Radicalism still lives in B.C., if only on paper. As a descendant of Scottish coal miners who came to Vancouver Island in the late 1800s, Stephen Collis first wrote Mine (New Star, 2001), a reconstruction of the early history of the B.C. coal industry from which sprang trade unionism in B.C.
It was followed by his investigation into the connection between anarchy and poetry, Anarchive (New Star, 2005), partially inspired by the Spanish Civil War, a conflict so essential to the evolution of counter-culturalists such as George Orwell and George Woodcock.
Now Collis has released To the Barricades (Talon $16.95) to examine shifting strategies of revolt and protest in contemporary social justice campaigns such as the Occupy movement and Idle No More. It is described as a collection of explorations "to drive apathy from the field and recover forgotten radical ideas.";

Collis simultaneously examines historical authenticity and authority in The Red Album (Book Thug $24). This fictional story, in the tradition of Borges and Nabokov, is complicated by a growing maze of author/characters, "as the ghosts of social revolutions of the past are lifted from the soil in Catalonia, and a new revolution unfolds in South America.";

Album 9781927040652; Barricades 978-0-88922-747-7