Each year UVic faculty, staff, students, alumni, and retirees produce an incredible amount of intellectual content reflecting their breadth and diversity of research, teaching, personal, and professional interests. A list of these works is available here.
Hockey fans will be delighted with King Kwong: Larry Kwong, the China Clipper who broke the NHL Colour Barrier, a marvelous new book from UVic alum Paula Johanson. This book will appeal to readers of all ages who want to know more about the history of this great Canadian sport.
About the Book
Who broke the colour barrier in the NHL? A man whose professional hockey career statistics include leading the senior leagues for scoring and for low penalty minutes – and a single shift on the ice in an NHL game. He was scouted three times by NHL teams before that game, and courted away from the NHL to a powerful role in three different leagues before retiring. He is Larry Kwong, a Canadian of Chinese descent born in Vernon BC in 1923, a hard-working man and World War II serviceman who played hockey most of his life.
Paula Johanson explores the life and accomplishments of the China Clipper, Larry Kwong, whose story is one of an indomitable spirit who triumphed in the face of adversity and social discrimination.
About the Author
For over twenty-five years, Paula Johanson has worked as a writer, teacher, and editor. Among her twenty-nine books on science, health, and literature the most recent are Love Poetry: How Do I Love Thee? (Enslow Publishers), What Is Energy? from the series Let’s Find Out! (Rosen Publishing), and the science fiction anthology Opus 6 (Reality Skimming Press). She also recently completed an MA in Canadian Literature at the University of Victoria.
A lifelong hockey fan, she listened on radio to the first Canada/Russia hockey series, and is proud to have played a pick-up game on a frozen pond.
Praise for the Book
“B.C. writer and self-described lifelong hockey fan Paula Johanson reminds us of the ephemeral nature of sports history in King Kwong, her marvellous little biography of the whirlwind on skates who blew out of the dusty interior 75 years ago. […] Johanson’s book with Five Rivers Publishing is aimed at young adults but I doubt there’s a hockey fan who will be put off any more than Larry Kwong was by his nickname as he dashed up the ice to score the winning goal for the Smoke Eaters in that long-forgotten B.C. Championship of 1946.” Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun, 2015.
