Into the Continentby Emily McGiffinPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$19.95 ISBN 9780889779891 I wasn’t sure how to begin Emily McGiffin’s poetry collection, Into the Continent, with its similar but opposite-side-up covers, front and back, and a Page 1 at either end. On one cover, a bayonetted rifle on a creamy background. On the other, a “Big Old Axe” against the same. As I chose a side (the rifle) to start my reading, I hoped I’d find the answer to why the book—praised by Jan Zwicky and Tim Lilburn—was structured thus. What is McGiffin, author of Between Dusk and Night and Of Land, Bones, and Money: Toward a South African Ecopoetics, metaphorically saying with this either way-ness and dramatic images? What I do know is that the University of Regina’s Oksana Poetry & Poetics book series, of which this book’s a part, concerns titles that “[probe] discussions of poetry’s cultural role”. I mined the internet and learned that the author/academic’s work “concerns the interplay of extractivism, empire, and expressive arts,” and she self-describes as “a multidisciplinary environmental humanities scholar researching arts, extraction, and environmental justice”. Currently a Research Fellow at University College London, she’s also studied and…

Defining Sexual Misconduct: Power, Media, and #MeTooby Stacey Hannem and Christopher J. SchneiderPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Toby A. Welch$34.95 ISBN 9780889778092 As Defining Sexual Misconduct is published by University of Regina press, I knew before I even started page one that I was in for a fact-based read that dove extremely deep into the subject matter. I wasn’t wrong. This bookby Stacey Hannem and Christopher J. Schneider takes a handful of high-profile sexual misconduct cases and delves deep into how they are framed by the news media. Readers then get to see how survivors are treated – often horrifically – and the after-effects. The book focuses primarily on the coverage of allegations against former Canadian media personality Jian Ghomeshi, Bill Cosby, Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, as well as two comedians: Aziz Ansari and Louis C.K. It also goes into detail about the Weinstein Effect: the phenomenon where some men (Trump, for example) seem impervious to sexual misconduct allegations whereas others (such as the man that the phenomenon is named for) do not. This is fascinating reading! Two other areas that Defining Sexual Misconduct explores are the #MeToo movement and Indigenous women. I’d forgotten how the #MeToo movement started and it was helpful to…

Going to Seed: Essays on Idleness, Nature & Sustainable Workby Kate J. NevillePublished by University of Regina PressReview by Michelle Shaw$30.95 9781779400000 In this award-winning collection of essays, Kate Neville melds the different areas of her life into a fascinating perspective on our perception of idleness: personal reflections from living in an off-grid cabin in northern BC and her academic life as associate professor in the Department of Political Science and the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto. Neville draws from a wide range of poets, writers, researchers and scientists to reconsider the notion of idleness in a world where our reaction to problems is invariably to accelerate and advance. What if instead, she asks, we “step back and slow down?” In 2020, when Kate Neville found herself living fulltime in her off-grid cabin during the pandemic, she began to ponder the accuracy of the perception that “going to seed“ was something to be avoided at all costs. As a gardener friend protested — “the seed phase… is a time of so much activity. Plants send out compressed packets filled with the energy and nutrients needed to sow new life.” The fact that I was reading this…

Squandered: Canada’s Potash Legacyby Eric ClinePublished by University of Regina PressReview by Toby A. Welch  $27.95 ISBN 9780889779693 Squandered: Canada’s Potash Legacy is another thoroughly researched and super interesting read by University of Regina Press. As a bonus, as a Saskatchewanian I always welcome a book that is so geared to our province. That said, it makes sense as fifty percent of the free world’s potash reserves are in Saskatchewan.  I learned so much reading Squandered. Granted, I didn’t know a lot about Canada’s potash industry before I cracked the book open. But I was floored to read about mining companies replacing their petroleum businesses with potash drilling as they made more money than they ever could with oil and gas. Also, Canada is the world’s largest producer and exporter of potash. And potash is the second most important value of production mineral in our country, second only to gold. As for Saskatchewan, potash is our largest export and our potash is the richest in the world.  By the end of the book, I’ll admit I was furious. It’s too lengthy to fully clarify in a review – which is why I highly recommend you read the Squandered! – but the Saskatchewan government did not manage this…

Trust the Bluer Skies: Meditations on Fatherhoodby paulo da costaPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Michelle Shaw$27.95 ISBN 9780889779921 Trust the Bluer Skies is a sensory-rich journey through a brief and distinct moment in time. Our daily lives so often pass in a blur, and we can reach the end of the day wondering what we actually did. In this book, paulo da costa slows us down and shares with us a leisurely, poignant kaleidoscope of memories and experiences as he details the six months his family spent in Portugal, his childhood home. The author, his wife Heather, his four-year-old son Koah and his baby daughter Amari travelled from their home in Victoria, British Columbia to spend six months with his family in Vale de Cambra, Portugal where he grew up. While they were there, Paulo recorded his thoughts on “pastry receipts, train tickets and advertising flyers” to create a detailed account of their time. The book is written in the second person in the form of letters to Khoa. paulo details the everyday events they experienced and intersperses them with recollections of his own childhood, family memories and musings on life. Yet the book is grounded in concrete…

Wrack Lineby M.W. JaegglePublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$19.95 ISBN 9780889779532 It’s a rare and wondrous thing when, while reading a poetry collection, I start conceiving poems in my own mind. Vancouver-born M.W. Jaeggle’s highly distilled first book of poetry, Wrack Line, has done that for me, and I feel indebted. This is a poet who looks and listens to the world around him at one already rare level, then amps his senses to an even higher plane. One cannot help but tumble under the spells he ingeniously casts with his poems about shorelines, wind, creatures, solitude, silence, loss, and guilt, and then you look away from the page, reflect upon his finely-crafted lines, and realize you’ve surfaced—as if from the sea—into gentle sunlight. M.W. (Michael) Jaeggle is presently a PhD student in the Department of English at SUNY Buffalo, but the book’s title, elegant cover (northern acorn barnacles set against a creamy background) and the poems within strongly suggest that his heart remains on Canada’s west coast: a “wrack line” refers to the ecologically-critical organic material (including seaweed and seagrasses) left on the shore by wind, waves and tides. It also includes less desirable debris,…

Eroding a Way of Life: Neoliberalism and the Family Farmby Murray KnuttilaPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Toby A. Welch$39.95 ISBN 9780889779457 I admit I had to look up the definition of neoliberalism before cracking into this book. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explained it in a way I could almost understand: “The philosophical view that a society’s political and economic institutions should be robustly liberal and capitalist, but supplemented by a constitutionally limited democracy and a modest welfare state.” In terms of reform policies, we are talking about eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, and lowering trade barriers. With that in mind, I dove into Eroding a Way of Life.  This book looks at the history and trajectory of farms in Western Canada and specifically Saskatchewan. Once that is established, we see how that intertwines with national and international political economy. Social class is an essential component in these chapters as it is a vital factor at play when understanding the transformation of rural Saskatchewan.  Knuttila begins with a look at merchant capitalism from the 1500s through to the Industrial Revolution. We move onto industrial capitalism, the period from the 1770s to the end of the American Civil War in 1865. Then we delve into conditions…

Towards a Prairie Atonementby Trevor HerriotPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$22.95 ISBN 9780889779648 Award-winning writer, prairie naturalist, and birder extraordinaire—Regina’s Trevor Herriot requires little introduction. River in a Dry Land: bestseller. CBC Radio: regular. I’ve just devoured Herriot’s Towards a Prairie Atonement—an eloquent treatise on the interconnected injustices that Colonialism and profit-at-all-costs dealt the prairie Métis and all living things dependent upon the Aspen Parkland grasslands. Though compact in size, this three-part essay dispenses an enormous amount of history, appeals for a reckoning, and delivers a few slight feathers of ecological hope. Herriot says he “set [his] heart on telling a story that [would] inspire people to take a second look at what we all lost, and could yet restore, in our regard for more sophisticated and nuanced forms of land governance”. The wisely-woven text begins with a map of the Saskatchewan and Manitoba rivers and historical sites discussed, and an edifying timeline that stretches from the 1600s to 2012. These centuries saw the beginnings of Canada’s fur trade; the North West and Hudson’s Bay Companies jostling; buffalo’s demise; a plethora of government decisions that greatly impacted upon the Métis; the plight of Louis Riel; the…

We Go Where They Go: The Story of Anti-Racist Actionby Shannon Clay, Lady, Kristin Schwartz, and Michael StaudenmaierPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Toby A. Welch$34.95 ISBN 9780889779082 I knew the moment I cracked open We Go Where They Go and saw that it was published by the University of Regina Press that I was in for a stimulating read. Every book I’ve read by the University of Regina Press has stuck with me even years later. They only publish deeply researched works that are powerful and interesting. Even if the subject matter doesn’t initially intrigue you, odds are that it will by the time you finish the book.  Trying to explain what this book is about in a few short paragraphs won’t come close to touching on the depth of the work but let’s give it a go. In response to community invasions in the 1980s by neo-Nazis and white supremacists, people retaliated. Anti-Racist Action (ARA) was formed. Thousands of members strong, the ARA fought against Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, anti-abortion fundamentalists, and racist police. This is a truly fascinating account of people with a common goal uniting to fight back. As this took place in the era before so much was…

kâ-pî-isi-kiskisiyân / The Way I Rememberby Solomon RattPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$25.95 ISBN 9780889779143 I went to school with a relative of educator, writer, storyteller and keeper of the Woods Cree language, Solomon Ratt, so when his memoir kâ-pî-isi-kiskisiyân / The Way I Remember became available for review, I requested it. Blurbs from Buffy Sainte-Marie (“Sol is an international treasure …”) and Maria Campbell (“This is an important book …”) demonstrate that Ratt’s highly lauded for his work in restoring Woods Cree and preserving the traditional stories he heard near his home community “on the banks on the Churchill River just north of … Stanley Mission”. Ratt’s 340-page autobiography is uniquely and significantly presented in Cree th-dialect Standard Roman Orthography, syllabics and English. The cover features a photo of the smiling author, and this joviality’s evident in many of his autobiographical stories. Between ages six and sixteen, Ratt was “Torn from his family” for ten months each year to attend All Saints Indian Student Residential School in Prince Albert, SK. The abuse that several thousands of residential school survivors endured has been documented via the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2007-2015), and the multi-generational legacy…