Seasoned tale-spinner Arthur Mayse has combined a vivid setting with an involving and suspenseful plot, and the result is a classic juvenile book and a memorable west coast story. Fourteen-year-old Paddy sets out to make the money handlining off the coast of British Columbia, and finds it a more daunting prospect than he thought. Setting up camp on …

One of British Columbia's most colourful figures was Albert "Ginger" Goodwin, a slight young English immigrant who arrived on Vancouver Island in 1910 to join hundreds of others slaving in the hellholes of the Cumberland mines. What he saw there made him one of the most effective labour leaders the province has ever seen, and led to an untimely and …

Vancouver Island is one of the world's best year-round salmon fishing areas. This comprehensive guide describes popular fishing holes, including a map of each and data on gear, best time of year, methods and more.

Once again, Kathleen Dalzell has captured the mystery and the adventure of the Queen Charlotte Islands. In this, her third book on the islands, Dalzell focuses on her parents, free-spirited pioneers who risked everything to settle on the islands they loved. The result is a story that is both fascinating and informative, a look at history from the i …

An extraordinary new collection of short stories from the author of Dzelarhons and A Whole Brass Band.

Here is an assortment of relationships: lovers, husbands and wives, children and parents, friends; and of strong individuals: Nan, whose frog causes consternation and chaos; Daleth who defies a fundamentalist sect, only to discover that it's hard …

A sequel to The Queen Charlotte Islands 1774-1966, this volume is an intimate tour of the mystical Charlottes. Beginning at the northwest tip of the islands, nearly 2000 features are presented in geographical sequence. Thus the reader may journey in a natural progression around the more than 150 islands which make up the group. For the spot reader, …

Here is the exciting history of the little-known Queen Charlotte Islands. Since 1774, when Europeans first encountered the proud and mighty Haida, adventurous men and women have been drawn to this farthest west region of Canada. Some were lured by sea otter pelts, others by whales, gold, fish, forest and fertile land. Many came to live among the Ha …

One of Canadian poetry's best-kept secrets is Maureen McCarthy, whose first book She Reminds Me of Vermeer drew accolades across the country. Nine years later, her second collection drew even higher praises.

"I have the sense of seeing things with her eyes and mind, of actually being in her situation, and it's this intimacy that gives her poems pow …

The Canadian Poetry Contest was launched to provide funds to help Canada India Village Aid in its programme of building dams and digging wells to counter the serious drought conditions that have arisen in northwestern India. A total of 1,255 poets entered no less than 3,223 poems. This collection includes the six prize-winning poems by John Pass (f …

Tom Wayman has earned an international reputation as a work poet, anthologist and essayist. This new collection of 64 poems deals with blue-collar working conditions, labour strikes and unemployment, the hierarchy of business and its philosophy of "money above all considerations" in the workplace. Some new travel poems and a few well-chosen comment …

Anne Cameron writes with uncompromising candidness of the relationships between men and women. Her stories combine wit and gritty realism with a clear sense of the storyteller's art. Quite simply she is willing to venture into uncharted territory and speak of the things she finds there in a voice that is clear and at times unsettling.

In South of an …

Once regarded as British Columbia's "voice from the bunkhouse" for his powerful logging poems, Peter Trower, has produced a new collection about life "after the bunkhouse" - seventy new poems about cities and small towns, travel and love.

In these magical tales of the Celts, Cameron does for old world mythology what she has done for new world myths in her best-selling Daughters of Copper Woman and Dzelarhons. Cameron adds wit and common sense to symbolism and to the mysteries of life and creation.

Reactions to Alan Twigg's first book of interviews with Canadian authors, For Openers:

"For Openers is much the best thing of its kind I've ever read, and much more difficult to achieve than the casual reader would guess. "
-Hugh MacLennan

"One can appreciate the zest, the engaging lack of stuffiness, with which Twigg confronts his authors."
-Ken Ada …

A traditional northwest coast legend for ages six to adult, told simply and gently be one of BC's best-loved writers.

". . . should be added to any collection of materials concerned with native peoples."
-Canadian Materials

Vancouver's Granville Island complex rates the status of a genuine urban redevelopment wonder on several counts: it is an old industrial eyesore which has become one of Vancouver's most popular tourist attractions; it is a consciously planned "people place" that works; it is a government-run enterprise that makes money; it is a political creation w …

Ethel Wilson has delighted readers with her art, her humour, and her extraordinarily perceptive eye. She turned out six novels and a book of short stories - all highly acclaimed by famous critics and writers and all written after she reached the age of 49.

Mary McAlpine, a close friend of Wilson, has produced a biography that is very personal, humou …

A traditional northwest coast legend for ages six to adult, told simply and gently be one of BC's best-loved writers.

". . . should be added to any collection of materials concerned with native peoples."
-Canadian Materials

From Shakespeare to cop shows, sitcoms to docudramas, for over three decades the CBC has presented viewers with every variety of television drama and has become Canada's closest equivalent to a national theatre. Turn Up the Contrast is the first book to explore the content of Canadian television drama and is both a critical analysis and a survey hi …

On January 22, 1979, an eleven-year-old Native girl died of a ruptured appendix in an Alert Bay, B.C. hospital. The events that followed are chronicled here by Dara Culhane Speck, a member by marriage of the Nimpkish Indian Band in Alert Bay. She has relied mainly on interviews, anecdotes and public records to describe how this small, isolated Nati …

Who would have suspected the power of bubble gum? Atlas is bored. It's raining, so he sits inside, chewing a gumball. He blows a bubble and imagines that it is Australia. Then the stove becomes a Chinese dragon; the fridge is Antarctica, inhabited by penguins; the bathtub melts away into the Seven Seas; and the piano turns into an African elephant. …

From 1939 to 1954, Malcolm Lowry lived and wrote in a shack near Dollarton, in North Vancouver. It was here that he revised and polished Under the Volcano until it was almost ready for publication, and here that he experienced his happiest and most productive years. His posthumously published works are filled with references to the landscape and l …

Anne Cameron is well-known for her humourous retellings of North West Coast Indian legends - Daughters of Copper Woman and Dzelarhons. In the present collection of poetry, she enters a darker, more eerie and threatening corner of this world. "The Sickness That Has No Name" is an exploration of alienation and Indian mysticism, and of a woman's deter …

Orca's Song is the tale of the love between Orca and Eagle-Flies-High, and explains the origin of the killer whale's song and exuberant dance.

Albert Johnson was a loner, a deadly shot, who in 1932 triggered a gruelling manhunt that has become an Arctic legend. For over six weeks, amid blizzards and numbing cold, he eluded a posse of trappers, First Nations and RCMP, who for the very first time used a two-way radio and an airplane in their search.

Johnson was involved in four shoot-outs, …

The poems collected in The Face of Jack Munro may be set on the Canadian Prairies, in the Kootenay region of southeastern BC, or in Vancouver during the 1983 Solidarity public sector general strike. But the humour, concern for the individual, and biting social commentary found throughout this collection are exactly what readers of Tom Wayman have l …

The first non-Bennett to lead BC's Social Credit Party, a former mayor of Surrey, nurseryman, husband, father, defeated Vancouver mayoralty candidate. . . As minister of Human Resources and later, of Education, he became for some the most hated man in BC. During his time as Municipal Affairs minister he was an autocrat who pushed through the develo …

Vancouver and its Writers introduces over 100 Vancouver related fiction authors, summarizes over 100 Vancouver novels, and locates 100 literary sites throughout the Lower Mainland.

For both the curious tourist and the serious scholar, this unprecedented study also includes provocative assessments of Vancouver (pro and con) in its 100th year from con …

The Canadian Yearbook of International Law is issued annually under the auspices of the Canadian Branch of the International Law Association (Canadian Society of International Law) and the Canadian Council on International Law.

"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 …

This humourous look back at a neglected part of B.C.'s history will be of interest to those who were there . . . and to those who missed it!

Frozen inkwells on winter mornings, black bears coming to class, and wolves on the trail home in the evening are only some of the trials and adventures that one-room schoolteachers faced in the wilds of B.C. Jo …

Vancouver journalist-broadcaster Alan Twigg examines Evans' earliest, out-of-print novels and magazine serials, as well as his masterpieces Mist on the River and 0 Time In Your Flight, and his poetry. The plot synopses and criticism make this an important reference guide for students of Canadian literature, and Evans' own comments on his craft prov …

A beautifully illustrated book for children ages 6 and up relating the classic northwest coast myth telling how Raven, the trickster, freed the moon from the old fisherwoman's cedar chest and carried it to its rightful place in the heavens. Entrancingly retold from the female viewpoint by the celebrated author of Dreamspeaker and Daughters of Coppe …

The famous northwest coast Indian myth, sometimes called "Raven Steals the Light" telling how Loon, Raven, and all the animals rallied to retrieve the daylight from behind its wall of ice after it was stolen by evil spirits. Amusingly retold for ages six to adult by the well-known Canadian poet and novelist.

Through Michael's eyes he could see the familiar world reflected as a fantastic, often hilariously distorted place, and fortunately he had the time and sensitivity to capture the magic of these childhood perceptions in a heartwarming series of poems. Illustrated in kindred spirit by two small boys, What Are Uncles For? will prove equally entertaini …

The Crystal Spirit, George Woodcock's intellectual biography of George Orwell, won the 1966 Governor General's Award for non-fiction. In this book he turns his attention to 1984, the novel which expresses Orwell's fears for the future, and his exhortations against totalitarianism.

First-hand experience with twentieth-century politics combines with e …

With 81 contributors, Women & Words was the most ambitious collection of writing published during the rise of Canada women's writing in the 1980s, and the first one to be published in both French and English. It includes short fiction, poetry and dramatic pieces by well-known writers like Marian Engel, Nicole Brossard, Jane Rule, Louky Bersaniuk an …

Kids will love The A to Z of Absolute Zaniness. While their parents read the six-line alliterative captions, children will be dazzled by the bold, colourful drawings illustrating each letter with objects, animals, and people.

Carol Mills wrote the short stories that describe the bizarre feats of people and animals, real and ridiculous. Susanne Ferri …

This outspoken, thoroughly documented study covers the development of one of North America's most important industrial unions from its beginnings to the present. Personalities, issues, and conflicts are analysed with meticulous care.

"The two authors of this book, Wm. Tattam and Dr. Jerry Lembcke are to be congratulated for a job well done. They ha …

A book of long poems about being on the edge, the cost of life and death, and loving.

One powerful taboo that still remains in our literature today is the taboo against discussing our most central daily experience: working for a living.

Poet and editor Tom Wayman believes that with the recent appearance of a new kind of work writing we have begun at last to see the end of this limitation. In his essays gathered in Inside Job Wayman c …

The second five issues of the west coast's own journal Raincoast Chronicles collected in one fascinating volume.

PLUS... a spectacular full-colour selection featuring paintings of the BC coast by world-renowned artist E.J. Hughes.

Over thirty historical articles along with fiction, poetry, reviews, remarkable photographs and beautiful line drawings. …

Peter Trower is a poet known for what he writes about: the lives of west coast loggers, the rural culture of the B.C. Coast, skidroad life in Vancouver, and his personal love of the western landscape. He has established himself as a unique voice, lyircal and regional, a Canadian original. Goosequill Snags is the first major collection of poems sinc …

An exciting first collection of stories by the author of Deep Line, West Country and S'neymous that mixes crisp social realism with long fanciful rambles and terse tales full of poetic symbolism:

"Listen. Hear that tahonk tahonk tahonk out there in the dusk. That sound's Flash Harry's 10-14 Easthope. Timing's out. That's how Flash Harry he run the M …

Time magazine (US) has described Canada's Erickson as a superstar in his field. Iglauer, in her best New Yorker tradition, provides a biographical portrait and a complete survey of Erickson's pioneering projects. There is a 9" x 10.5" format with 138 photographs and 32 pages in full colour. The photos are accompanied by brilliant biographical text …

Pioneer Days is a blend of words and photos that proves British Columbia's history is as interesting as that recorded anywhere else in North America. Every article is true, many written or narrated by those who, 100 or more years ago, lived the experiences they relate. Each volume contains 160 pages, plus some 60,000 words of text and over 200 his …

This is the memoir/novel that so astonished reviewers in 1979. In it Evans faithfully records his own turn-of-the-century Ontario boyhood through the eyes of a nine year old fictional protagonist, Gilbert Egan.

As one of the most remarkable literary feats by a Canadian, O Time In Your Flight delights more and more readers each year with its technica …

First John Skapski was a commercial gillnet fisherman, then he got an MA in creative writing, then he became a lawyer. But he's still a fisherman. One of the finest books to come out of the workplace - piercing, memorable, authentic.

A trilogy of stories by the Edwards family about their fascinating life in the Bella Coola area. Trudy, daughter of Ralph Edwards, continues the Lonesome Lake story. She, her husband and daughter carried on the work with the trumpeter swans that Ralph had begun. The book tells of their life on the isolated farm they built for themselves in the Chil …

A book that has become a west coast institution - articles, stories, poems, drawings covering every imaginable aspect of northwest history and folklore. The first five issues of Raincoast Chronicles, dating back to 1972.

Winner of the first Eaton's British Columbia Book Award, this is the innovative institution at the heart of BC regional publishing …