The Winter Happiness Challengeby Denise LeducPublished by Lilac Arch PressReview by Michelle Shaw$22.99 ISBN 9781998872077 Depression can be a nagging companion over the winter months, so I grabbed this little book with great anticipation. To my delight, I found it provided a carefully curated toolbox to help readers through the cold and sometimes dreary months of winter. The book grew out of a Facebook group that Denise Leduc started one November a few years ago, when she noticed that several people around her were going through a tough time. “I thought it might be fun to do some weekly challenges to bring some simple pleasures and joy to our daily rounds. I had been rereading some books on hygge [a Scandinavian term that evokes cozy, comforting and contented living, often through simple pleasures] and I thought we could explore various Scandinavian concepts to get us through the cold, snowy Canadian months.” The original members of the group invited others and before Denise knew it, more than 100 people from all over Canada, the United States and England had joined. The group proved to be such an encouragement for herself and the other members that Denise began to conceive the idea…

My List, My Rules: The Year A Checklist Changed My Lifeby Angie CouniosPublished by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Toby A. Welch  $29.95 ISBN  9781778690211 Holy smokes – I don’t think I’ve read a memoir more exposed and vulnerable than this one. Usually books in that genre feel a tad curated to me, which takes away from the authenticity you want in a memoir. But not this one. Counios laid it all out there for us and it is magnificent! The layout of this book is genius. I incorrectly assumed that since Counios was going to do 101 things in 365 days, she would just list them and tell us how she tackled each one. Wrong! The 365 days weren’t a calendar year, they were one birthday to the next. So the book is categorized into months, starting with her birthday month: November. I loved that she laid out the book that way as it flowed perfectly with each month having eight or nine random items from her list. (For those of you who like seeing the list in numerical order, you can find that at the back of the book.) This is catalogued as a memoir but it could also be considered a…

Don’t They Kick When You Do That? Vol 2 More Stories of a Prairie Veterinarianby Dr. Gary HoiumPublished by DriverWorks InkReview by Michelle Shaw$19.95 ISBN 9781927570814 An anxious Saint Bernard with a muzzle full of porcupine quills, four escaped buffalo that inadvertently crossed the international border into Canada and an escaped tomcat that resulted in an unusual “fishing” experience. These are a few of the heartwarming and quirky scenarios Dr Gary Houim relates in Don’t They Kick When You Do That? Vol 2 More Stories of a Prairie Veterinarian , the sequel to his popular 2021 memoir Don’t They Kick When You do That? For more than 30 years, Dr Gary Hoium was the owner of a mixed animal clinic in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. Mixed animal is a simple way of saying that he treated everything in the surrounding areas from turtles to alpacas. Most of his day-to-day work of course was more routine – calving cows, caring for injured cattle and horses and the many small animal concerns and emergencies of a busy veterinary clinic. But never, ever snakes. And yes, there’s a story in that! Gary Hoium is a wonderful storyteller. He sets each scene with a vivid sense…

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…

Cathedral of Stars: A Memoir of Home & Faith on the Moveby Gloria EngelPublished by YNWPReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$24.95 ISBN 9781988783901 Cathedral of Stars: A Memoir of Home & Faith on the Move by SK-born Gloria Engel is utterly fascinating. The stories about her peripatetic life—and constant faith—as a linguist with Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics is indeed hard to put down. The intrepid author asks and adeptly answers this question: “How can you find a sense of belonging in home and church when you’re constantly on the move?” Much of this global zinger of a book takes place in Guatemala, and Engel paints a colourful portrait of the family’s authentic experiences there. Now in her eighties, the joy-filled wife, mother of four boys, linguist, writer and dancer (a verboten activity re: her strict Lutheran upbringing) experienced “forty-five changes of residence in five countries,” before settling in Biggar, SK. The anecdotes about her resourceful family and rural SK upbringing (no indoor plumbing; folks said her father “could hold machinery together with macaroni”) are compelling, but the Guatemalan accounts left me gasping. First came linguistics training at the University of North Dakota. Orientation sessions took place…

My Daughter’s Heartby Kim JaskenPublished by Your Nickle’s Worth PublishingReview by Michelle Shaw$24.95 ISBN 9781778690167 Spring of 2020 was a strange and frightening time for everyone. For the Jasken family, the uncertainty of the early days of the pandemic were exacerbated when their eleven-year-old daughter suddenly collapsed, and they discovered the cause was heart failure. Dealing with a desperately ill child in a world where everything has changed brings a new level of fear. Sierra was initially treated at the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) but was soon transferred by plane to the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton for more specialized care. Kim Jasken’s account of their family’s experience is detailed and absorbing. Her sometimes wry descriptions allow you to live through the exultant highs as well as the moments of utter despair when it all seems too much. She describes each situation so clearly that you ride the emotional roller coaster with her. I related to the story on two levels. On the one hand it’s a harrowing story of a family’s health crisis. But it’s also a specific moment in time in Saskatoon. I could relate to the school closures, stocking up…

Always Another Riverby Daryl SexsmithPublished by YNWPReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$24.95 ISBN 9781778690143 Prince Albert, SK-raised Darryl Sexmith is an avid canoe-tripper and former United Church minister who’s built his community­—wherever he’s lived—around his passion for wilderness canoeing and the fellowship group canoe-tripping naturally inspires. Reading Always Another River, his well-written, chronologically-told collection of canoe stories—he’s completed over seventy-five trips and “hasn’t hung up his paddle yet”—stirred fond memories of my own canoeing experiences. It’s a Canadian thing, eh. The nineteen chapters are mostly titled by location, and it’s evident that Sexsmith’s playground has predominantly been the rivers (and lakes) of northern Saskatchewan, but his lifetime of paddling expeditions also includes the far north. He’s a former executive director of Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s (CPAWS) Northwest Territories chapter, and in that role he canoed the South Nahanni and Mackenzie rivers to promote conservation. He also participated in the 2008 David Thompson Brigade, paddling six-person voyageur canoes from Alberta to Ontario “to commemorate Thompson’s historic trip of 1808,” a journey also heralded in 1967 with the Centennial Canoe Pageant. How interesting to read about the grueling paddling across Manitoba’s massive lakes (with high winds and just five-minute breaks every hour),…

Rise Above: Surviving Depressing and Living a Better Lifeby John MelnickPublished by Wood Dragon BooksReview by Toby A. Welch$19.99 ISBN 9781990863110 I truly feel that someone who hasn’t been touched by depression wouldn’t have been able to write this book with as much heart as John Melnick. He has struggled with the mental illness for decades and that experience comes through in every page of Rise Above. In 2002, in the depths of a severe clinical depression, Melnick swam into a fast-flowing river to end the pain in his life. Thankfully his desire to live prevailed. He shares his story and enlightens the rest of us about depression, a devastating mental illness.  Melnick shares openly about the family dynamics he has lived with all his life, relationships that may or may not have contributed to his depression. I found those details fascinating and appreciated how forthcoming he was; that helped clarify his experiences.  One chapter shares the point of view of Melnick’s wife and another of Melnick’s niece. They cover what the ladies went through when Melnick tried to commit suicide and their perspective on things. Depression doesn’t just affect the person afflicted with it; it touches everyone in that person’s life. Hearing from…

Paddling Pathways: Reflections from a Changing LandscapeEdited by Bob Henderson and Sean BlenkinsopPublished by Your Nickel’s Worth PublishingReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$29.95 ISBN 978-1-988783-81-9 This beautifully-bound anthology of 21 essays written by paddlers and edited by educators—and intrepid canoeists and guides—Bob Henderson (ON) and Sean Blenkinsop (BC) deserves a much longer review than this 500-word assessment. In short: it’s extraordinary. Paddling Pathways: Reflections from a Changing Landscape contains a wealth of thought-provoking essays on the rivers, lakes, and oceans the diverse contributors have navigated via canoe or kayak—often in groups but sometimes solo—and it examines the paddlers’ interior worlds as they contemplate being present; history; culture; relationships with plants, animals and other creatures; Indigenous Canada (land and territorial acknowledgements and “Settler Responsibilities” are included); ecology; climate change; and, as Bruce Cockburn contributes in his Foreword, the “soul-expanding space” where one can get “a glimpse of the world as it was made.” Maps, black and white photos, and the editors’ numerous “Suggested Reading” lists are superb accompaniments to the layered essays. Henderson has previously published books on heritage travel and outdoor life, and Blenkinsop, a professor at Simon Fraser University who writes about “wild pedagogies” and “ecologizing education,” agree that as…

Who Gets In: An Immigration Storyby Norman RavvinPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Keith Foster$29.95 ISBN 9780889779228 In Who Gets In: An Immigration Story, Norman Ravvin traces the route of his grandfather, Yehuda Yoseph Eisenstein, from Poland, across Canada to Vancouver, then back across the Prairies to Dysart, then Hirsch, in southern Saskatchewan, in the early 1930s. Although Eisenstein was married in Poland, he entered Canada claiming to be single. This caused problems later when he wanted to bring his family to join him. Ravvin focuses his book on Eisenstein’s struggle to resolve this problem. Eisenstein faced culture shock as he left a home and family in Poland, travelled across the ocean and across the continent, to wind up in the desolate Prairies, in the middle of nowhere, a land where he didn’t know the customs and couldn’t speak the language. On top of this, he faced discrimination as a Jewish person. Destitution, or simply being out of work, could lead to an immigrant being deported. Although he was not a rabbi, Eisenstein’s training enabled him to perform the rituals and duties of one. This is how he made a living. Operating first in Dysart, then in Hirsch, he…