Index
Results (500)
Review
Madness, Betrayal and the Lash: The Epic Voyage of Captain George Vancouver
Madness, Betrayal and the Lash is an accessible, succinct narrative of George Vancouver’s life, focusing on the voyage he led into the Pacific in the late 18th century. Bown’s stated goal is to give Vancouver...
BC Studies no. 163 Autumn 2009 | Page(s) 135-6
Review
Vancouver Vanishes: Narratives of Demolition and Revival
The cover and larger format pages of this handsomely produced book are drear images of demolition in the older inner suburbs of Vancouver. An array are pictured on the back cover rather in the manner...
BC Studies no. 191 Autumn 2016 | Page(s) 157-160
Review
This Day in Vancouver
There are some stories about Vancouver that bear retelling. Take the tale of Theodore Ludgate, an American capitalist in the lumber trade who arrived in the city around 1899 with a lease for the...
BC Studies no. 185 Spring 2015 | Page(s) 206-09
Review
The Last Gang in Town: The Epic Story of the Vancouver Police vs. the Clark Park Gang
The past decade has witnessed a surge in Vancouver criminal and nocturnal history, from Daniel Francis’s Red Light Neon (2006) to Diane Purvey and John Belshaw’s Vancouver Noir (2011) and Belshaw’s edited collection Vancouver Confidential...
BC Studies no. 197 Spring 2018 | Page(s) 179-181
Review
Dream City: Vancouver and the Global Imagination
Dream City. The title is captivating, but what does it mean? Lance Berelowitz’s book about changes in the urban design and planning of Vancouver opens and closes by briefly discussing the phrase “dream city,” but...
BC Studies no. 148 Winter 2005-2006 | Page(s) 107-9
Review
L.D.: Mayor Louis Taylor and the Rise of Vancouver
MANY NORTH AMERICAN cities have had great civic leaders. Fiorello La Guardia, New York’s Depression-era mayor, is considered the father of modern New York; Metro chair Fred Gardiner put his distinctive imprint on Toronto in the...
BC Studies no. 145 Spring 2005 | Page(s) 128-30
Review
Vancouver Special
In Vancouver Special Charles Demers presents a unique portrait of his hometown of Vancouver, where he continues to live and work as a writer and a comedian. In a series of essays that explore the...
BC Studies no. 171 Autumn 2011 | Page(s) 145-146
Review
Vancouver’s Bessborough Armoury: a History. Vancouver: The Fifteenth Field Artillery
Victor Stevenson’s longstanding personal and professional attachment to Vancouver’s Bessborough Armoury is reflected in his concise and well-researched account of the building’s history. Having served as both honourary colonel of the 15th Field Artillery Regiment,...
BC Studies no. 174 Summer 2012 | Page(s) 141-43
Review
Philip Timm’s Vancouver: 1900-1910
I first met Fred Thirkell in the late 1970s when I ran an antique store in North Vancouver. Fred was a postcard collector, and we played the familiar dance between buyer and seller in the...
BC Studies no. 155 Autumn 2007 | Page(s) 154-6
Review
Historical Atlas of Vancouver and the Lower Fraser Valley
The cover of this atlas is engaging [1]. The muted grey, black, and red jacket offers an intriguing bird’s-eye view of Vancouver in 1912, looking west from New Westminster to Stanley Park. The heavy antique...
BC Studies no. 150 Summer 2006 | Page(s) 123-6
Review
Buckerfield: The Story of a Vancouver Family
Buckerfield tells the story of one of Vancouver’s most important business families. The story is structured around two narrative strands. One is the business history of the family patriarch, Edward Ernest Buckerfield, the New Brunswick-born...
BC Studies no. 186 Summer 2015 | Page(s) 177-78
Review
City of Love and Revolution: Vancouver in the Sixties
Lawrence Aronsen’s handsomely-illustrated City of Love and Revolution examines a period of Vancouver’s history that still resonates. The latest contribution to a growing literature on the Sixties in Canada, the book also contributes to contemporary...
BC Studies no. 174 Summer 2012 | Page(s) 150
Review
The Private Journal of Captain G. H. Richards: The Vancouver Island Survey (1860-1862)
Captain (later Admiral Sir) George Henry Richards, Royal Navy, is one of the great personages of that unique era in modern history known as Pax Britannica – a period when “Britain Ruled the Waves,” and sometimes, as...
BC Studies no. 175 Autumn 2012 | Page(s) 119-23
Review

Sailing with Vancouver: A Modern Sea Dog, Antique Charts and a Voyage Through Time
In Sailing with Vancouver, the late maritime writer Sam McKinney follows the path of Capt. George Vancouver’s 1792 expedition through the Pacific Northwest’s inland waters. Part saltwater travelogue, part historical reflection, McKinney uses the region’s...
BC Studies no. 203 Autumn 2019 | Page(s) 151-153
Review
Vancouver Confidential
John Belshaw undertook the task of publishing a series of fifteen essays on Vancouver written by artists, journalists, and writers. There is no specific thesis in this collection, and no attempt to convey a specific...
BC Studies no. 188 Winter 2015-2016 | Page(s) 132-34
Review

Dreamers and Designers: The Shaping of West Vancouver
Between 2011 and 2016, the population of the District of West Vancouver declined by one half of one percent. In contrast, the population of Metro Vancouver grew 6.5%; even the comparably wealthy West Point Grey...
Review
Vancouver Anthology
During the 1960s things radically changed in the Canadian art world. Aesthetic categories expanded to include technically based video and multimedia performance art. Traditional art institutions competed with artist-run centres like The Sound Gallery and...
BC Studies no. 183 Autumn 2014 | Page(s) 170-72
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
Review
The Man Who Saved Vancouver: Major James Skitt Matthews
The publication of Daphne Sleigh’s biography of James Matthews coincides with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the City of Vancouver Archives, which he founded. The work is remarkable for being the first book-length biography of a...
BC Studies no. 160 Winter 2008-2009 | Page(s) 142-143
Review
The Chuck Davis History of Metropolitan Vancouver
Everyone who has spent any time researching Vancouver history seems to have a Chuck Davis story. Here’s mine. It’s about 1980, I’m a callow not-easily-impressed grad student doing work on some arcane heritage tax law...
BC Studies no. 175 Autumn 2012 | Page(s) 130-31
Review
Imperial Vancouver Island: Who was Who 1850-1950
The author of this work, Professor J.F. Bosher, was born in North Saanich near Sidney, British Columbia and raised in a cultured English family. Having retired from York University in Toronto, where he specialized in...
BC Studies no. 181 Spring 2014 | Page(s) 128-30
Review
Sensational Vancouver
Rumrunners, writers, aviators, architects, crooked cops, and killers are just some of the motley cast of characters populating Eve Lazarus’s Sensational Vancouver. This is her third local history book and a welcome addition to the...
BC Studies no. 188 Winter 2015-2016 | Page(s) 131-32
Review
Georgia Straight: A 50th Anniversary Celebration and City on Edge: A Rebellious Century of Vancouver Protests, Riots, and Strikes
Vancouver has always had a volatile streak; it’s a key ingredient of the city’s identity, a theme in the story Vancouverites tell themselves about their place in the world. Perhaps political polarization, western alienation, protests,...