Inuksuit « O' Canada

Although several volumes produced by the Vancouver-based Douglas & McIntyre have sat upon my shelves for quite awhile, I had not focused on this independent publishing powerhouse until I recently posted some thoughts about art in the Pacific Northwest and pondered the coincidence that two art books (Shore, Forest and Beyond and Mythic Beings) mentioned then were from D&M. I also count Inuksuit (noted in O’Canada Blog on January 31, 2011) and Arctic Eden among my books from D&M that contain beautiful images of special aspects of the Canadian physical and cultural landscape.

Exploring their catalog of titles, what strikes me are the diverse range and high quality — there are many award wimmers here — of Douglas & McIntyre’s art-themed volumes and its literary fiction and non-fiction. Its affiliated imprint, Greystone Books, is also quite good. I’ve added several to my wish list. Some of the titles that stood out from my browsing include those below.

: Fred Herzog, Photographs

: Jennifer Kramer, Kesu’

: Ross King, Defiant Spirits

: David Blackwood, Black Ice

: Joan Murray, A Treasury of Tom Thomson

: Zsuzsi Gartner (ed.), Darwin’s Bastards

: T. Earle & F. Mueller, Yukon

: B. Grenville & S. Steedman (eds.), Visions of British Columbia

: Harry Thurston, The Atlantic Coast

Perhaps because we in the South have been having one of the more intensely cold and icy winters in recent memory, my thoughts have turned of late to the Canadian Arctic. Of course, my fascination with that region pre-dates the latest cold spell but the current chilliness causes me to contemplate in a more direct way the far north regions and what difficult living that must be. So, about a month ago I read through Inuksuit: Silent Messengers of the North by Norman Hallendy, which clued me into the mysterious man-made rock structures called inuksuk (the plural being inuksuit) and the special role they play in keeping people connected with one another and spiritual forces across the vast and barren — and hauntingly beautiful — landscape. Hallendy came to understand the intricate language and significations of inuksuit among the Inuit people over the course of his more than 40 years visiting the Canadian Arctic. His book does a wonderful job allowing us to peek into the lives of the Inuit and their reverence for the natural world.