Books like Indians on Vacation

Although it was Mercer's Talking to Americans that had me rolling on the floor, I list Streeters only because Talking to Americans isn't available in book format. That said, I do feel an affinity with Streeters for its rantiness (indeed, the subtitle is Rants and Raves from This Hour has 22 Minutes). Sometimes his stuff is too Political-capital-P for me (I don't follow the news anymore), but often it's just political-small-p—which is just right.

Part of the challenge of writing my novel was trying to study the various cultures, people, rituals, economies, beliefs, and ways the locals survived. This anthology had a bounty of information and a variety of stories that were written by northern authors who knew the area, some of them living there for prolonged periods of time.

The word “Taaqtumi” is an Inuktitut word that means “in the dark”—which seems appropriate. With story titles like “Insinaqtutalik Piqtuq: The Haunted Blizzard” and “Wheetago War II: Summoners,” you can see that the native POV is important to these stories. It is so important that I hired one of the authors, Repo Kempt, to be my Arctic advisor on my book—to help me get the details right. 

The titular Boundless is a train, and my grandparents were all train people in Canada. One of my most vivid early memories is being in the engine with my grandpa.

At 11 kilometers long, the Boundless is also a living, moving city. Ken makes a journey through the train like a journey through time, space, and history. Each time Will, the main character, leaps from one car to another, the reader also takes a leap into a new world. Why is Will jumping from car to car? Because he’s witnessed a murder, and the culprit is hot on his tail.

George Manuel was once asked by a white coworker, “Does Indians have feelings?” Refusing dehumanization, Manuel reveals the ongoing colonial relations between First Nations and the Canadian settler state. He charts his political journey from Secwepemcúl̓ecw to the National Indian Brotherhood to the World Council of Indigenous Peoples.

Manuel argues that the victories of the anti-colonial independence movements of the twentieth century did not end colonial domination of Indigenous Peoples—what he calls the Fourth World. The Fourth World is not a destination but the right to travel on your own road in your own way.

With a new insightful introduction, foreword, and afterword, the book's latest edition shows how Manuel’s analysis of colonialism and vision for solidarity continue to be relevant to contemporary struggles for decolonization. 

Jack Hodgins, Western Canada’s literary wunderkind, put Vancouver Island on the literary map with his short stories and novels which demonstrate the truth in the adage “write about what you know”. As a writer I learned this from Jack and I also learned that if I find a subject fascinating my readers will too. In Broken Ground, his seventh novel, Jack writes about World War One veterans, still haunted by the horror of the trenches, as they struggle to farm amid the massive stumps of a former old growth forest.

This book was a safe haven for me. I was feeling uninspired to write nonfiction and unable to focus on the memoir that I had tasked myself with writing. I wanted to write something meaningful and vulnerable yet somehow keep my power and agency to myself. 

Truthfully, this book felt like a safety net. Habib manages to write about her upbringing as a Muslim woman and her relationship to her queerness while also allowing the story to meander between power and vulnerability. It taught me a lot, and I am thankful I got to read it. 

My son works with the unhoused in our city.

This is a book about extreme compassion, and the long and torturous work of it in the face of neighbourhood fear and municipal hostility towards those who live without fixed addresses and all that that entails. 

Further, I see in Encampment the hope that on a personal and social level, we all have it within us to understand people we didn't think we could and keep alive the capacity we're born with to love those whom so many tell us we should not. 

Gabby Petito. Natalee Holloway. Laci Peterson. These names probably sound familiar. Lauren Cho, Stephany Flores, and Latoyia Figueroa might not. This illustrates what news anchor Gwen Ifill dubbed “missing white woman syndrome,” the disproportionate media coverage in missing persons cases that attractive, upper-middle-class white women receive.

McDiarmid’s moving book illustrates this phenomenon, following the cases of thousands of Indigenous women who have disappeared from a stretch of road in British Columbia dubbed “The Highway of Tears.” For decades, the cases garnered little media attention until a white woman named Nicole Hoar disappeared in 2002, bringing more resources and coverage.

In painstaking detail, this immersive and necessary book follows several of these previously ignored women’s lives, illustrating the systemic issues that failed the victims and their loved ones.

During the colonial period, women from Europe were shipped to Canada to marry military men, explorers, and fur traders. This story is about the Filles du Roi, sent by King Louis XIV of France, to populate the new colony.

In reading this story, I was given a taste of what life must have been like for these women who left a more modern society to marry a complete stranger and live in the rough, cold wilderness of 1660s Canada. They had to be strong if they were to adapt and survive, which many did not.

I can’t resist the combination of magic, music, and forests. Plus my mother grew up in Canada, and I’ve meandered along those berry- and bear-rich pebbly beaches. In this book, magic, fey-inhabited Wales crashes into modern Ottawa. De Lint’s setting and style seized my soul as a young adult reader. That yearning youngster is not only still part of me, but part of everyone, I hope.