Tag Archives: Book

Coal-mine disaster dusted off to good effect

The Devil’s Breath

The story of the Hillcrest Mine Disaster of 1914

By Steve Hanon

NeWest Press

327 pages, $24.95

Reviewed by Lorne Daniel

The early years of the 20th century seems distant, faded from today’s viewpoint, almost a full century later. European powers and their “new world” spinoffs still saw western Canada as a sparsely populated hinterland. Tucked into the remote Crowsnest Pass in the south-west corner of the new province of Alberta, however, were a number of coal mines producing the energy that would fuel the first burst of western development.

In June of 1914, the worst mining disaster in Canadian history took the lives of 189 men at Hillcrest Mine in the pass. The story of that disaster has been largely overlooked in our cultural record — and not only because it happened so long ago.

The disaster was covered by western media, but little of the news was picked up in the east. Western coal itself rarely travelled as far east as Manitoba, so the story simply did not reverberate very far afield.

Yet, for a region that had suffered the Frank Slide just 11 years earlier, the Hillcrest explosion was another devastating blow. Filmmaker-author Steve Hanon sifts through conflicting and confusing sources – newspapers, inquiry reports, company reports and memoirs – to patch together a picture of what happened at Hillcrest before, during, and after the explosion and fires.

The Devil’s Breath takes over 100 pages to lead us to the day of the disaster. The context, Hanon says, is everything. He takes readers inside the industrial age thinking of the time, the heated world of coal mining labour struggles, and the work ethic that drove small frontier communities.

The mine exploded between 9:15 and 9:30 am on June 19, 1914, killing many miners instantly. In the book’s most gripping chapter, “Without Air to Breathe,” we follow the frantic escape attempts and rescue efforts that filled the minutes and hours immediately after the explosion. Miners scramble to find escape routes and air to breathe. Rescuers head down shafts, retreat for air and equipment, return at considerable risk and often stumble into caverns filled with the bodies of their friends and co-workers.

What went wrong? Why do Canadians know so little about Hillcrest? The story moves from life and death heroics to the frustrating opacity of our economic, governmental and social systems. One is left believing that there were far too many vested interests in Hillcrest for real accountability to stick. To his credit, Hanon avoids the temptation to pick out a single, arbitrary villain. “The truth likely lay tangled somewhere in the Gordian Knot of human behavior that involved politics, the struggle for control, human failings, fear, shrugged shoulders, equivocation, evasions and fatalism,” he concludes.

The Devil’s Breath is presented in a handsome trade paperback edition with 20 pages of photographs, a useful glossary, an event timeline, a full listing of the disaster’s victims, bibliography and other notes. It is a thorough package.

The effect is more archival than imaginative, which is appropriate. Hanon did not set out to write a new story set in the context of Hillcrest, but to clear away the coal dust and give us a good look at the original story. That he does admirably.

Lorne Daniel lives in Victoria, B.C.. His blog Writing:Place is at http://lornedaniel.ca

Novel posits bleak future

Debut novel Swarm

By Lauren Carter
Published by Brindle & Glass

288 pages, $19.95

 

Reviewed by Jenny Boychuk

Capitalism has fallen. The government hardly exists except as whispers in condemned buildings. There are no jobs and everyone is poor. There is violence, rebellion. People have to quickly adapt to an older way of life—when living and surviving meant the same thing.

Lauren Carter’s first novel, Swarm, is narrated by Sandy, who lives in a previously abandoned house on a rural and isolated island with her partner, Marvin, and their elderly and dying friend, Thomson. Sandy and Marvin fish, hunt, farm and keep bees in order to survive.

         “Things would never be what they were—brightly lit supermarkets with asparagus from Peru and frozen pasta in microwave-safe plastic bowls—”

         “What are our battles? I could have asked, but didn’t. I thought I already knew. Survival, putting food on the table.”

When Sandy, never able to have children, finds the footprints of a small girl in her garden, it sparks a search and a yearning for something much larger than the child herself. The neighbour’s baby sleeps, sickly, in a blue recycling box—but Sandy still wants nothing more than a daughter of her own. She is preoccupied with what makes up a life, but is unable to differentiate between her fantasies and her reality.

Sandy addresses her story to the elusive child, whom she has named Melissa, as the book alternates from her past in the city to her present island life. It seems fitting that, in a time of so much isolation, Carter has her protagonist tell the story to someone who may not even exist.

         “No matter what, I had to find you. You had to be real.”

The ambitious structure is effective in keeping up the pace of the novel, as well as in helping the reader understand how everything fell apart, and how all of those small collapses influence the characters’ present lives. This novel is terrifying because of how realistically Carter has built this dystopian world; it could very easily become our world in the near future. We are already seeing a lack of jobs and resources as the divide between rich and poor continues to grow larger in real life. Carter’s descriptions of this isolated island are easy to imagine—and it’s no doubt that the clear-eyed specificity comes from her upbringing in rural Blind River, Ontario.

I immediately identified with Sandy’s character, and I found myself asking the same questions she’s faced with: What do we risk for our ideals? How do you build a home from things you’ve never imagined or have never cared to? I found myself thinking about how I deal with my own unexpected realities. Though the naivety of Sandy’s character often annoyed me, it’s hard to judge her. When every day is a struggle to survive, it’s difficult to imagine that other stakes exist, but Carter corrects of this notion. Swarm is proof that, regardless of what our current world looks like, humans will always yearn for the same things: love, security, compassion, and companionship.

Carter’s debut reads like an elegy for an entire population, an entire planet. This somber world, paired with a wash of beauty in the prose, makes for a reading experience I can only compare to the blue hour of the day—something half-way between light and darkness.

         “It was too late. Despite whatever I’d once wanted in a life, I had made my reality.”

 

Jenny Boychuk is British Columbia writer and reviewer

 

 

 

 

Family circle resists shaping

Every Happy Family

By Dede Crane

Coteau Books

247 pp., $18.95

Reviewed by Susan Braley.

Jill, mother, wife and “itinerant” scholar in Dede Crane’s third novel Every Happy Family, thinks “perfection is out there . . . if only she tries a little harder.” For the five years we know her, she devotes herself, lovingly and wearily, to rounding her husband Les and their three teenagers into a perfect circle.  But Crane deftly disrupts her efforts with the cat’s-cradle complications, multiplicities and heart-stopping randomness of real family life.

Language and logic, once grounding for Jill, short-circuit repeatedly throughout the story: a quiet talk with son Quinn doesn’t settle the question of the hidden vodka bottle, and a lecture to enlighten her adopted daughter Pema about misogynist rap lyrics falls short. Her handsome son Beau suffers from a stutter; her kids are more at home with her “faucet mouth” sister-in-law Annie than with her; and her mother, suffering from dementia, can no longer advise her. The lost-language crisis of Langue d’Occ, the subject of her latest paper, is happening in her own home.

Another anxiety for this family circle is its blurring circumference. Already struggling with her mother’s decline, Jill is shaken when Pema’s biological mother asks Pema to meet her in Tibet.  At the same time, Beau longs to set Pema outside his “blood” family, since he has secretly fallen in love with her. Pema questions the status of Quinn’s girlfriend Holly: “He brought a girl. Isn’t this a family event?” Yet Holly and her young son give Quinn the strength to dump a forbidden drink: “Feels like he’s pouring his own blood and thinks he might faint.”

Crane bends the definition of blood relations beyond the biological: her characters long to be truly seen and touched, to feel “the soothing vibration of a living creature.” Jill’s mother imagines a male roommate for herself after surviving a long, unhappy marriage; Les, too ill for love-making, misses Jill’s breasts.  To capture the depth of this longing, Crane includes a tender scene where Satomi, a classmate, explores Beau’s face with her fingers, not her eyes, and then draws it. As her hands linger on his face, he feels known beyond his beauty.

The novel seems to posit that  “outsiders” like Holly and Satomi amplify family, if only temporarily.  When loved ones are overwhelmed, the characters tell their stories to people willing to listen: Annie to a seatmate on a plane, Pema (not trusting her seatmate) to us, Les to an open-hearted teenager in a tree. He observes: “Random encounters with strangers. Is family any different? He’d have to say that Pema, oddly enough, feels more knowable to him, more familiar, than either of his sons, whatever that’s about.”

Crane intimates the interconnectedness of family, in all of its iterations, with the headings she offers in “Parts,” her table of contents. She dedicates the primary chapter titles to family members (for instance, “Les”), and the secondary ones to a category of relative (“Sons”). In “Les,” Les jealously remembers Beau’s coach hugging Beau like a father; in the following section “Sons,” he pushes himself to reach out in a new way to “brainiac” son Quinn. These chapter titles animate the complexities of relationships in the story before and while we read.

Similarly, the time frames dropped in between these titles – Eight Months Later, Three Years Later – generate a lively pace overall. These leaps in time allow the psychic lives of the characters to unfold fluidly, unencumbered by the mechanics of events such as Quinn’s release from assault charges and Pema’s exit from the house.

It is startling, then, to find over one-third of the novel occurs in one long, final chapter, centred on Les’s “Living Wake.”  Although the progress of the characters is enthralling on one level, this section lacks the agility of the previous pages, thus some of its poignancy is lost.  Surprising, too, is the studied effort to “chase the circle closed,” when Jill admits at the wake that it is “impossibly sentimental” to imagine everyone under one roof again, to expect to “come full circle.”  The evening’s ambiguous sun, “oddly like permanence . . . .[a]nd at the same time, as temporary as a breeze,” seems more in keeping with the wise and wistful vision of the novel.

Susan Braley (www.susanbraley.ca) is a writer living in Victoria.

Readers, buy this mouth-watering treat

Island Wineries of British Columbia (updated and expanded)
Edited by Gary Hynes
Contributors from EAT Magazine
Photographs by Rebecca Wellman
TouchWood Editions, 256 pages, $29.95.

Reviewed by Candace Fertile

This book was first published in 2011 and won the 2012 Gourmand International Wine Books Award for Canada, among other accolades. That a revised edition was deemed necessary is a testament to the growth in wine-producing on Vancouver Island.

The volume is a visual treat that will whet anyone’s appetite for the marvels that can be produced in our own back yard, from the Saaanich Peninsula to Sooke to the Cowichan Valley and beyond. Port Alberni has wineries. Saturna and Saltspring have wineries. So much is happening in regard to local food and drink, and Island Wineries of British Columbia provides an excellent introduction not only to wine from grapes, but also to wine from other fruit, plus mead, cider, and spirits. There’s even a selection of recipes featuring local ingredients—and suggestions for wine pairings. Chai Tea Honey Cake with Summer Fruits (suggested beverage—Venturi-Schulze Brandenburg No. 3 or a sparkling wine or blackberry dessert wine) is next on my baking list.

Hynes has assembled a huge amount of information by various writers, experts in the topics and, perhaps even more important, lovers of the local. Larry Arnold gives a short history of Island wines; Adam Tepedelen describes the Island wineries, often by using the words of the growers and vintners. Jeff Bateman, Treve Ring, and Adam Tepedelen explain the varieties of grapes; Julie Pegg gives us recipes sources from local restaurants. Kathryn McAree suggests some touring routes, and the volume concludes with a list of restaurants featuring Island wines.

Island Wineries of British Columbia is useful for beginner and expert alike, and the gorgeous photographs of Rebecca Wellman add to the mouth-watering effect. This book is marked by the sheer exuberance of the contributors: drink and food are pleasures, and to explore the pleasures of Island offerings is relatively easy. And the overall message is that what we have here is different from what is available from other wine-producing areas. The terroir changes the taste, as do the weather and the skills of the wine-maker. Over and over, wine-makers assert the challenge of making wine in BC. The growing season is short compared to, say that of the Okanagan. But the mild winters create an advantage in protecting vines. White wines, especially bubbly, tend to be more successful than red, but the local growers and vintners are in a constant state of experimentation and openness to what may work.

And the wine world on the islands is new. While people have made wine for ages, the business of it is only about twenty years old. What is being made is remarkable and testifies to the dedication of the people involved and the natural gifts of the regions.

Island Wineries of British Columbia would make a lovely gift for those interested in local fare. Buy one for yourself and one (or more) to give away.

Candace Fertile is a voracious reader who also enjoys food and wine.

“Rapid reads” convey deep meaning

Stolen
By John Wilson
Orca Book Publishers, 119 pages,  $9.95

Him Standing
By Richard Wagamese
Raven Books, 129 pages, $9.95

Reviewed by Marcie Gray

Ever start a book and then put it down for so long that when you pick it up again, you have to reread the beginning? Ever take a book out of the library and discover it’s due back before you’ve flipped it open? I’m guilty on both counts. I’ve read gorgeous books in fits and starts, all the while knowing that I’m missing out – that the book is not getting the attention it deserves, that  its beauty is betrayed by the cracking of its cadence.

What can I say? Life interferes with good books. Orca Book Publishers recognizes this and offers rewarding alternatives for those pressed for time, and for those pressed for interest. Reluctant readers, young people reading below their grade level, newcomers who are learning English as a second language. You can hand them a classic and hope it enthrals, but 300 pages and a dictionary later, odds are you’ve lost them. Better, perhaps, to offer a quick and entertaining book that will help the reader gain confidence and go on to the next novel.

Two books released this spring hit that mark. Stolen, written by John Wilson, is part of the “Orca Currents” series, aimed at middle-school students falling behind in their reading skills. Him Standing, by Richard Wagamese, belongs to the “Rapid Reads” series, targeting an adult audience.  It’s published by Raven Books, which is an imprint of Orca.

In Stolen, a Canadian boy named Sam arrives on the southern coast of Australia. He’s pulled into a mystery involving shipwrecks and stolen artifacts and international art thieves. The pace is quick and the language simple. This is a plot-driven, character-light whodunit where young protagonists use logic to solve the mystery and become the heroes of the hour. (Or perhaps two hours–that’s about how long it took to read this book.) This is not criticism; rather, I’d expect this book to engage young readers as they follow Sam’s escapades over the course of just two days.

Orca, based in Victoria, shows it’s treating these “rapid reads” seriously by turning to authors with solid track records. Wilson, a Lantzville writer, has written nearly 40 books, both fiction and non-fiction, many of them for young people. Wagamese, the author of Him Standing, has a remarkable resume as an award-winning author and journalist. He’s Ojibway, originally from Northwestern Ontario, now living in Kamloops.

Wagamese’s culture is front and centre in his story of a young man with a magic of his own. Lucas Smoke carves images in wood. His grandfather taught him, but Lucas is a natural. He faces danger when a stranger spots his talent and hires Lucas to carve a spirit mask. Wagamese dips into deep issues such as balance in the universe and the power of fear, and wraps them up into a mystical story that clips along and clocks in at 129 pages. An impressive feat. Also impressive is the voice he creates for Lucas; the young man’s internal dialogue feels genuine throughout.

Stolen and Him Standing are great at what they are meant to do–engage readers and keep them hooked to the (quickly nearing) end. They accomplish another task too–they make you want to read more. Next on my reading list: other works by Wilson and Wagamese.

Marcie Gray’s resume includes years spent reporting and producing for CBC Radio. Today she’s working on her own novel of youth fiction.

Journalist launches debut novel

Journalist Cathi Bond divides her time between the streets of Toronto and the fields of rural Ontario.  With her lively focus on contemporary culture and the Internet, Bond was a columnist on Definitely Not The Opera (DNTO) with Nora Young, and is a regular contributor to Spark, both on CBC Radio. She also does movie podcasts for Rabble and, with Nora Young, has created The Sniffer, a podcast on “New Directions in Trends and Tech.” Bond’s latest project is her first novel, Night Town, published by Iguana Press. The unstoppable Bond is now writing its sequel.  She recently answered questions from Lynne Van Luven.

Cathi, most listeners and viewers know you as a journalist, from TV and especially from CBC Radio. What precipitated your move from cultural reporting into novel writing?

I haven’t completely moved from cultural writing or broadcasting. As you’d know, the number of print jobs in Canada has diminished significantly in the last decade. And landing a steady gig as a cultural columnist at any of the big papers is nearly a miracle. In fact, many columnists who had that security have lost it and now have to get in the pit and compete for every column they write. I’m extremely fortunate to be able to work part time at Spark and have the privilege to write about shifts in technology that truly excite me.

In part, this new employment reality steered me towards taking a shot at fiction, but Night Town was a story that had been percolating inside of me for years. So I saved some cash, decided to live relatively poor and took the time to write it. I guess you could say that Night Town was always close to number one on my bucket list, and now it’s completed and I’m very happy with the result.

Night Town has been optioned by Back Alley Films. Do you think being a media personality helped the process at all?

Absolutely. It’s really unfair, but I think it’s true. Having any kind of name recognition, any kind of brand makes you instantly more attractive. It makes the project easier to sell to the funding bodies that hand out the money.

That said, having a feature film credit makes you worth more. That credit proves that you can do the work. I was very lucky that Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik, the story editor behind Back Alley’s award winning series Durham County, edited my novel. Yet another brand, or seal of approval, attached to the project.

Maddy Barnes is a captivating and credible character. I know this is a work of fiction, but I cannot help feeling there is a little spark of personal experience at the heart of this novel. True?

Good instincts. I think most writers, whether they admit it or not, do create from personal experience. Especially on a first novel. When I was very young, an absolutely horrible thing happened to me and my family. It was “the moment” that defined my life. So I took that moment and fictionalized it. I don’t think I’m letting the cat out of the bag if I tell your readers that the novel takes place, in large part, at the corner of Yonge and Dundas on the mean streets of Toronto during the early 1970s.

I wanted to write about that period in Toronto’s history. Toronto is one of the biggest cities in the world and, other than in  Ondattje’s “The Skin of the Lion” and by Atwood (a wee bit in her early work), it has never been mythologized in any significant way. I tried to change that by making Toronto a character. In fact, Night Town is the first in a trilogy of novels that follows Toronto and a single family from the dawn of the Great Depression, through to the arrival of the new millennium.

People call you a “podcast pioneer” and now you have a blog, so I wonder if it’s not a bit “retrograde” for you to become a novelist who’s now working on a sequel to her first book. What about all those “books-are-dead” prognostications?

I thought about this a lot, but I refuse to believe that reading is dead. The telling of stories is built into our DNA. It’s how we carry our history; it’s how we instruct; it’s how we delight. But is the book as we know it dead? I think we’re right in the middle of a big technological/business transition as to how our stories will be told. Personally, I think that eReaders are still clunky and not where they need to be, but they’re getting closer.  [Given] the speed at which technology is moving, I think the next device is right around the corner. That’s why I took the chance and went with a digital house. I wanted Night Town to be ready.

Can you talk a little bit about The Sniffer, the audio podcast you and Nora Young started? 

Nora and I started  The Sniffer in the summer of 2005, the summer when the word “podcast” had just appeared on computer screens . . . We do it primarily for fun, and as a way to sniff out sometimes wacky and really interesting new trends in technology. We’re both wool-gathering geeks and most folks don’t get all revved up talking about the stuff we do. But early subscribers heard about trends like Facebook, Second Life and YouTube first. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s something we do for ourselves and for you.

Partners in crime . . . writing

Victoria residents Kay Stewart and Chris Bullock are partners in life and crime-writing. Their third mystery in the Danutia Dranchuck series was published this spring. The series features a female RCMP constable who grows more complex with each new book. The authors will be in Vancouver April 18 at 7:30 p.m. in the Peter Kaye Room, Lower Level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia, for the Aurthur Ellis Shortlist event.  Stewart and Bullock recently answered Lynne Van Luven’s questions about the context for and development of  their new mystery, which they’ll launch in Nanaimo at The Coffee Vault (499 Wallace Street) on April 22 at 6:30 pm.

The two of you have logged a total of 50 years as professors of English at the university level. How difficult was the switch from that sort of intellectual work to the challenge of writing crime novels?

KAY: During most of my university years, I was a sessional lecturer, teaching writing and introductory literature courses. So I didn’t have the same stake in academic research and publication as Chris did. Before we began our first crime novel, I had published short stories as well as personal essays and writing textbooks. The stretch for me was moving from short fiction to the novel–no more sketching a character or setting in a few sentences.

CHRIS: In contrast, the switch from intellectual work to writing crime novels was very difficult for me. I discovered that knowing about the theory of fiction–about kinds of characterization and various ways of structuring plots–was little help in writing fiction. So the first drafts of chapters I wrote for our first novel, Deadly Little List, were hopelessly expository, full of reflection and very little action. The turning point for me was taking a writing class with Marilyn Bowering and learning to write in scenes. I also discovered that I needed to notice the life around me rather simply reflect on it, so writing fiction has involved an expansion of perception for me.

You both have lived in Alberta and taught in Edmonton, where there is a sizeable Ukrainian community. Did that influence the creation of your protagonist, who is named Danutia Dranchuk?

 KAY: Definitely. It was important to me that the book reflect something of the Canadian mosaic. I’d had Ukrainian students and neighbours, and I’d recently been fascinated by Myrna Kostash’s revisionist history of Ukrainians in Canada, All of Baba’s Children (reissued 1992). However, I didn’t want my protagonist’s ethnicity to be her defining trait. So I created Danutia Dranchuk, of mixed heritage like many of us. I expect that at some point she will be called upon to re-examine her cultural roots.

Unholy Rites takes Danutia and her “sidekick” Arthur Fairweather to England. Why did you move the action from Victoria, BC, to the wider world stage?

CHRIS:  We hadn’t intended to move Unholy Rites outside Canada, but were drawn by a particular area of England. The landscape and customs of that area seemed to ask us to set our novel there.

KAY: Changing the setting was also a device for keeping our interest as well as the interest of readers. We both enjoy exploring new places and trying to capture the flavour of their inhabitants. By moving into the wider world, we set new challenges for ourselves as well as for our protagonists.

Your acknowledgements thank the “well-dressing community of Derbyshire” for sharing their craft, but I am wondering when you knew this was going to be an integral part of Unholy Rites–before you started the novel, or part-way through?

CHRIS:  Initially, we went to the Peak District in Derbyshire to sell our first novel (A Deadly Little List) at a Gilbert and Sullivan festival.  While at the festival, we toured around a bit and became fascinated at seeing ancient hill forts and stone circles, and witnessing originally pagan customs like well dressing. Our original idea was to set our novel around a stone circle called the Nine Ladies. After mapping out this idea, we discovered that a local crime novelist had already written a book with exactly this setting. So we switched from monuments to customs, and started our second joint writing project with well dressing as a focus. As it turned out, our research into well dressing also led us to some other strange places and areas of interest.

Unholy Rites leaves the reader wondering about Danutia’s future as a RCMP constable. Without giving away any of the suspense, can you talk a bit about your plans for the novel series?

KAY: Like most young women of the last half century, Danutia is faced with questions about “work-life balance,” or, more accurately, “work-life imbalance.” These questions arise in the first book, A Deadly Little List, and intensify in Unholy Rites. The issue may–or may not!–come to a head in book four, which I’m working on now. I don’t know how it will turn out. If her life is like that of most women I know, her world will shift again just when she thinks she’s found some balance.

 

The authors will also appear in Victoria at Chronicles of Crime bookstore (1048 Fort Street) Thursday, May 23, 7 pm in At The Mike, a “conversations with crime writers” event. 

On May 25 from 9:30 to 1 p.m., they will be part of “Making Crime Pay: A National Crime-Writing Month Mini-Conference” at the Greater Victoria  Public Library, Central Branch and will be part of the afternoon “Speed-Dating” event as well.