We’ve so many writers on the island (Iain Lawrence, Katherine Gordon, Joelle Anthony…. how many others can you list off the top of your head?) and so many readers, too. If you’re a writer or a reader, this seems like the kind of thing you might like. From Wired: The Benefits of Being Bilingual. Samuel [...]
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By now you’ve probably heard of Phillip Vannini, who lives on Gabriola, teaches in Victoria, and wrote Ferry Tales: Mobility, Place, and Time on Canada’s West Coast. Today the Bowen Island Undercurrent has an article on Philip and his work: Mind the gap (or not). It includes this bit: Vannini inquired about the various signs [...]
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The Tyee offers an excerpt of Grant Buday’s book, Stranger on a Strange Island. He’s writing about his experience on Mayne, but does part of his account remind you of life on Gabriola? The most basic social division on Mayne is that between islanders and off-islanders. While there are categories of off-islanders, all are, by [...]
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I remember hearing how many book clubs we had on Gabriola once, but I can’t remember the number. Can you? Anyway. This is for all of you who read fiction, and for the book clubs to which you belong. From the New York Times: Your Brain on Fiction. Amid the squawks and pings of our [...]
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I love the idea of unofficial libraries and book exchanges. (Remember reading about Barbara Densmore’s library in Nanaimo?) Here’s another fine example: How New York Pay Phones Became Guerrilla Libraries. John Locke thinks people should read more. So in the past few months, the Columbia architecture grad has slipped around Manhattan with a sack of [...]
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Have you seen the new book by Phillip Vannini? … the ethnographer and Gabriola Island resident has travelled to every small community serviced by ferry on the coast, clocked 250 ferry rides and conducted some 400 interviews with ferry users on their relationship with the system. Vannini, a Royal Roads University professor, has formalized his [...]
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How many book clubs do you think we have on Gabriola? I remember hearing a number once — 42? No wait, that’s the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Anyway, all you readers (and writers) of fiction might want to take a look at this article from Scientific American: In the Minds of Others.
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Would a library like this work on Gabriola? From the Nanaimo Daily News: Neighbourhood library now ready to branch out. Taxi drivers occasionally stop outside Barbara Densmore’s home on Irwin Street and snoop around with flashlights in hand. She doesn’t worry though, because she knows the night owls are just looking for something to read. [...]
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Gabriola is often short of water in the summer, and yet we all want to water our vegetable gardens. Is there a way to garden without using so much water? Apparently there is. One approach is the one explained by Steve Solomon in Water-Wise Vegetables. From the introduction: Without regular and heavy watering during high [...]
Casting about for something to read? Go find a copy of The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet. Here’s the back-of-book blurb: After her husband died in 1927, leaving her with five small children, everyone expected the struggles of single motherhood on a remote island to overcome M. Wylie Blanchet. Instead, this courageous woman [...]
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More garden-related noodling on the internet — this time because one of the dogs got me up dark and early and I’m not quite crazed enough to plant a garden by flashlight – and discovered A VERY COOL BOOK. Vegetables of Canada by Derek B. Munro and Ernest Small, published in 1997 by Canada’s NRC [...]
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Today I heard that the bookshop at Twin Beaches will soon be moving to Folklife Village, to occupy the space where the Jeremy Maude Studio used to live. This is brilliant news for Gabriola readers. Dear bookstore people: for the love of God, please be open on Mondays, mmmkay? Because the Gabriola Library is closed [...]
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From the Times Colonist: Search engine rolling over writers. Imagine that a giant monster invades your country. But the beast is not gobbling up people or homes. It’s devouring our books. That’s what most writers insist is happening with Google, the Internet search-engine behemoth. Since 2005, Google has been digitizing the world’s books. Reportedly, its [...]
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This is part of an Abe Books blog post about a town without a bookstore: I remember touring around a small Gulf Island called Gabriola between here and mainland Canada a couple of years ago and discovering what looked like a gas station for boats on the edge of a dock. What intrigued me was [...]
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