His way or the highway
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on May 20, 2025 Iron Mike: My Life Behind the Bench
by Mike Keenan, with Scott Morrison Toronto: Random House Canada, 2024
$36.00 / 9780735281851 With his replacement of Rick Tocchet as head coach of the Vancouver Canucks, Adam Foote becomes the twenty-second bench boss in the club’s fifty-five year history—the seventh since 2013. Canucks Nation is holding its collective breath wondering how effective he ...
by Mike Keenan, with Scott Morrison Toronto: Random House Canada, 2024
$36.00 / 9780735281851 With his replacement of Rick Tocchet as head coach of the Vancouver Canucks, Adam Foote becomes the twenty-second bench boss in the club’s fifty-five year history—the seventh since 2013. Canucks Nation is holding its collective breath wondering how effective he ...
An immigrant family’s tragedy
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on April 23, 2025 The Tiger and the Cosmonaut
by Eddy Boudel Tan Toronto: Viking Canada, 2025
$26.95 / 9780735248557 Eddy Boudel Tan entered the Can Lit world with a sensational first novel. Inspired by the horrific 2015 plane crash by pilot suicide of Germanwings Flight 9525, After Elias used hindsight to explore a gay couple’s relationship before a similar tragedy ended it. When a ...
by Eddy Boudel Tan Toronto: Viking Canada, 2025
$26.95 / 9780735248557 Eddy Boudel Tan entered the Can Lit world with a sensational first novel. Inspired by the horrific 2015 plane crash by pilot suicide of Germanwings Flight 9525, After Elias used hindsight to explore a gay couple’s relationship before a similar tragedy ended it. When a ...
Queer cinema lessons from 1919
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on December 18, 2024 Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others)
by Ervin Malakaj Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023
$19.95 / 9780228018681
Queer Film Classics is a series of books examining queer films that have gained iconic status over generations, drawing widespread interest across pop culture and academia. Published by McGill-Queen’s University Press and edited by Matthew Hays and Thomas Waugh, previous titles ...
by Ervin Malakaj Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023
$19.95 / 9780228018681
Queer Film Classics is a series of books examining queer films that have gained iconic status over generations, drawing widespread interest across pop culture and academia. Published by McGill-Queen’s University Press and edited by Matthew Hays and Thomas Waugh, previous titles ...
Tested solutions from climate optimist
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on December 18, 2024 Climate Hope: Stories of Action in an Age of Global Crisis
by David Geselbracht Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2024
$24.95 / 9781771624268
Books about climate change can be pretty depressing. I recall suffering weeks of existential angst after reading David Wallace-Wells’s The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (2019). That book described, in gruesome detail, the harsh reality in store ...
by David Geselbracht Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2024
$24.95 / 9781771624268
Books about climate change can be pretty depressing. I recall suffering weeks of existential angst after reading David Wallace-Wells’s The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (2019). That book described, in gruesome detail, the harsh reality in store ...
An alternative to “rock bottom”
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on December 3, 2024 You Don’t Have to Quit: 20 Science-Backed Strategies to Help Your Loved One Drink Less
by Maureen Palmer (with Michael Pond) Vancouver: Page Two, 2024
$21.95 / 9781774584668 As far as alcohol use disorder (AUD) is concerned, Maureen Palmer and Michael Pond are something of a power couple in the B.C. recovery movement. Through their own example as life partners—Palmer has publicly ...
by Maureen Palmer (with Michael Pond) Vancouver: Page Two, 2024
$21.95 / 9781774584668 As far as alcohol use disorder (AUD) is concerned, Maureen Palmer and Michael Pond are something of a power couple in the B.C. recovery movement. Through their own example as life partners—Palmer has publicly ...
Gold Fever’s cautionary legacies
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on November 20, 2024 Slumach’s Gold: In Search of a Legend—and a Curse
by Brian Antonson, Mary Trainer, and Rick Antonson Victoria: Heritage House, 2024
$32.95 / 9781772035186
As brothers attending summer camp in 1957, Brian and Rick Antonson were nine and eight years of age when they sat around a campfire and listened with rapt amazement to “the greatest campfire story ever told.” ...
by Brian Antonson, Mary Trainer, and Rick Antonson Victoria: Heritage House, 2024
$32.95 / 9781772035186
As brothers attending summer camp in 1957, Brian and Rick Antonson were nine and eight years of age when they sat around a campfire and listened with rapt amazement to “the greatest campfire story ever told.” ...
Youth ‘in a feverish haze’
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on October 23, 2024 Yellow Barks Spider
by Harman Burns Regina: Radiant Press, 2024
$22.00 / 9781998926190 There’s a lot that’s original about Yellow Barks Spider. Let’s start with the likelihood that it’s the first debut Canadian fiction to be preceded by its author, three years earlier, with an album of ambient music bearing the same title—an album remastered and re-released a year before ...
by Harman Burns Regina: Radiant Press, 2024
$22.00 / 9781998926190 There’s a lot that’s original about Yellow Barks Spider. Let’s start with the likelihood that it’s the first debut Canadian fiction to be preceded by its author, three years earlier, with an album of ambient music bearing the same title—an album remastered and re-released a year before ...
Canuck faithful heartbreak
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on October 16, 2024 Never Boring: The Up and Down History of the Vancouver Canucks
by Ed Willes Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024
$28.95 / 9781990776892 Over the first fifty-four years of their existence, the Vancouver Canucks made it to the Stanley Cup final three times. As everyone knows, they lost all three—the last two going seven games. In 2011 against the Boston Bruins, the ...
by Ed Willes Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024
$28.95 / 9781990776892 Over the first fifty-four years of their existence, the Vancouver Canucks made it to the Stanley Cup final three times. As everyone knows, they lost all three—the last two going seven games. In 2011 against the Boston Bruins, the ...
Indigi-queer Philosophy 101
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on May 28, 2024 coexistence, by Billy-Ray Belcourt Toronto: Hamish Hamilton, 2024/$27.95 / 9780735242036 Earlier this year, a publicist from Random House Canada emailed The BC Review with an effusive, 500-word testimonial on behalf of a rising young superstar in its ranks. “It goes without saying,” the message began, that “every Billy-Ray Belcourt release manifests as a major event in Canadian publishing.” Overkill? No doubt ...
Ending the dubious curse
Essay by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on April 14, 2024 When the New York Rangers defeated the Vancouver Canucks in the 1994 Stanley Cup final, it was their first NHL championship in fifty-four years. This season, as the Canucks prepare for their first playoff action in front of fans since 2015, their own Cup drought is fifty-four years—the team’s entire existence. In a perfect scenario of poetic justice, the Canucks would go ...
