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In case you missed it -- and it was very easy to miss, given the scarcity of book news these days -- the BC Book Prizes were awarded last week. Here are the winners.

Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize -- Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness (Viking/Penguin Random House)

Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize -- Jordan Abel, NISHGA (M&S/Penguin Random House)

Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize -- Henry Doyle, No Shelter (Anvil Press)

Roderick Haig-...

Now that the death of Queen Elizabeth is receding into the past, perhaps there will be an opportunity for some clear-eyed thinking about the future of the monarchy in Canada. Given the orgy of sentimentality that accompanied the funeral -- can you tell that I am not a monarchist? -- we could certainly use some sensible discussion of the options.

A good place to start is this essay by Christopher Moore over...

The noted neuroscientist Dr. Patrick McGeer died this week, age 95. After attending Princeton University and working in the US in the 1950s he spent the rest of his illustrious career here in his native British Columbia.

He came from one of the most notorious political families in Vancouver. His uncle Gerry McGeer, an MLA, MP, Senator and two-term mayor -- well, actually a term and a bit; he...

Since last year August 1 has been recognized as Emancipation Day in Canada, commemorating the abolition of slavery. I hadn't seen the relevance for British Columbia. Slavery was not practised here (except by Indigenous people but that is a different story). Indeed, many Black people came here in the colonial period to escape the slave masters south of the border.

But I had not considered the possible connections my own community, North Vancouver, has to the slave trade. Recently North...

About three years ago I spent a fascinating afternoon touring Mount Pleasant with an ultra-knowledgeable guide, Christine Hagemoen. Mount Pleasant was pretty much the first residential suburb of Vancouver. Settlement began in the 1890s on either side of its commercial corridor, Main Street south of False Creek. As Christine explained, the community also developed around a creek, the evidence ...