Blog

When I lived in Montreal in the mid-eighties I was fortunate enough to have The Double Hook as my neighbourhood bookstore.

Occupying the main floor of a small house on Greene Avenue in Westmount, the shop was the domain of Judy Mappin, a silver-haired grande dame of the bookselling trade. She had started the business in 1974 with two partners when the idea of a store devoted solely to books written by Canadians was, if not revolutionary, at least daring.

Younger...

We are all familiar with the "Then & Now" approach to comparing contemporary and historic landscapes and urban settings. First we see a photograph of a building (or street or whatever) as it looks today. Then we compare it to another photo of the same site 50, 75, 100 years ago. It is a compelling way to emphasize change (or permanence, I suppose, though it is seldom used that way).

Two examples are the phone apps for Canadian cities developed by Jim Marsh and his team at...

In the past weeks I’ve noticed attention being paid in the media to the issue of mental illness in the prison system. In the New York Times, regular columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote this article arguing that prisons are the new mental hospitals. “Psychiatric disorders are the only kind of sickness that we as a society regularly respond to not with sympathy but with handcuffs and...

Vancouver history buffs are aware that mega rock star Jimi Hendrix had an historic connection to the city. His grandmother, Nora Hendrix, lived here for many years, from her arrival in 1912 until her death at age 100 in 1984. Jimi was raised in Seattle but came north to visit his grandparents regularly and there is now a small shrine to the singer in the city’s East...

If there is one thing Canadians know about their own history it is that we do not know, or care, much about it.

With depressing regularity, poll after poll reveals that we do not know the name of our first prime minister, or when BC joined Confederation, or yadda yadda yadda. We extrapolate from these dismal surveys to conclude that Canadians consider their past to be one giant yawn and the more excitable among us warn that there is a national crisis of ignorance.

But...