to sell or teach the weaving of Haida-style.”

There is a dance between these concepts that Churchill moves through, revisits and emphasizes throughout. She herself has learned to weave from Tlingit and Tsimshian weavers in addition to Haida (including her mother).

“Because they shared their intellectual property with me, I have been able to pass these skills and information on to the next generations of their people.”

The last chapter is entirely devoted to weaving techniques, with photos and step-by-step directions.

“Other First Nations weavers who have taken up my mother’s method apply their unique tribal techniques, and the weaving identifiers of their Nations remain evident,” says Churchill. “This

tDelores Churchill with her baskets (circa 1980s), including the Haida Potlatch Ring Band. The tall basket is a sample of four Nations’ weaving styles. She is revered as a cultural guardian, whom the president of The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, Richard (Chalyee Éesh) Peterson, says “revived the fading art of Haida weaving.”

Nations territories in northern BC in 1999, the young man was 18 to 19 years old at the onset of the Little Ice Age, a regional cooling event between 1300-1850. The ancient hunter introduced himself through his spruce root hat first, when the hat rose up into the air in the wind created by the research archaeologists’ helicopter. Through mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited exclusively from our mothers, Churchill says she learned she was related to the Long Ago Person. Scientists also found another 17 living relatives among local Champagne and Aishihik First Nations through maternal lines.

Roots and transformation are constant themes—with places, relations, interactions and roles wrapped around the key message: Haida culture will endure. Churchill learned from her mother Selina Peratrovich, who was also a master weaver. “Like the cedar work hat, my mother’s life and my

THE STORIES BASKETS TELL

Master Haida weaver Delores Churchill reveals how the art of weaving connects us all.

sharing of knowledge and method is part of our histories, revealed by the baskets that we weave.”

The book’s title is taken from the unique Haida weaving technique known as “from square to circle,” that Churchill describes: “A traditional plaited cedar bark hat begins as a square, transforms into a circle, widens to a gently sloping crown, and evolves

to a wide brim. The hat’s warp holds the hat’s shape, while the spiral weaving technique allows no breach on the walls.”

Churchill has studied the techniques of baskets discovered at archaeological sites, including the spruce hat of Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi (Long Ago Person in Southern Tutchone). Found in Champagne and Aishihik First

life went through many transformations,” says Churchill. “Since the time our ancestors made first contact with Europeans, many things were done to essentially change Indigenous people from ‘squares’ into ‘circles’—to take the ‘Indian’ out of us.”

However, Haida culture has the land, sea and sky as its strong warp. The twining weft is transformation and adaptation “...to hold on to the foundations of our culture and continue as a vibrant people,” explains Churchill.

“The traditional Haida weaving arts teach us how to stay connected and how to continue as Haida.”

9781990776854

Odette Auger, award-winning journalist and storyteller, is Sagamok Anishnawbek through her mother and lives as a guest in toq qaym

x

(Klahoose),

(Tla’amin),

(Homalco) territories.

From a Square to a Circle: Haida Basketry by Delores Churchill (Harbour $34.95)

Trophy Bear Lodge story basket by Delores Churchill

SOS Water by Yayo Also available in French and Spanish

In this deeply poetic and stunningly original picture book by one of Canada’s most celebrated illustrators, a sailor named Lalo and his friend Rosa, a goldfish, discover there is no corner of the earth left uncontaminated by plastic water bottles.

“SOS Water draws much-needed attention to the far-reaching impact of single use plastic bottles, and is a crystal clear clarion call to action.”

—Quill and Quire starred review

“Highly Recommended.”

—CM: Canadian Review of Materials 5 stars

Set in a ‘falling-down world’ in the contemporary Global South, children from affluent families are sent away— travelling through a war-ravaged countryside—to a former school on an island serving as a refuge.

“Randy Boyagoda threads his novel with moments of great compassion that shine all the brighter within this unflinching portrayal of a world in turmoil . . . Fans of speculative fiction will find LittleSanctuary both captivating and thought-provoking.”

—Canadian Children's Book News

“Highly Recommended.”

—CM: Canadian Review of Materials 5 stars

Three Sisters

A whimsical picture book by one of Canada’s most revered children’s book authors.

Emperor Wang wages numerous wars and refuses to listen to his advisors' pleas for peace. To soothe his rage they call upon his court musicians, including their three talented young daughters.

“Paul Yee's storytelling is a gift to Canada.”

—Shelagh Rogers, founding host of The Next Chapter, CBC Radio

Closely following the lives of three young people who befriend a refugee, The Freezies is a call for compassion and understanding for those fleeing war and oppression.

“Young activists set an example for their community in this adventurous YA novel, which conveys both humor and pathos.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Highly Recommended.”

—CM: Canadian Review of Materials 4 stars

In the aftermath of the Taliban victory, many thousands of Afghans make the perilous journey to Pakistan—and some on to Canada—seeking refuge. Zia and his mother are among them.

“Based on the experiences of the author and her son, Zia’s Story captures a child's refugee experience while conveying a deeper truth . . . This haunting novel packs a powerful punch.”

—Horn Book

The Freezies by Farrukh Dhondy

Little Sanctuary by Randy Boyagoda

The

by Paul Yee illustrated by Shaoli Wang

Zia’s Story by Shahnaz Qayumi illustrated by Nahid Kazami

Celebrating 40 years of supplying books to Canadian retailers!

WHITEWATER COOKS the food we love

Shelley Adams and Conner Adams

JOKES You’ll Love to Tell

A Prescription for Laughter Dr. David Goldberg

The seventh title in this bestselling cookbook series welcomes Conner, the adult son of Shelley Adams. Whitewater Cooks superfans and newcomers will love these recipes.

Shelley's Kootenay mountain-style tradition meets Conner's California-style culinary creations that result in new healthy, easy to make and delicious meals.

9780981142456 $38.95 Alicon Holdings

Available now where books are sold!

The ALOTTABOTZ series - Cartoonist Lynn Johnston has turned her creative hand to a wonderful world where everyone is a robot (even pets) - of the most adorable and fun kind! Now six books in the series - collect them all! Ages 4 - 6 Lynn Johnston Productions Inc.

A Dog with No Name

Medical care in Canada isn't a laughing matter, but perhaps it can be, says the author of this joke book. Here's a collection of side-splitting jokes that demonstrate the art of the extended punchline, where the journey is just as entertaining as the final destination. The author is a family doctor and surgical assistant who knows that laughter truly is the best medicine. Partial proceeds go to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Canada.

9781068832000 $18.95 pb D Goldberg Inc

British Columbia MAP BOOK

GM Johnson Maps

9781774492895 $21.95

No internet? Want the larger picture? Keep this excellent map book handy! Also available are map books for Vancouver Island and Vancouver/Fraser Valley. Large print and great colour makes finding roads and directions easy!

WESTERN CANADA The Landscape

Marty Gilbert

9781999143619 $36.95 hc

From the untamed shorelines of BC's rugged west coast to the majestic peaks and valleys of the Rockies, this collection of iconic colour images showcase the diverse landscape of the two western provinces.

Jennifer Schell Lirag

This may be the first cookbook to profile a single BC winery and its founding family. A collection of more that 50 delicious recipes, favourites of the Wyse family, also showcase the varietals and award winning wines produced at their winery in Osoyoos

9780995851306 $36.95 pb

Harvest BC A Forager’s Guide to Edible Plants of British Columbia Linda Gabris 9781777876425 $24.95 pb OP Media Group

Both a scientific field guide and a recipe book, this is the perfect companion to take foraging with its excellent colour photos and descriptions of wild edible foodstuffs while over 70 recipes will turn your foraging finds into delicious,hearty meals. BC Bestseller!

The perfect winter hobby for any avid angler! Vivid full colour images show step x step tips for 137 fly patterns. Materials list included - make your own flies for next season's lake fishing.

ART REVIEW

BY BEVERLY CRAMP

Born in England and raised in Victoria, Jack Shadbolt (1909–1998) was at the centre of a group of progressive artists and architects in Vancouver in the latter half of the 20th century. He produced paintings and drawings that resonated across Canada with their bold new interpretation of what “great art” could be.

Yet, for years little was known about his inner thoughts and what drove him—until now. Former art critic, Susan Mertens has gathered together excerpts from Shadbolt’s personal journals, letters, talks, interviews and writings, many of which have never been published, for Jack Shadbolt: In His Words. Mertens also tapped into the large body of personal poems that Shadbolt wrote, revealing a passionate, observant and determined man.

“The subject matter of Jack’s writings was ostensibly art,” writes Mertens, “but, like Vincent van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo, they reveal the obsessive questioning of a soul on a vision quest.”

In her old age, Shadbolt’s mother wrote a long letter to him recounting the doctor and nurse at his birth saying that he was “one of a hundred born ... ”. Shadbolt’s mother also noted that he was “something different,” and then follows with: “Your eyes were so large ... and your face was so clear and settled already as if you had come for a purpose ... having those great big eyes like you were looking at something we couldn’t see. We were never apart till you went to school at 5 yrs. I never let you out of my sight ... and I, like you, always wanted to know why and what for and always being told to shut up, which only helps a child to think more. So I sense both you and I belong to a different tribe altogether.”

After school, Shadbolt ran free in the meadows near his home, where he became sensitized to the natural world, recalling, “I went galloping off into the fields, my arms waving high and shouting my unbounded joy to the birds in the air.”

As an adult, Jack Shadbolt referenced the poet Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) when he called Oak Bay his “Fern Hill,” which is the title of a Thomas poem—an autobiographical evocation of a childhood “Garden of Eden” lost, but also how that innocence can be reborn through art.

In his art practice, Shadbolt thought often of his childhood ecstasies as indicated in a journal entry about a summer spent painting at his Hornby Island studio in 1979: “Ever since I can remember, wild fields of tawny grass have evoked a special magic for me. Painting all this past summer at Hornby Island … the nostalgia was powerful. In front of our deck, falling away over a field to the water, was deep tangled grass tufted with broom and briar roses and sparkling with white dog daisies:

You don’t know Jack

Jack Shadbolt left behind

a vast archive of writings now turned into the memoir he never got around to publishing.

and across, the hills of the Vancouver Island Range. So when, during the end momentum of a hard-working three months, having exhausted my supply of canvas, I resorted to a package of large heavy water colour board I had on hand and just let it all go, I sloshed on the acrylic in viscous gobs and splashes and as it first dripped down the surface to suggest grass stems, I knew I had found my long delayed true theme. The result was an exciting relief formed as though I had been given a

Wgift of childhood innocence again … In four hectic days I had produced twelve energetic paintings without once breaking rhythm.”

Shadbolt was not merely painting landscapes. These images were metaphors for something much deeper, for as he says, “An artist’s subject is only a convenient carrier for his subterranean involvement.”

In a letter, Shadbolt described someone who had viewed his paintings of owls and said to him, “In a way I don’t

hile struggling to create a work of art that expressed family history at the same time that she was teaching a watercolour class, Joanne Thomson began painting still life works with Mason canning jars for lessons with her students. Thomson’s grandmother, who had done a lot of canning while raising her family between 1926 and 1946, had described in one of her stories how she had 300 Mason jars “on the go at all times” to preserve food. Before long, Thomson says, “I realized I had a series emerging and that the series was about my relationship with family and my quest to claim a lost legacy.”

In 300MasonJars:PreservingHistory (Heritage $34.95), Thomson combines her watercolour series with visual storytelling to share her family story. Each page has one or two paintings of a jar, either with canned food or some kind of everyday object like yarn, tools, toys, photos or flowers, playfully placed in or half out of or beside the jar. Each painting has a title, such as Mason Jar with Last Carrot of the Season or Mason Jar with Pliers and each image has a corresponding poetic description.

9781772035162

OMildred Valley Thornton (1890–1967) was born in Ontario and arrived in BC via Saskatchewan in 1934. While she painted some landscapes, she is best known for her portraits of First Nations people, numbering nearly 300. Thornton referred to these portraits as the “Collection.” She made a point of not selling them during her lifetime, hoping that some day the collection would be acquired in its totality for viewing by the general public. That didn’t happen and after her deaththecollectionwasdispersedandsoldoff.However, AnthonyWestbridge ofVancouver,whohasbeeninvolvedintheCanadianartmarketasanartdealer for over 50 years, has now published Owas-Ka-Ta-Esk-Ean: Indigenous Portraitsby Mildred ValleyThorntonFRSA (1890–1967), A Catalogue Raisonné (Westbridge Fine Art $44.95). Owas-ka-ta-esk-ean is the honourary name bestowed on Thornton by Cree Chief Stanislaus Almighty Voice and it means “Putting your most ability for us Indians.” 9780991733460

understand you. At a time like this, why owls. Surely it would be more relevant to be dealing with the social scene?” Shadbolt didn’t have an immediate response although in his letter he outlined a defense: “In a sense everyone is the social scene. If I happen to be painting an owl, that’s also a human part of it. What’s going on inside us is also relevant even though outside we are witnessing Vietnam, the Black revolution, a life-style movement, an ecological wave, Amchitka, Quebec and all the rest. I’m only too aware of that … The deeper psychological soundings of guilt and unrest (if that’s what we crave) or the serenity (if that’s what’s needed) or the commitment (of attitude)—one can make an owl trivial or imply comment on our latent ferocity, our secret sadism, our alienation … In any case I reached over to my studio table and handed him a foolscap sheet on which I’d scribbled a poem the other day when I was resting between paintings. He confessed to a little surprise. I think he really thought I was being cute choosing owls—something to catch the public fancy ... I have been flippant maybe saying it wasn’t me that chose them, they chose me—something from childhood experience in Pemberton woods in Victoria ... And then ever since I first painted one I get such a constant demand for owls so I said OK let’s start there, communicating. It must be possible in even as serious a situation as that to communicate something deeper. That’s one part of it—but that’s not the whole of it. There is still the act of painting—experiencing how form works and creates its own meaning … So in answer to his “why owls?” I oppose (respectfully enough, I hope, but not too much so) ‘Why not?’

Mertens’ research and melding together of this collage of Jack Shadbolt does much to illuminate the artist and his work. Shadbolt’s poetry in particular is a revelation.

WhydoIpaint?IpaintbecauseImust. But why must I? As Picasso would answer, why must a bird sing? – Jack Shadbolt 9781773272559

Jack Shadbolt: In His Words Introduced & edited by Susan Mertens (Figure 1 $40)

Jack Shadbolt with a study for his largest butterfly work The Choice, a tapestry commissioned by Metropolitan Life in 1984.

COMMUNITY INTERVIEW

L VING EACH OTHER

Eve Rickert started a publishing company by crowdfunding for the book, More Than Two in 2014. It went on to sell an astounding 175,000 copies over ten years, considering that a Canadian bestseller is 5,000 books. This led to the new version, More Than Two, Second Edition: Cultivating Nonmonogamous Relationships with Kindness and Integrity (Thornapple $39.95). The wisdom in this deep dive into bonds between people is applicable to any relationship. However, regarding nonmonogamy, it’s never easy, as Kim TallBear says in the book’s foreword: “‘Nonmonogamy is not utopia,’ write Eve Rickert and Andrea Zanin in More Than Two. I laughed; no kidding! Yet, they also write, in nonmonogamous relationships ‘You have more of everything you get from romantic relationships—more companionship, more advice, more joy, more love.’ Rickert and Zanin are clear about the benefits and challenges of living nonmonogamously in a society that has been set up to prohibit or inhibit, at every legal and social turn, open, accepted nonmonogamous relating.”

Here is Victoria-based Eve Rickert’s journey to Thornapple Press.

BC BookWorld: How did you come to be a publisher? Was it a longtime dream?

Eve Rickert: I actually started out my professional life training to be a scientist. I moved to Canada (via marriage) after getting my degree, and spun my wheels for awhile trying to figure out how to enter the Canadian job market as a biologist.

In 2008, I got a job as an associate editor at D&M Publishers Inc. D&M at the time owned Greystone, which publishes popular science, so I took the job for the opportunity to work on science and environment books.

Later I founded my first company, Talk Science to Me Communications Inc., which provides a full suite of publication support services (writing, fact-checking, editing, design, consulting, etc.) to clients primarily working in the natural science and sustainability fields. In 2013, I cofounded my press, then called Thorntree Press and based in Portland, Oregon, and we crowdfunded and published the first edition of More Than Two (2014). In 2018, I was hired as the publisher at the Royal BC Museum, where I spent four years modernizing their program and published several important and bestselling books, including Spirits of the Coast, Mushrooms of British Columbia, What Was Said to Me and Pressed Plants

BETTER

With her new publishing company, Thornapple Press, Eve Rickert talks to BC BookWorld about the special niche she is developing.

t“[We publish] thoughtful books on sex and relationships—books that bring forward unique perspectives, offered challenging ideas, and that are focused on ethics and consent—books for‘sensitiveoverthinkers,’asoneofmy authors once said to me.”—EVE RICKERT

BCBW: What challenges did you face with your first publishing company?

ER: When my first coauthor and I crowdfunded the first edition of More Than Two, we started an LLC based in Portland, Oregon, basically just to hold the funds and handle the production costs. We didn’t actually intend to start a publishing company; we expected the book to be a one-off. But just a couple of months after More Than Two came out, two different authors approached us about publishing their books as well, and my coauthor was working on a second book (a memoir). So, we held another crowdfunding campaign for those three books, which also succeeded. It continued like that for a couple more years, until it was basically, “Well, I guess we’re publishers now.” My team at Talk Science handled all the editing and production. My business partner and I split up in 2018. I decided to rebrand the press and bring it to Canada, under Talk Science—since it was the same team already, anyway. During the time that I’d been working at the Royal BC Museum, one of my editors, Hazel Boydell (we’d worked together back at D&M) had been handling day-today operations and I promoted her to associate publisher. The rebrand and move was when I really got to think about what I wanted the press to be and do. We’d built a niche for ourselves publishing thoughtful books on sex and relationships—books that brought forward unique perspectives, offered challenging ideas and focused on ethics and consent—books for “sensitive overthinkers,” as one of my authors once said to me.

BCBW: What does Thornapple mean and why did you choose it for the name of your publishing company?

ER: The “thorn tree” in “Thorntree Press” was the hawthorn tree, a reference to Hawthorne Street in Portland where my business partner and I first met. I wanted the new name to call back to that but be different. Hawthorns are also sometimes called thornapples, and thornapple is also one name given to plants in the genus Datura. Both hawthorn and Datura have medicinal, ritual or magical uses in some cultures. The name “Thornapple” seemed a fitting name to acknowledge the press’s origins while evoking our vision of books that are both healing and transformational.

BCBW: What are your broader societal goals with Thornapple?

ER: As we discuss in More Than Two, Second Edition, I think the way we treat each other in our closest relationships iterates outward into the way we treat people in the wider world. I want to publish books that foster conversations and new ways of thinking about relationships, sex, consent and relational ethics; that equip people with tools to love each other better and take better care of each other and their communities; and that provide space for voices and perspectives that haven’t been wellrepresented in traditional publishing.

“Distinctly urban, with a twist!”

HESTER IN SUNLIGHT

HANNAH CALDER

Less a re-telling or transposition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic than a re-purposing of the materials to tell a different version, Hester In Sunlightis a heady and stimulating riff on contemporary motherhood and parenting.

PERMISSION TO SETTLE

HOLLY FLAUTO

Permission to Settle fills in the blanks of the application for Permanent Residency, capturing common aspects of immigration — anxiety, bureaucracy of application, identity, foreignness, inadequacy — all while exploring the sense of privilege that comes from the geographically and culturally close immigration journey from the US to Canada as a modern-day settler.

$20 | POETRY | 112 PAGES | 978-1-77214-238-9

HARD ELECTRIC

MICHAEL BLOUIN

Celine Dion’s first North American hit posed the question: ‘Where do all the lonely hearts go?’ Hard Electric presents a bleakly unsettling but ultimately lifeaffirming treatise that shuffles into the neighbourhood of an answer.

“One of the most moving books I’ve ever read, with some of the wisest lines ever written.” — bill bissett

$20 | POETRY | 128 PAGES | 978-1-77214-240-2

OX LOST, SNOW DEEP

ALICE BURDICK

These poems deal with semi-rural existence, raising a family, and living in poverty. Burdick confronts excruciation, apology, loss, humour, mistakes, and grief—and the freedom achieved by acknowledging these things. Ox Lost, Snow Deep will alter your ways of thinking and reading.

$20 | POETRY | 96 PAGES | 978-1-77214-241-9

A FEED DOG BOOK

AFTER WE DROWNED JILL YONIT GOLDBERG

After an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico explodes, everything in fifteen-year-old Jesse’s life deep in rural Louisiana is derailed. After We Drowned is a Southern Gothic coming-of-age novel that deals with environmental crisis, poverty, and the power of secrets.

$22 | NOVEL | 256 PAGES | 978-1-77214-227-3

PLAYLIST: A PROFLIGACY OF YOUR LEAST-EXPECTED POEMS

MICHAEL TURNER

Playlist: a Profligacy of Your LeastExpected Poems documents the life and practice of a writer who grew up in a musical household, spent his early adult years as a touring musician and his later years programming nightclubs, hotels, galleries and festivals.

$20 | POETRY/MEMOIR | 128 PAGES 978-1-77214-228-0

THE TENANTS PAT DOBIE

Winner of the 45th Annual 3-Day Novel Contest In the city of Vancouver, even dirt costs. In The Tenants three of its residents are struggling with their homes — whether that’s grappling with real estate prices, simmering resentments, or an uneasy co-living arrangement with the local wildlife.

$18 | NOVEL | 96 PAGES | 978-1-77214-229-7

NEW STAR BOOKS

WHEN HEROES BECOME VILLAINS JON BARTLETT & BRIAN ROBERTSON

Reckoning, reconciliation, and reflection are changing our landscapes. In WhenHeroesBecomeVillains, Jon Bartlett and Brian Robertson bring home the “naming” controversy, telling the stories of three erstwhile heroes of British Columbia: John Sebastian Helmcken, Joseph Trutch, William Bowser.

TOMORROWS NEWS MARC EDGE

Canada’s news is a mess. Many see this crisis of the fourth estate as an existential threat to a bedrock of democratic decisionmaking. In Tomorrow’sNews, Marc Edge lays out some of the new forms of journalism that are emerging in the post-print, digital-first world.

Chambersonic Oana

Avasilichioaei

Chambersonic imagines the book as an acoustic chamber. This collection of poems, essays, performance scores, and audio recordings comes alive with documents, rehearsals, and reverberations, all populated by an ensemble of players, instruments, and materials that make sound together.

cop city swagger

Mercedes Eng

Investigating whose safety really matters in the most expensive city in the nation, cop city swagger conducts a threat assessment of Vancouver’s police.

The Middle Stephen Collis

The fulcrum of a trilogy begun with A History of the Theories of Rain, The Middle hikes the shifting treelines of our warming world to reflect on the way all life is on the move.

No Signal No Noise

A Jamali Rad

AJamaliRad’s NoSignalNoNoise isaplayfulpoetic hybrid, sitting somewhere between philosophical treatise, epic poem, and experimental novel.

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER

From former Canadian Senator

MURRAY SINCLAIR

As Canada moves forward into the future of reconciliation, one of its greatest leaders guides us to consider the most important and difficult question we can ask of ourselves: Who are we?

HISTORY REVIEW

David A.

BY GRAHAM CHANDLER

Canada is not a nation of pacifists. Far from it. So shows this welcome volume with its selfdescriptive title page, which the rest of the book follows with over a century and a half of involvement in various domestic and international wars.

If you thought Canadian history (and especially Canadian military history) could be boring, read this book and you’ll have a re-think. David Borys, a faculty member at Vancouver’s Langara College and the host of the popular history podcast, Curious Canadian History, digs up many surprising facts. Those qualifications blend well in telling the stories behind the facts.

The following are a few examples of the little-known tales in Canada’s military history that Borys details: In March 1884, Mahdi forces (radical Muslims) were attacking the key city of Khartoum on the Nile River and the British were concerned that the fall of Khartoum would threaten their control of the region and the Suez Canal. To their rescue came veterans of Canada’s Red River Rebellion, who knew how to tackle such river-based skirmishes.

Assisting with quelling student and citizen riots is nothing new to Canada’s military. The Montreal Flag Riot of March 1900 saw a loyalist crowd of almost 2,000 made up of McGill University students and Englishspeaking Montreal residents celebrating Canada’s role in the recent Boer War victory at Paardeberg. Then the mob got sidetracked and attacked two French-language newspaper offices. The army was called in to settle down the brouhaha.

But most of the pages are filled with major battle action—often using descriptive quotes to put you there. Consider this one on the grim effects of chlorine gas faced by soldiers at the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915 during World War I: “Men barely accustomed to the wet and cold weather of Northwest Europe were now choking, vomiting, and dying as their faces turned from blue to a ghastly green. The effect of the gas caused the membranes in the bronchial tubes to swell, eventually turning to a liquid mass. A man effectively choked to death on his own insides.”

As well as the vivid descriptions, Borys provides stats to reinforce them. For the Battle of Vimy Ridge, synonymous with Canadian heroism, “The (Canadian) corps suffered 10,602 casualties, most of those on the first day. This gave April 9 the dubious distinction of becoming the bloodiest single day in Canadian military history. The fighting was so severe that

Canadian history is BORING, okooo

NOT

David Borys offers a comprehensive and entertaining rendering of Canada’s entire military history since confederation.

three Victoria Crosses were awarded on that initial day alone, with a fourth bestowed on the second.”

Not all of Canada’s military activity covered in the book falls under the rubric of national security; some is related to the protection of Canadian private business such as this unusual use of our army: the year 1921 saw three Royal Canadian Navy vessels— nearly the entire fleet—sail to Costa Rica to strong-arm that nation into giving in to the Royal Bank of Canada’s oil concessions.

And most Canadians who are aware of our forces’ national reputation as peacekeepers would spout how it started with the Suez Crisis of 1956-57. However, that’s not so. The template for United Nations international peacekeeping was established nearly a decade before when, in 1948, the UN requested military observers to patrol the demarcation line between India and Pakistan in Kashmir after the two countries’ independence.

It was on a small Mediterranean island, though, that Canada committed

to its longest peacekeeping operation. In 1963, Cyprus, which had received independence from Britain just three years earlier, was descending into chaos as Greek and Turkish Cypriots clashed over the political future of the island. Canada’s military kept the peace between the two sides for thirty years until the bulk of its forces were withdrawn in 1993. However, as Borys notes, Canada still has a small presence on the island as “a Canadian officer continues to be sent to Cyprus every year to support mission headquarters.”

Other contemporary war stories include Canada’s role in Afghanistan. In our longest war, between 2001 and 2014, 40,000 Cana-

David A. Borys

dians served in theatre. Nearly 2,000 personnel were wounded, 109 decorations for military valour were awarded, approximately 9,000 CAF men and women received treatment for PTSD and 158 Canadian soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice.

An attractive feature is Borys’ use of what appear to be vintage maps, showing advances and tactics where you can follow the action. Another is discussion of the politics behind those actions—how the soldiers, sailors and airmen got into all that fighting in the first place. And he doesn’t overlook the important role of Blacks, Chinese, Indigenous and other minorities.

But this book is not all about guts, glory and flag-waving. Borys doesn’t leave out the ugly stuff. Like the torture and murder of Somali teenager Shidane Arone by Canadian peacekeepers in Somalia that resulted in the disgrace and disbanding of the once-elite Canadian Airborne Regiment. Nor the morale-killing controversial stuff like the 1960s’ unification of the three services into one; and the 1970s’ favouring of Francophones in promotions. Add to those controversies the current sexual harassment charges that are still cause for concern.

Read this book and see why Canadian military leaders are constantly forced to do more with less, “punching above their weight,” as many, like Borys, are apt to say.

9781459754126

Vancouver-based freelance writer Graham Chandler has written over 700 articles on various topics including military issues. He served in the RCAF and Canadian Armed Forces, and holds a PhD in archaeology from the University of London.

Punching Above Our Weight:

The Canadian Military at War Since 1867

by

Borys (Dundurn Press $42)

Canadian infantry celebrated by Dutch civilians four days after being liberated from Nazi forces, May 9, 1945.

BOOKPRIZES BC

Say what?

A double-winner at this year’s BC and Yukon Book Prizes turned out to be (drum roll)... a poetry book.

BY BEVERLY CRAMP

While not known for its ability to rack up book sales, nevertheless poetry was the winning genre of the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award with Jess Housty’s (‘Cúagilákv) collection, Crushed Wild Mint (Nightwood $19.95), which had earlier in the evening taken the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.

Nightwood publisher Silas White joined Housty at the podium, where White enthusiastically declared, “I have been attending BC Book Prizes since I was a kid. Never would I have imagined a book of poetry would win the Duthie Prize.”

Housty was thankful for getting this second award in addition to the Livesay

prize. “This is a special award,” she said. “One of my greatest delights has been to meet the booksellers around the province. They are great human beings. I have so much gratitude for them.”

White also expressed his appreciation for the book purveyors in BC. “I definitely want to thank the booksellers, especially independent booksellers, for keeping poetry alive and well. Finally, I want to thank Jess — she’s such a powerful voice that needs to be heard.”

Darrel J. McLeod, who died suddenly on August 29, posthumously won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for A Season in Chezgh’un (D&M $24.95) about an urban Indigenous man feeling alienated from his family and culture, who leaves the city to take a job as a school principal in a remote northern Dakelh community. D&M’s publisher, Anna Comfort O’Keeffe, accepted the award, noting that gratitude was one of McLeod’s core values. She read out

acknowledgments from the back matter of McLeod’s book, including this statement: “Getting to the present version of this novel was quite a process, not unlike getting to the refined final version of a wonderful sculpture,” he wrote. “I thank my circle of lovely friends and family for their encouragement.”

BC literary star, John Vaillant, was unable to attend the gala and sent a prepared statement that was read out for his acceptance of the Hubert Evans

Non-Fiction Prize for Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast (Knopf $38).

Nominally about one specific fire, the May 2016 conflagration that turned Alberta’s fossil-fuel epicentre, Fort McMurray, into hell on earth, is also a book that explores Earth’s new century of fire, which has only just begun.

Ian Kennedy, author of The Best Loved Boat: The Princess Maquinna (Harbour $34.95) seemed taken aback at winning the Roderick Haig-

HOT NEW READS FOR COLD DAYS!

Journeys to the Nearby

A Gardener Discovers the Gentle Art of Untravelling

Elspeth Bradbury

Inspired by world travellers, Elspeth sets out to explore the world that exists in her own garden. With gentle humour and a warm conversational style, her “untravelling” becomes a voyage of discovery and rediscovery as she learns to slow down and observe.

u 978-1-55380-724-7 (pb) | 6 x 7.5 | 260 pp | $26.95 | B+W LINE DRAWINGS

Keefer Street

David Spaner

Jake grows up on Keefer Street in Depression-era Vancouver but his rabble-rousing street politics lead him to join the volunteers fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

“This critical moment in twentieth-century fascist history should be required reading for any person troubled by our world right now.”

—MAUREEN MEDVED, author of Black Star

u 978-1-55380-720-9 (pb) | 5 x 8 | 312 pp | $24.95

Untold Tales of Old British Columbia

Daniel Marshall

A collection of fascinating stories of the extraordinary and astonishing in B.C.’s history.

“Riveting! Guaranteed that when you start reading you won’t quit and you will emerge with a new, and often unsettling, view of this place known today as ‘British Columbia.’”

—WENDY WICKWIRE, author of At the Bridge

u 978-1-55380-704-9 (pb) | 978-1-55380-705-6 (ebook) | 6 x 9 | 330 pp | $24.95

Mad Sisters

Susan Grundy

A poignant memoir of a caregiver’s lifelong struggle to break through the barrier of her sibling’s mental illness.

“An indispensable book for those of us who love someone with a mental illness.”

—PETE EARLEY, New York Times best-selling author of Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness

u 978-1-55380-718-6 (pb) | 6 x 9 | 224 pp | $24.95

Treaties, Lies and Promises

How the Métis and First Nations shaped Canada

Tom Brodbeck

A riveting account of the links between the Red River Resistance and the numbered treaties.

“This book is a great gift to Manitobans and to all Canadians.”

—KEVIN CHIEF, Minegoziibe Anishinabe (Pine Creek) First Nation, Treaty 4; co-founder of the Winnipeg Aboriginal Sport Achievement Centre.

u 978-1-55380-716-2 (pb) | 6 x 9 | 204 pp | $24.95

The HBC Brigades

Culture, conflict and perilous journeys of the fur trade

Nancy Marguerite Anderson

A lively recounting of the gruelling thousand-mile trail faced by the brigades and the First Nations people who struggled with the desire to resist or assist them.

“An essential reference for anyone interested in early B.C.” RICHARD MACKIE, publisher, The British Columbia Review u 978-1-55380-701-8 (pb) | 6 x 9 | 316 pp | $24.95

Jess Housty (right), winner of the Duthie Booksellers Choice Award and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, with Leslie Bootle of the Association of Book Publishers of BC.

Brown Regional Prize. “I’m totally overwhelmed,” he said with tears in his eyes. “I can’t believe this has happened to me,” he added before thanking his editors.

Another surprised author was Wanda John-Kehewin who won the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize for Hopeless in Hope (Highwater $16.95) about a fourteen-year-old girl whose life is going from bad to worse and ends up in a group home because of her troubled mother. “I feel like crying right now,” said John-Kehewin “I came thinking I wouldn’t win. And I feel like crying because I did … This is momentous because it’s my first YA [Young Adult] book.”

The Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize went to Jordan Scott for My Baba’s Garden (Neal Porter $24.99), illustrated by Sydney Smith, about a boy gardening with his grandmother and doing other daily routines while deepening his bond with her. Scott was unable to attend and sent a prepared speech in which he recalled his own Baba, who had been interned in a forced labour camp before coming to Canada where she first lived in a chicken coop. “She squeezed my cheeks at least seven times a day,” remembered Scott. Helen Knott, also not present, won the Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes for Becoming a Matriarch: A Memoir (Vintage $23) that also was a co-winner of this year’s George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. Another emotional moment came when Keith Maillard accepted the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence. “I already knew I won and I’m still moved,” he said. “It takes many people to make a writer,” he continued. “For 35 years I had the honour of working at the UBC School of Creative Writing. If the students learned something from me, boy did I

learn something from them.” Maillard has written 16 novels, a book of poetry and two memoirs.

Victoria Book Prizes ...

The author of five books of poetry, Kathryn Mockler’s collection of short stories, Anecdotes (Book*hug, 2023) won the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize at the Victoria Book Prizes this year. Mockler teaches screenwriting and fiction at UVic. The City of Victoria Children’s Book Prize went to Raina Delisle for her YA title, Breaking News: Why Media Matters (Orca, 2023), a guide for middle school readers about how to be critical news consumers and find the news they can use.

Whistler Book Prizes ...

Karen Barrow, who lives in the Okanagan Valley, was awarded the Whistler Independent Book Award for Fiction for her historical novel, Palmyra (FriesenPress $26.49), which chronicles the rise of an educated elite in Trinidad that challenges the ruling white plantocracy, blending comingof-age and Gothic mystery to reveal divided loyalties, family secrets and ambition.

Performance That Truly Matters This Is What You’ve Been Waiting For

See the magnificence of China before communism. It’s a journey that will fill you with hope and inspiration—one you’ve longed for. Discover 5,000 years of wisdom, beauty, and wonder, live on stage.

“Wholesome and family-friendly… an epic tale.”

“A

—Ottawa Sun

—Stage Whispers

“Magnificent! It’s been very enlightening… I highly recommend it to anyone.”

—Tony Robbins, author & speaker

Raina Delisle won the City of Victoria Children’s Book Prize for Breaking News: Why Media Matters (Orca, 2023). Delisle is with her daughter at the Victoria Book Prizes.

Kathryn Mockler, winner of the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize

Keith Maillard

CHINA BEFORE COMMUNISM

“With both affection and clarity, West Coast Mission reveals the persistence, puzzles, and prospects that characterize Christian communities navigating mission and ministry in their new minority status.”

Christopher B. James, author of Church Planting in Post-Christian Soil: Theology and Practice

HISTORY REVIEW

The RECKONING

Hailed in their time as celebrated politicians, the legacy of white supremacists in BC’s past is under scrutiny in When Heroes Become Villains.

TBY TOM HAWTHORN

about 200 people gathered for the unveiling at a ceremony attended by the mayor, elders, chiefs, a linguist, neighbourhood residents and some university students who launched the renaming campaign as a contribution to reconciliation and decolonization.

The renamed two-block street once served as the western border of a large estate of several acres held by Sir Joseph Trutch, who served as the first lieutenant governor of British Columbia after the colony joined Confederation. Trutch was a popular and celebrated politician in his time and, eventually, streets in the capital, Vancouver, Richmond, Chilliwack and Clearwater would all carry his name as did an island, a creek, a hamlet in the Peace district and a peak in the Rocky Mountains.

While contemporaries and successors honoured Trutch, his poisonous legacy can be felt in British Columbia to this day. As chief commissioner of lands and works, Trutch was responsible for handling First Nations reserves. A cruel white supremacist, he sought to reverse the paternalistic approach of Governor James Douglas, who felt Indigenous peoples “should in all respects be treated as rational beings, capable of acting and thinking for themselves.” Trutch forced nations onto tiny reserves, seeking to deny them title to land and to thwart their connection to the natural world. “The Indians really have no right to the lands they claim,” he wrote in a report, “nor are they of any actual value or utility to them.”

More than a century later, the first of a series of court cases determined that Aboriginal title over ancestral territories remained unextinguished, compelling the provincial government to negotiate treaties and agreements, a process continuing today.

“These days,” note the authors Jon Bartlett and Brian Robertson, “many of these ‘heroes’ now look more like racists and sociopaths.”

Bartlett and Robertson’s polemic, When Heroes Become Villains, which runs just 74 pages of text plus another 20 of notes and an index, confronts the commemoration of three British Columbians: Trutch, his colonial counterpart Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken, and premier William John Bowser Trutch and Helmcken were two of three representatives sent to Ottawa to negotiate the colony’s entry into Confederation, while Bowser was a long-serving

wo years ago, several blue signs on a leafy street in Victoria’s Fairfield neighbourhood were replaced. Gone was Trutch Street. The new name would be Su’it (pronounced say-EET) Street from a Lekwungen word meaning “truth.”

Conservative politician who broke miners’ strikes and forced immigrants from Austria-Hungary into internment camps during the First World War. A community of about 2,000 people north of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island carries his name.

The authors accuse Dr. Helmcken of failing to do his duty during an outbreak of smallpox by not immunizing the Indigenous residents living near Victoria, especially those in temporary encampments. Many were forced away from the city to their home villages, where they spread the disease, devastating the Indigenous population.

The authors make a forceful case for renaming features commemorating those clearly seen as villains today.

“Social justice movements have illu-

minated how questionable the complicated legacies of people like these are,” they write, “and have resulted in a swell of calls for such place names to be replaced with ones that more reflect values we all can support.”

Trutch is so clearly villainous a figure that streets bearing his name have already been renamed in Vancouver (Musqueamview Street, or šxʷməθkʷəy̓ə masəm in hənq̓əmin̓əm) and Richmond (Point Avenue, after Steven Point, the lawyer who served as Grand Chief of the Stó:Lo Tribal Council before becoming the province’s first Indigenous lieutenant general).

The authors suggest features named for the coal baron father-son duo of Robert and James Dunsmuir, as well as Dr. Israel Powell, who banned pot-

latch ceremonies and after whom the city of Powell River is named, might be deserving of a change. (The regional district surrounding the Sunshine Coast city has already taken the name qathet Regional District.)

In Canada and around the world, the renaming of places and the knocking down of statues have in many cases been met by reaction, sometimes violently so. The authors do not engage with the arguments or anxieties in opposition to altering commemorations in this short book.

As well, the authors mostly limit their scope to British Columbia, though other Canadian jurisdictions have over the years wrestled with the meaning of names. In 1916, as Canadians fought on the Western Front during the First World War, residents of the Ontario city of Berlin voted to change the name in response to anti-German sentiment. They chose Kitchener after a British admiral only recently killed in action when his battleship struck a German mine.

The following year, the venerable House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha also surrendered to popular prejudice. We know them today as the House of Windsor.

A name change, whether by popular demand or royal proclamation, often simply needs time for acceptance.

9781554202126

Tom Hawthorn’s most recent book is The Year Canadians Lost Their Minds and Found Their Country: The Centennial of 1967 (D&M, 2017).

When Heroes Become Villains makes a case for renaming landmarks that commemorate those seen as villains today, such as Sir Joseph Trutch, the province’s first lieutenant governor. “Social justice movements have illuminated how questionable the complicated legacies of people like these are,” write Jon Bartlett and Brian Robertson, “and have resulted in a swell of calls for such place names to be replaced with ones that more reflect values we all can support.”

When Heroes Become Villains: Helmcken, Trutch, Bowser, and the Streets, Lakes, and Towns Named After Them by Jon Bartlett and Brian Robertson (New Star Books $18)

GRAPHICNOVEL REVIEW

This hauntingly intimate graphic novel depicts the loss of a

life partner.

A view of love & death

Nestled by the side of a creek in North Vancouver, Sarah Leavitt watches her partner of twentytwo years die. They are surrounded by loved ones and a medical practitioner who administers the fatal IV injection. Donimo, Sarah’s partner, has chosen Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) after decades of living with chronic pain and several untreatable medical conditions.

Something, Not Nothing, a true story documenting the author’s grief, begins in Donimo’s wake. “After her death, I continued living, which surprised me,” writes Leavitt. This graphic novel feels hauntingly intimate; akin to reading someone’s diary at their most vulnerable moments. Leavitt’s artistic style is free flowing, raw, shaky and sometimes silly. The book captures her process of grief, and she notes that the panels appear in roughly chronological order of their creation.

The first several pages are entirely black and white and made with dark, chaotic scribbles and words floating in and out or being obscured by other markings. “HOW,” Leavitt asks, “and HOW” “and HOW”. This cry appears over and over again, documenting Leavitt’s raw disbelief: “WHEN SHE GOT UP THE LAST MORNING WENT TO BED THE NIGHT BEFORE MADE

Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love by Sarah Leavitt (Arsenal Pulp Press $27.95)

BY SONJA PINTO

SURE HER HAIR HOW? HOW?” These questions summarize the early days of grief—certain words and phrases appear again and again. The word “grievous” appears standalone in several panels, first sidelong and struck through, then in cursive, then in its terrible context: “You must have a grievous and irremediable medical condition.”

The panels eventually begin to piece together the period of time before Donimo’s death. In one panel, a ghastly face with black eyes and tears falling pokes out from the bottom left with text in a conversation bubble: “I told Donimo I would do

some research for her.” Tears from the face drip into the panels below. One panel on the same page shows a figure curled in the fetal position surrounded by markings that resemble flames.

Before accessing MAiD, Donimo deals with the excruciating series of medical rejections:

“Another doctor said no.” After years of failed attempts at treatment to manage her pain, Donimo is approved for MAiD. “Part of me had thought maybe once you knew you had the option it would be enough,” admits Leavitt. Two panels depict Donimo, her eyes dazed spirals, saying only “I’m sorry Sarah.”

“I can only write about the day she died if I walk up to it sideways, trick myself a little,” confides Leavitt. The trick, coloured bright yellow, involves the memory of picking up her dog’s poop in the minutes after Donimo’s death.

Something, Not Nothing is a striking queer love story. Leavitt writes about “The night we met May (1998) at a queer sex show at a strip club, you in this sort of ‘70s faggy glam outfit, glowing” and “the joy of it / the peace / the brightness.” Leavitt recalls their dog Jackson snuggling in

“Some voted entirely and shapes, text, a raw of emotional … Other yellow, pink strokes bleeding each o conveys what cannot.”

tare deto colour bereft of processing experience pages show and blue bleeding into Colour what words Sonja Pinto, reviewer

his favourite place—Donimo’s armpit—and how Donimo was a motorcycle rider who “wore men’s clothing like a dandy.”

Some panels depict vignettes from the months and years prior to Donimo’s death. One describes how Leavitt would read Moominland Midwinter to Donimo by the light of a headlamp so as not to aggravate Donimo’s sensitivity to light. “I’m frightened. We might not finish the book in time,” writes Leavitt.

In the face of tremendous sorrow, Something, Not Nothing balances the heaviness with moments of refreshing anger and humour: “Fuck the rocks and their ongoing / never-ending lives.” Some pages are devoted to lumpy horses: “Just ask me. I will always provide horses … The horses don’t change anything. Everyone who died is still dead.”

This humour helps Leavitt come to terms with continuing to age without her partner. “My butt keeps getting older,” writes Leavitt in a page titled “fuck.” The page displays various body parts, wrinkles, hairs and unfinished thoughts. “Remember when we” reads one panel, paired

Panels from Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love

(Arsenal

Pulp Press) by Sarah Leavitt

with a teary face turned upwards. “And we” reads the next, the face now sly with a smug grin and sideways glance, as if recalling a salacious memory. “I don’t even know,” the last panel reads.

Some pages are devoted entirely to colour and shapes, bereft of text, a raw processing of emotional experience. One such page, filled with grey and yellow watercolours, is titled “Stare into space.” Other pages show yellow, pink and blue strokes bleeding into each other. “What if I could tell you everything with colours and no words? bright yellow? stupid purple?” asks Leavitt. Colour conveys what words cannot. At times, Leavitt invites the reader to imagine with her. “While we are waiting, I wanted to ask, do you think any of the following are possible?” referring to the following array of colours and shapes that offer the reader a space for contemplation.

As time goes on, Leavitt writes “of life continuing. / Of dishes and dog walks and workout videos.” How does one continue to wake up every day after someone so significant has passed? For Leavitt, the answer is simple and hilariously universal: “I get out of bed eventually because there is coffee and Wordle.”

As time passes, the shape of Leavitt’s grief changes. “It’s not like I see your ghost,” she writes, “It’s not empty space / It’s not you / It is you.” This amorphous feeling follows Leavitt, but the small delights increase over time as Leavitt recalls “my feet in warm socks in my own kitchen, chopping onions, grateful for every bit of peace.”

Despite the experience of heavy grief that Something, Not Nothing requests readers to digest, this book will leave you gasping with laughter and clutching your loved ones close by the last page. A visual masterpiece, this is a book that needs to be held and touched to truly be appreciated. 9781551529516

Sonja Pinto is a writer, photographer and printmaker. They reside on the unceded territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples (Victoria, BC).

Graphic novel ROUNDUP

Originally created for the Nanaimo Art Gallery’s group show, Gutters are Elastic, in 2023, Cole Pauls expanded his work into a full-length comic, we see stars only at night (Conundrum Press $10). Coles plays with the connection between land, regalia, performance and heritage, following in the footsteps of Tiger Tateishi, Hironori Kikuchi and Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas with his surrealistic narrative. 9781772621006

Teresa Wong’s graphic memoir All Our Ordinary Stories: A Multigenerational Family Odyssey (Arsenal Pulp $24.95) follows the obstacles a daughter faces as she attempts to connect with her immigrant parents. A book for children of immigrants trying to honour their parents’ pasts while also making a different kind of future for themselves.

9781551529493

OROTH Book 1: Wheetago War (Renegade $29.99) by Tlicho Dene author RichardVan Camp with art by Christopher Shy bills itself as an “Indigenous Walking Dead!” The story tells of the feared Wheetago, who have returned, using their powers to call back the Na acho, cannibalistic giants once banished by Dene deities. Forming an uneasy alliance, a mother, her young son and a desperate band of convicts fight to survive the Wheetago horrors now awakened. 9781989754221

Revolution by Fire: New York’s AfroIrish Uprising of 1741, a Graphic Novel (Beacon $24.95) provides a fly-onthe-wall view of a revolt and conspiracy by the enslaved and indentured in 18th century New York City and highlights cooperation among races and classes that transcended the social order of its time. This is the third book created by DavidLester, MarcusRediker and Paul Buhle. Their two previous books, Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay and Under The Banner of King Death, have been published in 11 international editions (and 6 languages). 9780807012550

OSouth Korean comic artist Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Dog Days (Drawn & Quarterly $29.95) centres on an unconventional family trying to build trust, not only with each other, but with their neighbours. Yuna never wanted to adopt a dog. But with her partner in mourning—and in need of a boost in morale—she gives in to his request, and surprisingly she becomes inseparable from the puppy. Translated by Janet Hong, a writer based in Vancouver. 781770467316 O

A finalist for a 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award. The Gulf (Tundra $20.99) by Adam de Souza follows a group of high schoolers graduating into a world they do not understand. As a cure for their frustration, they run away from home to an island commune that promises a way of living that makes sense to them. For ages 14 and up. 9781774880739

OKeeping it real for ages 8 to 12 is Gamerville (HarperAlley $15.99) by Johnnie Christmas. A contemporary exploration of the importance of human connections when a video gamer’s championship aspirations are dashed after his parents send him to Camp Reset, where electronics are forbidden and he is forced to socialize, eat healthy and spend time outside. 9780063056817

jackie dives photo

Sarah Leavitt

“This collection of essays by two dozen brave and dedicated citizens recounts one of the most significant environmental battles in the history of the West Coast. These pages speak for tens of thousands of people who participated over the years, many of them risking, and enduring, arrest, among many other hardships. Even if the short-term outcome failed to vindicate them, history most certainly will.”

—John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather

“These testimonies will convince many more to follow their hearts and act in defence of creation and in the spirit of human solidarity.”

—Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org

BETWEEN THE LINES Books without bosses since 1977

2024-10-23 2:07PM

When Louis Riel arrives at Batoche in 1884 to help the Métis fight for their lands, he discovers the rebellious outsider, Josette Lavoie, granddaughter of the famous chief Big Bear In this raw wilderness on the brink of change, the lives of seven unforgettable characters converge, each one with secrets. Maia Caron is an Indigenous author based on Vancouver Island.

• Historical fiction

Immigrant song

New Canadians on fleeing repression, prejudice, applying for 100 jobs & love.

Geographies of the Heart: Stories from Newcomers to Canada edited by Raymonde Tickner, Amea Wilbur, Zahida Rahemtulla & Kerry Johnson (Purich Books/UBC Press $32.95)

Achat over coffee in 2019 between an English Language Studies instructor at the University of the Fraser Valley and one of her students who had graduated with a Political Science and TESL degree, culminated five years later in a book of stories about newcomers to Canada, Geographies of the Heart. The instructor, Raymonde Tickner, became one of four other editors who helped put together the story collection from 18 immigrants; the student, Muhialdin Bakini, is himself an immigrant from Sudan who shared his experiences for the book.

There are stories about people who were forced to flee repressive regimes to save their lives; a young mother and professional seeking a better life confronted with prejudice and other challenges in getting her permanent residency status; a Trinidadian who

applied for over one hundred jobs; an Italian woman who finally leaves her beloved country to be with her true love in Canada.

Their accounts belie the many misconceptions about immigration and immigrants by revealing that the paths into Canada are as diverse as the people who journeyed them.

The following are selected excerpts of newcomers to Canada.

Part 1: Stories of Risk and Exile BEYOND THE MOUNTAIN by Deea Badri

the bell will ring in a minute for the next stop. Loud voices were coming from throughout the bus: “Touch the door! Touch the door!”

I looked back from where I was, sitting in front of the door at the back of the number nine bus headed to Vancouver Community College. Usually buses in Vancouver are really crowded in the early morning. Some are sitting, many are standing. That morning, a couple was laughing and kissing each other. An old lady was sleeping in her seat. Maybe it was too early for her to be awake.

I heard many different languages and tones on the bus. Some people were shouting, some were whispering, and some were speaking normally. Since coming to Canada, I’ve

Camille McMillan Rambharat was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago. She is a training and development consultant and activist.

tDeea Badri was born in Kurdistan-Iraq and is currently working as a settlement worker with MOSAIC in Vancouver.

learned about a lot of countries in the world and how to recognize different accents. Canada is a multicultural country where people come from everywhere to start a new life.

I looked back. There was a young Asian lady with black hair, white skin, and black eyes. She looked nervous and embarrassed while waiting for the door to open.

Two loud voices sounded at the same time: “Touch the door! Push the door!”

No one cared except me and the young lady who desperately wanted to get off the bus. One of the voices was the bus driver, saying, “Please, young lady. You have to touch the door. Then the door will open for you, or come to the front door to get off.”

But the young lady remained standing still.

From the expression on her face, she looked like she did not understand a word of English, or did not know how a bus door opens in Vancouver. I think she was waiting for the bus driver to open the door, because in other cities the bus drivers open the doors.

Another loud angry voice, this time from a homeless guy who had taken the disabled seat at the front of the bus for himself. No one was sitting near him because of how he smelled. He had two big plastic bags filled with cans.

He was ranting, “You are in Canada! You must speak English. Otherwise, go back to your country.”

Suddenly the bus went quiet. All the eyes turned to look at the white guy with long blond hair, blue eyes, dirty clothes, and dirty sandals. It was hard to recognize the colour of his socks because the dirt covered everything. The other passengers gave him angry looks. Some of them were distressed— they were either new to Vancouver or they could not speak English. People felt uncomfortable, threatened, and unsafe.

Suddenly this loud man remembered that no matter what, he is a white Canadian who speaks good English, and he has the power to talk. I am an immigrant, and I don’t talk the same way he talks….”

Part 3: Stories of Belonging & Exclusion CANADA REIMAGINED

by Camille McMillan Rambharat

i was sixteen when i first visited canada Years later I landed here as a newcomer and am now married, a mother of three, and still in love with the country. But maturity and decades of experience have made me observant. As a human rights activist defending against social injustice, I never realized that a day would come when I would have to fight for my own human rights and dignity…

My ancestry is African. My husband and I are Caribbean-born and Canada is our home… we moved to Canada, not the US, because I felt Canada would be non-discriminating for our three Black children, especially our sons…

Job searching was a learning curve. We had over forty-five years of work experience, both in the Caribbean and other countries. None of that mattered. We faced rejection.

“We would have hired you, but you don’t have the Canadian experience.”

Or my favourite, “We’re so sorry, but you’re not the fit.”

…Then came further barriers…

A school administrator noted that I checked English as our primary language. Her facial expression changed as though she’d caught me lying. She asked, “What other language do you speak?”

Without missing a beat, I responded, “English.”

She questioned me again, “So you speak no other language than English?”

“Only English,” I responded. Our eyes met like a matador and a bull, checking to see who would look away first.

As she walked away, I felt I had won. I looked at my family seated behind me and shrugged my shoulders in disbelief…

When the administrator returned, she handed me a document for our son to attend an ESL class.

I reminded her, “We only speak English.”

“I’m just following the rules,” she said.

9780774881012

“A

much needed, well written, and comprehensive overview of the Royal Canadian Air Force that is perfectly timed to commemorate its 100th anniversary.”

—RICHARD MAYNE

Director and Chief Historian RCAF History and Heritage

“An

immensely readable tour de force through the political and battlefield swamps of army history.”

—RON LOWMAN

Toronto Star

“An outstanding narrative of the history of the Canadian Navy.”

—JURGEN DUEWEL

Canadian Military Journal

Three books in the INLET PUBLISHING SERIES: COAST STORIES

Lonely battles to survive wild water, weather and wilderness. Reference to the geology, both above and below water line. Yvonne Proctor’s stories of floathouse lives in the Broughton Archipelago & McKenzie Sound. And, why Grizzlies have returned to the Sunshine Coast.

Some history of Jervis Inlet’s peoples, geology, glaciers, floods. Taking back Princess Louisa Inlet. Shíshálh Nation’s amazing agriculture Loggers. Logging railroads imbedded in forest.

Rev Pringle; detailed stories of the Yukon Gold Rush, WWI, south BC Coast adventures with Mission ���� ���� ������� �������� �������� forest fires, and lives of isolated loggers and settlers. And of his son Rev. George Robert Pringle 19131943.

FICTION REVIEW

F FROM STRATHCONA TO THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

BY GRANT BUDAY

or a good introduction to 1930s Vancouver, pick up a copy of David Spaner’s novel, Keefer Street It follows the life and times of Jake Feldman, a Jewish kid growing up in the neighbourhood of Strathcona, home to people of Chinese, Irish and Jewish descent.

The young Jake is interested in baseball and shooting pool, but the hard times soon politicize him. It is, after all, the “Dirty Thirties” when most countries around the world entered into deep recessions. By 1931, unemployment reached 28 percent in British Columbia — the highest in Canada. Thousands of unemployed men went to rural BC work camps, including Jake. These make-work programs didn’t pan out.

While employed at a government relief camp, Jake joins a protest over the lousy wages where two weeks of moving dirt earns him less than two dollars.

He falls in with a group of his fellow dissatisfied workers. “We unveil a black and yellow banner: Relieve the Relief Campers. Workers Not Beggars,” Jake recounts. He and 208 others soon find themselves in Oakalla Prison for the night. His life as an activist has begun. He also reads Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, about the sweatshops of Chicago. In Germany, Hitler is on the rise.

Jake’s youth is counterpointed by chapters set in 1986 at the fiftyyear reunion of the “Mac-Paps” in Spain. The Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion was the Canadian contingent of volunteers who went to fight General Franco and fascism in the years 1936 to 1939. The Mac-Paps were named after William Lyon Mackenzie and Louis-Joseph Papineau. Mackenzie led a revolution against something called the Family Compact in Toronto in 1837; Papineau did the same in Montreal. The Family Compact was a group who were thought to be preventing democracy from flourishing by keeping control of land and politics to themselves.

Jake’s early years are the most dramatic in Keefer Street. For example, when the Nazi warship, Karlsruhe, docks at the Ballantyne Pier in March 1935, Jake joins a mass protest. The range of the people standing against the Nazis in Vancouver is fascinating.

David Spaner sets the scene: “The waterfront is decorated in ban-

The story of Jake, a Jewish activist during the Great Depression, as he battles unemployment and a Nazi warship in Vancouver.

ners: Relief Camp Workers Against Fascism, One Big Union, Finnish Organization of Canada, International Typographical Union, Red International, Railway Carmen, Communist Party, Chinese Unemployed Association, Anti-Nazi Coalition, Mayday Committee, Pacific Coast Fishermen’s Union, Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, Ukrainian Anti-Fascist League, Waterfront Workers Association, Order of Sleeping Car Porters, Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union, Jewish Workers Circle.”

Karlsruhe and a battle ensues. Fighting his way to the prow he burns the Nazi flag before getting punched out and waking up in jail for the second time.

he finds himself blackballed for having volunteered in support of the Spanish Civil War’s Republican cause and can’t find work. In fact, he can’t even volunteer for the Canadian Forces to return to Europe for World War II.

In one of the book’s most intense incidents, Jake and others board the

Such scenes as this, as well as the book’s cover, which shows a man with his right fist defiantly raised, implies that Keefer Street is a novel about war and protest. Yet it’s not until halfway through that Jake sets off for Spain’s civil war, and the novel is nearly finished before we see any action—he gets shot in the leg and is tended in the hospital by an American nurse named Rebecca.

When Jake returns to Vancouver,

His personal life is just as disheartening. Lena, with whom he’d been in love, has gone to Toronto. Jake’s friends who stayed home are thriving. His father, who abandoned the family some years earlier and returned to the fictional northern town of Fort Harold, is running a successful clothing store and is involved with a new woman. What’s Jake going to do? For a while he contemplates changing his name to Jack Fields to skirt the antisemitism he feels is holding him back. As for his interest in politics, it seems to have faded and he has no particular desire to do anything else other than shoot the occasional game of pool. Eventually he marries Polly, an old friend, and when his father dies they move to Fort Harold, take over the store and raise three kids. The decades pass. Yet Polly, an aspiring actress, is bored. She finally takes the kids and leaves for Los Angeles; when Jake eventually follows, she says it’s over.

Keefer Street is solidly written and full of interesting historical detail. The depiction of Jewish life and the links with family members in Toronto and New York give the impression of a strong and pervasive ethnic interconnectedness.

The bright spot in Jake’s otherwise bleak life is his reunion with Rebecca, the nurse who tended him when he was recovering from his gunshot wound in 1936. Rebecca is still politically active. They visit a Spanish hospital where she is invited to give a talk. “When Rebecca is called to the microphone, it is the first time I’ve heard her speak in public and I’m taken by her eloquence and her manner,” says Jake. “Talking with her hands as much as her voice, in Spanish as much as in English, she tells of the urgent needs for medical supplies in Nicaragua, likening its conditions, under bombs and bullets, to Spain.”

Even fifty years later, she’s fighting the good fight. Jake finds strength in this. He and Rebecca connect and fall for each other. In the final scene they are in British Columbia together on serene and bucolic Hornby Island.

“Rebecca and I turn onto a dirt road to a cottage on the water, set in a garden of fern, bramble, violet.

“And we rest.”

9781553807209

Grant Buday’s historical fiction novels, Orphans of Empire (Brindle & Glass, 2020) and In the Belly of the Sphinx (Brindle & Glass, 2023) tell of the late 19th century lives of

settlers in Vancouver and Victoria respectively.

Keefer Street by David Spaner (Ronsdale Press $24.95)

Cover art of David Spaner’s Keefer Street (Ronsdale Press)

David Spaner

FICTION REVIEW

BY HEIDI GRECO

For readers who may be unfamiliar with flash fiction—or, for that matter, prose poems— Barbara Black‘s Little Fortified Stories could provide an interesting starting point. Black, who lives in Victoria, has won an array of prizes for her short literary pieces, from Geist magazine’s Literary Postcard Story Contest and several Federation of BC Writers competitions to acknowledgment as a winner or finalist in challenges as far away as the United Kingdom.

The first half of the collection, called Distillations, expands on the book’s title, with some particular liquor often serving as accompaniment to the small fiction

INTOXICATING

BREW

Barbara Black may well have invented a new literary form— liquor as a metaphor.

beneath it. As a kind of introduction, Black offers an explanation for using this odd conceit, recalling an occasion in Lisbon where she’s sampling that nation’s best-known spirit, port, with the sole intent of tasting. “But as the wines wet my tongue and their flavours blossom in my mouth, I discover that each small glass contains more than the origin of a unique taste and aroma. It contains a story. A little story, its words fortified… from a very particular Portuguese spirit.” And port isn’t the only inspiration for these tiny stories (nearly all less than a single page); Black also calls on the powers of gin, bourbon, tequila, scotch,

rum and whiskey. I admit to having had some fun searching out the specific liquors which may have led to each piece, and discovering that their prices ranged from the modest thirty-some dollar bottles to those well over $100. I’ll also confess I couldn’t always see the connection between the particular spirit and its story. But one of the pieces that offered a clear link was a fiction prompted by Two Drifters Signature Rum. Called “The Hazards of Flight,” it’s the first of two stories that seem to be in the voice of Icarus’s mother: Your paper wings crackled in the air…The sky allowed your suspension for a few moments. But then your wings faltered, even as you were thrilling with the weightless substance of you. As you fell, you saw yourself reflected in a lake below, a slim shadow plummeting into sky—but a sky whose surface could be broken. You survived as far as your cunning and craft could carry you. You with your candle wax dreams and wood-frame wings. But the land reasserted its laws.

That piece is one that stands solidly in my mind as a clear example of flash fiction in that it has a recognizable narrative arc, with a beginning, middle and end. Many others in the book are pieces I can only call prose poems—and that is not to disparage them in any way. One of my reasons for claiming this is based on quotes interspersed throughout the book from writers considered founders or masters of that form. Consider this bon mot from Charles Baudelaire: “The beautiful is

always bizarre.” Indeed, that is often the case in the tradition of prose poems. Many are what can be considered surreal, as they’re often dreamlike, unhinged from reality. A number of Black’s micro-fictions manifest this, particularly those in the section called Ancestral Fabrications. As an example, here, in its entirety, is “Sister Eugénie’s Wonderful Glass Eye”: With one unfloating eternal eye she moves in midnight, ghostly as a jellyfish, down rows of ransomed moony faces, ranks of the motherless, lost stars in darkness.

As she passes, the girl in Crib Nine invents the bathysphere, orphans herself in the metal ball and sealed from the tide of night sighs drops by cord the fathoms down to be with her, Sister Eugénie, monocular among aquatic angels.

This particular piece is one for which Black has created a word/picture collage. A number of these fanciful creations appear throughout the book (she’s even created one for her About the Author page). The only disappointing aspect of these is the fact that they’re reproduced in black and white, though had they been in colour, the book certainly would have cost more.

The section called Visual Provocations offers ekphrastic writings inspired by specific works of art, some of which can be seen online. Kim Dingle’s Cloud inspires one of the longest stories (nearly two-and-a-half pages), about a mysterious child named Bunnykins, a kind of snow-daughter. And if this sounds strange, please don’t worry. Over seven pages of notes appear at the back of the book. These offer background or reference information that often clears up a reader’s puzzlement. But again, I find myself citing yet another of those poets who are quoted occasionally throughout the book—in this instance, words from the Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, who may well have been familiar with the rich taste of a dark port: “The unnatural and the strange have a perfume of their own.”

Scents and sights linger after reading this collection. I can’t help but think Barbara Black may have invented an altogether new form with these pieces, one I’d choose to call “reveries” for their often dream-like qualities.

I’m willing to bet you won’t find another book as intriguingly original anytime soon. 9781773861401

Heidi Greco lives in Surrey on territory of the Semiahmoo Nation where she has been known to occasionally quaff gin and tonic with a sliver of lime.

t“But as the wines wet my tongue and their flavours blossom in my mouth, I discover that each small glass contains more than the origin of a unique taste and aroma. It contains a story. A little story, its

words forti-

fied…from a very particular Portuguese spirit.”

B arBara B lack

Little Fortified Stories by Barbara Black (Caitlin $23)

EMBEDDED

Award-winning writer and former reporter Catherine Lang wrestles with the consequences of war in the aftermath of the death of her niece Michelle Lang,whowaskilledwhile embeddedwithCanadian troops inAfghanistan.

“A stunningly ferocious yet gentle work... This book is a game-changer and essential reading for these times, for those invested in history, in processing grief, and the nexus of the political with the personal. Catherine Lang’s book adds a beautiful depth to the literature of public/private mourning.”

—Renée Sarojini Saklikar

SUNRISE OVER HALFBUILT HOUSES

Erin Steele delivers an authentic, humble and inspiring story through love, addiction and finding peace in the darkest moments of longing.

"The powerful magnetism and grasp of addiction are explored with unflinchingly humble, honest, and delicate prose.... the exacting attention to detail and sensitivity make it easy for a reader to forget this is a memoir."

The Seaboard Review

"Like a big piece of music."

—Paul Lisicky

/caitlinbooks @caitlinpress.daggereditions @caitlinpress

FICTION REVIEW

Knives, Seasoning, and a Dash of Love by Katrina Kwan

(Penguin Random House $24.95)

BY SENURI WASALATHANTHRI

Picture this: It’s been a long week. And you’ve been looking forward to coming home on Friday evening, having a long, hot bath, cooking or ordering in your favorite comfort meal and getting under the blankets with a good book that will make you blush, laugh, catch your breath and your toes curl. Well, I can confidently say that Katrina Kwan’s debut novel, Knives, Seasoning, and a Dash of Love would be a great companion for such a relaxing yet steamy night in.

Meet Eden Monroe, a chef with the gift of being able to pick up intricate cooking skills by observing others and an unparalleled palette that helps her easily identify missing ingredients that can make a good dish great. However, she holds a dark secret that makes her desperate to raise a substantial amount of money within a short period of time. It leads Eden to embellish her resume and apply for a sous chef position at one of the most prestigious French haute cuisine restaurants—La Rouge.

Here’s where the excitement is ratcheted up a notch. Eden meets Alexander Chen, a talented chef who earned La Rouge three Michelin stars. At the time she applied, Eden didn’t realize that she already knew Alexander from many years ago, back when he went by his real name, Shang. Eden and Shang (Alexander) had enrolled the same year at the Gagnon-Allard School of Culinary Arts, but Eden was forced to drop out because her caretaker at the time gambled all their money away.

Alexander, now a famous chef, doesn’t seem to remember Eden and Eden aims to keep it that way, so that

tKatrina Kwan lives in Vancouver. She spent six years as a freelance ghostwriter of romance novels and is also an actress.

Sizzle in the kitchen

he won’t know she lied to get the La Rouge job. But things don’t quite work out that way.

Alexander is captivated by Eden from the beginning as her mannerisms don’t fit the profile of an experienced sous chef and her leadership style is the complete opposite of how he runs his kitchen. While he bears down on his employees like a scary Gordon Ramsay during service, Eden showers them with compliments and is the first to give

Katrina Kwan’s romance novel is set in the high-stakes world of fine dining.

to subdue it) warming Eden’s heart. Their romance progresses like wildfire with heat, passion and sexual tension radiating between them. With that, their personal lives become intertwined and Eden and Alexander are forced to navigate the secrets they both harbor and the weight of the troubled pasts they both carry — threatening the security of their relationship. To make things worse, their colleague, Hector, is hell-bent on getting Eden fired as he is adamant that he deserved Eden’s job. In one scene, Hector is caught red-handed attempting to get Eden in trouble: “Eden stalks to the walk-in and shuts the door behind her, effectively trapping Hector inside. She’s caught him standing in between two of the produce shelves, one hand holding onto the cilantro in question, while the other is about to dump an entire handful of salt on top of the garnish. It’s an act of sabotage.”

Also, Sebastian, the slimy scheming owner of La Rouge, is looming over Alexander constantly, pressuring him to do work he has no interest in. Are Eden and Alexander strong enough to survive once their secrets are out in the open? Can they come to terms with their own personal insecurities and struggles that are hurting one another? Kwan answers all these questions effortlessly as the story builds.

others a helping hand. Yet the two are completely smitten with each other. “He likes her more than he cares to admit,” writes Kwan. “He hadn’t realized until now, but seeing her every day at work is a breath of fresh air. She makes it easier on him. Makes him give a shit.” Thus begins their fiery romance, with Eden constantly surprising Alexander and taking him out of his comfort zone, and Alexander’s kind-hearted nature (even though he tries his absolute best

Knives, Seasoning, and a Dash of Love has everything a hopeless romantic could ever dream of—adequate levels of romance, spice, tension and emotional twists and turns that make you want to keep turning page after page. Kwan also touches on the importance of healing scars from our past, realizing one’s worth and not giving up during difficult times because “Love doesn’t pick and choose.”

9781039012417

Senuri Wasalathanthri is a Vancouver based publishing assistant, writer and student. Her uncle, Edward Mallawaarachchi, is a bestselling Sinhalese romance author in Sri Lanka.

POETRY REVIEW

BY TREVOR CAROLAN

or more than 40 years Mona Fertig has been an indefatigable cog in the engine of poetry, books and publishing in BC and Canada. Largely self-taught and from a modest Lower Mainland working family, she emerged in the mid-Seventies wave of young feminist poets that cocked a snook to the boys’ club who’d run things, well, nearly forever.

FNear the top of the mountain

Mona Fertig flourishes with her first poetry collection in 14 years.

religious, it reflects her family’s Jungian background detailed in her book on her painter father, The Life and Art of George Fertig (Mother Tongue, 2010), contending,

“…the soul has no age / no gender it exists in the realm of breath / existential unbound by the thorns of the world Time’s crush”

Elsewhere, her observational poetics cover scenes from island life, naming berries, trees, birds. Personal connectivity becomes a source of order, so that in Every Night the Dark Holds Your Mind in This Place she can remember a “humpback whale’s gentle snoring in the bay / how it astonished / how the sound could heal all the heartbreaks in the world.”

It was Fertig’s organizational skills, however, that soon brought her acclaim. The Literary Storefront, a Gastown literary centre she founded in 1978 as a democratic collective for diverse voices of every genre, rewrote the rules concerning how public readings and workshop events would unfold in western Canada thereafter. From Margaret Atwood to Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Jane Rule, and hundreds of others who could expect a fair shake, literally everyone participated. The Storefront earned Fertig a lot of love. From there to co-founding other writers’ associations, book awards and lobbying for international human rights with PEN, she kept active. Travelling, raising a family, settling and becoming a respected book publisher on Salt Spring Island were more grist for the mill. It’s a wonder she still managed to write for herself.

Islander, Fertig’s first poetry collection in 14 years gathers intentional poems about her island and family life experiences. Grouped in three sections—Village Life, Huddling and Joies de la Vie, with two long sociopolitical poems that complete matters, the works string together structurally like beads. There’s little of the heavy weather from earlier days, and in an Afterword Fertig comments that she returned to poetry out of instinct. These new poems read like small rivers taking the poet and reader into a deeper flourishing after seasons of Covid gloom.

The opening selection, Poet Returning to Form, comes as a declaration. For years Fertig worked in prose poem form; now, after decades in business, lyric and narrative modes resurface, offering spaciousness: “The clock’s seconds lift the poet’s heart once again,” she writes, “hold it high.”

Fertig crafts tight lines needing little punctuation. But borrowing from her

“Socratic in its contemplation on the nature of the soul, while not consciously spiritual or religious, it reflects her family’s Jungian background.” Trevor Carolan

early mentor, the late Beth Jankola, her use of the virgule or forward slash (“/”) brings a pause in specific lines, an internal punctuation that gives longer lines poetic measure, a beat not unlike music. Her narrative poems especially, with their tales of local nature, of people “close to the bone / marrow of the land,” evoke calmness. West coast readers will intuit there’s something settled here.

Fertig has a knack for unexpected concluding lines—winter cabin-fevered islanders emerge in spring “humming like oboes.” There are touchstone elements too—longtime poetic connections with Phyllis Webb and Maxine Gadd

are celebrated through honeymoon and lunch visits to Webb’s island house, and we are reminded of Fertig’s admiration of Gadd’s labyrinth of language.

Family poems come with age. A short suite delights in the poet’s children and grandchildren, in the profundity of their innocence. Then in a flipside: Landlords and Tenants recounts the poet’s own family legacy of moving them from rental to rental, the rootless crunch of urban economics.

The Philosophy of Digging Potatoes brings a deeper layering. Socratic in its contemplation on the nature of the soul, while not consciously spiritual or

In a longer piece, As the Days Pass, the poet finds further peace, comfort and beauty in the fullness of nature’s grace as “the Green swallows up my mind….” Reliable busyness re-emerges in the sounds of hammers and chainsaws in the distance that return “a framework of normality and habit” to Covid times, and connectivity with others that arrives in “the smell of woodsmoke curls.” In a bewildered season, nature and everyday human activity offer a hinge of purpose.

The two longest poems, The Weather is Political and Sleepless in Strathcona work with an islander’s perspective when Fertig spends extended time in the city. The view is dystopian, shocked at the continual noise, poverty and casual violence that urbanites routinely turn a blind eye toward. While an old Everywoman knits pink sweaters to pass time, there’s use of biblical anaphora technique with deliberate repetition of the key phrase “In this city…” that another lamented late poet, Tim Lander of Seventies Gastown days, would emphasize for its oratorical power. If there’s a backstory, it’s the poet’s desire to stop aggressive redevelopment of old neighbourhoods, beloved islands, even the old ways. The book’s most memorable selection comes as an elegant homage to elderhood. With ripe, almost serene images, Near the Top of the Mountain maps the islander’s inevitable approach toward the end. Leading upward “where it’s easier near the top” even as life unfolds below, a final grace note concludes how, “cloud patterns offer patience / [and] sunsets console / even with all the goodbyes.”

9781896949895

Trevor Carolan writes from North Vancouver and is author of The Literary Storefront: The Glory Years, 19781985 (Mother Tongue, 2015).

Islander: New Poems by Mona Fertig (Mother Tongue $22)

Mona Fertig grew up in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood and Burnaby, and was a founding member of the Feminist Caucus of the League of Canadian Poets.

Memoir a Indigenous a Fauna a Science

The story a widowed woman wrote in 1961 about taking her five children in a small motor launch to explore the beauty of the BC coast in the 1920s and 1930s, is a classic. Now its republished with family photos and maps as well as a preface by publisher Howard White; a new foreword by two of Blanchet’s grandchildren; a profile of M. Wylie (“Capi”) Blanchet by Edith Iglauer; and the last letter Capi wrote.

Keystone

Conservationists and casual hikers alike thrill to spot a cougar, a sea otter or an Orca in the wild. All are examples of BC keystone species—organisms that play an essential role in their ecological niches. Without keystone species, their ecosystems would be radically altered or collapse. This small, easily transportable book highlights 50 BC keystone species.

We

and Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls by Angela Sterritt (Greystone $34.95)

Sterritt combines memoir with her investigative reporting of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. Her engaging and disturbing stories show how colonialism and racism continue to endanger Indigenous women and girls, including Sterritt herself, who survived living on the Downtown Eastside and near the Highway of Tears.

Just Say Yes: A Memoir by Bob McDonald (D&M $34.95)

Canada’s foremost explainer of all things scientific, Bob McDonald, the host of CBC’s Quirks and Quarks didn’t do so well at university. In fact, he dropped out. He had a difficult upbringing at the hands of an abusive alcoholic father as well. How he overcame all these drawbacks to become an exuberant science celebrity holds good lessons for everyone.

The Curve of Time: New, Expanded Edition by M. Wylie Blanchet (Harbour $19.95)

Unbroken: My Fight for Survival, Hope,

50

Fauna Species of Coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest: A Pocket Guide by Collin Varner (Heritage House $19.95)

KIDLIT REVIEW

The Secret Office by Sara Cassidy (Orca $8.95) Ages 6–8

BY BEVERLY CRAMP

In what is an increasingly common portrait of a family, Sam, a single mother, works from home where she raises two children in a onebedroom apartment in Sara Cassidy’s The Secret Office with illustrations by Alyssa Hutchings

Yes, it’s crowded but for the most part this is a well-adjusted, happy home for nine-year-old twins, Allie and Henry. It’s only recently that Sam left her work office for the living room sofa and coffee table in the family apartment. At night, Sam opens the sofa into a bed and sleeps there. The twins have the bedroom.

That doesn’t mean the children don’t notice that, with their mother now working at home, their lifestyle has become constrained. Take this scene when they arrive home from school and rambunctiously fly through the doorway just as Sam is digitally conferencing with her boss, Mr. Kahlil, and other coworkers: “As they tumble into their apartment, Sam scowls at them, finger on her lips. Quiet, she mouths. She is at her computer in the living room, on Zoom. It is clearly an important meeting.”

Allie and Henry tiptoe to their bedroom to do schoolwork. Memories of

ROUNDUP

Allie and Henry’s big office adventure

Can

the nine-year-olds turn an old coal storage room into a special space for their mom?

having the apartment to themselves after school are still fresh; when they could watch TV, run the blender to make smoothies, build LEGO cities on the living room carpet—activities all now forbidden.

“I’m so tired of Mom taking up the living room,” Allie says to Henry. “I’m sick of crawling around and being qui-

ontinuing with his historical Chinese children’s books, Paul Yee’s Three Sisters (Tradewind $24.95) for ages 6–8, tells of the daughters of court musicians who use their music to challenge the heart of a cruel and warlike emperor. The tale is vividly illustrated in bright colours and traditional designs by Shaoli Wang. Born and raised in Qing Dao, China, Shaoli Wang now lives in BC where she has taught art to children for 25 years. Wang is the illustrator of many of Yee’s books, including one of his most famous titles, Bamboo (Tradewind, 2014). Yee has won numerous prizes including a Governor General’s Award, the Sheila Egoff Children’s Prize and the the Vicky Metcalf Award. 9781990598265

The fourth book of Joseph Dandurand’s “Then and Now” series, The Bears and the Magic Masks (Nightwood $15.95) for ages 6-8, portrays the relationship between the Kwantlen people and bears. When a master carver is rescued by bears after falling into a river, he expresses his gratitude by gifting them animal masks. But little did the bears know that these masks hold magical powers. What will the bears do with their newfound powers? Illustrated by Elinor Atkins 9780889714748

et. I’m sick of Mr. Kahlil and his plans and strategies. I’m sick of the strange voices. It’s like people have moved in, but they don’t eat with us or help with the chores. It’s like living with a bunch of ghosts.”

The twins are resilient, though, and they soon hatch a plan to save their pocket money to buy their mother

headphones from the local thrift store. That will solve some of the new restrictions at home. They’ve picked up clues from their mom’s work conversations for solving problems and setting goals as they check out prices and plan how to budget for the cost.

Then, while washing their clothes in the basement laundry one day, they stumble upon an unused locked room, which they look at through a keyhole. It’s an old coal storage room no longer in use after the heritage building in which they live stopped using coal for heating purposes. Allie and Henry immediately begin brainstorming a way to secretly turn it into an office for their mother as a surprise.

It takes a lot of scheming to overcome the challenge of turning the dusty, dirty room into a suitable work space. Allie and Henry find a way around all the challenges, such as the building owner wanting $50 a month in rent for the room. Along the way, they are helped by other people in the building including the fastidious 32-year-old building superintendent and a grandmotherly neighbour named Olive.

Award-winning Sara Cassidy creates a cast of believable people and life situations in this captivating tale. The Secret Office is part of the Orca Echoes series with character-building themes and school curriculum tie-ins.

9781459839465

OAt the park, people give squirrels free peanuts. And nobody screams when a squirrel crosses their path. But for Rat, it’s all screams and no nuts … until he comes up with a plan: be more like a squirrel—squirrel-ish! However, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side as Rat learns in Bambi Edlund’s humorous story about self-acceptance, Squirrel-ish (Owlkids $21.95), for ages 4–7. Illustrations also by Edlund 9781771475174

OThethirdinstallmentoftheSoundsofNatureseriesby Kallie George, I Hear You, Mountains (Greystone $22.95), for children ages 3-7, is about the sounds of the mountains. The book follows a group of friends on a hiking adventure, discovering the rush of waterfalls, chattering chipmunks and mischievous birds along the way, encouraging kids to engage with nature through listening, fostering connection, empathy, mindfulness and imagination. 9781771647427

Illustration by Alyssa Hutchings, from The Secret Office

Sara Cassidy

Illustration by Shaoli Wang, Three Sisters (Tradewind)

WHO’S WHO BRITISHCOLUMBIA

A IS FOR ALEXANDER

Preble Jefferson can see five seconds into the future, but otherwise leads an ordinary life. A subway confrontation with a cop goes wrong, allowing Preble to dodge a bullet—resulting in another man’s death. When government agencies discover his gift, a manhunt ensues, shifting their focus to military research. As Preble fights to protect his family, he must balance the cost of his ability against his humanity. The Man Who Saw Seconds (Clash Books $27.99) by Alexander Boldizar is a novel that explores time, the brain, and the conflict between individuals and society.

9781960988072

B IS FOR BARROW

An unexpected visitor to a cocoa estate in Trinidad triggers memories of mysterious deaths for a prosperous French Creole family in Karen Barrow’s Palmyra (FriesenPress $24.49). The nowruined “Great House” was where Joe, the housekeeper’s precocious elevenyear-old son, witnessed enigmatic events. Decades later, a young stranger’s arrival reawakens these memories, setting off tragic events. Including historical and geographical detail, the novel chronicles the rise of an educated elite that challenges the ruling white plantocracy, blending a coming-of-age tale with a Gothic mystery.

9781039195806

C IS FOR COSACK

In the quiet seaside town of Oyster Hill, a hit-and-run accident kills a child. Christine Cosack’s novel, Barcelona Red Metallic (Second Story $22.95) follows police Detective Luci Miller whose only clue is a unique shade of red car paint (which is the book’s title). Her search eventually points to Jo Nelson, a grandmother in her seventies who has spent her life caring for a son with cystic fibrosis. As Luci gets closer to Jo, she discovers that Jo’s charm hides dark secrets. And Jo is forced to face the possibility that someone she loves might be behind the tragic accident.

9781772603910

DIS FOR DEL BUCCHIA

In Dina Del Bucchia’s You’re Gonna Love This (Talonbooks $19.95) a narrator tells of the intertwined relationships with her spouse, television and herself in a long poem. Through a distinctly working-class lens, Del Bucchia’s work explores how constant media culture affects our connection to the world. Laced with dark humour, the narrator recounts her experiences in caregiving and her own mental health journey.

Del Bucchia, a sessional instructor at UBC, is also a senior editor of Poetry Is Dead magazine and a co-host of the podcast Can’t Lit with Jen Sookfong Lee 9781772016123

E IS FOR EYTON

Explore35outdooradventuresin Backpacking on Vancouver Island: The Essential Guide to the Best MultiDay Trips and Day Hikes (Greystone $26.95) by Taryn Eyton. Whether you’re seeking a weekend mountain adventure, a multi-day trek to a hidden beach or a short day hike to a waterfall, Eyton offers detailed route descriptions, trail maps and practical advice. Each trip includes essential details such as elevation, distance, time, camping spots, water sources, and information on fees and permits. This guide also promotes environmental responsibility along with outlining wilderness experiences. 9781778400100

F IS FOR FIFTH FIVE

The long-running journal, Raincoast Chronicles, first published in 1972, helped launch Harbour Publishing two years later. Every decade since, a collection of these historical stories is bound into a book. Now, Raincoast Chronicles Fifth Five (Harbour $60), following the First Five to Fourth Five, has been released as part of the celebration of the publisher’s 50th anniversary. Including stories from some of BC’s most iconic authors—Al Purdy, Anne Cameron, Patrick Lane, Edith Iglauer, Jean Barman and Grant Lawrence among others—this collector’s edition is another deep dive into BC’s coastal character. 9781990776939

Dina Del Bucchia

G IS FOR GRAIN

In the historical fiction novel, The Silver Pocket Watch: A British Home Child’s Journey (Tadpole $24.95), John Grain imagines what it was like for his grandmother, one of the 100,000 children sent by the British Home Children program to Canada as indentured labourers between 1869 and 1939. The story begins with Winnie Ormsby raising her infant niece, Millie, in Victorian London’s slums. Winnie marries Captain Thomas Turtle, but their children are kidnapped and sent to Canada as child labourers by a spiteful family member. Central to the story is a silver pocket watch, a family heirloom symbolizing an enduring connection. 9780973863437

Alexander Boldizar

Karen Barrow

Taryn Eyton

Christine Cosack

WHO’SWHO BC

H IS FOR HARVEY

The Hawk Shadow (Kids Can Press $23.99) for ages 4-7, written by Jan Bourdeau Waboose and illustrated by Karlene Harvey, explores sibling bonds and Anishinaabe cultural tradi-

FOOD FULL OF LIFE:

Eating with the Cycle of the Seasons: memoirs and recipes by Ann-Lee and Gordon Switzer

Child psychologist Jillian Roberts focuses on the importance of friendships for children’s social-emotional learning and mental health in The Friendship Guide (Orca $21.95), due out in February 2025. The book offers principles for how to be a good friend with real-life scenarios to illustrate these ideas in everyday settings like the playground, school or playdates. It serves as a practical resource for parents, guardians and children about what makes friendships work and how to make lasting and meaningful connections.

9781459839311

K IS FOR KANE

The collection of poems, Asterisms (Harbour $22.95), by Donna Kane celebrates the universe and the natural world, reflecting on topics ranging from Comet NEOWISE to swallowtail butterflies and The Incredible Hulk. Kane’s previous book of poems, also with a title related to astronomy, Orrery (Harbour, 2020), was shortlisted for a Governor General’s Literary Award, and also mixed humour and wonder. These two collections take readers on a journey through the vastness of space and the interconnectedness of all life on Earth.

9781990776717

ISBN: 978-1-896627-34-2

Bring the seasons of the year into the kitchen, month by month. Learn what’s happening in nature and the garden, and what locally sourced foods are ready to cook. Find very easy-to-follow recipes for breakfast, desserts, dinner, drinks. Anecdotes and drawings will entertain as well. Bon appétit!

344 pages with index illustrations throughout $35 paper bound

Published by Ti-Jean Press available through amazon.ca

Set largely in the Okanagan Valley around Kelowna from June 2021 to June 2022, Matt Rader’s poetry collection, Fine (Nightwood $19.95), reflects on the major natural, historical and social events that occurred, including a 2021 heat dome during the summer followed by an atmospheric river in the autumn; the pandemic and its impact on people; the discovery of unmarked residential school graves across Canada; and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On a personal level, the poems explore disability, illness, trans identity and healing. Rader looks back on these contemporary challenges from an imagined future, invoking a world of resilience and beauty.

9780889714663

COMING DECEMBER 2024 FROM THORNAPPLE PRESS

Part of the More Than Two™ Essentials series, books by Canadian authors on focused topics in nonmonogamy.

Find it at your local bookstore or at thornapplepress.ca

GEORGE WOODCOCK LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

AWARD for an outstanding literary career in British Columbia.

Theannual$5,000prizetoaBCauthorwhoseenduringcontribution tosocietyspansseveraldecades,wascreatedby BC BookWorld and co-sponsorsincludetheVancouverPublicLibrary,PacificBookWorld NewsSociety,theWritersTrustofCanadaandYosefWosk.

Tonominateacandidatefortheaward,sendabriefletterto: George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, c/o BC BookWorld, Box 93536, Vancouver, BC V6E 4L7

Formoreinfo:(604)736-4011orbookworld@telus.net

WHO’SWHO

N IS FOR NOCK

Shortlisted for the 2024 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, A Family of Dreamers (Talonbooks $18.95) by Samantha Nock redefines the concept of “home.” This debut poetry collection explores the complexities of growing up in rural northeast British Columbia, capturing the love and grief that emerge there. Nock weaves in themes of fat liberation, desirability politics and heartbreak as she navigates her identity as a young Indigenous woman who moves to the city. Samantha Nock is Cree-Métis originally from Treaty 8 Territory in the Peace Region of BC. 9781772015478

O IS FOR OLORUNTOBA

Change is a given and one that Tolu Oloruntoba, a Governor General Award and Griffin Poetry Prize recipient, takes on in his third poetry collection, Unravel (M&S $22.95), due out in March 2025. Oloruntoba delves into the ways individuals and their worlds can be deconstructed, while examining the transformations and consequences that arise in the aftermath of such profound changes. Formerly a medical practitioner, Oloruntoba now manages health projects in British Columbia. 9780771013966

P IS FOR PRASAD

Ellie Price is a chronically ill, former marathon runner who embarks on a life-affirming journey to heal after an unexpected and devastating loss in Ron Prasad’s Ellie’s Albatross (iUniverse $19.95). Faced with the choice of succumbing to grief or finding new meaning in life, Ellie strives to rediscover love, hope and inner strength. Parksville-based Prasad’s novel is a fictionalized love letter to his real-life wife, who also suffers from chronic illness. 9781663245618

Q IS FOR QUIT (SORT OF)

When helping someone overcome a drinking problem, the traditional approach is to push for abstinence. A new approach is offered in Maureen Palmer’s You Don’t Have to Quit: 20 Science-Backed Strategies to Help Your Loved One Drink Less (Page Two $21.95). Palmer advocates for harm reduction and positive change through empathy and compassion. Drawing from her own experience and interviews with experts, she provides strategies to reduce or stop drinking, while also maintaining healthy boundaries. Palmer debunks myths that foster shame and conflict, promoting a collaborative approach to improving both relationships with drinkers and their drinkingbehavior.

9781774584668

R IS FOR ROSS

S IS FOR SYLVIA

In BC, where most people report in surveys to having “no religion,” what are the implications for Christian communities that continue to worship and work in such a secular place? Ross Lockhart, a prof at the Vancouver School of Theology, considers religion’s future in West Coast Mission: The Changing Nature of Christianity in Vancouver (MQUP $34.95). He concludes that rather than disappearing, Christianity is adapting to immigration, decolonization and social crises with friendship and social connection.

9780228022862

tBorn in Vancouver to Ukrainian immigrants, Sylvia Molnar was steeped in Ukrainian culture. She began cooking as a little girl and, after retiring from a 26-year teaching career, opened a cooking school in 1995 and began presenting Ukrainian Food Flair on a local radio program. She became well-known through various cooking demonstrations (in places such as the now-closed Barbara Jo’s Books to Cooks store) as well as TV shows. Molnar died in 2015 before she could publish her cookbook, but friend and radio host, Paulette Demchuk MacQuarrie, has now made it available as Ukrainian Food Flair: Authentic Recipes from Canada’s West Coast (Nash Holos $24.99).

9780981037820

T IS FOR TYSICK

Long known for his devotion to, and work for, the homeless, Victoria-based Reverend Al Tysick shares his experiences in Muddy Water: Stories from the Street (Wipf and Stock $25). Ranging from despair to humour to hope, Tysick sheds light on the issues of the hard-to-house, addiction, mental illness and poverty that are often overlooked in mainstream media. Enhanced by Elfrida Schragen’s drawings, the text provides insights into street life and highlights the impact of Canada’s residential schools on Indigenous people among the homeless. Tysick advocates for dismantling colonialism, racism and sexism to address inequality and poverty, urging a shift from self-centred to communityfocused living. 9798385215010

FALL 2024 NON-FICTION

The human heart travels far in this second volume of Better Next Year true-life Christmas memories, following the same bright star of hope.

Collected by acclaimed memoirist and editor JJ Lee, these stories feature more dashed holiday hopes, Christmas catastrophes, and slender, heartbreaking shards of joy.

“. . . a welcome gift for anyone who has complicated associations with the yuletide season.” THE TYEE

$ 24.95 ISBN 978-1-990160-44-8

Order from: UTP Distribution utpbooks@utpress.utoronto.ca

FALL 2024 FICTION

FALL 2024 NON-FICTION

“An enlightening deep dive into the rich history of women’s hockey.” CAMMI GRANATO Hockey wasn’t meant to include girls. Women attracted to the speed, finesse, and physicality of the game had to overcome condescending attitudes, lack of resources, and even sexual assault in their quest for legitimacy and ice time.

$ 26.95 ISBN 978-1-990160-42-4

“We are like the sash, woven together from different peoples and traditions, making something new, beautiful, and strong.”

Red River Métis author Cheryl Parisien combines research nd family history in this story of a pivotal moment in the birth of a sovereign nation.

$ 24.95 ISBN 978-1-990160-40-0

Maureen Palmer

Drawing by Victoria artst, Elfrida Schragen, from Muddy Water: Stories from the Street

From the cookbook, Ukrainian Food Flair: Authentic Recipes from Canada’s West Coast

Tolu Oloruntoba

Ross Lockhart

Samantha Nock

WHO’SWHO

Illustrator Udayana Lugo’s picture book, No Huddles for Heloise (Orca $21.95) follows a young penguin who enjoys sledding, giving rocks to friends and eating fish popsicles while disliking crowds, close-talkers and huddles. But huddling is essential for penguins to stay warm and avoid leopard seals. Seeking others like her, Heloise runs into unfriendly animals and has a close call with a predator. Through colourful illustrations, the story concludes with Heloise realizing she must return to her community and find a way to be a penguin that can fulfill her need for personal space. The book is written by Deborah Kerbel 9781459839106

The last title in the Crow Stories trilogy, The Runaway (Groundwood $19.99), written and illustrated by Nancy Vo, tells of a young boy who loses his mother to cholera and decides to leave home. Fearlessly setting out on his own, the boy is is taken in by two horse riders several days later when they find him ravenously hungry. The riders give him food at their encampment in exchange for labour. When the boy is stronger and prepares to leave again, he realizes he no longer needs to. Vo’s finale pays tribute to the boy’s faith in loved ones and the discovery that life, despite its hardships, can improve.

9781773064017

Actor and playwright (as well as fullytrained dentist), Sangeeta Wylie has published her debut play, we the same (Talon $19.95), which is based on a true story about a mother and her six children fleeing Việt Nam in 1979 by boat. They survive getting separated from their husband and father, pirate attacks, deadly weather and being shipwrecked. Thirty-five years later the mother shares secrets with her daughter that help ease the tragedy of the past.

9781772016161

“Revolution by Fire is a riveting graphic narrative of the 1741 New York City slave conspiracy. The innovative graphic narrative brings into full view America’s slave past and how enslaved people courageously rebelled against their enslavers. Readers particularly interested in the multiracial dimensions of slave resistance will find this graphic narrative a real gem.”

—Dr. Karlos K. Hill, author of The Murder of Emmett Till: A Graphic History

In Xiran Jay Zhao’s mecha science fiction blended with Chinese history for YA readers, Heavenly Tyrant (Tundra $28.99), Zetian must manage her thirst for revenge after rising to power in Huaxia. She learns hidden truths about her world and fights an enemy holding one of her loved ones hostage. Forced to collaborate with a dangerous ally, Zetian confronts both external enemies and internal struggles at home. As revolution brews, she is torn between being a just ruler or succumbing to violence to achieve her goals of vengeance and liberation. This is a sequel to their #1 New York Times Bestseller, Iron Widow (Penguin Random House, 2021).

9780735269989

Octopuses, with their blue blood, large brains and eight arms are unusual creatures. Known for their mastery of camouflage and remarkable escape abilities, recent research highlights their intelligence and distinct personalities. While they are generally solitary, they have been known to interact with humans. Octopus Ocean: Geniuses of the Deep (Orca $24.95), by host of the Skaana Podcast, Mark Leiren-Young, examines the biology, habitats and behaviours of these animals. The book also addresses threats to their survival, such as warming oceans, over-fishing and pollution.

9781459838956

Zoe Duff’s UnTethered (Filidh $13.85) is a poetic exploration of loss, relationships with elderly parents and the journey from grief to healing. Beginning with journal notes after her father’s death, the collection follows with existential questions and expressions of love for Duff’s parents. The poems speak to anyone who has experienced loss, blending the strangeness of grief with the mundane aspects of daily life. Duff lives in Victoria with her life partners, children and grandchildren.

9781927848630

Nancy Vo

Udayana Lugo

Sangeeta Wylie

Xiran Jay Zhao

OBITS IN MEMORIAM

Darrel J. McLeod (1957 – 2024)

Brought up in a poor Cree family in Northern Alberta, Darrel J. McLeod sprang onto the literary scene in 2018 with his first book, the memoir Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age (D&M), which took the Governor General Literary Award in the Non-Fiction category. A second memoir followed, Peyakow: Reclaiming Cree Dignity (D&M, 2021), which was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction; his first novel, A Season in Chezgh’un (D&M, 2023) posthumously won the 2024 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. McLeod passed away in Victoria unexpectedly on August 29, 2024 at the age of 67 following a brief and sudden illness.

Grace

Eiko Thomson (1933 – 2024)

Born Eiko Nishikihama on October 15, 1933 in Steveston, Grace Eiko Thomson was interned with her family at an abandoned gold mining town near Lillooet during World War II. Later in life she became the founding curator and director of the Japanese Canadian National Museum at the Nikkei Centre in Burnaby and was president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians from 2005 to 2010. In 2021, Thomson wrote the memoir, Chiru Sakura—Falling Cherry Blossoms: A Mother & Daughter’s Journey through Racism, Internment and Oppression (Caitlin) that combined her own writing with translated entries from her late mother’s journal. She died at the age of 90 on July 11, 2024.

Roy Miki (1942 – 2024)

Vancouver author, activist and Japanese Canadian World War II internee, Roy Miki, died on October 5, 2024. Miki taught in the English department at Simon Fraser University for over thirty years and was instrumental in the achievement of Japanese Canadian redress. His 2004 book, Redress:

LITERARY LOSSES

Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (Raincoast) offered an account of that arduous process. Miki wrote and edited many critical studies, literary essays and books of poetry. His collection, Surrender (Mercury), received the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry in 2002. Miki was the recipient of the Order of Canada, the Order of British Columbia, a Gandhi Peace Award and many more accolades during his lifetime.

Stan Persky (1941 – 2024)

Born in Chicago on January 19, 1941, Stan Persky was easily one of the most significant figures in the rise of British Columbian writing and publishing during the 1970s and 1980s. In the late 1960s, Persky cofounded the Georgia Straight Writing Supplement in Vancouver which led to the formation of New

Star Books. For many years, Persky, as an author and political activist, was closely associated with New Star Books and wrote a series of books about BC and international politics for the press. As well, Persky was an early activist in Vancouver’s gay movement and wrote about gay life in his book Buddy’s: Meditations on Desire (1991). He died in Berlin on October 15, 2024.

Kevin Roberts (1940 – 2023)

Kevin Roberts was born in Australia on March 8, 1940 and died in BC on November 17, 2023. Roberts came to Canada in 1964, completed a master’s degree in English at SFU and began teaching at Malaspina College when it opened in 1969. He later earned a PhD from Griffith University in Queensland and studied in England. Roberts published 13 books of poetry, three books of short stories, four novels, three plays and two books of nonfiction. Both his poetry and fiction have been widely anthologized and two books of poetry, S’ney’mos (Oolichan, 1980) and Stonefish (Oolichan, 1982) were produced and broadcast by the CBC.

Bob Tyrrell (1948 – 2024)

The founder of one of BC’s biggest publishing houses, Orca Books, Bob Tyrrell was born in the Peace River country in 1948 but was raised on the coast. His self-published 1984 guide, Island Pubbing (Orca Books), cowritten with Boyd Corrigan, helped Tyrrell make the switch from being a high school English teacher to operating Orca Books, as did The Pubs of B.C. (Orca, 1988), coauthored with Jane Seyd When he retired in 2017, Orca Books had more than 850 titles in print and was producing more than 80 new titles a year. Bob Tyrrell died suddenly on August 31, 2024.

Roy Miki

Grace Eiko Thomson

Darrel J. McLeod

Stan Persky

Bob Tyrrell

Kevin Roberts

ilja herb photo

BOOKSTORES

Bulwarksagainst thehideousness

ituated in North Vancouver’s Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood, Helicon Books was cofounded by Lizzie Lee and Matt Sturrock, two booksellers with years of experience including Toronto’s Nicholas Hoare Books, London’s Daunt Books and Waterstones, UK. In an interview with Quill & Quire, Sturrock described the goals of Helicon: “We just want to provide

a welcoming place for inquiry and epiphany, and we endeavour to carry a range of exceptionally good novels, short stories, essay collections, poetry, history, travel, cookery, and art. The internet can be a huge reservoir of ire and misinformation ... so independent bookshops are more important than ever as sources of sophisticated entertainments, as intellectual hubs, and as bulwarks against all the hideousness and fatuity out there.” Helicon Books, 125 West 1st Street, North Vancouver. www.heliconbooks.ca

Brigades Discovery Linking Up

The publication of The HBC Brigades [review in Autumn 2024 issue], is a wonderful achievement for Nancy Marguerite Anderson and Ronsdale Press. Her Internet publications introduced me to the grandfather of two Nicola Valley cowboys and Great War soldiers. His name was Henry Hardinge Digby Shuttleworth (1834 –1900) and he led his first HBC horse brigade across the North Cascades in the company’s 1856/57 “outfit” year, to Fort Langley from Fort Colville, and back. He led men and women, and their beasts and their burdens up and down the Hope-Princeton trail for another thirty or so years after that first crossing. “Fixed income” me has alerted the Vancouver and Thompson-Nicola libraries to this book.

Michael Sasges

Vancouver and Nicola Valley

Editor’s Note: In our feature on Nancy Marguerite Anderson’s The HBC Brigades: Culture, Conflict, and Perilous Journeys of the Fur Trade [Autumn 2024 issue], we incorrectly described Anderson as being the “ancestor” of a voyageur. The correct term is “descendant.”

Congratulations on the latest iteration of BC BookWorld [online]! It looks great, the links are fast and reliable and, as always, it’s packed solid with information and good reading.

John Harris Esquimalt

Discovering Judith

I picked up your paper on BC Ferries. I read your excellent article on Judith Copithorne. I knew zilch about her. I decided to see if the Vancouver Public Library had any of her books. I took out Heart’s Tide (1972). I finished it tonight and I loved it. I put another one of her books on hold at the VPL. They have several others I plan to read as well. Thank you for guiding me to this author.

Instagram commentator, October 25, 2024

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