19th Annual Canadian Book Challenge!

 

It's time for the new round of the Canadian Book Challenge! It's the 19th year in a row that this readalong has been going on, it's easy, just read and review 13 Canadian books between July 1 - July 1. 

I made it to 17 over this last year. Maybe I'll beat that in this round! Lots of great books to choose from - and there are many reviews to read over the last 18 years, if you are looking for a good book :)

Stitches of Tradition

 

Stitches of Tradition / Marcie Rendon,
illus. by Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley
NY: HarperCollins, c2024.

This Ojibwe story honours the ribbon skirt as a tradition that stitches together generations. A young girl gets her first ribbon skirt thanks to her grandmother's sewing prowess. They measure and cut and create a skirt for her to wear to a baby naming ceremony — and then as she grows older, new ribbon skirts to wear to a Fall Ceremony, a swearing in as her aunt becomes a district judge, and finally to her own coming of age ceremony. As she grows, she learns to help with the sewing and continue the traditions. The text features repeated paragraphs that both ground the story and move it forward, making it an engaging read aloud.

The text and illustrations are both by Ojibwe artists, one from Minnesota and one from Barrie. Together they've created a heart warming book about the connections between generations of women and the traditions that bind families. The text is sprinkled with Ojibwe terms, with a glossary and an author's note at the back, explaining the importance of ribbon skirts. The topic and the colour saturated illustrations make this a visually appealing book for young readers and their elders. It's a gentle story full of love, connection, and sewing! I loved it. 

REDress: Art, Action, and the Power of Presence

 

REDress / Jaime Black-Morsette, ed.
Winnipeg, MB: Portage & Main Press, c2025.
160 p.

Today's book is a feature for National Indigenous People's Day, June 21. I read this from my library, and it was a powerful read. It looks at art and how artistic projects have been used to draw attention to issues in the Indigenous community in Canada, particularly the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women campaign. (MMIW)

The title refers both to actual redress of wrongs, and to the Red Dress project, the best known project to draw attention to MMIW. This project uses red dresses, hung from trees, clotheslines, and in public spaces, to represent lives lost in this ongoing tragedy. It's a project that was begun by artist Jaime Black-Morsette, the editor of this collection. It's been installed in a variety of museums as well, and it is haunting. This book gives a bit of the history and purpose of this activist art installation.

There are also essays on other activist art projects, like beaded moccasin vamps also meant to draw attention to missing women. There are a number of ways that clothing has been used symbolically in the works included in this anthology, alongside other essays and statements from Indigenous women, Elders, grassroots community activists, artists, academics, and family members affected by the scourge of MMIW. 

There are many clear photos and imagery to support the essays, and the book is very well produced. While the theme makes it a hard read at times, it's so important, and I felt it was a great look at this topic as well as 15 years of the Red Dress Project. Definitely worth searching out. 

Dorothy Grant, An Endless Thread

 

Dorothy Grant: An Endless Thread / Dorothy Grant
Victoria, BC: Figure 1 Publishing, c2024.
176 p.

I came across this book in my library's online catalogue; until then I hadn't heard of Dorothy Grant. I'm so glad I found this! Grant is a West Coast Haida designer from what is now Alaska. She began designing in 1989 with her show called Feastwear, which launched her into a very successful career selling first in a boutique, and then via trunk shows and bespoke items.

This book is partly a memoir of her career and partly a look-book of her many pieces and designer lines. There are photos of many Indigenous celebrities and leaders wearing her work, as well as politicians -- one image of Governor General Mary Simon greeting Pope Francis during his visit to apologize for Residential School harms has her wearing a white Dorothy Grant capelet that echoes the Pope's robes, something I found fascinating.

Grant's work has also been collected by museums and galleries. Her designs incorporate traditional Haida motifs as well as garment types and kinds of embellishments like shellwork and embroidery, or traditional spruce root weaving. They play those elements off of modern design to create amazing pieces. 

This book was put together for a retrospective at Haida Gwaii Museum in 2024, so there are also essays by the curator, India Rael Young, and Haida repatriation specialist and museologist Sdahl Ḵ’awaas Lucy Bell, alongside some of Grant's own reflections and memories, and those of her longtime assistant, Haida curator and artist Kwiaahwah Jones. All this, plus the many large photos, make this book a wonderful read, with so much to examine. I really enjoyed it. If you can find a copy, I would recommend it to any fashion lover. 

You can find lots of fascinating information and fashion on Dorothy Grant's website, too,

(Flip through with more images, details and a short video interview with the author can be found on the publisher's website) 

Christian Allaire's The Power of Style

 

The Power of Style / Christian Allaire 
TO: Annick Press, c2021.
96 p.

This is a book aimed at younger readers, the teen demographic. It talks about clothing and style, and how fashion choices can represent identity, signal belonging, and help people express themselves fully. 

Christian Allaire is an Ojibwe fashion writer at Vogue, and he put together this book to show the kinds of fashion, style, and people he didn't see in fashion when he was a teen. He shares Indigenous content -- ribbon skirts/shirts, beading and more -- but also then goes on to cover topics like drag, hijabs, makeup, hair and cosplay, to point out the connections between fashion and social justice. 

This is a photo heavy book, fairly short, so I did find it didn't get into heavy sociological depths -- it is an intro, a survey class if you will, for readers new to these ideas. It's colourful, celebratory, and joyful despite some of the more serious themes. 

I would like to see future volumes more narrowly focused on some of the themes of these chapters, as at times the transitions between chapters felt jumpy because there was so much to cover. But if you have a younger reader interested in cultural identities, gender, and the wider fashion world, this would be a great book to share with them. The many photos really give it visual appeal, almost magazine style, and there are lots of thoughtful threads to follow further. I thought it was very interesting! 

From the Rez to the Runway

From the Rez to the Runway / Christian Allaire 
TO: HarperCollins, c2025.
272 p.

June is National Indigenous History Month in Canada. I shared a few reviews of some books by Indigenous writers on my sewing blog this month, and am going to share them here this week as well. I'll start with this fascinating memoir!

Christian Allaire (author of The Power of Style) has just published a memoir about his rise from Ojibwe teen from Northern Ontario to Vogue fashion writer -- and it's a great read! He's really honest about the trials and tribulations of reaching his goals, recognizing both his own hard work and his luck. As well as the support he received from his family and community. 

He shares how he was always into fashion, reading magazines, watching Fashion Televison & admiring Jeanne Beker, and dressing himself as style-forward as he could with thrift store finds and more. He decided to go into fashion journalism and headed to Toronto, where he found himself one of the few Indigenous students in the journalism program, and certainly in the fashion journalism subset. 

During school he also interned and worked very hard to make connections that might lead to work or further opportunities - he seems to have had endless energy and drive at this time. In this section, he mentions that the professors told him he shouldn't be working, that he should be focusing on academics instead - but that it was all the work he was doing that led to the footholds he was able to get in the industry. This is a great point for many students to think about. 

When he moves to New York to take on some internships, the stories get wilder, until he realizes he needs to take control of his life and manage addictions, so that he can succeed instead of burning out and disappearing. There are lots of entertaining stories during his internship years, including one at a magazine where a roomful of Chanel couture was inadvertently destroyed (not by him), or when a celebrity wore all the designer clothes from a shoot home, and Christian, an intern, had to go get these pieces back to return to the designers in the morning. 

But he also shares stories of how being true to himself and his Indigenous community led to opportunities, especially at Vogue. His pieces on the Santa Fe Indian Market and a variety of Indigenous beaders, designers, jewellers and more were big hits, and he was able to parlay this into the right role at just the right time. And when the book ends, he is giddy, at the peak - he's on the red carpet at the Met Gala, interviewing guests. 

This is an engaging memoir from an important voice in the fashion community right now. I enjoyed the structure and the progression of the book and thought it was well done, incorporating a variety of stories for someone so early into their career. Definitely worth a look!

The Wardrobe Department

 

The Wardrobe Department / Elaine Garvey
Edinburgh: Canongate, c2025.
231 p.

This is Elaine Garvey's debut novel, which I found serendipitously in my library's collection. It's the story of Mairead, a 22 yr old Irish woman who has left a suffocating home life to work at a small theatre in England. But the theatre isn't the dream life she was looking for - it's still just real life, a job with many attendant issues. 

She works in the wardrobe department, and the descriptions of the actual work are great - sewing up gloves, awkward fittings with actors they have crushes on, washing and pressing until all hours, sourcing stockings at sex shops for the cheapest options and so on. I loved this part of the book; it is so rare to find a book that goes into actual daily worklife, and manages to capture the every day nature of it, the way it makes up most of a life. And also the way that coworkers shape the day. Mairead works with two other young women, one posh and one more raucous and full of desire to live life. Their interactions are so realistic, and they help to shape Mairead's story. And her direct boss is tough but ultimately supportive. Some of the other characters are ones you'd like to throttle, though!

Mairead is awkward and introverted - she's not sure she fits in here but doesn't feel like she fits in at home either. But she still misses it and feels torn between two places. Then she has to go home for a funeral, and that part of the book is the real heart of the story. Her visit shows the reader the background for all the issues she's been having in London, her numbness, anxiety, constant worrying and so on. The family dynamics are finely drawn, between Mairead and her parents but also her wider family. There are some difficult moments in her life and that of her family that are hard to read about. 

But then there is a breakthrough in mother-daughter communication which shakes Mairead up, just as she is ready to board her plane back to London. And once there, she goes back to her daily round of work and home, but somehow her mother speaks through her in a key moment -- Mairead finds her steel -- and everything changes. Although much of the book has us following Mairead stuck in her life, the ending is hopeful, and I thought it ended on a high note. 

I really liked this one. If you enjoy slower paced character driven stories with a wonderful setting, you may also like it. Of course I also found the sewing content relatable and realistic, and appreciated the metaphors arising from stitching that appeared in other parts of the book.


And here's a nice interview with the author at the blog Word Herding, about her work in theatres and how it informed this book, if you want to learn more.

(review first appeared at FollowingTheThread)