Crown Corporations in Saskatchewan by Boris W. Kishchuk Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Keith Foster $19.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-95-8 Few issues in Saskatchewan stir up as much controversy as Crown corporations. One need look no further than recent provincial elections. But Saskatoon author Boris Kishchuk deliberately steers clear of politics in his book, Crown Corporations of Saskatchewan. Instead, he focuses on their history and evolution. Kischuck divides Crown corporations into three categories: for job and wealth creation; for investment and financial services; and to provide services to the people of the province. Crown corporations have a long history in Saskatchewan. The Territorial government created the first Crown in 1901, selling hail insurance to farmers, before Saskatchewan even became a province. Some Crowns may not exactly be household names – like Saskatchewan Government Airways, Saskatchewan First Call Corporation, and Saskatchewan Box Factory Ltd. – but they nevertheless played an important part in the province’s history. Crown corporations sometimes invested in private enterprise, some with unusual names such as Hollywood at Home, Inc. and Clothing for Modern Times, Inc. Kishckuk brings his personal knowledge to the subject. He served as chair of the Saskatchewan Rate Review Panel for five years….

Robert David Symons: Countryman: Artist, Writer, Naturalist, Rancher by Terry Fenton Published by Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery and Hagios Press Review by Keith Foster $25.95 ISBN 978-1-927516-03-4 As Robert Symons lay seriously ill in bed, a friend dropped by to check on him. Sweating profusely, Symons explained that he needed to finish reviewing the proofs for his forthcoming book because “I think I’m going to die tonight.” His friend remarked, “Boy, that’s what I call a deadline!” They both laughed so hard that Symons’ temperature dropped, his fever subsided, and the baffled doctors sent him home. This is one of the incidents related in Robert David Symons: Countryman, about a multi-talented man who was a naturalist, rancher, artist, and author of eleven books of natural life on the Prairies. Trevor Herriot, a Saskatchewan naturalist who knew Symons personally, introduces Terry Fenton’s text, which is almost a memoir or personal recollection. This is followed by a chronology by Heather Smith, curatorial director at the Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery. An astute observer, Symons recorded his observations in both paint and words and illustrated his own books. He also painted many of the dioramas for the habitat exhibits in…

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…

Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life by James Daschuk Published by University of Regina Press Review by Keith Foster $39.95 ISBN 978-0-88977-296-0 Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life exposes the seamier side of Prime Minister John A. Macdonald’s National Policy. As the subtitle implies, this book offers startling new insights into the plight of First Nations people and the politics that caused it. Author James Daschuk is an assistant professor of health studies at the University of Regina. Focusing on the medical histories of First Nations people in western Canada, he shows how diseases like smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis, and scarlet fever ravaged the native population. Daschuk’s reinterpretation of Canadian history is a rude awakening to those who believe Canadian attitudes towards aboriginal people were much more humane than their American counterparts. In detailing the politics of persecution and the systematic starvation of natives by withholding rations, Daschuk’s analytical narrative cuts through highly complex issues like a scalpel through skin. He shows that some Indian agents, appointed by the federal government to feed indigenous people, were not exactly men of strong character or high moral values. When…

My Battle of the Atlantic by Donald A. Bowman Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Keith Foster $16.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-99-6 There’s something about the sea that seems to attract men from the Prairies. Donald Bowman was one of them, and he records his personal experiences in his memoir, My Battle of the Atlantic. Born and raised in Saskatoon, Bowman enlisted as a teen at the outset of World War II. After trying his hand at bayonet practice, and reading about rats in the trenches during the First World War, he realized the infantry was not for him. The Air Force appealed to him, but only if he could be a pilot, and he didn’t think he had the qualifications for that. So the Navy it was. While on leave in Saskatoon, he married his sweetheart, Muriel Beatty. They booked a room at the Bessborough Hotel, but the war cut short their honeymoon. Bowman regales readers with his adventures as an officer on HMCS Edmundston, a corvette intended for coastal duty but used to escort convoys across the Atlantic, and named for a city in New Brunswick. In heavy seas, it would be flung about with as much grace…

Regina’s Warehouse District: Bricks and Mortar – Pride and Passion edited by Richard Wood, et al Published by Biographies Regina Review by Keith Foster $24.95 ISBN 978-0-9731523-5-7 If walls could talk, what tales they’d tell. And if ghosts could speak, what stories they’d share. Regina’s Warehouse District: Bricks and Mortar – Pride and Passion is a collection of historical accounts of the flesh and blood people who lived or worked in Regina’s Warehouse District from early days to the present. It includes the story of James Strathdee, a prominent Regina wholesaler who was found dead with a bullet in his neck and whose ghost is purported to continue to haunt the building that bears his name. Published by Biographies Regina, this book includes “biographies” of buildings and businesses as well as people. It evolved from material compiled by 28 researchers and writers, edited by four editors headed by Richard Wood, who coordinated this massive undertaking. This book is an eye-opener for anyone who thinks they know Regina’s history. Running at more than 280 pages, it consists of sixty bite-size chapters that make easy reading. Each chapter is followed by a list of sources. The book overflows with fascinating factual tidbits….

The Literary History of Saskatchewan. Volume 1 – Beginnings edited by David Carpenter Published by Coteau Books Review by Keith Foster $19.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-515-3 (v. 1) The Literary History of Saskatchewan sets out to be a comprehensive history of literary writing in Saskatchewan. It encompasses a scope as broad as the prairie landscape, with as much variety as the flora and fauna of that landscape. Volume 1 of a three-volume scholarly study, this book focuses on the period covering the oral traditions of First Nations storytellers and early European explorers to the burgeoning Saskatchewan literary world of the 1970s. Over the decades, Saskatchewan has produced a bumper crop of successful authors, many with now-familiar names, such as W.O. Mitchell, Sinclair Ross, Anne Szumigalski and Guy Vanderhaeghe. The book is a collection of eleven essays and four tributes covering all genres of writing, including non-fiction, novels, poetry, and playwriting. It is a collaborative effort by sixteen essayists, virtually all with university backgrounds, under the editorship of David Carpenter, himself an author with clearly established credentials. Carpenter points out in his foreword that the literary centre of Saskatchewan is wherever writers write, whether at a sturdy oak desk, in a cabin alcove,…

A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden by Stephen Reid Published by Thistledown Press Review by Hannah Muhajarine ISBN 978-1-927068-03-8 $18.95 I decided to try A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden: Writing from Prison because both the form (short non-fiction essays) and the topic (prison, as one might deduce from the subtitle) are outside the usual scope of my reading. I expected to learn something, and I definitely did. The tone ranges from tragic to humorous to poignant and back, sometimes within a single essay. Alongside difficult topics such as drug and sexual abuse, there are lighter sections on writing a poem for a fellow inmate’s girlfriend (“Dear Mona, / Roses are dead / Violets are doomed / As will be you / If you don’t visit soon”) and the trials of filling out the “Psychopathy Check List Revised”. The first essay describes the failed bank robbery which led to author Stephen Reid’s incarceration. The police chase through the streets of Victoria reads almost like a heist movie. But unlike a movie, there are real consequences to Reid’s actions, and he does not shy away from writing about the harm he caused to innocent civilians, as well as his own family….

Creating the Prairie Xeriscape by Sara Williams Published by Coteau Books Review by Regine Haensel $34.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-461-3      I dove into Creating the Prairie Xeriscape in the first week of April while snow drifted down outside.  With winter refusing to loosen its grip on the landscape, the book was like taking a drink of cool water after wandering a dry desert for days.  Though given the subject matter, perhaps I should say taking a small sip of water that I had hoarded and conserved carefully! According to Williams, “Xeriscaping is an environmentally friendly approach to your yard and garden that leaves your piece of the world in as good or better shape than when you assumed stewardship.”      Well known and respected throughout the prairies, Sara Williams’ weekly gardening column appears in more than twenty-five newspapers.  For twelve years she worked as horticultural specialist at Extension Division, University of Saskatchewan.  In 2008, she received the Prairie Garden Award of Excellence, and will be inducted into the Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame in 2013.      Creating the Prairie Xeriscape is a revision and update (the number of plant species mentioned has nearly doubled) of the 1997 book of the same…

The Inquiring Reporter by Clay Stacey Review by Michelle Shaw Published by DriverWorks Ink $20.95 ISBN 978-0-9879643-1-1 Clay Stacey started out in 1960 as a rookie printer sweeping the floor and removing misfed sheets of newsprint from the ink rollers. He soon progressed to reporting and spent his career in numerous small towns throughout Saskatchewan, Manitoba, British Columbia and Alberta, retiring in 2011 after 50 years as a reporter, editor, publisher, and on two occasions, owner, of newspapers such as The Revelstoke Herald, Fort Qu’Appelle Times, Calgary Albertan, Kamloops Daily Sentinel, The Golden Star, and the Moose Jaw Times-Herald. Stacey’s career is full of colourful and memorable anecdotes. He interviewed prime ministers, provincial premiers and skid row drunks. He helped a First Nations couple seek justice over a land dispute with the federal government and helped raise funds to send a dying child to a faraway city for cancer treatment. His reporting helped to encourage a prominent politician to resign from his cabinet post amidst allegations of fraud and he broke an exclusive story about the discovery of Nazi documents in a dilapidated shack in the BC wilderness. In looking back at a long and fascinating career it’s tempting to…