new society - citeseerx

Mobilizing the Green ImaginationAn Exuberant ManifestoANTHONY WESTON$14.95 / 5.5 x 8.5”/ 192 pages PB ISBN 978-0-86571-709-1 EBook ISBN 978-1-55092-504-3

Elegant and audacious possibilities that push the boundaries of contemporary environmentalism.

Making HomeAdapting our Homes and Our Lives to Settle in PlaceSHARON ASTYK$19.95 / 6 x 9”/336 pages

PB ISBN 978-0-86571-671-1

EBook ISBN 978-1-55092-509-8

How settling for less can mean having more.

The New Sustainability AdvantageSeven Business Case Benefits of a Triple Bottom Line - 10th Anniversary EditionBOB WILLARD$19.95 / 6 x 9”/224 pages

PB ISBN 978-0-86571-712-1

EBook ISBN 978-1-55092-507-4

Smart sustainability strategies and how they can benefit the bottom line.

Share or DieVoices of the Get Lost Generation in the Age of CrisisEDITED BY MALCOLM HARRIS WITH NEAL GORENFLOForeword by Cory Doctorow$14.95 / 5.5 x 8.5”/ 224 pages

PB ISBN 978-0-86571-710-7

EBook ISBN 978-1-55092-503-6

A collection of messages from the front lines of the new “Lost Generation”.

Solar Home Heating BasicsA Green Energy GuideDAN CHIRAS$12.95 / 5 x 8”/192 pages

PB ISBN 978-0-86571-663-6

EBook ISBN 978-1-55092-508-1

An easy-to-understand introduction to practical and affordable ways to heat your home or office with the power of the sun.

Toward Sustainable CommunitiesSolutions for Citizens and Their Govern-ments – Completely Revised 4th EditionMARK ROSELAND$34.95 / 8 x 9”/400 pages

PB ISBN 978-0-86571-711-4

EBook ISBN 978-1-55092-506-7

The single most useful resource out there on how to build and grow sustainable places.

“Binda Colebrook has given us a

reference book rich with practical

tips, first-hand experience, and best of all,

region-specific advice. If self-sufficiency and

growing food are important to you, and you

happen to live in the Maritime Northwest,

this is a book you should own.”

— Mark Macdonald, West Coast Seeds

www.newsociety.com

Tools for a World of Change Books to Build a New Society

A complete guide to cool-season crops and how

to raise them. Gardeners from Southeastern Alaska to southern Oregon will benefit

from clear, practical advice on how to put fresh homegrown

produce on your table every month of the year.

$17.95 / 6 x 9” / 208 pages

PB ISBN 978-0-85671-708-4 Ebook ISBN 978-1-55092-500-5

The Resilience ImperativeCooperative Transitions to a Steady-State EconomyMICHAEL LEWIS & PAT CONATY$26.95 / 6 x 9”/400 pages

PB ISBN 978-0-86571-707-7

Ebook ISBN 978-1-55092-505-0

Time for a SEE Change – Social, Ecological and Economic strategies for life after growth.

High SteaksWhy and How to Eat Less MeatELEANOR BOYLE$17.95 / 6 x9”/208 pages

PB ISBN 978-0-86571-713-8

EBook ISBN 978-1-55092-499-2

A solution-oriented guide to developing food systems that nourish people and the planet.

Winter Gardening in the Maritime Northwest

Cool-Season Crops for the Year Round

Gardener – Fifth Edition

new societywww.newsociety.comP U B L I S H E R S

2 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2012

Contributors: Hannah Main-van der Kamp, John Moore,Joan Givner, Sage Birchwater, Mark Forsythe,Louise Donnelly, Cherie Thiessen, Shane McCuneWriting not otherwise credited is by staff.

Consultants: Sharon Jackson

Photographers: Barry Peterson, Laura Sawchuk

Proofreaders: Wendy Atkinson, Tara Twigg

Design: Get-to-the-Point Graphics

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Publication Mail Agreement #40010086Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to:BC BookWorld,3516 W. 13th Ave.,Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3

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For this issue, we gratefullyacknowledge the unobtrusiveassistance of Canada Council, acontinuous partner since 1988.

SPRING2012Issue,Vol. 26, No. 1

Publisher/ Writer: Alan TwiggEditor/Production: David Lester All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online at

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In-Kind Supporters:Simon Fraser University Library;Vancouver Public Library.

PEOPLE

* The current topselling titles from 12 majorBC publishing companies, in no particular order.

The Third Crop: A personal andhistorical journey into the photo albumsand shoeboxes of the Slocan Valley1800s to early 1940s (Sono Nis $28.95)by Rita Moir

The Chuck Davis History ofMetropolitan Vancouver(Harbour $44.95) by Chuck Davis

Easy Way to Stop Smoking(Sandhill Book Marketing $19.95)by Allen Carr

Start & Run a Personal HistoryBusiness: Get Paid to ResearchFamily Ancestry and Write Memoirs(Self-Counsel Press $23.95)by Jennifer Campbell

Generation Us: The Challenge ofGlobal Warming (Orca $9.95)by Andrew Weaver

Something Fierce: Memoirs of aRevolutionary Daughter (Douglas &McIntyre $21) by Carmen AquirreWinner of CBC’s Canada Reads.

Elusive Destiny: The PoliticalVocation of John Napier Turner(UBC Press $39.95) by Paul Litt

I Just Ran: Percy Williams, World’sFastest Human (Ronsdale Press$23.95) by Samuel Hawley

The End of Growth: Adapting to OurNew Economic Reality (New SocietyPublishers $17.95) by Richard Heinberg

Vancouver Noir:Vancouver 1930-1960 (Anvil Press $25)by John Belshaw and Diane Purvey

Somebody's Child: Stories aboutAdoption (TouchWood Editions $19.95)edited by Lynne Van Luven andBruce Gillespie

Crossing the Continent(Talonbooks $18.95) by Michel Tremblay

B C T O PS E L L E R S

Janet & Pauline

*

Janet & Pauline

Following Canada’s withdrawal fromthe Kyoto Accord at the DurbanConference on Climate Change in

December, 2011, Orca Book Publishers senta copy of Dr. Andrew Weaver’s book,Generation Us—The Challenge ofGlobal Warming (Orca $9.95), to all 308members of parliament.

“Now more than ever it’s become criti-cally important that society—and especiallyour elected leaders—accept responsibility forglobal warming,” Weaver says. “We’ve cre-ated the problem; we must now be part ofthe solution.”

Generation Us explains the phenomenonof global warming, outlines the threat itpresents to future generations and offers apath toward solutions to the problem.

Weaver is the Canada Research Chair inClimate Modelling and Analysis at the Uni-versity of Victoria and a team member ofthe Nobel-Peace-Prize–winning Intergovern-mental Panel on Climate Change. 9781554698042

Canadians rally to demandthe Conservative government’scontinued commitment tothe Kyoto Accord. IT

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Kyoto KiboshThe new poet laureate of Victoria, Janet Marie Rogers, is a Mohawk who is pre-

paring to honour the centenary of the death of the Mohawk poet E. Pauline Johnsonin 2013. Born in Vancouver in 1963, Rogers has released two poetry collections, Red Erotic(Ojistah, 2010) and in 2011, Unearthed (Leaf Press $17.95). She also hosts Native WavesRadio on CFUV 101.9 fm in Victoria and broadcasts a Tribal Clefs music column everyTuesday on CBC Radio One. Her radio documentary, Bring Your Drum (50 Years of Indig-enous Protest Music), aired in 2011 on CBC’s Inside the Music. 978-1-926655-33-8

Edna Davis at the launch of her latehusband’s topseller, The Chuck DavisHistory of Metropolitan Vancouver

Janet Marie Rogers


PEOPLE

IT’S BEEN AWHILE SINCE wE’VE

said THANK YOU to allour brave booksellersaround the province whohelp us provide you with thelatest news about B.C.books into our 25th year.While we regret the govern-ment’s closure of CrownPublications bookstore inVictoria, we celebrate theendurance of our smallestre ta i l par tner—teensy32 Bookson Hornby Island, managedby Judi Stransman.

We can’tdo it without

YA!

With a naked cover image angled more towardsBenny Hill than King Lear, James Hawkins’

admiring biography Antony’s Private Parts (Bliss Publi-cations $19.95) nonetheless verifies that Antony Hol-land has had a prodigious career, on stage and on screen,from Shakespeare to Alan Aykbourn, since the 1930s.

This memoir-like biography offers tales of the Bristol OldVic Theatre Company, formed in 1945 out of the TheatreRoyal Bristol, as well as brushes with Hollywood royaltysuch as Katharine Hepburn.

“True to his Stanislavski principles,” as Hawkins puts it,Holland was never averse to forming abiding friendshipswith women, creating dramas in his off-stage life. Still awould-be ladies man, Holland’s greatest love appears to bethe theatre itself.

According to Hawkins, “Antony consistently drove hisfirst wife mad by his refusal to get a ‘real job.’”

Still-vigorous as an actor at age 91, Holland was forci-bly retired at age 65, in 1985, as the long-time mentor atLangara College’s Studio 58 theatre program in Vancouver.We learn Holland chose the name Studio 58 because it wasthe room number for the program. Regrettably, too few ofhis hundreds of gifted students responded to Hawkins’requests for input so the Studio 58 section is thin.

Antony’s Private Parts scratches the surface of some-one who deserves the adjective great more than grey.A paperback version is newly available. 978-0-9877852-1-3

It only gradually dawned on Robyn Michele Levythat something was wrong. Levy had a rigid left arm, frozenfacial expressions and an embarrassinglimp. She lost her job after five years ofdepression. But she resisted her doctor’ssuggestion that she might have Parkin-son’s—a neurodegenerative disease thatusually strikes the elderly—even thoughher father had the disease and had exhib-ited similar symptoms.

Most of Me (Greystone $21.95) de-scribes how Levy was diagnosed withearly onset Parkinson’s at age 43, thenbreast cancer eight months later. Alongthe way, she repairs a broken relation-ship with her daughter, re-connects withnew and old friends, and gains a new ap-preciation for her husband, Bergen.

Levy describes disease-coping mecha-nisms from deranged sexual fantasiesabout her dentist-turned-rock-star flossing her teeth to de-scriptions of her Cry Lady—a sobbing, blubbering womanthat inhabited her body. It’s proof positive that hardship canrekindle relationships, and a healthy mindset can overcomesevere physical challenges. 978-1-55365-632-6

F.S. Michaels’ first book, Monoculture: How OneStory is Changing Everything (Red Clover Press $16.25),has been awarded the 2011 George Orwell Prize for out-standing contributions to the critical analysis of public dis-course. It examines how the precedence of the economicstory in our lives deeply influences six fundamental areas oflife—work, communities, physical and spiritual health, edu-cation, creativity, and our relationships with others and theenvironment. Previous recipients include Pulitzer Prize-win-ner Charlie Savage, television host Jon Stewart of

the Daily Show, linguist NoamChomsky and cultural critic NeilPostman. The annual prize wasawarded in Chicago by the NationalCouncil of Teachers of English(NCTE), which has over 35,000members and subscribers worldwide. 978-0986853807

Antony Holland asLear with Layla

Alizada as Cordeliain King Lear (2002)

at Studio 58.Royal Roads University professor Phillip Vannini hasspent five years conducting 400 interviews and taking 250ferry rides to examine ferry-dependence on island and coastalcommunities for Ferry Tales: Mobility, Place, and Timeon Canada’s West Coast (Routlege $32.50). He hopes totrigger an understanding that our ferry systems are high-ways to our homes. 978-0415883078

OUR LIQUID HIGHWAYSMost of me,why not takemost of me?

Penguin bound

Orwell would approve

In April of 2011, GurGurGurGurGurjinderjinderjinderjinderjinderBasranBasranBasranBasranBasran was awarded theEthel Wilson Fiction Prizefor her first novel, Every-thing Was Good-bye.Mother Tongue Publishingon Saltspring Island hasnow sold Canadian rights

to Penguin Canada. Every-thing Was Good-bye will be

re-launched this year as a Pen-guin paperback and e-book.

F. S. Michaels

Phillip Vannini

Robyn Michele Levy BY LAURIE NEALE

GurjinderBasran

AntonyAntony WITHOUT CLEOPATRA

Judi Stransman


Sono Nis Press • 1-800-370-5228 • www.sononis.com • [email protected]

Working with WoolA Coast Salish Legacy & the Cowichan Sweater

Sylvia Olsen

Cowichan sweaters, with their

distinctive bands of design and

untreated, handspun wool,

have been a British Columbia

icon since the early years of the

twentieth century, but few people

know the full story behind the garment. Sylvia Olsen tells the tale,

drawing on her own experience, academic research, and her four-

decade friendship with some of the Coast Salish women who have

each knitted hundreds of sweaters.

• Winner of the Lieutenant-Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing• City of Victoria Butler Book Prize (Nominee)• George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature (Nominee)978-1-55039-177-0 • 8.5 x 9.25 • 328 pages • 165 photos • cloth • $38.95

The Third Crop A personal and historical journey into the photo albums and shoeboxes of the Slocan Valley 1800s to early 1940s

Rita Moir

The Third Crop serves a visual

feast to lovers of the province’s

history, with more than 160

historic photographs beautifully juxtaposed with contemporary

images of the valley. Moir’s insights into the history of a place she

deeply loves and respects, and her reflections on her experiences

living there, are a significant contribution to understanding this

vibrant part of British Columbia.

978-1-55039-184-8 • 9.25 x 8.5 • 175 pages • 180 photos • paper • $28.95

All That GlittersA Climber’s Journey Through Addiction and Recovery

Margo Talbot

Margo Talbot’s unflinchingly honest

account of a childhood characterized

by abuse and neglect, her descent

into depression, addiction, and

criminal activity is both heartbreaking

and, ultimately, inspiring. Finding

redemption and healing through her passion for the outdoors and,

in particular, ice climbing, this memoir is a stirring testament to

the power of the human spirit and the healing force of nature.

“This inspiring real-life story shows us that our lives’ biggest challenges can also be our greatest opportunities for personal growth, transformation, and enlightenment. Margo is magnificent!” — B P,

, Body-for-LIFE.

978-1-55039-182-4 • 6 x 9 • 192 pages • photos • paper • $19.95

The Riddle of the RavenA Sailing Ship Possessed by a Ghost

Jan deGroot

When Jan de Groot decided to purchase

Raven, a 140-foot gaff-rigged ketch,

in order to provide sailing adventures

for underprivileged children in BC, he

had no idea of the bizarre adventure

that lay ahead. His voyage began with

a crew of thirty-one who set sail in the

Bahamas to bring the ship to her new home in Vancouver. Almost

immediately, strange events began to rattle the crew and all were

affected by the presence of the ghost who haunted the ship and

cursed the voyage with its paranormal skullduggery.

The Riddle of the Raven is a wonderful read for all those who

love tales about ships and the sea, and for those who are intrigued

by the paranormal.

978-1-55039-183-1 • 6 x 9 • 200 pp • photos • paper • $15.95

Celebrating 44 Years of Publishing in Canada

More English than the EnglishA Very Social History of Victoria

Terry Reksten, foreword and

revisions by Rosemary Neering

Twenty-five years ago, Terry Reksten,

who died in 2001, wrote More English than the English “for those who might not

usually find pleasure in reading about the

past,” and strove to create a social history

that portrayed the spirit of the times

from the mid-nineteenth century into the 1930s. Deliberately

selective and anecdotal, this is a delightful collection of stories and

sagas of the people who fashioned a fort, a town, and finally, a city

on the rocks and meadows of southern Vancouver Island.

978-1-55039-186-2 • 6 x 9 • 232 pp • 100+ photos • paper • $19.95

Painting My LifeA Memoir of Love, Art, and Transformation

Phyllis Serota

“Serota’s work is an insightful

portrayal of humanity—the

micro and the macro of what

it is to be human. Her rich

and direct paintings are about

her, her family, being Jewish,

memory, and the impacts

of the world around her. Painting My Life is a sensitive, poignant

biography in word and art. The paintings, from more than thirty

years, trace Serota’s evolution with form, colour, light, and depth.

Serota is a truly significant Canadian artist, as this book clearly

demonstrates.” — PATRICIA BOVEY, FRSA, Art Historian & Consultant, Former Director

of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the Winnipeg Art Gallery

Stunning full-colour reproductions. A page-turning insight into

the place where art and life meet.

978-1-55039-188-6 • 8.5 X 9 • 240 pp • 168 photos • paper • $28.95


Lost NukeThe Last Flight of Bomber 075

Dirk Septer

In 1950 a USAF bomber carrying a nuclear bomb crashed in BC’s Coast

Mountains, not in the Pacific Ocean as reported. What really happened?

Heritage House $19.95

Kilts on the CoastThe Scots Who Built BC

Jan Peterson

Delve deep into the roots of Vancouver Island’s Scottish presence, tracing the lives

of such pioneers as Sir James Douglas, Robert Dunsmuir and their descendants.


Chilcotin YarnsBruce Watt

“Bruce Watt knows how to spin a laugh-out-loud yarn that captivates

and enchants the reader.” —Ian Ferguson, author of

Village of the Small HousesHeritage House $17.95

Fire CanoesSteamboats on Great Canadian Rivers

Anthony Dalton

Travel back in time to the decades when steamboat whistles echoed

across a vast land of powerful rivers.Heritage House $9.95

Code Name HabbakukA Secret Ship Made of Ice

L.D. Cross

In late 1942, Britain was desperate to win the Battle of the Atlantic. Would

its secret weapon be an undetectable aircraft carrier made of ice?


Waggoner Cruising Guide 2012The Complete Boating Reference

Mark Bunzel

This guide provides complete information about marinas, fuel docks, border crossings, radio requirements and more. It also includes

more than 152 maps and 300 photos. Fine Edge Publishing $24.95

Furrows in the SkyThe Adventures of Gerry Andrews

Jay Sherwood

Gerry Andrews’ aerial photography dramatically altered forestry in BC in the late 1930s, Andrews’ remarkable life left an indelible mark on British Columbia.

Royal BC Museum, $19.95

All the DirtReflections on Organic Farming

Rachel Fisher, Heather Stretch, Robin Tunnicliffe

New farmers, experienced growers, budding environmentalists and fans of natural, organic

produce alike will find ground to love in this must-read book on small-scale organic farming.

TouchWood Editions, $29.95

A Cowherd in ParadiseFrom China to Canada

May Q. Wong

The remarkable story of a couple forced to live apart for 25 years due to Canada’s

exclusionary immigration laws. “Required reading.” —Jan Wong, author of Red China Blues

Brindle & Glass, $24.95

The TinsmithTim Bowling

“An odyssey that spans a continent—from the Civil War battlefields, to the British

Columbia salmon canneries—The Tinsmith is an ambitious and spellbinding read.”

—Helen HumphreysBrindle & Glass, $21.95

The Corpse with the Silver TongueCathy Ace

The first novel in the Cait Morgan mystery series is set in the south of France, where

hatred simmers in the heat, and a man seemingly admired, and certainly feared,

drops dead at a dinner party. TouchWood Editions, $14.95

Deadly AccusationsDebra Purdy Kong

Delve into a deadly world of secrets and people fighting to maintain control at any cost. A murdered co-worker, gunshots and violence on the buses are all part of the second book in

the Casey Holland mystery series.TouchWood Editions, $14.95

Freedom ClimbersBernadette McDonald

Canada’s most decorated book of mountain literature. Winner of the Boardman Tasker Prize (UK), the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Book

Festival (CAN) and the American Alpine Club’s Literary Award (USA).RMB $32.95

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featureview FICTION

AS A NOVEL ABOUT BLACK OR

“half-blood” musicians inBerlin and Paris whose livesare threatened by the onsetof World War II, EsiEdugyan ’s Half-BloodBlues first came to interna-tional attention when it wasshortlisted for the ManBooker Prize in England,where it was first published.

Her sophomore novel,Half-Blood Blues has sincewon the $50,000 Giller Prizein Canada. It was alsoshortlisted for a GovernorGeneral’s Award and theRogers Writers Trust FictionPrize.

Publication was delayedin Canada with the demiseof Key Porter Books.Edugyan’s husband StevenPrice, whose first novelwas published by ThomasAllen in Ontario, encouragedhis editor Patrick Creanto read the manuscript andaccept it for publication.

Edugyan soon found her-self a finalist for four majorliterary awards, having justgiven birth to her first child.Born and raised in Calgary,Edugyan lives in Victoria.

We asked Joan Givnerto review both of EsiEdugyan’s novels.

Esi Edugyan’s note-perfect tribute toAfro-German jazz in the Third Reich.

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Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan(Thomas Allen $24.95)

Howthe DIVINE

MADNESSofART PREVAILS

Howthe DIVINE

MADNESSofART PREVAILS

I N BOTH HER NOVELS,Esi Edugyan illuminateslittle-known corners ofblack history, and shows the

forces of racial hatred militatingagainst, and ultimately destroying,the black person of extraordinarytalent.

Her first novel, The SecondLife of Samuel Tyne, is set in asmall Alberta town, established asa black community by fugitivesfrom the southern United States.Here in the 1960s, decades after ithas lost its black identity, Tyne ar-rives with his family. An economicforecaster by profession, his reallove is electronics, his ability tocreate a rudimentary computermarking him as a visionary. How-ever, he is an immigrant fromGhana, and his world is not hospi-table to a black visionary. Whatfollows is the steady erosion of hisdreams and the devastation of hisfamily. He left the city to followhis vocation, fearing an ignomini-ous epitaph: “he made it to theend.” After all his struggles thosewords sum up his life exactly. AsFaulkner wrote of his black char-acters, “They endured.”

This bleak chronicle has a castof grotesques—monstrous twins(right out of Marjorie Wallace’s1986 book, The Silent Twins), andthe town’s deputy mayor and hiswife, a red-neck couple that arriveson Tyne’s doorstep shouting, “Callthe Guinness Book—we made ithere in less than a month.” Eventhe comedy of their antics and dia-logue cannot relieve the overwhelm-ing heaviness of the story.

Seven years after this debut,Edugyan found a body of materialthat intensified her themes andfocussed them brilliantly. The char-acters of Half-Blood Blues are jazzmusicians in Nazi Germany and,as such, they face threats far moredire than the bigotry of rural Al-berta. Not only is the mixed race ofthe performers abhorrent to Naziideology, but the music itself isanathema:

It was a plague sent out by thedread black hordes, engineeredby the Jews. Us Negroes, see, wewas only half to blame—we justcan’t help it. Savages just got anatural feel for filthy rhythms,no self-control to speak of.

For any writer, the Holocaustis dangerous subject matter sincethe good-versus-evil dichotomyinvites (almost condones) melo-

drama. Edugyan ne-gotiates the territorydeftly. In focussingon black victims, sheneither diminishesJewish suffering, normakes every Germana Nazi collaborator.Of her six musicians,the Jewish pianist is

deported to Sachsenhausen, oneGerman cravenly abandons thegroup, while the hochgeboren man-ager risks his life to save the blackperformers. These are Sid Griffithsand Chip Jones, African-Americansfrom Baltimore, and the young gen-ius, Hieronymus Falk. He is aMischling (mongrel) the son of aSenagalese soldier and a white Ger-man mother. It is the fate of thistrio that the book traces, as theyflee Berlin for Paris, only toarrive as the army of occupationmoves in.

Sid Griffiths, anti-hero, a goodbut not great musician, is the narra-tor. Naturally for such a polyglotgroup, communication is a prob-lem. Sid explains how they (and theauthor) solve it:

We talked like mongrels see—half German, half Baltimore barslang. Just a few scraps of Frenchbetween us. Only real languageI spoke aside from English wasHochdeutsch.

The idiom they improvise is asspontaneous, lively, and rhythmicas their music. It allows the wittyrepartee of Chip Jones to run coun-terpoint to the harrowing events,creating a sustained chiaroscuro ef-fect. The novel’s other stylistic dis-tinction is the perfectly calibrated,cyclical arrangement of the six sec-tions, alternating between past andpresent. Only at the end, do theimplications of the opening seg-ment become clear.

The Second Life of Samuel Tyneby Esi Edugyan (Knopf $17.95)

JoanGIVNER


The ultimate affirmation of thenovel is that “Half-Blood Blues” isproduced, and that a fragment—amere 3 minutes and thirty-threeseconds—survives. That outcomecarries a faint echo of the conclu-sion to Eliot’s vision of a devas-tated world, The Waste Land:

These fragments I have shoredup against my ruins...Hieronymo’s mad again

It is the divine madness of artthat produces the things of value(often mere shards) that we findagain after the destruction ends andthe tides of ignorance and hatredrecede.

However, nothing in EsiEdugyan’s work is unshaded andunambiguous. The final irony isthat the music produced secretlyin a squalid studio, as the last defi-ant cry before its creators are si-lenced, endures to gain mainstreamacceptance. It is embalmed in thetrappings of success (a conferenceand a documentary film) by a criti-cal establishment, which in anotherera, colluded in its denigration.

9780887627415

Biographer and novelist JoanGivner writes from Mill Bay.

featureview FICTIONcontinued from previous page

BLACK LIKE TRUMAN GREENEsi Edugyan at the Giller Award ceremony, Toronto.

ACCLAIMED CANADIAN

director Norman Jewisonexplored U.S. race relations

in his 1967 release In the Heat ofthe Night. The Oscar-winning filmfeatures Sidney Poitier as a Phila-delphia homicide detective who re-luctantly takes the lead in abackwoods Mississippi murderinvestigation.

In a now legendary scene, Poitierinterrogates a white plantationowner who, enraged by his “effron-tery,” slaps him in the face. Poitierreturns the slap, a boldmove (even for the mov-ies) during an era whenracist whites routinelykilled blacks with impu-nity.

Truman Green de-livers similarly chargedmoments in A Credit toYour Race. First pub-lished in 1973, the novel has beenreissued as part of the Vancouver125 Books Legacy Project. In cel-ebration of the city’s 125th anni-versary last year, the programrepublished ten classic titles.

Set in Surrey, circa 1960, ACredit to Your Race chronicles aromance between narrator BillyRobinson, a 15-year-old blackyouth and Mary Baker, his 14-year-old white neighbour. Their li-aison draws the wrath of familymembers, teachers and schoolmateswho, for various reasons, disap-prove of interracial relationships.The most vocal opponent of thecouple’s union is Mary’s father, afarmer in what was, fifty years ago,a rural community on the outskirtsof Vancouver.

“One day out in the hayloft atthe back of her place, Mary saidshe was starting to hate her father,”Green writes. “Apparently he

didn’t have anything against mepersonally, but he had seen it hap-pen too many times when he wasin the army overseas. … Too manycoloured soldiers (or whatever hecalled them) got white girls preg-nant and then refused to marrythem. … These Canadian men ofcolour just up and left thousandsof poor little white girls knockedup all over the world.”

Billy responds with a cheekysarcasm that courses throughoutthe novel and serves to endear thenarrator to the reader: “But Mary… there’s only about one colouredsolider in the whole Canadian army.

Surely he couldn’t be re-sponsible for all this.”

At a time when manyadolescents are obsessedwith computer games,music videos and theirubiquitous cell phones,Green gives voice to a pe-riod during which rollerskating rinks, ice cream

parlors and drive-in movies werecentral to teenage life. Indeed, Billyrevels in an activity that is likely tosurprise readers who’ve been bom-barded with media images of youngblack men festooned in baggypants, gaudy jewelry and backwardbaseball caps. The protagonist ofA Credit to Your Race is better lik-ened to the late country singer WilfCarter than to the Toronto rap starDrake.

Here, Billy rides his bicycle toMary’s house (she’s sitting on thefront steps reading a newspaper!),to remind her of their upcomingdate: “You know we’re going squaredancing. … Square dancing was thebest … we’d smile at the lyrics and‘do-si-do,’ as they say, and every-thing that went with that.”

In a deft plot move early in thetext, Green introduces an elementthat raises suspense and fuels theflames of the novel’s already blis-

tering racial tension. With Mary’sparents away on holiday, the teensenjoy more time in the hayloft.

“Those two weeks were prob-ably the best of my entire life,”Green writes. “Besides just feelinglike a normal human being and nothaving to hide around corners like aburglar… we did all kinds ofthings.”

“That last night before the Bak-ers got back… knowing the… stu-pid sneaking-around would soon bestarting up… put us in a kind ofdesperate mood,” Green continues.

“Where we’d always stop and gohome, something happened thatnight and we ended up going a lotfurther than we’d intended.”

Green employs skilled pacingand pointed sub-plots–“Scout-master O’Reilly wanted to see mebox because he had some idea thatI’d be a natural”—to keep readersenthralled as the nerve-wrackedadolescents await the result of theirunintended splendour. This, beforepregnancy test kits became readilyavailable at any pharmacy (to saynothing of online outlets).

“Mary seemed to love me, allright,” Green writes. “She even saidwe could run away and elope… ifher dad threatened me. But at leastI wasn’t that dumb. … Where’s afifteen-year-old coloured boy anda fourteen-year-old white girl go-ing to hide?”

Feeling cornered on every front,Billy explodes when Mary, reiter-ating “wisdom” gleaned from herfather, announces that mixed-racechildren are “a lot dumber than allwhite or all coloured… and that alot of them are deformed.”

“ You know Mary, your dad’s afucking idiot,” Billy asserts.

As for Mary’s mom, she oneday summons Billy to herOldsmobile where she shares a per-sonal saga that prompts anotherplot twist. “I thought of the word,dilemma … and that was what Mrs.Baker was,” Green writes. “A di-lemma.”

A Credit To Your Race is en-hanced by a closing interview withTruman Green that details the evo-lution of the novel and its intrigu-ing publication history. Greenrecalls a 1970s-era publisher who,disaffected with his narrative style,had rejected the manuscript (“Heconstantly tells the reader how hefeels”).

“I feel that Billy’s thoughts,expressed directly to the reader, arethe most interesting and touchingparts of the book,” notes Green, aUBC graduate and now retired con-tractor who lives in Surrey. “I re-member thinking that perhaps thepublisher should reread AnneFrank’s diary or The Catcher in theRye.”

Ditto. 978-1897535868

Biographer of Alice Walker, EvelynC. White is the author of EveryGoodbye Ain’t Gone: A Photo Nar-rative of Black Heritage on SaltSpring Island.

A Credit To Your Race by Truman Green(Anvil Press $18)

Truman Green

The scenes—a meeting in a dis-used Jewish bath house, hiding outin an abandoned night club, waitingfor forged papers in the baronialmanor of a prominent official, a sidetrip to Hagenbeck’s “human zoo”outside Hamburg, lying low in adingy Montmartre apartment—provide a panorama of life in NaziGermany and of Paris in the firstmonths of the occupation.

✫A LIST OF SOURCES AUTHENTICATES

Edugyan’s picture of Afro-Ger-mans, blacks and jazz musicians inthe Third Reich. She also includesa true portrait of Louis Armstrongamong her characters. It emphasizesArmstrong’s commitment toJudaism, the legacy of his child-hood, when he was nurtured by aJewish family in New Orleans.Armstrong is seamlessly integratedinto the plot when he passes onthe mantle of his genius toHieronymus.

Edugyan’s focus on the musicgives the narrative its deeper reso-nance; and her description of jazzextends by implication to all artforms—musical, visual and literary.

She addresses the mystery of ar-tistic creativity—its collaborativenature, the jealousy it inspires, itstendency to transcend the indi-vidual artist, and the rare appear-ance of genius. Sid, heartbroken byArmstrong’s rejection, bitterly con-siders the unfair distribution of tal-ent:

Gifts is divided so damnunevenly...In every other walk oflife, a jack can work to get whathe want. But ain’t no amount oftoil going to get you a lick moretalent than you was born with.Geniuses ain’t made, brother,they just is. And I just was not.

But it is the Nazi official, a loverof classical music, who speaks themost poignant words on the sub-ject. “Dedication,” he says, “can begenius in its own right.” His state-ment is prophetic, for it is Sid whoensures the creation and survival ofthe great piece of music. He does soby committing an act of betrayalthat recalls Faulkner’s words:

The writer’s only responsibilityis to his art...he has a dream... Ifa writer has to rob his mother,he will not hesitate; the “Ode ona Grecian Urn” is worth anynumber of old ladies.

Evelyn C.WHITE



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ASSOCIATE OF ARTS DEGREE IN CREATIVE WRITINGCreative Writing at Capilano University puts writers of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, children's literature and other genres into contact with each other. Public readings, magazine and book production, hands on editing, and workshops bring writers together. We offer introductory workshops and advanced workshops in Fiction, Poetry, Creative Nonfiction and Writing for the Stage.

FOR MORE INFORMATION Call: 604.986.1911 ext 2425 • www.capilanou.ca/creative-writing Upcoming information sessions will be announced at capilanocreativewriting.blogspot.com

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Writing is a Social Act!


The Environmental Rights Revolution A Global Study of Constitutions, Human Rights, and the Environment

David R. Boyd

Wet Prairie

People, Land, and Water

in Agricultural Manitoba

A timely account of state and

settler attempts to manage

Manitoba’s wet prairie.

January 2012

978-0-7748-1853-7

pb $34.95

264 pages, 10 maps

The right to a healthy environment has been the subject of

extensive philosophical debates that revolve around the question:

Should rights to clean air, water, and soil be entrenched in law?

David Boyd answers this by moving beyond theoretical debate

constitutions. His pioneering analysis of 193 constitutions and

the laws and court decisions of more than 100 nations in Europe,

Latin America, Asia, and Africa reveals a positive correlation

between constitutional protection and stronger environmental

laws, smaller ecological footprints, superior environmental

performance, and improved quality of life.

February 2012 , 978-0-7748-2161-2 pb $34.95

468 pages, 3 maps, 10 charts, 22 tables

David R. Boyd’s thorough and carefully presented

research provides a clear and detailed account of how

environmental rights are being implemented throughout

the world. After an initial orientation to the philosophical

debates about human rights and the environment, Boyd

moves on deftly to investigate which arguments are

vindicated in practice. Identifying the evidence available

he provides an invaluable assessment of developments

to date as well as a guide to promising future directions of

research. This extremely well written book is an essential

guide to environmental rights in theory and in practice.

– Professor Tim Hayward, University of Edinburgh

Corporate Social Responsibility and the State

International Approaches

to Forest Co-Regulation

Jane Lister

An engaging analysis of the pos-

sibilities and limits of voluntary

corporate social responsibility

in safeguarding global environ-

mental and social well-being.

January 2012

978-0-7748-2034-9

pb $34.95

304 pages, 38 figures, 48 tables

Unnatural Law

Rethinking Canadian

Environmental Law

and Policy

Winner, 2004 Best Book

of the Year(Environment),

Canadian Geographic

Magazine

This award-winning book

comprehensively assesses

the strengths and weak-

nesses of Canadian environ-

mental law.

2003, 978-0-7748-1049-4

pb $32.95 , 488 pages

E VIDENTLY THE HEAD

trauma from a 1997 caraccident has not inhibited

W.P. Kinsella’s imagination.Unable to concentrate after be-

ing injured as a pedestrian, Kinselladid little for five years and consid-ered himself to be retired—but hassince become one of the country’stop Scrabble competitors.

After a 15-year hiatus frompublishing his work, the wizard ofdiamond lit and magic realism hasrebounded with gusto for Butter-fly Winter, another baseball novel.

“Butterfly Winter came aboutbecause I read an article about themigration of monarch butterfliesfrom Canada and the USA to win-ter in Mexico,” Kinsella told BCBW.“I made that into a short story. Ihad another short story abouttwins who play catch in their moth-er’s womb. I combined the two sto-ries for a novel, then rewrote itseveral times, changing narrators,and making the novel more of aninterview.”

Two chapters were previouslypublished in a slightly differentform, as short stories. “ButterflyWinter,” appeared in Red Wolf, RedWolf, in 1987, and “The Battery,”in The Thrill of the Grass, 1985.

Kinsella told BCBW his primaryliterary influence for Butterfly Win-ter was What The Crow Said, anovel by Robert Kroetsch. Quirkyand convoluted, Kinsella’s long-in-cubated novel offers cabbageswaltzing, herons bayoneting vil-lains and butterflies punishing evil-doers.

The story is largely set in a fic-tional country called the Republicof Courteguay, located betweenHaiti and the Dominican Republic.

“When I started the novel,”Kinsella says, “I thoughtCourteguay was a real country inCentral America, but it isn’t, so Imoved it to Hispaniola.”

[A Latin American dictatorshipcalled Corteguay was first imag-ined by novelist Harold Robbins inThe Adventurers, a trashy novelthat became a trashy movie in1969.—Ed]

Life in Courteguay changes withthe arrival of a baseballmissionary named SandorBoatly who brings theword of baseball to themasses. There is an ex-tremely unreliable narra-tor named The Wizardwho says, “The wordchronological is not in theCourteguayan language,neither is sequence.”

The considerable cast of char-acters in this novel turns out to beshorter than it appears. We realizethe wizard and prime narrator isalso Sandor Boatly, The Old Dic-tator, Jorge Blanco and OctavioCourt, the founder and namesakeof Courteguay, rolled into one. Andcould the wizard also be the villain,Dr. Lucius Noir, responsible forbanishing baseball, for untoldslaughters, and any number of des-picable acts?

There’s nothing our sleazy nar-rator can’t do. He’s as often the

villain as the hero. He rescues thekidnapped Julio from the guerillasby buying them off with colourfuluniforms, descending grandly fromthe sky in his beloved hot air bal-loon.

✫THE NOVEL’S PROTAGONISTS ARE

the pitching battery of Julio andEsteban who start playing catch intheir mother’s womb. Thesemiraculous twins are born to an im-

poverished and aston-ished couple, Hector andFernandela Pimental.

As toddlers, the dash-ing Julio and ploddingEsteban amazed interna-tional tourists who cameto watch the diapered pairplay baseball in their nurs-ery. At ten, they were off

to America to play on the “only ma-jor league baseball team in the TrueSouth,” apparently the AtlantaBraves. Super star Julio will onlypitch to his sibling, even thoughEsteban falls far short of his broth-er’s brilliance.

The beautiful Quita Garza,Julio’s true love, could conceivablyalso be an Alpha butterfly, or aheron, or exist in the retinue of onenight stands to which Julio eventu-ally succumbs.

While much of the narrationbelongs to the wizard, a gringo jour-nalist also elbows his way onto the

reviews FICTION

Magic and mayhem highlight W.P. Kinsella’sfirst novel in more than a decade

page, and, unlike the wizard, he doesnot shift shapes. He’s just tryingto do his job, attempting to sortout fact from fiction, past frompresent, and villain from champion.

The intrepid journalist has beenover four months on the story, un-tangling the wizard’s stories, andhe’s no longer on an expense ac-count, but he is determined to writethe history of Courteguay and itsfamous baseball twins.

Logic and time wobble aboutlike the proverbial Jell-O on thewall; we have first-person seguesinto third-person narration in thesame chapter, and people don’tnecessarily stay murdered.

The book’s division into threesections, each with a myriad ofshort chapters, seems as whimsi-cal as the plot. Each chapter is ti-tled by a name: usually TheWizard, or The Gringo Journalist,occasionally Julio Pimental, Hec-tor Pimental, (the twins’ father), orQuita Garza. But that doesn’t nec-essarily mean that chapter is deliv-ered from that character’s point ofview, or that it will even have any-thing to do with that character.

With its time bending, shapeshifting and death defying zaniness,Butterfly Winter kicks magic real-ism up a notch. The main thread ofconsistency is wonderful writing:

Properly played, baseball con-sisted of mathematics, geom-

etry, art, philosophy, ballet, andcarnival, all intertwined like themystical ribbons of color in arainbow.

✫KINSELLA HAS BEEN ASKED COUNT-less times by interviewers, ‘whybaseball?’ He puts part of his an-swer into Sandor Boatly’s excitedrevelation: “The field is not en-closed. The possibilities are end-less. There is no whistle to suspendplay, there is no clock to signal anending.”

So the possibilities in ButterflyWinter are likewise endless.

“Magic is only something youhaven’t seen before,” the wizardsays to Julio.

So how come Butterfly Winterwas released by a little-known im-print in Manitoba? That’s almostas bizarre as the novel.

As the man who wrote ShoelessJoe, the basis for the movie, Fieldof Dreams, surely Kinsella can getpublished anywhere he chooses.But no way, Julio.

“Let’s face it,” Kinsella says,“the offer to publish from Enfield& Wizenty was the only offer. SoI’m happy they decided to awardme their Colophon Prize and pub-lish the novel.

“Major publishers want hugesales. Something like 60% of allbooks are sold in Canada withina hundred miles of Toronto. Ihave never been a big seller inOntario.

“My novel Box Socials sold like70,000 hardcover copies in theUSA, but when my next novel wasready they not only didn’t want tobuy it, they didn’t want to read it.Reason? Not enough sales inCanada.” 978-1926531168

Cherie Thiessen reviews fictionfrom Pender Island.

WALTZING CABBAGES

LA

UR

A S

AWC

HU

CK

PH

OT

O

& BASEBALL IN THE WOMBButterfly Winter by W.P. Kinsella(Enfield & Wizenty $29.95)

W.P. Kinsella at LadyFranklin’s Rock

CherieTHIESSEN



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WATER IN THE WILDERNESS by Doris RiedwegHappily married to her beloved Morley, Tyne Cresswell is content in her dual role of farmer’s wife and hospital nurse. Then a late night conversation with one of her patients sets in motion a series of heartbreaking events that neither she nor Morley could ever have imagined.

Paperback 9 x 6 in ✦ 220 pages ✦ ISBN: 9781926763194 ✦ $23.00

MIDNIGHT EMBERS poetry by Candice JamesWords, when strung together like a beautiful rare necklace, are priceless, indestructible and eternal. Poetry is the grand ballroom these words live, breathe and dance in.


SECRETS KEPT / SECRETS TOLD a novel by Ben Nuttall-Smith

Secrets Kept / Secrets Told, Paddy’s story of Personal Growth, relates a journey of healing, showing that anyone can heal from abuse and PTSD, giving readers insight and hope.


VORTEX poetry by Manolis

An ancient music runs through the poetry of Manolis, so it is appropriate that his work should be presented with Greek en face. Vibrant, radiant, his poetry is steeped in an antique tradition and yet is thoroughly modern in scope and refreshingly new.


SMALL CHANGE short stories by George Amabile

This is a book about growing up and coming of age in the inner city, an unpredictable adventure filled with risk, spontaneous invention, bizarre hilarities, moments of grace...


THE SECOND WEDDING OF DOCTOR GENEVA SONGa novel by Robert N. FriedlandDoctor Geneva Song’s Chinese wedding ceremony is traditional, but she marries outside of her race and culture. This ancient ritual sets in motion a fateful journey from the light to the dark for Geneva, her Spirit Sister, and the men who love them.


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F I C T I O NF I C T I O NEVERY FEW YEARS OR SO, WE LIKE

to take stock of what our sto-rytellers are doing collectively.So welcome to our latest om-nibus about where B.C. writ-ers are at—literally andfiguratively—including AnneDeGrace (above), seen hereon the shores of Kootenay Lake.The size of the publishing houseshouldn’t matter, so we don’tdiscriminate against small fry.We leave it to our readers to dis-cern any thematic trends.

After two novels, Anne DeGrace of Nelson has releasedher first collection of trans-Canada short stories, Flyingwith Amelia (McArthur $29.95), spanning the country from1901 to 1999: A St. John’s boy watches as his employerMarconi receives the first transatlantic wireless signal. ABritish Home Child finds solace on an Ontario farmstead. In1920s Montreal, a one-armed WWI veteran gambles every-thing for a beautiful, intelligent, political young woman. Ger-man prisoners of war find creative ways to quell boredom innorthern Manitoba. Doukhobor children are snatched fromtheir parents by RCMP in British Columbia. And during thesixties, draft evaders find refuge. 978-1-55-152-416-0

Scottish-born Grant McKenzie, while living in Gibsons,published a debut thriller, Switch (Penguin $25), a mass-market paperback that has been translated into German, Rus-

sian and Chinese.Now living in Victoria

where he doubles as editor-in-chief of Monday magazine,McKenzie has signed a two-book deal in the U.S. withMidnight Ink to introducemystery lovers to a sassyheroine named Dixie Dash.“As a rule-breaking reporterfor alternative weekly SanFrancisco NOW, Dixie will

do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of the stories shefeels most passionate about.”

As the series is written in first-person from Dixie’s pointof view, McKenzie is adopting the pseudonym K.C. Grant.

9780143173359

Overshadowed somewhat by Esi Edugyan winning To-ronto’s Giller Prize, Patrick deWitt won both the$25,000 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Gover-nor General’s Award for Fiction for his sophomore novel,The Sisters Brothers (Anansi $22.95). The Canadian-borndeWitt is getting half the press even though he has wontwice as much partially because he lives in Portland. Hisoffbeat novel is a rollicking tale of two cowboy assassins,Eli and Charlie Sisters, and their faithful horses, as they aretracking down a gold prospector with a secret. Born onVancouver Island, deWitt was also nominated for the Gillerand long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. “I think of mywork as a bit left-of-centre,” he has said. DeWitt has beencredited with a “dark and gentle touch” in his storytelling.DeWitt’s previous novel, Ablutions, was published in 2009,and he wrote the screenplay for the film, Terri. 978-1770890329

Oh, Sisters Brothers,where art thou?

Patrick deWitt:a bit left ofcentre

BC

The first novel by five-time Ironman finisher MargaretDietz of Squamish, From My Mother (CreateSpace$9.99), follows marathoner Nadia as she undertakes a100-kilometre ultrarun, all the while contemplatingthe endurance of her 94-year-old grandmother Omawho immigrated to the Netherlands in the early1950s, escaping Czechoslovakia in the after-math of the communist takeover. Born inthe Netherlands in 1970, Dietz has writtenfour previous non-fiction books about run-ning including A Hundred Reasons to Run100km, Running Shoes Are a Girl’s BestFriend and Powered from Within: StoriesAbout Running & Triathlon. Dietz movedfrom Sydney, Australia to British Co-lumbia in late 2007. 9781456471347

Margaret Dietz:running shoesare a girl’sbest friend

In Richard Wagamese’s new novel Indian Horse(D&M $22.95) we meet Saul Indian Horse whose last bingealmost killed him. Promo material describes Saul as a reluc-tant resident in a treatment centre for alcoholics: “Saul wantspeace, and he grudgingly comes to see that he’ll find it onlythrough telling his story. With him, readers embark on ajourney back through the life he’s led as a northern Ojibway,

with all its joys and sorrows... For Saul,taken forcibly from the land and

his family when he’s sent toresidential school, salvation

comes for a while throughhis incredible gifts as ahockey player. But in theharsh realities of 1960sCanada, he battles obdu-rate racism and the spirit-destroying effects ofcultural alienation and dis-placement.”978-1-55365-402-5

✫

Grant McKenzie

✫W.D. Valgardson has returned to adult fiction for Whatthe Bear Said: Skald Tales from New Iceland (Turnstone$19), a collection of short stories that was launched in Gimli,Manitoba, centre of all things Icelandic-Canadian. The sto-ries capture the experiences of Icelandic settlers in Canada inthe old style of eddas and sagas. 978-0-88801-3804

Part love story, part medical drama, and part wartime saga,Daniel Kalla’s seventh novel The Far Side of the Sky(HarperCollins $24.99) weaves fictional characters intoWorld War II history. An Austrian Jewish physician andsurgeon flees the Nazis with his daughter to operate a refu-gee hospital in Shanghai where he falls in love with an enig-matic nurse, Soon Yi “Sunny” Mah. 9781443402651

✫


FICTION

Carmen Rodriguez’ Retribution(Women’s Press Literacy$22.95) takes the form of threememoirs by a daughter, mother

and grandmother. Whereas the grandmotherSoledad was once convinced to vote for a right-wing candidate in Chile, her daughter Sol joinedthe resistance movement against the dictatorPinochet and was tortured for nine months.

The threesome arrives in Vancouver in 1974 asrefugees. Sol’s child Tania is a newborn. The grand-mother recalls:

“As much as I wanted to pretend that I didn’t careabout Chile anymore, it didn’t take me long to realize thatwhen you leave your country behind, you don’t really leaveyour country behind. It haunts you, it teases you, it playstricks on you; it shows up at every corner, in every street; in

the wind, in the clouds. It doesn’t leave you alone. Your pastplays in your head over and over again, like a movie that youalready know by heart, but cannot stop watching.”

During their first weeks at the Cove Motor Inn in EnglishBay, a one-star transit hotel operated by the Canadian gov-ernment, her daughter Sol tells her, “The baby’s father is mytorturer.” (Rodriguez has given the reader some foreknowl-edge of this, near the outset.) Soledad, the grandmother, ex-plodes with hatred:

“I hated Pinochet. I hated my son’s murderer. I hated mysister for having turned my daughter in. I hated my

daughter’s torturer. I hated my daughter for givingbirth to the torturer’s baby and I hated baby Tania.

But above all I hated myself for not having knownto live my life to the fullest when I was young;

for not having accepted and loved my son for who hewas; for having disapproved of my children’s political

views; for not having appreciated what I had. I hated myselffor being alive and not having the guts to end it all and leavethis world once and for all.”

The grandmother rallies herself and becomes involved inthe solidarity movement of Chilean exiles and refugees inVancouver, but the title Retribution arises from the tortured

daughter Sol’s resolve to take revenge by breaking thelegacy of cruelty and hate, by re-inventing love.

[Carmen Rodriguez is not to be con-fused with Chilean-born playwright

Carmen Aguirre, also of Vancouver,whose memoir of political resist-

ance in Chile, SomethingFierce, won this year’s

Canada Readscompetition.]

978-0986638817

BCBOOKWORLD

STAFF PICK

Maureen Foss

June V. Bourgo

J. Jill Robinson

Barbara Lambert

Carmen Rodriguezwas born in Chile in 1948.She came to Canada as apolitical exile followingthe military coup ofSeptember 11, 1973.

Robin Spano

Surely the only novelist in Lac LaHache, Maureen Foss has pub-lished her third novel, Scribes(Caitlin $22.95) about four disparatewomen in a writers’ group: a closetlesbian, a vengeful wife, a sentimen-tal poet and an etiquette columnist.The darkly comic novel is dedicatedto Foss’ husband and the Quintes-

sential Writers Group on the Sunshine Coast that includedBetty Keller, Rosella Leslie, GwendolynSouthin and Dorothy Fraser. 978-1-894759-68-7

✫Surely the only novelist in Clinton,June V. Bourgo has worked inmarketing/sales for telecommunica-tions, managed a physiotherapyclinic, lived on a houseboat in Victo-ria harbour and worked at a remoteYukon gold mine. Her debut novel,Winter’s Captive (Asteroid $19.95),

shares with the reader what she learned through the ficti-tious story of one woman’s struggle to enlightenment andempowerment. 978-1-926720-17-3

✫J.Jill Robinson delves into theintricacies of mother-daughter rela-tionships with More in Anger (Tho-mas Allen $24.95), a novel aboutemotional inheritance. As the legacyof anger trickles through three gen-erations of the Mayfield family, theyoungest daughter, Vivien, struggles

to become the first to break the chain. Robinson has previ-ously excelled at short fiction, and dedicated one of her col-lections to her sisters. 978-0-88762-953-2

✫Described as a fairy tale for grown-ups, Barbara Lambert’s TheWhirling Girl (Cormorant $22)follows botanical artist ClareLivingstone to Cortona in Tuscanyto accept the inheritance of her un-cle’s property. While fending offunscrupulous archaeologists,

nosey neighbours and two male suitors, the sly, wry,lovely ‘princess’ in her new castle must come to termswith self-deception and buried truth. 978-1-77086-093-3

✫It’s not exactly a statement P.D.James would make, but mys-tery novelist Robin Spanoof Lions Bay wishes she livedinside the Charlie’s Angels TVshow. In Spano’s second novelfeaturing female cop ClareVengel, Death Plays Poker (ECW

$24.95), Clare goes undercover to investigate the deaths ofworld class poker players who are being strangled in theirhotel rooms. To catch the Poker Choker, she must pose as acard shark, alias Tiffany, dressed to kill. You don’t win theGiller with a thriller, but possibly she’s having more fun. 978-1-55022-994-3✫Arguably it can be better classified as a memoir than fiction,but George Bowering’s wit and storytelling are oncemore at play in Pinboy (Cormorant $32), previously an-nounced for publication two years ago. It humourously re-calls his sexual awakenings at agefifteen in the south Okanagan.Bowering finds himself enam-oured of three choices: his firstlove, the girl from the wrong sideof the tracks, and one of his highschool teachers. He’s also re-leased non-chronological remi-niscences of his literaryendeavours, how i wrote cer-tain of my books (Mansfield$19.95). Pinboy 9781897151945; Certain 978-1-894469-55-5

GeorgeBowering

Pinochet’s long shadowGrowing love from hate can take several generations.


FICTION

In 1909, twenty-five year-old Conrad Kain, fromthe tiny Austrian village ofNasswald, boarded theCPR ship Empress of Brit-ain en route to the Cana-dian Rockies where hebecame the first officialmountain guide of thenewly formed Alpine Clubof Canada (ACC). KeithG. Powell’s second his-

In Timothy Taylor’s novel thatexamines the culture of celebrity, TheBlue Light Project (Knopf $32.95),a man armed with an explosive de-vice storms a television studio wherea youth talent show is being filmed,and demands an interview with adisgraced former investigative jour-nalist. 978-0-307-39930-4

✫Vancouver cop Sean Slater’s first mystery thrillerThe Survivor (Simon & Schuster $19.99) follows DetectiveJacob Striker’s investigation of a shooting at hisdaughter’s high school. As an officer, Slaterhas investigated everything from fraud tohomicide, and has contributed col-umns and editorials to Vancouvernewspapers. 978-0-85720546-9

✫Joe Denham’s first novel,The Year of Broken Glass(Nightwood $24.95), follows astruggling crab fisherman acrossthe Pacific Ocean to deliver a glassfishing float to a high-paying col-lector. Against a backdrop of seismicdegradation, the protagonist,Francis “Ferris” Wichbaun, hasa romantic affair with histrans-ocean travelling com-panion while he is deeplyconcerned about his dualfamilies: Ferris is married toAnna and they have a sonnamed Willow, and simulta-neously he has a baby daugh-ter, Emily, with his girlfriendJin Su. 978-0-88971-252-2

Arley McNeney played on Cana-da’s national wheelchair basketballteam from 2001 to 2007, winning twoWorld Championships and a bronzemedal at the 2004 Paralympics. Withtwo creative writing degrees, at age24 she wrote Post (Thistledown,2007), her debut novel about retiredwheelchair athlete Nolan Taylor who

is forced to build a new identity in her post-basketball life.Leaving sports behind, she has crafted The Time We AllWent Marching (Goose Lane $19.95), a novel about a mother

and son trapped on a snowbound train heading west toVancouver, and mixed with the political past of a

missing father who had worked as an itinerantminer. The story chiefly explores the On to

Ottawa Trek and the Regina Riots of the1930s, two cathartic events in Canadian

labour history during which the federalgovernment and RCMP responded to theconcerns of the unemployed with an iron

fist. In 2011, McNeney began bloggingabout her recent hip replacement

on her blog called Young and Hip. 978-086492-640-1

✫

Joe Denham of Halfmoon Bay

Keith G. Powell at the Conrad Kain hut in the Bugaboos, oneof Kain’s favourite climbing haunts.

Timothy Taylor Arley McNeney

torical novel, Raising Kain (Wild Horse Creek Press $19.95),recounts Kain’s remarkable adventures in Canada, mainly inthe Rockies, but also around Wilmer in the Columbia Valley.Kain lived in Wilmer (just north of Invermere) for almost 20years and died in Cranbrook’s St. Eugene Hospital in 1934.He made almost 70 first ascents or new routes on peaks inthe Rockies to go with 59 ascents (29 first ascents) in NewZealand. He is widely recognized as “the prince of Canadianmountain guides.” 978-0-9812146-2-7

✫

Lorna Goodison

Lorna Goodison is the authorof two collections of short stories,eight books of poetry, and the award-winning memoir From Harvey River:A Memoir of My Mother and HerPeople. She has received much inter-national recognition, including theMusgrave Gold Medal. Born in Ja-

maica, Goodison divides her time between Ann Arbor, To-ronto, and Halfmoon Bay, B.C. Her new story collection isBy Love Possessed (M&S $28.99). 978-0-7710-3577-7


Published for the first time after 150 years, this journal is an exciting addition to the history of BC — with

valuable insights into the native peoplesand colonial society. 12 colour maps

& photos; 30 b&w photos.

978-1-55380-127-6 6 x 9 272 pp $21.95

The Private Journal of Captain

G.H. RichardsTHE VANCOUVER ISLAND

SURVEY (1860–1862)

Edited by Linda Dorricott& Deidre Cullon

Ronsdale Press Available from your favourite bookstore or order from LitDistCoVisit our website at www.ronsdalepress.com

The Barclay Family Theatre� Jack Hodgins

Back in print! — a superb collection of short stories by the winner of the GovernorGeneral’s Award.

978-1-55380-144-3 6 x 9 272 pp $18.95

Our Friend Joe: The Joe Fortes Story� Lisa Anne Smith & Barbara Rogers

The first-ever biography of the black lifeguard who won the hearts of Vancouver’s citizens, teaching their children to swim in English Bay and saving the lives of many prominent citizens. 20 b&w photos.

978-1-55380-146-7 6 x 9 170 pp $21.95

No Ordinary Place� Pamela Porter

Governor General Award winner Pamela Porterdoes it again — with poems that translate the everyday mundane into moments of ecstatic spirituality.

978-1-55380-151-1 6 x 9 106 pp $15.95

The Opening Act: CanadianTheatre History, 1945–1953� Susan McNicoll

The history of the many theatres that madeStratford possible in 1953, including Everyman,Totem, the New Play Society and Théâtre duNouveau Monde. 50 b&w photos.

978-1-55380-113-9 7-1/2 x 10 310 pp $24.95

Charlie: A Home Child’sLife in Canada� Beryl Young

The story of the 100,000 British children who came to Canada as indentured workersbetween 1879 and 1938. Young Adult.

978-1-55380-140-5 8 x 8 110 pp $12.95

Freedom Bound� Jean Rae Baxter

When 18-year-old Charlotte sails from Canada to Charleston, she finds herself caughtup in the final chaotic days of the AmericanRevolution. Young Adult.

978-1-55380-143-6 5-1/4 x 7-5/8 256 pp $11.95

FICTION

“We, the newly-fanged scholars and researchers lookedat each other in dismay,” she recalls, “but didn’t dare to raiseany objections. Accepted into the GreatTemple of Philology, we were treated as hisequals. And, if we, for some reason, didn’thave the reading knowledge of a given Euro-pean language, we still had a week until thenext seminar to acquire that knowledge!”

As a Ph.D student of Lotman, Sonkinalearned that a variety of disciplines must beexplored to study culture, so she studiedphilosophy, psychology, film, theatre, folk-lore and visual arts. In 1987, she immigratedto Canada with her small sons, two suit-cases, and one hundred dollars, leaving herjob teaching at Moscow University. “It wasall the Soviet government—a proponent of

Disturbed by Indo-Canadian gangland murders, Surrey-raisedRanj Dhaliwal took the title for his “underworld” novel, Daaku(New Star 2006) from the Punjabi word for outlaw or gangster. Inhis follow-up, Daaku: The Gangster’s Life (New Star $21), theprotagonist Ruby Pandher is a little older, wiser and moreambitious—while remaining reflective about his lone-wolf lifestyle. “Maybe God will forgive me if I getout of this life now.” Dhaliwal now devotes someof his time to organizations that deal with at-riskIndo-Canadian youth. 9781554200597

✫Newcomer Raminder Sidhu examines thelives of contemporary women in Vancouver’stightly-knit Little India district in her firstnovel, Tears of Mehndi (Caitlin $24.95),to expose “the shrouded violence withinCanada’s Punjabi community.” Similar inscope to Gurjinder Basran’s WilsonPrize-winning debut novel in 2010, Eve-rything Was Good-bye (Mother Tongue),it has characters caught between two cul-tures—a fundamental theme in B.C. fic-tion first made conspicuous in HubertEvans’ Mist on the River in 1954. Sidhuwas born and raised in Mackenzie, BC,and resides in Surrey. 978-1-894759-73-1

From Russia with $100Diversity and a zest for life punctuate Marina’s world

Marxist materialism in theory, but a defender of extremenon-materialism in practice—allowed me to take with me.”

Convinced her sons would eventually be forced into mili-tary service for Russia, Sonkina has no regrets about her exo-dus. One son is now a tenured professor of mathematics atDalhousie in Halifax; the other returned to Moscow as a Cana-dian citizen and has achieved success as an actor in 28 films.

In Montreal, Sonkina initially found work in the Russiansection of Radio Canada International at CBC. Now teachingliterature at UBC and SFU, Sonkina has published a diverse,

third collection of stories, Lucia’s Eyesand Other Stories (Guernica $20). Thelonger stories include ‘Tractorina’s Trav-els,’ about a twice-married Russian who isuneasy about Perestroika, and ‘Carmelita,’about a volatile, Bohemian painter whohas a poignant, sensual and lethal relation-ship with a much older narrator, Joseph,in Mexico. Sonkina’s new children’s bookis The Violin That Wanted To See The World(MW Books).

When not writing and teaching, Ma-rina Sonkina teaches yoga and dances thetango (“with an often unjustified fervor”).

978-1-55071-334-3

Surrey underworld &Little India revealed

Don Hunter’s political thriller, Cooper and The Queen(Mirador $14.85) opens with reports that the Queen is toabdicate, that the throne will go to her grandson Williamand his bride Kate Middleton, and that the Queen thenwill spend much of her future in her favourite Common-wealth country—Canada. The narrative then turns back toevents of 1983, during the North American royal tour, sched-uled to end in Vancouver where the Queen would announceplans for the Expo 86 World Fair. A rogue Irish RepublicanArmy assassin Sean Dooley plansto assassinate the Queen on the finalday of the royal tour (a tour that DonHunter covered as a reporter with

The Province newspaper.). Coin-cidentally Sgt. Matt Cooper of theVancouver Police Department isremoved from his position ashead of the Emergency Response

Team and appointed bodyguard to a woman who doestheatre impersonations of HRH. The story moves

from Vancouver Island to Ottawa, the Caribbean,Ulster, California, Galiano Island, and Vancouver,to its dramatic climax at the Hotel Vancouver. 978-1-908200-26-6

Don Hunter

Stephen Legault

Rachel Wyatt

Raminder Sidhu Ranj Dhaliwal

✫In End of the Line (Touchwood $18.95) byStephen Legault, newly reinstated MountieDurrant Wallace arrives in a lawless shantytown tosolve the murder of a CPR section boss before thekiller can strike again. According to novelist AngieAbdou, “The End of the Line transported me. Thisexplosive tale takes read-ers on a rough and tumbleride through Canada’s WildWest. I completely lostmyself in StephenLegault’s imaginedworld—what more could

a reader ask for?”Homelessness in the

Downtown Eastside is the lightning rod for intrigueand murder for the third volume in Legault's mystery

series featuring ex-Ottawa politico Cole Blackwater.In The Vanishing Track (Touchwood $18.95) he helps hisfriend Denman Scott thwart the demolition of the LuckyStrike Hotel, home to nearly three hundred poor people.When he discovers homeless people are disappearing with-out a trace—hence the title—the pair uncover corruptionwith the help of an intrepid Vancouver Sun reporter and

street nurse named Juliet Rose.Vanishing: 9781927129036; End: 978-1926971049

✫Dedicated to P.K. Page, RachelWyatt’s sixth novel, Letters toOmar (Coteau $21) is about threeinterfering women “with time on theirhands” who tackle a charitable causeby hosting a dinner party, only to

realize that fixing the universe is no easy task.978-1-55050-448-4

✫Creator of a monthly sex column, Blush, in Vancouver’sXtraWest, as well as a stand-up improv performer and dragqueen named Miss Cookie LaWhore, Michael V. Smithhas received the inaugural Dayne Ogilvie Award for Emerg-ing Gay Writers with his candid poetry collection, What YouCan’t Have. But sex is not overtly the focus for Smith’ssecond novel, Progress (Cormorant $21), in which a lonelywidow named Helen has to relocate when a dam is built inher small town, and she learns a family secret when her long-lost brother suddenly reappears. 978-1-77086-000-1

✫In Jenn Lafortune’s debut mystery, Murder inParksville (Diamond River $16.95),the protagonist Leann revisits herhometown of Tofino where she iswoken by police who tell her thather parents are the apparent victimsof a fatal car crash in Parksville. Ap-pearances are deceiving. A localRCMP detective must unravelthe case. 978-0-9866598-1-2

Marina Sonkina: Moscow, nyet

Marina Sonkina still recalls being 18

at Moscow University when her cul-

tural history professor Uri Lotmanwrote a detailed bibliography on the blackboard

in French, German, English and Italian:

Jenn Lafortune


FICTION

Kevin Chong’s Beauty Plus Pity (Arsenal $17.95) fol-lows the travails of Malcolm Kwan, a slackertwentysomething Asian-Canadian living in Vancouver whois pursuing a modeling career. When his filmmaker fatherdies and his fiancée leaves him, Malcolm is forced to con-front his past relationships with women, including his ownmother, and his ambivalence toward his hyphenated culturalidentity. He also discovers that at some point his father hadan affair, resulting in his teenaged half-sister, Hadley. Chong’sfollow-up is a superb memoir about becoming part-owner ofa Vancouver racehorse. See SPORTS, page 20. 9781551524160

Pauline Holdstock’s Into the Heart of the Country(HarperCollins $32.95) tells the story of Molly Norton,mixed-blood daughter of Governor Moses Norton and apersonal favourite of explorer Samuel Hearne. Mollyspeaks to the reader from across the centuries, revealing thestory of her liaison with Hearne, and exposing both itsprivilege and its price. When Molly’s small society istorn apart by a French attack, the women of the fort,including Molly, find themselves and their children aban-doned by their British masters. 9781443405577

The one-man culture known as bill bissett has brokennew ground—as usual—with his first work of semi-fiction,novel (Talonbooks $17.95), partially an uncapitalized nar-rative about a character named jimmee searching for his lover,mark. There are also “pomes and essays” to comprise amélange of invariably vibrant bissett humour and wisdom—as usual. There is nobody like bill bissett and there is nonovel like novel. His bio material states he is, “originaleefrom lunaria ovr 300 yeers ago in lunarian time sent by shuttulthru halifax nova scotia originalee wantid 2 b dansr n figurskatr b became a poet n paintr in my longings after 12operaysyuns reelee preventid me from following th inishuldireksyuns.” Simultaneously, Carl Peters has releasedthe first scholarly study of bissett’s poetry and pictures,textual vishyuns: image and text in the work ofbill bissett (Talonbooks $24.95). novel 9780889226715; vishyuns 9780889226616

Robert W. Mackay’s historical novel Soldier of theHorse (TouchWood $19.95) is a World War I tale inspiredby his father’s true story and letters about fighting in Picardy,France. Mackay is president of the Vancouver branch of theCanadian Authors Association. He himself served with theRoyal Canadian Navy and the British Navy, in destroyersand submarines, until 1969. He returned to UBC to studylaw and practiced law until 2008. 978-1-926741-24-6

bill bissett: one-man culture

Robert W. Mackay: inspired by his father

✫

✫

✫

From the late 1800s onwards, many peasants left southernItaly to work in the orchards and vineyards of either Argen-tina or British Columbia. These peasants were calledgolondrinas: the swallows. Instead of following the swal-lows to Capistrano, Robert Pepper-Smith followedthem to a fictional town in southeastern B.C. for his firstnovel, The Wheel Keeper (NeWest 2002), about an Italianfamily that deals with displacement as a proposed hydro-electric dam threatens to flood their village. The narrator’s

grandmother was forced to emigratefrom Italy as a young, unwed mother,fleeing to Canada to avoid giving upher child to the church. Edited byThomas Wharton, Robert Pep-per-Smith’s second poignant novelHouse of Spells (NeWest $18.95)follows the friendship between teen-agers Rose and Lacey. When Rose

becomes pregnant, the mysterious and childless Giacomofamily, whose wealth is well-known in the community, of-fers to adopt the child. As Rose wrestles with the decision togive up her baby, Lacey recounts her efforts to help herfriend and the unsettling discoveries she makes along theway. Born in Revelstoke in 1954, Robert Pepper-Smith liveson a farm in the Cinnabar Valley and teaches philosophy atVancouver Island University.

Wheel Keeper 1-896300-49-9; Spells 978-1-897126-87-5

Robert Pepper-Smith


FICTIONAs a teacher of literature and crea-tive writing at Langara College, PaulHeadrick published That TuneClutches my Heart (Gaspereau 2008),shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fic-tion Prize. It’s hard to hype shortstory collections but his follow-upcollection, The Doctrine of Affec-tions (Freehand Books $23.95), has

one of the better ‘blurbs’ in recent memory: “A poverty-stricken guitar virtuoso navigates the political landscape ofnineteenth-century Parisian society as he comes out of re-tirement for one final concert. A sessional instructor com-peting for the prestigious Interdisciplinary Chair in ArethaFranklin Studies gets sidetracked by her obsession with amysterious student in a yellow hat. A dying doo-wop DJand his wife try to bridge the estrangement wrought by ill-ness as they travel in search of the horns, drums, and vocalsof highlife.” Headrick lives in Vancouver with his partner,novelist Heather Burt. 978-1-55111-978-6

✫In 2006, Gayla Reid received the$15,000 Marian Engel Award for afemale writer in mid-career for a bodyof work. The publisher’s synopsisfor her fourth work of fiction, Com-ing From Afar (Cormorant $32),reads, “In England in the spring of1939, Clancy, an Australian nurse,

waits with her infant daughter for news of her lover, whowas a volunteer with the Mackenzie-Papineau Brigade inthe Spanish Civil War. As she waits, Clancy shares with herdaughter the story of her own childhood in the Australianbush and her disastrous marriage to an English archaeologist.When the Spanish Civil War erupted, Clancy volunteered onthe Republican side. Her chance for happiness amid the chaoscame when she met the young Canadian, Douglas Ross. Shehas not heard from him since the final desperate offensive.”

9781770860445

✫Anyone who knows Cuban historyin depth can tell you there could nothave been a successful Cuban Revo-lution without Celia Sánchez,Fidel Castro’s lover, who handledthe organizational aspects of the oth-erwise chaotic Castro brothers’ up-

rising and, equally important, kept Fidel’s monstrous ego incheck. In Rosa Jordan’s forthcoming novel The WomanShe Was (Brindle & Glass $21.95) we meet Celia Cantú, apediatrician in modern Cuba, named after Celia Sánchez,who scours the island to find her 16-year-old niece Liliana,hoping she can prevent her from turning into one more jintera(prostitute) who gets American dollars from tourists. Whilepresent-day Celia searches from popular tourist destina-tions to the Sierra Maestre range where Celia Sánchez andFidel first became lovers, she herself must choose betweenlovers—Luis, a high-level bureaucrat in Havana or her formerfiancé, Joe, who has returned from Miami. 978-1-926972-46-6

Writer’s digestMennonite makes an eleven-course debut

Gayla Reid

Paul Headrick

Rosa Jordan

BY PORTIA PRIEGERT

Married to the executive chef at the Okanagan Golf Club—also her high school sweetheart—Hossack, 35, is a passion-ate cook who writes food columns for the Kelowna Courierand Kamloops This Week.

While her stories, set mainly on the prairies, often ex-plore sin, penance and redemption, as well as the conflictsbetween tradition and change—common themes forMennonite-related fiction—there are plates and plates offood throughout.

“I didn’t includerecipes,” she says,“but I considered

it. To me, being Mennonite is so much about the food that Idon’t know how I could ever separate it. If cooking wasn’tin my writing, I don’t think it would have the depth that Iwant it to have.”

Hossack, who lives in Kelowna, credits her success inpart to the Humber School for Writers in Toronto, where shewas mentored through the correspondence program by Mani-toba’s Giller Prize-finalist Sandra Birdsell.

According to Birdsell, Hossack’s stories “reverberate withwhat has been left unsaid, the silence between people thatspeaks of betrayal, forgiveness and the power of love toprevail.”

There’s no shortage of notable Canadian writers ofMennonite descent such as Birdsell, Miriam Toews,Rudy Wiebe and Andreas Schroeder, who saysHossack’s stories “prove the title true—both literally andmetaphorically—but these very constraints make the sto-ries’ hard-won moments of joy and insight especially memo-rable.”

To honour her heritage, Hossack has used her mother’smaiden name, Friesen, as a middle name. Her mother’s fam-ily came to Canada five generations ago and farmed at

Schoenfeld, a small Mennonite village in southwesternSaskatchewan. Hossack grew up nearby in Swift

Current, living with her mother and attending pub-lic schools, but was exposed to traditional culturethrough her grandparents.

As a teenager, she moved to the Okanagan,joining her father, a Seventh-Day Adventist, andfinishing high school there. Her next project is anovel, What Looks In, which will explore a fam-ily divided by grief and religion.

“The two ideologies, although they’reboth Protestant, don’t mix very well,” she

says. “But hopefully, by the time I cometo the end of the story, there will besome kind of meeting of hearts or, I sup-pose, meeting of souls, and the familycan come together.”

Meanwhile Hossack welcomes her inclu-sion in the realm of Canadian Mennonite Lit.Mennonite writers, she says, “seem to write

about life with raw honesty. They don’t cover itin flowers. They don’t try to engineer it. They

don’t try to steer it toward a conclusion.They usually have no conclusion atthe end. It’s not preachy. It’s the wayMennonites are—they are simple,honest and often very funny people.”

978-1-897235-78-2

Portia Priegert writes from Kelowna.

T he title of Darcie FriesenHossack’s first collection of elevenshort stories, Mennonites Don’tDance (Thistledown $18.95) might

well have been lengthened to Mennonites Don’tDance, But They Sure Can Cook.

Mennonites Don't Dancewas shortlisted for theCommonwealth Prize(Canada/Caribbean), arunner up for the DanutaGleed Award and named bythe Globe & Mail, one of thetop 5 first fictions of 2011.


19 BC BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SPRING • 2012

3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 • [email protected]

A quarterly forum for and about writers;as well as a series about the origins

of B.C. publishing housesLOOKOUTLOOKOUT#

46

EDMONDS STREET, IN THE SOUTHERN CORNER OF

Burnaby, has always been a place of new begin-nings. The Scottish, Irish, and English arrived

here more than a century ago, soon followed by successivewaves of Japanese, German, Italian, and Polish immigrants.In the 1970s and 1980s the Indians and Chinese came, joinedby Bosnians and Croatians, Koreans and Filipinos.

Today the neighbourhood is an assortment of smallshops and businesses: a Balkan butcher shop is next to anAfghan restaurant; an African grocery store is adjacent toa tattoo parlour; a temple is across the street from an adultvideo store.

Condominiums are taking over the vacant lots onceoccupied by boarded-up buildings and crack houses. Al-though Edmonds has long been a rough place, it is a tight-knit community, one in which residents take pride. Thatpride is evident in the regular neighbourhood clean-ups, inthe Santa Claus parade, and in the faces of the childrenwho attend Edmonds Community School.

In a profoundly personal and concrete way, that schoolrepresents the most distinctive aspect of the community:the dreams of a better life for families of refugees andimmigrants.

Edmonds Community School isn’t much to look atfrom the outside. Originally founded in 1894, the school isa two-storey white-and-green building that was built justafter the Second World War. Among its alumni are Carrie-Anne Moss of The Matrix and Hollywood starMichael J. Fox.

Edmonds lacks the flash of newer schools in otherparts of the city and, despite recent updates, the placeseems a little tired. The pavement in the parking lot iscracked, the playground needs upgrading, the gravel soc-cer field has a habit of flooding in the winter rains and, lastyear, a cherry tree on the south side of the school—one ofthe few green things left on the grounds—fell sick and waschopped down.

But looks can be deceiving. Inside, the school is spot-less, with new flooring throughout. Artwork covers thewalls and, in the foyer, there is a beautiful mosaic thatencapsulates the school’s demographics.

In 2009 Keith and Celia Rice-Jones, well-knownVancouver-area artists, were commissioned through theArtist in Residence program to make the mosaic,entitled From Many Places—a fitting choice since theschool currently serves students from almost fifty coun-tries.

Nearly 100 students of refugee families from countriessuch as Ethiopia, the Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Uzbekistan,Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq now call Edmonds their home.The school and the refugee population it serves have fre-quently been featured in local, provincial, and nationalmedia.

But there has been negative publicity as well. The FraserInstitute—a right-wing think tank that takes assessmentnumbers from the controversial Foundational Skills As-sessment (a reading, writing, and math assessment writtenby students in Grades 4 and 7)—has singled out Edmondsas one of the “worst” schools in British Columbia. Tradi-tionally, the school ranks low in these assessments—andnot just low, but very low—and the rankings have alwaysbeen a source of anger in the building.

The Fraser Institute’s assessment is simply wrong.Far from being one of the worst schools in the province,Edmonds is actually one of the best at what it does.

The Fraser Institute fails to take into considerationsome essential realities:• Six-out-of-ten Edmonds students are stilllearning to speak English as a second language.• Eight-out-of-ten don’t speak English at home• Fully one-third of our students come from refu-gee backgrounds.• Many students arrive at the school having neverattended a school before.• In many cases, students have witnessedscenes of horrific violence and bear the scarsof significant physical and psychologicaltrauma.• Often new students can neither under-stand a word of English nor read or writein their own first languages.

Yet, with just one or two years of in-struction, these children learn to functionproficiently in English and find themselveswell on their way towards catching up to—and frequently exceeding—their native-bornpeers, thanks to a dedicated staff with a skillset second-to-none.

✍WHEN I CAME TO EDMONDS, I HAD

almost as much to learn as my stu-dents. I had spent eight years teach-ing social studies and Englishliterature in the comfortably middle-class suburb of Coquitlam, andthen—armed with a newly acquiredMasters Degree in Administration

and Leadership from UBC—spent two years working asa vice principal in a small rural public school in the easternFraser Valley.

When I began working as vice principal at Byrne CreekSecondary School in 2006, it was immediately clear to methat small-town schools with predominantly white andFirst Nations students were worlds apart from the large,urban, multicultural community where I now found my-self in Burnaby.

The penny dropped for me one day when I was regis-tering a new student from Afghanistan. “We came so thatour children could attend school and have a good life,” thechild’s mother told me through an interpreter. I agreedwith her that school was indeed important.

“No,” she said forcefully, her voice quaking with emo-tion as she touched the office wall. “You don’t under-stand. We came for this school.” Byrne Creek was a newschool beset by difficulties, a school the Fraser Institutedidn’t like either, and yet this mother from Afghanistanhad travelled thousands of kilometres to put her mostprecious possessions—her children—into that school andin my care.

I carried the hopes and expectations of that motherwith me to nearby Edmonds Community School two yearslater as its new principal. Although the students areyounger at Edmonds, the faces and the names are the sameas at the high school and, in many ways, the story ofEdmonds is incomplete without including the story ofByrne Creek.

Edmonds and Byrne Creek are not easy places to work.In an age of shrinking budgets, the spectre of reducedservices hangs constantly over the schools, which have

relied on additional staffing and resources from the schooldistrict to do their job effectively.

The level of commitment demanded of the staff ishigh; emotional burn-out is an occupational hazard.But for those who come, stay, and learn to love thestudents and the neighbourhood, the rewards are ex-traordinary as they enable some of Canada’s newestand perhaps most vulnerable residents to integrateand succeed.

I wrote From Bombs to Books to chronicleand celebrate the roles that Edmonds Com-

munity and Byrne Creek Secondary schoolshave played in educating, acculturating andwelcoming people who have fled fromsome of the most dangerous places onearth, but first and foremost this bookabout brave families—their journeys andtheir experiences. 978-1-555277-860-9

Why Edmondsdeserves Starr

treatmentJUST DO THE MATH.Six-out-of-ten students at Edmonds School inBurnaby are learning to speak English as a sec-ond language. Eight-out-of-ten don’t speakEnglish at home. One-third come from refu-gee backgrounds. Many have witnessed hor-rific violence.

David Starr’s From Bombs To Books (Lorimer$22.95) tells the inspiring story of how refugee and immi-grant children—if they are well-loved and well-taught—can be remarkably resilient and thrive in a new country.

Here is an edited excerpt.

School principal David Starr with Nasima Muhammad Aslam, Victor Gonzalez Aguirre,Rifad Bhuyia, Jennifer Mascardo and Maryam Jawansheer. Sabria Ahmed Mohamed (below).

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21 BC BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SPRING • 201220 BC BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SPRING • 2012

SPORTS

If you discount Whitecaps co-owner Steve Nashof NBA fame—who grew up playing soccer in Victo-ria and would dearly love to have played profession-ally with his brother, Martin Nash—there is onlyone soccer folk hero in B.C.

Arguably it should be John Catliff, the Van-couver-born striker who has scored the second-mostgoals for Canada’s national team, or it should be pro-lific scorer Christine Sinclair, who is leadingthe Canadian women into the London Olympics, butthe household soccer name for decades remainsBobby Lenarduzzi, current president of Van-couver Whitecaps FC.

Co-written with veteran sportswriter JimTaylor, who accompanied Lenarduzzi, his brotherSam Lenarduzzi and the rest of Canada’s na-tional men’s team to their only World Cup appear-ance, Bob Lenarduzzi: A Canadian Soccer Story(Harbour $28.95) ranges from:

• Lenarduzzi serving as a ball-boy during rau-cous matches at Callister Park in East Vancouver• his character-building apprenticeship at agefourteen with Reading FC in England

• the Whitecaps’ heady 1979 championship ofthe North American Soccer League after whichsome 100,000 Vancouverites attended a victoryparade• his experiences as a coach and player for theVancouver 86ers.

It’s seldom noted that Lenarduzzi’s 86ers wonfour straight Canadian Soccer League titles andamassed a 46-game unbeaten streak, a record for anyprofessional team in North America.

The wryness of Taylor is evident in much of thetext: Nobody saw Canada lose its final game at itsfirst-ever World Cup appearance because the livebroadcast was pre-empted. By Sesame Street.

Lenarduzzi describes the ancientElm Park stadium at Reading: “It’ssaid that once in your place it wasimpossible to squeeze down the lineto get out to the loo or your placewould be lost. So, it’s said, you peedin the pocket of the man next to you.‘Liverpool hot pocket,’ it came to becalled… Folkore, no doubt. One canonly hope.”

This memoir is far from a ‘tell-all’ page-turner,opening as it does with a chapter of appreciation forcurrent Whitecaps majority owner Greg Kerfoot,but there are some lively bits and some beguiling hu-mility.

Lenarduzzi has been inducted into the Soccer Hallof Fame, United Soccer League’s Hall of Fame, theNorth American Soccer Hall of Fame, the BC SportsHall of Fame and he’s a recipient of the Order of B.C.Not bad for an east-end kid whose father was oncebusted for making homemade wine. 978-1-55017-546-2

There are precious few Canadian books about soc-cer—even though it is the most-played sport in thecountry—so one has to admire Robert Lanning’sself-published labour of love, Westcoast Reign: TheBritish Columbia Soccer Championships 1892-1905 (Ballboy Press $39.95), a rare attempt to tracethe origins of the game in B.C. It’s more about soccerpolitics and team results than individual players andblow-by-blow reportage.

The first provincial soccer association

was organized from Nanaimo, the hub for coal minersfrom Britain, in 1891. The more the Nanaimo-basedBC Football Association cemented nepotistic rela-tionships with clubs from the mining community, themore jurisdictional disputes between the mainlandand island ensued.

“In many ways,” he writes, “the actions of theB.C. Football Association closely mirrored those ofthe young boy who owned the only soccer ball at hisschool… The BCFA’s unwillingness to change itsrules in order to satisfy the needs of those it governedresulted in the fall of British Columbia’s first soccerdynasty.”

Lanning was inspired to pursue this project aftertaking a creative writing course from David Zierothin Coquitlam. 978-0-9877478-1-5

Eighteen years ago, the Canucks advanced to theStanley Cup final and didn’t win. Last year it was thesame story, but this time they boasted the Sedin twins,winners of back-to-back scoring championships.

Having completed the best NHL season in thehistory of the franchise, the Vancouver Canucks arecelebrated in Grant Kerr’s A Season to Remem-ber: The Vancouver Canucks’ Incredible 40thYear (Harbour $19.95). Kerr is assistant coach of theCoquitlam Express and winner of the 2007 Ernie GareMemorial Trophy as the BC Hockey Coach of theYear. With veteran Vancouver sportswriter GregDouglas, Kerr also co-authored Canucks at 40:Our Game, Our Stories, Our Passion (Wiley$39.95). Paul Chapman and Bev Wake alsoedited A Thrilling Ride: The Vancouver Canucks’Fortieth Anniversary Season (Greystone $19.95).

Incredible 978-1-55017-564-6; Passion 9780470679166; Thrilling 978-1-92681-291-5

✍As Brad Pitt’s recent movie Moneyball makes clear,general managers of sports franchises are as muchresponsible for victory or defeat as players andcoaches.

In 84 years of NHL history, only 32 general man-agers have won the Stanley Cup as a GM. “I believethat the NHL’s general managers have been the brainsand the conscience of the game since the league openedfor business in 1917,” says Brian Burke, whowon the cup with the Anaheim Ducks in 2007.

Jason Farris reportedly took 18 months and60,000 kms of travelling to create Behind the Moves:NHL General Managers Tell How Winners AreBuilt (circaNow Media $99.95), a 252-page coffeetable book based on his in-person interviews withevery living NHL GM who has taken a team to theStanley Cup final. Collectively these GMs representover 500 seasons of GM experience. It is touted aspart history book, part encyclopedia and part manualfor would-be managers. 9780973901658

Lori Bowden of Victoria is one of 22 women pro-filed in Timothy Moore’s Sub Nine: History’sFastest Ironwomen (CreateSpace $14.99 plus post-age) about women in the world who have finished anIronman race in less than nine hours. Moore, a resi-dent of Squamish, has written for San Diego-basedTriathlete magazine and is a regular contributor toToronto-based Triathlon Canada Magazine. AnIronman race consists of a 3.8km swim, a 180km bikeride and then a 42km run. As of October, there were26 women who had gone ‘Sub Nine.’ The feat wasfirst accomplished by Thea Sybesma of theNetherlands in 1991. 978-1-4609-0764-1

Bob Lenarduzzi won four straight CSL titles.

SOCCER

This quintet of gents won B.C.’s five-a-sidesoccer championship in 1893.

RUNNING

HOCKEY

PERCY WILLIAMS✍A farmer’s daughter whowas born at a time whenfew women ever dreamed ofrunning marathons, BJMcHugh, now in hereighties, only took up run-ning in her fifties. My Roadto Rome: The RunningTimes of BJ McHugh(Sandhill $18.95) recounts

how McHugh became the world’s fastest senior long-distance runner for her age group.This memoir of courage and determination wasco-written with Bob Nixon. 9780986905407

✍Since it was first published in 1999, The BeginningRunner’s Handbook has reputedly helped more than35,000 participants at community clinics acrossCanada realize their goal of running 10km. Re-issuedby Ian MacNeil and the Sports Medicine Councilof B.C., with a foreword by Doug Clement, thenew version is now called The Beginning Runner’sHandbook: The Proven 13-Week RunWalk Pro-gram (Greystone $19.95). 978-1-55365-860-3

BJ McHugh

Kevin Chong

The heroes were a devout Scottish missionary whorefused to run on Sundays and a determined Jew whosedevoted trainer couldn’t get inside the stadium. Chari-ots of Fire won the Oscar for best film.

So you would think by now someone in Canadawould have made the Percy Williams story as amovie. As Samuel Hawley makes abundantlyclear in his biography I Just Ran: Percy Williams,World’s Fastest Human (Ronsdale $23.95), Williams’ascendancy to Olympic superiority was far more un-likely, and his personal story was far more heart-wrenching.

Four years after that Chariots of Fire story ofunderdog purity, Williams astonished the world bywinning both the 100- and 200-metre gold medals in1928. Everyone was aghast. He was only five-foot-seven and weighed 126 pounds. But it was no fluke.Williams held the 100-metre world record from 1930onwards until the advent of Jesse Owens in 1936.

As the biography makes clear, Williams was “sotouchingly shy; so humble despite his talents; so muchthe epitome of the amateur tradition.” His unpaidtrainer was a janitor at King George High School, anoddball named Bob Granger. They had no money,no facilities, no support. The pair never faced interna-tional competition until Williams breasted the tape inAmsterdam in 1928.

Williams’ triumph as a scrawny kid from nowheremade him into an overnight sensation, almost as well-known in North America as contemporaries BabeRuth and Jack Dempsey. And because Williamswore a prominent maple leaf on his chest, his Cinderellavictories inspired Canada to embrace the maple leaf asits symbol.

But Williams and Granger went their separate waysin 1932, having only track in common. Williams foundany sort of publicity excruciatingly painful. He wascantankerous with reporters and suspicious of any-one who wanted to use him. He didn’t tell peoplewhat they wanted to hear.

“I always thought it was a lot of hogwash to saythat you ran for your flag and your country,” he said.“I was out there to beat the guy beside me.”

Reclusive and alcoholic, the lightest sprint cham-pion in the history of the Olympics carried a veryheavy heart. In 1982, Percy Williams put a 12-gaugeshotgun to his forehead and blew his brains out, ex-actly 12 years after his trainer Granger died in a nurs-ing home in Parksville. His cremated remains can bevisited in the Masonic Cemetery in Burnaby, over-looked by a telephone pole.

Oddly, Percy Williams never much liked runningin the first place. He mostly ran to satisfy the expec-tations of others, particularly his unconventionaltrainer. After Granger’s funeral, Williams was askedhow much credit ought to be accorded to Granger forhis Olympic wins, and he replied, “Offhand, I’d say ahundred per cent. I’d never have continued runningafter high school, but for him. I couldn’t have caredless about running at the time.”

If there has been a more thorough and necessarysports biography of a British Columbian in recentdecades, we haven’t seen it. 978-1-55380-1216-9

✍They call horse racing thesport of kings, but KevinChong’s My Year of theRacehorse (Greystone$17.95) cites a more aptdescription from an oldmovie—it’s a slow poison.His brilliant memoir aboutbeing minority owner of amediocre race horse will bereviewed in the next issue. 978-1-55365-520-6

World’s fastest human

In 1981, the Brits made a movieabout two obscure amateur sprint-ers who gained unexpected glory atthe 8th Olympiad in Paris, in 1924.

You might recall they put some orchestralmusic by Vangelis behind a title sequencethat showed a band of men in white shirtsand shorts running along the surf.

Percy Williams(second from left)winning the goldin the 100-metreevent at the 1928

Olympics inHolland.

....back in time to 1948, when the Fraser River is rising and the local farms are in danger.978-1-4598-0068-7 • $6.95 pbAges 7–9

…on a journey into a boy’s memories for a fi nal bus ride with the grandfather he misses dearly.978-1-55469-869-1 • $6.95 pbAges 7–9

…to Ontario for the summer, where a superhighway is putting Bree’s grandmother’s farm in jeopardy.978-1-4598-0045-8 • $7.95 pbAges 8–11

…to the Kibera slum outside of Nairobi, where 10-year-old Safi yah fi nds her artistic inspiration.978-1-4598-0051-9 • $7.95 pbAges 8–11

…to the year 1066, when an Anglo-Saxon girl is the only person who can save her village from a Viking raid.978-1-4598-0057-1 • $9.95 pbAges 9+

…to the basements, garbage cans, picnic blankets and all the other dwellings of the creatures living in our cities.978-1-55469-394-8 • $9.95 pb with flapsfull-color photosAges 8+

Where do your

books take you?

eaching More eaders

Also available as ebooks!


Ron Smith’s tale of two athletes in one.

featureview BIOGRAPHY

ATHLETES WHO CAN COM-pete at the highest levelin two sports are rare.

Chicago Bulls wunderkind Michael“Air” Jordan couldn’t manage it.When he tried professional base-ball, he was marooned in the mi-nors.

The NFL dandy “NeonDeion” Sanders played both ma-jor league baseball and pro football.John Ferguson and Jack Biondaplayed both pro hockey and la-crosse.

Canadian cyclist and speedskater Clara Hughes is the onlyperson to have won multiple med-als in the summer and winter Ol-ympic Games, for cycling andspeed skating.

Before them all came GerryJames. Within one year, he playedin both the Stanley Cup and theGrey Cup.

• As the youngest player to playin the CFL, at age 17, James earned$50 per week, when it was stillcalled the Western Inter-provincialFootball Union, in 1952.

• He scored the first touchdownagainst the newly-minted BC Li-ons in 1954 at Empire Stadium.

• He was the first player to winthe CFL’s Schenley Award for Out-standing Canadian.

• He led the league in scoring in1957 and won the Schenley for asecond time that year.

• For 43 years he held the CFLrecord for most rushing touch-downs in a season (18). He set 18CFL records and played on fourGrey Cup winning teams.

In hockey, after winning theMemorial Cup with the TorontoMarlboros in 1955—by which timehe was a teenage father—Jamesplayed for four seasons with theToronto Maple Leafs, epitomizingKing Clancy’s aphorism, “If youcan’t beat ’em in the alley, you can’tbeat ’em on the ice.”

James later became one of themost successful coaches in minorleague hockey, voted all-star coachseven times in the SaskatchewanJunior Hockey League, and tutor-ing the likes of NHLer BrianPropp.

Gerry James has been inductedinto the CFL Hall of Fame and theSaskatchewan and Manitoba Hallsof Fame—along with his father,Eddie “Dynamite” James, whowas a football star with the pre-war Blue Bombers—but who is henow?

You have to remember the glorydays of the Canadian FootballLeague and the hockey broadcastsof Foster Hewitt to even recall hisname. Fortunately his golfing part-ner on Vancouver Island, formerbook publisher Ron Smith, knowsand understands sports better thanmost sportswriters. Upon his re-tirement, Smith decided James wasworthy of an in-depth biography.

Kid Dynamite: The GerryJames Story is not a quickie rehashof career highlights and stats—al-though it certainly does provideextensive records of James’ twin

sporting careers. Smith, no slouchhimself as an athlete, has spentyears gathering information for anintimate portrait of how a verynaïve, gifted and angry young manevolved into a complex, argumen-tative and inordinately proudenigma.

Although he’s clearly respect-ful, Smith does not try to makeGerry James likeable. The result isa compelling narrative that willprompt even the most ardentsports fan to realize sports can beover-valued in society, and thatsuccess in sports is invariably adouble-edged sword.

✫GERRY IS A NICKNAME. HE WAS BORN

Edwin Fitzgerald James inRegina, in 1934, but the James fam-ily, including one older brother,moved to Winnipeg—leavingEdwin in the care of his aunt inBroadview, Saskatchewan, for thefirst year of his life.

Reunited in Manitoba, Gerry’sasthmatic brother Don, four yearsolder, beat and oppressed him foras long and often as he could. “Hehad no stamina at all,” James re-calls. “I think when he saw that Icould do all the things he couldn’tdo, he was jealous. I think he fearedthat I would become Dad’s favour-ite.”

At age 14, Gerry was strong

enough to finally pummel hisbrother, remorselessly, into com-plete submission. The brothersbarely spoke for the rest of theirlives. (Don settled on the east coast;Gerry would eventually gravitateto Vancouver Island with his wife,Marg.)

Sibling rivalry and the crueltyof an older brother were certainlycatalysts for James’ fiercely com-petitive nature, but he was alsodetermined to rival his ex-sports-hero father, who was less than he-roic at home. “Gerry remembersmany occasions when he leapt onhis father’s back to try to stop himfrom striking his mom,” Smithwrites.

His parents divorced in 1947,after his father, a chronic drinker,had returned from the war. To thisday James’ favourite memory ofboyhood was taking a bath. “A sim-ple bath,” he told Smith. “Can youimagine? Warmth is a preciousluxury, an almighty luxury, espe-cially for someone who grew up onthe prairies.”

Outspoken, but rarely one toindulge in introspection, James oncenoted, in 1981, “It was eithersports or jail, one or the other.” Bygrade ten in Kelvin High School, hewas a sports celebrity in Winni-peg, excelling as a sprinter.

A Canadian Press story pre-dicted he might exceed his famousfather. Soon enough, sports an-nouncer “Cactus” Jack Wellsdubbed him Kid Dynamite, in muchthe same way as Henri Richardbecame known as the “PocketRocket” in reference to his olderbrother Maurice “Rocket” Richard.

James lost his two front teethwhile playing baseball at age 15, inSt. Boniface, against grown men,when he was sucker-punched by arival first baseman. “That was prob-ably the shortest fight I was everin. For two days I kept quiet andhid my mouth because I knew mymother would be upset and I knewshe couldn’t afford the additionalfinancial burden of replacing them.I never did find the teeth.”

James was once offered an NFLcontract by the New York Giants,but in those days the CFL paidmore. Eventually the Leafs de-manded that James not play foot-ball in 1956 if he was contracted toplay hockey. James has vividmemories of the Original Six. “Forall-round skill, Gordie Howe was

the best,” he says, “but for sheerentertainment value, the Rocketwould get my vote.”

Smith devotes more than halfthe book to chronicling James’ ath-letics, then deals with his coachingyears, which included a stint coach-ing Special Olympians.

✫JAMES AND HIS WIFE VISITED

Vancouver Island during a trip toB.C. to attend Expo 86. Theybought a lot near Nanoose Bay in1989, arrived to live in B.C. in 1994and took possession of theirpresent home in 1997. Not long af-terwards, he met Ron Smith on theputting green of the Fairwinds GolfCourse. It might have been one ofthe luckiest breaks of James’life.

Kid Dynamite: The GerryJames Story is a rarity—a sportsbiography that does its subject thefavour of being warts ‘n’ all. It res-urrects Gerry James as a fascinat-ing personality, not simply anexceptional athlete.

An anecdote towards the endof the book serves as a case in point.James firmly believes the two sexesare wired differently. He doesn’tbelieve that men can write aboutwhat women think, so he skips overany parts of a novel that purportto reveal the female mind.

“Once I thoroughly enjoyed aparticular work of detective fic-tion,” he recalls, “skipping the fe-male parts as usual, only to cometo the end of the book and discoverthe author was P.D. James. I wasso pissed when I saw P.D. was fe-male. I threw the book down onthe floor. I felt like I’d beentricked.”

Despite his feisty nature, Jamesremains genuinely modest about hisaccomplishments. When his biog-rapher told him he held the recordfor most appearances in CFL post-season games (36), James wasn’teven aware of the record.

“I played in the days before thebig money in sports,” he tells Smith,“and I looked at it as a way to sup-port my family. Marg and I hadthree children by the time I signedto play two sports, and our familykept growing.”

Smith notes that Gerry James’ascendancy in two pro sports inCanada is not unprecedented. Anobscure athlete named Elwyn(Moe) Morris played pro hockeyand pro football. Lionel Conacherwon a Grey Cup with the TorontoArgonauts in 1921 and successiveStanley Cups with the ChicagoBlack Hawks in 1934 and the Mon-treal Maroons in 1935—and wasnamed Canada’s greatest athlete ofthe first half century (20th) fordoing so.

Nowadays, once a week, Margdrags Gerry along to the soupkitchen at the Salvation Army toserve as a volunteer, and everyChristmas, for several weeks,Gerry can be seen outside the PetroCanada station on the main islandhighway, attending to his SalvationArmy donation kettle. People do-nate—cuz they don’t want to getpunched in the nose.

978-0-88982-276-4

Kid Dynamite: The Gerry James Storyby Ron Smith (Oolichan $30)

UPKEEPING

WITH THE JAMESESOne of the most requested photosfrom the archives of the CanadianHockey Hall of Fame is this imageof Gerry James being toppled byChicago Black Hawks defencemanPierre Pilote, with netminder GlennHall in the background.



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NEW FROM UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESSDREAMS & DUE DILIGENCETill & McCulloch’s Stem Cell Discovery and Legacyby Joe SornbergerJoe Sornberger vividly chronicles the work of two Canadian medical researchers, Ernest McCulloch and James Till, who first discovered the existence of stem cells.

9781442644854 $29.95

BRUCE MCDONALD’S HARD CORE LOGOby Paul McEwan

Consistently ranked as one of the best Canadian movies of all time, punk-rock mocumentary Hard Core Logo continues to enjoy a devoted international cult following. McEwan provides an entertaining analysis of Canada’s one of the most mythologized movies.

9781442612730 | $16.95

BODY & SOULNarratives of Healing from Ars Medicaedited by Allison Crawford,et alBody & Soul features inspiring and award-winning fiction, essays, memoirs, poetry, photography, and visual art on the universal themes of wellness, treatment, and healing.

9781442612907 | $32.95

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHTContributions of Aboriginal Peoples to Canadian Identity and Culture, Volume IIedited by Cora J. Voyageur, et al.

Hidden in Plain Sight highlights the extraordinary contributions made by Aboriginal peoples to Canadian society. It includes the profiles of many notable individuals, such as singer-songwriter and educator Buffy Sainte-Marie, politician Elijah Harper, and musician Robbie Robertson.

9781442610125 | $37.95

CANADA’S ENTREPRENEURSFrom the Fur Trade to the 1929 Stock Market Crashedited by J. Andrew Ross and Andrew D. Smith

This captivating collection profiles Canada’s most prominent and innovative business people who shaped the face of Canadian business as we know it. Included in this collection are profiles of John Molson, John Redpath, Alphonse Desjardins, and Timothy Eaton, among many others.

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utppublishing.com

the press with the urban twist

distributed in canada by utp + spd in the u.s. | repped by the lpgwww.anvilpress.com • [email protected]

new fromANVIL PRESS

From the award-winningauthor of The WatermelonSocial and Going Fastcomes Valery the Great,Elaine McCluskey’s quirkycollection of absurdistand highly entertainingstories. Sometimessweet, sometimes sarcas-tic, the unique narrativevoice is always powerfullytouching. [stories • 978-1-897535-89-9 • $20 • april]

Patrick Friesen’s latestvolume of poetry, A DarkBoat, explores the kind ofloneliness and yearning

that is contained in thePortuguese word saudad:a longing for somethingin the past that can neverbe found because timehas shifted everythingaway from what it was.[poetry • 978-1-897535-91-

2 • $16 • april]Five Little Bitches by

Teresa McWhirter is a

punk-rock traveloguefrom a psychologicallycharged feminist perspec-tive, exposing the externalpressures and tribulationswhich slowly increase asan all-girl band achievessuccess in the male-domi-nated world of rock ’n’roll. [novel • 978-1-897535-90-5 • $20 • april]

InMutant Sex Party &Other Plays, Ed Macdonaldeviscerates the high andthe mighty, the hypocriti-cal, and those who abusepower in late-capitalismAmerica. He expertly peelsback the façade of corpo-rate respectability, expos-ing the rot that is bro-kered and sold under the

guise of “doing business”in America. [drama • 978-1-897535-93-6 • $16 • may]

You Exist. Details Follow.New poems from StuartRoss. “… there’s no otherpoet like Ross in NorthAmerica: one who drinksdeep from the leaping, skit-tering invention of early sur-realists like Benjamin Peretbut delivers it with thecroaky conviction of aJewish Captain Beefheart.”(Eye Weekly) [poetry • 978-1-897535-92-9 • $16 • april]

Known for his many books about thecontemporary fishing industry on theWest Coast, Tim Bowling startshis novel The Tinsmith (Brindle &Glass $21.95) at the Battle ofAntietam in 1862. An assistant sur-geon with the Union Army, AnsonBaird survives the American Civil Warand helps a black slave named John

assume a new identity in British Columbia where they com-bat the unscrupulous business practices of the pioneersalmon canners some twenty years later. 978-1-926972-43-5

✫Set in twentieth and twenty-firstcentury Canada, Kyrgyzstan, Thai-land, and the United States, TriciaDower’s first book, Silent Girl(Inanna 2008), was a collection ofstories inspired by female charactersin Shakespeare’s The Tempest,Pericles, The Taming of the Shrew,

The Winter’s Tale, Othello, Hamlet, Twelfth Night andCoriolanus. Her forthcoming release, Stony River (Penguin$24), set in New Jersey in 1955, shows how perilous the so-called innocent fifties could be for children in a smalltown.The threat of violence could be omnipresent against a back-drop of absent mothers, controlling-fathers, biblical injunc-tions, and teenaged longing. 978-0-14-318247-4

✫The heroine of Robert Friedland’sThe Second Wedding of DoctorGeneva Song (Libros $20) is a sexu-ally adventurous family physicianwho marries outside her Chinese cul-ture. Her childhood friend Deri over-comes her upbringing in remotenortheast China to become a devout

Buddhist nun, a concubine and the most powerful woman offinance in Canada. Friedland’s portraits of these two pro-vocative women in contemporary B.C. are audacious, intel-ligent and fanciful, spiced with murder and sex—barelyrecognizeable as Canlit. A civil rights lawyer in Richmond,Friedland has had two stories selected to be read on CBC’s

The Vinyl Café. 978-1-926763-17-0

✫Playwright Charles Tidler’s sty-listically daring novel Hard Hed: TheHoosier Chapman Papers (Anvil$20) is a contemporary retelling ofthe Johnny Appleseed story. Theprotagonist Hoosier Chapman is anapple orchardist and local historian

who has just been released from an Ohio jail after servingtwo years for planting wild apple trees in a city park. Thecharacter named Hoosier tries to make ends meet in CharlesTidler’s home state of Indiana. 978-1-897535-69-1

✫The first installment of John Wilson’s Desert LegendsTrilogy, Written in Blood (Orca 2010) began his examinationof the legend about the infamous American outlaw known asBilly the Kid. In the sequel, Ghost Moon (Orca $12.95), wefollow young James Doolen after he has discovered the ter-rible truth about his father in Written in Blood. In 1878,young Jim heads to New Mexico and meets Bill Bonney(later known as Billy the Kid) who takes him to a ranch,south of Lincoln, Nebraska, where they find work as cow-boys. Lucrative army contracts with nearby Fort Stantongive rise to violence and cold-blooded murder. Jim watchesas Bill swears revenge and leads a gang of killers into thehills. In Wilson’s third installment, Victorio’s War (Orca$12.95), Jim is an army scout in a war to force Victorio’s

Apaches onto a reservation, far fromtheir traditional lands. Captured byhis nemesis Ghost Moon and forcedto flee with an Apache band of warri-ors, Jim is only saved from a slowand torturous death when his oldfriend Wellington adopts him as hisson. Will he be branded a traitor? Orkilled in a battle with the 10th US

FICTION

In The River Killers by Bruce Burrows(Touchwood $14.95) 978-1926971568----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I’ll See You in My Dreams by William Deverell(M&S $29.99) 978-0-7710-2716-1----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A Place Called Armageddon: Constantinople–1453by C.C. Humphreys (Hachette $24.99) 978-1-4091-1487-1----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Yours, Unexpectedly by Susan Fox(Kensington $14) 978-0-7582-5931-8----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------All Night Gas Bar And Ten Other Storiesby Ernest Hekkanen (New Orphic $22) 978-1-894842-20-4---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Never Hug a Mugger on Quadra Islandby Sandy Frances Duncan & George Szanto(Touchwood $26.95) 978-1926971483----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Secret Combinations by Gordon Cope(Touchwood $26.95) 978-1926741529----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Stopping For Strangers by Daniel Griffin(Esplanade Books $18.95) 978-1550653205----------------------------------------------------------------------The Guardian by C. J. Gosling(Brighter Books $16.95) 978-0986555527----------------------------------------------------------------------La Chiripa by Kaimana Wolff (Nanaimo: Stars Above,Stars Below Pub. $9.99) 978-0-9689993-8-7----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Seaweed in the Mythworld by Stan Evans(Ekstasis $17.95) 9781897430774----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Play It Again by Tracy Krauss(Strategic Book Publishing $16.75) 978-1-61204-392-0----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Escape and Other Stories by Trevor Clark(Now Or Never Publishing $19.95) 978-1-926942-04-9----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Secrets Kept / Secrets Told by Ben Nuttall-Smith(Libros Libertad $23) 978-1-926763-18-7---------------------------------------------------------The Desserts of War by David Kos(Tagman Press $18) 978-1-903571-72-9---------------------------------------------------------One in Every Crowdby Ivan E. Coyote(Arsenal $17.95) 978-1-55152-459-7---------------------------------------------------------Floating Like the Deadby Yasuko Thanh(Emblem $22) 978-0-7710-8429-4---------------------------------------------------------The Last Hiccup byChristopher Meades(ECW $16.95) 978-1-55022-973-9

Tim Bowling

Tricia Dower

Robert Friedland

Charles Tidler

John Wilson

Cavalry or the Mexican Army? There’s a mini-series in heresomewhere, perhaps to be called Divided Loyalties. Wilsonknows his history and he knows his storytelling. Due inMay, Victorio’s War will be the Lantzville author’s 32nd title

for juveniles, teens and adults.Ghost 978-1-551469-270-5; Victorio 9781554698820

✫When a new security cop named Jas-mine Birch is killed, co-worker MarieCrenshaw asks her rival security teammember Casey Holland to clear herbrother of the murder rap. Colleaguesand employees soon become mired

in a swirling maelstrom of distrust in Deadly Accusations(Touchwood $14.95), the second Casey Holland Mysteryby Debra Purdy Kong. 978-1-927129-06-7

✫In Cathy Ace’s debut novel, The Corpse with the Sil-ver Tongue (Touchwood $14.95), a Welsh Canadian crimi-nologist and professor, CaitMorgan, also a gourmand, in-vestigates a murder at a dinnerparty in the south of France. Inclassic Agatha Christiestyle, all the guests aresuspects. An ancientgold collar has disap-peared in the process,alleged to carry with ita curse. It is describedas “a Nicoise salad ofdeath, secrets and lies.” 978-1-927129-09-8

A L S O N O T E D

Debra Purdy Kong

Cathy Ace JER

EM

Y W

ILSO

N P

HO

TO

GR

APH

Y

There are various psychological rea-sons given for why people must in-vent stories. Some say, for instance,

that most fiction writers are injustice collectors.Kim Clark believes that before MS began its insidi-

ous infiltration of her body, there was no writing in her andthat, somehow, the damaging changes that shut down cer-tain functions in her brain also opened up other unusedareas that housed a secret love affair with language and allits delicious sights and sounds and feelings.

Here Kim Clark’s first story collection, Attemptations,is reviewed by Mary Ann Moore.

KELLY LOUISE JUDD’S COVER ARTWORK FOR ATTEMPTATIONS

leads one to expect the unexpected: A woman appears to belevitating. There is a rabbit in mid-air, poised to land on herthroat. It turns out the characters throughout Attemptationshave physical challenges—and, of course, nearly all physi-cal afflictions arrive unexpectedly. Even the dog in “Dick &Jane and the Barbecue” has epilepsy. Jane has “an obscuredisease involving physical wasting.”

Shorter stories at the outset build towards the longerones. In “Solitaire,” Lillian, an aging woman with arthritis,plays cards on her own. Her days consist of taking hermeds, eating a poached egg for dinner, and perhaps watch-ing a documentary about superstitions and talismans.

With a desire to have her own lucky rabbit’s foot, Lillianhears about the human feet—“mostly left”—that are beingwashed up onto Gulf Island beaches. (Detached humanfeet, mostly left ones, have been found on various occa-sions on West Coast beaches.)

Before long, Lillian dreams her-self “agile as all get-out” and into afeline body. Her “dreams becomereality” and we go along for theshape shifting ride, largely becauseClark appears to delight in her ownword wizardry, and we share in thatdelight.

The other long story, “Six Degrees of Altered Sensa-tion,” introduces Melanie, a writer with MS, another ofClark’s feisty female characters. At her launch in Nanaimo,Clark said she finds this story the most fun. Indeed it is.Melanie’s inner dialogue is hilarious at times. She is anotherphysically challenged character full of desire.

When Mel goes to an MS clinic for her annual check-up,she learns the results of a Sexual Neuro-Response Study.Dr. Sharni tells Mel that she’ll only be able to have a fewmore orgasms before her “sensory nerves, the sympatheticsystem, will stop responding.”

When she’s given a number at the clinic—six—Mel findsthat “six is so close to sex, even the numerical becomeshighly erotic.” Charlene, Mel’s friend, tells her she can’tsurvive on desire. “Yah, well, watch me. It’s a different kindof high,” Mel responds.

Clark’s stories are erotic, fused with dark humor andeveryday magic—a different kind of high. She throws cau-tion to the wind and seizes every opportunity to surpriseus with characters who don’t let anything get past them.

Kim Clark also has two poetry collections due later thisyear. 978-1-894-75966-3

Mary Ann Moore is a freelancer based in Nanaimo.

No one expectsthe Spanish

Inquisition—orphysical disabilities

How desire and imaginationfuel the fiction of Kim Clark

Kim Clark

Radio Belly Storiesby Buffy Cram

(D&M $19.95)978-1-55365-902-0



Ballboy PressVancouver-based historian Robert Janning, has had a life-long passion for soccer. Westcoast Reign gives a historical account of the early days of soccer in British Columbia. The fi rst players and organizers came from all walks of life with all the antics and escapades you would expect from such a diverse mix. Whether it was a pugilisticly inclined linesman who gave his referee a black eye for disagreeing with a call or a president of the BCFA (and local Chief of Police) arousing the ire of a certain clergyman for allegedly frequenting establishments of vile repute, you will fi nd that this book shines a fascinating light on one of the more colourful aspects of British Columbia’s sports history.

Ph 604.338.7475Email [email protected] www.ballboypress.ca

limited edition hardcoverISBN 978-0-9877478-1-5 ~ $39.95

8½ x 11 ~ 176 pp with statistics and photos

Walking on HeadsMy Charming Imposter: a Cautionary Taleby Dania MatiationThe true story of a woman's relationship with a sociopath.978-1-926991-08-5 17.95

ExistenceScience, Spirituality and All Thatby Brett HaywardA far-reaching inquiry into destiny & the meaning of life.978-1-926991-11-5 18.95

The YukonLife Between the Gold Rush and the Alaska Highwayby Joann RobertsonLife during a little-known period of Yukon time.978-1-926991-09-2 19.95

The Bravest CanadianThe Heroic Exploits of Fritz Peters in WWI and WWIIby Sam McBrideLovable, eccentric & one of our greatest Cdn war heroes.978-1-926991-10-8 24.95

Attack of the Manorwood BrigadeMagnath Chroniclesby Johnny MayAn humorous and action-packed animal adventure. 978-1-894694-99-5 14.95

Tel: 604 688 0320 Toll Free: 1 877 688 0320

New Authors Welcome.

Order via PayPal: www.sockeyespecial.com

For more info: [email protected]

The Sockeye Special was the tramthat operated from Vancouver toSteveston from 1905 through 1958.

Ron Hyde provides a fascinating lookat the B.C. Electric’s partnership withthe people, the canneries, industry,entertainment and life on Lulu Island,plus the Steveston Opera House andRichmond dairy industry. Includes 82photos and images.

Also available at Black Bond Books,Steveston Bookstore, Gulf of Georgia Cannery,Britannia Heritage Shipyards, London HeritageFarm, and Cultural Centre, Minoru Gate.

$15

www.thistledownpress.com

New from Th istledown Press

A novel of the terror and delight of accepting oneself completely, The Path To Ardroe is an exploration of friendship and its limits, life changes and the transforming culture and sub-cultures that altered North American life in the 80s and 90s, especially changes in sexual awareness and the aesthetics of art.

print: ---- | .ebook: ---- | .

Available April 15

Donald Ward’s stories in The Weeping Chair are confidently layered with surprising situations and characters whose faith in themselves provides the strength to confront whatever weird or challenging experience befalls them. With Ward's stories you can always expect the unexpected and be assured his intentions are not frivolous.

print: ---- | .ebook: ---- | .

Available April 15

Sandy Bonny's curiosity, scrutinizing intelligence, and ever playful wit take us through close encounters with physical and psychological landscapes and then reveal the uncommon denominators in them that make people unique. The characters we meet in these places are oddly familiar or perhaps familiarly odd.

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Available April 15

Fiction / Poetry / Non-Fiction / Notes on Writing / Reviews

Visit our new home online http://eventmags.com

photo by Byron

Barrett

40 years young.

Peter Trower’s poem “A Wild Girl to Walk the Weathers With” inspired the title of this collection.

And here is love! Portaging the bog of refusal! Here is its rust and rasp and snare, its frisk, its trumpets – love driving the getaway car, love forgetting why it came, love hollering Crazy, crazy, crazy. Here is love shouting Shut Up! Love Me!

Fifty-one poets, 80 pages.978-1-926655-37-6 $16.95

www.leafpress.ca

The Wild Weathers:a gathering of love poems

est. 1945

1391 Commercial DriveVancouver, BC V5L 3X5

(604) 253-6442

featureview NON-FICTION

PATRIOTISM, EGO AND AN UN-canny capacity for suffer-ing took Polish climbers to

the very top of the alpine climbingworld in the 1970s and 1980s.

The world’s most celebratedclimber, Italian ReinholdMessner, says the Poles’ achieve-ments in the 1980s madethem, “Worldwide lead-ers as high-altitudeclimbers, especially inthe Himalayas.”

Dozens perished orvanished. In 1989 alone,five Polish climbers diedon Everest.

Freedom Climbersby Bernadette McDonald de-scribes how Polish men andwomen, armed with ice axes, cram-pons and grit, overcame the mostextreme high altitude conditions,making first ascents and forging in-novative new routes, often in harshwinter conditions that most woulddare not climb in.

✫THE POLISH PASSION FOR ALPINE

climbing emerged as Poland ex-changed the horrors and humilia-tion of Nazi occupation for Sovietdomination, deprivation and mar-tial law.

Poles had climbed in the Hima-layas back in the 1930s, but theravages of the Second World Warand life behind the Iron Curtain vir-tually killed that desire. Climbingwas officially frowned upon,“Mountains were a sign of free-dom,” McDonald writes, “a con-cept the Soviets feared above all.”

Eventually political oppressionhardened the climbers’ desire tocatch up with others on the inter-national scene. Poles formed moun-taineering clubs and laboured atmenial jobs, such as painting fac-tory smoke stacks, to generateenough money for expeditions intothe nearby Tatras and Alps, andeventually the Himalayas.

Freedom Climbers captureshow the sheer joy and sense ofachievement associated with climb-ing became an escape from a drearyexistence that offered few oppor-tunities for personal advancement.

Some of the Poles became verygood smugglers, selling equipment(and sometimes alcohol) duringtheir foreign climbing excursions toacquire coveted foreign currency.Climbers joked about defecting, butfew of them did. They were Polesfirst, who’d figured out how towork the system. For many, climb-ing became a living.

McDonald profiles many iconsof Polish climbing who drewstrength from hardship, such asAndrzej Zawada, a leading climberin the 1970s, who colluded withpartisans during the Russian “lib-eration.” He kept a machine gun un-der his desk at school and grenadesby his bed at night. Arrested at age17, he survived prison— unlikefriends who were tortured and ex-ecuted by the Russian secret serv-ice.

In 1973, Andrzej served noticeto the climbing world that Poleswere prepared to suffer and rewritethe record books. He led a team ona winter ascent of a mountain over7,000 metres where temperatures

plummeted to -35 atnight, storms screamedthrough camps and toesfroze. He and TadekPiotrowski reached thepeak of Noshaq, Afghani-stan’s highest mountain.

“The wind on mycheeks, and the cold when

it was winter, the warmth in thesummer, the friction of graniteagainst my fingers,” Andrzej said,“They bring me so much joy.”

Andrzej began to dream of afirst-ever winter assault on Ever-est. In 1980 he fronted a team of 20that put Leszek Citchy andKrzysztof Wielicki on thesummit. Andrzej would in-spire many others totest their limits, in-cluding VoytekKurtyka and Jerzy

Kukuczka, two of the most inno-vative of the Himalayan climbers

Wanda Rutkiewicz was alsomaking a name for herself at thistime. A slight figure and a lone wolf,often at odds with her climbingpartners, she had a willfulness thatwas forged from tragedy. Wanda’sbrother was killed as a child by agrenade explosion; her father wasmurdered and buried in his garden.

Approximately thirty of herclimbing partners and friends werelost over the years. McDonaldwrites, “Perhaps it was an overex-posure to premature and sudden

loss of life that prompted her,and other climbers, to ig-

nore their own mortal-ity rather than

THE JOYFUL FRICTIONOF GRANITE

“As the deaths multiplied, those who survived beganto feel immortal.”—Bernadette McDonald

Freedom Climbersby Bernadette McDonald(Rocky Mountain Books $32.95)

succumb to trauma. As the deathsmultiplied, those who survived be-gan to feel immortal.”

Wanda Rutkiewicz became thefirst European woman to climbMount Everest on the same dayPolish Cardinal Wojtyla waselected Pope John Paul. Poleswere euphoric, and she later pre-sented him with a stone from theEverest summit.

Another Polish team followedby tracing a challenging new routeup its peak, and through these suc-cesses fellow Poles saw new hopeand possibilities. These individualachievements soon had Polish au-thorities worried. Trouble was

brewing with food

prices going through the roof in1980, and Lech Walesa launchingthe Solidarity trade union move-ment in the Lenin Shipyards. Thehammer came down with the im-position of martial law.

Money for climbers was dry-ing up, so Wanda Rutkiewiczsought private sponsors for futureclimbs. Her life was now com-pletely focused on climbing (withpersonal relationships left in thedust). She continued to set morefirsts for women, but then took onetoo many chances.

In 1992, while attempting toclimb her ninth peak over eightthousand metres, she disappearedon Kangchenjunga, the world’sthird highest peak (elevation of8,586 m. or 28,169 ft.), locatedalong the India-Nepal border.

✫MCDONALD’S RESEARCH IS SUPERB,enhanced by years of interviews,and from being part of the moun-taineering community. She goes in-side group dynamics, dissectsvarious egos, tells of the mysteri-ous Third Man hallucinations thatsome climbers experience at alti-tude, and conveys the awe of reach-ing the top of the world.

For Poles under the Soviets,mountain climbing offered a modi-cum of control and freedom. “Theychannelled their unfulfilled hopesand suppressed energies into a pas-sionate love of mountains and ad-venture... a way to fulfillthemselves and create meaningfullives,” McDonald writes.

Of course the age-old questionsof why people climb in such condi-tions lingers like a potential ava-lanche in these pages, but givenwhat the Polish people had experi-enced, perhaps the question mightbe, “Why not?”

A more poetic rationale has beenprovided by Polish climber VoytekKurtyka, “Beauty is some kind oflaser connection to higher worlds.”

978-1-926855-60-8

Mark Forsythe is host of CBCradio’s Almanac.

Wanda Rutkiewicz(left & below) was thefirst European woman toclimb Mount Everest.

She perished withouta trace on the world’sthird-highest peak,Kangchenjunga,in 1992.

Wanda Rutkiewicz(left & below) was thefirst European woman toclimb Mount Everest.

MarkFORSYTHE

Bernadette McDonaldof Naramata is the firstperson to win the ‘TripleCrown’ of mountain lit-erature.

With Freedom Climb-ers, McDonald receivedthe Grand Prize at theBanff Mountain BookFestival, then she wonBritain’s £3,000 Board-man Tasker Prize, be-coming the first Canadianto gain that honour. (TheBoardman Tasker Prizecommemorates the livesof Peter Boardman andJoe Tasker, two Britishadventurers who diedwhile climbing Mt. Ever-est). In February she wonthe 2012 American AlpineClub Literary Award.


LETTERS

I AM CURIOUS AS TO THE BASIS FOR

the subheading, “First B.C.-basedPrime Minister John Turner finallygets his bio” (BCBW Winter). Sir JohnA. Macdonald was the first personelected to serve as prime ministerfrom British Columbia, when electedas MP for Victoria on Oct. 21, 1878,though he never resided in B. C.

John Turner was not an MP when he became prime min-ister on June 30, 1984. He announced he would run forelection in Vancouver Quadra on July 16 and was subse-quently elected as its MP in the general election on Sept. 4,1984, though he ceased being prime minister on Sept. 16following his party’s defeat in the election. As I recall, Mr.Turner’s principal residence in 1984 was in Toronto. I donot recall exactly what kind of residence he had in Vancouverin 1984 when he was prime minister, though it’s likely he didnot spend more than a handful or two of days in Vancouverduring that period. An article entitled “Turner sells poshhome in Toronto” in the Globe and Mail on Dec. 6, 1984,page 1, notes Turner sold his Toronto home and was lookingfor a residence in Vancouver in Shaughnessy or Kerrisdale,as well as moving into Stornoway as leader of the opposi-tion in Ottawa.

Kim Campbell may be the first truly B.C.-based primeminister when she became prime minister on June 25, 1993,having been born and raised in B.C., and being a sitting Van-couver MP with a Vancouver residence when she becameprime minister. Though, like Turner, her tenure was short-lived as she ceased to be prime minister on Nov. 3, 1993,after losing during the general election on Oct. 25 along withher party. At least Turner could say he was elected as primeminister, though for only 12 days.

Depending on what you mean by B.C.-based, Macdonaldwas the first person elected as prime minister in a B.C.constituency, Turner probably had some kind of temporaryresidence in Vancouver when he was prime minister andonly Campbell, while not elected as a prime minister, had apermanent residence in B.C.

William Macintosh,Macintosh Publications,Whistler / Sechelt

Old Macdonaldhad a B.C. riding

Jane Rule,Galiano Island,

1987

John Turner

John Lennon


INDEXTO ADVERTISERS

BCBOOKWORLD

Anvil Press...24Aspire Media...37Ballboy Press...26Banyen Books...32BC Beer Barons...30BC Historical Federation...30BC Library Association...12

Caitlin Press...12Capilano University...9Douglas College/EVENT...26Festival of the Written Arts...30First Choice Book...38Friesens Printers...38Galiano Island Books...32

Givner, Joan...32Granville Island Publishing...26Great Plains Publications...18Harbour Publishing...40The Heritage Group of Publishers...6Hignell Printing...38Houghton Boston...38Hyde, Ron...26Leaf Press...26Libros Libertad Publishing...12Lightbody, Alma...24Mother Tongue Press...17New Society Publishers...2

Oolichan Books...10Orca Books...22Oscar’s Art Books...37People’s Co-Op Books...26Playwrights Canada Press...30Printorium/Island Blue...38Quickies...36Ronsdale Press...15Royal BC Museum...12Self-Counsel Press...35SFU Writers Studio...9Sidney Booktown...32Sono Nis Press...5

SubTerrain...9Talonbooks...39Thistledown Press...26Three O’Clock Press...30University of Alberta Press...26UBC Press...10University of Toronto Press...24Vancouver Desktop...37WestPro Publishing...30White, Mary...30Wild, Paula...37Wild Horse Creek Press...30Yoka’s Coffee...32

I HAD TO THINK LONG AND HARD ABOUT

how to write this letter. This is a difficultletter for me to write. I want to talk abouthow my words were represented in your ar-ticle in BC BookWorld in the Fall 2011 issue.I was quoted as saying “Writers have alwaysbeen getting the shaft from publishers.Now we will be getting the e-shaft.”

While it is true this ispretty much what I said,pulled out of the contextin which I spoke it andplaced into the contextin which it appeared inyour article, I feel I needto clarify a couple ofthings.

First of all, I am firstand foremost a writerand a storyteller. This

Imagine no BCBW

IN THE LAST ISSUE (BCBW WINTER) JOAN GIVNER WRITES IN

her review of Taking My Life that editor Linda M. Morradoes not clarify in the introduction of her book whether ornot she got permission from Rule to publish her memoir.

I want to refer the reviewer to page 274 where Ms. Morraclearly indicates that she received the permission of threemembers of Jane Rule’s estate and that the three executorshave been very supportive and further more participated inthe project by providing corrections and photos.

On another note, I really enjoy reading BC Bookworldand wish you a long life.

Sylvie Beauregard,Galiano Island

Executors’ permission is quite different from Jane Rule’s ownwritten (or even verbal) permission to reprint thework—neither of which are referenced in theintroduction. – Ed.

means my first loyalty is and will always be to other writersand storytellers, and cultural creators in general. Of course Iwish that all writers made more money, especially Canadianones. I wish that royalties were higher, that all writers soldmore books, and that our other related skills (live readings,teaching, etc.) were valued more, and that writers shared abigger piece of the literary pie, along with publishers, festi-vals, booksellers, agents and others who take a cut out ofwhat writers produce and what we do.

But the thought of self-publishing is not an option forme. Between my touring, production, teaching, writing andtrying to maintain some semblance of a personal life sched-ules, just making a living more than fills my calendar. I can-not fathom adding distribution, marketing, attending bookfairs, and doing other promotion related work to my pile,not to mention editing and market research. This is wheremy publisher comes in. I have been working with ArsenalPulp Press since 1999. Almost thirteen years now. We havepublished seven books together; our eighth is due out nextspring. I have always found Brian Lam and his crew to notonly be true professionals, but also committed to many ofthe same ideals and values I hold dear in terms of creating andproducing cutting edge queer literature. They truly believe,as I do, in bringing marginalized and politicized voices tobookshelves all over the world. I could probably have movedon to a bigger press at some point in the last ten years, I haveintentionally chosen not to.

I remain as committed to Arsenal as they have proventhemselves to be to me in return. I am saddened that my offthe cuff remarks after a panel discussion that I was only amember of the audience for were recorded and published,and that these remarks hurt my long-term relationship withmy publisher. This was not my intention, I was merelyspeaking in terms of the publishing business in general, andhow I often feel that writers are not compensated financiallyas they should be. I was certainly not speaking of my rela-tionship with Arsenal Pulp Press, which has been and con-tinues to be a fruitful, respectful and supportive one.

BC BookWorld has always been a great support to meand my work in the past. I have always truly appreci-

ated the excellent coverage your publication hasgiven to me and my books, and I do sincerely

hope that this letter is read with the sameappreciation and respect for you and yourwork that you have always shown me.

Ivan Coyote,Vancouver

Written permission to print Ivan Coyote’scomment about e-rights, made at the GalianoLiterary Festival, was obtained from her prior

to publication.—Ed.Ivan E. Coyote'scurrent memoir-writing course forthe Vancouver PublicLibrary has sold out.Her new book thisspring is One in EveryCrowd (Arsenal $17.95)978-1-55152-459-7

Write to BC BookWorld at3516 W. 13th Ave.,Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 [email protected] may be edited forclarity & length.LA

UR

A S

AW

CH

UK

PH

OTO

IT’S GREAT THAT BC BOOKWORLD HAS

always given coverage to independ-ently-produced titles from B.C.especially, even though most self-publishers have little or no advertisingfund. I am one self-publisher who hasbeen grateful for BCBW’s supportthrough the years, most recently formy fourth book, The Lennon-

Bronte Connection that reveals John Lennon was the rein-carnation of the troubled Branwell Bronte, brother toEngland’s literary sisters Emily and Charlotte.

Jewelle St. James,Delta

Joan & Jane

e-eeks

reviewsPOETRY

BORN IN BULGARIA AND PARTIALLY

raised in Nigeria, DanielaBouneva Elza has a Masters inEnglish Philology from Sofia Uni-versity. She acquired a second Mas-ters, in Linguistics at OhioUniversity (USA). In 1999 sheimmigrated where she gained herPh.D in Education from SimonFraser University.

In 2010, Elza was the recipientof Pandora’s Collective CitizenshipAward. She is the Vancouver editorfor the Pacific Poetry Project, ananthology of three cities (Portland,Seattle and Vancouver) forthcom-ing from Ooligan Press (US) in theFall of 2012.

With an introduction byAislinn Hunter, Daniela Elza’sdebut collection of poetry, theweight of dew has been describedas a literal, metaphorical and philo-sophical journey from Vancouverinland through (mostly) BritishColumbia. Here it is reviewed byHannah Main-van der Kamp.

I N THIS DEBUT COLLECTION,linguist and philologistDaniela Elza shapes an unu-

sual format to convey the fugitivenature of words.

Using italics, spaces, dashes,alternate punctuation and broken-up words, she weaves a web ofprint that does not restrict itself toconventional verse form.

For example: “as my heart (b (e (a) t) s)

Such writing can belikened to very loose knit-ting. Each poem—mostshort enough for onepage—has many droppedstitches, dropped withskillful intent.

Playing with wordsand the spaciousness be-tween them, she’s not ask-ing them to carry much weight.

It’s difficult to replicate theshape of these word nets in a shortreview. One wonders if they caneven be read aloud. Readers willhave to see these poems for them-selves.

✫THE SO-CALLED “LANGUAGE

poets,” most of them academics(Legris, Tostevin), have had a pro-file in B.C. for decades. At times

the weight of dew by Daniela Elza(Mother Tongue $19.95) DANIELA’S

DEW LINESThe speed of the hungry eye versus

the fugitive nature of words

It would be easier, they thought,to move the six-sided cabin they’d builtthan to start again with a pileof logs, spikes andtwo-by-fours, so

my parents unroofed the place shingleby shingle to avoid snaggingpassing hydro wires, pried out all the glasswindows, jacked up the walls and floor,

the wood cookstove still inside,loaded the thing on skids and dragged it,eight miles on gravel roads.Needless to say, the skids —two huge spruce—

shredded beneath it as they hauled.The logs began to shift, unhingingat each of the six cornersand the floor beneath the cookstove

splintered, heaved, gave itself upto the rutted driveway, that long dirttrack thick with timothy, chickweed,the occasional lowbush blueberry.

From Kerosene (Nightwood$18.95) by Jamella Hagen,who grew up in Hazelton.978-0-88971-263-8

these poets risk beingtoo clever with their ty-pography as with theover-use of brackets.

Elza quotes from, andacknowledges the influ-ence of, the poetics ofTim Lilburn regardingthe hubris of trying tocapture the world with

words. How helpless words reallyare when confronted with the par-ticularity, the “thisness” of things.

Lilburn, poet/philosopher andteacher, has articulated an ap-proach, especially to Nature, thatquestions a writer’s ability to “cap-ture” the essence of anything letalone understand it. Even so thereis the paradoxical importance ofcontinuing to write poems with rev-erence and humility.

Does Elza intend for the wordsto be read in a sequence? It’s un-clear and part of the strategy. Ap-pearing to not be trying to controla word flow is also a technique, anartifice.

Except for the titles and the lib-eral sprinkling of quotes from otherwriters, it’s possible to read thesephraselets in any order. But thenthey are not intended to evoke lin-ear thoughts. Feelings, thoughtsand images dance on the page andthe page, the only apparent struc-ture, can hardly contain them. Thedance has eccentric rhythms.

Mostly concerned with birds,water, light, sky, leaves, the firstand last of the three sections havean ephemeral quality.

The middle section of the threeis a record/journal of a car trip withvery young children through BC.Here the reader who longs for someconcrete narrative can relate to ge-ography/history and touristic ex-periences: Osoyoos, Fort Steele,picnics, motels, elk and moose.

At one point, the poet asks usto “suspend / your ability to com-prehend.” But the scattered textand rich word play in the weight ofdew may still be barricades for somereaders.

It’s pleasant, nonetheless, towander through these verballydeconstructed landscapes, not un-like engagement in any absorbingactivity when the talky self-con-scious brain lets itself be parked.

Fred Wah has been appointedCanada’s parliamentary poet lau-reate. Born in Swift Current, Sas-katchewan on January 23, 1939,he grew up in the West Kootenays.He is the son of a Canadian-bornChinese-Scots-Irish father raisedin China and a Swedish-born Ca-nadian mother from Swift Current.In the early 1950s, his family op-erated the newest and most mod-ern Chinese cafe in Nelson, theDiamond Grill, subject of one ofhis more than twenty books.

Dragging the Cabin

Jamella Hagen

Wah named PL

Daniela Elza

Fred Wah

Elza’s imaginative alterations ofwords will raise a few eyebrows,thoughtfully. The arrangements willhalt the speed of the hungry eyeand give it cause to pause.

HannahMAIN-VAN DER KAMP

Isn’t that, in part, whatpoetry is for? 978-1-896949-21-5

Hannah Main – van derKamp does not knit but triesto hold words loosely on theUpper Sunshine Coast.



The entertaining story of the Buckerfield family of Vancouver.

Mary Buckerfield White, the only daughter of Ernest and

Amy Buckerfield, tells not only her story but that of her hus-

band, Victor, and parents along with engaging tales of relatives and

personages who played a part in their lives. She also chronicles the

rise of her father’s business, Buckerfield’s Feeds Seeds and Ferti-

lizers, which became a household name throughout much of British

Columbia. Lavishly illustrated, this generous book is sure to delight

a variety of readers and prove a valuable addition to the social his-

tory of Vancouver and B.C.

8 x 10. 334 pages. • ISBN 978-0-9877491-0-9 • $25.00 (No HST!)

[email protected] Books (in Kerrisdale) 2176 West 41 Ave., Vancouver B.C.

604.263.9412 • [email protected] • www.hagerbooks.ca

The Story of a Vancouver FamilyBy Mary Buckerfield White (with Philip Sherwood)

BUCKERFIELD

“Buckerfield—a resource

book for BC’s cultural history

and also an engaging

domestic narrative.”

—Mary Ann & David Stouck

Image B-04570, Courtesy of Royal BC Museum, BC Archives

British Columbi a History

Read BC’s fascinating storySubscribe to British Columbi a History and receive four issues

per year for only $20

Call 604.582.1548 or order online at bchistory.caPublished by the British Columbia Historical Federation: a collective voice that encourages interest in history through

research, preservation and support.

[email protected]

72 pages, including the secrets of theStanley Park Brewery, 16 colour pages, a

limited edition, each copy signed &numbered, $30 plus $5 for shipping:

ISBN: 978-0-9697455-1-8

The adventurous life of Conrad Kain,Canada’s greatestmountaineer

RaisingKain

“It’s a must read”—B. Williams

NEW BOOK RELEASE

From Keith Powell, author of Livingin the Shadow of Fisher Peak

Distributed by Sandhill Marketing

As heard on BC Almanac, RadioWestand North-By-Northwest

Cranbrook, BC • 250-417-4711www.wildhorsecreekpress.com

O B I T S

As a prominent Communist Party candidate in B.C. andAlberta, Swankey was interned during World War II, but thenenlisted in the Allies’ war effort. He later became one of thethree main co-founders of the Vancouver civic political partyCOPE (the Committee of Progressive Electors) along withHarry Rankin and Frank Kennedy. Vancouver city coun-cillor Geoff Meggs edited Swankey’s autobiography in 2008.Swankey died at age 98 on November 22, 2011.

After his parents newly emigrated from Russia, Swankeywas born in Steinbach, Manitoba, as Bernhard Schwanke, onSeptember 17, 1913, as the fifth child of Leokadia andGustav Schwanke. His father initially worked as a rail-road labourer and the family lived in Herbert, Saskatchewan.Ben rode the rails at age 14, reaching Washington State onesummer, where he worked as a fruit picker. With $10, he hitch-hiked from the prairies to Vancouver at age 17.

Soon after his arrival, Swankey became politically radicalizedby attending an anti-war rally with his brother, a teacher, at theCambie Street Grounds in Vancouver. When demonstrators re-vealed their communist loyalties, police brutally attacked thecrowd. According to Tom Hawthorn’s obituary in the Globe& Mail, Swankey tore off a white picket from a fence at a gasstation and struck back. Swankey kept attacking capitalism withwords for seven more decades after that.

As oppression against Communist Party members and dis-sident labour in Canada increased, Ben Swankey became anoutspoken ‘coalition builder,’ raising funds to support strikingcoal miners at Crowsnest Pass in 1932. He also co-organizedand participated in a hunger march in Edmonton that year, anevent often cited for the solidification of his radicalism.

Swankey married Olive Senko one day after his 20thbirthday, and the couple tried homesteading north of PrinceGeorge, but they barely survived one long winter before return-ing to live in Alberta. Following their divorce, he would marry aWinnipeg pianist, Anne Wiseman, during the war years.The couple met after hearing a speech by communist leaderTim Buck.

In 1940, Ben Swankey, as a communist, was arrested inCalgary for allegedly pasting anti-war stickers in the streets.This police frame-up failed to win a conviction, but Swankeywas re-arrested on the steps of the courthouse as soon as he wasreleased. This time he was arrested under Section 21 or the WarMeasures Act, without charge or a trial. He was held for amonth in a Calgary jail before being sent to Kananaskis Intern-ment Camp south of Canmore, Alberta. There he was seques-tered without recourse with other communists and left-leaningcitizens who had been apprehended by the state—and impris-oned along with Nazis.

Swankey was eventually transferred to another internmentcamp for intellectuals and communists in Petawawa, Ontario.[The internment camp at Kananaskis is no longer recognizableas a barbed wire compound; it was used in the 1980s as anEnvironmental Science Centre for the University of Calgary.]

When the Soviet Union joined forces with the Western alliesto combat Hitler’s Nazis, Swankey was released and he soonenlisted in the Canadian Army. After serving briefly overseas, hebecame Communist Party leader in Alberta in 1945. He ran in the1945 federal election in the Alberta riding of Jasper-Edson butreceived only five per cent of the vote. As the Communist Partyhad been outlawed, he represented the newly formed Labour-Progressive Party, a euphemism for the communists. Again he ranfederally in 1949 in Edmonton, then in 1953 in Peace River.

In 1957, Ben Swankey moved to Vancouver where he be-friended lawyer Harry Rankin, also a World War II veteran. As ajournalist, Swankey was editor of various trade union publica-tions. As reported by Tom Hawthorn, Swankey said his Mos-cow-published biography of the Métis military leader GabrielDumont, for which he could find no publisher in Canada, sold50,000 copies in its Russian-only version.

Swankey later became a strong advocate for the Old AgePensioners Association, fighting to preserve social programsand appearing in the media to defend and affirm seniors’ rights.The City of Vancouver declared Ben Swankey Day in 2003 tomark his 90th birthday.

Ben Swankey remained committed to social justice even dur-ing his final years in a Burnaby care facility where he had thenewspaper read to him daily. In Hawthorn’s words, he remained“engaged and outraged.”

Under-heralded five-time novelist MargaretPrimeau died at age 97 in Vancouver on October29, 2011. Born in Saint Paul, Alberta on May 10, 1914,she wrote in French, having lived in France and Italy.Primeau first came to Vancouver in 1954. She laterbecame associate professor Emerita of the UBCFrench department. Memories of a fairtytale child-hood were the basis for Sauvage Sauvageon (Edi-tions des Plaines, 1984), winner of the Prix Champlainfor the best novel written in French in North America(1986). In that book, when Maxine is five years old inAlberta, her father is like ‘a magic lantern,’ like aprince who holds the key toa world of magic. Later, theheroine comes to terms withher disillusionment with lifewhile surveying her pastfrom a retreat on Galiano Is-land. The novel was trans-lated and B.C.-published asSavage Rose (Ekstasis,1999).

“ENGAGED & OUTRAGED”The life and times of a tireless man

Abiographer of On-to-Ottawa trekleader Arthur ‘Slim’ Evansand Métis commander GabrielDumont, Ben Swankeywas one of Western Canada’s fore-

most socialist historians and lecturers.

Ben Swankey(1913-2011) withGeoff Meggs

Man Along the Shore: History of the VancouverWaterfront and the Canadian Area, InternationalLongshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union(ILWU Local 500 Pensioners, 1975) Two printings.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------”Work and Wages”! A Semi-DocumentaryAccount of the Life and Times of Arthur H.(Slim) Evans: 1890-1944 Carpenter, Miner, LabourLeader (Trade Union Research Bureau, 1977),co-written with Jean Sheils.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Gabriel Dumont and the SaskatchewanRebellion of 1885 (Moscow: Progress Books, 1980).Published in Russian only.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Fraser Institute(Centre for Socialist Education, 1984)----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Tory Budget (Centre for Socialist Education, 1985)----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Brother Can You Spare a Billion?The Politics of Corporate Concentration in Canada(Centre for Socialist Education, 1987)----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------COPE: Working for Vancouver: 1968-1993(Committee of Progressive Electors, 1993).With John Church, Elaine Decker and Gary Onstad.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What’s New: Memoirs of a Socialist Idealist(Trafford, 2008) aka A Prairie Marxist’s Memoir.Edited by Geoff Meggs.

BOOKS by Ben Swankey

Novelist, playwright and CBC radio producer Nor-man Newton died on December 27, 2011. Born inVancouver in 1929, Newton corresponded withEarle Birney and became part of Birney’s Au-thor’s Anonymous circle that included RobertHarlow, Norm Klenman, Ernest Perrault,Ben Maartman and Hilda Thomas. DuringNewton’s many years at CBC radio, his friendshipwith fellow CBC announcer Bill Reid led him to anenduring interest in the Haida. Released one yearprior to Alan Fry’s breakthrough novel about B.C.Indian reserves, How A People Die, Norman New-ton’s third novel, The Big Stuffed Hand of Friend-ship (1969), provides a credible and occasionallyribald portrait of a coastal B.C. town and its oftenstrained relations between Aboriginals and whites.Newton later produced a non-fiction book, Fire inthe Raven’s Nest: The Haida of British Columbia(1973) that is an amalgam of interviews, oral narra-tives, myths and documentary materials, with somedirect input from Bill Reid. One section recalls howsmallpox destroyed the traditional culture on theQueen Charlotte Islands. Published in England, New-ton’s first historical novel about Mexico, The Houseof Gods (1961), recalls Toltec culture from the 15thcentury. His second novel set in Mexico, The OneTrue Man, incorporates Mayan and Aztec stories totheorize that Phoenicians could have establishedcolonies in North America centuries prior to the birthof Christ. Newton’s non-fiction book, Thomas Gagein Spanish America (1969), recalls the Englishmanwho went to Spain in 1612 and became a Dominicanpriest. He retired to Gabriola Island.

“ENGAGED & OUTRAGED”

Margaret Primeau(1914-2011)

Norman Newton (1929-2011)

NormanNewton

Margaret Primeau



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INTERNATIONAL

Dear Václav,The first Becherovka [aperitif] of my life I

drank with you in September 1978. It was inHradecek [his summer house] and it seemed tome like a dream. You said then that I shouldcome back in a couple of days with my mother,and you would make us scrambled eggs withfresh mushrooms.

As it turned out, this did not happen. Thepolice stopped us in front of Hradecek. Weboth played the roles of slightly stupid tour-ists, who totally mixed up a detour and hadno idea where they were.

You have been with me from 1978 on-ward and enriched my life in so many direc-tions that I have no words for it. So, justsimply in the Canadian way, HAPPYBIRTHDAY, VASEK! [diminutive forVáclav]

— Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz✍

IN 2012, AS THE PLANE CARRIED ME FROM

Frankfurt to Prague, I was late for the mainmemorial for Václav Havel, the country’sex-president, in St.Vitus Cathedral at the

Hradcany Castle.With a grey feeling of unreality I dragged my

take-on suitcase to the exit at the airport. There Icould hardly believe my eyes. A man was holding

up a sign that said “Marketa.”The grey feeling gradually evaporated as I

was driven to the Prague crematorium wherea less official memorial for friends was totake place. Still there was a crowd outside.Darkness was falling but the evening wasilluminated by hundreds of candles.

Inside, people brought flowers andstopped by the small coffin that wasraised above the crowd. Friends steppedforward, one by one, and spoke about how

Václav had affected their lives.There was a powerful choir and classical music—some

of it Czech—but this gathering was also punctuated by silence as adeep sense of irreparable loss filled the air.

A few days earlier, television screens around the globe showedhundreds of thousands of Czechs moving slowly, following the carbearing Havel’s casket across the ancient Charles Bridge to thecastle where, twenty-two years earlier, a youthful dissident play-wright had been catapulted into the presidency by - in this case -the benevolent storms of historical change.

Václav Havel wrote a new constitution, reopened the CastleGardens, inaccessible to the public for many decades, and re-estab-lished a democratic government after more than four decades oftotalitarian rule. The latter work, of course, encountered many dif-ficulties and proceeded only gradually.

Freedom, so passionately yearned for by multitudes every-where in the world, imposes a heavy burden of responsibility onthose who fight for it, then struggle to maintain it. In the case ofHavel, he sacrificed some of himself as a writer in order to serve hispeople as a politician.

When still a persecuted “dissident” whose writings were bannedin his own country, Havel had come to worldwide attention throughhis essays: “The Power of the Powerless” (1978), “Politics and

Conscience” (1984), and his Letters to Olga, written fromprison between 1979 and 1982.

His plays, including The Vanek Plays (published by UBCPress in 1987) and the formidable Faust play Temptation,were produced in many countries.

Literature always infused him with wisdom and courage.As president, Havel travelled the world, giving speeches onfive continents, talking (in the words of his English transla-tor Paul Wilson, a Canadian) “about Godot and politicalpatience to the French, about Gandhi and non-violence tothe Indians, [and] about Kafka and self-doubt to the Israe-lis.”

Václav Havel wrote all his presidential speeches himself.He claimed that this writing kept him sane on the job “be-cause it is really one of the more creative aspects of beingpresident.” So it was he made the name of his small country,the Czech Republic, crushed for centuries on that restlesscrossroads at the centre of Europe, internationally knownand respected.

All this is doubtless generally familiar to literate people,but it seems only fitting at the time of his death to renewpublicly our homage to this man whose moral courage hadan extraordinary national and international impact.

During those days in Prague that were darkened by theloss of a unique man, I again became acutely aware of theperennial contradictions that seemed engrained in VáclavHavel’s life.

While basically shy and entirely free of political postur-ing, he was yet able to address huge gatherings and keeptheir undivided attention; he was deeply sincere, yet had anironic detachment from events; while capable of genuineself-depreciation, he was unbendable when a basic valuewas at stake; he preserved a sustained sense of humour evenduring the gravest situations, and having lived through dec-ades of harassment and persecution, he claimed he was inca-pable of hatred.

Now, as I grope for the mysteries of his personality, Imust refrain from becoming emotional (a quality abhorred bythe Czech character, and Václav himself). So I will end withthis reminiscence of Havel by noting his connection with Van-couver—where his plays were published in English.

The Czech-born novelist Jan Drabek lives here, andI have translated some of his plays, but Havel also had apersistent curiosity about the city itself. In 2004, Havel hadbeen planning to come to Vancouver to participate in a panelthat also included the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutubut his doctor forbade him to do so due to his frail health.

Although several of his plays have been performed here,he himself never managed a visit. Still he maintained a deeply-felt connection to Canada.

For many years, Václav Havel loved to wear a T-shirt Isent him that said ‘VANCOUVER MILUJE VAŠKA’ (‘Van-couver loves Václav’). It is a joyful thought that this amaz-ing man liked to show, with a twinkle in his eye, the lovingnote on his chest that displayed the affection of a Canadiancity. While mourning his loss, I remind myself of the T-shirt,and smile.

I particularly cherish a photo of Havel in his VancouverT-shirt in 1984, a short time after he came out of prison. Heis carrying a sack of potatoes, clearly not at his best. Othersshow him wearing it earlier, in the garden of his countryhome where friends and dissidents met and discussed phi-losophy, literature and politics.

Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz is a UBC professor emeritus ofcomparative literature. While Václav Havel was imprisonedby the Communist Party, she edited The Vanek Plays, FourAuthors, One Character (UBC Press 1987), which fea-tured Havel’s fictional Ferdinand Vanek as a dissident play-wright. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1927, Goetz-Stankiewiczalso wrote The Silenced Theatre: Czech PlaywrightsWithout A Stage and edited Critical Essays on VáclavHavel.

On a lovely sunny fall day in Oc-tober 2011 in Prague, I wrotethe following note for a Czechjournal Tyden (‘The Week’) that had

a special issue on Václav Havel’s 75thbirthday. Little did I know this birthdaygreeting to my friend was to be my last.

Václav & VancouverMarketa Goetz-Stankiewicz remembers Czech playwright

and president Václav Havel who was published by UBC Press


Václav Havel,wearing hisVancouvert-shirt and

holding a bagof potatoes,soon after

beingreleased

from prisonin 1984.

directions for projects that can take any-where from five minutes to an entire week-end. It can be for a balcony-sized plot or arural acreage. 978-1-55017-538-7

LIKE ‘EM OR HATE ‘EM, FIREARMS INSTRUCTOR

York Furstenwald wants parents andchildren to know more about guns. Thereare almost 300 million guns in NorthAmerica, so Kids, Guns & the Truth(North Vancouver: 3B Publishing $19.95)shares facts and advice: A modern high cali-bre rifle has more force at ¼ mile away thana point blank shot from a handgun. Firingguns in celebration often kills people whenthe bullets come to earth. Treat every gunas if it’s loaded. 978-0-9737938-0-2

LARRYLARRYLARRYLARRYLARRY GAMBONEGAMBONEGAMBONEGAMBONEGAMBONE GREW UP IN LOGGING

towns on Vancouver Island where he wasactive in the anti-nuclear weapons ‘Ban-the-Bomb’ movement. He founded Red LionPress in 1984 and began to publish a seriesof chapbooks on labour, social history andanarchism. His most recent books are TheView From Anarchist Mountain (RedLion Press $16) and The Impossibilists(Red Lion Press $10), which features thewritings of the Socialist Party of Canadaand the One Big Union (1906-1938). It is arevised edition that also includes writingsby Ginger GoodwinGinger GoodwinGinger GoodwinGinger GoodwinGinger Goodwin. More info:[email protected]

STAN DOUGLAS: ABBOTT & CORDOVA,7 August 1971 (Arsenal $40) arises fromhis creation of a gargantuan photo muraldepicting Vancouver’s infamous 1971Gastown Riot. The book is a rare attemptto delve into the historical and social ramifi-cations of a pivotal and violent event in Van-couver’s history during which police,equipped with newly acquired riot sticks,pummeled peaceful demonstrators duringthe “Gastown Smoke-in” held to protestharsh anti-marijuana laws. The debacle wasthe pinnacle of friction between DanMcLeod’s Georgia Straight ‘hippie’newspaper and Mayor Tom Campbell,marking the beginning of the end of the ‘peace‘n’ love’ counter-culture movement in B.C. 978-1-55152-406-1

ONE WAY TO WEEN YOUR KIDS OFF THE

computer, cel phone and a plethora of otherconsumer items is to get ’em hooked on 100fun, green garden projects for the whole fam-ily as outlined by Christina Symonsand John Gillespie’s Everyday Eden(Harbour $29.95). There are step-by-step

LONG ENSCONCED AT POSSIBLY THE ONLY

archives on pilings anywhere on our WestCoast, Joyce Wilby (above) of the AlertBay Public Library and Museum has been alocal librarian and archivist for 53 years,having arrived at Alert Bay in 1948. In theabove photo she welcomes Rick Jameson his tour to promote Raincoast Chroni-cles 21: West Coast Wrecks & OtherMaritime Tales (Harbour $24.95). 978-1-55017-545-5

FOLLOWING THE PATH MADE BY SONG-gatherer Phil Thomas, the duo of JonBartlett and Rika Ruebsaat havemined the archives of Princeton and Hedleyfor an unprecedented collection of heritagewriting, Dead Horse on the Tulameen:Settler Verse from BC’s SimilkameenValley (Canadian Folk Workshop $29, in-cludes postage). Their illustrated narrativeand verse anthology is a rare, thorough re-flection of pioneer life in B.C. to accom-pany their new CD of Similkameen-madesongs and poetry, Now It’s Called Princeton,their fifth musical release. 978-0-9877255-0-9

WHOWHO’S

B R I T I S H C O L U M B I A

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is for Eden

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Jon Bartlett andRika Ruebsaat

have sung B.C. folksongs together

since 1975.

PAU

LA

WIL

D P

HO

TO

A section of Stan Douglas’ massive mural “Abbott & Cordova”

AFTER HIS ONE-YEAR STINT AS THE VANCOUVER

Public Library’s seventh writer-in-residence,Wayde Compton has been selected totake over from Betsy Warland as thedirector of Simon Fraser University’s Writ-er’s Studio. The new Poet Laureate for Van-couver is Evelyn Lau; and Victoria’sDeborah Willis is the 2012 writer-in-residence at Joy Kogowa House, where shewill live and work at until April 15, 2012.

Joyce Wilby and Rick James

is for Bartlett

is for Furstenwald

is for Gambone

Ginger Goodwin


RON HYDE OF THE BC HISTORICAL FEDERA-tion has written The Sockeye Special:The Story of the Steveston Tram andEarly Lulu Island (BCHF $15 plus $5postage). The Sockeye Special was the tramthat ran between Vancouver and Stevestonfrom 1905 through 1958. Initially many pas-sengers were workers from Vancouvertraveling to the canneries in Steveston wherethey were canning Sockeye salmon, the pre-mium of all salmon, thus is became knownas the Sockeye Special. 978-1-55383-303-1

HAVING RESEARCHED THE HISTORY OF

Vancouver Island wine-making and visitedits meaderies, cideries, fruit wines, artisandistilleries and craft beer makers, GaryHynes and the writers of EAT magazinehave won a 2011 Gourmand InternationalWine Books Award for Island Wineries ofBritish Columbia (Touchwood $29.95).It includes recipes from chefs at Café Brio,Camille’s, Sooke Harbour House, Stage WineBar and other leading Island restaurants. 9781926741260

J.J. LEE OF NEW WESTMINSTER WAS NOMI-nated for the Governor General’s Award forNon-Fiction for The Measure of a Man:The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit(M&S $29.99). It’s now up for the CharlesTaylor Prize [See T for Taylor]. Lee is themenswear columnist for the Vancouver Sunand broadcasts a weekly fashion column forCBC Radio in Vancouver. He spent a yearas an apprentice at Modernize Tailors andwas featured in the award-winning filmabout the shop, Tailor Made: The Last Tai-lor Shop in Chinatown. 978-0-7710-4647-6

IN HER SUPERB NEW MEMOIR MNEMONIC:A Book of Trees (Goose Lane $19.95),Theresa Kishkan names each chapterfor a particular tree — the Garry oak, thePonderosa pine, the silver olive, and others— to place her personal past within a bo-tanical/historical context. It’s about child-hood, young womanhood, marriage, thebuilding of a house, raising children and writ-ing books, echoing the words of Pliny theElder, “Hence it is right to follow the natu-ral order, to speak about trees before otherthings...” Flip open this book on any page,and you’re charmed. 978-0-86492-706-4

IAIN LAWRENCE OF GABRIOLA ISLAND HAS

received the $20,000 Vicky Metcalf Awardfor Children’s Literature from the Writers’Trust of Canada. The prize recognizes hisbody of work for young adult fiction rang-ing “from the realms of early nineteenthcentury seafarers to a remote, twentieth cen-tury lighthouse off B.C.’s north coast, andfrom Cold War rural America to a southernEnglish village at the height of World War I.”His books include Gemini Summer for whichhe received the Governor General’s Liter-ary Award for Children’s Literature in 2007.Visit www.writerstrust.com

ONCE MORE ONE OF B.C.’S MOST

philanthropic writers, Mike McCardell,has enjoyed a prolonged presence on theBC Bestsellers List, this time with Here’sMike: With Junkyard Granny, WhistlingBernie Smith, the Robertson Screw-driver, Pancakes and Eternal Truth (Har-bour $32.95). It’s a compendium ofMcCardell’s favourite stories from the thou-sands of television tales he has shared at theclose of Global TV’s News Hour. 9781550175622

is for JJ

is for Kishkan

is for McCardell

is for Lawrence

continued on next page

is for Hyde

is for Island

MEL

ISSA

STE

PHEN

S PH

OTO

Writers’ Trust winner Iain Lawrence:“I don’t think it’s good enough tojust entertain.”

J.J. Lee

TheStevestontram (akaSockeyeSpecial)

TheresaKishkan


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NANCY OKE, A RESEARCH VOLUNTEER AT

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JOY PARR, AUTHOR OF

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teaching at SFU. Her Sensing Changes:Technologies, and the Everyday, 1953-2003(UBC Press) has received the 2011 CanadaPrize in the Social Sciences category. Parrhas been cited as “the outstanding Canadianhistorian of her generation.”

Norman Nawrocki

THE VANCOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY STAFF HAS

selected poet Meredith Quartermainas its writer-in-residence for 2012. Associ-ated with the Kootenay School of Writing,Quartermain received the Dorothy LivesayPrize for Vancouver Walking in 2006, acollection followed in 2008 byNightmarker, prose-like observations ofVancouver’s architecture and people.

VICTORIA HALLMARK SOCIETY PRESIDENT

Nick Russell has published GloriousVictorians: 150 Years/150 Houses – Cel-ebrating Residential Architecture inBC’s Capital (Sandhill $34.95) to re-flect changing architectural fash-ions that tell a story aboutthe prosperity of BritishColumbia’s capital city.What is Queen Annestyle? Did a premier livehere? Who were the greatarchitects? What impor-tant buildings have beenlost over the years? And whatwill tomorrow’s heritagebuildings look like? 9780987788900

is for Russell

Nick Russell with Victorian blueprint

David Spaner

Joy Parr

An ad in The Colonist, 1936, extollingthe virtures of drinking beer toimprove athletic performance.

is for SpanerDAVID SPANER’S SHOOT IT! HOLLYWOOD

Inc. and the Rising of Independent Film(Arsenal $22.95) examines how Hollywoodlost its ability to support the work of crea-

tive filmmakers. It is also a portrait ofthe independent filmmakers who

have risen up to fill the void.Indie directors Gus Gus Gus Gus Gus VVVVVanananananSantSantSantSantSant , Mike LeighMike LeighMike LeighMike LeighMike Leigh ,Atom EgoyanAtom EgoyanAtom EgoyanAtom EgoyanAtom Egoyan, SallySallySallySallySallyPotterPotterPotterPotterPotter, John SaylesJohn SaylesJohn SaylesJohn SaylesJohn Sayles,

and Ken LoachKen LoachKen LoachKen LoachKen Loach are inter-viewed. Spaner has worked as amovie critic, reporter, and editor.

He is the author of Dreaming inthe Rain: How Vancouver Be-

came Hollywood Northby Northwest (Arse-

nal 2003). 9781551524085

is for Quartermain

The Listenerby David Lester

thelistenergraphicnovel.wordpress.com

ISBN 9781894037488 $19.95GRAPHIC

NOVEL

“A dense and fiercelyintelligent work... all in alyrical and stirring tone.”— Publishers Weekly (NY)

FOUR OF THE FIVE

finalists for the$25,000 CharlesTaylor Prize for Lit-erary Non-Fiction areBritish Columbians:Charlotte Gillfor her treeplanting

memoir, Eating Dirt (Greystone); WadeDavis, for Into the Silence: The Great War,Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest(Knopf); J.J. Lee for The Measure of aMan: The Story of a Father, a Son, and aSuit (McClelland & Stewart); andMadeline Sonik for Afflictions & De-partures: Essays (Anvil). In February, withPremier Christy Clark in attendance atthe Vancouver presentation, Charlotte Gillwas selected as the 2012 recipient of theBC National Award for Canadian Non-Fic-tion, worth $40,000.

LONGTIME UBC PRESS

head honcho PeterMilroy has retired,and is replaced byMelissa Pitts,while the press hashad two titlesshortlisted for The

Canada Prize in the Social Sciences: AlanGordon’s The Hero and the Historians:Historiography and the Uses of JacquesCartier and for Joy Parr’s SensingChanges. [See P is for Parr]. Two publish-ing imprints associated with UBC, PacificEducational Press and UBC Press, have re-cently marked their 40th anniversaries, alongwith trade publishers Talonbooks and Doug-las & McIntyre.

A SIERRA CLUB CAMPAIGNER IN VICTORIA,Caitlyn Vernon guides young readersthrough an ecosystem of information inNowhere Else on Earth: Standing Tallfor the Great Bear Rainforest (Orca$22.95), encouraging stewardship for theGreat Bear Rainforest. 978-1-55469-303-0

AT AGE 88, MARY BUCKERFIELD WHITE,with Philip Sherwood (lifewriters.ca),has self-published Buckerfield: The Storyof a Vancouver Family. White’s father wasone of the province’s foremost business-men (feeds, seeds, and fertilizers) and her

mother a leading member of Vancouver’sarts community. Mid-century they be-friended and entertained at their home someof the most distinguished persons to visitVancouver including C.D. Howe,Leonard Bernstein, Dylan Tho-mas and Dame Joan Sutherland.Novelist Ethel Wilson was Mary White’saunt. White’s memoir contains numerousphotos and anecdotes about Wilson. The 300-page family history is available in hardcoverfrom Hagar’s Books in Kerrisdale for $25.

THE FACE OF WILLIAM

B. Davis is recog-nizable worldwide. Asthe Cigarette SmokingMan or “Cancerman”in the television seriesThe X-Files, Davisdishes candidly about

the show’s famous co-stars GillianAnderson and David Duchovny inhis memoir, Where There’s Smoke (ECW$22.95), while revealing the character of hisundergraduate colleague Donald Suth-erland and recalling his own work at theNational Theatre in London with SirLaurence Olivier, Dame MaggieSmith and Albert Finney. 978-1-77041-052-7

WITH A FOREWORD BY JOE MCBRYAN OF

Buffalo Airways, pioneering ice pilot DonF. Hamilton’s self-published journal offlying in Canada’s Arctic, Flying Over-loaded (Aspire Media $26.95), is packedwith the requisite hair-raising episodes. Itrecounts his flying in the Far North for vari-ous companies, including training pilots onthe DC-3 for Buffalo Airways in their earlydays, and in support of his two fly-in lodgeswith his own aircraft. It appears at a timewhen there are two new television seriesabout aviation in Canada’s far north. Con-currently, Mike Vlessides’ The Ice Pi-lots: Flying with the Mavericks of theGreat White North (D&M $17.95) is de-rived from the History Channel show aboutpilots based in Yellowknife, currently air-ing in eleven countries. Ice Pilots: 9781553659396; Flying: 978-0-9809319-1-4

is for UBC

is for Vernon

is for White

is for Zastrozzi

is for X-Files

is for Yellowknife

is for Taylor

Charlotte Gill

Jacques Cartier

William B. Davis

IN HER SELF-PUBLISHED MEMOIR OF LIVING

aboard a ship, The Life and Times of theFloathouse Zastrozzi ($15), MaryHughes asserts that getting a 1917Heintzman piano down the ramp at Fisher-man’s Wharf in Victoria was a minor chal-lenge compared to what she and AlanHughes faced in their twelve years livingaboard the ship. Over the years, Zastrozzinarrowly avoided a collision with the Cohoferry, repelled a mink invasion, and onlybarely survived sinking at the dock. Thenthere was the daunting challenge of movingZastrozzi ashore on Salt Spring Island in2002. The book is available at a few coastalbook outlets, from her website, or from herfront porch on Salt Spring.

Caitlyn Vernon


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