Blog

The generosity of family allows me to spend time regularly on Savary Island, a small piece of paradise adrift in the Salish Sea. 

For Christmas this year I acquired a camera, the first I have owned since I toured Europe in 1966 with a little Kodak Instamatic. I have recently been conducting forays on foot into the history of Vancouver and I've felt the urge to record what I see.

Here are some results of the convergence of these two enthusiasms -- Savary Island and photography...

Many years ago I lived in an apartment with Babe Rainbow. When I moved out and then got married, the Babe took a different path but she turned up recently and once again adorns the walls of my office.

Babe Rainbow is one of a series of "fictitious lady wrestlers" imagined in 1968 by the British artist Peter Blake. Blake is still going strong, as...

According to BookNet Canada, 88 percent of Canadians read at least one book last year. I guess that is good news; apparently only 76 percent of Americans did.

But if you are going to read just one book in 2016, then I'd like to recommend that you make it the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was released earlier this week.

The summary of the report is online,...

I should acknowledge the recent death of British scholar Benedict Anderson since I so shamelessly ripped off his notion of "imagined communities" for my 1997 book National Dreams. Anderson, who wrote many books, was an historian of nationalism as well as an expert on Southeast Asia.

I thought when I wrote Dreams, and I still think, that it is very useful to think of Canada as, well, imaginary. Or perhaps...