On a school trip to the museum, Matthew has an eerie meeting with Peter Glimmer, who was imprisoned in his own portrait by his uncle, the villainous alchemist, Nicolaas van der Leyden. Peter Glimmer entrusts Matthew with recovering from the past the one thing that can save the world. Encountering magic, mayhem and murder, Matthew ends up in a despe …

Has your silver lost its lustre? Have your photos faded? Has the family quilt come undone?

Fear not. In this entertaining and easy-to-read book, Colleen Wilson will help you keep your most precious household possessions in pristine condition.

This is a refreshing historical document about identity and education in a Native community in the time of residential schools. Anthony Walsh arrived at the Inkameep Day School in 1932 and started teaching. He had little experience in education but encouraged the children to explore their Aboriginal identity through art and drama.Anthony Walsh's ed …

Nancy Turner and Richard Hebda present the results of many years of working with botanical experts from the Saanich Nation on southern Vancouver Island. Elders Violet Williams, Elsie Claxton, Christopher Paul and Dave Elliott pass on their knowledge of plants and their uses to future generations of Saanich and Coast Salish people, and to anyone int …

The genus Lasiopogon is a widespread group of robber flies (Diptera: Asilidae) inhabiting the north temperate parts of the Earth. This study is the first to examine the genus as a complete entity and clearly define intrageneric relationships. It is also the first to pay special attention to the male and female genitalia, important structures in the …

The shared use of wild animals has helped to determine social relations between Native peoples and newcomers. In later settlement periods, controversy about subsistence hunting and campaigns of local conservation associations drew lines between groups in communities, particularly Native peoples, immigrants, farmers, and urban dwellers. In addition …

Preserving What Is Valued explores the concept of preserving heritage. It presents the conservation profession's code of ethics and discusses four significant contexts embedded in museum conservation practice: science, professionalization, museum practice, and the relationship between museums and First Nations peoples.

Museum practice regarding han …

Birding and butterfly watching have been popular outdoor activities for decades. Now, dragonfly watching is catching on as a fascinating and enjoyable pursuit. Dragonflies are large, colourful insects with amazing and easily observed behaviour. Noted entomologist Dr. Robert Cannings introduces students, naturalists and outdoor enthusiasts to the wo …

The Halifax Explosion of 1917 is a defining event in the Canadian consciousness, yet it has never been the subject of a sustained analytical history. Astonishingly, until now no one has consulted the large federal government archives that contain first-hand accounts of the disaster and the response of national authorities. Canada's recently establi …

The men who worked British Columbia's mines have passed into history. Coal Dust In My Blood is a moving account of one coal miner's life, in plain, evocative language. But this book is much more than a personal memoir. Bill Johnstone's mining career spanned several decades and he worked in a wide variety of positions. His broad insights reveal impo …

The Uncanny: Experiments in Cyborg Culture is a dazzling and provocative examination of the cyborg--the concept of man-as-machine--in popular culture. The book collects essays and images, in colour and black-and-white, presenting the image of the cyborg in all its imaginative guises. The title is from a 1919 essay by Sigmund Freud (and included in …

Since the release of our first, bestselling Calgary cityguide, many things in the city have changed: it's gotten bigger, faster, and richer. Still filled with strange secrets, this revised and expanded edition of the earlier Calgary: Secrets of the City reveals the whole truth.
With stories of notorious figures like the jazz impresario who has ha …

Browsing in his grandfather's study, young Jamie discovers a notebook entitled "This Was My War" and finds himself pulled into the life of East End London teenagers whose adolescent years were overtaken by the devastation of World War II. As Jamie follows his grandfather's story in which "war" changes from silver screen exploits to bombs exploding …

In this handbook, Philip Lambert describes 43 species and subspecies of sea stars in the coastal waters of northwestern North America. The sea-star fauna of the region from Glacier Bay, Alaska, to Puget Sound in Washington, is the most diverse of all the temperate waters of the world. The great age of the Pacific Basin, and the varied habitats alon …

This book is an ethnography of the cultural politics of Native/non-Native relations in a small interior BC city – Williams Lake – at the height of land claims conflicts and tensions. Furniss analyses contemporary colonial relations in settler societies, arguing that “ordinary” rural Euro-Canadians exercise power in maintaining the subordina …

Out of the Mist celebrates the art, culture and history of the Nuu-chah-nulth nations. It features the material culture?including many major art pieces?of the richly complex societies along the west coast of Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula. With the help of many Nuu-chah-nulth voices, Martha Black places the objects in context with the c …

This small, comprehensive guide offers practical advice on how to collect, dry and store plant specimens for botanical study. Intended for plant collectors who do not have access to herbarium equipment, this book describes how to use common household items to dry, press and store plants.

In her third ethnobotany handbook, Nancy Turner focuses on the plants that provided heat, shelter, transportation, clothing, tools, nets, ropes, containers—all the necessities of life for First Peoples. She describes more than 100 of these plants, their various uses and their importance in the material cultures of First Nations in British Columbi …

In Pnina Granirer: Portrait of an Artist Ted Lindberg captures the development in life and art of one of Canada's finest painters. Over the past forty years Pnina Granirer has been exploring and extending her perception of the world around us with exuberantly colourful and formally innovative paintings and prints.

Lindberg analyzes in detail Granire …

Sea cucumbers have inhabited the world's oceans for about 400 million years. They live in almost any marine habitat, from the fine ooze of the deep ocean to current-swept reefs and rocky shallows. These marine invertebrates are related to sea stars and sea urchins and they are an integral part of our coastal ecosystems.

Philip Lambert describes more …

A story of the ill-fated romance between a wandering musician-social-idealist and a Cape Breton coal miner’s daughter, whose dreams are reawakened by their passion. The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum is a play in which the all-consuming brightness of dreams and memory are overshadowed by absentee greed, callousness and exploitation. It is a tragedy t …

Trees and Shrubs of British Columbia is the definitive guide to all native and naturalized woody plants in the province. T. Christopher Brayshaw describes almost 300 species of trees and shrubs, as well as many subspecies and varieties. His beautifully detailed illustrations of leaves, flowers, fruits and woody parts are arranged to show the distin …

The heyday of anthropological collecting on the Northwest Coast took place between 1875 and the Great Depression. The scramble for skulls and skeletons, poles, canoes, baskets, feast bowls, and masks went on until it seemed that almost everything not nailed down or hidden was gone. The period of most intense collecting on the coast coincided with t …

A look into the life and times of falconry expert and acclaimed artist Frank L. Beebe. Hancock House is proud to present the fine and sensitive works of one of Canada's most famous bird artists, Frank Beebe. Here is the story of how young Frank took up drawing while in school, how one teacher reached his inner imagination and sparked his lifelong d …

Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes poses a number of probing questions about the role and responsibility of museums and anthropology in the contemporary world. In it, Michael Ames, an internationally renowned museum director, challenges popular concepts and criticisms of museums and presents an alternate perspective which reflects his experiences from …

The Brooklyn Museum has played a major role in presenting and interpreting North American Native art. Its commitment to this field began in 1903, when R. Stewart Culin was appointed to head its new Department of Ethnology. During three trips to the Northwest in 1905, 1908, and 1911, Culin collaborated with Dr. Charles F. Newcombe and bought several …

"MY WIFE HAS GONE CRAZY - one of the isolated upcoast lightkeepers in this astonishing book writes to his Victoria supervisor. "PLEASE SEND SOMEONE UP HERE AT ONCE."
It could be an incident from any one of many poignant stories which unfold as Don Graham, himself keeper of Vancouver's famous Point Atkinson Light, breaks the lighthouse fraternity's …

A guide to North American Indian Quillworking. Quillwork, once practiced by Great Lakes and Plains Indian tribes, has inspired Christy Ann Hensler to save this delicate art from extinction. Mrs. Hensler's detailed step-by-step instructions and how-to sketches describe the techniques of quillworking, from plucking and preparing the quills, to finish …

Historian Peter Corley-Smith chronicles the provincial museum's accomplishments from 1886, when 30 prominent citizens petitioned the government to establish a provincial museum, to its centenary in 1986. From its modest roots, the museum has grown to become one of the most renowned in North America. But this is a story about the people with the vis …

The Kitwancool people live in a village of the same name on a tributary of the Skeena River, near Hazelton. In his introduction, Wilson Duff says, "the Kitwancool think of themselves as an independent and completely autonomous tribe." This book, written by the Kitwancool, contains statements about their history, territories, laws and customs. It is …