Herstory 2014: The Canadian Women’s Calendar by The Saskatoon Women’s Calendar Collective Published by Coteau Books Reviewed by Jackie Blakely $15.95 ISBN 9781550505566 Herstory 2014: The Canadian Women’s Calendar offers a wonderful collection of stories highlighting the achievements of Canadian women throughout Canadian history. Each vignette in the calendar is crafted to bring to life each woman’s experience and influence, through thoughtful reflections on each of its subjects. From writers to artists and athletes, this compilation of women’s history is proof of the strength of Canadian women and their involvement in creating a great nation. This book is so much more than a functional calendar. It is a documentary of women’s stories that might otherwise be lost over time. Stories such as that of Annie Hanley, the first female council member in Nelson, British Columbia, a nurse, a teacher, a writer and a scholar, populate the pages and bring to life a Canadian history rich in feminine energy. The women profiled in the calendar come from all walks of life and various nationalities and backgrounds. Their impacts are felt from Canada’s historical inception to present day, and their stories are told to highlight their contributions. Stories are accompanied by photos…

Architecture of Saskatchewan: A Visual Journey, 1930-2011 by Bernard Flaman Published by University of Regina Press Review by Keith Foster $49.95 ISBN 978-0-88977-250-2 Saskatchewan is more than a land of living skies and gorgeous sunsets; it also comprises the buildings that dot our prairie landscape and adorn our cityscapes. Architecture of Saskatchewan: A Visual Journey covers the period from the 1930s to the new millennium as a companion volume to Historic Architecture of Saskatchewan, published in 1986, which focused on Saskatchewan’s early heritage buildings. An architect in the field of heritage conservation, Bernard Flaman wrote the introduction to each chapter and the text accompanying the photos. A man of few words, he introduces the chapters, then lets the photos speak for themselves. Flaman uses both black and white and colour images. He took many of the photos himself, supplemented by archival sources and other photographers. This 179-page hardcover coffee table book often shows multiple images of the same structures, displaying the changes or additions that have taken place over the years, or simply showing the buildings in different seasons or at different times of day. The photos create some strange images, especially if one adds a little imagination. The Saints…

Our Lamps Were Heavy by Eleanor A. Sinclair Published by DriverWorks Ink Review by Keith Foster $14.95 ISBN 978-0-9879643-3-5 A diary is a good thing to keep; you never know when it might come in handy. Eleanor Sinclair uses extracts from a diary she kept as a nurse in training as the basis for her book, Our Lamps Were Heavy. A retired registered nurse, Sinclair relates the sharp learning curve she experienced as a teen in the 1950s while in training at the Holy Family Hospital and School of Nursing in Prince Albert. She soon learned there was more to nursing than wearing a white uniform. This book is not for the squeamish. While assisting in a delivery, Sinclair witnessed both mother and baby die in childbirth. Then she had to carry the stillborn child to the morgue and clean it for burial. Her narrative slows somewhat when she uses medical terms, but is most lively when she quotes from her diary: “I copied doctor’s orders wrong today and had a baby girl to be circumcised tomorrow. Did I ever get teased.” Sinclair supplements her text with three dozen black and white photos taken while she was training. All the…

One Family’s War: The Wartime Letters of Clarence Bourassa, 1940-1944 Edited by Rollie Bourassa Published by Canadian Plains Research Center Review by Keith Foster $29.95 ISBN 978-0-88977-221-2 For the average soldier, war is mostly long periods of endless monotony, occasionally interrupted by spasms of sheer terror. This maxim is nowhere more clearly borne out than in One Family’s War: The Wartime Letters of Clarence Bourassa. As the title suggests, this really was a family war because it affected the entire family. By enlisting in the South Saskatchewan Regiment and being shipped overseas in 1940, Clarence had to leave his wife Hazel and two young sons, Rollie and Murray, back home at Lafleche, SK. Edited by his son Rollie, with an introduction by Regina Leader-Post reporter Will Chabun, these letters express Clarence’s abiding love for his wife and children, often with sentimental terms of endearment. Many of the letters are deeply personal. Right from the first, the reader can feel Clarence’s deep pangs of loneliness. And the further he got from his wife, the worse he felt: “I’m all alone in my tent with a great big lump in my throat, and I sure feel like crying.” Aside from letters, the…

First in Canada: An Aboriginal Book of Days by Jonathan Anuik Published by Canadian Plains Research Center Press Review by Chris Ewing-Weisz $24.95 978-088977-240-3 Every schoolchild has heard of La Vérendrye, but how many know the name of the Cree guide who made the canoe route map he relied on? We all know about the Plains of Abraham and Sir John A. Macdonald, but how many of us know about the numbered treaties, or when Native Canadians got the vote? Jonathan Anuik’s sumptuously illustrated, made-for-browsing book brings a hidden history to light. Hundreds of intriguing facts, arranged by date, alternate with photographs and short writeups about First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people across Canada, from earliest prehistory to the present. First in Canada celebrates Native achievements in every field: art, literature, music, architecture, politics, medicine, sports, religion, theatre, education, and more. Also noted are the darker elements of our shared history: conflicts from the North West Rebellion to Oka; Richard Cardinal’s suicide and David Marshall’s wrongful imprisonment; the long and tangled history of legislation and activism attempting to sort out the relationship between Native and more recently arrived Canadians. Many items are only briefly noted; readers will want to turn…

Storm of the Century: The Regina Tornado of 1912 by Sandra Bingaman Published by Canadian Plains Research Center Review by Keith Foster $29.95 ISBN 978-0-88977-248-9 If there was any doubt about the importance of newspapers to historical research, it is surely dispelled by Sandra Bingaman’s latest book, Storm of the Century. In describing the impact of the massive tornado that struck Regina on June 30, 1912, the author draws heavily on Regina’s three daily newspapers of the time – the Leader, the Province, and the Standard. By using selected quotes from these papers, she gives the reader a feeling of almost being there. When she quotes from survivors, it’s as if one is hearing their stories directly from them. For example, travelling salesman W.S. Ingram, who was in an office with Joseph Bryan when the storm struck, related his experience to a Standard reporter: “Strange to say, I felt no injury, other than a somewhat dazed condition. I could feel that Mr. Bryan must be on me, and reaching up my hand could feel his body. I called to him, but received no reply, and reached up again to feel his arm. The body became limp, and I was quite…

Gabriel Dumont: La Chef Michif in Images and In Words by Darren R. Préfontaine Published by the Gabriel Dumont Institute Review by Chris Ewing-Weisz $65.00 ISBN 978-0-920915-87-5 On postage stamps and place mats, bronze plaques and sculpture, Gabriel Dumont, military leader of Riel’s 1885 Rebellion, continues to be remembered. In recent years he has been freshly appreciated as a genuine community leader, and a touchstone of Métis identity. Now he is the subject of a large, colourful, coffee-table anthology from the Gabriel Dumont Institute. Drawing together a wealth of photographs, artwork, archival documents, artifacts from his life, and newspaper accounts past and present, it explores how Dumont has been perceived through time and by different individuals and communities. Browsing these pages, you will see Dumont through many different eyes: Métis and settler, government and military, French and English Canadian, American and British. You will see Dumont pictured with hostile bitterness, racist suspicion, equally racist romanticism, revolutionary fervor, political pragmatism, and more. You will also discover a wealth of period detail: the difference between French and English billiard tables; how bison hunters reloaded on the fly (and sometimes lost fingers); war reporting prior to instant communications; and Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild…

Honouring Our Past, Embracing Our Future: Celebrating a Century of Excellence in Education at the University of Regina Campus Text by Dr. James Pitsula Photos selected by Don Hall and Dr. Stephen King Published by the Canadian Plains Research Centre Press Review by Jessica Bickford $39.95 ISBN 9-780889-772434 There are one-hundred years of history packed into Honouring Our Past, Embracing Our Future, which is a visually stunning compilation of archival photographs and historical tidbits about the University of Regina. Dr. James Pitsula, who authored the text, is not only a history professor at the University of Regina, but he is also the authority on U of R history – having written three other books on the subject. Honouring Our Past, Embracing Our Future chronicles the U of R’s story from its humble beginnings in 1911 when Regina College (which was then a high school established by the Methodist Church) opened its doors to a whopping twenty-seven students, right up to the present day when the University now has twelve-thousand students, three federated colleges, and twenty research centres to its name. The intervening years, all chronicled through gorgeous photographs of students, faculty members, staff and buildings, are thoroughly described in four…

Within the Stillness: One Family’s Winter on a Northern Trapline by Keith Olsen Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by William Wardill $16.95 ISBN 978–1–894431–61-3 This book encapsulates deeply etched memories of Keith Olsen, whose grandfather came to the United States from Denmark in 1910 at the age of thirteen. When he moved to Canada, he settled in the Big River district of Saskatchewan, where he married Anna Ethier in 1914. After the birth of two daughters, she became a victim of the 1918 influenza plague. The elder daughter, Florence, became the mother of James Edward Olsen, who was born out of wedlock in 1934. Florence Olsen married an English immigrant, Thomas Edward Nicholson, in 1937. After only nine years in the Nicholson family, James Olsen’s relationship with his stepfather became unendurable, and he set out on his own. He was twelve years old. In the late summer of 1960, James Olsen, his wife (always identified as Mum), and their young sons Clarence and Keith went to Little Mahigan Lake for a winter on the trapline. What follows is a colloquial account of living off the land. Aside from a few purchased necessities, they ate what forest and lake…

Manitoba Premiers of the 19th and 20th Centuries, edited by Barry Ferguson and Robert Wardhaugh… [a] collection of essays, each dealing with a different Premier[;] it is a political history of a political province as seen through the lives of its Premiers.