MEMOIR: HRH: A nodding acquaintance by Maria Tippett * On the occasion of the death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021), we present an extract from the diary of art historian Maria Tippett of Pender Island of the visit to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, by Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh in November…
Read more 1097 HRH: A nodding acquaintance
The Library of Legends by Janie Chang Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2020 $22.99 / 9781443456050 Reviewed by Val Green * The year is 1937. The place is eastern China. The story of The Library of Legends by Janie Chang is a true account of the evacuation of university students from the city of Nanking across thousands…
Read more 1094 Escape from Nanking, 1937
Magdalena, River of Dreams: A Story of Colombia by Wade Davis Toronto: Penguin Random House (Knopf Canada), 2020 $24.95 / 9780735278943 Reviewed by Howard Macdonald Stewart * Another river. I was bowled over years ago by Wade Davis’s One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest (1997), a remarkable book about his youthful…
Read more 1087 The soul & graveyard of Colombia
No Ordinary Seaman: A Memoir by Gary H. Karlsen Victoria: First Choice Books, 2018 $22.95 / 9781775266907 Reviewed by Eric W. Sager * There are many paths into adulthood. One way is to leave home and go to sea. It is an old path, followed by many young men (and women too) through the ages,…
Read more 1084 The education of a seafarer
Surreal Surrebutter Rebutter Sandwich Spread by Ernest Hekkanen * Editor’s note: The archives of the New Orphic Review (NOR) are a popular part of The Ormsby Review website. Since 2018 all the back issues of NOR have been housed under our roof. Founded in 1998 by Ernest Hekkanen and Margrith Schraner, NOR was a semi-annual…
Read more 1078 Hekkanen’s Kootenay Surrealism
A Whisper Across Time: My Family’s Story of the Holocaust told through Art & Poetry by Olga Campbell Vancouver: Jubaji Press, 2018, distributed by Red Toque Books. To purchase see here $31.95 / 9780981291123 Reviewed by Claire Sicherman * I first met visual artist and author Olga Campbell in 2019 at Vancouver’s Jewish Community Centre,…
Read more 1072 Healing through creativity
Claws of the Panda: Beijing’s Campaign of Influence and Intimidation in Canada by Jonathan Manthorpe Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2019 $24.95 / 9781770865396 Reviewed by Trevor Carolan * Book-length critiques of our national failures of nerve and vision seldom make easy reading. Drug use policies, Quebec-ROC relations, Indigenous reconciliation, housing and environmental issues — on and…
Read more 1056 Beijing in Canada
MEMOIR: A country in transition: Russia, 1990-1995 by Max Wyman * But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them – from Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928) I’d been in love with Russia, off and on, since…
Read more 1035 A country in transition: Russia, 1990-95
Letters from the Pandemic 23: Letter to Mary Magdalene by Lilian Broca * Dear Mariam, Who would have imagined at the time we first met a few years ago that our newly formed relationship would be interrupted for several months due to a pandemic threatening the entire world? I certainly didn’t and I suspect nor…
Read more 1032 Letters from the Pandemic 23: Letter to Mary Magdalene
Stanley’s Dream: The Medical Expedition to Easter Island by Jacalyn Duffin Montréal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019 $39.95 / 9780773557109 Reviewed by Colin Levings * Stanley’s Dream, Jacalyn Duffin’s book on the 1964-65 Medical Expedition to Easter Island (METEI) is an intriguing detailed compendium, retrospective analysis, and overall fascinating story of one of Canada’s…
Read more 1021 Canadian science on Easter Island
The Clean Body: A Modern History by Peter Ward Montréal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019 $37.95 / 9780773559387 Reviewed by John Douglas Belshaw * This review is late. Very late. It took McGill-Queen’s a staggeringly long time to get the book into my sanitized hands — due in part to pandemic understaffing at a…
Read more 1020 Dishing the dirt on soap
The Girl Who Stole Everything: A Novel by Norman Ravvin Montreal: Linda Leith Éditions, 2019 $21.95 / 9781773900278 * Prisoners of Hope: Rising from the Ashes of the Holocaust: An Eyewitness Account of Life in the Auschwitz Extermination Camp and Two Slave Labour Camps (1944-1945) by George L. Pal (Former Prisoner #42821) Victoria: George L….
Read more 1019 Prisoners of hope and memory
Frederick Paget Norbury, Remittance Man or Gentleman Immigrant? The Story of an Englishman in Canada by Brenda Callaghan * Editor’s note: We are pleased to present the first instalment of the late Brenda Callaghan’s biography and selected correspondence of East Kootenay settler Frederick Paget Norbury (1867-1940). In 1887, Norbury became one of the first immigrants…
Read more Frederick Paget Norbury: Introduction
Moon Madness: Dr. Louise Aall, Sixty Years of Healing in Africa by Alan Twigg Vancouver: Ronsdale Books, 2019 $21.95 / 9781553805939 Reviewed by Valerie Green * In writing the true-life story of Dr. Louise Aall (pronounced All), author Alan Twigg has produced a spellbinding biography about an incredible woman. For sixty years, Dr. Aall devoted…
Read more 1007 Love affair with Africa
LETTER: Dear Readers of History, and all that Jazz by Mariken van Nimwegen * What does the Oxford historian Peter Frankopan’s hefty 2015 book The Silk Roads have in common with “Vancouver man about town,” Andreas Nothiger’s skinny 1984 synchronoptical World History Chart? I think I have a case, and a story. Frankopan gives us…
Read more #994 Letters from the Pandemic 8: Dear readers of history