To All Appearances A Lady - University of British Columbia

legacy, different kinds of knowing, and the
relation between modernism and nationalism,
with instructive plates and interviews
with such contemporary artists as Lawrence
Paul Yuxweluptun. Yves Bonnefoy's 2-volume
compilation of American, African, and
Old European Mythologies and Asian Mythologies,
tr. Wendy Doniger (U Chicago, $25.00
and $27.00), comprehensively summarize
the Ramayana and other holy books, and in
separate signed articles take account of various
religious cosmogonies, the significance
of twins among the Bantu, Huron creation
stories, and other subjects; the accounts of
religion far surpass the rudimentary data,
gathered along with population statistics, in
Joyce Moss and George Wilson's Asian and
Pacific Islanders (Gale, n.p.), but the black-
&-white illustrations pale in comparison
with those in Larousse's guide to mythology.
Meredith Bain Woodward's Land of
Dreams: A History in Photographs of the
British Columbia Interior (Altitude, n.p.)
wonderfully documents another history of
social change; the transformed character of
an often-neglected part of Canada comes
alive here in pictures of natives and settlers,
railway workers and miners, mountainclimbers,
bronco-busters, Doukhobour
communities, and British landholders taking
tea on a cultivated lawn.
In a special category is Canada 125:
Constitutions (Canada Communications
Group/Govt. of Canada, $85.00); this collection
of seventeen documents brings
together in one handsomely illustrated volume
the 1763 Proclamation, the Quebec
Act, the acts relating to Confederation and
Rupert's Land, the B.C. Terms of Union,
the Alberta Act, the Statute of Westminster,
and related acts right up to the present. It's
both a reference volume and—because
these are documents that impact directly
on Canadian life—a cultural reminder that
future constitutional documents deserve to
be composed out of principle rather than
political expediency, W.N.
On the Verge
Expressions: A Compilation of Feelings, ed.
Bill K. Braisher. p.o. Box 39503, Richmond,
B.C. V7B 5G9. $28.50. Believing that
teenagers should have the opportunity to
speak up and be heard, Bill Braisher plans
to invite high school students from across
British Columbia to submit their writing to
this annual publication. The first collection,
in the words of poet Michelle Yeh,
speaks most often of the "heart aching with
faint whisper of hope/to catch a
butterfly/with a broken net." In drawings,
short prose pieces and poems, the young
people here represented care intensely
about the implicitly racist label "people like
that" (Tanya Syrota), and the agony of children
with no toys, no clothing and nothing
to eat" (Harmony Hemmerich). As a
primer on the evolution of the poem, this
collection reminds us that the first objective
of the developing writer is not the startling
metaphor but discovering some words
to better the world. The words these aspiring
writers feel most intensely about are
those words most likely to "become lies"
(Tawnya Bossi). L.R.
Sandra Gwyn. The Tapestry of War.
HarperCollins. $26.95. This is a remarkable
book, and very few more illuminating
account of the effects of the Great War have
been written. It is an account, not so much
of the gruesome battlefields of the Western
Front, though these make their appearance,
but of what participating in the war, or
even living passively through it, did to
Canadians' lives. Sandra Gwyn is writing
archival rather than oral history, for none
of the ten people on whom she has chosen
to concentrate lived long enough for their
voices to be taped, and she is relying mainly
on letters or diaries they left, supported by
other incidental information. It is in fact a
grand pastiche, from which Gwyn's good
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