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I want to mention three very fine books that I've read recently. Any one of them would make a good addition to your Christmas want list, or an appreciated gift for someone near and dear.

The first is for the marine mammal lovers among you. Orcas, of course, are the poster animal of the BC west coast. Jason Colby, from the University of Victoria, has published an absorbing history of the bad old days when they were hunted down for live capture and shipped off to aquariums and...

The always reliable Christopher Moore reports that the Governor General's History Awards will be going ahead in January with Gov. Gen. Julie Payette's involvement. (Here is the link to Chris's post: http://christophermoorehistory.blogspot.com/2018/12/history-of-gg-not-be....)

This is excellent news. I have participated in the awards ceremony twice -- once as a runner-up and once as a...

Congratulations to Bill Waiser, this year's winner of the Governor General's History Award for Popular Media, better known as the Pierre Berton Award. Waiser has written many fine books and blogs regularly about the history of Western Canada.

Earlier in the year it was announced that the history awards would not be handed out by the Governor General herself, as has been the case for years. Too bad. The GG is apparently rethinking her priorities.

Nonetheless, the award is a...

Congratulations to Darrel McLeod whose memoir, Mamaskatch, has won the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction.

I cannot help noting that each of the five finalists for this year's award is a memoir. I am not sure what that says about non-fiction writing in the country, if anything. Several years ago I was a member of a jury deciding on Canada Council grants to non-fiction writers and I recall how many of the applicants were writing memoirs. Where were the historians, the...

Here in British Columbia we are voting, again, on possibly changing the way we vote. In this context, I keep reading that London, Ontario, was recently the first Canadian municipality to use a ranked ballot system in its civic election.

This is not true. Vancouver introduced such a system, briefly, almost a century ago. And bad news for those on both sides of the current debate who argue that, for better or for worse, a ranked ballot would result in significant change: it didn't...