A selection of Daniel’s published essays, features and reviews over the years.

Rapist, your time is up

Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on The British Columbia Review on June 26, 2022 Victim: A feminist manifesto from a fierce survivor by Karen Moe (Vigilance Press, 2022) $24.99 / 9781647044701 * For any new author seeking a large audience for a polemical work, the self-declared “manifesto” is a risky undertaking. Driven by the urgency of singular purpose, a manifesto in the wrong hands can result in the most artless of writing: self-righteous, tone-deaf…

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Oh, the good new hockey game

Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on The British Columbia Review on April 18, 2022 Overcoming the Neutral Zone Trap: Hockey’s Agents of Change by Cheryl A. MacDonald and Jonathon R.J. Edwards (editors) Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2021 $34.99 / 9781772125795 * To anyone who watches the game with a critical eye, it should not come as news that the mainstream hockey establishment suffers from a hyper-defensive gatekeeper mentality. For too long now, the…

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A one-man freedom convoy

Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on The British Columbia Review (formerly the Ormsby Review) on February 25, 2022         man@the_airport: How Social Media Saved My Life. One Syrian’s Story by Hassan Al Kontar New Westminster: Tidewater Press, 2021 $23.95 / 9781777010188 Given the staggering human toll of the civil war in Syria since 2011 — half a million dead, more than six and a half million internally displaced, another five and…

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Permanent military rule might just be a fact of life for Burma

Commentary by Daniel Gawthrop posted on straight.com (Georgia Straight) on February 1, 2021       In the face of international outrage over this week’s military coup in Burma, the country’s generals no doubt see a moral advantage they didn’t have in 1990 when they refused to hand over power to the National League for Democracy after losing that year’s elections by a similar landslide: it’s hard to take Western calls for due process seriously…

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A Queer Love Story celebrates Jane Rule and Rick Bébout’s platonic intimacy

Review by Daniel Gawthrop published in the Georgia Straight July 26, 2017 A Queer Love Story: The Letters of Jane Rule and Rick Bébout Edited by Marilyn R. Schuster. UBC, 650 pp, hardcover On October 24, 1994, an arthritic and wheelchair-bound Jane Rule made her long-awaited appearance in B.C. Supreme Court as an expert witness in Little Sister’s bookstore’s epic legal battle with Canada Customs. Rule’s testimony was big news: here was a seldom-seen icon…

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