GEORGE RYGA AWARD - BC BookWorld

Bob Hunterwriting aboardthe firstGreenpeaceprotest vesselPhyllisCormack, 1971.WinnerGEORGE RYGA AWARDFor Social Awareness inBritish Columbia Literature.AWARD SCULPTURE BY REG KIENAST.On behalf of her late husband,Roberta Hunter accepts “TheCensors’ Golden Rope” fromsculptor Reg Kienast. Thesculpture is given annually toGeorge Ryga Award recipients.Robert Hunter (1941-2005) and photographer Robert Kezierecollaborated on the first authoritative report on the Amchitkaprotests by Greenpeace in 1971, but Hunter’s original manuscriptwas rejected by publisher Jack McClelland of Toronto infavour of a picture book. Recently Keziere’s partner Karen Loveretrieved the lone copy of Hunter’s eyewitness report and tookit to Brian Lam at Arsenal Pulp Press. Published last year asThe Greenpeace to Amchitka: An Environmental Odyssey, thechronicle of idealism, bad weather, weird karma and personaltensions has been selected as the winner of the second annualGeorge Ryga Award for outstanding social awareness.The award was presented at the Vernon Performing Arts Centreon July 27 during a celebratory concert, hosted by CBC’s PaulGrant, to mark the 73rd anniversary of George Ryga’s birth.The shortlist included Redress (Raincoast) by Roy Miki and AStain Upon the Sea (Harbour) by a collection of authors.Sponsored by the George Ryga Centre (Summerland),(Kelowna) and Okanagan College.Information: jlent@junction.net

CLASSICSBC5 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006This article is the fourth in a series celebrating enduring B.C. books.In 1898, hoping to raiseenough money to return to England,Chilcotin rancher NormanLee, son of an Oxford-educatedvicar, decided to take 200 cattleon a 1500-mile trek to theKlondike gold fields.After five months, winter forced Leeto butcher the herd. He loaded the meatonto scows but the entire shipment waslost on Teslin Lake, 500 miles short ofDawson Creek, his destination.Only one companion, his driver andscow captain William 'Bill'Copeland, remained with Lee for theduration of his doomed expedition.Copeland said his boss was “more like abrother” and always “honest about whathe wanted and what he said.”Copeland and Lee barely made it toWrangel, Alaska, from which they tooksteamers south, to Victoria and Nanaimorespectively.“As funds were getting short again;and as my clothes were in rags,” Leewrote, “I did not care to look up any ofmy aristocratic friends in Victoria.” Leemade it to Vancouver with a roll of blankets,a dog and one dollar.Undaunted, Norman Lee returned tohis “Chicken Ranch” in the Chilcotinand became a successful cattle rancherknown to the Chilcotin Indians as “OldLee” because he was the first member ofhis family to arrive.In 1902 he returned to England,witnessed the coronation of EdwardVII, and married his second cousinAgnes 'Nessie' Lee, who had reluctantlyended a holiday in Ireland afterreceiving a telegram from her brother:“Please come and help entertain ourcousin Norman Lee, from Canada.”Agnes Lee became one of five whitewomen residing in the Chilcotin uponher arrival. Affectionately known as“Gan-Gan” by the Chilcotins, she becamefluent in Chilcotin and managedthe local store for decades.Norman Lee remained as a fixture inthe Cariboo, living at Hanceville on theChilcotin Plateau, until his death at age77 on March 16, 1939.BCBOOKWORLDSpring Issue Vol. 20, No. 1Publisher/ Writer: Alan TwiggEditor/Production: David LesterPublication Mail Agreement #40010086Return undeliverable Canadianaddresses to: BC BookWorld,3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver,BC V6R 2S3Produced with the sponsorship ofPacific BookWorld News Society.Publications Mail Registration No. 7800.BC BookWorld ISSN: 1701-5405Advertising & editorial:BC BookWorld, 3516 W. 13th Ave.,Vancouver, B.C., V6R 2S3Tel/Fax: 604-736-4011Email: available on request .Annual subscription: $12.84Contributors:Mark Forsythe, Joan Givner, Sara Cassidy,Louise Donnelly, Carla Lucchetta, Heather Ramsay,Hannah Main-van der Kamp, Sheila Munro.Writing not otherwise credited is by staff.Proofreaders: Wendy Atkinson, Betty TwiggDeliveries: Ken ReidDesign: Get-to-the-Point GraphicsWe acknowledge theassistance of Canada Counciland the Provinceof British Columbia,through the Ministryof Community, Aboriginal,and Women’s Services.We acknowledge thefinancial support of theGovernment of Canadathrough the BookPublishing IndustryDevelopment Program(BPIDP) for this project.Chilcotin pioneersNorman Lee, hiswife Agnes andtheir son Daniel.All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online at www.abcbookworld.com“It seems to be the chance of a lifetimeto make a few dollars. I do not see muchchance to lose anything.”—NORMAN LEEThe Rancher Takes a HerdTHE INCREDIBLE BOVINEJOURNEY OF NORMAN LEE✍Norman Lee left behind a self-illustratedmanuscript, completed aroundthe turn of the century, based on journalnotes he had made while undertakinghis cattle drive in 1898.Nine years after Lee's death, EileenLaurie of CBC Radio in Vancouverarrived in Quesnel in June of 1948 toattend an art show—and began to hearstories about Lee's legendary cattle drive.She later interviewed Mrs. Agnes Lee ofHanceville, Norman Lee's widow, in1954 in conjunction with a provincewideprogram from Vancouver thatbroadcast authentic stories by B.C. pioneers.The following summer Laurie andher husband visited the Lee's log houseand store in the Chilcotin and read NormanLee's journal. She also came toknow Penrose Lee, Norman Lee'sbrother, who had been a rancher in theINDEX to AdvertisersAnvil Press...8Arsenal Pulp Press...26Banyen Books...40BC Book Prizes...35BC Civil Liberties...41Bolen Books...38Book Warehouse...7Caitlin Press...12Crown Publications...39Douglas & McIntyre...43Douglas College/EVENT...40Douglas College / SummerInstitute in Historical Fiction...41Ekstasis Editions...36Ellis, David...41First Choice Books...42Friesens Printers...42Granville Island Publishing...42Hedgerow Press...30Harbour Publishing...44HarperCollins...8Heritage House...14Hignell Printing...42Houghton Boston...41Julian, Terry...41Leamcom Press...41McClelland & Stewart...4Multicultural Books...41Morriss Printing...42New Star Books...30, 40Northstone...12Oolichan Books...26Orca Books...24People’s Co-op Books...41Playwrights Canada Press...30Printorium...41Propp, Dan...30Raincoast Books...3Random House...16Ripple Effect Press...19Chilcotin for more than 50 years, arrivingtwo years after his brother. Lauriereceived permission from Lee’s widow toread excerpts on her CBC program PartyLine and agreed to serve as her agent.Months after being presented toPrincess Margaret in WilliamsLake during the town's Centennial festivities,Agnes Lee died at age 87 in Decemberof 1958, having never realizedher ambition to have her husband’s journalpublished.Soon afterwards the wife of Vancouverbook designer and publisherRobert R. Reid heard Eileen Laurieread excerpts of Lee's journal on theCBC, whereupon Reid approachedHoward Mitchell of Mitchell Presswith a proposal to co-publish KlondikeCattle Drive with an introduction bySFU English professor Gordon R.Elliott, who grew up in Williams Lakeand had visited the Lee’sranch in the summerswith other boys.“I was also one of those kids,” Elliottrecalled in 2005, “who happily read thebooks Mr. Lee pressed us to read andone of those kids to whom he talked soeasily and grammatically that none of ushave ever forgotten him.”Elliott described Lee as a small, athleticman with a kind heart and a wrysense of humour, a thinker ahead of histimes, unusual for his “racial tolerance.”Klondike Cattle Drive: The Journalof Norman Lee (Mitchell Press, 1960),republished in 1991, and again in 2005,is the fourth title in TouchWood Editions’Classics West Collection, $12.95.FOR YOUR EYES ONLYCOMING NEXT ISSUE…1894898141Having served for five years as the refereefor an annual contest that chooses the bestCanadian first novel or fiction collection bya new writer, W.P. Kinsella answersour questions as to what heck goes on inthe fiction judging game. Is it wise to becynical? Is geography really your destiny?Should all storytellers move to Toronto?Ronsdale Press...10Royal BC Museum...12Save-On Foods...38Self-Counsel...17SFU Writing & Publishing...36Sidney Booktown...30Sono Nis Press...18Talonbooks...11Temeron Books...30Terasen...2Thomas Allen Publishers...12Thomson, Ann...41Transcontinental Printing...42UBC Press...20University of Alberta Press...30Vancouver Desktop...41Woewoda, James C....41Yoka’s Coffee...39TO ADVERTISE CALL604-736-4011

FICTION16 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006Just as William Gibsonbecame the darling ofrock stars and Hollywoodduring the nineties,ex-VancouveriteSean Stewartis positioned to be theflavour-of-the-decadein Hollywood’s newfictional realm thatmerges science fictionand virtual storytelling.Born in Lubbock, Texas(“the buckle of the BibleBelt”) on June 2,1965, Sean Stewart movedto a fatherless home in Edmontonat age three. Introverted,without siblings, he says he had“an unremarkable childhood ofroughly the usual length.”Stewart graduated from reading TheHobbit at age seven to a broad appetitefor serious fiction (Jane Austen,James Joyce, WilliamFaulkner) and a passion for highschool fencing. Then came girls andtheatre.“From my drama teacher I gainedmany valuable insights, such as the factthat if you salt the donuts at your concessionstand, those who purchase betweenthe first act and the second willbe back for a pop between the secondand third.”Still not setting the world or his hairon fire, Stewart graduated from the Englishprogram at the University of Alberta,married his high school sweetheart “andput in the requisite years of writing verybadly and getting rejected, followed bythe requisite years of writing half-decentlyand continuing to be rejected.”He worked at a variety of jobs (roofer,busboy, computer specialist), wrote interactivefantasy games and moved toVancouver where he worked for theVancouver Cultural Alliance.Stewart eventually published the fifthnovel he had written, Passion Play(Beach Holme/Tesseract, 1992), endorsedby William Gibson.Passion Play received the 1992 AuroraAward for best Canadian SF novelSEAN’SPENin English as well as an Arthur Ellis gaming mysteries, working with programmersfrom Microsoft’s Entertain-Crime Writers Award for debut fiction,but his big break came from White ment Business Unit.Dwarf Books. The owners of Vancouver’sleading SF store urged the local sales hype the Steven Spielberg movieBorn as a marketing campaign torepresentative for Ace Books to read PassionPlay.collaboratively-produced Alternate Re-A.I. (Artificial Intelligence), Stewart’sA copy reached Ace Books senior ality Game was dubbed The Beast becausethe first draft of an ‘art asset’ listeditor Susan Allison and soon PassionPlay appeared from a major U.S. came to 666 items.publishing outlet in 1994. It has been “The game was freaking pastiche Armageddon,”Stewart has written on hisfollowed by a fantasy novel Nobody’s Son(Maxwell Macmillan, 1993) in which a website. “It started from a Spielbergvillage commoner breaks the centuriesoldGhostwood’s spell, wins the princess from a Brian Aldiss short story withscript inflected with Kubrick notionsfor his prize, and then his problems begin—plussix more novels.for God’s sake. Political tracts. Corpo-echoes of Dune and Clockwork Orange,That’s the end of Act One in Sean rate boasting. Sex-kitten catalogues. MysteriousOriental Gentlemen. WistfulStewart’s success story in progress.Stewart has since moved to midlife crises. Suicide notes. GibsonianMonterey, California where he has becomea rising star in the field of Internet “I stole or hot-wired or tweakedcyberpunk.upShakespeare and John Donneand Tim O’Brien, Ovid and IainBanks and Puccini andBladerunner. I wrote every genre characterever invented, I think—bountyhunters and kept women and a bad guymade of nightmares, religious zealotsand angry teenagers and streetwise hackers.”Among the computer-geek set, themaze-like mystery of widespread cluessupposedly became as popular as themovie A.I.This Internet project was followed bya new quest game in July of 2004 calledI Love Bees. Another Internet-dependentAlternate Reality Game (ARG), thistime Stewart helped design I Love Beesas an adjunct promotion for a new videogame called Halo 2.The Beast and I Love Bees have apparentlysucceeded where other on-linegames to promote other films (such asTim Burton’s Planet of the Apes,Swordfish and X-Men) have failed, generatingscads of chat groups and wouldbedetectives picking up messages indesignated phone booths around theworld.✍It’s possible ARGs are the fiction oftomorrow—already happening today.Meanwhile in Stewart’s latest novel,Perfect Circle (San Francisco: Small BeerPress $18), William “Dead” Kennedy hasproblems. He’s haunted by family, bydead people with unfinished business,and by those perfect pop songs that youcan’t get out of your head. He’s a 32-year-old Texan still in love with his exwife.He just lost his job at Pet-Co foreating cat food. His air-conditioning isbroken, there’s no good music on theradio, and he’s been dreaming aboutghost roads.The novel was shortlisted for thisyear’s Nebula Award. Perfect Circle 1931520119

ENVIRONMENT8 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006BUDDY, CAN YOUBY BEVERLY CRAMPPump down the volume, folks.Relocalize Now! suggests a completelynew way for society tooperate by ensuring our needs are metlocally.Its trio of authors, two of whom livein Vancouver, acknowledges change willrequire experimentation and time, andthat mistakes will be made along the way,but revising our consumerist lifestyle inNorth America is inevitable:“There are no perfect answers or solutionsto these problems, only responses,”they write. “Finding whatresponses might work for each individual’slocale will require a fantastic experiment,a post carbon experiment... we areworking to manifest dreams of an enjoyableand invigorating future thatseems about as remote and differentfrom our current existence as one couldimagine—a future without cheap oil andnatural gas, without limitless energy andgrowth and without huge corporations.”In a world where corporations controlmany of our provisioning choices,employing large numbers of people,these can be seen as incendiary words.Yet the authors say they are not political;they just don’t see a reasonable visionfor the future coming from thepolitical right or the political left.Regardless of one’s political orientation,Relocalize Now! calls for a radicalmakeover of society, including thebutchering of some sacred cows. Take,for example, the so-called free market:“It is important to note that thesenotions are human constructs:they are developed,rationalized, andpromulgated by people.Operating systems arenot divine truths cast instone that can never bealtered even though certainideas become so embeddedin commonbeliefs that they are regardedas undeniable reality.Such is the case withfree market economics.”In the authors’ bravenew and environmentallysustainable world, the futurewill be in the handsof clusters of self-governing,self-provisioningcommunities that are notJulian Darley,Celine Rich andDave Room havelinked more than50 “post carbonoutposts” aroundthe globe.SPARE A TURNIP?Rising gas pump prices affect more than a car trip.The cost of oil is factored into our food, furniture,appliances, clothing and just about everything elsethat needs to be trucked, shipped or flown.Relocalize Now! Getting Ready for Climate Changeand the End of Cheap Oil (New Society $21.95) byJulian Darley, David Room and Celine Rich is a forthcoming “postcarbonguide” that will outline ways people can create local money,energy and food systems to obviate our reliance on oil.completely isolationist. Where economicprojects require more resources than acommunity has, regional cooperationwill be required. In opposition to “thisglobal behemoth we have created,” therewill be far less material wealth. It has becomeimperative to “reduce and produce90 per cent less, then make the rest.”Like any screed that promotes radicalchange, Relocalize Now! containsmany new or not well-known terms:• peak oil (the high production pointafter which all future oil production willbegin decreasing and energy will getmore expensive)• parallel public infrastructure (a newprovisioning infrastructure that uses thelocal model and new forms of ownership,and is developed while the existing globalsystem is still operating)• community supported manufacturing(a partnership of mutual commitmentbetween the makers of life’s toolsand a community of supporters. Supporterscover the factory’s yearly operatingbudget by purchasing a share of theproduction. CSM members make a commitmentto support the factory throughoutthe year and assume the costs, risksand bounty of manufacturing along withthe factory workers).Strange new concepts for most peopleto be sure, but such ideas will givepeople something to think about whenwatching the price numbers tick overwhile refueling their cars at the gas sta-tion. The alternative—simply ponderingthe status quo—is a great deal less inspiring.“Oil and other forms of big energy,such as natural gas, nuclear, large hydroelectricitydams and coal, have enabledhumans to strip mine the earth,” writeDarley & Co. “We have managed toscrape the ocean bottom of fish, mowdown trees from the mountains and poisonthe biosphere with pollutants whileincreasing our numbers to six billion(and counting). Our massive use of fossilfuels cause the Earth’s temperaturesto rise and the beginning of climatechange like nothing we’ve known before.”And in the process, some executivesin Canada’s oil and gas capital, Calgary,will still tell you that petroleum use doesnot cause global warming. It wasn’t solong ago that tobacco companies deniedsmoking causes cancer, either.✍Julian Darley has a MSc in environmentand sociology from University ofSurrey, UK, which led to a publishedthesis examining the coverage of complexenvironmental issues in current affairsprogrammes at the BBC. He alsohas a MA in journalism and communicationsfrom the University of Texas.Celine Rich has a MA in design forthe environment from the Chelsea Collegeof Art and Design, England; a BAin fine arts from the Emily Carr Instituteof Art and Design, and a Certificateof Marketing from KwantlenCollege.Darley and Rich are a Vancouvercouple who have recentlyco-foundedthe Post Carbon Institute,an educationalthink tankthat explores thetheory and practicehow cultures, governanceand economieswill functionwithout (non-renewable)hydrocarbonsas energy and chemicalfeed-stocks.David Room hasa MA in engineeringeconomic systemsand a BSc in electricalengineering fromStanford University.0-86571-545-9Beverly Cramp is afreelance writer whoedits the MusqueamNewsletter.

16 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006NOW IN PAPERBACKThe NATIONAL BESTSELLER and WINNER of theGOVERNOR GENERAL’S AWARD FOR NON-FICTIONTHEGOLDENSPRUCEPROFILEA FATHER’S HEROICSINSPIRE HORRORMEISTER SLADEAn attorney in more than 100 murder cases,Jay Clarke has also co-written eleven ‘psycho-thrillers’under the pseudonym MichaelSlade. In Swastika (Penguin $24), he huntsthrough the annals—and factories—of WorldWar II history to expose a Pentagon cover-up with links to rocketscientist Wernher von Braun.“A powerfulwork that willchange howmany peoplethink aboutnature.”—Sebastian JungerFor 300 years, a mythical golden spruce on theQueen Charlotte Islands was sacred to the Haida,respected by loggers, protected by environmentalists,and loved by all who saw it.Then one man deliberately felled itand mysteriously disappeared.JOHN VAILLANT“[Like] Jon Krakauer and Sebastian Junger,Vaillant deftly peels away the surface story toexplore the psychology below ... an intensemystery and a sweeping history ... a terrific read.”—National PostClarke’s new thriller is directlyinspired by the WWIIarchives of his father, Jack“Johnny” Clarke, an artistwho volunteered for theRAF in September of 1940.He flew 47 combat missionsagainst the Third Reichand participated in the Battleof El Alamein.Jay ClarkeClarke links his father’s warrecord (which he says he found behinda false wall in his mother’s linen closet in2003) to a delusional killer named TheAryan who arrives on the West Coastand heads to Barkerville in search of Hitler’sgold.“What is it about the Cariboo thatappeals to the Germanic mind?” Sladewrites. “Are the mountains evocative ofthe Bavarian Alps? Are thethickets reminiscent of how theBlack Forest used to feel? Is itthe sense of Lebensraum in itswide-open spaces, the yearningfor elbow room that drove theNazis to invade Russia?Whatever it is, German accentsare everywhere in theCariboo today, and that madethe Aryan just one amongmany.”As for using Swastika to link the German-born‘American’ scientist Wernhervon Braun to Hitler’s war crimes involvingslave labour, Jay Clarke claims, “VonBraun’s war record was ‘inconvenient’for the Pentagon’s post-war missile plans.So, to subvert the Nazi restrictions inProject Paperclip, he was slapped withmore whitewash than Tom Sawyer andhis dupes put on that fence.“By the time I was a kid inthe mid-1950s, you couldsit on the floor wearingyour Davy Crockettcoonskin cap and seevon Braun on Disney’sTV show.“His design for therocket ship inTomorrowland wasbased on his V-2. Bythe time he died anAmerican ‘hero’ inVINTAGE CANADA“Fascinating ... a grippingwilderness thriller ...Essential reading.”—The Georgia StraightA TRUE STORY OF MYTH,MADNESS AND GREEDFlight Lieutenant Jack“Johnny” Clarkedisappeared in anairplane crash duringJay Clarke’s youth

17 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006Take controlof your finances!Smoke & Mirrors:Financial Myths That Will RuinYour Retirement Dreams• Updated third edition!• Retire comfortably – it costsless than you think!• Stop making RRSP payments– pay down debt firstCanadianbest-seller!Swastika is an unusual Michael Slade novel because it alleges a Pentagoncover-up of SS Major Werner von Braun’s links to the deaths of 20,000prisoner-of-war slaves who died while the Nazis built V-2 rockets for Hitler.Von Braun is pictured on the cover of Time Magazine in 1958.The No Smoke & MirrorsWorkbookOvercome the FinancialMyths That Will Ruin YourRetirement Dreams• Based on the best-sellingbook• Plan your personalfinances according toDavid Trahair’s principles• Avoid common mythsand achieve yourfinancial goals1977, he’d been given a medal by PresidentFord...“During the Red Scare years after thewar, von Braun became essential toAmerica winning the arms race. So thePentagon brought its own iron curtaindown between Nordhausen—the overflowcamp—and the Dora Mittelbau V-2 factory tunnels, less than five miles tothe north. Dora was written out of history,and the cover-up persists today.”✍Jay Clarke, aka Michael Slade, can tracehis origins as a writer to his fascination withEC Comics in the mid-1950s—and theencouragement of bookseller Bill Duthie.“I was fascinated by the criminalmind,” he says. “First I drew comics, andthan I wrote a book, 13 Tombs, when Iwas thirteen.I typed it out in signatures andstitched them together like the guts of abook. From age ten I had haunted DuthieBooks, so I showed my work to BillDuthie and left it with him to read.Imagine how wowed I was when hegave it back to me a week later, boundin hardcover, with the title and my namein gilt on the spine. ‘Now you’re publishedin a limited edition of one,’ hesaid. ‘One day, I want to see your bookssold in my store.’”✍Born in Lethbridge in 1947, JayClarke specializes as a lawyer in cases forthe criminally insane. Most of his recentnovels are co-written with his daughterRebecca Clarke, who studied literatureand history at UBC. Their collaborationfor Bed of Nails (Penguin2003) marks a return to the landscapeof Slade’s second novel, Ghoul, selectedby the Horror Writers’ Association asone of the 40 top horror novels of alltime and named one of the best novelsby the A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers(Simon & Schuster, 1997) along withSilence of the Lambs and Psycho. In Bedof Nails, a local crazy called The Ripper—whobelieves he’s Jack the Ripper—plotsrevenge on Inspector ZincChandler. A car chase with guns blazingin Vancouver and a World HorrorConvention in Seattle lead the Mountieto a cannibal island climax in the SouthPacific, where Survivor is the game, andChandler is an unwilling contestant.Clarke is willing to consider his fascinationwith horror could be somewhatlinked with the disappearance of his father,a Trans-Canada Airlines pilot,whose flight from Vancouver to Calgaryin 1956 crashed into a mountain nearChilliwack during a storm, killing all 62people aboard. The plane went missingon December 9, 1956 and wasn’t founduntil May. “What you do is you plumbyour life,” he told the Georgia Straight’sSteve Newton in 2003, “and youcome up with whatever the scariestthings are. Now, I don’t know, maybeyour parents lost you in the woods.Maybe Uncle Charlie took you out andsexually assaulted you behind the woodpile.Maybe you drowned and had anear-death experience. It will be differentfor every single person, but there’llbe something in your life which youhave to carry with you, and you’ll carry[it] with you ’til the grave.”0-14-305325-6Divorce Dollars:Get Your Fair ShareFinancial planning before, during,and after divorce• Understand exactly howdivorce will affect youfinancially• Negotiate the settlementthat is right for you• Discover how to preserveyour securityPersonal Budgeting KitLearn to budget, save, and invest• Trim your spending painlessly• Understand where your cashgoes and how to keepmore of it• Set realistic financial goals –and achieve themAvailable in bookstores & online: www.self-counsel.com

FIRST NATIONS19 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006Yesterday & today: St. Mary’s residential school and November, 2005 newspaper headline.Unlucky 713Aboriginals constitute less than fourpercent of the population in B.C., andyet Aboriginal children constitute 40percent or more of the children instate care in western and northern Canada accordingto Christopher Walmsley in ProtectingAboriginal Children (UBC Press $85).Hence the recent furore over the unexamined deaths ofmore than 700 children in British Columbia—including 19-month-old Sherry Charlie of Port Alberni who was placedin a home where her uncle, who was known to be violent,beat her to death in 2002—has particular relevance to FirstNations communities.Based on his interviews with nineteen B.C. child protectionworkers, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, conductedin 1998-1999, Walmsley has examined the Aboriginal childprotection system in B.C., from residential schools in the 19 thcentury to foster homes in the 1990s.“Throughout its history, the residential school system waschronically under-funded and provided substandard education,housing, health care and child care,” he writes. Despitewidespread physical and sexual abuses, only one public inquiryinto residential school conditions in B.C. was undertakenprior to the 1980s—a coroner’s inquest after eight-year-oldDuncan Sticks ran away from the Williams Lake ResidentialSchool in 1902 and was found dead the next day.Allegations of state negligence since 2002 therefore have aChristopherWalmsley reprints achronological list of 16residential schools in B.C.and their years of operation:St. Mary’s Mission1863-1984;Coqualeetza (Sardis)1888-1941;Kamloops 1890-1978;Kuper Island (1890-1975);Kootenay (1890-1970);Port Simpson (1890-1948);Cariboo (1891-1981);Alberni (1891-1972);Kitamaat (1893-1941);Christie (1900-1983);St. George’s (1901-1978);Squamish (1902-1960);Ahousaht (1904-1939);Sechelt (1905-1975);Lejac (1910-1976);Alert Bay (1929-1975).disturbing backdrop of systemic abuse and irresponsibility.Walmsley, who joined the staff of the School of Social Workand Human Service at Thompson Rivers University in 1996,emphasizes that considerable progress was made in the 1990safter public attention was focussed on the death of five-yearoldMatthew Vaudreuil, a ward of the Ministry of SocialServices throughout his short life.The resultant Gove Report, issued in November of 1995during the tenure of Joy MacPhail as NDP provincialMinister of Social Services, led to new legislation such as theChild, Youth and Family Advocacy Act to ensure an independentsystem of advocacy for children.With Aboriginals constituting 35 percent of the childrenin B.C. government care in 1997, plans were made to generatea special advocate for Aboriginal services, but the advocacyoffice was eliminated and its legislation repealed with theelection of a Liberal government in 2001.In conducting his panoramic examination of contemporarysocial work in the field of Aboriginal child protection,Walmsley was not able to find a male Aboriginal child protectionpractitioner with a social work degree. 0-7748-1171-4✍“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” saidSamuel Johnson. As an education faculty member atYork University, Celia Haig-Brown has co-edited WithGood Intentions: Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal Relationsin Colonial Canada (UBC Press $85), an examination of whitessuch as James Teit who recognized colonial injustice andresponded in constructive ways during the 19th century andthe first two decades of the 20th century. 0774811374ALSO NEWNuu-chah-nulth ethnographer RonHamilton contributed the introduction and14 drawings to the first, cooperatively writtenproduct of the Barkley Sound LanguageDevelopment Project, the Nuu-chah-nulthPhrase Book & Dictionary: Barkley SoundDialect (Bamfield: Barkley Sound DialectWorking Group, $15.95), designed andtypeset by Maggie Paquet of PortAlberni. The Language Development Teamof Hilda Nookemis, Deborah Cookand Denny Durocher worked for 18months with representatives from the Huuay-aht,Ucluelet, Toquaht and UchucklesahtFirst Nations to produce the 192-page,pocket-sized book in an effort to revive ararely spoken language. 0-9735641-0-5✍Long active in the indigenous peoples’ rightsmovement, Jeannette Armstrongparticipated in the Opening Plenary of theThird World Water Forum at the KyotoConference organized by the United NationsEducational, Scientific and CulturalOrganization in March of 2003. Firstpublished on UNESCO Canada’s website,her water poem for that conference, ‘Wateris Siwlkw,’ has been republished at theoutset of Sky Woman: IndigenousWomen Who Have Shaped, Moved orInspired Us (Theytus $24.95), an anthologyof writing and art edited by SandraLaronde. 1-894778-19-7Cover art for Sky Woman byMaya Christina GonzalezWordscapes:British Columbia Youth Writing Anthology 2006Wordscapes features a diverse mix of poetry, short stories,essays and artwork by some of British Columbia’s bestyouth authors and artists.Young Adult, ISBN: 1-894735-10-2192 pages, trade paper, 5 1/4” x 8 1/4”$15.00 Available now.Wordscapes includes all the winners from Ripple Effect’sannual B.C. Provincial High School Writing and DesignContest. 48 students from across B.C. share $8000 andpublication in the annual Wordscapes anthology. Thisyear’s contest deadline is May 31st, 2006.For contest guidelines and how to order Wordscapes pastand present, visit:www.rippleeffect.caRipple Effect Arts and Literature Societyand BOOKtopiapresent the Wordscapes 2006 Launch PartyFeaturing readings by Wordscpapes 2006 authors,youth art gallery, dee-jay, and free refreshments.7:00 pm, Friday, April 28th, 2006.West Vancouver Memorial Library1950 Marine Drive, West VancouverFree admission.For more information, contact us at:info@rippleeffect.caRipple Effect: 604-879-7327BOOKtopia: 604-925-7408

20 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006LETTERSBible thumpingMy hobby is picking up old books atgarage sales and library book sales. B.C.BookWorld has been my Bible for 18years. I really like the BC Classics section.M. Wylie Blanchet’s Curve of Timewas number three [BCBW Winter2005] and Andrew Roddan’s God in theJungle was number two. But what wasnumber one?Bud MacleodSunshine Coast[First in the series was Simon PeterGunanoot: Trap-Line Outlaw by DavidRicardo Williams. That article is storedat www.abcbookworld.com. Just enter:David Williams.]Breakfast of championsThank youfor Sara Cassidy’sinsightful andsensitive interviewabout PeterSuch’s novelEarthbaby[BCBW Autumn2005).Just one tiny correction: Not only is ourB&B, Earle Clarke House, not closed,we have just been voted #3 “Best Breakfastin Canada” by Arrington’s InnTraveler, the Bible of the B&B industry.Joyce KlineVictoriaStraight talk on CurvePeter Such &Joyce KlineGreetings from history-phobic Richmondwhere in Steveston many FirstNation sites have allegedly been destroyedin the last few years (i.e. developmentof the packers’ site and a chief’shome site near Garry Point Park).Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet[BCBW Winter 2005] describes plunderingFirst Nations sites as they sail for15 summers, dreamingly collecting artifacts.There is an inference that this wasokay because it was a different, innocenttime. But how would they [the Blanchetfamily] react if their ancestors’ grave siteswere plundered?Many people and government policiesare still oblivious to other cultures, past andpresent. Artifact hunting isdestroying human history, sometimes whilemaking money. Modern plunder has notchanged much since the ‘50s. There aremany examples: Local building codes haveallowed a new home to be built on or nextto an old midden at the end of Lyall Harbouron Saturna Island as millions are beingspent by the federal government tocreate park land for new occupiers.Paul BruhnRichmondChomsky at the bitThat article on the Allen Bell/NoamChomsky book [BCBW Autumn 2005]is truly amazing and I just see people allover the place reading it. It has been afantastic way to get Chomsky’s words outinto the public sphere much more sothan the book itself.Lynda GammonVictoriaLetters or emails contact:BC BookWorld, 3516 W. 13th Ave.,Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3email: bookworld@telus.netLetters may be edited for clarity & length.

FICTION & THEATRE15 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006Red light district novelist hits green lightsBy writing nightmarish tales of Bombay, Anosh Irani is living the Canadian dreamIn October of 2003, the Arts Club of Vancouverproduced Anosh Irani’s first full-lengthplay, The Matka King, a darkly comic tale abouta witty eunuch who operates a Bombay brotheland keeps his severed penis in a jar.Five months later, in Irani’s debut novel, The Cripple andHis Talismans (Raincoast $29.95), a detestable and unnamednarrator went searching for his severed limb after waking in aBombay hospital to discover his left arm was inexplicably missing.He proceeds to carry a leper’s finger through a dizzying,absurdist and deeply commercial world of lepers and cockroaches,peacocks and prostitution, rainbows inside whiskeybottles and chickens that practice black magic.“The novel’s restless vision of Bombay,” commented onedazed but impressed reviewer, “occasionally feels like a motorcycletour of the Louvre.”Having had another play, Bombay Black, open in Torontoat Cahoots Theatre in January, Anosh Irani has now releasedhis second novel about a nightmarish quest, The Song ofKahunsha (Doubleday $29.95), in which a ten-year-oldboy runs away from an orphanage, hoping to find hisfather.While dreaming of an idyllic paradise he callsKahunsha, “the city of no sadness,” this youngseeker named Chamdi befriends a brother andsister who are beggars.Amid Bombay’s 1993 religious riots, in which2,000 people were killed, their plan to rob aHindi temple literally explodes in their faces.“One day, all sadness will die,” Chamdiwhispers to Guddi, “and Kahunsha willbe born.”Before that can happen, Guddi’s brother will die in streetviolence, Chamdi will have to outwit a deadly crime boss tosave Guddi’s life, and the crime boss will order Chamdi tocut out his own tongue.As Irani once told Georgia Straight threatre critic ColinThomas, “If we are lucky enough to live in a place likeVancouver, we sometimes forget that there are people whoare living in hell.”Irani has once more invented a spiritually wounded protagonistwho carries a talisman—only this time it’s the bloodstainedcloth that swaddled him as a baby.The Song of Kahunsha is another literally fabulous taleabout finding God; a fable about self-completion that evokesthe precious need for love in a labyrinth of sorrow and cruelty.Far from bleak, this Oliver Twist Goes To India culminatesin tenderness and hope. About the only things to criticizeare the huge margins and overall layout that have inflated a200-page book to 300 pages.✍Born in Bombay, Anosh Irani was raised as a Zoroastriannear Bombay’s red light district. As an only child in a Parsicolony, separated from both Hindus and Muslims, he usedto tell stories to his pet cockatoo, Polly.Having worked as a dancer and advertisingcopy editor, Irani moved to Vancouverwith several friends in 1998.After attending Capilano College,he read unsolicited scripts for ArtsClub Artistic Director BillMillerd, who became hisplaywriting mentor.At age 29, while Irani was enrolledin UBC’s Creative Writingprogram, he became a Canadiancitizen.“I had always heard of anAmerican dream,” he wrote inthe Globe & Mail. “Theone that Canada offersis better.”Cripple 1 55192-651-2;Kahunsha 0-385-66228-9Anosh Iranigot his start withBill Millerd at theArts Club Theatre.TUSHNA SHROFF PHOTOJanet Michael and Lisa Dahling await Prime MinisterLaurier in the Belfry Theatre production of ErnestineShuswap Gets Her Trout, by Tomson Highway, 2005.Tomson Highwayon the Thompson RiverCommissioned by Western CanadaTheatre and the SecwepemcCultural Education Society,Tomson Highway’s play ErnestineShuswap Gets Her Trout (Talonbooks $15.95)is set in Kamloops during the visit of PrimeMinister Sir Wilfrid Laurier to the ThompsonRiver Valley in August of 1910. The centralcharacters are four women, representing the fourseasons, preparing a feast for Laurier’s visit.Highway came to Kamloops to help producethe cabaret-style play with an Aboriginal cast in2004. It was also the subject of an hour-longBravo! television documentary,Tomson HighwayGets His Trout, from Getaway Films, directedby Tom Shandel, who describes Highway’swriting as “at once light-hearted burlesque andangry agitprop.”Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout wasproduced to mark theimportance of atreatise written in1910 by JamesTeit, on behalf of 14chiefs of theThompson Riverbasin, to assert theircollective rights toland and resources.Written in theTomson Highwayspirit of Shuswap, a“Trickster language,”Ernestine Shuswap has production notes thatadvise, “Think of the exercise as just a bunch ofkids, the kind you were when you were five yearsold, playing in and with a chest filled with oldclothes and objects. . . .”To make clear his feelings on the issue of“Aborginals Only” theatre (ie. only Aboriginalsshould depict Aboriginal characters), Highwayhas pleaded “in my Cree heart of hearts” for anend to political correctness, if, for no otherreason, than it will enable him to have his playsproduced more often.✍The eleventh of twelve children, TomsonHighway was born in a tent near Maria Lake,near Brochet, Manitoba, in 1951. After six yearsin his nomadic Cree family, he attended aresidential school in The Pas where hisintroduction to music escalated into ambitionsto become a concert pianist.Twice a recipient of the Dora Mavor MooreAward, Highway is Canada’s best-knownAboriginal playwright and the first Aboriginalwriter to receive the Order of Canada.0-88922-525-7

INTERVIEWDON’T KILL THE UMPWhen it comes to the game of picking winners and losers in the field of fiction, W.P. Kinsella has had his innings.Retired novelist and full-timeScrabble whiz W.P. (Bill) Kinsellalives just above the Fraser Riverin Yale, B.C. with his partnerBarbara Turner-Kinsella.For five straight years, W.P. Kinsella,the outspoken author of Shoeless Joe (aka Field of Dreams, the movie) has adjudicatedall rookie novelists from sea to sea to sea for the Amazon/Books In CanadaFirst Novel Contest. “I haven’t seen any Fifth Businesses or Stone Angels,” he says,“but previous winner Martin Sloane by Michael Redhill is world class, as is this year’sThree Day Road by Joseph Boyden which was passed over for both the Giller andthe GGs.”There are two main national awards for fiction in Canada—the venerable GovernorGeneral’s Awards and the swanky, Toronto-centric Giller Prize. Kinsella—whonever received either—views the Governor General’s Awards as “a farce” but suggests,“until this year the Giller people have shown uncommon good judgment inpicking winners.”Now that Bill Kinsella is opting out of his gatekeeper job for the First Novel Contest,we thought some questions might be in order about the state of fiction in Canada.BCBW: On a provincial basis, wherehave most of the new novelists in Englishcome from?KINSELLA: Over five years Ontariowriters produced 46% of the first novelssubmitted to the contest, followed byB.C. with 19%, Alberta with 10% andNewfoundland with 8%.BCBW: What’s the average age of firsttimenovelists in Canada?KINSELLA: I’d say it’s late 30s.BCBW: Has the gender ratio for novelistschanged since you published yourfirst fiction book in 1977?KINSELLA: The female-to-male ratioof published novelists has increased.The novels I’ve read in the past five yearswere equally divided 50/50.BCBW: Does the old maxim ‘Writeabout what you know’ still apply?KINSELLA: I don’t think ‘Writeabout what you know’ has ever applied.The best novels are works of imagination,the worst are full of autobiography.✍BCBW: Do you sometimes ask yourselfif there are too many books?KINSELLA: I think there have alwaysbeen too many books. Unpublished writersmay whine otherwise, but nothing,absolutely nothing even remotely goodgoes unpublished.Literally hundreds of books both fictionand non-fiction are published eachyear that should never see the light ofday, are read by virtually no one, andwould never be missed had they notbeen published.BCBW: The pop music industry hasbeen ruined by the music video. Do youdetect any corresponding trend towardspublishing novelists who ‘look good’rather than write well?KINSELLA: I don’t see any correlation.If looking good meant anythingthere would be far more well-designedcovers. There are only two or three goodcovers a season, the rest often appear tobe designed by artsy-craftsy incompetentswho have no knowledge of lettering, andprobably just got their first computer.BCBW: Are the first novels from largerpublishing houses any better, or different,than the first novels from smallerpublishing houses?KINSELLA: I’d say the novels I seefrom Knopf Canada, Random Houseand Doubleday are usually quality ones.They are more consistent in quality than[ones from] the smaller publishers, possiblybecause they have money for bettereditors and proofreaders.BCBW: If you were writing a first noveltoday, what small press would you sendit to?KINSELLA: I would go with GreatPlains Publications, a relatively new firmout of Winnipeg. Their books are allbeautiful and they give the impressionthat they really care about their product.BCBW: And what large press wouldyou send it to?KINSELLA: I’d first try KnopfCanada.BCBW: Can you explain to me howanyone writing or talking in Canada canpronounce, with complete confidence,that the novel they have just read is somehowthe ‘best’ novel of the year whenthat person has likely read less than 10%of the novels published?KINSELLA: Something like that isa judgment call. What it means is thatthe novel compares favorably with manyexcellent novels of the recent past, thereforeit must be one of the best of thecurrent crop.BCBW: You’ve already cited SusanJuby as a ‘writer to watch.’ What otheremerging first novelists have impressedyou?KINSELLA: The first year I pickedthe short list I was very disappointed thatLydia Kwa’s beautifully poetic yet tough-TWIGG PHOTOas-nails story of lesbian love and sacrifice,This Place Called Absence, did notwin. I felt it was the best novel of thatyear by a wide margin.I very much like Open Arms by MarinaEndicott, Blue Becomes You byBettina von Kampen, The Beautiful DeadEnd by Clint Hutuzlak, and Stay byAislin Hunter. These people are very talentedand could become major playersin Can-Lit.However, my favorite first novel ofall time was a runner-up in 1976 tosomething long forgotten, The True Storyof Ida Johnson by Sharon Riis. It wassummed up by Margaret Atwood as “...a flatfooted waitress caught in the eerielight of the Last Judgment.” It is a novelI re-read several times a year, always findingsomething new.✍BCBW: Do you sometimes think weshould place a moratorium on publishingnovelists under age 35?KINSELLA: Definitely. It got so badthat for a couple of years I added myown Bottom Drawer Award for novelswhose manuscripts should have remainedin the bottom drawer with orangepeels, cracker crumbs and condomwrappers.The worst offenders are the publisherstrying to qualify for future grants bypublishing a certain number of bookseach year. They end up publishing anythingwith a pulse.BCBW: So should everyone attendingCreative Writing courses be encouragedto get jobs delivering pizzas instead?KINSELLA: No. I’m a graduate ofthe University of Victoria Writing Departmentand the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.When I went to UVic I was like abaseball pitcher with a wonderful fastballwho threw every third pitch into thestands. Bill Valgardson, Robin Skelton,Lawrence Russell and Derk Wynandcoached me until I was publishing regularlyby the time I graduated.Iowa gave me two years of freedomto write, and I was beginning Shoeless Joewhen I received my MFA. Only one ortwo bad novels came from graduates ofwriting programs, while several verygood ones emerged, especially from theUBC Writing program, which has aphenomenal rate of published novelists.It has always been that in a class of15 writing students, on average only onewill ever achieve any success. I do thinkWriting Departments should be morediligent in weeding out the obvious nonperformers,but the problem is age-old;the departments get paid by the student,so anyone with diligence and a smatteringof ability can get a degree, which ultimatelycheapens the degrees of thetalented writers.That was my chief complaint withIowa where I saw students use the same60-page, unrevised manuscript they usedto gain entry to the workshop as theirGraduate Thesis Project.

9 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006FEATURE REVIEWBY MICHAEL M’ GONIGLEPARIS IN BURNABYLooking back at an angry campusThe scene is unimaginabletoday—900 studentsgathered in theSimon Fraser Universitymall with revolution ontheir minds. And willing to dosomething about it.But as recounted in HughJohnston’s period history, RadicalCampus: Making Simon Fraser University(D&M $45), that was part of normallife in 1968. It was the age of protestand, in June of that year, SFU’s counter-culturalismculminated with a massdemonstration of students to demandthe resignations of the university’s presidentand board.The goal of these students is equallyunimaginable today as were their tactics—auniversity led by its faculty andstudents.Three weeks earlier, students in Parishad launched their now famous Mayuprising that brought the city and thegovernment of Charles de Gaulleto a standstill. Around the world andatop Burnaby Mountain, there was realexcitement about what was possible.As Johnston tells it, an older student,“a mother of five,” incited the SFUcrowd with a loaded question: did theywant “another Paris?”The roar came back: “Yes!”Right from its title, Radical Campusis both disapproving of this history, andproud of it. Johnston’s conflicted stanceis not surprising. This lengthy and detailedtome is really an unofficial biographyof Simon Fraser University. Andit is a fitting tribute, even in its ambivalence.Along the way Johnston has an eyefor the telling vignette. He recalls, forinstance, the graduation ceremony fordoctoral candidate and student activist,Jim Harding. As he received his diploma,Harding, a co-founder of theSDU (Students for a Democratic University),surprised the crusty SFU chancellorGordon Shrum by kissingShrum’s shoe.This was no act of gratitude: Hardinglater explained he had learned at universityto kiss the boots of the authorities.✍Setting up an “instant university” wasthe whim of Premier W.A.C.(Wacky) Bennett in 1963. B.C.’slong-serving province-builder, Bennetthad a penchant for mega-projects, fromdams to highways to universities. Andhe liked to get his way. His designate forthe SFU job was the equally colourful,and determined, Gordon Shrum, aUBC physics professor turned politician.It started with a big architecturalcompetition that led to the classicalmountaintop design of architectsArthur Erickson and GeoffMassey. But this vision of a whole universityhewn out of the forest had to bedelivered in short order. Despite the visionarydesign, no one had a plan—justan impossible schedule. Between theconception and the execution, the decadequickly awoke from the lingeringsomnambulance of the 50s into the raucousmarches of the mid and late 60s.Vietnam and anti-war demos. KenKesey and the cross-continental acidtrip. Janis Joplin and theBeatles. Peace and love, riot policeand tear gas.Although Johnston does not muchexplore the larger context, SFU was partof the biggest building boom in the historyof universities. Across NorthAmerica and Europe, new suburbanuniversities drove an expansion in highereducation.York and Trent, Calgary and theUniversity of Victoria—all were foundedin the same era. What happened in thoseyears laid the foundation for what becametoday’s knowledge economy.Though it still escapes notice today, theresult was the creation of a “higher educationindustry” on a grand scale.What that new industry would looklike was really what was at stake duringSFU’s infancy. continued on page 10Jim Harding:the man whokissed GordonShrum’s shoes.

HISTORY13 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006Next time you stroll or cycleWWHOInear the totem poles atBrockton Point, keep aneye out for a lone lilacHOIbeside the Stanley Parkshoreline. Spare a thought forMartha Smith, the young& HOI POLOIbride just out of residentialschool who planted the shrub ather new home morethan 100 years ago.Jean Barman recalls shameful evictions of pioneer familiesMartha Smith’s home has been longforgottenuntil the release of JeanBarman’s Stanley Park’s Secret: TheForgotten Families of Whoi Whoi,Kanaka Ranch and Brockton Point(Harbour $36.95), a “pre-history” of oneof North America’s most famousparks.The area now known as Stanley Parkwas inhabited for thousands of years,and logged extensively, before the Dominiongovernment created Stanley Parkwith the strokeof a pen in1888. Barmanhas skillfully retrievedthe collectivehistory ofthe First NationsMARK FORSYTHE and hybridfamilies whowere evicted from their homes by governmentofficialdom.It took until 1958 for the last memberof these many families to be forcedout. It took another 46 years for theircollective story to be told.✍Two years ago I invited Jean Barmanto be a guest on Almanac to learn moreabout the pioneer Joe Silvey, centralcharacter in her book, The RemarkableAdventures of Portuguese Joe Silvey.Among other subjects, we discussed howSilvey and his Aboriginal wifeKwahama Kwatleematt hadlived with the Squamish people inStanley Park.“People remember Gassy JackDayton,” Barman told me, “in part, becausehe was British and English andmore like us, whereas Portuguese Joe wasa fisherman. He was from Portugal andlived on the edge of the water in the peninsulathat would become Stanley Park.”Afterwards, Barman received a telephonecall from a listener whose familyhad also lived in the park. This led to ameeting between Barman and the caller’smother, Olive O’Connor, a residentof the Fraser Valley.“She worked very hard during a wonderfulafternoon,” Barman says, “to persuademe to write about the families inStanley Park. She was descended fromthe families that lived at Kanaka Ranch,just outside today’s park at the foot ofDenman Street, and also from theBrokcton Point families."Of the Brockton Point families, only the Gonsalves children Matilda, age 16 and Elizabeth, age 14escaped the residential school system.Drawing on family stories, numerousphotographs, notes from Vancouver’sfirst archivist Major J.S.Matthews, and various court documents,Barman proceeded to cast lighton the communities that disappearedinto the park’s shadows.✍Both Squamish and Musqueam livedon the site for thousands of years, buttheir middens were dug up and hauledaway to build the first road around thepark. At least eight First Nations settle-Residents of Stanley Park always got mail despite their controversial status.ments existed on the peninsula, the mostrecent at Whoi Whoi (near present-dayLumberman’s Arch) and nearbyChaytoos. They didn’t stand a chanceagainst the colonial imperative.“Even before the park is created,”Barman says, “there was a Reserve Commissionthat went around laying out reserves,and for reasons I think are veryinappropriate, the families at WhoiWhoi and Chaytoos were denied reservesat that point, and thereafter theywere treated as squatters.”Kanaka Ranchwas perched nearthe water on presentday Denman Street,occupied by Hawaiianswho mostly hadSquamish wives.Brockton Point washome to a mixedpopulation, mostlymen from theAzores (like Silvey)and Scotland who’dLETTER COURTESY OF KEAMO FAMILYPHOTO COURTESY OF LLEWELLYN DUNCANcome to mine gold. They returned tofishing and took Squamish wives, raisingtheir families in the park.“They were very much working men,contributing to the economy,” says Barman.“Three generations later, they wereliving very enterprising, worthwhile lives.But they were inter-racial, between societies,and so people didn’t know quitewhat to make of them.”The courts eventuallypushed everyone out. Itwas a drawn-out process.In 1923, for example,the City of Vancouverlaunched a suit againstMariah Kulkalemand eight heads of remainingfamilies at Brockton Point, demandingthey prove they had title to theland. This step was taken to enable thegovernment to evict the families withoutproviding any compensation for theloss of their homes.The trial of 1923 was well-coveredin the newspapers. ThomasAbraham gave his testimony in “aSquamish dialect” and reportedlystamped his umbrella stick on the floorof the witness box to make his point. Hispicture appeared under a headline, “SoOld He Forgets When He Was Born.”But the decision against the alleged“squatters” was a foregone conclusion.Barman has gained a firm grasp ofthe prejudices that were entailed, andshe has documented the injustices, buther book concentrates on celebratingindividuals such as August JackKhatsahlano, WilliamNahanee (who shared his family historywith Major Matthews), theGonsalves family, Tim Cummings(the final resident of Stanley Park) andtheir descendants such as Rose ColeYelton.Martha Smith’s Brockton Point lilacwill still push out blossoms this spring.Mark Forsythe is the host ofAlmanac on CBC radio.Martha Smith in front of her Stanley Parkhome around the time of the 1923 trial.1-55017-346-4PHOTO COURTESY OF HERBERT SMITH

eviews32 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006CHIWID’SWILDERNESSChilcotin: Preserving Pioneer Memoriesby The Witte Sisters (Heritage $39.95)Never mind ArthurErickson’s SFU, theMarine Building or theBowMac sign. The top engineeringfeat of B.C. is either MungoMartin’s 39-metre totem in BeaconHill Park or Rudy Johnson’sbridge, erected without governmentsupport in 1968.Rudy Johnson purchased the200-ton, 300-ft.-long steel bridgein Alaska and re-assembled itacross the Fraser River, with thehelp of engineer Howard Elder,in six months for only $200,000.It allowed him to cut 30 milesoff his trips between his BuckskinRanch and Williams Lake.Johnson is one of countlessdo-it-yourselfers featured inChilcotin: Preserving Pioneer Memories,a 432-page Who Was Whothat was assembled, as much aswritten, by the three ChilcotinbornWitte sisters—Veera, Ireneand Hazel—all raised at BigCreek.Eric Collier, author of thebackwoods classic, Three Againstthe Wilderness, is one of the fewcharacters in Preserving PioneerMemories who might be recogniz-JEWISH ROOTS UNVEILEDAccording to Cyril Leonoff in Pioneer Jews of BritishColumbia, the first Jews known to have reached VancouverIsland were adventurers of Polish, Prussian and Germanicorigin, stirred by gold fever in 1858.The earliest Jewish organization in Western Canada, the FirstHebrew Victoria Benevolent Society, was formed in 1859; andthe first Jewish burial ground (still in use today) was consecratedin 1860.By the time Moldavian-born Israel Joseph Benjaminpassed through Victoria in February of 1861, Victoria boasted2,500 white inhabitants, 5,000 Indians and one synagogue. Thewandering scholar and historian observed, “The beginnings ofthe city of Victoria are really due to the Jews. For, no matterhow many persons streamed to the island at the outbreakof the gold-fever, they scattered again, for the most part,to all corners of the world when their disillusion followedonly too quickly.“The Jews, however, held their ground, set uptents for residence and booths for shops; for theysoon realized that this place had a great commercialfuture. This was to be deduced,easily enough, from the situation of theisland, which lies between the Sandwich(Hawaiian) Islands, Californiaand China.”Having studied Jews around theglobe, including Africa, the worldlywiseBenjamin judged gold fever tobe pernicious, and warned againstrampant materialism. Two years laterthere were 119 Jewish families in Victoria,totalling 242 people.Pioneer Jews records:• The first meeting of the nascentJewish community occurred in thedrygoods store of Kady Gambitz inChiwid: rumoured to have spiritual powers & lived life mostly outdoorsable to urbanites, but unfortunatelyhis entry remains slight.The Witte sisters’ research fortheir original 1995 collection ofprofiles has yet to be updatedor revised.The Witte sisters recall thefirst white woman in theChilcotin, Nellie Hance, whoPioneer Jews of British Columbia by Cyril Leonoff, Geoffrey Castle, Sarah H. Tobe,Christopher J.P. Hanna, Leopold Levy (Jewish Historical Society $20)London-born HenryNathan Jr. became thefirst Jew elected to theHouse of Commons whenBritish Columbia joinedConfederation in 1871.rode side-saddle for 400 miles toget there in 1887, and the moreremarkable loner Chiwid, aChilcotin Aboriginal womanwho lived outdoors for much ofher adult life. Rumoured tohave spiritual powers, Chiwid(also Chee-Wit, or“Chickadee,”) was a crack shotwho moved her solitary campaccording to the seasons, protectedonly by a tarp.Born as Lily Skinner, she wasthe daughter of Luzep, aChilcotin deaf mute fromRedstone, and Charley Skinner,a white settler in the Tatlayoko-Eagle Lake area. Chiwid marriedAlex Jack and they hadthree daughters, but her lifechanged irrevocably when hebeat her mercilessly with a heavychain.Remorseful, Chiwid’s husbanddrove several head of cattleto Chezacut and sold themto Charlie Mulvahill to raisemoney to send his beautiful wifeto Vancouver for treatment, butthereafter Chiwid left her husbandin order to roam theChilcotin, from Anahim Lake toRiske Creek, sometimes with anold horse and a dog. Many peoplein the Chilcotin tried to assisther, offering firewood, foodor clothes, but Chiwid maintainedher independence, fearingshe would become sick if sheremained too long indoors.Ill, aged and blind, Chiwidspent her final years in the StoneCreek Reserve home of KatieQuilt, where she died in 1986,and became the subject for abook published by SageBirchwater in 1995. 1-895811-34-1All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online atw w w . a b c b o o k w o r l d . c o mAugust of 1858 in order to plan observances of the Jewish New Yearand Day of Atonement.• Wholesale liquor merchant Simon Reinhart paid a record priceof $3925 for a choice lot in June of 1859.• The first Jew to serve in a Canadian legislature was also BritishColumbia’s first government auctioneer, Selim Franklin, elected tothe Legislative Assembly of Vancouver Island in 1860.• As Victoria’s second mayor, Selim’s brother Lumley Franklinwas the first Jewish mayor elected within British North America,in 1866.• Miss Ray Frank became the first woman to mount thepulpit of Temple Emanu-El of Victoria as a lay cantor, hiredfrom Oakland, California, in 1895.✫Co-written by Cyril Leonoff, retired archivist;Geoffrey Castle, researcher; ChristopherJ.P. Hanna; the late Leopold Levy of Trail;and researcher Sarah H. Tobe, PioneerJews was printed in California as a joint publicationof two Jewish periodicals, WesternStates Jewish History and The Scribe. Withfootnotes and illustrations, but lacking an index,it appears as plans for a 1,500 squarefootpermanent exhibition of B.C. Jewishhistory are reaching fruition.[No ISBN; JHSBC 604-257-5199]As a project of the Jewish Historical Societyof British Columbia, a new museumfacility is slated to open in thespring of 2006 on the third floor of theJewish Community Centre of GreaterVancouver. It will house more than100,000 photographic images from thearchives of the Jewish Western Bulletinnewspaper, the Jewish Federationof B.C. and photographers LeonardFrank, Otto Landauer and Fred Schiffer.MEMORYANDPREJUDICEKilling Time by Hank Schachte(New Star $18)In Hank Schachte’s shortnovel Killing Time the maincharacter loses hismemory and his ability to formnew memories in the aftermathof a car accident.What follows is an unusualstory which slips backward,chapter by chapter, eventuallyrevealing the complicatedrelationships between Richardand his brother and his brother’slover, Cindy.As the plot unravels and Richard’sshort-term memoryslowly returns, the reader remainsone step ahead of thecharacter in realizing his pastidentity as well as what the futureholds in store.Hank SchachteSchachte’s background infilm is evident—using long,loose sentences, often withminimal punctuation, the authorattempts to mimic thefree-flowing nature of visualmemory.Part of the impetus for thisliterary mystery wasSchachte’s interest in examiningthe constructs of time andmemory. “I have always beeninterested in the particularlyhuman perception of time,”he says. “The story explores thisidea of memory as a form ofprejudice—how memory andexperience influence our perceptionsof the present momentand our construct ofpersonal reality.”Schachte, a screenwriter, isalso the author of a non-fictionbook, Vagabond Fitness: AField Manual for Travelers, publishedby Orca in 1995. His featurefilm, Silence, screened atthe Sundance Festival in 1999and a new novella is the subjectof a screenplay under development.Schachte, who becamea licensed pilot in 1958,flies his own Cessna and liveson Saturna Island, where he isan aficionado of vintageSaabs. 1-55420-019-9

31 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006reviewsCEEPEECEE HAD NO CBCNON-FICTIONRaincoast Chronicles Fourth Five edited by Howard White (Harbour $39.95)If there’s a typical entry inthe 400-page RaincoastChronicles Fourth Five, editedby Howard White, it might be AlderBloom’s memoir that begins,“It was late August in 1937 whenI first sighted Ceepeecee, orshould I say when I first smelledit.”Ceepeecee, or CPC, was anabbreviation of California PackingCorporation, an Americancompany that built a processingplant for pilchards (sardines) onthe West Coast of Vancouver Island,southwest of Tahsis, ‘behind’Nootka Island, in 1926.Eight years later this plant wassold to Nelson Brothers Fisherieswho added a salmon cannery.“It was very smelly,” recallsBloom, “but so are most industrialtowns, each in its own way.To someone looking for work,the smell meant money.”After stints as a carpenter atMcBride Bay, Nootka and PortAlbion, as well as working atGibson brothers’ logging camps,Bloom returned to the clusterof wood-framed buildingsknown as Ceepeecee in 1941, towork for Del Lutes, the virtualking of the town, who kept ‘drylaws’ in place.“Lutes ran a very strict campbut he had to relent a little duringthe war years,” Bloom recalls.“Esperanza Hotel, just 15 minutesaway by boat, was amodern building with agood-sized beer parlour.”Zeballos, two hoursaway by boat, had cafes,hotels, a doctor and abawdy house, describedby Bloom as a frontier necessity,but cannery hoursmade the trip prohibitive.✫Prior to refrigeration,most canning had tooccur near the fishery.Therefore the denizensof Ceepeecee were isolatedat the head ofTahsis Inlet, dependenton the bi-monthly arrivals of theMaquinna and a radio wirelessthat used only Morse code.“Mr. Lee, the Chinese cook,and his helper served tasty andabundant meals for the crew,”Boom writes. But the most essentialcitizen turned out to bea little Scotsman who couldsqueeze out tunes on his littleaccordion.Bloom fondly recalls howScotty went to the hotel onweekends so the few girls in towncould do their fast steps with anyof the boys who could keepup—and Bloom wasn’t one ofthem.“One Sunday morning,Scotty didn’t check in for his reductionplant shift so a searchwas started. Scotty travelled inhis own little skiff and tied it upat the unloading dock. He hadto climb a ladder to get to thedock and somehow he fell.“We found him at low tideresting on the bottom below theladder. Scotty was everybody’sfriend and he gave more pleasureto the crew than anyone incamp. In a place where radio receptionwas very poor, his littleaccordion was a godsend.”Another godsend was FlorenceFrench. One day whenBloom was picking up suppliesfrom Ceepeecee in the fall of1940, she noticed him andAfter his 40 years in the fishing industry, AlderBloom amassed an extensive photographic archive,including this cannery worker with a vacuum-sealer.“Map it and save it,” says Briony Penn, a proponent ofcommunity mapping. “Mapping is a great excuse to talk to theneighbours, old-timers and local kids, and listen to tree frogsand barred owls, even in the city.” Having gained her Ph.D inGeography from Edinburgh University, Penn has provided theforeword, and some of the inspiration, for Islands in the SalishSea: A Community Atlas, edited by Salt Spring Islanders SheilaHarrington and Judi Stevenson, in order to generateprotective awareness for 17 of the largest islands in the Strait ofGeorgia, 12 of which already have their own land trust or conservancyorganizations. Approximately 28,000 people live onthese 17 islands from Quadra in the north to Saturna in the south.The Salish Sea Community Mapping Project, which arosefrom Salt Spring Island, extends the concepts raised by Van-smiled. A few minutes laterBloom was in the companystore, she glided in, smiledagain, bought her cigarettes,and left.Two years later theybecame the first of severalCeepeecee couplesto tie the knot. Their firstson Bob was born in PortAlberni in 1943.The Blooms leftCeepeecee in 1946. Withthe sudden disappearanceof the pilchards inthe late 1940s, shoreworkers like Florencecould no longer be sureto work four-month stintsof 12-hour days at 35cents an hour.Ceepeecee closed in1951, along with otherwooden cannery communitiesalong the coast.MAPPING THE SALISH SEAIslands in the Salish Sea: A Community Atlas (Touchwood Editions $44.95)“Everything wasvery Spartan butwe did haverunning water, asewer runningout to thesaltchuck andelectric lights.”—ALDER BLOOMAlder, Boband FlorenceBloom atCeepeecee,1946.Some were left to rot;Ceepeecee’s buildings were destroyedby fire in 1954.✫White’s fourth compilation ofRaincoast Chronicles-—begun in1972—also features Pat WastellNorris’ reminiscences of AlertBay along with her book-lengthhistory of Telegraph Cove (releasedas Raincoast Chronicles 16).Among the longer entriesFourth Five also reprints StephenHume’s Lillies & Fireweed(Raincoast Chronicles 20), a panoramaof some noteworthy B.C.women.Douglas Hamilton recalls theworst fire aboard ship in B.C.history when the steamer Grapplersank in Seymour Narrows in1883, with more than 100 liveslost. Conversely, DoreenArmitage recalls rescues by tug-boat skippers in the days beforesearch and rescue.Classic West Coast raconteursDick Hammond, Arthur Mayse,Bus Griffiths and White himselfadd some levity.Other subjectsincludeshipyards,squatters, logbarging, fishingsuperstitions,the Pisces sub,Howard WhiteWest Coast patriarchClausCarl Daniel Botel, pioneer photographerHannah Maynard andthe ‘mega-village’ of Kalpalin onthe shores of Pender Harbour.Margaret McKirdy recallshow her mother placed The People’sHome Medical Book alongsidethe Eaton’s catalogue and theBible—and its influence wasgreater than either. More fundamentalthan even the Joy ofCooking, this 1919 treatise,known in many households assimply ‘the Doctor Book,’ advisedthat most means of contraceptionwere injurious to awoman’s health.✫One of several contributionsby Douglas Hamilton, ‘WhoShot Estevan Light? A TraditionalistReturns Fire’ returns to thecontroversial subject of why theEstevan Point Lighthouse wasshelled on June 20, 1942.Hamilton refutes claimsmade on Fifth Estate bylightkeeper Donald Grahamthat the attack on “the boldest,most beautiful lighthouse inBritish Columbia” was instigatedby the Canadian government inorder to incite public alarm.Citing Bert Webber’s Retaliation:Japanese Attacks and AlliedCountermeasures on the Pacific Coastin World War II, Hamilton states,“A number of daring raids onthe west coast of North Americawere carried out by Japanesesubmarines in 1942.”1-55017-372-3All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online atw w w . a b c b o o k w o r l d . c o mcouver-based regional planner Doug Aberley in Boundaries ofHome, Mapping for Local Empowerment (New Society, 1993).Community mapping is obviously a laudable concept but theformat of this book is too small to represent the detailed work.The type is tiny on many of the maps, rendering them mostlydecorative. Islands in the Salish Sea is a lovely advertisementfor an idea that has been spread too thin, like one of thosepizzas called De Woiks, with sprinklings of everything addingup to a forgettable taste.1-894898-32-XTOILET INSTALLATION EXPLAINED: “What I hoped to dowith this installation was create a bold symbol of the threatsthat urbanization poses to the sensitive ecosystems of the SalishSea—a toilet. The indoor toilet is also a symbol of ourseparation from our waste and other impacts on theenvironment. Waste can be flushed down a drain and simplydisappear from view and from thought. The idea was inspiredby a 15 th century Flemish masterpiece by Hans Memling calledThe Voyage of Saint Ursula’s Relics.”— BRIONY PENN

29 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006reviewsTENDER IS THE PLIGHTFICTIONA ballerina tumbles into Post Traumatic Stress Disorder--and we read about it to feel less aloneBY DIANE ATKINSONSympathy by Dede Crane(Raincoast Books $15.95)Critic Anatole Broyardonce suggested that theone fundamental questionto be asked about a newnovel is, “Is it necessary?”This remark is famous, Ithink, because of its tendency tostick in the mind. I’ve toyed withit over the years, as if turning ahard candy over and over in mymouth with my tongue. Whatmakes a book necessary? And,necessary to whom?✫Sympathy, by Dede Crane, isa tender, luminous novel of sympathyfor those among us whoare most emotionally wounded.Set in the Post TraumaticStress Disorder wing of theRosewood Clinic, it’s the story ofa ballerina grieving her husbandand son, both of whom died ina car accident.It’s also the story of the threeor four other patients of handsomeDr. Michael Myatt, an idealisticempath with someunresolved identity issues of hisown.Partly set in the PacificNorthwest and dealing, as itdoes, with shock and grief, Sympathymay remind some readersof Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping,this reviewer’s favouritenovel.Working out at the gym thismorning, I thought of the protagonist,Kerry, doing her physicalrepatterning exercises asdevised and supervised by Dr.Myatt. It took me a few minutesto recall she’s a fictional character!I felt I shared her experience.(To a point. The novel couldbe criticized for a certain romantic—i.e.unlikely—gloss:she’s a world-famous ballerina;her parents are well-off and stilltogether. At thirty-four, she wasa happily married homeownerwith a child. She had more inplace before she lost it thanmany people ever get. But then,pain can’t really be comparativelyevaluated.)Margaret Atwood has saidthat it is unrealistic for a writerto strive for resolution at the endof a novel. “Insight alone is sufficient.”She adds, “Insight aloneis an achievement.”Sympathy succeeds in engagingthe reader in thetroubled emotional worldsof its characters. We try ontheir traumas (“Howwould I cope if this happenedto me?) and weroot for them to unfurl,to forgive themselvesand reach out, at thevery least toward life’ssmall pleasures.Unlikely alliancesoccur: a stout, blacknurse dotes on agangly, pimpled,white teenager.She leaves himoranges, whichhe loves, onhis bedsidetable. Inthe greyhospitalroom, theDedeCranesmall gift shines warmly, like asmall sun.In that none pass throughlife unscathed, and some us aremore scathed than others, andgiven that grief, shock, andPTSD more often than not goinadequately acknowledged, letalone treated, in our society, thisnovel could be balm for thewounded. (T.S. Eliot: “I read tofeel less alone.”)Although the would-behealer, Dr. Myatt, has someproblems himself, the care withwhich he watches over his flock,making minute notes on theirprogress, must in itself be healing,no matter the specific contentof his theories.We should all be so lucky, inour hour of need, to be bookedinto the plushy, caring, privateRosewood Clinic!Simply writtenin short, easy topick up andput downbursts, Sympathy’s prose is cinematographicallytransparent.Crane writes simply, so you areunaware of the story as writing—rather, you experience it directly.(Do you know who wrote,“One shouldn’t be aware of thewriter turning pirouettes on thepage?” John Updike, of all people!The greatest pirouetter ofthem all.)In Housekeeping, the churchladies who come to visit and offertheir condolences murmura plainsong that rings in myhead. “The world is full of sorrow.”The rejoinder: “Yes, it is.”And because it is, Sympathy is necessary.As readers, we can be thankfulthis author has made us a giftof her careful observations, honouringthe small details of life—institutional life, in particular—and thankful for the goodnessin her heart, from which thisfinely-wrought work clearlysprings. 1-55192-781-0Novelist Diane Atkinson hasrecently returned to live inBritish Columbia.HOOKED ON LETTERSPortrait of a felon clinging to the life raft of the alphabetAll BC BookWorld reviews are posted online atw w w . a b c b o o k w o r l d . c o mBY CHERIE THIESSENAlphabet (McArthur & Co. $14.95)While packing for a move from London, England, KathyPage discovered a novel she had abandoned almostten years earlier and decided to resurrect it. “Timehad performed its magic—a kind of alchemy—and it was suddenlyeasy to see what to jettison and what to keep,” she says.Happily ensconced in her new, solar-panelled writing spaceon Salt Spring Island, complete with a view, Page proceeded tofinish her grim novel, Alphabet, about a fictional felon, SimonAusten, who is serving a life sentence in Britain for murdering hisgirlfriend.“When a character like this arrives,” Page says, “youcan’t throw him out. Just as in a real relationship, you have tokeep going until whatever you came together for is complete.”A young, illiterate carpet layer, Simon Austen likes to commandhis girlfriend to do things, then he watches. In spite of herentreaties, they have not yet had sex. He strangles her when shetakes off her clothes but refuses to put on her glasses.As Austen later comes to realize in therapy, he liked to turnher on and off like she was a television screen and he had theremote. Brutal, manipulative, damaged, intelligent and occasionallycharming, Austen was abandoned by his mother and abusedas a child in foster care.A widower with time on his hands volunteers to teach Austenhow to read in prison. “He’s got all the time in the world and it isn’tKathyPagelike school at all... He gets into education,big time. Eighteen months later he’sfunctional and hooked on the alphabet.”Austen forges tentative relationshipswith women; first writing to the alcoholicacademic, Vivienne, under a falseand carefully crafted artistic identity.When his deception is discovered, hetries a second time with Tasmin. This timehe tells her who he really is and shedoesn’t mind. Even better, she giveshim the gift he most needs for his newobsession—a typewriter.Trouble is, Tasmin has lied to him.She is way underage and he is way introuble.Along comes Bernadette, the newprison shrink. She calls him courageous.The increasingly devoted Austen hasthat word courageous painfully tattooedon his chest to join the numerous otherwords that wrap around his body. It’sthe first word that’s positive in a worldthat has branded him otherwise: wasteof space, a threat to women, stupid,callous, bastard and murderer.Bernadette gets Simon Austen admittance to a gentler prisonfacility with a therapeutic focus, but the love-stricken killer at firstdoesn’t want to go. At the new facility he begins to make someheadway in self-recognition but eventually his aggressive behaviourwith a superior does him in. After a year in the new prison,he’s spirited away in the middle of the night. Imprisoned for tenyears, he must readjust to a seamier and a more dangerousenvironment.This convincing portrait of a felon clinging to the life raft of thealphabet arose from Page’s experiences as a writer-in-residenceat a men’s prison, three days per week, for about a year, whereher job mostly consisted of encouraging the inmates to write andsupporting other creative projects.“The prison was both fascinating and dreadful,” she says. “Itwas a place of frighteningly intense feelings, and, at the sametime, given there was no outlet for them, one of utter stultification.It was about as hard a reality as you could get, yet nowhereelse could fantasies and delusions grow so thick and fast.”Having also undergone lengthy training as a counselor andpsychotherapist, Page—also a qualified carpenter and joiner,with an M.A. in Creative Writing—found she was well-positionedto revisit her abandoned manuscript in the relative tranquility ofthe Gulf Islands. Her seventh novel since 1986, and Page’s first asa new Canadian, Alphabet was nominated for the GovernorGeneral’s Award for Fiction. 0 75381 861 2Cherie Thiessen writes from Pender Island.

eviewsART27 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006Czech mated:John Koernerand Lisa BirnieThere are three reasons why JohnKoerner has yet to emerge as abig name in Canadian art circles.First, from Picasso to Shadbolt, from Madonna to DavidBeckham, artists and celebrities of the 20th century increasinglyrecognized the need to reinvent themselves,like actors taking on new roles, in order to continuallyprovide or serve as ‘new’ products.John Koerner’s nuanced landscapes have remained,in his own words, “totally different from anythingthat could remotely be described as ‘cuttingedge.’” His modest nature has prompted him to observe,“As I look back on my sixty years of work, I can see someslight changes, but they are mostly of a technical nature.”Reading between the lines in his new memoir, A BrushWith Life, it’s easy to see how the perception of a lack ofdramatic transformation in his work has been a professionaldrawback—even though Koerner’s art hasevolved through clearly discernible stages of varyingcontent for anyone who cares to look closely.It also hasn’t helped Koerner that he has a surnamethat reminds some British Columbians of a wealthy family.Koerner’s uncles Leon, Otto and Walter Koerner werebrothers who fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 and startedAlaska Pine Company in Vancouver, selling out toRayonier Inc. of New York in 1954.Leon and Thea Koerner subsequently established theKoerner Foundation to support charities and the arts;Walter Koerner, in particular, was an extremely generousand important patron of arts and culture, playing afundamental role in the preservation and rejuvenationof First Nations work.Thirdly, Koerner has maintained a steadfast resolveto represent the spiritual truths he has absorbed fromthe little-known writings of Bo Yin Ra, pseudonym forGerman mystic Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken (1876–1943), whose prose Koerner first encountered in his lateteens. That makes it possible to dismiss Koerner as a bit ofa kook—which would be a very superficial assessmentof him.“The direction that Bo Yin Ra indicates is not an easypath,” he writes, “but after all these years I still believe inhis advice. His books are guides to a perception of realitythat neither philosophic speculation nor dogmaticfaith can attain. I have attempted to produce work thatwould be in complete accord with this reality; a task thathasn’t been too difficult as I have lived fully wrapped upin it.”The three-syllable name Bo Yin Ra has no literal meaning,nor any connection with eastern religion or philosophy.Like the word Kodak, the pen name Bo Yin Ra wascreated for its tonal qualities alone. Divorced from rationalism,Koerner’s paintings are likewise evocations of“tonal qualities.”THE IMPORTANCE OFBEING JOHNIn the art game, modesty is not always the best policyA Brush with Life by John Koerner (Ronsdale $39.95)ABrush with Life avoids the pretentious gobbledygookof contemporary artspeak but JohnKoerner does court posterity by baring hispride:“If I had a dime for every person who has asked me,‘Are you still painting?’—as if I really should be doingsomething less self-indulgent and more responsible—I’dbe doing well.”Born in Prague in 1913, John (Jan) Koerner was raisedamong well-to-do Jewish free-thinkers and sent to Parisfor two months, at age 15, in order to learn French. Therehe spent much of his time in the Louvre, thrilled by Cubismand Surrealism, and he made several visits to theMontparnasse studio of Paul Colin.Aware of their son’s budding passion for art, his parentsdidn’t object to sending him to Italy the followingsummer. There Koerner developed his lifelong admirationfor the colours and luminosityof Giorgione.After studying law inPrague and Geneva toplease his father, he movedback to Paris in 1937, intriguedby Socrates’ awarenessof the human soul. “Iintuitively felt that these [Socrates’] ideas were relatedto my love of painting, but I didn’t know how,” he recalls.Returning to Geneva, Koerner met the Swiss publisherof Bo Yin Ra in Basel and bought each of his 30 titles,works that he still reads seventy years later.“Instead of questioning the meaning of life,” he writes,“I came to ask what meaning I could give to life.”In 1939, John Koerner returned from the Prague universitylibrary to find nobody was at home. Responding toinstructions left for him, he hurriedly made his way tothe Prague airport to meet his uncles Walter and Leon.They boarded a DC-3 that his uncle Otto had chartered,having evacuated most Koerner family members to Paristhe day before.Walter Koerner and his wife Marianne relocated thefamily business in London, but Leon Koerner and his wifeThea went to western North America to scout opportunitiesin the timber business. Upon their purchase of asawmill in New Westminster, John Koerner was requestedto put aside his Bohemian existence in Paris as a painterin order to temporarily assist the family firm in B.C.When war broke out, Koerner volunteered with theCanadian militia but was rejected on medical grounds.Koerner worked in the family’s Marine Building officesin downtown Vancouver for twelve years, during which“Instead of questioningthe meaning of life, I came toask what meaning I could giveto life.”—John Koernertime Leon Koerner changed the name of Western hemlocklumber to Alaska pine in order to make it more attractiveto European markets.Alaska Pine and Cellulose Ltd. was sold to RayonierInc. of New York in 1954, three years after John Koernerhad left the family firm to paint. In the 1950s, Koernerbegan teaching at the Vancouver School of Art wherehis friendship with the principal teacher, Jack Shadbolt,blossomed until 1980. Koerner began to feel estrangedfrom what he calls Shadbolt’s “critical expectations, andquite materialistic values. He also had a flamboyant temperamentand was the strongest atheist I had ever met.”Throughout the 1950s, Koerner had mixed with colleaguessuch as Molly and Bruno Bobak, Don Jarvis andOrville Fisher, as well as Abe Rogatnik and Alvin Balkinwho opened the New Design Gallery, “but I always hadan uncomfortable feeling I was not a very welcome newcomer,”he writes.After teaching at UBC from 1958 to 1962, Koernermaintained the greatest affinityand respect for BertBinning, noting that Binningshould have been accordedbetter treatment by Ian M.Thom in Masterworks fromBritish Columbia. “It was a savageblow to me when Bertiedied suddenly in 1978,” he writes.Although Koerner has had a large mural permanentlydisplayed in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre since 1986, andone of his works was installed in the classical record storeThe Magic Flute by its original owner David Lemon in 1993,he has received more support from writers than painters.Although he formed collegial relationships with theWest Coast pantheon that includes Jack Shadbolt, BillReid, Gordon Smith, Joe Plaskett and Tak Tanabe,Koerner has noted-—with an exclamation mark-—thatonly Plaskett ever purchased one of his paintings.“With the exception of Doris and Jack Shadbolt andlater Bert and Jessie Binning and Lawren Harris,”Koerner writes, recalling his formative years on the WestCoast, “my overtures of hospitality to fellow artists werenot returned.”Admired by Jane Rule, David Watmough, MaxWyman, Linda Rogers and Vaclav Havel (who boughtone of his paintings in Prague), John Koerner’s Japanesestylebrushstrokes rarely convey their sensitivity if reproducedin black & white. Nonetheless Koerner did allowhis coastal miniatures to decorate the colourless coversof BC Studies from 1985 to 1993, something he doesn’tmention in the book.continued on page 28BEVERLY CRAMP PHOTO

28 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006reviewsWESTCOASTGROUP OF ONEA Journey with E.J. Hughes byJacques Barbeau (BarbeauFoundation / D&M, $50)UP THE INLET WITHOUT A FATHERA Tofino kayaker takes us for a bi-cultural spin in a brooding climateJOHN KOERNERcontinued from page 27John Koerner met his firstwife Eileen Newby on a blinddate in 1943. When she diedmore than fifty years later,Koerner’s artistic nature becamestalled in the spring of 2000.“Throughout her illness,” he recalls,“I was totally unable to workand after she was gone I fell intoa desperate state of grief.” UltimatelyKoerner found solace inthe advice of Bo Yin Ra (“All sufferingis evil, but it must be surmounted”)and a letter from hislong-time friend Jane Rule (“Itwas your last gift to her, to outliveher”).Then John Koerner was introducedto retired journalistand author Lisa Birnie who hadlost her husband around thesame time Koerner had lost hiswife. “Lisa changed my life, andinvigorated my mind, soul andbody,” he says.Koerner and Birnie marriedfour months after they met.Trips to Vietnam and Australiafollowed. And Koerner’s workhas had a resurgence.A Brush with Life, a coffee tablebook containing 65 full-pagecolour prints, and 50 b&w prints,published in association withPaula Gustafson and ArtichokePublishing, is edited by Birnie.John Koerner has outlivednearly all of his peers, and fallenin love again forgood measure. Nodoubt Bo Yin Rawould approve.At 92, JohnKoerner is stillpainting.BEVERLY CRAMP PHOTOJacques Barbeau first saw a reproductionof an E.J. Hughes paintingon the cover of the Vancouver telephonedirectory in 1958. Whileworking as a lawyer, Barbeau spentthe next 35 years amassing theworld’s most comprehensive collectionof Hughes’ art. “Hughes,” he predicted,“will become the Canadianartist of the century. He will eclipseboth the Group of Seven and EmilyCarr... To have that discipline and tostill be able to emote—that’s magic.”Not to be confused with a coffeetable book that was produced inconjunction with a Vancouver ArtGallery retrospective in 2002,Barbeau has re-released A Journeywith E.J. Hughes. For more on Hughes, seewww.abcbookworld.com 1-55365-153-71-55380-032-XJohn KoernerBY CHERIE THIESSENSilent Inlet by Joanna Streetly(Oolichan $22.95)Five years ago, Hannah escapedfrom HansenSound, a storm-wrapped,isolated sliver of a village on VancouverIsland’s west coast. Shefled north to train and work as anurse, perhaps desperate forthe reliable rays of a Yukon sun.In the sopping bi-culturalhome of her birth, the sun is arare occurrence, especially atthe darkest time of the year, thewinter solstice, the time whenshe returns. This time Hannahis escaping from an abusive relationshipin Whitehorse, carryingbruises and bumps, one ofwhich is not going to go awayanytime soon.While the story of a prodigaldaughter returning home humbledand pregnant is not new,there is nothing clichéd aboutHannah or the home to whichshe returns. Joanna Streetly’s SilentInlet unfolds slowly and believablythrough the thoughtsand actions of four people:Hannah and her mother, Harry,(short for Harriet); and two Aboriginals,Big Mack Stanley andhis nephew, Lonny.Writing from a male viewpointwith a different culturaloutlook would be challengingfor most, but Streetly knows whatshe’s doing, having had a sevenyearmarriage to a Tla-o-qui-ahtcarver. She obviously learnedmore than just a new language.Having lived in ClayoquotSound for 16 years, she has hadtime to absorb the tang and blusterof a sodden Tofino winter.✫Having arrived in Canada in1990 as an immigrant fromTrinidad and England, Streetlyalso knows what it’s like to beconnected to two cultures,never fully belonging to either—justlike some of her characters.“Harry,” a self-reliant lonerwho lives on her own small islandabout two hours by boat from thevillage, was a single mother whobrought up her daughter,Hannah, to be like she was. Asa young teenager, Hannahrebelled and went to live intown, staying with a loving butchildless couple, Jack and Ada,in order to attend school.Ada is dead, butJack’s home is stillHannah’s and heremains her surrogatefather. Hannahnever knew orwanted to know anythingabout her birthfather who left withouteven knowing hehad planted a seed,but now, contemplatingsingle motherhoodherself, Hannahwants to know moreabout her past. Whatshe learns will slightlyJoanna Streetly:Drawing on the leftside of the countryalter the way she sees theworld.Big Mack has no idea whathappened to his mother whenshe disappeared when he was ayoung boy. His father went on abinge and before they knew it,the children were dispersed.Now in his late 30s he is againliving in his father’s home, tryingin turn to be father to twoboys, one of whom, Lonny, is asgood as orphaned.Lonny is the son of one of BigMack’s brothers, in jail for murderingLonny’s mother. Tenyear-oldLonny is on thebrink—so which way will he teeter?On the side of love, opennessand the optimism ofchildhood or toward the cynical,despairing ennui of those whohave gone before?A frightening accident suddenlyputs pressure on all thesefragile relationships.A fifth character is the settingitself—the rain, the storms,the quality of light and smell ofthe sea, the remoteness. TheSound blankets the inhabitants,warming, chilling, imprisoningand freeing them.✫Streetly’s approach to writinga first novel was literally picturesque.“When I began this book,I didn’t write,” she says. “I drew.I drew people, houses, floorplans, maps, maps and moremaps. I named every street intown and every river in theSound. Hansen Sound camealive for me, even though it iscompletely fictional.”The sudden revelations thatappear in a world where everythingmust happen in its owntime, and where ways of thinkingwill only alter over generations,can sometimes run a bitthick. For example: “Hannah issuddenly overcome by the waysadness can be everywhere andnowhere; present, yet invisible....It makes her feel connectedon a different level, as ifthis thread of sadness bindsthem together.... For someonewho has always been a loner, thefeeling is strange, but she welcomesit.”Or for Big Mack: “From a farawaycorner of his brain, he feelshis mother’s smile creeping outat him again. It beams at him fora few seconds and then vanishes.Mack feels his own mouth lift atthe corners, returning the smile.He smiles harder as a sense of joyand love run into him.”But Joanna Streetly’s unerringsense of place is one of thestrengths of the novel, alongwith her sensitive exploration ofthe ambivalent feelings betweenmother and daughter. Guilt andlove and fear and pity and angermeld into one inescapablebond.✫In addition to being an artist,Streetly is also a kayak guide,the author of Paddling ThroughTime and the editor of the westcoast anthology Salt in Our Blood.A kayaker moves slowly andknows the land in a way that othersnever will. And that’sStreetly’s approach to narrative.She has used her experiences onthe water to provide depth to thebrooding setting of the novel.For someone reading in Europeor South America or Toronto,Silent Inlet would no doubtbe an exotic story; for those ofus on the west coast, Streetly hasmade an earnest attempt to tellit like it is. 0-88982-207-7Cherie Thiessen reviews booksfrom Pender Island.

33 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006reviewsTHE ACCESSIBILITY OF DREAMSSurrealistic sleepwalking with Jen CurrinThe Sleep of Four Cities by Jen Currin(Anvil Press $15)Sometimes a traveler, exploringa foreign city, experiencesa disorientationthat no map or guide can shake.The choice then is to assiduouslypursue an understandingof the layout and ambience ofthe place or to abandon attemptsat orienting oneself andjust keep walking and noticing,without a route, just taking it allin.Reading Jen Currin’s poems,one is faced with a similarchoice: the first leads to drudgeryand dead-ends.The second, the only viableoption, is to keepreading, abandoningany expectation of linearsense.In The Sleep of FourCities, you can letCurrin’s language takeyou down alleys, overbridges and through gates, withouta destination, and you areovertaken by surprise and variety.You may not be able to saywhere the poems took you butyou were certainly taken.I traded my spirit for a handfulof nails. / Bliss pinched my elbows./ The stars climbed backupon the roof/ and the sky said,“hurt me.”Currin’s poems have the accessibilityof dreams which requirerelinquishing paraphrase.In this debut collection thereisn’t a single predictable line orimage. One can detect certainobsessions:Clouds / moon / light / wind /water and fish / ponds / rivers/ wells.There is a stubborn disconnectbetween the titles and theindividual poems and no congruitybetween poems withineach of the four sections. If connectionis to be located in thiselusive writing it has to be personallyconstellated by theHANNAH MAIN-VANDER KAMPreader. That’s true for all art butin these kinds of poems it’s imperativeand also the reason whymany readers say they don’t“get” contemporary poetry.The plethora of striking images,many surreal, is anchoredsomewhat by Currin’s use of conventionalpunctuation and format.After all that dissonance, apuzzled reader is grateful tocome upon a recognizable landmark.Some poems, different onesfor different readers, will remainbehind locked gates. Somewill give up secrets reluctantlywhile others willopen wide vistas inmemory and desire.Call these inaccessibleor, alternately,toss out the nostalgiafor interpretive closureand just go forthe adventure.“Yesterday on the pierI saw a ship with five sails. Isaw another with none.I turned back to my book.when I looked up, the sail-lessship had blossomed—twohandsome triangles fluttered,white as nursery bed sheets. Andas I sat there, the wind read thebook rapidly, with no regard forrhyme.” 1-895636-70-1Visiting Hours by Shane Koyczan(Mother Press Media $16.95)PERFORMANCE POETRY IS THE NEW KIDon the poetry block, a kid withattitude. Fun, entertainingeven, spoken word poets arewinning new converts at a timewhen literary poets face diminishedaudiences. Spoken wordpoems are alive when performedbut on the page, in comparison,they pale. Fortunately,the Mother Press Media, “an unconventionalpress for unconventionalartists,” includes a CDwhich reveals Koyczan’s sly humourand great vocal timing. Listento the CD first, thenre-imagine Koyczan’s cadencesas you read the poems. MotherPress Media plans to producemore artists who “breach theboundaries of genre.” Perhapsthis new publisher might considera reversal: put out CDs ofcomplete performances and attacha small sample of print. Eitherway, I look forward to more.0-9738131-0-5Hongyun, New and Collected ShorterPoems, 1955-2005 by J. Michael Yates(AuthorHouse $18.45)“AN IMAGE IS ONE OF AN INFINITEnumber of entrances to anarena where somethingineffable has alwaysbeen going on.”Or so says J.Michael Yates. In thesixties he was a blackleather-jacketed-motorcyclist-poetwhotaught Creative Writing.Since then he’sconstructed differentpersonas and careersbut J. Michael Yateshas kept on writing.This volume is a representativesampling of new andcollected work of an originalpresence on the West Coast writingscene; and it proves his poetryis standingthe test oftime.J. Michael Yates: “toknow for a certaintywith the blood”“Something is rising in the blackthroat of the sky. Somethingdraws me into the earth by myeyes. Just beneath them the avalanchesof flesh begin. The languageof a man alone in thebush goes the colours of boulderfieldsand lichen.”Distinctly the poetry of contemplativefishing in northernplaces (Alaska, Queen Charlottes),Hongyun includes thestunning Great Bear Lake Meditationswhich remain as fresh nowas they were groundbreakingfour decades ago. Also included,his Book of Interrogationsis both rambling and erudite, aseries of aphorisms on the art ofwriting. Sometimes prophetic,sometimes irascible, thisEcclesiastes of Poetics is anevocative summingup by a mature poetwho hasn’t compromisedhis aesthetic,though it metamorphosedconstantly.Yates, a formerpublisher and prisonguard, has earnedhis place in the pantheonof influentialB.C. poets and this isa welcome collection.“Time and tide,exhaling here, now,after the long breathing-in ofbeing young. Here on the subsidingside of both time and tide,among the clear pools full ofthings waiting for water to return,the steel-coloured seabladecarving far out andalmost out of sight, fallingand falling and almostat low-slack. Timenow to say inside it isalmost good toknow for a certaintywith the blood: Ican die.” 1-4208-2770-7POETRYHannah Main-vander Kamp’s most recentcollection of poetryis According toLoon Bay (The St.Thomas Poetry Series).Amanda Lamarche: “getawayon all fours”DANGER PAYSThe Clichéist by Amanda Lamarche(Nightwood Editions $15.95)You know you are in for a wonderfulset of poems when the first poemcauses your heart to skip a beat andthen you look again at the cover illustrationand it’s the visual translation ofthat poem. Now you know what a splintto keep the heart still looks like.The poems in AmandaLamarche’s first book illustrate one ofJ. Michael Yates’ aphorisms: “Art mustsummon a weather of danger.” Thereare no clichés in The Clichéist. Anyoneplanning to fell a tree, please first readthe fifteen-poem section, A Tree FallsIn The Woods.“Here’s my trick for staying alive.Don’t think like a man when you planyour escape route. Think like what livesin the forest. Sniff things out. Make friendswith the idea of a getaway on allfours.” 0-88971-20-5ALSO RECEIVEDSongs of the Spirit by Verna Benjamin(First Choice Books) 0-9739013-0-6-------------------------------------------------------------The Charlatans of Paradise byArthur Joyce (New Orphic Publishers)1-894842-07-3-------------------------------------------------------------Lunar Drift by Marlene Cookshaw(Brick Books) 1-894078-46-2-------------------------------------------------------------Paradise City by Daniel RajalaJen Currin: “thewind read thebook rapidlywith no regardfor rhyme”All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online atw w w . a b c b o o k w o r l d . c o m

21 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SPRING • 2006LOOKOUT #23 • a forum for & about writers3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 • bookworld@telus.netLOOKOUTLOOKOUTAPE POPULATIONS INDECLINE WORLDWIDEBY BIRUTÉ MARY GALDIKASThe foremost protector of orangutans on the planet, BirutéMarija (Mary) Filomena Galdikas, is invariably describedas the third woman sent by paleontologist Dr. Louis B.Leakey to study primates in their natural habitat, after DianFossey and Jane Goodall, and is known as one of “Leakey’sAngels.” Galdikas is an Officer of the Order of Canada and alsothe only foreign-born person ever to win the Kalpataru, Hero ofthe Environment Award, from the Indonesian government.While studying orangutans for more than thirty-five years,Biruté Mary Galdikas has taught as a professor in the Dept. ofArchaeology at Simon Fraser University.WHEN I FIRST STARTED STUDYING ORANGUTANS IN THEgreat tropical rain forests of Indonesian Borneo(Kalimantan), all that science knew aboutthese enigmatic red apes in the wild might have filled apage. That was almost 35 years ago. We now know muchmore about orangutans but, unfortunately, we also knowthat orangutan populations have declined precipitouslyover the last few decades and that 80 per cent of orangutanhabitat has been decimated.Along with the African chimpanzees and gorillas, theAsian orangutans are great apes, our closest living relativesin the animal kingdom. Chimpanzees are so closelyrelated to humans that their genome differs by only 1.2per cent in terms of single nucleotide changes and, onceblood types are matched, chimpanzees can receive bloodtransfusions from us and vice versa. Gorillas, the greatestof the great apes in terms of size, are also very closely relatedto humans who, in some ways, are just another Africanape.All great apes share with humans high cognitive abilities,similar emotions, foresight, excellent memories, selfrecognitionand self-awareness, and are capable ofsymbolic communication, insight, imitation and innovationas well as generalization, abstract thought and problemsolving. When we look into their eyes, we seesomething there that we recognize. Their eyes reflect ourown.Less known are the small apes, gibbons and thesiamang. After the great apes, the small apes are our closestliving relatives. Found only in Southeast Asia andChina, small apes are territorial, monogamous, and theacrobats of the primate world, swinging from tree to treelike the “flying young man on the swinging trapeze” andthen soaring mid-air as they let go of one branch and flyto reach another. Certainly, this soaring locomotion is theirform of genius. Gibbons are also known for their sopranovocalizations. Gibbons don’t use tools and don’t performwell in laboratory tests, scoring below some monkeys onintelligence tests. But studies of their brain show cerebellumsthat fall on the great ape side of the divide. And Ipersonally have seen one captive gibbon, to my amazement,use tools, twigs, to scratch himself. I think gibbonsare underrated. They are as flighty, edgy, and fragile asthe birds with which they share the treetops. But theyare brighter, smarter and more adaptable than theyhave been given credit for in textbooks.Unfortunately, all apes, great and small, arein dire straits. All face extinction as their habitatsare destroyed. When I first arrived inBorneo over 90 per cent of the island consistedof primary tropical rain forest, theworld’s second-largest continuous expanseof forest after Rosamond the Amazon Basin.But now Borneo’s forest is inNorburyretreat, like the forests of equatorialAfrica, under relentless pressurefrom the forces of theglobal economy. Like a highspeedlocomotive with noone at the controls, the globaleconomy hurtles recklesslyinto the future,overwhelming everythingin its path, destroyinghabitats and accelerating the extinction of plantsand animals as well as the destruction of traditional humancommunities that co-existed with and sheltered theecosystems in which the apes lived.The prognosis for all ape populations in the wild isbleak. As habitat loss continues,ape populationsdecline and fragment,creatingsmallerpopulations that are increasingly vulnerable to local extinction.Local extinctions are common. In the Africannation of Togo, once 33 per cent forest, the forest is nowalmost gone. Not surprisingly, the western chimpanzeerecently went extinct in Togo. In Nigeria and Cameroon,the Cross River Gorilla has the lowest population of anyAfrican great ape with only 150-200 left. In China, dueto recent industrial development, the call of the Hainangibbon can only be heard in captivity. On the island ofJava the endemic gibbon is found in only two protectedmountainous areas and numbers less than two thousand.In Sumatra the orangutan population is critically endangered;some populations number only in the dozens.✍Jane Goodall has been on the road tirelessly since 1986championing chimpanzee conservation and animal rights.Yet chimpanzee habitats are shrinking. In West and CentralAfrica, chimpanzees are just meat for the pot. Unlesspoliticians, rock stars, and governments embrace the causeof great and small ape extinction in a major way, apes willgo extinct within the next 50 years.The one bright spot remains the mountain gorillas.Dian Fossey gave up her life in 1985 for the gorillas. Thetourist industry that followed helped provide stability andmoney, allowing for a 17 per cent increase in gorilla numberssince the last census. It costs $50 for a park ranger toguide you to the cabin where Dian lived and the gravewhere she lies buried. It costs $350 per day for one hourwith the gorillas. The mountain gorillas are as expensiveas some lawyers. That has been their salvation.I’m not saying we need more martyrs to ensure thesurvival of the great and small apes but the Hollywoodmovie, Gorillas in the Mist, sure helped. AndInternational Orangutan Awareness Week also probablyhelps hold back the tide. It could be a lot worse.Orangutans could be extinct throughout their entirerange and not just locally. We need a MissionImpossible like those led by Bono and Bill Gates intheir fight against global poverty and disease. Weneed to pressure our governments to save the greatand small apes. An occasional billionaire wouldhelp, too.Why save the apes? I could give ecological andeven economic answers but the truth is greater. Thegreat and small apes represent who we once were andwhere we came from. They are not our ancestors butour siblings, brother and sister species, and our cousins.They led the way and we followed, eventuallyovertaking them as we became human, and thenwe left them behind. That separation shouldnot be their death sentence. What consolationsolitude if we remain the onlyspecies in our family left behind ona planet endlessly spinning with noclose kin to call our own?“The mountaingorillas are asexpensive assome lawyers.That has beentheir salvation.”—BIRUTÉ GALDIKASBiruté Galdikas’ new book isGreat Ape Odyssey (HarryN. Abrams $65), withphotographs by KarlAmmann. For more infowww.orangutan.org orwww.ioaw.org. 081095575XDIANE LUCKOW PHOTO

22 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SPRING • 2006 23 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SPRING • 2006COVER STORYYOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN:DEN ROBINSONHAISLA NOVELIST BY VICKIE JENSENThe gritty urban world of Eden Robinson’s new novelBlood Sportsts (M&S $34.95), set in Vancouver’sDowntown Eastside, is far removed from the Haislavillage of Kitamaat (pop. 700), the setting for herfirst novel Monkey Beach (Knopf, 2000). But whetherRobinson is depicting inner city grime or the eeriebeauty of a remote inlet, her characters all find themselvesdrawn into a death-grip struggle for emotionaland physical security. Vickie Jensen visited EdenRobinson in Kitamaat and she sends this report:THREE YEARS AGO EDEN ROBINSONmoved back to the Haisla reservationin order to live with her parentsin their quiet home that looksout onto the upper reaches of theDouglas Channel. Framed photographs of Edenand her sister Carla, the first Aboriginalanchorwoman for CBC TV news, are prominentlydisplayed everywhere. Her father JohnnyRobinson suffers from Parkinson’s and it lookedlike the disease was advancing rapidly. Fortunatelymost of his symptoms turned out to be side effectsfrom medication.After two months back on the rez, Robinsonrealized that she really didn’t know her parents asadults and staying on in the village was an opportunityto remedy that. “My folks both have a lotof things they want to share,” she says, “althoughI don’t think they want to see them published!”Coming home was the sixth move in the lastthree years for Robinson, who’s still unpackingboxes and recovering from the success of her firsttwo books. Published in five countries, her shortstory collection Traplines (Knopf, 1996) won theWinifred Holtby Prize for best first work of fictionin the Commonwealth and was featured as aNew York Times Notable Book of the Year. MonkeyBeach won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize andwas nominated for the Giller Prize and the GovernorGeneral’s Award.After years of city living, travelling, touring, andworking as writer in residence, Robinson says thetransition to life on the rez was a huge cultureshock. “I didn’t realize how much of an urbanIndian I was. I am so bad at bush living! Peoplethink I must be Lisa in Monkey Beach—they forgetthat I made her up. I’m completely incompetentat living off the land. The characters in MonkeyBeach are modeled after a number of my cousinswho are really into it. I’d starve!”Robinson contends there are different types ofintelligence. “Me, I’m smart with books, but I’mreally dumb if I try to start a boat or set up a tent.The first time I went to the Kitlope as part of aHaisla Rediscovery Camp, I brought my hairdryer. Someone asked me where I thought I wasgoing to plug it in and I told them I figured if Icould bring my laptop, I could bring a hair dryer.”Robinson’s laughter spills out as regular punctuationto her thoughts. “Of course, after threedays, my laptop packed it in because the batteriesran out but by then we were so busy going places,collecting food and scouting archaeological sitesthat by 6 p.m. I was in my tent snoring! I thinkthat was the first time in my life that I didn’t useconditioner. We bathed in a glacier-fed river, so Ijust rinsed the soap out of my hair as fast as I could!”Around the village, the elders know Eden asVicki Lena Robinson. “I was named after a cousinwho choked to death in her crib on a bottle,” sheexplains. “Unfortunately there were five otherVickis in the village at that time, and I got taggedwith Big Vicki. Little Vicki didn’t like her namemuch either,” she laughs. “So, I always thoughtthat someday I’d change my name to somethinglike Rebecca or Anastasia. Anyway, my first yearof college I was telling that to someone who said,‘Oh, you’ll never change your name.’ And I decided,‘Yes, I will. I’m… Eden Robinson.’ I don’tknow where that name came from! That was 20years ago now—it was part of a mental switch, ofseeing myself differently. I wasn’t ‘Big Vicki’ anymore.”Asked how she learned so much about theworld of pimps, prostitutes and drugs for her newnovel, Blood Sports, she says, “I used to live in EastVancouver. I’m part of the arts community andwe always need to seek out the cheapest rent possible!”More seriously, Robinson says she knows alot of people who live inthe downtown core orwork in re-hab clinics.“It’s a severely differentmind set, an environmentwhere addictions are thenorm. In some parts ofVancouver, people regularlydiscuss stock portfolios—therepeople talkabout treatments orfixes.”Robinson’s educationalso spans two worlds. Afterwrestling with a notalentassessment at theUniversity of Victoria, shewent on to complete aMasters in Creative Writingat UBC (where Monkey Beach served as herMasters thesis), but she also values her Beaver Clanheritage and the Haisla storytelling tradition. “I’mtrying to learn Haisla,” she says, “word by painfulVICKIE JENSEN PHOTOEden Robinson withJohnny Robinson andWinnie RobinsonJAY POWELL PHOTOword. But I have a tin ear. Dad’s always amusedby my attempts.”While Eden Robinson is the first Haisla novelist,her uncle Gordon Robinson, author ofthe non-fiction Tales of the Kitamaat in 1956, wasthe first Haisla writer to be published. “I thinkI’m the only full-time writer in the village now althoughothers on the reserve are getting interested,especially when they hear tales of six-figure advances!But most don’t really know what writingfor a living is all about. There’s no basis for understanding.They just think it’s like what they see inthe movies—you finish the book, you hand it in,it gets published and you get a big cheque. I try toexplain about the long hours writing, the edits andthe copy edits. Or that making money at writingis so sporadic. People do understand if I compareit to seasonal fishing. But they don’t understandthat writing is usually just me on my ass in thebasement, glued to the computer for hours onend.”Recently a battery of tests confirmed Robinsonsuffers from celiac disease, an intolerance to glutenthat has sapped her energy, lefther prone to depression and causedconstant gastrointestinal pain. “Ididn’t think it was celiac disease becauseall the people I know whohave it are really skinny,” she says,“but it doesn’t work that way for me.It’s hard to explain this level of constantfatigue to healthy people. Heremy aunties aren’t in the best ofhealth so we can share colonoscopystories. There’s a real openness aboutmedical conditions.”Once the diagnosis was confirmed,Robinson adopted a strictwheat and gluten-free diet. Sticking to the dietwhen she’s on the road or when she attends any ofthe local feasts or parties is a challenge since mostof the foods served are wheat-based, but now shepacks her own snacks and reads labels. The disciplineis paying off—much of the pain is gone andshe can already feel her energy levelshifting.“This is a good time in my life to just be,” shesays, “to get my life, my finances and my own healthin order. I have a low energy level because of myillness, but each day there’s a certain time periodwhen I can go to town on the writing; if I missthat, it’s a shot day. So when I write, I hermit. Peoplein the village are sometimes surprised to findthat I’m here because they haven’t seen me. Forme, writing is a passion. It doesn’t feel like I’mworking 18 hours. I want to do it.”If writing is what makes Eden Robinson happiest,she’s also the first to say that it’s often a struggle.“Some people have tremendous control overtheir novels. I don’t seem to be one of them.”Robinson was working on a different novel whenBlood Sports took over. It grew out of her novella“Contact Sports,” a story in Traplines that took herten years to complete, and 34 drafts. “It was myapprenticeship,” she says. “Everything I neededto write Monkey Beach I learned in that novella—switching time periods, changing voice, structureof the story.”For Blood Sports, Robinson revisits her originalcast of characters from “Contact Sports”, five yearslater in their lives. The tangled web of addiction,revenge and human relationships in Blood Sportsis stark and violent. Tom Bauer, now in his early20s, has fathered baby Melody with fellow exjunkiePaulina, but he comes home from work tofind that Paulina and the baby have disappeared.At the same time his controlling, abusive cousin“So when I write, Ihermit. People in thevillage are sometimessurprised to find thatI’m here because theyhaven’t seen me. Forme, writing is a passion.It doesn’t feellike I’m working 18hours. I want to do it.”Jeremy has come back to haunt his life.“I expected Blood Sports to go in a very differentdirection. I had plots, plans, but the charactersevolved in a way I hadn’t outlined. OriginallyI was picturing something lighter, maybe superficialor glib,” Robinson says, “so my characters werereally safe in the first couple of drafts. Then Istarted torturing them. I really didn’t have achoice. When my characters solidify themselves,they pretty well take over.”The main character in Blood Sports has an 11-month-old daughter. “I don’t know where shecame from!” she says, “And I never planned forthe main character to have a mental breakdown.”The brutal parts were hardest to write. “I’m reallysqueamish so the violence was really a surprise.”Even so, the book is not as dark as some earlierversions of the manuscript. “I went back and cutthe torture scenes to one or two and the deathswent from eleven to four.”The traditional storytellers from her village haveadvised Robinson to stick to the storyline but ithasn’t been easy to follow their advice. “In MonkeyBeach they wanted to know definitely,did Lisa’s brother live or didhe die? I tried to explain that I deliberatelywandered off track withthe story. We’ll see what they sayabout Blood Sports since it really goesall over the map.”Robinson describes the new novel’sstructure as “a little haywire.”Each of the different sections correspondsto the main character’s differentmental states. Robinson saysthe book will work best for peoplewho like puzzles and piecing thingstogether. “I wanted this new book tobe a straightforward mystery but it fell flat when Itried to make it a traditional narrative,” she says.Whereas she thinks Monkey Beach was fairlyeasy to market because readers were interested innorthern life and native families, she feels she’s takinga chance with Blood Sports. “This new bookdid a lot of things I didn’t want it to do. It’s certainlymore extreme, and the form is not incrediblycommercial. I think it’s going to be a reallytough sell. I’m just hoping it gets banned—thatwould be great for sales!”Now with three notable books to her credit,Robinson is well aware that the business of writingdemands two personalities from every author.“There’s the personality you need to write and thepersonality you need to promote. Without the hermitside, I wouldn’t get any book finished, but withoutthe ham side, the book wouldn’t get published.“It took a lot of effort for me to be able to functionin public, but I was pretty damned determinedso I took voice lessons, acting lessons,desensitivity training, counselling—I worked myass off to make it look like I was comfortable infront of an audience. Before, I was focused on howawkward I was, how shy. Once I could do smalltalk, it just opened up my world.”Robinson describes herself as “a bit of a controlfreak” so learning to trust her instincts ratherthan trying to rigidly control everything was ahuge leap of faith for her. “It’s a scary freedom,”she says. “I fought it for about two years and finallyjust started writing. Once I gave in, the bookstarted to flow.” 0-7710-7604-5Photojournalist Vickie Jensen’s nine books most recentlyinclude The Totem Poles of Stanley Park (Vancouver:Westcoast Words and Subway Books, 2004).She and Jay Powell have co-authored 40 native languageand culture texts.

37 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006ENDPAPERSPlaywright Lucia Frangione leads the way for fellow cast members Donna-Lea Ford andDirk VanStralen for Pacific Theatre’s production of her play Cariboo Magi. (Talonbooks).BRIAN CAMPBELL PHOTOis for ArgentHaving prepared booklets for genealogyresearch on a province-by-province basis,Judith Argent of the CloverdaleLibrary has compiled Planning a GenealogyTrip to the Vancouver Area (SurreyPublic Library $15), a handbooklisting resources for family history recordsin the Lower Mainland. Genealogical authorityAngus Baxter has declaredthe Surrey Public Library system “has thefinest collection of genealogical materialin the province.”0-9692197-5-Xis for BlairUsing locations that include GranvilleIsland, Sea Village, Bridges Pub, HarbourFerries Marinaand the RoyalVancouver YachtClub, MichaelBlair’s third mysterynovel, Overex p o s e dMichael Blair:Underwear conundrum(Dundurn$11.99) concernsa commercial photographerwhowakes with a hangover to discover women’sunderwear in his dishwasher and acorpse on the roof of his floating home.Blair’s preceding mysteries are If LooksCould Kill and A Hard Winter Rain.1-550002-582-1is for CruikshankWhereas Aboriginals viewed glaciers assentient and animate in their oral histories,Europeans have tended to see themas inanimate and subject to measurementand scientific investigation. JulieJulie Cruikshank:ice escapadesCruikshankinvestigates historicaland contemporaryencounters withglaciers in Do GlaciersListen? LocalKnowledge, ColonialEncountersand Social Imagination(UBCPress $29.95), an examination of a newlydesignated World Heritage Site thatspans the borderlands of Yukon, northwestBritish Columbia and Alaska.is for Drabek0774811870In 2005, Jan Drabek returned tothe Czech Republicfor the launchof his 15 th title,Hledani Stesti uCizaku [Searchingfor Happinesswith Aliens], coincidentalwith theposthumous publicationof his fa-Jan Drabekther’s novelPodzemi [The Underground].is for EgoffHosted by Bill Richardson, the annualBC Book Prizes gala on April 29 atthe Marriott Pinnacle Hotel in Vancouverwill be dedicated to the memory ofthe late Sheila Agnes Egoff, thepioneering critic and supporter of Canadianchildren’s literature, after whomone of the prizes is named. An Officerof the Order of Canada, she died onMay 22, 2005, in her 88th year, in Vancouver.First produced as a full-length play in2001 by the Pacific Theatre, post-feministactor and playwright LuciaFrangione’s Cariboo Magi(Talonbooks $15.95) follows a makeshifttroupe of would-be theatricals who attemptto mount a Christmas Pageant forthe Theatre Royal in Barkerville duringthe Cariboo gold rush. They consist of avery pregnant child star cast as the VirginMary, an inept and drunken Anglicanpreacher, a cunning Madame namedFanny and a mixed-blood poet whoclaims he’s the last of the Mohicans.Frangione worked in Barkerville for fouryears. 0-88922-527-3is for GlavinTerryGlavinis for FrangioneWildlife advocate Terry Glavin leadsus hopefully into the Sixth Great Extinctionepoch with Waiting for the Macaws(Penguin $35), a superb survey of ourfellow species, some of whichare dearly departed.This is an even moreengaging bookthan Glavin’sprecedingpanorama ofthe North Pacificbecausewe glean naturalhistory factsduring his visitsto Singapore,County Clare, Costa Rica, theEastern Himalayas, Siberia and theLofoten Islands in the North Atlantic.0-670-04422-9is for Huey-HeckThe Spiritualityof Art (Northstone$39) by LoisHuey-Heck isthe fourth title ina series that has sofar examined thespirituality inherentin enjoyingLois Huey-Heckwine, gardeningand labyrinths. Her co-author and partner,Jim Kalnin, is an Okanagan artistwho teaches Fine Arts at UBCOkanagan. They live in Oyama.is for Ilsley1-896836-78-XGeorge K.Ilsley’s first collectionof edgygay fiction,RandomActs ofHatred(ArsenalPulp, George K. Ilsley2003) hasbeen followed by ManBug (ArsenalPulp $19.95), a fragmentedexploration of a tempestuous lovebetween a former entomologist, Sebastian,who suffers from Asperger’sSyndrome, and a “spiritual bisexual,”Tom, who may or may not be recruitingSebastian for a cult.P.STERN PHOTO1-55152-203-9continued on page 38

38 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006ENDPAPERSis for Jiwacontinued from page 37For Margin of Terror: A Reporter’sTwenty-Year Odyssey Covering theTragedies of the Air India Bombing(Key Porter $26.95), co-written withscreenwriter Donald J. Hauka,Province reporter Salim Jiwa has updatedhis 1985 book about the two AirIndia bombings with new informationon the 20-year Air India investigationand the 19-month trial that resulted ina verdict of not guilty for the accused in2005. 1-55263-772-7is for KraulisBorn to Latvian parents in Stockholmin 1949, J.A. Kraulis is a Montrealraisedphotographer whose bilingual,large format coffee table book GrandLandscapes of Canada (Firefly $49.95)provides 200 images, many taken fromthe air. 1-55407-036-8is for LivingstonIn Billie Livingston’s second novel,Cease to Blush (Random House$34.95) a woman discovers her latemother, renowned as a crusading feminist,had an extensive and diverse sexualhistory in Las Vegas during the Sixties.Livingston, according to her publisher,now “drives the bumpy road from theburlesque stages of Rat Pack Vegas to thebedroom internet porn scenes of today,exploring just how far women have reallycome.” 0-679-31322-2is for MusgraveSusan Musgrave’s amusing and irresistiblythoughtful personal essays inYou’re in Canada Now… (Thistledown$18.95) are provocative in style and content:“In our culture, these days, there isno core, no authenticity to our lives; wehave become dangerously preoccupiedwith safety; have dedicated ourselves toease. We live without risk, hence withoutadventure, without discovery of ourselvesor others. The moral measure ofman is: for what will he risk all, risk hislife?” 1-894345-95-9is for NeeringHaving won the Vancity Book Prize forwriting about courageous and unconventionalwomen, RosemaryNeering has looked appreciatively atthe contributions of courageous andconventional homemakers in The CanadianHousewife: An AffectionateHistory (Whitecap $29.95), a cornucopiaof coping with insects, recipes, canning,children, paternalism and Lysol forbirth control. 1-55285-717-4is for OnleyPhotographer Yukiko Onley has collaboratedwith poet E.D. Blodgettin Elegy (U of Alberta Press $24.95), awork inspired by Onley’s husband, ToniOnley, a landscape watercolourist whodied on February 29, 2004, when hecrashed his plane into the Fraser Riverwhile apparently practicing landingsand take-offs. 0-88864-450-7is for PorterPamela Porter’s second juniornovel, The Crazy Man (Groundwood$9.95), has won the Governor General’sAward for Children’s Literature(English text). Told in free verse, it’s thestory of twelve-year-old Emaline who isinjured in an accident with a tractordriven by her father on the family farmin Saskatchewan in 1965. Grief-strickenand guilty, her father leaves Emaline andher mother to fend for themselves. Muchto the disapproval of neighbours,Emaline’s mother hires a friendly, redhairedgiant from the local mental hospital,Angus, whom local kids teasinglycall the gorilla. As the “crazy man” of thetitle, he helps Emaline overcome herdespair. Pamela Porter lives in Sidney,B.C. Her husband’s family has operateda family farm near Weyburn, Saskatchewan,for generations. 0-88899-695-4PETER BATTISTONI/VANCOUVER SUN PHOTOBillie Livingston:recently shortlisted forthe Pat Lowther Awardfor poetry.

ENDPAPERS39 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006In work we trust: from The Canadian Housewife: An Affectionate History (Whitecap)is for Quill & QuireOkay, so Canada’s venerable publishingtrade periodical, Quill & Quire, doesn’thave a new book out, but they do have anew format, having resurrected themselvesas a magazine.is for ReedIn the 69-year history of the GovernorGeneral’s Awards, 12 Francophone authorshave won three times each; nineAnglophone authors have won threetimes each—the latest being Montrealbasedtranslator Fred A. Reed forTruth or Death: The Quest for Immortalityin the Western Narrative Tradition(Talonbooks $29.95) by ThierryHentsch. Only five-time recipientHugh MacLennan and four-timerecipient Michael Ondaatje havewon more often than Reed. In his acknowledgementsfor Truth or Death,Reed credits Davinia Yip, who worksfor Talonbooks in B.C. 0-88922-509-5is for SuzukiDavid Suzuki: The Autobiography(Greystone $34.95) is the second instalmentof DavidSuzuki’s lifestory, expandingon earlier materialin Metamorphosisand also coveringhis accomplishmentsafter ageDavid Suzuki fifty. 1-55365-156-1is for ThompsonT is for Thompson, as in David. Easilythe most admireable of the fur tradingpersonnel who reached B.C. in the early19th century, David Thompson isthe subject of an important exhibitionat the Spokane Museum as well as JackNisbet’s The Mapmaker’s Eye: DavidThompson on the Columbia Plateau(WSU Press $29.95 US). 0-87422-285-0is for UnderwoodJan Underwood has won the 28 th3-Day Novel Writing Competition withDay Shift Werewolf, a story about anunproductive werewolf, Warren, who isdemoted to an undesirable shift amongother underdogs in the increasinglyhigh-tech horror industry. It’s forthcomingfrom Arsenal Pulp Press later this year.is for Vaillant1-55152-208-XOne night in January of 1997, formertimber-scout Grant Hadwinplunged into the Queen Charlotte Islands’Yakoun River, towing a chainsawbehind him, and methodically cut downK’iid K’iyaas, a “Golden” Sitka Sprucethat was more than300 years old.Conserved byMacMillanBloedel, the 50-metre-tall GoldenSpruce representedto HadwinJohn Vaillant the hypocrisy ofthe logging industry.Before he disappeared under suspiciouscircumstances, avoiding beingsentenced, Hadwin also dismissed therelevance of Vancouver Island’s CathedralGrove as merely a “circus side-show”and a “corporate set-aside.” JohnVaillant first wrote about Hadwin’sextremism for The New Yorker, then heproduced a larger pastiche aboutHadwin, the Haida, the coastal fur tradeand the West Coast logging industry,The Golden Spruce (Knopf $35), to winthe 2005 Governor General’s Award forEnglish Non-Fiction. At the awards ceremonyin Montreal, Vaillant observedhis was the first book about British Columbia,written by a British Columbiaresident, to receive a Governor General’sAward since Emily Carr.George Bowering’s Burning Waterand Jack Hodgins’ Spit Delaney’sIsland, both set in British Columbia,have also received Governor General’sAwards.0-676-97645-Xcontinued on page 40DAN DEITCH PHOTO

40 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006Killing TimeA Novel by Hank SchachteFind it here1-55420-019-9Blackberry BooksDuthie BooksPeople’s Co-op BookstorePB Cruise BooksellerAbraxas BooksMagpie Magazine GalleryChaptersIndigo Books + MusicPublished by New Star BooksENDPAPERSnew & established writersIn our 36th year ofOffering the Perrenial Beauty of theWorld’s Spiritual & Healing Traditions.$1,500Creative Non-FictionContestThree winners will each receive $500 plus payment for publication in Event 35/3. Other manuscripts may be published.Final Judge: Charles Montgomery, photojournalist and author of The Last Heathen, Encounterswith Ghosts and Ancestors in Melanesia which won the 2005 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction.Writers are invited to submit manuscripts exploring the creative non-fiction form. Back issues ofEvent with previous winning entries and judges’ comments are available for $7.49 (inc. GST).Note: Previously published material cannot be considered. Maximum entry length is 5000words, typed, double-spaced. Include a separate cover sheet with the writer’s name, address,phone number/email, and the title(s) of the story (stories) enclosed. Include a SASE(Canadian Postage/IRCs only). Douglas College employees are not eligible to enter.Entry fee: Each entry must include a $29.95 entry fee (includes GST and a one-year subscription).Those already subscribing will receive a one-year extension. American and overseasentries please pay in US dollars.Deadline for entries: Postmarked April 15, 2006.The Douglas College ReviewP.O. Box 2503, New Westminster, BC V3L 5B2Phone: (604) 527-5293 Fax: (604) 527-5095e-mail: event@douglas.bc.caVisit our website at http://event.douglas.bc.caLigaturesby Donato ManciniFind it hereSpartacus BooksPeople’s Co-op BookstoreDuthie BooksMagpie Magazine GalleryPB Cruise BooksellerAbraxas BooksWatermark BooksPublished by New Star Books1-55420-017-2Banyen BOoks3608 West 4th Avenueat Dunbar, one block east of Alma in Kitsilano, VancouverBooks 604-732-7912 Music/Gifts/Tkts 604-737-8858Out-of-town orders 1-800-663-8442Open Mon-Fri 10-9, Sat 10-8, Sun 11-7www.banyen.comR.G. Willems: Veterinary affairscontinued from page 39is for WillemsTargets of Affection (Cormorant$21.95) by Abbotsford’s R.G.Willems features a veterinary nursenamed Shelby James who reluctantly exploreslinks between animal abuse andchild abuse. The more she gets to knowMiranda Wall, a woman who maintainsa menagerie of needy animals, the moreShelby is unnerved by Miranda’s silentdaughter and her stalking husband. It’sthe first instalment of Willems’ projectedseries of mystery novels about veterinarymedicine. 1-896951-98-8is for XiquesDonez Xiques has included a previouslyunpublished short story byMargaret Laurence in her newbiography Margaret Laurence: TheMaking of a Writer (Dundurn $40), awork that focuses on Laurence’s apprenticeshipyears in Africa and Vancouver,a city she once described as a boringswamp. Coincidentally independentscholar Paul Comeau’s MargaretLaurence’s Epic Imagination (U of AlbertaPress $34.95) has been describedas the first critical study of Laurence inMargaretLaurence feltswamped inVancouver.more than twenty years to look at herentire oeuvre. Comeau, head of Englishat Windermere Secondary in Vancouver,describes how Laurence turned tothe epic mode to create her master narrativesof loss, exile and redemption.Xiques 1-55002-579-1, Comeau 0-88864-451-5is for YouFor having stumbled all the way, possiblywondering whether or not we couldfind an author with a surname beginningwith X or Z.is for ZuberiHaving conducted in-depth interviewswith hotel workers, particularly roomattendants employed by the same multinationalhotel chains in downtownVancouver and Seattle, UBC’s DanZuberi has compared and contrastedAmerican and Canadian social conditionsin Differences That Matter: SocialPolicy and the Working Poor in theUnited States and Canada (CornellUniversity Press $23.50). DaniylMohammad Zuberi received his Ph.Dfrom Harvard in 2004. 0-8014-7312-8Also Noted:The 2006 Biennial Conference of the Associationof Italian Canadian Writers will be held atthe University of British Columbia in May, 2006✍Anthony Dalton has taken on the presidencyof the Vancouver Branch of the CanadianAuthors Association. Dalton’s most recentbooks are Wayward Sailor: In Search of theReal Tristan Jones and J/Boats, Sailing to Success.✍Editor/writer Fernanda Viveiros is the executivedirector of the Federation of B.C. Writers;her predecessor Merrill Fearon is nowan editor for Pacific Educational Press at UBC.

K I D L I TGRUFF GOAT-MAN25 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006ShelleyHrdlitschka andDiane Tullsonhave bothreceived ALAhonours.Blue ribbon for Red SeaDiane Tullson’s Red Sea (Orca 2005) has been named Best Bookfor Young Adults by the American Library Association. The ALA’sannual lists for best books also include three Orca Soundings novels—SomethingGirl by Beth Goobie, Charmed by CarrieMac and Dead-End Job by Vickie Grant—as Quick Picks forthe Reluctant Young Adult Readers list. Six recent Orca titles havebeen named to the Popular Paperbacks list: two novels by ShelleyHrdlitschka—Kat’s Fall and Sun Signs—and four Orca Soundingsnovels for teen reluctant readers—Snitch by NorahMcClintock, Truth by Tanya Lloyd Kyi, Hit Squad byJames Heneghan and Home Invasion by Monique Polak.•The vampire atemy homeworkHaving survived cancer at a veryyoung age, James McCannbecame a children’s book specialist whouses mapmaking in his creative writingworkshops. In McCann’s teen novelRancour (Simply Read $16.95), a werewolfnamed Rancour and a vampirenamed Shay enter the life of Alix, a highschool student who had previouslymostly worried about finding a date forthe prom. Alix must cope with the thousand-year-oldrivalry between the twoviolent combatants, while making sureshe gets her homework done. 1-894965-31-0•If you drink,don’t motherUnfortunately Sara Graefe’sbook has become a bestseller—because so many parents don’t knowwhere to find help for raising childrenwith Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.There is currently no laboratory testthat can confirm whether or not a childhas FAS.Institutions in British Columbia thatrespond specifically to children andfamilies affected by Fetal Alcohol Syndrome,such as Sunny Hill Health Centrefor Children in Vancouver and theAsante Centre in Maple Ridge, can’tpossibly reach every family that needsassistance.Therefore Sara Graefe first wroteParenting Children Affected by Fetal AlcoholSyndrome: A Guide for Daily Livingin 1994.A second bilingual edition in 1998,also sponsored and published by theSociety of Special Needs Adoptive Parents(SNAP), sold more than 40,000copies across Canada and abroad.Graefe’s updated third edition entitledLiving With FASD: A Guide forParents (Groundwork Press $24.95)marks the 15th anniversary of a landmarkFetal Alcohol Syndrome conferencethat was held in Vancouver.As well, Living With FASD is beingreiussed on the 30th anniversary of thefirst North American research articlethat made the connection between maternaldrinking during pregnancy.0-9735444-1-4[Publisher info at abcbookworld.com]•Bird flewHaving volunteered for the Wildlife Rescue Association of BC,Diane Haynes has combined mysteryand suspense for Flight or Fight (Walrus/Whitecap $8.95), first in her projectedJane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series.“I watched a scoter get smashedagainst the Stanley Park seawall becauseit couldn’t lift its wings out of the water,”says Haynes, after a canola oil spillin 2000. “When we got it to the shelter,there were volunteers working aroundthe clock to save hundreds of oiled animals.It changed my life. I’ve been a volunteerever since.”Flight or Fight’s main character JaneRay is a shy, reluctant heroine who takesan oiled bird to the (fictional) UrbanWildlife Rescue Centre after a 200,000-gallon spill. Thrust into the nationalmedia, she pits her will against the oilcompany at fault.Haynes has crossed Canada on aspeaking tour for the book, talking toteenagers. “Animals aren’t statistics tothem,” she says. “They’re real, live, feelingcreatures. Kids love them. They sawWabamun Lake. They get it.” 1-55285-658-5✍Designed for younger readers SallyRogow’s compilation of true stories ofrescue during World War II, They MustNot Be Forgotten: Heroic CatholicPriests and Nuns Who Saved PeopleFrom The Holocaust (Holy Fire Publishing$11.99 U.S.) documents heroism recognizedand honoured by the YadVashem and the Catholic church. 0976721163✍Born in Mexico, ElisaGutierrez is the Vancouver-basedauthor and designer of Picturescape(Simply Read $19.95), the story of a boywho finds himself magically transportedon a cross-Canada journey after he visitsa local art gallery and admires works byCanadian artists. 1-894965-24-8TWIGG PHOTOOstensibly a children's book,Barbara Ann Lambert‘sself-published The Mystery ofBilly-Goat Smith (Trafford $9.99) recallsthe hermit who resided on a 160-acrehomestead at Jim Brown Creek, at thehead of Powell Lake.Aka Billy-Goat Smith, Robert BonnerSmith came to Powell River in 1910 anddied in 1958. A crude sign on his propertyread: “Powell River People and DogsPlease KEEP OFF.”Local residents suspected Smith wascomplicit in the much-publicized highsociety murder of architect StanfordWhite in the United States in 1906. Therewas speculation that millionaire HarveyThaw had hired a hitman—the reclusiveSmith, who had subsequently fled toCanada—as inferred by an article inColliers magazine.The sensational story became thebasis of a movie, The Girl in the RedVelvet Swing, in the 1950s.The Powell River News alsospeculated he was the unacknowledgedpartner in a 1932 robbery of the PatriciaTheatre by notorious criminals WilliamBagley and Gordon Fawcett.After Smith received more than $6,000in compensation for flooding of PowellLake, he kept his money in glass jarshidden in the dirt floor of his root house.Lambert was prompted to write TheMystery of Billy-Goat Smith after siftingthrough a family trunk and finding twoletters signed Billy Goat. Both were writtenbefore Smith kept goats, indicating he hadacquired his nickname for a differentreason--probably because he was knownto be a sharpshooter who could hit a goatfrom a half-a-mile away. 1-4120-7311-1CRABBY CRABIn her 80th year, Ruth Howard hasself-published what one young readerhas called “a real Grandma story.”It’s Crabby Crab (Trafford $9.99), avery simple tale about a shore crab thatgets trapped in the red plastic sandbucket of two children digging on thebeach, taken home for show ‘n’ tell, thenreplaced in the ocean.Raised in Fredericton, Howard workedin fisheries research and later continuedher appreciation of marine life from acottage at Hopkins Landing.1-4120-1432-8Illustration by Helen Downing Hunter

I N D I E S34 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006The call ofthe gameAs the best announcer in the leaguefor the worst team, veteran sportsplay-by-play broadcaster JimRobson has been wooed for years to producea book. At 69, finally agreed to allowJason Farris, a 38-year-old software businessman,to compile Robson’s memorabiliafor Hockey Play-by-Play: Around theNHL with Jim Robson (Granville IslandPublishing $44.95), a scrapbook-styled coffeetable book. The much-loved Robson,known for his “message to hospital patientsand shut-ins” and other people who couldn’tget out to the games, retired from radio in1999 and last called a hockey game onCKNW radio when the Vancouver Canuckslost game seven to the New York Islandersin the 1994 Stanley Cup finals.“The business has changed quite a bit,”Robson told Iain MacIntyre of the VancouverSun. “It’s entertainment now and I wasnever an entertainer... I think the kids todaywould find [my broadcasts] dull.” AlthoughRobson was the voice of the VancouverCanucks for 25 years, long-time BritishColumbians remember Jim Robson just asfondly as the voice of the VancouverMounties baseball team in the PacificCoast League.That era ofRobson’s careerhas yetto be documented.0-9739016-1-6A youngJim RobsonRemnant of the statue of Constantine the GreatThe barmaid & JesusAccording to Terry Julian in his eighth non-fiction title, Helena,mother of Constantine the Great, the Christian ruler who broughtprosperity and order to the Roman and Byzantine empires duringhis 21-year-reign, was possibly a Sicilian barmaid. She later becamepious and revered as the alleged discoverer of Christ’s cross in Jerusalem.It’s just one of the details explored by Terry Julian inConstantine, Christianity, and Constantinople (Trafford $19.95).Constantine was not baptized until he lay on his death bed because,according to Julian, “Baptism in those days was taken very seriouslyand it was common to defer it as late as possible so that there wasless chance of committing mortal sin subsequently.” 141207003-1Hong Kong hellAlthough an editor could have improved Gordon Fairclough’stext for Brick Hill and Beyond ($13), his homespun autobiography isremarkable for its all-too-brief account of walking halfway across Asia asan escaped prisoner during World War II.While defending an anti-aircraft gun site at Brick Hill Peninsula, onGordon Faircloughthe island of Hong Kong in 1941, Gordon Fairclough was taken prisonerat age 22 and sent to the North Point Prison. The flies were so bad hewas ordered to spend several hours a day swatting them. “A six-foot barrack table wouldappear to move,” he recalls, “I remember counting the flies that I had killed with one swat,and the result was 49 flies.” Sickness was taking its toll. Outrageous cruelty from theJapanese guards and a starvation diet prompted Fairclough to decide “it was a 50/50chance of survival whether we stayed as prisoners or attempted to escape.” He andseveral others managed to free themselves by trekking across China and into Burma, anastonishing feat he describes with remarkable restraint.When Fairclough returned to England as a captain in 1945, after service in India, hewas awarded the Military Cross from King George VI. Troubled by recurring nightmaresuntil 1951, he immigrated to Canada in 1953 and now lives in Tsawwassen. 0-9736019-0-6The call of the roadAformer medical doctor in BurnsLake and the Arctic, John Daleof Nelson has released Notes from aSidecar (Daedalus $24.95), a lightheartedyet detailed examination of20th century philosophy. His accounttakes the reader on a motorcycle/sidecartrip on a Vulcan 1500 Kawasaki, withHannigan sidecar, around the SelkirkLoop in B.C., Washington and Idaho.It simultaneously concerns the vaguenessin philosophy in relation to everydaydecisions and encourages beingcomfortable with inexactitude.Motorcycles and the art ofphilosophy maintenanceDale studied with Wittgensteinianphilosophers. His book does not requirea detailed prior knowledge of philosophybut the author suggests “it will taxyour brain to read it.” 1-4120-5910-0The call of the cattle“Land, my boy,”Mac Annableonce told hisgrandsonA n d r e wMcCredie,“land and livestock.It’s all I’veAndrew McCredie ever known.”Ranching theKootenay District in the Rocky Mountainsin 1899, Annable operated a5,000-acre cattle ranch and lumbercompany between Trail and Rossland.Having served in the Assiniboia Assemblywhen Saskatchewan and Albertajoined Confederation in 1905, he finallyretired to Valdes Island. McCredie, aNorth Vancouver-based newspaperman,has written The Laugh ThatShook The West! G.M. ‘Mac’ Annable,Rancher/Politician (West Vancouver:Ancan Pub. $19.50). 0-9738895-0-0Publisher addresses for books on thispage are at www.abcbookworld.comA Langley resident since 1979, WarrenSommer, with a master’s degree from UBC inhistorical geography, has written his third bookabout his hometown, Frail Memorials: TheCemeteries of Langley (Corporation of theTownship of Langley, $24.95). 0-9682654-1-3✍A member of the second generation of “VancouverSchool” photographers, Evan Lee premiered aretrospective of recent photographs at thePresentation House Gallery in January, curatedby Bill Jeffries. The exhibit entitled Captures:Selected Works 1988 to 2006 (PresentationHouse $20) included a catalogue that has textby Christopher Brayshaw, Peter Culley,Jeff Wall and William Wood. 0-920293-68-9Bethan Davies & Ben Cole’s Walkingthe Camino de Santiago (Pili Pala Press$25) provides a step-by-step guide towalking an ancient pilgrimage route thatgoes for 700 km. across northern Spain.The co-authors re-walked the camino in2005 prior to releasing their lighter, secondedition that includes some city maps andaccommodation options. The Vancouverbasedimprint was started in 1993 topublish walking guides to the IberianPeninsula, including Walking in Portugal.Pila Palal is Welsh for butterfly.0-9731698-2-6Memorial cross by the side of the roadin the Pyrenees surrounded by crossesleft by pilgrims is part of walking theCamino de Santiago in Spain.

I N D I E S35 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006The call of the lakeArriving in the Okanagan from Londonat age eight, mainly because hismother was eager to try homesteading,Roger John Sugars commenceda series of diaries that he maintained from1905 to 1919. Sight-unseen, his fatherbought 160 acres on the west side ofOkanagan Lake for $500, staying thereuntil 1917. Raised near present-dayFintry in a lakeside wilderness, Sugarswas educated by his father, a scholar andpianist.RogerJohnSugars in1948He worked in logging camps and onfruit ranches before shipping overseas toserve in France and England duringWW I. John A. Sugars of Westbank hasedited the diaries for publication as AnOkanagan History: The Diaries ofRoger John Sugars (Sandhill $24.95).The call of Kenya 10-9738153-0-2As the second installment of J.Gordon Mumford’s trilogycovering the east-African period from1949 to 1958, Drums of Rebellion:Kenya in Chaos (Zebra House $24.95)is set against the backdrop of the notoriousMau-Mau uprisings and Kikuyurebellion.Mumford visited many remote areasof east Africa as an Assistant Engineerfor the East African Posts and TelecommunicationsAdministration, working inthe field on the radio repeater surveyroutes throughout Kenya, Tanganyikaand Uganda. 0-9736297-1-1The call of Kenya 2As a retired elementary school principal,overcoming the loss of hereldest son to leukemia, SandraHarper volunteered to assist the AfricaCanadian Continuing EducationWAYNE CROSSEN PHOTOThis teacher is one of 12 Kenyans featured in Inside Kenya—Creating TomorrowSociety (A.C.C.E.S.), a British Columbia-basednon-governmental organizationthat funds education scholarshipsand literacy centers in Kakamega, Kenya.After six months in Kakamega, a poorcommunity with high unemployment inthe Western Province of Kenya, whereonly forty-two percent of children attendprimary school, Harper wrote InsideKenya—Creating Tomorrow(Hawthorne $19.95), twelve portraits ofKenyans she met and admired.Specifically these twelve Kenyans,having been given the opportunity to attendpost-secondary education inCanada, were back in Kenya, educatingothers. All proceeds from her independentlypublished book go to anA.C.C.E.S. Scholarship Fund.0-9734986-1-7The call of the KettleJ.F. Garden’s latest railroad book,The Crow and the Kettle: TheCPR in Southern British Columbiaand Alberta, 1950-1989 (Footprint /Sandhill $69.95), looks at the modernera of the famous rail line that ran fromMedicine Hat to a switch on the CPRmainline at Odlum, then across theFraser River from Hope. Built by wayof the Crowsnest Pass, Kettle Valley andthe Coquihalla Pass, this all-Canadaroute was designed to thwart Americaninterests in southern B.C. It crossedthree major rivers and seven mountainsummits. 0-9691621-8-9The call of DenmanHaving examined the surrealistmovement in the United States forSurrealist Subversions (Autonomedia),Ron Sakolsky has collected his variouswritings since the turn of the 21stcentury for Creating Anarchy (Fifth Estate$15 US), “all bathed in the subversivelight of anarchy and mad love.”With chapter headings such as Refusingthe Marketplace, Why Consent tobe Ruled at All?and Anarchy in aDiasporic Key,Sakolsky presents acollage of ideasand images mostlypublished previously.Ron Sakolsky In a piece entitledDancingWaves, Sakolsky briefly looks at comparisonsto be made between Denman Islandand the Orkney islands off thenorthern tip of Scotland.“Only after I’d left my old landlockedIllinois life behind and moved here lock,stock and barreled,” he writes, “did I discoverthat Canada’s most well-known anarchistphilosopher GeorgeWoodcock was a frequenter ofDenman on his way to neighboringHornby Island to visit his good friend,the painter, Jack Shadbolt—a factthat appealed to my sense of anarchistsynchronicity.”0-9772258-0-1ALSO RECEIVEDRobert G. Anstey’s umpteenth selfpublishedtitle, Beatles’s Gigs (Sardis: WestCoast Paradise $12.95) proceeds from theFab Four’s metamorphosis as the Quarry Menand the Silver Beetles to the end of theirtouring days in 1966—and beyond. “TheBeatles were possibly the hardest-workingband that ever was,” says Anstey, songwriterand poet, “as theynot only performed forup to seven hours ata time, seven days aweek in Hamburg,they often performedone, two and eventhree gigs a day from1961 to 1963 inGreat Britain.” AlsoRobert Ansteyin 2005, Ansteyreleased a personalcelebration of life, Poems from Tuscany.(West Coast Paradise, $14.95).Gigs 1-897031-16-5; Tuscany 1-897031-23-8✍With 30 archival photos, Vernon Storey’sLearning to Teach: Teacher Preparationin Victoria, BC: 1903-1963 (Faculty ofEducation, University of Victoria $23) tracesthe development of formal teacher training inVictoria, from the Victoria Provincial NormalSchool years to 1963, to mark the 40thanniversary of the University of Victoria andthe 100th year of post-secondary educationin Victoria. Storey, a professor of LeadershipStudies at UVic, was a teacher, principal andschool superintendent. His other booksinclude The Home: From Orphan’s Home toFamily Centre, 1873 to 1998.What Goes Up Comes Outby Ian Rudkin (Brio Books)---------------------------------------------------------From Top To Bottom...and Back by PeterHicks (Peter Hicks $14.95) 0-9737606-0-5----------------------------------------------------------------------------Without A Blueprint by Zolten S. Kiss(Sandor Press $35) 0-9738361-0-5----------------------------------------------------------------------------A Year On The Garden Path by CarolynHerriot (Earthfuture $22.95) 0-9738058-0-3----------------------------------------------------------------------------Eyewitness by Mark Johnstone 0-9737945-0-X----------------------------------------------------------------------------Rough Justice by Mark Johnstone(Trafford) 1-41204440-5----------------------------------------------------------------------------Prisoners Under Glass by R. Patrick(Scroll Press) 0-9735422-2-5----------------------------------------------------------------------------Awake! A Spiritual Primer by ElizabethBlakely (Isis Moon $28.95) 0-9686765-3-7----------------------------------------------------------------------------In The Wilds of Western Canada by TyroneDanlock (Trafford $37) 141203447-7----------------------------------------------------------------------------Meditations on the Paintings of CarleHessay by Leonard A. Woods (Trabarni/Treeline) 1-895666-27-9Publisher addresses for books on thispage are at www.abcbookworld.com

6 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006INTERVIEWSYLVIA OLSENsteps off the constructionsite looking like amillion bucks.At 51, the mother of four is theconstruction manager for theTsartlip First Nation on southernVancouver Island, but she’s alsoconstructive as a writer, workingbetween four and seven in themornings, for the past ten years,producing a series of impressivebooks drawnfrom her FirstNations milieu.Her firstbook, No Time toSARA CASSIDYSay Goodbye, recallsthe experiences of First Nations childrenwho were sent to Kuper Islandresidential school. Girl With A Baby wasinspired by her daughter’s experience ofbecoming a mother at 14. CatchingSpring and Yellow Line are juvenile novelsabout Aboriginal youths learning tocope with maturation and racial tensions.White Girl is based on Olsen’s own experienceas a non-Aboriginal who movedto live on the Tsartlip reserve at age 17.“When I got married and started livingon reserve,” she says, “all my friends wereACROSSTHE ROAD &OVER THEDITCHSYLVIA OLSEN confronts motherhood issuestraveling to the exotic places of the worldto get cultural experiences. I walkedacross the road and over the ditch andthen stayed for 33 years and got an immersionin cross-cultural life.”Upon learning that up to 70% of newfamilies in some Coast Salish communitiesare being started by teen parents,Sylvia Olsen obtained support from theAboriginal Healing Foundation to learnmore. With First Nations communityworker Lola James, she organized thirteenyoung Coast Salish mothers for events,such as picnics and birthday parties, aswell as conversations, giving rise to JustAsk Us: A Conversation with First NationsTeenage Moms (Sono Nis $22.95).Just Ask Us shares the experiences ofteenage mothers facing a wide range ofissues that include sex, relationships,birth control, abortion, pornography,self-image, and parenting.Currently building social housing forlow income families, Sylvia Olsen was interviewedby Sara Cassidy.✍BCBW: Are you Coast Salish by marriage?OLSEN: I’m a status Indian by marriage.That’s what the official thing is,but I’m from down the street, across theroad, whatever it is.BCBW: Is it a tension that confrontsyou daily, your cross-cultural existence?OLSEN: Yes and no. I’m intellectuallyattached to it, not just experientially. Iwent to university and got a Mastersdegree in the West Coast history of native-whiterelations. So now the burningquestions in my mind are around that.BCBW: In my experience, the separationbetween First Nations and non-FirstNations is stark. It creates not just ignorancebut allows for forgetfulness.OLSEN: Yes, ignorance in the sensethat we just don’t know each other. That’sthe core of the problem. In Canada, wehave set up two separate worlds, Themand Us. It serves political purposes foreveryone, but in the big picture, as faras I’m concerned, it has not served eitherside well.There are many, many mixed-bloodchildren in this country. There are manymore people with a mixed experiencethan this Us and Them separation wouldhave us believe. I’m just a voice that says,if you want to talk stark separation—well, that’s certainly part of the overallconversation. I, however, want to havethe conversation that’s happening in themiddle. It’s important in our country tohave a look at where the coming-togetherhappens.BCBW: And you feel support for thatviewpoint? Emphasizing exchange?OLSEN: Oh, yeah. How do we learnabout ourselves? By seeing ourselves inreference to others. That’s the enrichmentin life. As opposed to isolating ourselvesand looking only from our ownperspective. Some may disagree and Ithink disagreement is great! Let’s justhave a rich discussion instead of one thatis afraid and making it up becausewe’re not really being honest aboutourselves.BCBW: In my generation, there’s someawareness of colonialism, but there’s also“There are many,many mixed-bloodchildren inthis country.”Sylvia Olsen with her daughterHeather and granddaughter Yetsa.

7 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2006a reluctance to ask, to run the risk of reviolating.In a way, the title of your book,Just Ask Us, reflects that.OLSEN: Yes. The young mothers said,just ask us: if we want to know about eachother, just ask us.BCBW: Why did you want Just Ask Usto be a community-based study and notscientific research?OLSEN: Scientific method uses a lotof statistics and statistics are harsh. Theyhaven’t served us very well in this community.That is not the kind of discussionyou want to have with young moms.When you read statistics toyoung people around here,it’s a very, very hard thing tohear. But another reason isbecause I really believe conversationsare the best wayfor us to get to know ourselvesand others. It’s betterthan statistical analysis.BCBW: But you do pointout the context for their parenthood—poverty,experiencesof abuse, high rates ofdrug and alcohol addiction,families deeply ruptured byresidential schools.OLSEN: For our community, we haveall these plans and aspirations and yetre-building community is a very difficultchore when you have so many teenagerstaken up with raising babies in a reallydifficult situation. The communitiesneed the mothers so badly, because we’rere-building broken-up communities.BCBW: You quote Kim Anderson whonotes that “when a people are undersiege it is imperative to re-produce.” Butyou also write of “a lag time” betweenthe modern First Nations young motherand the cultural structure.OLSEN: Yes. Like many of the Aboriginalwomen here, I didn’t graduatefrom high school. I had my children, thenwent back to university. I am now working,like many of my peers, building community.Most of the strong women myage are out, they’re doing health care,they’re building houses, they’re the communityworkers. And our children arehaving babies, and we aren’t there, we’renot there supporting. We’re just not there.There are some empty spaces in ourhomes now. It’s a difficult equation.I would say, living in a First Nationcommunity, there is more activity, moreconsciousness of making community,than there is anywhere else. There ishuge thinking going into it, in everyfield. First Nations are working to capacity,they’re maxing out. So young girlswith their babies… it’s out of seasonsomehow. But there is a really, reallystrong feeling that we want every kid andSYLVIA OLSEN BIBLIOGRAPHYwe have ambitions and plans for everychild. That’s really strong.BCBW: How do you feel these dayswhen you hear another teenager in yourneighbourhood is pregnant?OLSEN: Because I’ve been here a longtime, I don’t throw my hands up. I justknow that that child can be fine if thereis the support. It really is about the supportthe child and her mother get. But Ido worry, because I know immediatelythat that girl is going to be in distressright away. And I want that child to havethe same opportunities as other children.When my daughterhad her baby, I could seethere were more thingsthat could happen to sether back. In our family,the baby was able to becared for very well, but abeautiful fourteen-yearoldgirl who is now amother, who has to negotiateher way through thestigma and the stereotypes…well, the baby isgoing to depend so muchon that mother, so it is importantthat the mother is supportedand that she is on her feet. That baby’ssuccess depends on it. So we have tomake sure the mother matures, that shedoesn’t get her maturation truncated.BCBW: Are you generally a committedperson by nature or does the communityask you to get involved?OLSEN: It’s the nature of me to attachto the burning social issues of where I am.I figured that out after a while. So whena person like me lives in a community thatis so needy and where there are so manyquestions, there’s no getting up and leaving.Because these are the burning questionsof our country. These are Canada’squestions. They aren’t First Nations questions,they are questions that need to beaddressed no matter who you are.BCBW: Anything you’d like to add?OLSEN: Yes. The answers to theseproblems are really, really simple. They’reabout communicating. Right from thestart, if we communicate with ourdaughters and our sons and each othercross-culturally… if we have decent,mature, honest, tolerant conversationsabout the real subjects, rather than theextraneous junk, than we will either nothave as many [babies born] or when wedo we will cope with them. So, my bigthing is, let’s talk about things and talkabout the stuff we don’t like talkingabout… [laughter] I think that’s mytheory for everything!Sara Cassidy is a freelance writer andinterviewer based in Victoria.No Time to Say Goodbye: Children’s Stories of Kuper Island ResidentialSchool co-authored by Rita Morris & Ann Sam (Sono Nis, 2002) 1-55039-121-6The Girl with a Baby (Sono Nis, 2003) 1550391429Catching Spring (Orca, 2004) 1-55143-298-6White Girl (Sono Nis, 2004) 1-55039-147-XJust Ask Us: A Conversation with First Nations Teenage Moms(Sono Nis, 2005) 1-55039-152-6Murphy and the Mouse Trap (Orca, 2005) 1-55143-344-3Yellow Line (Orca, 2005) 1-55143-462-8Open late every day!Location,Location,Location,. . . and great prices!DOWNTOWN552 Seymour St604 683-5711YALETOWN1068 Homer St604 681-5711WEST END1051 Davie St604 685-5711BROADWAY632 West Broadway604 872-5711KITSILANO2388 West 4th Ave604 734-5711UNIVERSITY/PT GREY4444 West 10th Ave604 221-5711NORTH SHORE1524 Lonsdale604 904-5711NEW!Vancouver’s independent discount bookseller for 25 yearswww.bookwarehouse.ca