Reviews

Long Time Relationship

Montreal-born Julie Doucet is an internationally renowned comics artist, part of a renaissance that emerged in North America in the 1980s and ’90s that recognized comics as a subtle and effective storytelling medium. Although she’s ... Read More »

January 26, 2004 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture

Midnight Cab

By James W. Nichol

The blurb on the back of Midnight Cab makes a brave – or possibly suicidal – claim that aspects of this mystery are “worthy of Thomas Harris.” The surprise is that the comparison is not ... Read More »

January 26, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta

By Aritha van Herk

Mavericks, the fifth instalment in Penguin Canada’s provincial histories series, is a strange beast. Each chapter tackles a different subject in an episodic, mostly chronological format, but the history is decidedly untraditional in that it ... Read More »

January 26, 2004 | Filed under: History

Power: Journeys Across an Energy Nation

By Gordon Laird

As hopes for environmental improvements take a distant back seat to the “war on terrorism,” Gordon Laird’s timely new look at Canadian energy exploration and exploitation provides a strong rallying call for the planet’s fragile ... Read More »

January 26, 2004 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair

By Allan Peterkin

One Thousand Beards, Allan Peterkin’s “cultural history of facial hair,” aspires to be a quirky yet authoritative overview of the historical and social roles of facial hair. Peterkin, a Toronto psychotherapist and author, has amassed ... Read More »

January 26, 2004 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment

Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing

By Margaret Atwood

Like the set of lectures that Margaret Atwood gave at Oxford University and reformatted into Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature, the six chapters that comprise Negotiating with the Dead started life as ... Read More »

January 26, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

Guilty of Everything

By John Armstrong

Art Bergmann and the band DOA are more familiar to Canadian rock fans now, but 20 years ago their contemporary John Armstrong was just as central to Vancouver’s punk scene. Under the alias Buck Cherry ... Read More »

January 26, 2004 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture

The Horizontal Everest: Extreme Journeys on Ellesmere Island

By Jerry Kobalenko

The Horizontal Everest is the culmination of journalist/photographer Jerry Kobalenko’s obsession with Ellesmere Island’s dramatic environment and complicated history. A 16,651-square-mile island in the Canadian Arctic, it is one of the harshest places on earth, ... Read More »

January 26, 2004 | Filed under: Reference

Pacific Press: The Unauthorized Story of Vancouver’s Newspaper Monopoly

By Marc Edge

In 1957, to prevent a fight to the death between the Southam-owned Vancouver Province and the privately owned Vancouver Sun, Southam proposed an unusual corporate partnership called Pacific Press. The two operations would share production ... Read More »

January 26, 2004 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

On Equilibrium

By John Ralston Saul

With On Equilibrium, John Ralston Saul convincingly stakes his claim for a place in the great philosophical continuum by contributing his own perspective to the key questions: What is a good life? What constitutes a ... Read More »