Poetry when it works speaks intimatley to our personal experiences in a language we didn't know we understood. Andy Quan acheives this and more in Slant his first published collection of poems. It isn't easy to avoid the snare of identity politics in considering Quan's work.Canadian born, of Chinese descent this young gay poet has many hands he could play however his poetry wonderfully resonates to the cards we have all been dealt. The feeling of being a stranger, the exhiliration/terror of leaving the familiar behind be it a place or a person, the sudden wonder at our origins brought on by the death of a grandparent,the first night spent in a strange bed with an unfamiliar body. All of these and other experiences are unpacked like the souvenirs of a long journey, dusted and polished by Quan's extraordinary use of words and presented to us for inspection, inevidably causing us to say, Oh I've been there too. Such a young poet who has travelled so far surely has many more travel tales to tell. I look forward to hearing them.

The reader gets a beautiful photographic glimpse of sub arctic Canada and an interesting socialogical glimpse of the four crew members as they make a record setting trek across Hudson Bay in a 40 foot sailboat.

Included in this volume is a short story by Michel Tremblay (The Hanged Man) that rivals Poe's Tell-Tale Heart for scariness. Much better than Stephen King ... and much shorter! The story is told in the first person by the guard who stands sentry through the night over the body of a hanged man. He tells of his experiences that evening ...

If you try & cannot locate a copy of this book, email me. I'll call you collect and read you this story ... late at night, in the dark.

You are making no mistake if you read this book. Lynn Coady has a cutting sense of humour that will make you laugh and wonder if you should be. Her portrait of a tourmented young girl is both accurate and saddening.

This book, The Struggle for Recognition: Canadian Justice and the Metis Nation, traces the struggle of the Canadian Metis people to retain and develop their own legal system in the colonial context and documents the present day impact of the legal and child welfare systems upon the Metis people. It contains an update of the information that the Manitoba Metis Federation presented to Manitoba's Aboriginal Justice Inquiry.

This book is still available from Pemmican Publications Inc. 150 Henry Ave. 3rd Floor, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3B OJ7, phone (204) 586-8474

Good Smilee Fisherman

You had to swing your cannonballs into the cliff at Stuart Island on 33 fathoms of steel line,and bounce a #7 silver and bronze Pal Diamond Lance off the knoll. The water moves at 3 or 4 knots as you ferry across the eddy onto the spot, no more than 75 feet from the wall. All the big ones lay under a shelf just below the 33 fathom mark, waiting for the tide to wash in herring. You could fish at 32 fathoms for a week and not catch a cold, but just another 6 or seven feet and you could hook into the biggest slab of salmon in the world, salmon that would blow your mind, salmon that grew over 100 pounds, salmon so strong they could snap 150 lb test or straighten a #7 Stainless Mustad hook beyond recognition. The biggest fish I ever caught was 50 pounds, dressed, on a hand line. The biggest I ever heard of was a 12 year old kid, in a skiff, with a rod...117 pound Bute Inlet white salmon...three hours and several miles later. I spent 15 years trying to figure it all out. I eventually did...I stopped fishing.

I love this book...it's a story of courage, misguided and untamed, hardship and backbreaking boneheadedness, love, family, feeling, blood sweat and tears, isolation, forlorn hopes and dreams, unchecked struggle...all the things it takes to make something out of nothing in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of nobodies...and it's everything to me...Arnt Arntzen was my Grandfather.

Atwood's Survival was a seminal book for me back in the 1970's. Her theory that there are national themes in literature is very useful for studying cultures generally. The rap on the book is that she has not done a thorough, scholarly job of research and tends to favour references to books written by her friends or published by her publisher. I think this is unfair. She is a working writer, not an academic, and she herself notes the book's scholarly limitations. The real fun is in taking the book's theses and running with them yourself.

Atwood sees the essential Canadian literary theme as the survival in the title: the survival of winter, imposed on us as Canadians by our geography and climate.

A very thought-provoking book.

A short account dealing with Canada's first national internment operations of 1914-20, and their adverse impact on the organized Ukrainian Canadian community. Described as "enemy aliens" under the notorious War Measures Act, many eastern Europeans, primarily Ukrainians, were rounded up and placed in 24 concentration camps spread across Canada's hinterlands. Their properties and valuables were looted, and some of that wealth remains in Ottawa's coffers to this day. In 1917 most Ukrainians living in Canada were also disenfranchized. Of late the community has asked for the Government of Canada to acknowledge this injustice and provide for the restitution of the confiscated wealth, as well as placing historical markers at each of the internment camp sites. This booklet provides a basic but very helpful and well illustrated introduction to this relatively unknown episode in Canadian history.

I received this book from my 82 year old mother-in-law Xmas 1997 and began it right away out of politeness to her, and her enthusiasm was catchy. The book is a delight- a refreshing cool drink of water- beautifully written about the author's childhood as a Russian (escaping the revolutionary turmoil in Russia) in Shanghai in the 20's. The details are amazing, and there is no sappy sentimentality, just an honest rendering of life through a child's innocent eyes. These books are hard to find, but well worth the effort.

The author is careful to include a brief history of the war monument, he has also done his homeword and places obvious emphasis on monuments of WWI. All in all, I strongly recomend this book to anyone ineterested in Canadian memorials. On a more critical eye, the author does not state the problems that arose in provinces that were felt to be less nationalist (i.e.: Quebec City), another problem is his passing interest to the war experience as women saw it, and the Myth of the War Experience. Complementary reading will remedy this.