Daniel Francis

Reading the National Narrative

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November 24, 2021

Mark Forsythe, writer and former CBC Radio host, has penned a very nice review of Becoming Vancouver in the latest issue of BC Bookworld.

You can pick up the magazine at convenient locations around the province -- I often get mine on the ferry -- or find it online at the BC Bookworld...

October 17, 2021

The Ormsby Review, Canada's only provincial on-line book review site, has turned five years old.

Named for the pioneering BC historian Margaret Ormsby, the site was the brainchild of its founding editor, Richard Mackie, and his co-conspirator Alan Twigg. Five years after they launched it, Ormsby has published 1250 reviews of books by British Columbia writers and about British Columbian...

October 7, 2021

The new book is out and, I hope, selling briskly. As well, the first reviews are appearing. Here is a very nice one by Patricia Roy on the Ormsby Review website.

Professor Roy has written a great deal about Vancouver, including her own illustrated history published back in 1980. In other words she knows whereof she...

September 16, 2021

For the past couple of years a group of young filmmakers has been hard at work on a documentary series about the history of British Columbia to commemorate the 150th anniversary of 1871, the year the province became a province.

(Full disclosure: I played a very small part in the project, as a consultant and appearing briefly as one of the talking heads.)

The result, a four-part series titled British Columbia: An Untold History, will be premiering on the Knowledge...

September 7, 2021

No matter how many times it happens, the arrival on the doorstep of a new book is always special.

Well, it happened again today. My new history of Vancouver is out. Look for it in your favourite bookstore within a couple of weeks.

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