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…
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?…
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…
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on March 1, 2024 The Invisible Hotel, by Yeji Y. Ham Toronto: Bond Street Books, 2024. $34.00 / 9780385698054 If you’ve never heard of Yeji Y. Ham, that’s about to change in a hurry. This young Korean Canadian writer, a UBC Creative Writing grad and Brown University MFA who divides her time between Vancouver and Seoul, has written a first novel that—on its own merits, and with…
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on February 12, 2024 The Longest Shot: How Larry Kwong Changed the Face of Hockey, by Chad Soon and George Chiang, with illustrations by Amy Qi Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, February 13, 2024 $24.95 / 9781459835030 The story of Vernon’s Larry Kwong, the first professional hockey player of Asian descent to crack an NHL line-up, has been told many times. The Province’s Tom Hawthorn, CBC reports,…