Book Reviews
Results (1823)
Book Review
Civilian Internment in Canada: Histories and Legacies
“There is no single historiography of internment” in Canada, write Rhonda L. Hinter and Jim Mochoruk in the introduction of this ambitious collection of essays (9-10). Siloed histories of particular internments, they suggest, convey episodic...
Book Review
Inalienable Properties: The Political Economy of Indigenous Land Reform
In Inalienable Properties: the political economy of Indigenous land reform (2020), Jamie Baxter presents his readers with a puzzle surrounding the inalienability of Indigenous land tenure systems. Baxter asks, ‘why does inalienable property persist in...
Book Review
Northwest Voices: Language and Culture in the Pacific Northwest
What, if anything, is the socio-linguistic glue that binds together the region often referred to as the Pacific Northwest? When it comes to language and culture, do the peoples of Washington and Oregon in the...
BC Studies no. 207 Autumn 2020 | Page(s) 133-134
Book Review
The Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples
Gregory Younging’s (1961-2019) The Elements of Indigenous Style is a testament to how prioritizing listening to Indigenous peoples, instead of merely writing about them, can both change the way settlers view their relationship with Indigenous peoples...
BC Studies no. 207 Autumn 2020 | Page(s) 134-145
Book Review
Solemn Words and Foundational Documents: An Annotated Discussion of Indigenous-Crown Treaties in Canada, 1752-1923
When the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its final report in 2015 it drew attention to the importance of treaty making in the history of Crown-Indigenous relations in Canada. Treaty making, the...
BC Studies no. 207 Autumn 2020 | Page(s) 136-137
Book Review
Towards a New Ethnohistory: Community-Engaged Scholarship Among the People of the River
This book purports to represent a ‘New Ethnohistory’ as community-engaged research in First Nations communities. It consists primarily of essays written by graduate students who participated in the Ethnohistory Field School run since 1997 by...
BC Studies no. 207 Autumn 2020 | Page(s) 137-138
Book Review
Iroquois in the West
Sometimes the most detailed and poignant histories emerge from historical fragments. In Iroquois in the West Jean Barman uses what she calls “slivers of stories from the shadows of the past” to tell a rich...
BC Studies no. 207 Autumn 2020 | Page(s) 138-140
Book Review
At the Wilderness Edge: The Rise of the Antidevelopment Movement on Canada’s West Coast
In recent years, local opposition to the expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline in BC has confounded the plans of oil investors and federal officials alike. The government of Alberta has declared its right to...
BC Studies no. 207 Autumn 2020 | Page(s) 140-141
Book Review
Rain City: Vancouver Reflections
John Moore is a BC-based free-lance journalist and author. Original versions of the sixteen essays that make up this volume have appeared in a variety of newspapers and periodicals over several decades. Some have won...
BC Studies no. 207 Autumn 2020 | Page(s) 141-142
Book Review
Stagecoach North: A History of Barnard’s Express
In Stagecoach North, Ken Mather undercovers the history of one of the most important companies in British Columbia: Barnard’s Express. From 1862 to 1914 this famed company carried passengers, freight, and mail along the Cariboo...
BC Studies no. 207 Autumn 2020 | Page(s) 142-143
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In Nature’s Realm: Early Naturalists Explore Vancouver Island
In Nature’s Realm, a third tome from Michael Layland that focuses on the (mostly) colonial histories of Vancouver Island, is an artistic and literary achievement. Layland’s hybrid of chronological and thematic descriptions of Vancouver Island-related...
Book Review
Complicated Simplicity: Island Life in the Pacific Northwest
Complicated Simplicity is a collection of essays, personal and expository, that explore the nature of living on secluded (non-ferry-serviced) islands within the Southwestern part of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest (and further abroad too)....
Book Review
He Speaks Volumes: A Biography of George Bowering
The Canadian writers who rose (or leapt) to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, and who are sometimes thought to be synonymous with Canadian literature itself, are now venerable. Although Margaret Atwood remains a formidable...
Book Review
Spirits of the Coast: Orcas in Science, Art and History
As I write, the world has received news that Talequah (or J35), the Southern Resident killer whale who carried her dead newborn for two weeks in 2018, is pregnant again. Spirits of the Coast: Orcas...
Book Review
Postsecondary Education in British Columbia: Public Policy and Structural Development, 1960-2015
As distinct from previous historical accounts of postsecondary education in BC, Cowin makes it clear that he will cover the development of the “entire” postsecondary system in BC (3). For Cowin, this means the whole...
Book Review
UBC: The Next Century
To begin, this review must clarify that this book has a misleading title. The book has been published to mark UBC’s 100th anniversary (technically in 2015), and the title promises it will explore UBC’s future....
Book Review
Service on the Skeena: Horace Wrinch, Frontier Physician
Although both Horace C. Wrinch and his wife Alice are featured in Eldon Lee’s Scalpels and Buggywhips (1997), Horace Wrinch is little known, despite his extraordinary contributions to British Columbia society. Geoff Mynett, a retired lawyer...
BC Studies no. 207 Autumn 2020 | Page(s) 143-144
Book Review
Talking Back to the Indian Act: Critical Readings in Settler Colonial Histories
History as an academic discipline recognizes that how we understand the past is no more than that. It is how we understand the past, and not necessarily what actually transpired in distant times that we...
BC Studies no. 206 Summer 2020 | Page(s) 133-134
Book Review
Waterlogged: Examples and Procedures for Northwest Coast Archaeologists
Waterlogged will find its way to the bookshelves of almost every practicing archaeologist in BC. It succeeds in bringing together experience and innovation in a single source. A mix of advice for field archaeologists, empirical research...
BC Studies no. 206 Summer 2020 | Page(s) 136-137
Book Review
Love of the Salish Sea Islands: New Essays, Memoir and Poetry by 40 Island Writers
The Salish Sea is an international ecosystem that features an amazing array of gorgeous and largely tranquil islands. Tourists and residents enjoy the rural simplicity of the islands and from most appearances, the living is...