Book Reviews
Results (1816)
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
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
BC Studies no. 205 Spring 2020
Book Review
“Opposition on the Coast”: The Hudson’s Bay Company, American Coasters, the Russian American Company, and Native Traders on the Northwest Coast, 1825-1846
Jim Gibson has assembled a collection of primary sources: 27 documents from Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) archives, British Columbia provincial archives, and microfilm of Russian-American Company (RAC) records from the US National Archives. A significant...
BC Studies no. 206 Summer 2020 | Page(s) 121-122
Book Review
New Ground: A Memoir of Art and Activism in BC’s Interior
New Ground: A Memoir of Art and Activism in BC’s Interior is more than just a memoir about Ann Kujundzic’s life — it is a beautifully crafted encounter with Kujundzic and all of the histories that...
BC Studies no. 206 Summer 2020 | Page(s) 126-127
Book Review
Nothing to Write Home About: British Family Correspondence and the Settler Everyday in British Columbia
The history of colonial British Columbia is, in many respects, well-trodden ground. Over the past few decades, scholars like Jean Barman, Cole Harris, and Adele Perry have made multiple transformative contributions to our understanding of...
BC Studies no. 206 Summer 2020 | Page(s) 122-124
Book Review
When Days Are Long: Nurse in the North
In this book, first published upon her retirement in 1965, Amy Wilson presents a biographical history of her career as a public health nurse in Northern British Columbia and the Yukon during the 1950s and...
BC Studies no. 206 Summer 2020 | Page(s) 125-126
Book Review
Book Review
Surveying the 120th Meridian and the Great Divide: The Alberta-BC Boundary Survey, 1918-1924
In this, his ninth monograph on surveying in BC, Jay Sherwood returns with the second of two volumes on the work of the Alberta-BC Boundary Survey in the early twentieth century. The first installment, Surveying...
BC Studies no. 206 Summer 2020 | Page(s) 124-125
Book Review
The Co-op Revolution: Vancouver’s Search for Food
When growers, producers and practitioners self-organize around shared interests in the local foods economy, their social and economic actions—whether through a farmer’s market, buying co-op or the production of local food—can feel tenuous on the...