River Queen: The Amazing Story of Tugboat Titan Lucille Johnstone

Janet Collins is a freelance writer in Sechelt, British Columbia.

Few men—and even fewer women—can honestly be said to have attained
the status of living legend in the B.C. business world. Lucille
Johnstone was a notable exception. Rising from her position as “girl
Friday” to president and CEO of the highly respected Rivtow Straits,
she achieved a remarkable feat for a woman working in the male-dominated
world of towboating. River Queen tells the story of that rise to the
top, her heartbreaking personal life, the boardroom shuffle that left
her outside the company she had helped to build, and her later work as
the driving force behind so many successful enterprises, including the
Vancouver Airport Authority and St. John Ambulance.

Levy’s tale is based on extensive taped interviews with Johnstone and
other key players in the story (the book can almost be described as an
oral history), as well as newspaper and magazine articles. Occasionally,
he adds background to provide a clearer context for Johnstone’s
quotes; the two-page history of the Ross Dam project forms a case in
point.

One regrettable feature is that most of the photo captions are directly
lifted from the body of the text. And in some cases, the same
information is repeated again in a sidebar. This repetition is annoying
and gives the book a somewhat amateurish presentation. Nevertheless, the
book will appeal to anyone interested in the life of Lucille Johnstone,
the history of the West Coast marine industry, or B.C. business history.