Ice and Fire: Dispatches From the New World, 1988-1998

by Stephen Osborne

"Ice and Fire" is a collection of nonfiction narratives from award-winning writer Stephen Osborne, who retains an abiding sense that the places and the people he encounters are still to be discovered. Negotiating the Trans-Canada Highway near Moncton during a whiteout, visiting Timothy Eaton's grave in Toronto, leaving offerings of tobacco at a Nez Perce battleground, drinking with his Japanese mentor in a revolving bar in Vancouver while debating Buddhism vs. class struggle?for Osborne, all of these are occasions to conjure our time and our place. Ice and fire are extremes of a Canadian North, from which several of these dispatches are written. But Osborne's special insight is that Kamloops, New Glasgow and even Toronto are as unknowable as Pangnirtung. We live in a country that can claim the world's only souvenir police force, and whose analogue is a department store; a country that believes itself to be part of a New World, even though people have lived here for ten thousand years. Smart, funny, moving, and full of wonder and surprise, the dispatches in "Ice and Fire" illuminate a very old world striving to make itself new.

200 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2002

About the author

Stephen Osborne is a Canadian writer and editor, notably the co-founder of Arsenal Pulp Press and the editor of Geist Magazine.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See other authors with similar names.

Reviews

[Mj · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ice & Fire: Dispatches from the New World, 1988-1998 was written by Stephen Osborne In Remembrance of D.M. Fraser 1946-1965 (would have turned 39 on his birthday.)

I chose this book because I was participating in a limited time-frame challenge to read a book from every province and territory in Canada. It turns out that I could not get the book during the challenge time-frame so I substituted another book. It also turns out that while Osborne was born in Nunavut, he only lived there for a short while, although he did visit the area later and wrote about it in Ice & Fire.

After the challenge was finished, a copy of Ice & Fire borrowed from the University of Calgary was delivered to my library. I decided to go ahead and read it and thoroughly enjoyed Osborne’s writing and stories.

Osborne didn’t just write about Nunavut. His book is about his travels and life throughout many parts of Canada - from coast to coast. It is perhaps best categorized as a collection of essays (non-fiction) as the essays or short stories describe real events and real people in Osborne’s life.

Osborne writes well, gets your immediate attention and keeps it throughout each essay. None of his topics are particularly substantive. Many are about small events in his life but Osborne writes about them so well that each story takes on a very large and engaging importance. The essays are written as if looking back in time and reporting on a previous event. Despite it being written about something past, the essays are very much written in the present. I felt like I was beside Osborne and enjoying the same journey and people. Each tale could be read as a stand-alone essay and each story was impactful with its own strong essence. Many of the stories are about social and historical aspects of Canada unlikely not known by many young Canadians, as some of the corporations mentioned have since closed down or the people discussed had passed away before many young Canadians were born. For me, it was a great reminder of places and things I was familiar with and a period of time I don’t stop often enough to reflect on.

Stephen Osborne founded Arsenault Pulp Press and co-founded Geist and currently edits this magazine as well as writing for it. I enjoyed his writing style and was impressed with the variety and insight in his collection. I only wish he had written another book or might publish another book soon.

The descriptions on the front and back flaps and back cover describe the book better than I would. I have included them below to give you a better sense of the book.


From Back Cover

Stephen Osborne’s spirited, stylish way of bringing reality into focus produces exceptionally readable and memorable prose. Ice & Fire abundantly demonstrates his exceptional energy and his shrewd eye. It should have many grateful readers. Robert Fulford

What a pleasure it is to read Stephen Osborne’s Ice & Fire. The essays compose a genre of his own invention with elements of the story, the novel, the tale, told in unemphatic yet warmly living voice of an almost invisible narrator. This voice is an instrument that can ring dramatic surprises and unenunciated silences tnat linger in the air. Along with the humour latent in Osborne’s work is the unsentimental nostalgia that makes his dispatches seem to come from an old new world, remembered but entirely present. Mary Meigs

Back Flap

Stephen Osborne was born in Pangnirtung in 1947, grew up in Edmonton and Kamloops, and now lives in Vancover. He received a B.A. from the University of British Columbia in 1969 and dropped out of post-graduate school a year later. In 1971 he founded Pulp Press Book Publishers and began editing and pulishing a wide range of alternative literature.

Since 1990 he has been the editor of Geist magazine, and he now holds a part-time teaching position at the University of Victoria.

Etcerera

Front Flap

Ice & Fire is a collection of personal essays on Canadian life by Stephen Osborne, an award winning writer and the editor of Geist magazine.

With a poet’s eye and explorer’s heart, Osborne retains an abiding sense that the people and the places he encounters in these narratives can be known but not discovered.

………

Smart, funny, moving and full of wonder and surprise, Ice & Fire illuminates a very old world striving to make itself new.

My summary - I found Fire & Ice to be a very readable and engaging collection of Canadian non-fiction essays. 4 stars