The Strongest Man in the World liked to set his folding lawn chair out on the asphalt next to his gold Cadillac and stretch out in the sun with dark glasses on his nose and a two-litre carton of milk in one hand.
While I was looking at a poster for Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, two women rushed up and begged me not to go in, crying “It’s terrible, we couldn’t sit through it!” I might have been swayed if a friend hadn’t warned me that he almost left, even though he has never walked out of a movie in his life. In the end, he said, he was very glad he stuck through it.
This review was accepted for publication by the Vancouver Sun in January 2000, and then rejected by editors who found it “too one-sided and unfair to the bank.” This is the first financial book review to be published in Geist, and is offered here in plenty of time for RRSP season.
[Paper Boom: Why Real Prosperity Requires a New Approach to the Canadian Economy]
...The Yuquot Whalers’ Shrine (Douglas & Mclntyre/University of Washington Press), the first book-length study of the site. Along with a history of the shrine, Jonaitis presents a precise description of its contents, many photographs and several First Nations stories accounting for its origins. When I look at the photographs of the carved human effigies with their blank, unseeing eyes staring back at me, I am reminded once again of that other, parallel reality that existed, and still exists, in this part of the world. The shrine relates specifically to ancient whaling practices on the Pacific coast, but the story of its “purchase,” preservation and possible repatriation will appeal to anyone with an interest in First Nations issues.
