Index
Results (506)
Review
Breaking Ground: The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and the Unearthing of Tze-whit-zen Village
Breaking Ground, by journalist Lynda Mapes, is a compelling, well told story of a Coast Salish tribe in Washington State – the Lower Elwha – and its fraught relations with the settler community that grew...
BC Studies no. 164 Winter 2009-2010 | Page(s) 115-116
Review
Ethel Wilson: A Critical Biography
THE TWO THINGS about Ethel Wilson’s writing that David Stouck emphasizes in his critical biography are her ability to evoke a sense of place and her great reverence for “the English sentence.” Anyone would think...
BC Studies no. 141 Spring 2004 | Page(s) 108-9
Review
Murder in the Chilcotin
Author Roy Innes can be forgiven for his less than stellar accuracy in depicting the Cariboo Chilcotin in his recent crime novel, Murder in the Chilcotin. His story-telling prowess, captivating story line, and intriguing plot...
BC Studies no. 177 Spring 2013 | Page(s) 177-78
Review
Return to Northern British Columbia: A Photojournal of Frank Swannell, 1929-39
This is the third and final instalment in Jay Sherwood’s series about the work of provincial land surveyor Frank Swannell. It describes Swannell’s activities during the 1930s, including several seasons spent in areas of northern...
BC Studies no. 175 Autumn 2012 | Page(s) 135-36
Review
Vancouver Noir: 1930-1960
In the August 1946 issue of the French cinema studies journal, L’écran française, French critic Nino Frank used the term “film noir” to describe a new generation of American crime films only recently allowed into...
BC Studies no. 175 Autumn 2012 | Page(s) 143-44
Review
Lillian Alling: The Journey Home
In 1929, Lillian Alling reached the coast of Alaska on her way to Siberia. Her three-year walk across North America began in New York City and ended at Cape Wales where her footsteps disappeared after...
BC Studies no. 176 Winter 2012-2013 | Page(s) 175-6
Review
Extraordinary Anthropology: Transformations in the Field
“Anthropology is unquestionably a discipline with well-known intellectual traditions, or histories … [It is] not a social science tout court, but something else. What that something else is has been notoriously difficult to name, precisely...
BC Studies no. 160 Winter 2008-2009 | Page(s) 129-31
Review
Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast
The Garry oak meadows of southern Vancouver Island are among the rarest ecosystems in Canada. In Gardens Aflame, Maleea Acker takes on the ambitious goal of relating the history and ecology of Garry oak meadows,...
BC Studies no. 179 Autumn 2013 | Page(s) 215-216
Review
Mystery Islands: Discovering the Ancient Pacific
Drawing on experience gained from travel writing assignments, Salt Spring author Tom Koppel tackles an ambitious subject, the peopling of the Pacific Ocean, with a book of interesting anecdotes and information set within a larger,...
BC Studies no. 180 Winter 2013-2014 | Page(s) 169-170
Review
Flyover: British Columbia’s Cariboo Chilcotin Coast. An Aviation Legacy
In his latest publication, Chris Harris views the Cariboo, Chilcotin, and Coast region of south central British Columbia, the base for his numerous books, from a new perspective derived from a series of flights over...
BC Studies no. 180 Winter 2013-2014 | Page(s) 191-192
Review
A Wilder West: Rodeo in Western Canada
This is a book about people in small towns in the west, and the rodeos that have provided ways to negotiate their complex social, economic, and cultural relationships with each other and with the animals...
BC Studies no. 180 Winter 2013-2014 | Page(s) 189-191
Review
The Good Hope Cannery: Life and Death at a Salmon Cannery
Until post-war technology allowed for the centralization of salmon canning, the industry relied on numerous canneries located close to the fishing grounds. More than 200 canneries were scattered along the BC coast, and apart from...
BC Studies no. 176 Winter 2012-2013 | Page(s) 170-1
Review
The Library Book: a History of Service to British Columbia
Accepting the challenge to produce, within a fixed deadline, a comprehensive overview of the evolution of libraries in British Columbia must have been daunting. Works of this sort are most often destined to grow old,...
BC Studies no. 176 Winter 2012-2013 | Page(s) 165-6
Review
Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and other stories from Desolation Sound
This is a book of stories, mostly frothy, engaging, and well told. It’s also a sort of not-quite postmodern coming-of-age tale that is much enhanced by Grant Lawrence’s mixing of his own stories with those...
BC Studies no. 173 Spring 2012 | Page(s) 158-59
Review
A Walk with the Rainy Sisters: In Praise of British Columbia’s Places
Following in the footsteps of Roderick Haig Brown’s Measure of the Year, Stephen Hume has chosen to tell many tales, some celebratory and some cautionary, to the rhythm of a passing year. Like Grant Lawrence’s...
BC Studies no. 174 Summer 2012 | Page(s) 131-2
Review
Urbanizing Frontiers: Indigenous Peoples and Settlers in 19th-Century Pacific Rim Cities
Colonists seldom embarked alone to new continents, and so the act of “settling” was often the act of creating a “settlement.” Penelope Edmonds’s Urbanizing Frontiers reminds us that the interface between settler and...
BC Studies no. 172 Winter 2011-2012 | Page(s) 130-31
Review
British Columbia’s Magnificent Parks: The First 100 Years
James D. Anderson’s British Columbia’s Magnificent Parks: The First 100 Years is a tribute to the first century of the Provincial Park system in BC. This thoroughly researched and richly illustrated history, sensitive to ongoing...
BC Studies no. 174 Summer 2012 | Page(s) 134-5
Review
Contesting White Supremacy: School Segregation, Anti-Racism, and the Making of Chinese Canadians
In September 1922, the Victoria, B.C. school board ordered 155 Chinese children (97 were Canadian-born and many spoke only English) to leave its regular elementary schools and move to segregated schools which only they would...
BC Studies no. 173 Spring 2012 | Page(s) 148-50
Review
The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian in Canadian Culture (2nd Edition)
Twenty years after its initial publication, The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian in Canadian Culture remains a relevant read. Featuring a new preface and afterword, this second edition of Daniel Francis’s important popular...
BC Studies no. 177 Spring 2013 | Page(s) 172-73
Review
Stranger on a Strange Island: From Main Street to Mayne Island
Grant Buday’s slim tome about his transition to life on Mayne Island in the new millennium is my favourite among the small pile of good books about life on the inland sea that I’ve reviewed...
BC Studies no. 177 Spring 2013 | Page(s) 196-97
Review
Victoria: Crown Jewel of British Columbia, Including Esquimalt, Oak Bay, Saanich and the Peninsula
This book claims to be a “multi-faceted photo-essay” which combines historical detail with compelling narrative to provide the visitor with new insights into the many wonders of Victoria and its environs. As an extra bonus,...
BC Studies no. 173 Spring 2012 | Page(s) 150-51
Review
Chinese Community Leadership: Case Study of Victoria in Canada
I am particularly interested in this volume, having been born in Vancouver’s Chinatown in 1938 and having a father who was treasurer of a district association. He was a shirt tailor, and I remember in...
BC Studies no. 169 Spring 2011 | Page(s) 158-161
Review
The Whaling Indians: Legendary Hunters
THE INTENT OF The Whaling Indians: Legendary Hunters is to present the “Native point of view” and so that will also be the perspective of this book review. On the surface of things, the method...