Spring 2005 Volume 19 - No. 1 - BC BookWorld

On August 6, 2002, policemet with Maggie de Vriesand gave her the news that asample of her adopted sisterSarah’s DNA (from a tooth)was found by police on thePort Coquitlam property ofRobert Pickton, the accusedserial killer of Vancouverprostitutes. After hope wasreplaced by grim certainty,de Vries kept searching foranswers as to how and whyher sister had disappeared,leading to her heart-rendingmemoir, Missing Sarah(Penguin).innerGEORGE RYGA AWARDFor Social Awareness inBritish Columbia Literature.It has received the firstGeorge Ryga Award.This award was presented ata gala reunion concert ofUHF (Shari Ulrich, BillHenderson and Roy Forbes)in the Vernon PerformingArts Centre on July 24,hosted by CBC’s Paul Grant.The shortlist also includedBurning Vision (Talonbooks)by Marie Clements; FieldDay (New Star Books) byMatt Hern and The OrientalQuestion (UBC Press) byPatricia E. Roy.Sponsored by the George Ryga Centre (Summerland),(Kelowna) and Okanagan University College.Information: jlent@junction.net

CLASSICSWith this article, we commence a new series celebrating classic B.C stories and / or classic B.C. books.SIMONGUNANOOT:OUTLAW PAR EXCELLENCEBill Miner, B.C.’sbest-known outlaw, wasdepicted in the movieThe Grey Fox as a lovablebandit. As B.C.’s mostremarkable outlaw,Simon Gunanoot hasalso been mythologizedas a hero. But thetruth is more complex.Simon Gunanoot, a prosperousGitksan trapper and merchant, wascharged with the cold-blooded murderof two men near Hazelton in 1906.With family members in tow, he fledinto the wilderness and eluded capturefor thirteen years.Several expeditions pursued the fugitives,but Gunanoot’s superior wildernessskills along the Skeena, Nass andStikine Rivers soon made him into aKispiox folk hero. The Gitksan helpedhim elude capture and provided food.Gunanoot sometimes followed his ownposse, but he never harmed them.He surrendered to Mounted Policein Hazelton on June 24, 1919 after Vancouverlawyer Stuart Henderson took aninterest in his plight. With Hendersonat his side in a Vancouver courtroom,Gunannoot was acquitted in 1920.His co-accused brother-in-law PeterHi-madam was soon exonerated, too. Evidenceagainst both men was scant, andsome prosecution witnesses had disappearedor died, so the Crown prosecutordid not pursue the case with rigour.Thomas Kelley wrote the first bookabout Gunanoot, Run Indian Run, inwhich his outlaw status was glorified.Then along came David RicardoWilliams, a trial lawyer, who dissectedthe case more thoroughly for TraplineOutlaw: Simon Peter Gunanoot (SonoNis, 1982).Williams interviewed some ofGunanoot’s children and gath-Simon Gunanoot’s shootingspree is chillingly recalled:The folk hero shot three horses,killed another horse with an axeand threatened to kill his ownchildren.ered pertinent information not raisedduring the trial. After an extensive recountingof the facts, Williams effectivelydismantles Gunanoot’s romanticreputation as a wrongly accused murderer.“We cannot disregard the strong evidenceof guilt,” he concludes. “It establishesthat Simon Peter Gunanoot killedboth Alexander MacIntosh andMaxwell Leclair.”All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online atw w w . a b c b o o k w o r l d . c o mAccording to Williams, Gunanootpossibly killed MacIntosh as the resultof MacIntosh’s supposed or real triflingwith his wife, or as the result of theirdrunken altercation, or some insult orslight connected with it. “Simon wouldhave considered the cuts inflicted byMacIntosh to his face almost a mortalinsult,” Williams claims. “In any event,Simon’s hostility combined with toomuch liquor led to a fatal outcome. Hemay have killed Leclair as the result ofhis taunts, but more likely he shot himin a drunken frenzy.”Gunanoot’s shooting spree on the dayof the alleged murders is chillingly recalledfrom eyewitness accounts.The folk hero shot three horses, killedanother horse with an axe and threatenedto kill his own children.Gunanoot’s co-defendant Peter Himadamimplicated him and Gunanootalso told two of his sons he had committedthe murders. According to Williams,Gunanoot also privately confessed to killingboth MacIntosh and Leclair (afterlosing his drunken fight withMacIntosh) to his wife, to his father andto another man named Tom Lula.Gunanoot was represented by StuartHenderson, an unconventional lawyerwho defended 45 men on murdercharges during his varied career aroundB.C., and secured acquittals for all buttwo. Williams describes him as “perhapsthe most effective criminal lawyer BritishColumbia has known.”After the trial, Henderson formed anunusual business relationship withGunanoot, traipsing around the Kispioxas a prospector, hoping to strike it richwith Gunanoot’s guidance. Hendersondied in Victoria in 1945 at age 81.Born around 1874 in Gitanmaax,Simon Gunanoot died of heart failurein October of 1933 while tending histrapline near Stewart. He was buried inthe wilderness.David Ricardo Williams’ sobering indictmentof Gunanoot (also spelledGun-a-noot) will not suit the needs ofHollywood, or please anyone eager toimagine an Aboriginal equivalent ofRobin HoodNow back in print, Trapline Outlaw:Simon Peter Gunanoot (Sono Nis$19.95) serves as a fascinating work byone of the province’s foremost biographers.0-919203-98-1For more on David Ricardo Williams,visit abcbookworld.comBCBOOKWORLDSpring Issue Vol. 19, No. 1Publisher/ Writer: Alan TwiggEditor/Production: David LesterPublication Mail Agreement #40010086Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to:BC BookWorld, 3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3For information on allBC authors visit:www.abcbookworld.comProduced with the sponsorship of Pacific BookWorld NewsSociety. Publications Mail Registration No. 7800.BC BookWorld ISSN: 1701-5405Contributors: Mark Forsythe, Joan Givner,Louise Donnelly, Carla Lucchetta, Candace Walker,Hannah Main-van der Kamp, Heather Ramsay.Writing not otherwise credited is by staff.Proofreaders: Wendy Atkinson, Betty Twigg.Deliveries: Ken Reid. Design: Get-to-the-Point GraphicsAdvertising & editorial: BC BookWorld,3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., V6R 2S3Publication Agreement 400-100-86Website: www.bcbookworld.comTel/Fax: 604-736-4011; email: available on request .Annual subscription: $12.84We acknowledge theassistance of CanadaCouncil and the Provinceof British Columbia,through the Ministryof Community,Aboriginal,and Women’sServicesINDEX to AdvertisersAnn Thomson...32Anvil Press...22Arsenal Pulp Press...14Banyen Books...13BC Book Prizes...24Book TV...32Bolen Books...26Book Warehouse...30Caitlin Press...14Crown Publications...12David Ellis...28Douglas & McIntyre...35Douglas College/EVENT...32Ekstasis Editions...22First Choice Books...34Friesens Printers...34Gaspereau...27Granville Island Publishing...32Harbour Publishing...36HarperCollins...3Hedgerow Press...32Heritage House...16Hignell Printing...34Houghton Boston...34Literary Press Group...22, 27, 32New Society...4Northstone...12Oolichan Books...8Orca Books...8People’s Co-op Books...28Printorium...34Ripple Effects Press...33Ronsdale Press...9Save-On/Overwaitea...26Self-Counsel Press...31SFU Writing & Publishing...15Shuswap Lake Writers’ Festival...3Sidney Booktown...13Sono Nis Press...11Talonbooks...20Terasen...2Transcontinental Printing...34UBC Press...25VanCity...6Vancouver Desktop...28Warren Thompson...32Western Rim Book Company...28Wolsak & Wynn Publishers...32Yoka’s Coffee...13Zebra Publishing House...285 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005

SHOWBIZElvis interviewed by Red Robinson, 1957.Nat King Cole at the Georgia Hotel, 1958.Hugh Pickett with ‘close friend’ Marlene Dietrich.Unicyclist at the Cave Supper Club.Empire Stadium, 1964.BLACK & WHITE& RED ALL OVERNat King Cole (with towel) broke thecolour barrier in Vancouver when hestayed at the Hotel Georgia in 1958.Ageless deejay Red Robinson (with LittleRichard at right) broke the sound colour bar on airwhen he purchased black 45s, from beneath the counter,and spun them at CJOR.With significant contributions from impresarioHugh Pickett, concert photographer DeeLippingwell and others, Red Robinson and journalistGreg Potter have gathered a trove of neverseenphotos, and recycled some of the city’s bestshow-biz anecdotes, for Backstage Vancouver: A Centuryof Entertainment Legends (Harbour, $39.95).“Jack Cullen passed away and a group ofmy colleagues worked to save his collection of audioand photographic materials,” says Robinson,who still plays Oldies music on CISL.“The same for Monty McFarlane... Ihave saved all my interviews and photographs.It is my dream to start a B.C. EntertainmentMuseum.” 1-55017-334-0Little Richard and Red Robinson at CKWX studios.Clark Gabletees off in Vancouver.“Clark Gablewas so nice andhe always cameby himself, nogirlfriends. He justcame to fish forsteelhead andpike in theCoquitlam River.—Clara Jacobs, hotelierPamela AndersonYvonne DeCarloDorothy StrattenRed Robinson with Buddy Holly, 1957.7 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005

FICTIONSECRETS& LIVESDEREK SHAPTON PHOTOAn hour-longdocumentary aboutWayson Choy’srecent trip to China,Searching for Confucius,will premiere on VisionTV,March 29, 2005. He wasprompted to examine hisChinese roots more deeply whenhe fell ill while completingAll That Matters(Doubleday $35.95).With 50,000 copies in print,his first novel The Jade Peony(D&M $19.95) has been re-issued.Born in Vancouver in 1939, Wayson Choy always believed he was the son of acook on a Canadian Pacific ship.When he attended Strathcona Elementary School, he wanted to grow up and be acowboy. Safe within the ‘bubble’ of his marginality, he accompanied his mother to herevenings of mahjong and watched Chinese opera. Later he became the first ChineseCanadian to enroll in a creative writing course (taught by Earle Birney). At UBC hebegan writing a short story that would turn into his first novel more than 30 years later.As an inter-generational chronicle of the Chens, an immigrant family strugglingduring the Depression, The Jade Peony (D&M) won the City of Vancouver Book Awardand the Trillium Award in the mid 1990s. [It has been re-issued in a revised edition.]After a radio interview about the book, Wayson Choy received an unexpected phonecall from a woman who had been his babysitter. At age 56, he learned he had beenadopted. This revelation led him to write Paper Shadows (Penguin) a memoir set duringthe 1940s.Now Wayson Choy has returned to the saga of the Chen family with All That Matters(Doubleday), a prequel told through the eyes of eldest son, Kiam-Kim, who arrivesby ship at Gold Mountain with his father andgrandmother, Poh-Poh, in 1926.By Johanne LeachNeighbours—one Chinese, one Irish—areboth racist. Flowers and teas are sent back andforth between the families, but they still don’t want their sons and daughters to intermarry.“Kiam-Kim must choose between becoming a bridge that connects the difference—ora wall,” says Choy. “It’s a choice we all must make.”The wise and spirited Poh-Poh is a compilation of the women who influenced Choywhen he was growing up. He took the elements revealed by the elders to create Poh-Poh’s secrets of abuse and rape as a slave girl in China.“Everyone in Chinatown cooperated in keeping secrets. They would buy, sell andtrade children. Immigrant people do dreadful things to survive. The women who cameto Canada from China were tough cookies, they were survivors. Often they came aswaitresses when they were actually prostitutes and the pretty ones were bought by therich merchants.”The title All That Matters comes from Confucius. “He was asked by a group ofyoung scholars what to say when they spoke to the poor, to the ordinary people,” Choysays. “They likely expected a long dissertation, but instead the master said a few words:‘all that matters is to express the truth.’”Although Choy has never had a family of his own, he depicts many domestic sceneswith children, including the birth of a baby. “I grew up with a large extended familyand I have two goddaughters who are so important to me, as are their families. When Iwas writing this book, dear friends gave me a great gift––the opportunity to witness thebirth of their baby.”For his writing, Choy says it is essential to trust the point of view of others. “Mycharacter, Kiam-Kim, is heterosexual which I am not. You have to risk everything tomake a breakthrough. Be on the side of the monster. Until we can make someoneunderstand that any of us could have been the guard at a Nazi concentration camp orthe uncle that abused his niece or the soldiers that napalmed Vietnam, until we canmake others see that, it is not literature. A writer has to reverse things to get at what theyknow.”Although Choy has been teaching remedial English and creative writing at HumberCollege in Toronto since 1962, he remains haunted by the Chinatown of his youth.Ghosts and phantoms; omens and signs. They inhabit Wayson Choy’s literary landscapes.Choy believes “that people who loved us still occupy and exist in our lives. I cantalk to them and sometimes they talk to me. They are not gone.”Matters 0-385-25759-7; Peony 1-55054-468-3; Shadows 01-40268197Johanne Leach is a Vancouver freelance writer.All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online atw w w . a b c b o o k w o r l d . c o m21 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005

O B I T S33 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005CANADA’S MOSTsignificantnon-fictionauthor spenthis teenageyears inVictoria and began hisprofessional writing career inVancouver, where he had anundistinguished university careerat UBC. Born in Whitehorse onJuly 12, 1920, Dawson City-raisedPierre Berton graduated toprofessional journalism from hisstudent newspaper days on TheUbyssey (1939-1941). Instead ofconcentrating on his school work,Berton doubled as a studentstringer for the News-Herald, aVancouver daily. He went to workfull-time for the News-Herald andbecame city editor at age 21.Berton was the youngest cityeditor on any Canadian daily. Heserved in the army (1942-1945),rising from private to captain/instructor at the Royal MilitaryCollege in Kingston, also spendingsome time at the military trainingcentre in Vernon. He returned toVancouver and joined TheVancouver Sun in 1946. There hebecame a crony of reporter JackWebster. Berton and his wifewould partially raise anotherVancouver-based broadcaster,Vicki Gabereau, whose fatherworked for the press in Vancouveras a photographer. In 1946, Berton’s series of articles about aso-called ‘Headless Valley’ in the South Nahanni River regioncaptured the public’s imagination and prompted a job offerfrom Maclean’s. Berton moved to Toronto in 1947, and by1951, at the age of 31 he was named managing editor ofMaclean’s. In 1957 he became a key member of the CBC’spublic affairs flagship program, Close-Up, and a permanentpanelist on Front Page Challenge for 39 years. He joined TheToronto Star as associate editor and columnist in 1958,leaving in 1962 to commence The Pierre Berton Show, whichran until 1973. Since then he appeared as host and writer onMy Country, The Great Debate, Heritage Theatre and TheSecret of My Success. An outspoken critic of capitalpunishment, Berton was a liberal in the 1950s who supportedbirth control and abortion, and criticized conventional,organized religion in The Comfortable Pew. He also greatlyincreased the viability of Canadian publishing. For threedecades Berton wrote about one book per year, mainly aboutCanadian history. Berton won three Governor General’sEND OF THE LINE:Pierre Berton outsideBC BookWorld’sfirst office onStation St., 1991.PIERRE BERTONAwards for: The Mysterious North (1956), Klondike (1958),and The Last Spike (1972) which told the story of thebackground and construction of Canada’s firsttranscontinental railway. Berton also wrote extensively andsignificantly about Canada’s military history and the Arctic. Hewas honoured with numerous honourary degrees and heserved as the Chancellor of Yukon College. He was made aCompanion of the Order of Canada in 1986.By the time he ditched his trademark bow-tie in the 1990s,Berton was no longer adequately revered among youngerCanadians as the most integral Canadian historian. Given hisprominence in Ontario, Berton’s formative years in Victoriaand Vancouver are seldom cited.One of his lesser-known books is Crystal Gardens: WestCoast Pleasure Palace (1977). His 50th and final book wasPrisoners of the North (2004) about the lives of Klondike JoeBoyle, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Lady Jane Franklin, John Hornbyand Robert Service.He died on November 30, 2004.Unforgettable(1920-2004)TWIGG PHOTODavid GriersonLiterate, articulate and tireless,David Grierson of CBC Radio in Victoriadied suddenly of a heart attack onNovember 20, 2004. Born in 1955, hewas 49. Grierson provided text for TheExpo Celebration (Whitecap), wrote onjazz for The Georgia Straight and contributedto publications that includeddownbeat, Swing Journal, Canadian Musicianand Western Living.For CBC Radio, David Grierson created,hosted and produced North byNorthwest, a weekend morning programin British Columbia devoted to the arts.In December of 2000, he began hostingVancouver Island’s weekday morningprogram On The Island. As a radiobroadcaster, he also contributed toWestcoast Performance, Richardson’sRoundup, The Arts Report, Stereo Morning,Morningside, Gabereau, SundayMorning, Prime Time, Arts National,Sunday Matinee, Vanishing Point and hewas the voice of the National ResearchCouncil Time Signal.Bob TeatherAs a 30-year veteran of the RCMP,Bob Teather was only the thirteenth Canadianto receive the Cross of Valour afterrescuing two trapped fishermen inan overturned boat two miles off theB.C. coast. He was also awarded theRCMP’s highest award, the Commissioner’sCommendation for Bravery. Along time member of the RCMP underwaterteam, Teather wrote UnderwaterInvestigator. Teather died of a heartattack on November 13, 2004 at 57.“He was a great guy with a wonderfulsense of humour,” said his publisherRodger Touchie. In 2004, HeritageHouse re-released Teather’s MountieMakers: Putting the Canadian in RCMP.Sharon BeechSharon Beech, owner of CopperBeech Books, died from ALS on October26, 2004. She had celebrated tenyears in business as of July. “Sharon was amember of an endangered species,” saidcustomer and author Heidi Greco, “thebookseller who loves books more thanbusiness. Hers is the last fiercely-independentbookstore in Surrey. She willbe remembered for her irreverence, herquick and caustic wit, and for her loveof reading and books.”All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online atw w w . a b c b o o k w o r l d . c o mWordscapesB.C. Youth Writing Anthology 2005Wordscapes features fiction, poetry, artworkand essays by the newest generation of B.C.writers and artists. The anthology includes allthe winners and honourable mentions fromRipple Effect’s fourth annual B.C. ProvincialHigh School Writing and Design Contest.Young AdultISBN 1-894735-08-05¼ x 8¼, 192 pages$15phone: 604.879.7327fax:604.879.7321P.O. Box 2836 STN TerminalVancouver, BC V6B 3X2info@rippleeffect.caSee our website for complete bookorder and contest information:www.rippleeffect.ca

Having already garnered five Dora MavorMoore Awards in 2003, includingOutstanding New Play and OutstandingDirection of a Play, Morris Panych’s Girl in theGoldfish Bowl (Talonbooks $15.95) was accordedthe Governor General’s Award for drama inNovember. It has been described as a poignantcomedy about childhood, innocence and fish.Panych, an actor who studied creative writing at UBC,emerged as the most creative and prolific playwright inB.C. in the 1980s and 1990s. As a director and playwright,he has kept pushing the proverbial envelope,directing more than 30 productions, and as an actor hehas made numerous appearances for television and films.Panych’s many other original productions, usually withstage design by his partner Ken McDonald, have includedLast Call, Contagious, Cheap Sentiment, Real TalkingPeople Show, 2 Be Wut U R, The Cost of Living, Life Science, 7Stories andVigil. Panych’s latest absurdist play The Dishwasherspremiered at the Arts Club in Vancouver in February. 0-88922-481-1THEATREEncorefor Morris✍Marcus Youssef and Camyar Chai, two of the playwrights/actorsbehind the acclaimed theatre production The Adventuresof Ali & Ali and the aXes of Evil, brought their charactersto life on CBC Newsworld in December as part of a series exploringkey topics in Canada’s cross-border relations with the U.S.Their characters Dr. Mohandes PanirAliZiaGhandiNehruKhomeiniJinnah (Camyar Chai) and interviewerAli Ababwa (Marcus Youssef) were drawn from politicalsatire soon to be published as The Adventures of Ali & Aliand the aXes of Evil (Talonbooks $16.95). 0-88922-516-8Designer Ken McDonald and playwright Morris Panych.Marie Clements has received the 2004 Canada-JapanLiterary Award for Burning Vision (Talonbooks $16.95), her dramaabout Déné miners who were told they were transporting a substanceto cure cancer while working at Great Bear Lake in the 1940s. Insteadthey were helping to extract uranium ore used to bomb Hiroshima andNagasaki. Born in 1962, Marie Clements founded Urban Pink, a Vancouver-basedFirst Nations production company for Aboriginal worksof theatre, music, film and video. Her surrealistic play The Unnaturaland Accidental Women (Talonbooks $12.95) is another politicizedreconstruction of the past, this time pertaining to a 30-year-old murdercase in involving female victims of violence in Vancouver’s Skid Row.Despite their common associations with a low-lifer named Gilbert PaulJordan, a coroner listed their deaths as “unnatural and accidental.”Burning 0-88922-472-2;Unnatural 0-88922-521-4 All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online atw w w . a b c b o o k w o r l d . c o mBARRY PETERSON & BLAISE ENRIGHT-PETERSON PHOTOFirst performed in Vancouver in 1996,Kevin Kerr’s co-written play aboutthe 20th century genius Nikola Teslahas been published as Brilliant! TheBlinding Enlightenment of Nikola Tesla(Brindle & Glass $14.95). Tesla pioneeredthe fluorescent light, the laser beam,wireless communication, remote control,robots and vertical take-off aircraft. Hiswork on the alternating current inductionmotor has been cited as one of the tengreatest discoveries ever made. Kerr andthe Electric Company have earnednumerous Jessie Richardson TheatreAwards since the cooperative theatregroup was co-founded in 1996.0-9732481-9-XLET THEREBE TESLAJonathon Young (co-artistic director ofElectric Company) as Nikola Tesla.Advertise & reach 100,000 readers.Just call us at604-736-4011 or visit www.bcbookworld.com26 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005

INTERNATIONALUNEMBEDDED TRUTHSHE INVASION OF IRAQ, FAR FROM BEING A RESPONSE TO 9/11Tterrorism or an attempt to eliminate weapons of massdestruction, was precipitated by the imminent peak of globaloil production and the ascendancy of the euro currency.That’s the gist of William R. Clark’s Petrodollar Warfare(New Society $24.95). Withthe world’s second-largest oil reserves,Iraq was already a targetfor the Bush administration longbefore 9/11. Less appreciated isthe growing apprehensiveness ofthe White House after Iraqswitched its oil transactions fromdollars to euros. 0-86571-514-9✍Paul William Roberts Petro duel: the dollar versus the eurointerviewed Saddam Husseinback in the days when the dictator still considered himselfto be a U.S. ally. Since then Roberts has closely monitoredthe invasion of Iraq and his frustrations have grown intooutrage. “Never in history was a war so well documentedyet so poorly covered by the media,” he claims.Having been in the home of an Iraqi friend during adeadly U.S. air strike, Roberts unleashes a counter-attackof uninhibited, unembedded rhetoric in A War AgainstTruth: An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq(Raincoast $39.95).Roberts’ purging of disdain makes for an uneven, frequentlybrilliant and ultimately disturbing tirade (“I writein a state of raging anger, and shame, about what I saw”)that frankly describes the Bush White House as a gang ofcrooks and reminds us that Winston Churchill once said hewas strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilizedtribes.We get the history of the region (“T.E. Lawrence was marketedas the embodiment of the new benign brand of Britishimperialism”) mixed with literary flourishes that arereminiscent of the late Hunter S. Thompson.No matter what your political stripe, it is hard not to likeany book that describes theweasel-brained CNN anchorAaron Brown as the thinkingman’s Forrest Gump.“The term ‘empire’ isavoided like the plague by allconcerned with implementingPax Americana,” Robertswrites. “They hide behind jargonand academic-speak orterms like ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’to such a point of obfuscationthat one is forced towonder what it is about world domination that embarrassesthem so acutely. Answer: the cost, probably. Just the amountof the increase in the defence budget from 1993 to 2003 isfar more than the total amount spent annually on defenceby China, the next-biggest spender.” 1-55192-688-1✍As the arrival of Peak Oil encourages American elites toadopt increasingly draconian measures to maintain theirdominance—from Guantánamo Bay to US-backed paramilitaryviolence to CIA-sponsored warlords and coups—Michael C. Ruppert has outlined the synchronicityof guns, drugs, oil, natural gas and money in Crossing theRubicon (New Society $29.95). Ruppert reveals the extentto which American military spending and foreign lendingare used to subsidize the dominance of corporate elites.0-86571-540-8MIDDLE EASTMANOEUVRESAs a Lebanese Canadian journalist and aMuslim, Hadami Ditmars ofVancouver made six trips to Iraq before andduring the American occupation to meet withIraqis and record her impressions in Dancingin the No-Fly Zone (Raincoast $24.95), aninsider’s look at thehuman costs of therepressive, 12-yearsanctions. Ditmarshas written aboutIraqi women for Msmagazine andcontributed to theNew York Times, theIndependent, TimeHadami Ditmars and Elle. 1-55192-735-7✍To counter-balance its disastrous meddling inIran, the U.S. initially supported Iraq andprovided Saddam Hussein with technologicalsupport to build WMD to use against Iranis andKurds. With 9/11, the hawks in Washingtonwere quick to label their Frankenstein as partof the axis of evil. The complexity andhypocrisy of the current Bush regime, plus theovert Dick Cheney/Halliburton convergence ofinterest, are soberly described to explain thepresent, unsanctioned occupation of Iraq inBehind the War on Terror (New Society$21.95) by London-born Nafeez MosaddeqAhmed. 0-86571-506-8All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online atw w w . a b c b o o k w o r l d . c o m15 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005

FICTIONBC23 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005Animal balmBob Collins writes from a cluttered desk on the familyfarm in the Alberni Valley. He knows people. He knows animals.He knows people are animals. He loves them anyway.After two collections of stories, Collins’ first novel called Summerof Wonder: The Misguided Romance of Hap Fitzpatrick(Stone Pillow Press, $18.95) won’t give Alice Munro a runfor her next Giller, but its unabashedly wistful charm will penetratethe veneer of hardened sophisticates with all the relief ofVicks Vaporub. Hap loves Marilyn Baird and for one luminescentsummer we watchthe eight-year-old boy“wallowing blissfully inthe glorious confusion ofchildhood.”Bob Collins and a four-legged friend.0-9688007-2-6✍Nanaimo emergencyward doctor KevinPatterson has wonthe first City of VictoriaButler Book Prize forCountry of Cold (Vintage,2003), a collectionthat traces the lives ofclassmates raised, likePatterson, in small-town Manitoba. Many of the stories arise fromPatterson’s medical training.✍Having recently relocated to Edmonton, Shani Mootoohas followed her award-winning Cereus Blooms at Night with anovel set in contemporary Vancouver and a fictional Caribbeanisland during WW II. In He Drown She In the Sea (M&S $24.99),Harry St. George recalls his Caribbean boyhood and his unrequitedlove for Rose, the daughter of a wealthy man, and thenRose shows up in Vancouver where Harry lives. 0-7710-6401-2✍TV rights for Susan Juby’s girly fiction series that includesAlice, I Think (HarperCollins) and Miss Smithers (HarperCollins)has been optioned by Slanted WheelProductions in association with CTVVancouver, the starting point for therunaway comedy hit Corner Gas. Veteranscreenwriter SusinNielsen-Fernlund is writing theadaptation, having just published herown second children’s book, MormorMoves In (Orca, 2004). Juby’s latestyoung adult release in her series isAlice MacLeod, Realist at Last(HarperTrophy $15.99).00-0639266-0Fashion design collegedropout Susan Juby✍Born in Vancouver, editorLinda L. Richards and photographerDavid Middleton started their on-line literarypublication January Magazine.com in 1997, having been partnerssince 1993. Her first suspense novel Mad Money (MIRABooks $7.99) is the first in a series of novels featuring stockbrokerMadeline Carter. While the first two books in the series takeplace mainly in Los Angeles, the third book, Calculated Loss,will be set in Vancouver. 0-7783210-3720-4✍For setting his novels in his hometown neighbourhoods ofWheeling Island, South Wheeling and Woodsdale, Vancouvernovelist and UBC creative writing teacher Keith Maillardwas inducted into the Wheeling, West Virginia, Hall of Fame onNovember 28, 2004. In January, Maillard also went to Seattleand received the Creative Arts Prize from the Polish AmericanHistorical Association for his recent novel, The Clarinet Polka.✍Warren Dean Fulton is acquiring film rights to threestories in Michael Hetherington’s The Late Night Caller(Thistledown) including “Standing in a Pool of Water” whichwas featured via a front cover photograph in BC Bookworld, summer2004. Hetherington will write the screenplays.Basie jazz & Little Burgundy bluesMairuth Hodge Sarsfield lives in Parksville.The ascendancy of Alice Walkerfrom sharecropper’s daughter toliterary star is traced by EvelynC. White in Alice Walker: A Life (W.W.Norton / Penguin $44).Ms Magazine founder GloriaSteinem, plus Color Purple cohortsQuincy Jones and Oprah Winfreymake appearances, but this is not a tell-allbio for the paperback newsstands.White defends Walker against all hercritics in her celebration of the struggle ofthe first black woman to receive thePulitzer Prize for fiction, for The ColorPurple, made into a movie by StephenSpielberg.Sexual politics, racial friction andmisplaced violence have percolatedAll BC BookWorld reviews are posted online atw w w . a b c b o o k w o r l d . c o mMairuth Hodge Sarsfield’s jazz-flavoured novel aboutlife in Montreal’s Afro district of Little Burgundy in the 1940s, No CrystalStair (Women’s Press $19.95), has been selected as one of the five titlesfor CBC’s national Canada Reads competition.No Crystal Stair has drawn comparisons with Gabrielle Roy’s TheTin Flute which evokes the French-Canadian milieu of Montreal’s St-Henridistrict during the same period.In No Crystal Stair, Marion Willow, a proud young widow, must work attwo jobs to ensure that her three girls develop lifestyles not hindered byclass and colour.The bitter-sweet experience of Marion’s elegant American expatriateneighbour, Torrie Delacourt, could help the girls survive Canada’s subtleracism, but the women’s rivalry for the love of Edmund Thompson, ahandsome railway porter, pits them against one another.Mairuth Hodge Sarsfield worked as a journalist and researcher beforeshe became an on-camera host for CBC, CTV and TVOntario. Her novelrecalls the heyday of Rockhead’s Paradise, a nightclub that attracted theuptown crowd to hear jazz greats such as Count Basie, DukeEllington, Fats Waller and a young Oscar Peterson. 0-7737600-24CIVILWRITESthrough Alice Walker’s work and life, eversince her fiction and poetry emerged fromthe civil rights movement of the 1960s, andWhite does an admirable job tracing thefoundations of Walker’s fiction.For a female black to hold firm to herresolve to place art above the dictates ofpolitical correctness or family has takencourage. The egoism of the artist, whomust pursue her calling at all costs, is atheme that will doubtless be examinedmore deeply in future biographies.Although Evelyn White is anunmitigated supporter of her subject, herwork will serve as the basis for AliceWalker scholarship for many years tocome.Saltspring IslanderEvelyn C. White haswritten a biography ofAlice Walker (above).0-393-05891-3

10 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005COVER STORYWOMEN GONE WILDCHRIS CZAJKOWSKIDOGGONELONESOMEWritten from the point ofview of Lonesome,the first dog toaccompany her into the wilderness,Chris Czajkowski’s Lonesome:Memoirs of a Wilderness Dog(Heritage $18.95) is an attempt toobserve the world through her longsufferingcanine companion who shenamed after Lonesome Lake.“The snow plastered itselfover my face, until onlymy eyes were uncovered.The more I tried to rub myface clean, the more thesnow stuck to it. Myhuman seemed to find thishilarious. She wouldobscure the front of herhead with a device calleda camera and transfix mewith its great blackpiercing eye. There wouldbe a click, and her facewould appear again,grinningunsympathetically.”—LONESOME“I got my human when she was alreadyfully grown, which was a relief,”Lonesome narrates, with occasional cynicismand disdain.“I’m not a dog to seek adventure andwould have been far happier in an orderly,suburban garden with kids to play with and nice, safe walks in the park.”Mostly humourous, Memoirs of a Wilderness Dog ends on a touching note as Lonesome,too old to withstand the rigours of her spartan life with her human Chris, isbilleted with a kind friend at Schoolhouse Creek who must ultimately take the infirmanimal into the bushes, carrying with him his rifle...The memoir entirely from a dog’s point of view spent several months atop the BCBestseller List.✍Before she settled in the remote reaches of the Coast Range, 480 kilometres northof Vancouver, at Lonesome Lake in Tweedsmuir Park, east of Bella Coola, EnglishbornChris Czajkowski lived and worked in Uganda, New Zealand, the South Pacificand South America, spending a decade backpacking around the world.GUMBOOT GUARDIANAs a homesteader in self-built cabinsat Lonesome Lake, she soon became aregular contributor to CBC’sMorningside program with PeterGzowski in the 1980s.Lonesome Lake was first made famousby Ralph Edwards whose conservationwork with trumpeter swans wasthe subject for several books.Czajkowski’s wilderness experienceshave been well-documented in Cabin atSinging River (Camden House, 1991),Diary of a Wilderness Dweller (Orca,1996) and Nuk Tessli: Life of a WildernessDweller (Orca, 1999), plus her firsttitle To Stalk the Oomingmak: An Artist’sArctic Journal (Aquarelle Press, 1989).An accomplished botanist, artist andphotographer, she is also the author ofSnowshoes and Spotted Dick: Letters froma Wilderness Dweller (Harbour, 2003)in which she describes building herfourth cabin with hand tools, twochainsaws, an Alaskan Mill and somehelpful friends.In letters to a friend in Europe,Czajkowski details how she breaks trailsby snowshoe with her two pack dogs, encounters grizzly bears, builds a custom stoneoven and learns how to use it to bake bread—and to make spotted dick, a traditionalEnglish steamed pudding.✍Czajkowski operates the Nuk Tessli Alpine Experience, an ecotourism wilderness adventurebusiness that she manages via her website and her Nimpo Lake mailing address.She lives about a day-and-a-half’s walk (at human speed) from the nearest road andneighbour, at an altitude of 5,000 feet, about 40 miles away from her first cabin that wasdestroyed by fire in July of 2004 during the Lonesome Lake Fire.Her food and building supplies must be flown in and Czajkowski must hike morethan 30 kilometres to the nearest road to lead guiding trips, attend craft fairs and occasionallyundertake promotions for her books. 1-894898-24-9All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online atw w w . a b c b o o k w o r l d . c o mJust as Biruté Galdikas has become one of theforemost protectors of orangutans in Indonesia, andJane Goodall has become famous for researchingchimps in Africa, Alexandra Morton ofSimoon Sound has become known as ‘the whale lady’ for gettingto know whales on an individual basis.Now living with an underwater whale detection system in herhome, Morton has raised her two children on a boathouse atEcho Bay since the early 1980s.As the director of Raincoast Research, she is the subject ofa documentary film, Alexandra’s Echo, released in 2003, andNational Geographic featured her work in a television specialthat aired in 1991.Her latest book Beyond the Whales: The Photographsand Passions of Alexandra Morton (Heritage $29.95), witha foreword by Robert Bateman, celebrates and examines life inher homewaters of the Broughton Archipelago.It concludes with a surprising message in which Morton foreseestourism as an antidote to fish farms.“I invite everyone to come here,” Morton says, “especially inkayaks and sailboats. Fall in love and breathe life into this area.“Come to the Broughton as never before; help to strengthentourism and tourism operators, put the Broughton on the mapas the place to see.“Maybe you will carry life into these waters as the salmonshould be doing.”Brought up in Connecticut, Alexandra Morton moved to Californiain 1976 to research marine mammals, first arriving tostudy orcas in B.C. in 1979.ALEXANDRA MORTON: “When I was 18 I naivelythought that if I looked hard enough, I couldunderstand the communication between twowhales in a tank in Los Angeles. I was wrong.”She married filmmaker Robin Morton in 1980, buther husband tragically drowned while filming whales in 1986,one day before National Geographic was scheduled to recordtheir work.Morton took a job as a seasick deckhand on a fishboat runby oldtimer Billy Proctor, a lifelong resident of theBroughton Archipelago with whom she later co-wrote Heart ofthe Raincoast: A Life Story (Horsdal & Schubart, 1999).Morton’s account of one year in the life of a young whale,Siwiti: A Whale’s Story (Orca, 1991) received the Sheila EgoffPrize for Children’s Literature in 1992. It was followed by a secondeducational book about whales, In the Company of Whales(Orca, 1991) and Listening to Whales, What the Orcas HaveTaught Us (Ballantine Books/Random House, 2002).Having also studied fish farming in the 1990s, Morton becamea co-author of A Stain Upon the Sea (Harbour, 2004), acritical book about salmon farming in British Columbia.✍Beyond the Whales celebrates the fragile splendour of theBroughton Archipelago, from kelp beds and oolichan, toplumose anemones and caulk boots, to boom chains and floathouses. And it radiates hope.“Some time ago I was given the opportunity to meet JaneGoodall,” she writes. “I was spellbound by my childhood idol.She radiated grace, and the wisdom of the Earth. When a lullin the conversation opened, I stepped forward and asked,‘Jane, do you think there is hope?’ Her answer came backcrystal clear, ‘Yes.’” 1-894898-23-0

I N D I E S29 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005Keeping upwith theZeta-JonesesSomehow it helps to knowthat: Life expectancy inZimbabwe has droppedto 31 years [United Nations, 2003],there are more African Americanmales in prison than enrolledin colleges or universities[New York Times, 2002] and inSwaziland, where life expectancyhas fallen by 25 years with thespread of HIV, teenage girls inthe countryside sell sex for $5,the same price for hiring twooxen for a day of ploughing[Guardian Weekly, 2003].Meanwhile US Vice-PresidentDick Cheney conducted$24 million in businesswith Saddam Husseinwhen Cheney was CEO of oil field supply forHalliburton [Chicago Tribune, 2002] and prior totheir $1.5 million wedding Michael Douglasand Catherine Zeta-Jones signeda pre-nuptial agreement to guarantee she receives$2.8 million for every year of their marriage[USA Today, 2002].SPOUSAL USE:Catherine Zeta-Jones is paid on ayearly basis to actas MichaelDouglas’ wife.David Lester’s barrage of statistics inThe Gruesome Acts of Capitalism (Winnipeg:Arbeiter Ring Publishing $10.95) is balancedby original cartoons and a foreword byJean Smith. All royalties go to the CanadianCentre for Victims of Torture.This is highly unlikely to change the factthat the amount of money made by the richest1% in the world per year equals the amountmade by the poorest 57% [Bread for the World Institute,2003], the U.S. defence budget was estimatedat $1 billion per day [Gustav Lindstrom, TransatlanticIssues, 2003] and the annual budget for the UnitedNations has been calculated as less than theannual cost of running the Tokyo fire department[American Indicators website, 1998]. 1-894037-20-0All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online atw w w . a b c b o o k w o r l d . c o mHaving watched Campbell River expand from a village of 3,000 to acity of 28,000, Van Gorman Egan writes with an underlyingnostalgia that flashes like a trout beneath the surface. An Islandersince 1954, Van Gorman Egan writes so carefully, so lovingly, sodevotedly, about one-man fishing on the North Island, decades beforethe Island Highway was built, that it’s easy to understand why artist Loucas Raptisoffered to illustrate his next book, whatever it was. With encouragement from MarkHume, the historian of the Tyee Club has turned his hand to revising four exquisitestories for Rivers of Return, in a trilogy that includes Rivers on My Mind and Riversof Salt. Mainly sold to collectors of angling books, Van Gorman Egan’s limited editionsare not the least bit cumbersome in terms of technical language. “He chose a SkykomishSunrise on a No. 2 hook, cast it at the edge of the rough water and saw the current take itswiftly away, giving it no chance to go deep.” Deluxe hardbacks are $75; regular hardbacksare $60; softbacks are $30. Contact the author at 2340 Campbell River Road,Campbell River, B.C. V9W 4N7. His reverence is a match for the better-known works ofRoderick Haig-Brown. And no, he’s not on the web.—Martin TwiggExporting a dreamAfter Diana Lynn Thompson had a dream of findingstrangely shaped pieces of shell on a beach, she gatheredthousands of shell pieces, cut and engraved them, and sentthem in 140 envelopes to friends, artists and strangers with arequest to place them on favourite beaches around the world.“The shells travelled around the globe, but most settled onbeaches in British Columbia,” she writes in Alluvion(Saltspring Island: Equilibrium Studio $25). The installationartist’s exhibit also called Alluvion - Acts of Intention andIntervention opened at the Campbell River and District Public ArtGallery in 2004 and it opens at the Nanaimo Art Gallery inSeptember. Former publisher Caffyn Kelley of Saltspring hassupplied the foreword. 0-9734427-0-0ALSO RECEIVEDLouise SusyFramst of theTahtlan FirstNations lives inCecil Lakewhere she hasreleased herfifth children’sbook,Louise Susy Framst Feathers(Louise FramstBooks $14.95), about theimportance of feathers in Aboriginalcultures, with art by WendyFramst. 0-9733818-0-9--------------------------------------------------------------------The seer Nostradamus complainedto Henry II about ever-changingcalendars, but he is still revered bysome for the accuracy of some ofhis predictions. Wence Horakclaims to have decoded hiddenmessages intended solely for thisgeneration in Nostradamus: WhatHe Really Said and Why(Kelowna: Earth Way Society$14.95). 0-9688889-3-3--------------------------------------------------------------------Having survived solitary imprisonmentin Russia, Anny Scoonesbought historic Glamorgan Farm inNorth Saanich and now she recallsher restoration efforts since 2000 inHome: Tales of a Heritage Farm(Sidney: Hedgerow Press $19.95).0-9736882-1-1----------------------------J. GordonMumfordworked in thehinterlands ofKenya,Tanganyikaand Ugandadeveloping andinstalling aJ. Gordon MumfordVHF radiorepeatersystem from 1949 to 1958, oftenmaking his own paths and roads.The experiences are recorded in histhird book, White Man’s Drum:Tales of the East African Bundu(New Westminister: ZebraPublishing $24.95). 0-9736297-0-3--------------------------------------------------------------------God Revisited: A ContemporaryUnderstanding of History’s Antidote toStress by Birgit Schneider (ProfessionalImage Design) 0-9732993-1-2--------------------------------------------------------------------Traveling the Sun by Sandra Harper(Hawthorne) 0-9734986-0-9--------------------------------------------------------------------Mom, Marian & Me by Gilbert MurrayParker (Aware) 0-9736906-0-7--------------------------------------------------------------------The Fairy Book by Martha Warran (Selfpublished)0-9734069-0-9--------------------------------------------------------------------The Lost Kitten of Toledo by Anne Swannell(Rampant Swan) 1-895289-05-X--------------------------------------------------------------------Mountain Trails: A ProspectingExpedition From the Diary of a16-Year-Old Girl, 1935 by Daisy Callison(Self-published) 0-9735861-0-9--------------------------------------------------------------------Before the Road Came by Florida AnnTown (Bookus) 0-9735750-0-X--------------------------------------------------------------------Fallujah by Daniel Rajala (Self-published)--------------------------------------------------------------------One Less Victimby Doug Setter(Trafford)141203396-9----------------------------The Judas Kissby Robin Rickards(Trafford)141202468-4----------------------------3 Stories byDan ProppDan Propp(Self-published)0-9731934-1-7

30 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005OOKSK I DOOKSStabbingvictim AhMow.OOKSOOKSOOKSOOKSOOKSOOKSOOKS20 % offPublishers’ list prices onALL CURRENT BOOKS,BESTSELLERS ANDSPECIAL ORDERSEVERY DAY!OOKSOOKSOOKSOOKSOOKSOOKSOOKSOOKSOOKS632 West Broadway550 Granville2388 West 4th Ave1181 Davie St4444 West 10th Ave1524 Lonsdalewww.bookwarehouse.caVancouver’s independent discountbooksellerIt’s November of 1870, twoyears after a great firedestroyed most of the town,and Barkerville has rebuilt itself.Although many miners have left forthe winter, the place is thrivingwith shops, restaurants and a busyChristmas social season of sleighrides, dancing and caroling withthe Glee Club.Ted MacIntosh, nowseventeen and working inhis father’s carpentry shop,has ignored the prevailingracist attitudes towards theChinese, referred to as“Celestials,” and befriendeda young Chineseboy. Then a Chinese mannamed Ah Mow is stabbedto death on the steps of hisBarkerville restaurant.A violent white man named HenriTremblay is charged with the murder. Itlooks like a simple case until witnesses arebeing threatened by Tremblay and hiscrew to substantially change their testimoniesbetween the inquest and the trial.In Ann Walsh’s third volume inher Barkerville Mystery series, By theSkin of His Teeth (Beach Holme$9.95), idealistic and headstrong TedMacIntosh, who first appeared in Moses,Me and Murder and then again inThe Doctor’s Apprentice, knows he willendanger himself and his Chinesefriends if he insists on telling the truth.When the all-white jury finds the accusednot guilty, the judge, affronted bythe verdict, publicly comments on thedefendant’s narrow escape from justice.Walsh, whose books have all received theChildren’s Book Centre Our ChoiceAward, couldn’t find evidence to supporther theory that witnesses must have beenMURDER inBARKERVILLELOUISEDONNELLYthreatened and beaten to make themchange their stories, but her latest storyis otherwise based on actual events.Getting an MB, eh0-88878-448-1The character of Rachel, who poppedup in Wow Canada! and Only inCanada!, and her cohort, Nelson writerVivien Bowers, have joined flagwavinghands again for That’s Very Canadian!(Maple Tree $19.95), presentedas “An Exceptionally Interesting ReportAbout All Things Canadian.” We learnthat MB, for instance, once stood forMade Beaver, meaning one goodquality,adult beaver pelt and thata Hudson’s Bay blanket, wovenwith four black bars, was worth4MB. No mention, though, ofHBC Reward Points.1-897066-05-8✍A self-admitted basic “B”student in high school biology,but keen on the fieldtrips, Victoria Mileschronicles the last word infield trips with Wild Science (Raincoast$24.95), celebrating the work of tenworld-renowned biologists who studygrey wolves, sea otters, manatees andother creatures in their natural environments.1-55192-618-0✍Dedicated to teacher-librarians everywhere,Ms. Bee’s Magical Bookcase(Chestnut $10.95) is the latest picturebook from Margriet Ruurs who,although temporarily re-located in Oregon,still calls rural Armstrong home.Ms. Bee, with sassy striped socks, hairanchored in a haphazard bun and satchelsof books, leads a secret weekend lifewith seven dwarfs, three kittens withoutmittens and a woman who lives in a shoe.Come Monday, Ms. Bee, who in thehands of illustrator AndrewGooderham bears a resemblance toa certain Armstrong community librarian,returns to school with an everchangingrepertoire of stories. 1-894601-10-6

31 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005L I Twww.self-counsel.comHearts of Gold: Stories of Courage,Dedication and Triumph from CanadianOlympians (Raincoast $19.95)spans a century of athletic “grace underfire” including Silken Laumann’sbronze medal in single-sculls rowing onlytwo months after an accident so badlydamaged her right leg that doctors questionedif she would walk again. 1-55192-684-9✍If all your clothes had been stolen,what would you go home in? Where doshrimp shop? Why did the tiger spit outthe clown? Kids can find the answers inHa! Ha! Ha! 1000+ Jokes, Riddles,Facts and More (Maple Tree $9.95) byLyn Thomas with illustrations byDianne Eastman. 1-897066-12-0✍Growing up in Creston, TanyaLloyd Kyi knew someone whopunched a hockey player. Years later hersecond novel, My Time as Caz Hazard(Orca $9.95), follows the troubles of Cazwho is suspended for punching out hercheating hockey player boyfriend. Caz’sparents are splitting up and she’s beingsent to a new “supportive” school whereshe’s diagnosed as dyslexic. As a “sped”—special education student—she enduresperky Ms. Samuels’ morning classes withPsycho Boy, shoplifting Amanda, nonverbalRob and Dodie Doorknob. Boredwith reviewing “dge” sounds, Caz pensa note, “Time to jump off a ledge.”Dodie’s suicide soon afterwards sendsCaz reeling. 1-55143-319-2Louise Donnelly writes from Vernon.Nikki Koski1-55180-610-X•96 pp.+CD-ROM1st ed.: Feb ‘05 • $14.95• Share ownership ofrecreational property• Avoid conflicts and maximizeenjoyment of your investmentCarolyn Harvey, Beth Herrild1-55180-604-5 • 296 pp.1st ed.: March ‘05•$19.95• Stop feeling guilty aboutthe choices you make• Take charge of what youcan; let go of the restZoohalitz drawn byMargaret Maclure, fromHistory and Folklore of theCowichan Indians (1901).Her Father knew bestSeldom cited in the annals of B.C. literature, Martha Douglas Harriswas born in 1854, three years after her father became Governor of theColony of Vancouver Island and four years before he was named Governorof the Crown Colony of British Columbia in 1858.As the daughter of Sir James Douglas, Harris waited until her parents diedbefore publishing six of her mother’s Cree stories, along with 14 Cowichan stories, inHistory and Folklore of the Cowichan Indians (Colonist Printing, 1901).Martha Douglas Harris was herself one-quarter Aboriginal—from her mother’s side—and one-quarter Black—from her father. The publication of the first of many B.C.books to transcribe West Coast Aboriginal stories for children was delayed after herfather had told her, “I have no objection to your telling the old stories about ‘Hyass’but pray do not tell the world they are Mamma’s.”A newly reprinted version (Marquette Books $29.95 US) features the originalillustrations by Margaret C. Maclure, who died in 1938, and an introduction byPaul Lindholdt of Eastern Washington University, but omits the Chinook languagein a story called Chee-che-ka. Harris died in 1933. In her introduction she stated shehad compiled the 20 stories to protect and recall the “native dignity and wholesomelife” of the Cowichan tribe on Vancouver Island.“When written down,” she admitted of her stories, “they lose their charm whichwas in the telling. They need the quaint songs and the sweet voice that told them, thewinter loaming and the bright fire as the only light—then were these legends beautiful.”0-922993-11-4✍Another Harris who transcribed First Nations story for children was ChristieHarris, no relation. In Haida lore, the tiny narnauk or spirit being—with “big, busymouse eyes” that could appear either as a mouse or a tiny, tiny grandmother—wasknown as Mouse Woman. This little grandmother, who kept a particularly close eyeon youngsters, wasn’t above using a little trickery to set things right. With the originalartwork by Douglas Tait, Mouse Woman and the Mischief Makers (Raincoast$10.95) is one of three re-issued Mouse Woman books by Christie Harris who died in2002 at age 94, having written more than 20 books for young people. Her most enduringwork has been Raven’s Cry. 1-897035-21-7All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online atw w w . a b c b o o k w o r l d . c o mSusan Kirkland1-55180-607-X•200 pp.+CD-ROM1st ed.: May 2005 • $21.95• Run a successful home businessas a graphic designer• Learn business tips from anexpertSarah White and Kevin Pegg1-55180-598-7•136 pp.+CD-ROM1st ed.: March ‘05 • $19.95• Turn practical skills into aprofitable business• Written by successfulhandyman entrepreneursGeraldine Santiago1-55180-599-5 • 132 pp.1st ed.: March ‘05 • $18.95• What you need to know tosell a home with confidence• Find the perfect buyer foryour homeTony Wilson1-55180-586-3 • 192 pp.1st ed.: Jan ‘05 • $18.95• Choose the rightfranchise for you• Understand franchiseagreements inside outWestern Canada: 1-800-663-3007Eastern Canada: 1-800-387-3362

P O E T R Y27 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005From spring blossoms inKitsilano, to the whitekarelian woods of Finland,to the sycamores in London tocasuarinas in St Lucia, every poemin W.H. New’s Underwood Log(Oolichan $17.95) is adendrologist’s delight.New explores trees—such as thedragon tree in Tenerife and acacias inRajasthan—in what can be described asa poetic atlas for arborists. Armchairtravelers will profit from a globe at hand;the poet titles each poem solely with thelatitude and longitude of the trees’location. New frequently returns to hisown garden in Kits, finds the world oftrees conversing there and departsagain, “for only bygoing away,gambling yourlife / into thehaltingunderwood, /can you or I, /chilled andHANNAHMAIN-VAN DER KAMPwelcome,o n c e /again/ return.”Whether you are a tree-lover or a traveleror both, New’s witty crossing of leafy meridianscelebrates the co-breathing humansdo with trees. 0-88982-193-3✍The poetics of travel are also redolentin Dorothy Field’s Leaving theNarrow Place (Oolichan $17.95). Howto find home? Raised by non-practicingJewish parents, Field explores her heritagewith an urgent hope to re-enter “thestories, the scars, the grief.” Searching fortendrils of Judaism, Field travels to Japanand Tibet, to a Benedictine Abbeyin Saskatchewan and to her ancestors’Poland. From childhood in New York tofarming on Vancouver Island; places andmemories are recorded with the desireto find a home which is more than a geographicalplace. “I want a coat knit justfor me/ from family yarn. I will cobble abasket/ from forgotten prayers, lost recipes,BILL NEW:CrossingleafymeridiansCO-BREATHINGWITH TREESTrevorCarolanAll BC BookWorld reviews are posted online atw w w . a b c b o o k w o r l d . c o mwalk/ through the razed cities, gathering silenced language…let me come home.” With the Benedictinemonks, Field experiences kinship as well as an ancientreligious feud. Memories of childhood sexualabuse are hesitantly uncovered. Though “It took along time to learn to be Jewish,” the poet persists. Inspite of “the failures of love, the loss of solid ground,”Field closes with a love poem, “all these years / comfortI’ve struggled to receive / wrapping me now inhome’s cloak.” 0-88982-199-2✍Whether about pioneers or newcomers, Sikhs orMennonites, tugboats or berry-farms, the diverseelements of Down in the Valley (Ekstasis $21.95),edited by Trevor Carolan, convey a deep senseof place, and offer proof of literary liveliness in thelikes of Whonnock, Yarrow and Matsqui. There areboth covert and overt references to the Christianfaith but, given the history of settlement in theValley, that shouldn’t surprise. Old Yale Road,Hatzic and Vedder Mountain; if these namesTWIGG PHOTOare familiar to you, there is delight to befound in recognizing them again in poetryand prose. Many contributors associatedwith the University College of theFraser Valley are included in this rich collectionby writers of all ages, multi-ethnic,some established and some not,offering a sprawling, colourful map of theFraser Valley, past and present. 1894800591✍As in her earlier eight books, SusanMcCaslin’s poetry in A Plot of Light(Oolichan $17.95) is suffused with contemplativespirituality. This time theLangley-based writer goes toQueenswood, the inter-denominationalRetreat Center run by the historic Sistersof St. Ann in Victoria. “Time to losethe habitual motions / from the flicking ofthe switch/to the thoughtless word. / Timeto do a stint at release / to unclasp theclasping…” A Plot of Light also includespoems from pilgrimages to sites associatedwith the philosopher, poet andmulti-faceted monk ThomasMerton. 0-88982-197-6Hannah Main-van der Kamp lives in Victoriaand Lund. Her latest book of poetryis According to Loon Bay (Toronto: StThomas Poetry Series $20) 0973591005ALSO RECEIVEDSinger, AnElegy byGeorgeFetherling(Anvil $14)1-895636-61-2--------------------Uproar’s YourOnly Music byBrian Brett George Fetherling(Exile Editions$22.95) 1-55096-607-3----------------------------------------------------------Rumours of Bees by Alexander Forbeswith illustrations by Tricia Sellmer (LosAngeles: Red Heifer Press $34.95) 0-9631478-8-9------------------------The Gray Doorby PatrickJamieson(Ekstasis$17.95)1-89-4800-54-0------------------------Silt by JordanJordan Scott Scott (New Star$16) 1-55420-012-1

R E V I E W24 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005If you were an historian, which picture of beautiful downtown Donald, BC would you choose?NIT-PICKING PICSUnlike beauty, history isnot in the eye of thebeholder. It’s in the eyeof the editor. Patricia E. Roy andJohn Herd Thompson take painsto make that clear in their newillustrated history British Columbia:Land of Promises (OxfordUniversity Press $36.95).There’s no Pauline Johnson, noexplosion of Ripple Rock, no collapse ofthe Second Narrows Bridge. Instead theyerr on the side of sobriety, providingdocumentary-style images and cartoonsthat illustrate ideas and attitudes. It’sdownright educational. They’re trying tomake an original book, not merely a rehashof familiar photos, and that entailssome critical-mindedness along theway.The authors note that Terr yReksten’s illustrated history of B.C.,James H. Gray’s history of the prairies,and Craig Herron’s Booze: AHistory of Canada have all used the samephoto of two women and several menoutside Edd and Joe’s saloon in Donald,B.C. This Glenbow Museum photo, accordingto Reksten, shows two ‘fallenangels’ from a bygone community (locatednorth of Golden) that was a “gambling,drinking, fighting little mountaintown.”Next in the museum’s catalogue,there’s a very different image of beautiful,downtown Donald—its police station.Rarely, if ever, published before,this second photo must have been takenon the same day as the first, likely by thesame photographer, because the sameman appears in both photos, but whowants to learn that law ‘n’ order was alwaysjust around the corner in our pioneertowns? As a result the exterior saloonimage—showing two women who couldhave been the saloonkeeper’s wife andsister—has been used three times to influencethe public’s imagination of thepast.Roy and Herd Thompson abhor thistendency to choose entertainment overcontent, to pander. They say historianswho opt for aesthetics in their selectionof photos are doing “the equivalent ofchoosing to cite a written document simplybecause it was written with elegantpenmanship on fine vellum!”Roy and Herd Thompson are optingfor higher ground. There are nophotos of sports heroes, not even PercyWilliams, or Miracle Miler RogerBannister or Terry Fox. They concentrateon what social historians call‘high politics,’ seemingly taking somepleasure in finding fault with others inthe process. Their refusal to titillate, combinedwith a predilection to debunk, isa welcome antidote to the slackness evidentin more commercial undertakings,notably Charlotte Gray’s recentThe Museum Called Canada: 25 Roomsof Wonder (Random House $65), a bo-gus mega-book riddled with idiosyncraticfluff and ‘curated’ by Sara Angel.Whereas Gray has managed to creditThe Guess Who’s hit song AmericanWoman to Bachman-Turner Overdrive,and claim Juan Joseph Perez Hernandez(no accents) was the Spanish discovererof British Columbia—when it wasJuan Pérez, a different chap—Royand Herd Thompson are sticklers foranalysing iconic imagery and providinglengthy captions.This is not British Columbia forDummies. In their caption for anoft-used 1784 engraving of CaptainJames Cook by J.K.Sherwin, based on the 1776 portraitby Nathaniel Dance, Roy andHerd Thompson cannot resistadding, “The portrait isubiquitous in histories ofBritish Columbia, althoughthe artist is almostnever identified.”God is in the details.In their church, thereare no cushions on thepews. They understandmuch of history is artifice,and they refuse todeploy trickery. Intheir introductionthey quoteLewisHine whosaid, “Photographsmaynot lie, but liarsmay photograph.”The truth ain’t pretty, and it mustn’tbe gussied up. But, like the turtle that isslow and steady, it can sometimes prevailin the long run.Promises 0-19-541048-3; Museum 0-679-31220-XNorthern composureShe knew, and she learned from,Bartók and Schoenberg, yet in the endshe went her own Canadian way—that'sthe line on Jean Coulthard, a professionalcomposer who made UBC oneof her many 'musical homes' throughouther seven-decade career.As a friend of Coulthard for 30years, UBC-based WilliamBruneau has co-authored a biographicaland musical appreciation,Jean Coulthard: ALife in Music (Ronsdale$22.95) with composerDavid GordonDuke, who studiedwith Coulthard.1-55380-023-0JeanCoulthardwith her onlydaughterJane, 1943.

POLITICSSPARTACUSREMEMBEREDMost British Columbians have long since forgottenabout the bombing of the Cheekeye-DunsmuirHydro sub-station in 1982 and the prosecutionof the Squamish Five. But not Alan Antliff.A UVic art history professor by day and an “anarchivist” by night,Antliff has compiled a diverse anthology for and about a thin stratum offolks who already know about the Squamish Five, Open Road, Oka, Bulldozer,Who’s Emma, Spartacus Books and the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade(and their successful Red Hot Video firebombings).Described as “the first comprehensive overview of anarchist theoryand practice in Canada from 1976 to the present,” Only A Beginning:An Anarchist Anthology (Arsenal Pulp $29.95), provides minimal contextfor its potpourri of excerpts from counter-cultural movements, gatheringsand publications, illustrated by pre-computer art and grainy b&wphotos.A brief article by Alexander Daughtry pays tribute toSpartacus Books, the Hastings Street bookstore that was destroyedby a fire on April 25, 2004. Opened in the spring of 1973 as anoffshoot of the SFU bookstore, the non-profit store was namedfor the slave who led a revolt against the Roman Empire. Withouta hierarchic management structure, it had persevered as afocal point for Viet Nam War evaders, Indigenous resistance andanti-WTO protests.The majority of Canadians—the 30 million who don’t knowthe international anarchist insignia of an A inside a circle wasinvented by Italian anarchists in the 1960s—will find Antliff’sscrapbook approach problematic, even bewildering, but onthe plus side he has been widely inclusive, incorporatingstreetcorner zines such as minus tides, bisexuality,anarcha-feminism, prostitution and animalliberation. 1-55152-167-9Spartacusbookmarkest.19451391 Commercial DriveVancouver BC V5L 3X5(604) 253-6442RARE FIRSTNATIONSBOOKSDavid Ellis, Booksellerdavidellis@lightspeed.caJ. Gordon Mumford'sAfrican & SeafaringMemoirszebra Tel: 604-520-1487Fax: 604-520-1497zebrapage@shaw.caPUBLISHINGHOUSEWhite Man's DrumISBN 0-9736297-0-3 $24.95Drums of RebellionISBN 0-9736297-1-1 $24.95Available Spring 2005The Black Pit ... and BeyondISBN 1-894263-19-7 $19.95The Sampan GirlISBN 1-894263-40-5 $24.95zebrapublishinghouse.comFrom Jamie Anderson,Author of “Outlaw Pilot, True Adventures ofJimmy “Midnight” Anderson” and“Outlaw Pilot - Vol. II”NEWJust $12.95For Autographed Copies:Jamie Anderson atThe Writers DenBox 147Parksville, BC V9P 1R8250-468-1487Distributed by Western Rim Book CompanySince 1994, a small independant but growingdistributor for select Western CanadianNon-Fiction, representing over 2 dozen publishersoffering 125+ titles.Including...TALES OF A CATSKINNERTHE TRAIL OF ‘42,THIS WAS NO *** PICNICNORTHERN HISTORIES,THE MYSTERIOUS NAHANNIAND LOTS MORE!Contact:Roy Crissmanat 604-585-6768Fax 604-589-7195#151 10090-152nd StSurrey, BCV3R 8X8Autumn Images, publisher of award winning“Tales of a Catskinner” Proudly AnnouncesMarch 15, 2005Just $19.95 - 192 Pages“Read Alcan Trail Blazers - Itstrue history and a damn goodread!” ~ Chester Russel - Authorof “Tales of a Catskinner”Distilled from diaries, photos and lettershome, men tell first-hand of theiradventures and tribulations surveyingand building the Alaska HwyEarl L. BrownAutumn Images IncBox 904-W, Fort Nelson,B.C., V0C 1R0Ph 250-774-3488Fx 250-774-6767autumn@pris.caVisit the Northern Bookshelfwww.autumnimages.comDistributed by Western Rim Book Company28 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005

INTERNATIONAL13 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005GODBEFORETVDouglas Curran first metmembers of the Chewapeople of Malawi—thesecond-to-last countryon earth to receive television—whileworking on a film in Zimbabwe in 1992.The Chewa he met were migrant workers employedon plantations and in mines. Over severalyears he gradually became integrated into theChewa community in Malawi and became thefirst photographer to document their rituals associatedwith a belief system known as Nyau.Nyau (meaning mask) is also the term for asemi-secret mask association of men. The Chewarituals and their stunning masks are part of a complexset of beliefs that Curran was encouragedby the Chewa to record.“The Chewa believe Chauta (God) descendedto earth with man, woman and all of the animals,”Curran writes.“All lived in harmony until the day man accidentallycreated fire by rubbing two sticks together.With the grasslands and the forest aflame,all the animals (with the exception of the dog,the goat and the pig) ran away in fear and anger.From that time forward, there has not been harmonyin the world.”Curran’s pictorial record served as the basisAll BC BookWorld reviews are posted online atw w w . a b c b o o k w o r l d . c o mfor an astonishing exhibit that opened at PresentationHouse Gallery in North Vancouver inJanuary, curated by Bill Jeffries. An accompanyingbook-length catalogue was published asDouglas Curran: The Elephant Has FourHearts: Nyau Masks and Ritual (PresentationHouse $20). 0-920293-68-8Offering the Perrenial Beauty of the World’sSPIRITUAL & HEALING TRADITIONS...and see www.banyen.com for upcoming booksignings,talks, concerts and workshops, including:ROBERT THURMAN—March 19; ANDREW HARVEY—April 8Banyen 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.com"Only in Sidney"10 independent bookstoresall within comfortable walking distancefrom a lovely waterfront.Visit us year-round!Sidney Booktown, Vancouver Island

9 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005SPORTSTHE BEAUTIFULGAMEForget the double lutz andthe triple toe loop. Socceris the most popular sport formore than 350,000 Canadiangirls and women.Co-written with journalist BobMackin, former pro goalie ShelBrodsgaard’s second book, Goalsand Dreams: A Celebration of CanadianWomen's Soccer (Nightwood$14.95) highlights the EdmontonUnder-19 Women's World Championshipsand the Women's World Cup,in which Canada beat Argentina, Japanand China. 0-88971-205-0Canadian soccer star Kara LangIn a fiberglass by himselfEven when there’s no hockey onthe tube, it’s inescapable in print.Mike Leonetti recalls it wasn’t untila 1959 game at Madison SquareGarden, after Montreal Canadiengoalie Jacques Plante was hitsmack in the face with a puck, thatgoalies began to wear masks in theNHL.Also called Jake the Snake, Planterefused to return to the ice againstthe New York Rangers unless hecould wear the fiberglass mask he’dbeen using in practice.Plante’s immortal place in the historiesof both hockey and commonsense is recalled in Leonetti’s TheGoalie Mask (Raincoast $21.95).This is a kids’ book in which NewWestminister illustrator ShayneLetain, whose clients include theVancouver Canucks, represents theground-breaking game in the nostalgictones of black-and-white television.1-55192-703-9✍On his first day of summer hockeyschool, six-year-old DanBlackburn clutched the boardsand pulled himself around the rink.By the end of the second day, althoughhe could skate, he decided to be goalieso he wouldn’t have to skate so much.A mere twelve years later, duringthe 2001-2 season, he joined the NewYork Rangers, becoming one of theyoungest goaltenders in the NHL.Jeff Rud’s Hockey’s Young Superstars(Raincoast $19.95) introducesBlackburn among the “25 HottestPlayers on Ice.”Rud includes—surprisingly—Daniel and Henrik Sedin, neitherof whom was deemed worthy ofthe starting line-up for the Swedishnational team. 1-55192-637-7NOW IN ITS 2ND PRINTINGFirst InvadersThe Literary Originsof British ColumbiaAlan TwiggBritish Columbia’s earliest authorsand explorers prior to 1800 areskilfully introduced, for the first timecollectively, by Alan Twigg. Theyinclude Pérez, Cook, Quadra,Malaspina, Moziño, Vancouver,La Pérouse and more than 50 others.A fascinating account of characters,events and intrigues, comprisingBC’s earliest literary history.Over 85 photos and maps.ISBN 1-55380-023-0 $22.95ISBN 1-55380-022-2 $14.95ISBN 1-55380-025-7 $8.95Jean CoulthardA Life in MusicWilliam Bruneau & David Gordon DukeThe first-ever biography of one of Canada’s mostbeloved composers offers an intimate picture of herpersonal life, her close ties to major 20th-centurycomposers, and an analysis of her music.Sobering DilemmaDouglas L. HamiltonIntroduction by Jean BarmanBooze in BC began with wide-open saloons,race-based laws for the Native peoples, generalprohibition from 1917 to 1921, and a half-centuryof arcane liquor laws. Using formerly closed policefiles, Hamilton traces the scandals, corruptionand crime that resulted from the attempts to banliquor. Includes archival photos.CharlatanSteven LairdIn language that is both lyrical and postmodernin its challenge to everyday reality, Steven Laird’sfirst book of poetry expresses the longing totalk to something divine in the universe.Rilke’s Late PoetryDuino Elegies, The Sonnets toOrpheus and Selected Last PoemsTranslation by Graham GoodThe first translation in a single volume ofRilke's three mature works, with a criticalintroduction and an extensive commentary oneach of the poems by Graham Good.Rosie’s Dream CapeZelda FreedmanA charming novel about an eleven-year-old girlwith a wonderful dream who finds herself working ina Toronto sweatshop after fleeing with her grandmother from the Russian purges of the 1920s.Dream HelmetWilliam NewBill New's wonderfully zany poems, illustratedin full colour by Vivian Bevis, portray childrenputting on a dream helmet and travelling toworlds where anything is possible.Ronsdale PressAvailable from your favourite bookstore or order from LitDistCoVisit our website at www.ronsdalepress.comISBN 1-55380-018-4 $21.95ISBN 1-55380-016-8 $21.95ISBN 1-55380-024-9 $16.95ISBN 1-55380-021-4 $14.95 HC

TRAVELAFGHANISTANorBUSTUBCPressThought that countsScholars are stilldebating whether ornot an Afghan orChinese monk named Huishenreached the west coast ofNorth America about 1,000years before Columbus.To trace the probable pathwaysof Huishen, Gary Geddes tookhis wanderlust to the Himalayas, theTaklamakan Desert in the XinjiangUighur Autonomous Region ofChina and Central America (whereHuishen is most likely to havelanded, according to Chinese archives)for a memoir ofmisadventures, humour and hearsayentitled The Kingdomof Ten Thousand Things(HarperCollins $34.95).Gary Geddes: Ready, set, GaryGeddes’ travelogue is as muchabout the strangeness and dangersof Taliban, Chinese and Zapatistapolitics, and Geddes’ twinned affinitiesfor poetry and history, as it isabout the historically elusive pre-Columbian monk. Geddes recallsAfghan refugees and dissidents inPakistan, Tibetan monks in Xiahe, aKentucky Fried Chicken franchisein Louyang, mysterious cairns inHaida Gwaii, the ghosts ofQuetzalcoatl, D.H. Lawrence andTrotsky in Mexico.” 0-00200-100-4Last Heathen comes firstTracing the voyages taken by hisgreat-grandfather who was theBishop of Tasmania in 1892,Charles Montgomery ofVancouver explored the South Pacificand published an account of hisjourney and his exploration of howChristian missionaries affected theregion in The Last Heathen: Encounterswith Ghosts and Ancestorsin Melanesia (D&M $24.95).The memoir has won the$25,000 Charles Taylor Prize for LiteraryNon-Fiction that was presentedat theWindsor ArmsHotel in Toronto.1-55365-072-7Vanishing British ColumbiaMichael KlucknerMARCH • 224 pages, illus.$49.95 hc • ISBN 0-7748-1125-0Paddling to Where I StandAgnes Alfred, Qwiqwasutinuxw NoblewomanEdited by Martine J. Reid,translated by Daisy Sewid-Smith325 pages, illus.$29.95 pb • ISBN 0-7748-0913-2The Heiress vs the EstablishmentMrs. Campbell’s Campaign for LegalJusticeConstance Backhouse and Nancy L.Backhouse356 pages, illus.$29.95 pb • ISBN 0-7748-1053-XA Spring 2005 Books for Everybody SelectionNegotiated MemoryDoukhobor Autobiographical DiscourseJulie Rak172 pages$29.95 pb • ISBN 0-7748-1031-9Letters from LexingtonReflections on PropagandaNew Updated EditionNoam ChomskyForeword by Edward S. HermanAPRIL • 192 pages$19.95 pb • ISBN 1-59451-029-6Distributed for Paradigm PublishersMedia Spectacle and the Crisisof DemocracyTerrorism, War, and Election BattlesDouglas Kellner264 pages$24.95 pb • ISBN 1-59451-119-5Distributed for Paradigm PublishersThe Simplicity of DementiaHuub BuijssenMARCH • 160 pages$24.95 pb • ISBN 1-84310-321-4Distributed for Jessica Kingsley PublishersThe Dancing UniverseFrom Creation Myths to the Big BangMarcelo Gleiser352 pages, illus.$24.95 pb • ISBN 1-58465-466-XDistributed for the University Press of New EnglandThe Encyclopediaof Native MusicMore Than a Century of Recordingsfrom Wax Cylinder to the InternetBrian Wright-McLeodAPRIL • 464 pages, illus.$34.95 pb • ISBN 0-8165-2448-3Distributed for the University of Arizona PressThe Kiss in HistoryEdited by Karen HarveyAPRIL • 224 pages$34.95 pb • ISBN 0-7190-6595-XDistributed for Manchester University PressCommon Sense on Weaponsof Mass DestructionAmbassador Thomas Graham Jr.200 pages$17.95 pb • ISBN 0-7748-1147-1Gay Male PornographyAn Issue of Sex DiscriminationChristopher N. Kendall296 pages$29.95 pb • ISBN 0-7748-1077-7Fight or PaySoldiers’ Families in the Great WarDesmond Morton368 pages, illus.$39.95 hc • ISBN 0-7748-1108-0Published in association with the Canadian War MuseumThe Red Man’s on the WarpathThe Image of the “Indian” and the SecondWorld WarR. Scott Sheffield240 pages, illus.$29.95 pb • ISBN 0-7748-1095-5Pedagogy of IndignationPaulo Freire176 pages$22.95 pb • ISBN 1-59451-051-2Distributed for Paradigm PublishersChildren, Youth, and Adultswith Asperger SyndromeIntegrating Multiple PerspectivesEdited by Kevin P. Stoddart336 pages$44.95 pb • ISBN 1-84310-319-2Distributed for Jessica Kingsley PublishersNikkei in the Pacific NorthwestJapanese Americans and JapaneseCanadians in the Twentieth CenturyEdited by Louis Fisetand Gail M. NomuraMARCH • 360 pages, illus.$32.95 pb • ISBN 0-295-98461-9Distributed for the University of Washington PressSex and the SlayerA Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy FanLorna JowettAPRIL • 240 pages, illus.$29.95 pb • ISBN 0-8195-6758-2Distributed for Wesleyan University PressWise LeadershipLynda McLymanMARCH • 180 pages$32.95 pb • ISBN 0-87013-74-8Distributed for Michigan State University PressReflections of Heartsand MindsMedia, Opinion, and Identity in theArab WorldShibley TelhamiMAY • 160 pages$29.95 pb • ISBN 0-8157-8308-6Distributed for Brookings Institutional PressCharlesMontgomeryUBC Press books are available from fine bookstores across British Columbiaor order direct: tel 1.877.864.8477 • fax 1.877.864.4272For more information on our titles, visit our websitewww.ubcpress.ca25 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005

INTERNATIONALTHE EYE OF THEBOTANISTThe greatest botanical explorer of the 20 thcentury, Richard Evans Schultes, took asemester’s leave of absence from Harvardin 1941, disappeared into the Amazon region ofColombia and didn’t return for another 12 years.While living amongst 24 indigenous tribes, he tookhundreds of photos while collecting 30,000 botanicalspecimens en route to becoming the world authority ontoxic, medicinal and hallucinogenic plants from SouthAmerica.Esteemed for finding 300 species new to science, and2,000 new medicinal plants, Schultes died in 2001 atage 86, celebrated as a botanist. Ethnographer, adventurerand Schultes-biographer Wade Davis has sinceculled the stunning photo collection of his hero to produceThe Lost Amazon: The Photographic Journeyof Richard Evans Schultes (Douglas & McIntyre $45).Each image has ethnographic and historical context.For Schultes’ photo of a mother and her son tapping arubber tree, Wade Davis provides a summary of turnof-the-centurycruelty that only bears comparison to thenightmarish white barbarism that occurred in KingLeopold’s Congo during the rubber boom in Africa.During the height of the rubber terror, some fortyyears before Schultes arrived in the Amazon, the atroci-ties committed against Indians defied imagination.Women were treated particularly cruelly. RafaelCalderon, a twenty-two-year-old bandit who tetheredIndians for target practice and once gave a Witoto childfifty lashes for stealing a loaf of bread, lived by themotto, “Kill the fathers first, enjoy the virgins afterward.”When a woman refused to sleep with one of hismen, the trader Armando Norman wrapped her in akerosene-soaked Peruvian flag and lit it on fire. WhenCaño Guacayá, RioMiritiparaná, 1952.Photo by RichardEvans Schultes.the station-master at Atenas discovered that a youngIndian girl he had raped had venereal disease, he tiedher to the ground and flogged her while a burning firebrandwas inserted into her vagina.A priest who had lived in the Putumayo during thosedark days told Schultes that the best that could be saidof a white man in that era was that he did not kill Indiansout of boredom.”1-55365-078-612 BOOKWORLD SPRING 2005

17 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SPRING • 2005LOOKOUT #19 • a forum for & about writers3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3LOOKOUTLOOKOUTLara Gilbert(left) andshortly beforeher suicide(right).SARAH ITTER PHOTOTHE MOVING OF MOUNTAINS“I WISH THE ROOTS OF HAPPINESS AND SADNESS WERE FULLYunderstood,” wrote Lara Gilbert in St. Paul’spsychiatric wing in 1993, “it’s frustrating notknowing why I have no faith in this worldwhile most other people do.“My personal belief is that they are deludedinto ignoring the plain truth: thisplanet is in a mess and there is so muchmore misery than joy. The only way a personcan live day by day contentedly is by‘overlooking’ the pain around them.”The year before, on her 20 th birthday, Lara Gilbertwrote, “Daddy who did what he knew was wrong, wouldhurt, would frighten and confuse me, did it anyway becausehe couldn’t control his feelings, impulses, sex, sex,sex. Dad who kissed me on the lips today as he said Goodbyeand Happy 20 th , who then moved his lips down tomy neck and shoulder and left a red blotchy mark there.”Having participated in a therapy program at the VancouverIncest and Sexual Abuse Clinic, Lara Gilbert experimentedat being “a damn fine junkie whore” on theDowntown Eastside while excelling at her studies (HonoursBiochemistry) at UBC.In 1994, she wrote, “I want to put my hand into the fierypink of the sunset. It’s so beautiful. But then, everything’sfine, everything’s tolerable, because I have Ativan. My psychiatristgave me six tablets for the week to help deal with thecravings for heroin, desipramine, any drug at all.”Lara Gilbert took her life on October 7, 1995. A studentof pharmacology, she overdosed after several previousattempts at suicide. Nine years later her mother,Carole Itter, has published eight years of journal excerptsas I Might Be Nothing: Journal Writing (Trafford$26.50). There is an afterword and an introduction byItter in which she states, “I did not suspect any abuse, andhad I known, I would have moved mountains to stop it.”✍Lara Gilbert grew up in Vancouver’s DowntownEastside. Precociously literate, she was a gifted writer andacademic who endured “dreaded” poetry readings byher estranged father and her parents’ peers.She developed her own imaginary friends and languagein a world she called Kawiakee. At 15 she wrote,“From the outside, my life seems perfect. But the deeperyou go, the scarier and lonelier it gets.”The father of this brilliant but dramatically depressivenarrator gradually emerges from the shadows of LaraGilbert’s memory as a threatening figure, and there areadditional allegations of sexual exploitation by the girl’spaternal grandfather.Lara Gilbert received psychiatric diagnoses includingunipolar depression, dissociative disorder, post traumaticstress disorder and possible borderline personality disorder.The extent to which Lara Gilbert’s confessions aretrue or false must be gauged by each individual reader.As well, the degree to which 3,200 pages of journalwriting has been abridged and edited by Itter and otherscannot be apparent. Itter has included the contentsof one letter addressed to her in 1992, marked NeverSent, in which Lara Gilbert was going to alert her motherto incest. (Within the journal Lara Gilbert also claims amale nurse at Vancouver General Hospital’s PsychiatricAssessment Unit once sexually assaulted her.)Just as Anne Frank’s diary has been criticized bysome for alleged revision by her father, it’s impossible toretrospectively verify every detail of a deceased person’sjournal or letters. However I Might Be Nothing exists asa chilling piece of posthumous literature, an educationalwork more than an accusatory one.This is a tragic tale to which too many women will beable to relate. We know the ending. The journey entailstrying to fathom the beginning.“Fear is more real than the world around us,” LaraGilbert wrote at age 18. Both naïve and sophisticated,her wrenching journal evokes her confusion and her tormentedstruggles with Sylvia Plath-like poignancy.It has the potential to outlast most of the writing done byher father—and possibly this constitutes a form of revenge.✍For mental health professionals, I Might Be Nothing:Journal Writing will rank with Mark Vonnegut’s EdenExpress: A Memoir of Insanity and Jans LarsJensen’s Nervous System as one of the most illuminatingglimpses into mental anguish from B.C. 1-41201804-8

18 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SPRING • 2005 19 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SPRING • 2005WRITER & CO.In our competitivesociety, labels for identityand marketing arise. Someare chosen; others arefoisted upon us; some area curse; many we outgrow.Few fit.Jane Rule gave the following addresson the perils of being labelled tomembers of the Periodical WritersAssociation of Canada at theirannual retreat.SOME LABELS WE CHOOSE LIKE A FAVORITE HAT;some we are simply stuck with like a necessarycane. I was five when I learned that beinga girl had serious drawbacks. I was sixwhen I discovered that being left-handedwas unacceptable. I was 19 and traveling in Europefor the first time before I had to apologize for being anAmerican.By the time I was 15, I was sure I wanted to be awriter, and I wasn’t shy of saying so. What kind of awriter I wasn’t yet sure. I was writing a lot of bad poetry,strongly metered and rhymed in imitation ofEdna St. Vincent Millay and EleanorWylie, inspired for subject matter even by such heavyworthies as Milton.When my mother read my tragically touching,thumpingly rhymed poem on my own blindness, shelaughed and saved the world from the bad poet I mighthave grown up to be. I retreated for a time to personalessays intended to amuse, and my mother, for whomlaughter was the highest goal, approved.WRITER & ACADEMICBy the time I reached college at 16, away from mymother’s comic influence, I began to write bad shortstories in imitation of Katerine Anne Porterand Eudora Welty, heavy in symbolism and grotesquecharacters. One featured a Black man with yellowhair and green eyes, named Cain, who raped sheep.That story inspired my classmates to burst into theWiffenpoof song—”We are little black sheep who havegone astray, bah, bah, bah”—every time they saw me.Tough critics like my mother and my classmatesdaunted me a little. Then I learned that in academiccircles a real writer was by definition dead. Those foolishenough to be alive were not real writers at all, but“creative” writers, a swell-headed, deluded lot withnothing important to say. That attitude taught me, ifnot real modesty, some caution about exposing my ambitions.I gradually learned not to call myself a writer at all.As a young university teacher, I did not admit that what I did in myspare time was write short stories and novels. During the ten years Iwrote before I had any publishing success, writing was a secret vice to beconfessed only to intimate friends.A few years ago the Canadian Writers’ Union was concerned abouthow few young writers were applying for membership and tried to thinkof ways to make them more welcome. I pointed out that it was, in fact,very difficult to admit to being a writer. Only years of experience whichtended to thicken the skin made such a confession possible.In my personal world I came out as a lesbian long before I came outas a writer.The Writer’s Union should be resigned to being an organization forthe middle-aged and the old.LESBIAN & PORNOGRAPHERI finished my third novel, which would be my first to be published, afew days before I was 30. It took three years to find publishers. I don’tknow what I expected beyond finally feeling I might have a legitimateclaim to call myself a writer, or, at least be permitted to say that I wrote.Instead in 1964, before homosexual relationships were removed fromthe criminal code, I became Canada’s only visible lesbian and almost lostmy job at UBC.I was defended by my colleagues with the old saw, “Writers of murdermysteries are not necessarily murderers.” To my interviewers I wasnot a writer but a sexual deviant.TWIGG PHOTOLABELS“I came out as a lesbian long before I came out as a writer.”—JANE RULEYears later my good friend, Don Bailey, told me that in all hisyears of publishing poems and stories and novels, no interviewer everwanted him to talk about his writing, which he began in jail serving aterm as a bank robber. They wanted him to talk about robbing banks.Over a bottle of scotch, we decided we should have a TV program calledThe Lesbian and the Bank Robber and give the public what they apparentlywant.I am labelled a pornographer because my books, coming from theStates where some stay longer in print than they have in Canada, areroutinely seized at the border by Customs, but none has finally everbeen refused entry. Still the label sticks, and readers who buy my booksare therefore often disappointed, and others who might otherwise buyand enjoy them don’t.I have done relatively little to publicize my work, weary of the rolesI’ve been forced to play, but, when I agree to be interviewed, I give upany notion of speaking as a writer and become instead a teacher aboutgay issues, about censorship, about civil liberties, a responsibility I takeseriously, not so much as a writer but as a citizen.CANADIAN & IMMIGRANTMy first published novel came out just before I became a Canadiancitizen. It is a book set in the States, probably accurately called an Americannovel. I have since been challenged about what right I have to callmyself a Canadian writer though the majority of my fiction has been setin Canada.My Dutch publisher, arranging a publication partyfor one of my novels, approached the Canadian Embassyfor a small contribution, only to be told that I wasreally an American. “Odd,” replied my publisher, “sinceanother branch of your government contributed fundsfor translating the book.” I have been told that someCanadian writers traveling abroad are pleased to be mistakenfor American and therefore part of a larger andmore established and respected tradition. Only strongnationalists like Margaret Atwood insist on beingidentified as Canadian and become ambassadorsfor Canadian literature.For immigrants (another possible label) it is oftendifficult to know what use there is or what right wehave to claim our citizenship as part of our identity. Ifelt guilty the first time I traveled in Europe with a Canadianpassport and enjoyed the courtesy and kindnessso often withheld from Americans, for underneaththat bland label lurked surely still an ugly American. Ishould probably have been called an ex-Americanwriter.Even now, after fifty years in this country and veryproud and relieved to be a Canadian, I am shy to claimthe label and never surprised if others are reluctant togrant it.NOTES ONBETTY FAIRBANKS PHOTOBIBLIOGRAPHY:FICTION:Desert of the Heart (1964)This Is Not For You (1970)Against the Season (1971)Theme for Diverse Instruments (1975)The Young In One Another's Arms (1978)Outlander (stories and essays, 1981)Contract With The World (1982)Inland Passage (1985)Memory Board (1987)After the Fire (1989)NON-FICTION:Lesbian Images (1982)Hot-Eyed Moderate (1985)AT LEFT: Jane Rule (seated, with glasses) onGaliano Island with members of the PeriodicalWriters Association of Canada, 2004.BELOW: Jane Rule on Galiano, 1973.SOLDIER, SAILOR, TINKER, NOVELIST...Genre labels make most writers uncomfortable in aculture that rates writing narrowly and strictly to excludeor at least place below the salt how-to books orchildren’s books or mysteries or science fiction as notreally literature. Even best sellers and women’s fictionare suspect. A poet isn’t a real poet if he or she is funnyor sings poems to a guitar accompaniment.Genre labels are not meant to be descriptive so muchas judgmental. Real writers don’t write cookbooks orjokes or murder mysteries. Real writers die of starvationyears before they can reap the rewards of their immortalwords. And their names are often “anon.”Though some claim that “anon” was a woman, genderlabeling of writers has been a long debate. Manywomen writers in the past chose to avoid the label withmasculine pen names, and that still is the habit of manymystery and science fiction writers who fear otherwiseputting off their male readers.Some gay writers resist the label, not now so much infear of criminal charges or job loss or alienation fromfamily but of being placed in an even smaller ghetto,cut off from the mainstream of literature, from largeraudiences of readers.Disguised or denied sexual identity rarely works. Thefirst novel of James Baldwin’s I read was Giovani’sRoom, a story of two White male homosexuals in France.I didn’t know he was Black until I read others of hisbooks, less self-conscious and much more powerful whenhe wasn’t hiding his race or his sexuality in White characters.RETIREDAuden said, “I am a poet only when I’m writing apoem.”Because writers so often feel they may possibly neverwrite another worthwhile word, putting down the labelexcept while involved in the activity can be an enormousrelief. For a long time I wanted to be even freerthan that. I didn’t want to be a writer at all. I simplywanted to write, and being a writer got in the way ofthat because what the world wants of a writer is notwriting but public performing, lectures, readings, seminars,for which we are often paid more than we are forthe writing we do.Now that I am retired, write only very occasionallyas I have this small essay, which seems like a grandchildcome to visit for a few days, I don’t find it as difficult to“be a writer.” But the old are forgetful of nouns. Propernouns go first, then common nouns. They are, after all,the only words we have to teach children who learnother parts of speech, even verbs and their tenses, bythemselves.If we could be identified as many-labeled, which allof us are, we might move more comfortably in the world.Even if we could wear only those labels appropriate forthe occasion, much as we select among our shirts orrings, we would be less apt to be embarrassed and irritable.We are not finally labelers. The real business of ourlives is to live, to love, to write, and to remember, leavingthe calling of names to others, names we may answerto or not. —Jane Rule, Bodega Inn,Galiano Island, September 13, 2004All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online atw w w . a b c b o o k w o r l d . c o m