Брайан Бретт0.0 For thirty years, Brian Brett shared his office and his life with Tuco, a remarkable parrot given to asking such questions as “Whaddya know?” and announcing “Party time!” when guests showed up at Brett’s farm. Although Brett bought Tuco on a whim as a pet, he gradually realizes the enormous obligation he has to the bird and learns that the parrot is a lot more complex than he thought. Simultaneously a biography of this singular bird and a history of bird/dinosaurs and the human relationship with birds, Tuco also explores how we “other” the world—abusing birds, landscapes, and each other—including Brett’s own experience with a rare genetic condition that turned his early years into an obstacle course of bullying and nurtured his affinity for winged creatures. The book also provides an in-depth examination of our ideas about knowledge, language, and intelligence (including commentary from Tuco himself) and how as we learn more about animal languages and intelligence we continually shift our definitions of them in order to retain our “superiority.” As Brett says, “Whaddya know? Not much. I don’t even know what knowledge is. I know only the magic … and the mysteries.” By turns provocative, profound, hilarious, and deeply moving, this fascinating memoir will remain with the reader long after the last page has been turned.
Emily Urquhart0.0 The story begins on St. Stephen's Day, 2010, in St. John's, Newfoundland, when the author gives birth to a baby girl named Sadie Jane who has a shock of snow-white hair. News of the child's icy locks travels across the hospital, and physicians and nurses from all wards visit the unusually beautiful newborn as she lies sleeping in her plastic bassinet. The maternity-floor janitor, however, feels something is amiss. Her eyes wide, incredulous and panicky, the janitor asks, "Is she an albino?" The idea is immediately dismissed, but after three months of medical testing, Sadie is diagnosed with albinism, a rare genetic condition where pigment fails to form in the skin, hair and eyes. She is visually impaired and faces a lifetime avoiding the sun. She will always have the otherworldly appearance that drew the awestruck hospital staff to her side.
A journalist and folklore scholar accustomed to processing the world through other people's stories, Emily is drawn to understanding her child's difference by researching the cultural beliefs associated with albinism worldwide. What she finds on her journey vacillates between beauty and darkness. She discovers that Noah's birth story is believed to be the first record of a baby born with albinism, and that the Kuna people in Panama revere members of their society with albinism, seeing them as defenders of the moon in the night sky. She attends a gathering of people with albinism in St. Louis and interviews geneticists, social scientists, novelists and folklorists in Canada, England and the US. But when she uncovers information about gruesome attacks on people with albinism in Tanzania, rooted in witchcraft, she feels compelled to travel to East Africa, her sun-shy toddler in tow, in an effort to understand these human-rights violations. Upon her return to Canada she discovers a family photograph from the past that might illuminate her daughter’s present.
While navigating new territory as a first-time parent of a child with a disability, Emily embarks on a three-year journey across North America and Africa to discover how we explain human differences, not through scientific facts or statistics but through a system of cultural beliefs. Part parenting memoir, part cultural critique and part travelogue, Beyond the Pale, as the title suggests, takes the reader into dark and unknown territory in the search for enlightenment.
Мария Типпетт0.0 Is there such a thing as British Columbia culture, and if so, is there anything special about it? This is the broad question Dr. Maria Tippett answers in this work with an assured "yes!" To prove her point she looks at the careers of eight ground-breaking cultural producers in the fields of painting, aboriginal art, architecture, writing, theatre and music. The eight creative figures profiled in Made in British Columbia are not just distinguished artists who made an enduring mark on Canadian culture during the twentieth century. They are unique artists whose work is intimately interwoven with British Columbia's identity.
Emily Carr portrayed BC's coastal landscape in a manner as unique as her lifestyle. Bill Reid's carvings, jewellery and sculpture stand as a contemporary interpretation of his reclaimed Haida heritage. The name Francis Rattenbury is less known than The Empress Hotel in Victoria, one of many prominent BC buildings he designed, while Arthur Erickson's modern architectural contributions are recognized worldwide. Martin Allerdale Grainger's experience in the BC woods in the early days of hand-logging inspired him to write one of the undisputed classics of BC fiction, Woodsmen of the West. Jean Coulthard struggled for respect as a female composer during the 1920s and 1930s in British Columbia but eventually proved her extraordinary musical talents internationally. George Woodcock left Britain in 1949 to forge his career as an influential author, editor, mentor and tireless promoter of literary scholarship in the province, while playwright George Ryga, the son of Ukrainian immigrants, exposed the anguish and reality of life for Native women in our cities with his 1967 play, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe.
Featuring images of the artists and their works, Made in British Columbia presents a history of the treasures found in our galleries, concert halls, theatres, museums, libraries and streetscapes, and explores the legacy of a cultural tradition as unique as the place that nurtured it.
Briony Penn0.0 The Real Thing is the first official biography of Ian McTaggart Cowan (1910–2010), the “father of Canadian ecology.” Authorized by his family and with the research support and participation of the University of Victoria Libraries, Briony Penn provides an unprecedented and accessible window into the story of this remarkable naturalist. From his formative years roaming the mountains around Vancouver looking for venison to his last years finishing the voluminous and authoritative Birds of British Columbia, Cowan’s life provides a unique perspective on a century of environmental change—with a critical message for the future.
As the head and founder of the first university-based wildlife department in Canada, Ian McTaggart Cowan revolutionized the way North Americans understood the natural world, and students flocked into his classrooms to hear his brilliant, entertaining lectures regarding the new science of ecology.
During his academic career, Ian McTaggart Cowan stepped outside the narrow con- fines of academia to pioneer nature television. His television programs in the 1950s and ’60s, Fur and Feathers, The Web of Life and The Living Sea, made him a household name around the world by capturing the first microscopic organisms on TV and bringing a live moose into the studio. He was also responsible for hiring a young David Suzuki, who followed in his nature-show-host footsteps.
Cowan’s early work in the national parks became the foundation for wildlife conservation and environmental education in Canada. And like his US counterpart and colleague Aldo Leopold, he was part of a secret fraternity that practised a reverence for wildness and influenced three generations of scientists and politicians on everything from conservation of endangered species to the dangers of pesticides and climate change, long before these topics were generally acknowledged.
Birds of British Columbia, which the Royal BC Museum called “one of the biggest publishing events in Canadian history.”
Illustrated throughout with colour and black-and-white photos from all aspects of Cowan’s life, The Real Thing takes the reader on an adventurous and inspirational journey through the heart of North American ecology, wilderness, landscape and wonder.
Lorimer Shenher0.0 An ex-police detective’s searing personal account of sexism, racism, and mishandling in the investigation of missing and murdered women.
In That Lonely Section of Hell, police detective Lorimer Shenher describes their role in Vancouver’s infamous Missing and Murdered Women Investigation and her years-long struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of their work on the case. From their first assignment in 1998 to explore an increase in the number of missing women to the harrowing 2002 interrogation of convicted serial killer Robert Pickton, Shenher tells a story of massive police failure—failure of the police to use the information about Pickton available to them, failure to understand the dark world of drug addiction and sex work, and failure to save more women from their killer.
That Lonely Section of Hell passionately pursues the deeper truths behind the causes of this tragedy and the myriad ways the system failed to protect vulnerable women.
