PreviewsIssue 86, Spring/Summer 2025
-
Becoming Métis in Northern Alberta
Patricia A. McCormack
Drawing upon literature related to ethnogenesis, this book challenges the prevailing discourse about “Métis-ness” by considering the circumstances of the northern Métis, many of whom were considered by white Canadians as little different from First Nations people, until government policies made a distinction between Métis and First Nations Peoples to deal with them differently. The book also examines the evolution of legal distinctions between First Nations and Métis, reviewing key pieces of legislation and judicial decisions.
-
Beyond the Rink
Behind the Images of Residential School Hockey
Alexandra Giancarlo, Janice Forsyth, Braden Te Hiwi
In this fascinating book of oral history, the authors collaborate with three surviving members of the 1951 Sioux Lookout Black Hawks Thunder Bay district champions to share their stories and the complex legacy behind the promotional tour and professional photos taken and used at the time to demonstrate to the Canadian public the success of the Indian Residential School system.
-
Beyond Touch Sites
An Anthology of the Tangible
Wendy McGrath (Editor)
In essays, stories, and poetry, and in English and French (with bits of other languages), the contributors to this fourth anthology in the Beyond Series – authors such as Rona Altrows, Rita Bouvier, Pierrette Requier, and Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike – explore the sense of touch, and also the concepts of getting/staying in touch.
-
Blood and Fire
Bill Slavin, Bill Slavin (Illustrator)
The conclusion of the Mordecai Crow Trilogy goes back to his beginnings – readers now hear his mother, Raven, tell the story of how she was enslaved by Lord Pyke, the ruler of the Luddites, and how she escaped in order to keep her son, only to lose him. Mordecai’s and Raven’s stories come together in an action-packed climax.
-
Bodies of Art, Bodies of Labour
Kate Beaton
The latest CLC Kreisel Lecture was given by award-winning Kate Beaton. In it, she explores connections among class, literature, and art, maintaining that class has a profound effect on who is allowed to become an artist and thereby who is represented in art, but also recognizing that she, from Cape Breton, came from a working class community that valued art, and that has made all of the difference.
-
Book of Hope
Healthcare and Survival in the North
Agnes R. Pascal
Pascal compiles over 30 first-hand narratives from Northern and Indigenous cancer survivors and caregivers that illuminate the unique challenges of health care accessibility in the North, challenges that include the logistics of travel for treatment, the disconnect between Indigenous and Western medicine, and the structural determinants of health. Yet the people also share that hope comes from building healing communities.
-
Born Sacred
Poems for Palestine
Smokii Sumac
This powerful and heartbreaking book comprises 100 poems written between October 2023 and April 2024 in which the poet bears witness to the war in Palestine, making connections between daily and past experiences here as an Indigenous colonized person and the genocide in Gaza, and processing his deep grief to somehow continue to believe that poetry can make a difference.
-
Buffalo Traces
Mark Vitaris
This photo-essay narrative explores the geography, ethnology, art, history, and people of the northern Great Plains, with photos and interrelated stories drawing upon roadside encounters, kitchen table conversations, campsite chats, and barroom banter, and inspired by the explorers, writers, and artists who followed in the wake of the bison.
-
Cartographic Poetry
Examining Historic Blackfoot and Gros Ventre Maps
Ted Binnema, François Lanoë, Heinz W. Pyszczyk
This first book-length study of five maps drawn by Blackfoot and Gros Ventre cartographers in 1801 and 1802 for the Hudson’s Bay Company explores the maps’ cartographic conventions, utility, and beauty from historical, linguistic, and archeological perspectives.
-
Catch You On The Flipside
a novel
Lee Kvern
Moving in time (from the 1980s to 2010s) and place (from the Philippines to Calgary and other spots), this fast-paced political thriller follows four characters who work together at a Calgary casino, presenting their perspectives in a puzzle-in-progress structure to explore the wide-ranging effects of each one’s experiences.
