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.” Little…
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…
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…