BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
'The Door Is Open' is a compassionate, reflective, and informative memoir about three-and-a-half years spent volunteering at a skid row drop-in centre in Vancouver's downtown eastside. In an area most renowned for its shocking social ills, and the notorious distinction of holding the country's "very poorest forward sortation area of all 7,000 postal prefixes," Bart Campbell dismantles our hard-held notions about poverty, the disenfranchised, substance abuse, and the nature of charity.'The Door Is Open' is one man's story of a transformative journey into the complicated and complex world of poverty.
Finalist BC Book Prize
Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize
"His narrative reads like a 1930s 'noir' journey into the seamier sides of cities once prowled by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. It is this straight-up style that is both the book's strength and, on occasion, its only weak link. Readers looking for a sense of hope will find little of it in Campbell'sgritty descriptions. Indeed, some readers might mistake his unrelenting portrayl of skid row inhabitants as representative of the homeless population across Canada, most of whom are not victims of addiction or mental illness, but of an economy that has been stacked against them for most of their lives, if not for generations before." - Quill & Quire
"What is most refreshing about Campbell's memoir is that it neither self-aggrandizes nor propagates a misinformed political message. His work has an objective tone and each chapter is well researched...this is one of the best books I've read all year." - Discorder
Finalist City of Vancouver Book Prize
Bart Campbell's essays about the downtown eastside of Vancouver and his experiences there as a soup kitchen volunteer have appeared on CBC's 'Morningside', and in 'Next City', 'True Life', 'Canadian Forum', and frequently in 'The Vancouver Review'. A "non-fictional" excerpt from Bart's historic novel about the 4,000 Relief Camp Strikers who occupied Vancouver in the spring of 1935 appeared in 'Canadian Geographic' Magazine, spring 2001. Bart lives in Vancouver and works as a medical laboratory technologist.