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There's a movement to put the face of Tommy Douglas on the next Canadian $5 bill. Wouldn't that be wonderful? And wouldn't it be a kick in the pants to those who seek to privatize our health care system? Go here to nominate Tommy Douglas.

I've been on a "books about books" run lately, beginning with Syria's Secret Library , then Robert Caro's Working , and now I'm finishing the wonderful The Library Book by Susan Orlean. Orlean is a writer for The New Yorker , which generally means excellent nonfiction. Her book about the canine movie star Rin Tin Tin has been on my List since it was published in 2011. Her 1998 book The Orchid Thief is considered a modern classic. (I read The New Yorker story that led to the book, but have not yet read the book.) The Library Book , like most quality nonfiction, is many things. It's the story of a fire that destroyed much of Los Angeles' Central Library in 1986, and the mystery of who set the blaze, which was definitely arson. It's a history of libraries, and librarians, and a brief history of Los Angeles. It's also a short history of arson, and library fires, and probably a few other things as well. These many threads are intertwined with a ...

Fans of Robert Caro rejoiced when we learned that Caro, author of nonfiction histories, was writing a book about his writing process. When the book was published, I'm sure I wasn't the only one surprised by its brevity. At a slim 207 pages, Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing is the equivalent of a post-it note for Caro, whose books are often described as tomes . I read Working over the course of a weekend, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Not only is the subject fascinating, but Caro's warm and genuine voice is truly a joy. If you read nonfiction and you enjoy history, and you haven't read Robert Caro , you must correct this terrible oversight. Caro's first book, The Power Broker , is considered one of the best nonfiction books of the 20th Century. It is a biography of Robert Moses , who was the most powerful man in the most powerful US city -- a man who was never elected to office and who many people, even many New Yorkers, may never have heard of. Mor...

Ali: A Life is an extraordinary book about an extraordinary person. It's an epic page-turner at more than 500 pages. This is simply a fascinating book about an utterly fascinating person. If Muhammad Ali hadn't existed, you couldn't make him up. No fiction character on this scale would be believable. It would be a cartoon. The only athlete who comes close is Babe Ruth -- but Babe Ruth never aligned himself with an outlaw counterculture and made shocking pronouncements about the U.S., imperialism, and racism. Ali was a mass of contradictions. He craved material wealth, yet gave away money as if he had an unlimited supply. He was a self-absorbed egomaniac, but incredibly generous, not only with his money but with himself. He made one of the most important political statements of his generation, one that had profound consequences to his career, one that inspired countless others to follow his path -- yet he never uttered another political statement in his life, and was specta...

Eleven people, on war. *  *  *  * Imprisoned for opposing U.S. involvement in the war in Europe, Debs ran for President from jail. He garnered 1,000,000 votes, at a time when the US population was 103,208,000, and only men could vote. These are the gentry who are today wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the men who dare to even whisper their opposition. . . . No wonder Sam Johnson declared that “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people. . . . Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder...

The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig was a fascinating and very readable look at how oral contraceptives -- otherwise known as The Pill -- came to be. The Pill changed the world. It was the first contraception that was nearly 100% effective, easy to use, did not interrupt or alter sex, and crucially, controlled by the woman who used it. It was also the first option to be both effective and reversible; pre-Pill, the only completely effective birth-control was sterilization. The advent of oral contraceptives, and later, the availability of safe and legal abortion, liberated millions of women from the fear of unwanted pregnancy, and in doing so, lifted millions of children out of poverty, by giving women the ability to limit the size of their families. Eig tells the story through the lens of four people -- all iconoclasts, all rebels, and none of them saints. Safe, effective, reversible, female-controlled, non-barrier birth co...

I love history -- the history of anything that I'm interested in. Music, baseball, science and technology, and of course, the history of people's movements. Women, peace, civil rights, LGBT -- and above all, I love labour history. Learning about how working people organized and fought for justice in the workplace is thrilling to me, especially the ground-breakers, the pioneers, the courageous women and men who defied unjust law and immoral authority, who risked everything. Those people are my heroes. I feel a kinship, a solidarity with these historical figures. I feel the chain of labour battles stretching out across the ages, the torch passed from their hands to ours. Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong era. I dream of the time when workers would "down tools" and walk out, shutting the whole factory down. I dream of general strikes, of the IWW crossing class and colour lines, of the "mill girls" of Lowell and Laurence, Massachusetts (my all-time f...

On Thursday, October 24, the Port Hardy Library will host Awil'gola Open House , a celebration of local Indigenous cultures. Awil'gola is a Kwak'wala word loosely translated as "in celebration", "being with one another", or "all being together". We will be celebrating beautiful new Cultural Literacy Kits focusing on the Kwakwaka'wakw, the Kwak'wala-speaking peoples. At the Awil'gola Open House, we'll unveil and launch these new kits. Members of the Kwakiutl Nation will demonstrate button-blanket making and cedar weaving, and students from the Gwa'sala-Nakwaxda'dw School will perform traditional drumming and dancing. There will be refreshments and prize draws – 10 children will each win a Kwak'wala-themed colouring book. Cultural Literacy Kits are a learning experience in a box. Along with books, they may contain DVDs, CDs, or learning games and puzzles. Vancouver Island Regional Library (VIRL) has many Cultural Lite...

Get the story at OrangeShirtDay.org .

By now wmtc readers, at least those who read my "what i'm reading" posts, know that Colson Whitehead is one of my favourite authors. I was so happy that he achieved breakthrough success with The Underground Railroad , winning both the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the National Book Award. I've been reading him since his debut novel, The Intuitionist , was published in 1999. So when I tell you The Nickel Boys  is his best work so far, trust me, this is high praise. It tells a simple story of one boy's journey into the irrational, omnipresent, terror and violence of Jim Crow. The principal setting is a boys' "reform school" (so-called) in the segregated American South. The conditions and their effects will remind Canadian readers of the residential schools that Indigenous children were forced to endure. It's disturbing to read, as it should be. The violence is not graphic -- most of it happens offstage -- but it's not hidden. It's everyday...

I thought it would be fun for my mom to see a different part of Vancouver Island. I didn't want her going home thinking the whole island is a sparsely populated rain forest! Plus it's more fun stuff to do together. I booked an Airbnb in Royston -- just south of the town of Courtenay -- and we did some exploring from there. Saturday: driving and eating First there was the drive down-island, which included our obligatory stop at Ideal Cafe . We contrive to eat there whenever we go to Campbell River or beyond -- which means anytime we go anywhere out of the North Island. After another great breakfast, we found the Airbnb, a two-bedroom cottage with a patio, surrounded by pear trees and blackberry bushes, and steps away from the water. Courtenay sits on an estuary, directly across from the town of Comox, and the cottage was only steps away from trails along the water. Estuaries are supposed to be paradise for birders: there was a bench hidden in tall grass, and our host leaves bino...

This week's day trip with my Mom was the town of Sointula. One of my libraries is located in Sointula, so I've been there a couple of times, but had never had an opportunity to explore the town or surrounding Malcolm Island. Sointula has a fascinating history: it was founded as a socialist, Utopian community by dissident Finnish coal miners! Their vision was equality, community, and self-sufficiency. You can read more about this at a wonderful site that documents Utopian societies in Canada: Canadian Utopias Project . Allan and I always find it interesting that Vancouver Island tourism info about Sointula omits the words strike and socialism . The radical history of this proud little village is diluted to "people who were searching for a better life" -- which is true, but not quite accurate. And boring! It's as if the very mention of the word strike is enough to incite anger -- or longing, perhaps? -- in potential tourists. In this way and a million others, rad...

Reading David Blight's monumental Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom , I learned some facts about both Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony that were very unpleasant and, at least in Douglass' case, baffling. This brought me back to a topic I've revisited several times on wmtc: the rejection of art or culture or historical admiration, based on some moral or ethical failing of the individual. I only want to know about perfect people I was amazed to learn that Douglass himself could be racist! In his speeches, he used the stereotype of the drunken Irish immigrant to bolster his case for universal suffrage: if this lout is allowed to vote, why not the Negro? Douglass also had a huge blind spot regarding Native Americans. He would contrast the civilized, educated Negro with the Native American who preferred their own savage and backwards ways to that of the white settler. Douglass did (verbally) to Native Americans what white oppressors were doing to African Americans --...

My biography reading continues: I finally finished Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by the historian and Douglass scholar David Blight. It is a monumental work, not an easy read, but extremely enlightening and very satisfying. The book is notable for Blight's refusal to ignore or sugar-coat Douglass' flaws. Douglass was a genius, and a hero -- my vote for Greatest American -- but he was a human, and therefore imperfect. Blight's willingness to show us the whole man, including flaws and foibles, gives his work extra credibility. The Douglass of Prophet of Freedom is not a myth. Although his words and his work reached mythical proportions, the Douglass of this book is a man. Blight brings us the full man, not just the parts we admire. In our present culture that rejects anything but the illusion of moral purity, where heroes and world-class talents are discarded because of their failure to measure up to idealized standards, this is a bold choice. In addition, Blight a...