Bøger af Ron Verzuh

The Kootenay region of British Columbia is full of hidden historical events that have long been forgotten. The showing of Salt of the Earth at the Castle Theatre on December 15 and 16, 1954, was one such event. The blacklisted Hollywood movie was seen by 900 viewers who paid 70 cents each (35 cents for children) to see what the CBC film critic Nathan Cohen called "an exciting experience, a deeply human drama in the documentary manner perfected by the Italians in such masterpieces as Open City, The Bicycle Thief, and Shoe Shine." This booklet argues that it is worth celebrating the courage shown by those who dared sponsor the original showing in 1954, those who dared to see it, and those today who see the value of revisiting that time of repression and political intolerance that infected all North America right down to this rural region of B.C.

Did you ever want to live in Venice, Italy, that legendary City of Islands in the stunning Adriatic Sea? After a brief three-week 'living in Venice' experiment, we came away more fascinated than ever by this mesmerizing place of art and architectural wonders. Venice Observed is a random set of views, images, and memories from that experiment.

We live in an age of war and terror. The four horsemen of the apocalypse gallop through the world as if they had coffee hot-wired into their veins. The tea time of the soul seems lost for the moment. Perhaps the answer is to return to a quieter more peaceful time when the world stopped each day for an hour or so, when people put aside everything else to enjoy a brief respite with their favourite cuppa. Tea Leaves suggests that we contemplate those bygone times and think about mapping future tea leaves in a better world. This is a tea travel book that takes readers to the four corners of the earth in search of that little bit of heaven on earth - the perfectly appointed tearoom with its perfectly brewed cup of tea. You won't visit every tea country here not will you get a taste of every tea experience available across the globe. But you will share my sense of the social meaning of tea. In Tea Leaves, tea is defined as calm, while coffee, that other hot drink, is frantic. Tea is safe, coffee dangerous. Tea is peace, coffee war. Tea is history, coffee modern. Tea is truth, coffee gossip. Tea is literature, coffee journalism. Tea is rural, coffee urban. Tea is healthy, coffee is not. Tea is the waltz, coffee is the mambo, the watusi, the cha, cha, cha. Tea is the Beatles, coffee the Rolling Stones. Tea cures cancer, coffee can cause it. Tea is life, coffee is ulcers. Tea is heaven, coffee can lead to hell. Tea Leaves offers readers something special by whetting your appetite to take some tea leaves of your own. And it strives to offer a momentary escape from the fast-paced, market-mad new world that is increasingly coffee-driven. If it does those things, then its mission will have been accomplished. RV October 2011

The smelter city of Trail, British Columbia, kept one of the biggest Canadian secrets of the Second World War. The people of Trail didn't know why they were keeping the secret, but it was wartime and no one questioned the code of silence. In Codename Project 9 their secret is revealed.

Journey back in time to the bygone era of "printer's devils" and uncover how their influence shaped the establishment of BC's Smelter City. The grisly murder of a nurse, a crippling 1917 strike, death on the wartime battlefield, the 1918-19 flu pandemic--these are just some of the historic events covered in the early days of the Trail News. In Printer's Devils, historian Ron Verzuh offers both a study of pioneer journalism and a social history of the smelter city of Trail as it grew into a small but prosperous community. He traces the stories of residents and their evolving attitudes, pastimes, and opinions as they respond in times of economic crisis, war, labour strife, and life-threatening disease against the backdrop of one of Canada's pioneer industrial centres. Beneath these stories is a revealing exploration into the lives of six Trail News editors--Trail's printer's devils--in which we see firsthand how their editorial choices were honed by their education, business priorities, and experience as printers in the early days of newspaper publishing in the region. Delving back through layers of history, Printer's Devils: The Feisty Pioneer Newspaper That Shaped the History of British Columbia's Smelter City is a tribute to the lasting impact of journalism in Canadian society, as chronicled in one single-industry town.

In 1938, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) sent communist union organizer Arthur "e;Slim"e; Evans to the smelter city of Trail, British Columbia, to establish Local 480 of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers. Six years later the local was recognized as the legal representative of more than 5,000 workers at a smelter owned by the powerful Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada. But the union's fight for survival had only just begun.Smelter Wars unfolds that historic struggle, offering glimpses into the political, social, and cultural life of the semi-rural, single-industry community. Hindered by economic depression, two World Wars, and Cold War intolerance, Local 480 faced fierce corporate, media, and religious opposition at home. Ron Verzuh draws upon archival and periodical sources, including the mainstream and labour press, secret police records, and oral histories, to explore the CIO's complicated legacy in Trail as it battled a wide range of antagonists: a powerful employer, a company union, local conservative citizens, and Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) leadership.More than the history of a union, Smelter Wars is a cultural study of a community shaped by the dominance of a world-leading industrial juggernaut set on keeping the union drive at bay.