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Enlarge Cover
list price: $29.95
edition:Hardcover
category: Biography & Autobiography
published: Sep 2007
ISBN:9780889712119
publisher:
Nightwood Editions
Description
Somewhere between joyous affirmation of British Columbia's splendour and momentous grief for the destruction of a once thriving salmon culture comes the newest work from acclaimed poet and novelist Tim Bowling. The Lost Coast is a lyrical, impassioned lament for the home Bowling once knew and for the river and creatures that continue to haunt his imagination.
Raised in Ladner, BC, by a gillnetting family, Bowling was a fisherman himself until the mid-1990s. The loss of the West Coast's salmon culture is felt deeply by Bowling; this is a betrayal of his birthright and a decimation of his children's heritage. The Lost Coast asks hard questions of politicians, fishermen, fish farmers, industrialists and of the three million people currently inhabiting Greater Vancouver. What is the story behind the pioneers who built this province? What is the secret life of the killer whale and the great blue heron? And above all else, who caused, and continues to hasten, the diminishment of the Pacific salmon, British Columbia's most totemic creature?
With a poet's attention to details of the spirit, and a novelist's flair for character and story, Tim Bowling elevates his cherished homeland to the realm of enduring myth.
Recommended Age, Grade, and Reading Levels
- Age:
- 15
- Grade:
- 10
Awards
- Short-listed, BC Book Prizes--Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize
- Winner, Alberta Literary Awards--Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction
- Short-listed, The Writers' Trust Nereus Non-Fiction Prize
- Commended, A Kiriyama Prize "Notable Book"
- Commended, British Columbia Award for Canadian Non-Fiction Longlist
Editorial Reviews
"One of the strongest aspects of the book, in my opinion, is Bowling's modulation of his often sentimental tone with a reluctance to view environmental crisis as a solely contemporary phenomenom. ... Bowling's vision, forcefully expressed, is compelling even as an individual response to ecological change."
--"Nicholas Bradley," Canadian Literature
— Canadian Literature
"Tim Bowling is one of Canada's greatest living poets. He's also a novelist and an accomplished storyteller with a gift for vivid imagery ... Bowling enjoys something of an advantage over historians, journalists, ecologists and anthropologists. Which is why The Lost Coast is important ... There's a lovely magical realism about The Lost Coast. Killer whales glide in and out of it, the night is always as dark as blackberries, and the characters and wharf rats loom so much larger than life."
--Terry Glavin, The Globe and Mail
"Tim Bowling is a powerful writer, and this meditation on his childhood home and its salmon fishery is written from a deep well of emotion."
--Bob Armstrong, Winnipeg Free Press
"...an exceptionally fine depiction of a vanishing way of life...The Lost Coast is an excellent memoir."
--Steve Noyes, Vancouver Sun,
"Lyrical, thought-provoking writing."
--Annie Boulanger, Burnaby Now
"Both a lyrical lament for the changing environment and a celebration of life."
--"Editor's Picks," Shared-Vision
"It's the best prose [Bowling] has written."
--Edgar Dunning, The Delta Optimist
— Praise for <i>The Lost Coast</i>
"For [Bowling], the salmon are gods and the Fraser takes on dimensions that make it confluent with the Styx, Thames, Congo and Lethe. There is always something vital at stake in Bowling's work, and rarely do the trivia of modern writers' preoccupations seep in.... [T]his book... is a work of transcendent beauty and anger - and somewhat surprisingly, it is also a work of hope.
"Bowling... offers glimpses into his own present-day existence -- car-free, TV-free, independent -- as a simple example of how one might go about restaking a claim to wildness and severing ties to the massing forces of infinite economic expansion. The more of us who follow his counsel and ways, the better off we'll be."
--Zachariah Wells, Vancouver Review
— Vancouver Review
"Bowling's Lost Coast is an angry, informed, and loving lament for a way of life and a place that is gone."
--Bill Robertson, The Saskatoon StarPhoenix
— Saskatoon StarPhoenix
