Literary Review of Canada December 2021

Chris Alexander served as Canada’s minister of citizenship and immigration from 2013 to 2015 Kelvin Browne Kelvin Browne is the executive director of the Gardiner Museum, in Toronto. Frances Bula Frances Bula covers urban issues and city politics in Vancouver. Grant Hayter-Menzies Grant Hayter-Menzies specializes in biographies of extraordinary women, but his most recent book is Muggins: The Life and Afterlife of a Canadian Canine War Hero Hattie Klotz Hattie Klotz is a writer, journalist, and gourmet currently living in the United Kingdom Chad Kohalyk Chad Kohalyk divides his time between Canada and Japan Gayatri Kumar Gayatri Kumar lives and reads in Toronto Nathaniel G. Moore Nathaniel G. Moore published Honorarium: Essays 2001–2021 earlier this year. J. R. Patterson J. R. Patterson can be found sometimes in Canada and at other times in Portugal Shazia Hafiz Ramji Shazia Hafiz…

NO DOUBT THE BEST SATIRICAL reaction to Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that his company, Facebook, would henceforth be known as Meta came from the keyboard of Caroline Suzuki, who runs the Twitter account for ECW Press, the independent publisher in Toronto. “ECW Press is changing its name to Facebook now that it’s up for grabs,” she tweeted in late October. “We are a company that builds technology to connect your face to a book and we’re excited for our name to finally reflect that. No more ‘What does ECW stand for?’ Simple. Original. Your face—in a book.” It was in such a book, Snow Crash, that the American novelist Neal Stephenson coined the term “Metaverse” nearly thirty years ago—a term that Zuckerberg has now clipped as short as his trademark hair. Stephenson’s…

The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World Marie Favereau Belknap Press “[A] vividly written history on a vast canvas that enables us to see the Mongol conquerors of Asia and Europe through the eyes of the Mongols themselves. An amazing picture emerges of a mobile empire’s extraordinary historical impact.” Blood on the River: a Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast Marjoleine Kars The New Press “Kars is a marvellous writer and scholar, using untapped sources to breathe life into both the oppressors and the oppressed in a colony built on slavery and savage violence… She presents us with a quite unforgettable narrative.” Survivors: Children’s Lives after the Holocaust Rebecca Clifford Yale University Press “Survivors transforms our understanding of historical trauma and its impact on children. Beautifully written, intensively researched, unsentimental and profound, it makes an important contribution…

RE: A Pearl Anniversaryby Patrice Dutil (November) PATRICE DUTIL DESERVES NO CREDIT. THE FACT IS the rag that he produced was for policy wonks. If anyone, credit goes to Madeline Koch, who, several years later, was having a Dooney’s coffee with Tony Westell when I walked by looking to start a review of books. Tony told me that the Literary Review of Canada was being junked, and I called Carleton University Press who said yes and added that they would happily give me a stamp and some back issues in which I could wrap the ink blot. Denis Deneau and I drove up to Ottawa, paid 800 bucks, and a couple of months later put out the first issue. There is something rather invidious about the revisionist history you let Dutil publish. David…

WHY DID A COUPLE OF ZACKS feel the need to shed their gloves this October in Edmonton to fling fists at each other’s heads? Could be, I guess, that Zack Kassian, a winger for the Oilers, disparaged Zack MacEwen’s manhood, mother, or mien. It was the NHL’s pre-season still, so maybe MacEwen, then a Vancouver Canuck, wanting to audition for his own coach, asked his rival for the pleasure of the punch in the time-honoured way of these things: “You wanna go?” Was this a warning we were seeing or maybe a dose of vengeance? Did it have to do with fulfilling an arcane rite understood only by Zacks? There was some suggestion that Vancouver’s forwards had sinned by skating too close to the Oiler goaltender Mike Smith, and so…

Inside our crannies, vapour-sealsinfiltrated, fine to die behind.Snap! I retrieve the crawl-space trap:the pinned-down, neck-mashed rat,his maggot wig wiggling with intellect. Because it’s turning fall,the Pest Controller rings our bellwith his jar of peanut butter, his spatulato scrape fur-confit from attic laths.We pay him more for more intense tactics.He rings our house with technocraticplastic peanut butter rat-bait interfaces,each with its rat-size hole to accommodatethe humblest of rodent tinkers who creeps across the stoop-light, seesme, turns his tail and sneaksbeneath the hydrangea bush. He and Ithis game repeat. But soon I will tire,shut the door, and he, in all sincerity,will nose into the technocratic plasticbait-rat interface. Then awful thirst. I wince, a little like his final smile,the innocent but unsuccessful thief.I, who have turned many from my door:better off without me, was my belief. Steve…