I’ve just completed five days of research for my Pennell Projects at the British National Archives at Kew. (And a couple of weeks earlier I spent the afternoon at the British Library in London). William Pennell was a diplomat and a spy under diplomatic cover from 1814 to 1832. That meant I had a […]
Topsham on the River Exe, in Devon, is the seaport for the larger city of Exeter. In the past week, I have had the chance to explore one of the towns where my roots are, the Pennells, on one main branch of my father’s side of the family. There were villages in the area of […]
Masthead for Field in March 1908 In May, 1908, 114 years ago, two presumably rich, presumably British, hunters came to Kitamaat Village, hired two Haisla guides named “Frank” and “David” and went bear hunting in the Kitlope, Giltoyees and up the Kemano River. One of the two hunters, named John H. Wrigley, would later write […]
(Warning: This post may be triggering to people or their families who were victims of real crimes against humanity. I didn’t want to raise the temperature of the Ottawa protest debate but the continuation of the blockades and remembering the anniversary date compelled me to write this). The so-called freedom convoy protestors on the streets […]
Version 2.0 Updated October 2023 Long read (Contains spoilers for It’s a Sin and may trigger some AIDS survivor readers. Names in quotation marks are pseudonyms. Many of the names from the 80s aren’t mentioned because I don’t remember. Other names are real, taken from my occasional diary or letters I wrote) This is an […]
Fifty years ago, in 1970, two books, one written and edited in the United States, the second in Canada, both gathered prominent writers to predict what the year 2020 would be like. As one might expect, no one got it entirely right. There were hints of things to come. Now it’s 2020. The world is […]
Earlier this summer I saw a prepublication notice for Sarah Kovner’s book Prisoners of the Empire Inside Japanese POW Camps, where the Harvard University Press promotion called the book “A pathbreaking account of World War II POW camps, challenging the longstanding belief that the Japanese Empire systematically mistreated Allied prisoners.” I eagerly pre-ordered the book. […]
A mariner sailing from BC’s Douglas Channel to Haida Gwaii is seduced by mysterious lights on Hecate Stait, not knowing a seductive monster lurks off Aranzazu Banks. My short story Aranzazu Banks appears in the new anthology of Canadian horror and magic realism Canadian Dreadful edited by David Torcher […]
My short story Dragon Hunter is now available in the Darkover Anthology Citadels of Darkover, edited by Deborah J. Ross A young paleontologist arrives on the mysterious planet Darkover with what appears to be an impossible assignment, find out if there were ever “dinosaurs” or the planetary equivalent on the planet. He faces bureaucratic resistance […]
(CONTAINS SPOILERS) Star Wars: The Last Jedi is Luke Skywalker’s final chapter in the mythic cycle that George Lucas began with the original 1977 Star Wars film, now called A New Hope. That’s why, despite the flaws in any Hollywood movie, The Last Jediwill become a classic. As every Star Wars fan knows, Lucas based the character of […]
