Book & Film Reviews
Results (1769)
Review
The Right Relationship: Reimagining the Implementation of Historical Treaties
In the 1764 Treaty of Niagara, representatives of the British Crown met with a gathering of more than two thousand Indigenous leaders and committed that North American settlement would only proceed with Indigenous consent. At...
BC Studies no. 199 Autumn 2018 | Page(s) 180-2
Review
Uncertain Accommodation: Aboriginal Identity and Group Rights in the Supreme Court of Canada
The Supreme Court of Canada’s approach to Aboriginal identity is fraudulent and harmful to Indigenous peoples in Canada. This is essentially the conclusion reached by Professor Panagos in his new book. Although this conclusion is...
BC Studies no. 199 Autumn 2018 | Page(s) 182-3
Review
Surveying the Great Divide: The Alberta/BC Boundary Survey, 1913-1917
Released in 2017 to coincide with national ‘Canada 150’ celebrations, Jay Sherwood’s Surveying the Great Divide also affords an opportunity to reflect on a period of productive inter-provincial cooperation a century ago, at a moment...
BC Studies no. 199 Autumn 2018 | Page(s) 183-4
Review
Ranch in the Slocan: A Biography of a Kootenay Farm, 1896 – 2017
Cole Harris’s Ranch in the Slocan: A Biography of a Kootenay Farm, 1896 – 2017 is delightful summer reading. It is, primarily, a history of the Harris family’s Bosun Ranch and a record of the lives of...
BC Studies no. 199 Autumn 2018 | Page(s) 185-6
Review
Emily Patterson: The Heroic Life of a Milltown Nurse
In Emily Patterson: The Heroic Life of a Milltown Nurse, Lisa Smith transports the reader to late nineteenth century Pacific Northwest and evocatively offers a history of an extraordinary woman living through extraordinary times. Born in...
BC Studies no. 199 Autumn 2018 | Page(s) 186-7
Review
Not My Fate: The Story of a Nisga’a Survivor
Not My Fate: The Story of a Nisga’a Survivor is Janet Romain’s account of the life of her friend and fellow northerner, Josephine Caplin.[1] Jo was born in Smithers to a Nisga’a mother and non-Aboriginal...
BC Studies no. 199 Autumn 2018 | Page(s) 187-8
Review
The Promise of Paradise: Utopian Communities in British Columbia
My childhood vacations did not involve the sophisticated technology that keeps my children (relatively) quiet in the backseat today. Apart from what I recall to be my endless patience on those long and winding drives...
BC Studies no. 199 Autumn 2018 | Page(s) 188-9
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,...
BC Studies no. 199 Autumn 2018 | Page(s) 190-1
Review
A Matter of Confidence: The Inside Story of the Political Battle for BC
In February of 2011, I was the moderator for the BC Liberal Leadership candidates’ debate in Prince George, British Columbia. As the evening got underway I saw Christy Clark enter the room. She caught my...
BC Studies no. 199 Autumn 2018 | Page(s) 191-2
Review
Striving for Environmental Sustainability in a Complex World: Canadian Experiences
The title suggests a broad discussion of sustainability, with Canadian examples. The core of this book, however, is about “Canadian experiences” with Man and Biosphere Reserves (sic) or MAB, and Model Forests. Francis was an...
BC Studies no. 199 Autumn 2018 | Page(s) 193-4
Review
Mapping my Way Home: A Gitxsan History
British Columbians may be familiar with the landmark Delgamuukw case (Supreme Ct. of Canada, 1997), which established that testimony on based upon traditional knowledge and oral history is valid evidence. But most are limited in...
BC Studies no. 198 Summer 2018 | Page(s) 179-180
Review
People of the Saltwater: An Ethnography of the Gitlax m’oon.
“Gitlax m’oon, people of the saltwater” are more commonly known as the Gitxaala; their principal village, Lach Klan is located on what is now called Dolphin Island, a little to the south of Prince Rupert....
BC Studies no. 197 Spring 2018 | Page(s) 163-4
Review
Review
Mixed Blessings: Indigenous Encounters with Christianity in Canada
Mixed Blessings is a collection of papers developed for a May 2011 workshop, “Religious Encounter and Exchange in Aboriginal Canada,” capably edited by historians Tolly Bradford and Chelsea Horton, whose helpful introduction and conclusion pull...
BC Studies no. 197 Spring 2018 | Page(s) 167-9
Review
The W̲SÁNEĆ and Their Neighbours: Diamond Jenness on the Coast Salish of Vancouver Island, 1935
Anthropologist Rolf Knight launched a new chapter of Indigenous history in 1978 with the publication of his book, Indians at Work: An Informal History of Native Indian Labour in British Columbia, 1858-1930.[1] In contrast to...
BC Studies no. 197 Spring 2018 | Page(s) 169-72
Review
Settler Anxiety at the Outposts of Empire: Colonial Relations, Humanitarian Discourses and the Imperial Press
In May 1861, the British Colonist, a local newspaper in Victoria, Vancouver Island, reported on a “Horrid Massacre in New Zealand.” According to the Colonist, Maori warriors had launched a surprise attack on a small...
BC Studies no. 197 Spring 2018 | Page(s) 172-4
Review
The Life and Art of Arthur Pitts
Kerry Mason begins The Life and Art of Arthur Pitts with a question: ‘Why haven’t I heard about this artist?’ (x) By the end of the book the reader is persuaded that we should indeed...
BC Studies no. 197 Spring 2018 | Page(s) 174-5
Review
Imagining Uplands: John Olmsted’s Masterpiece of Residential Design
This is a most handsome book, and a most intelligent analysis of the dense process of realizing a design concept. Larry McCann has allowed his telling of the Uplands history to be imaginative, if not...
BC Studies no. 197 Spring 2018 | Page(s) 175-77
Review
Tax, Order, and Good Government: A New Political History of Canada, 1867-1917.
E.A Heaman has produced a decided masterpiece on a topic too often thought to be dry as a bone. Taxation, with its underlying legitimacy of consent, is the lifeblood of the state, supplying it with...
BC Studies no. 197 Spring 2018 | Page(s) 177-8
Review
An Exceptional Law: Section 98 and the Emergency State, 1919-1936
For most of the past eighty years, Section 98 of Canada’s Criminal Code has been seen as an “exceptional law” in a different way than Dennis Molinaro regards it. Because of its limited life (1919-1936),...
BC Studies no. 197 Spring 2018 | Page(s) 178-9
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
Beyond Mile Zero: The Vanishing Alaska Highway Lodge Community
The Alaska Highway runs from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Delta Junction, Alaska. Built by the American military for defense purposes during the Second World War, it was opened to the public in 1948 and...
BC Studies no. 197 Spring 2018 | Page(s) 181-2
Review
The Queen of the North Disaster, The Captain’s Story
As one might expect from a competent and conscientious career mariner, Colin Henthorne’s account of the sinking of the Queen of the North on March 22, 2006, a little south of Prince Rupert on British...