Saskatchewan Dirt: A Pandemic Quest for Connectionby Bev LundahlPublished by Your Nickel’s Worth PublishingReview by Toby A. Welch$24.95 ISBN 9781778690129 We all know you should never judge a book by its cover, but I made that mistake initially with Saskatchewan Dirt. Based on the title, I assumed this book would be about a farmer’s search for ways to connect with others during the height of Covid. Wrong! It’s a “genealogical and geographical pursuit of the early connections between settlers and Indigenous people in southeast Saskatchewan.” This book unfolds in a creative way. Basically, the author and her road trip sidekick, Georgina, hit the highways and back roads of Saskatchewan to uncover the history of the settlers and Indigenous people of that region. (I loved that they spent plenty of time in the Estevan area, my stomping grounds.) Between and after the two road trips they took, the research continued via Zoom meetings and deep dives into the Internet. The details Lundahl unearthed add to the depths of this work. In addition to the genealogical aspects, the residential schools atrocity takes up a portion of the book. (She even touches on Pope Francis’s apology in 2022 for the Catholic church’s role in the history…

The Thunderbird, the Quesnel, & the Sea by Bev Lundahl Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Keith Foster $19.95 ISBN 978-1-988783-35-2 In The Thunderbird, the Quesnel, & the Sea, Bev Lundahl takes readers on an investigative journey to track down a stolen grave marker carved in the shape of a mythical Indigenous thunderbird. She invites readers to follow her leads, hoping to find the missing artifact but not knowing if it even still exists During the dark years of World War II, while docked at Alert Bay on the coast of British Columbia, sailors from the Canadian corvette HMCS Quesnel removed the carving from the ‘Namgis First Nation burial ground. The area was notable for its totem poles, and the crew wanted to distinguish their West Coast ship from East Coast ships. A thunderbird mascot would do just that. The thunderbird was in such poor shape that the crew wasn’t sure whether to fix it or simply discard it. They opted to repair and paint it and bolted it to the crow’s nest on the mast. The Quesnel‘s captain, Murdo Smith, wanted the thunderbird off his ship, not because it was stolen, but because he believed it was…

Entangled Roots: The Mystery of Peterborough’s Headless Corpse by Bev Lundahl Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Keith Foster $17.95 ISBN 978-1-927756-31-7 In the early hours of a cold wintery morning in 1894, Hessie Gray was abruptly awakened to find smoke billowing in her Peterborough, ON bedroom. She opened the door to the kitchen. Seeing it was in flames, she broke a window and got her young children out. But her boarder, David Scollie, was still inside. With these few simple facts, Bev Lundahl’s Entangled Roots: The Mystery of Peterborough’s Headless Corpse sets the stage for her quest to determine what happened. An inquiry ruled that the fire was an accident and that Scollie had burned to death in his bed. But almost immediately, questions arose. Scollie’s head appeared to be missing. Had it simply burned away, or had he been decapitated? Rumours spread. Suspicions turned to Hessie. A preliminary hearing was convened. The strongest indictment against Hessie came from her sister, Mary McGregor, who happened to be none other than Lundahl’s great-grandmother. Mary testified that Hessie had threatened Scollie. Suspicion also turned to William McGregor, Lundahl’s great-grandfather. Adding to the mystery is the presence of several Aboriginal…