The Law and the Lawless
At the end of the nineteenth century, Canada’s prairies were still sparsely populated. Crimes such as horse theft, random murders, and prison escapes were the order of the day, and the North West Mounted Police continued to rely on their horses, their contacts, and their wits to apprehend the culprits. By the mid-1930s, a sea change in technology …
Arctic Ambitions
Captain James Cook is justly famous for his explorations of the southern Pacific Ocean, but the exploration of the northern Pacific and the Arctic are equally significant. On his third and final great voyage, Cook surveyed the northwest American coast hoping to find the legendary Northwest Passage. While dreams of a passage proved illusory, Cook’ …
From Classroom to Battlefield
In August 1914, Canada found itself jolted from its splendid isolation by the onrush of a European catastrophe. In Victoria, British Columbia, five hundred youth who had been educated at Victoria High School went to war and were forever changed by the experience.
From Classroom to Battlefield follows the experiences of this cohort through the Second …
Dangerous Spirits
“Highly readable and well researched.” —Canada's History
In the traditional Algonquian world, the windigo is the spirit of selfishness, which can transform a person into a murderous cannibal. Native peoples over a vast stretch of North America—from Virginia in the south to Labrador in the north, from Nova Scotia in the east to Minnesota in …
CHEK Republic
In 2009, Victoria's CHEK-TV became the first employee-owned television station in North America after corporate owner CanWest Global threatened to shut it down. The David-and-Goliath story made national headlines and reawakened a belief in local, independent broadcasting. In the five years since the employee purchase of the station, CHEK has weathe …
History in the Faking
Finalist, Silver Birch Award
Finalist, Manitoba Young Readers' Choice Awards
Finalist, New York State Reading Association Charlotte Award
Life is getting more dismal by the minute in the town of Sultana, Manitoba. Thanks to a dry season that nearly dried up the river, no one wants to camp there anymore. There aren’t enough tourists to keep the …
Henry Hudson
From the era of wooden sailing ships and Europe’s golden age of exploration, the story of famed British navigator Henry Hudson tells a classic tale of courage, ambition, and treachery on the high seas. As the leader of four Arctic voyages in 1607, 1608, 1609, and 1610, Hudson searched in vain for a navigable route through the polar ice that would …
High Peaks Engineering
Building transportation routes through the Rockies is dangerous. It always has been. It is also expensive, labour-intensive, and highly political. But railway and highway construction through the western cordillera succeeded thanks to scientific innovation and sheer human grit. In the nineteenth century, steam locomotives, railways, tunnels, trestl …
Healy's West
Through his incredibly varied fifty-year career, John J. Healy left an indelible mark on the Canadian and American west. At different points in his storied life, Healy was a soldier, a trapper, a prospector, a free trader, an explorer, a horse dealer, a scout, a lawman, a newspaper editor, a speculator, a merchant, a capitalist, a historian, and a …
Haida Gwaii
Haida Gwaii, ancestral home of the Haida First Nation, was once as inaccessible and mysterious as it was beautiful. The tight cluster of islands off British Columbia’s northwest coast remained virtually untouchable for millennia, allowing its people to develop a distinct and exceptional cultural identity that was known and revered across the regi …
Port Alberni
Any community that has ever been labelled a “mill town” carries both the promise of prosperity and the constant threat of collapse, its fortune hinging on a single industry whose performance is as much related to the whims of a global economy as it is to the abundance of a key natural resource. The people of Port Alberni, located deep in Vancou …
The Spanish on the Northwest Coast
They endured the torments of scurvy and the vagaries of deep fogs, adverse winds, and contrary currents. They suffered through appalling quarters and rotting food. They spent years away from their homes and families, never knowing whether they would return. Their orders from Spain might well arrive long after they were needed, six months or longer …
Canoe Crossings
“A comprehensive and well-informed review of canoeing and kayaking in British Columbia.” —BC Studies
Often called one of the Seven Wonders of Canada, the canoe has played a particularly important role in British Columbia. This seemingly simple watercraft allowed coastal First Nations to hunt on the open ocean and early explorers to travel the …
The Game of Our Lives
In this bestselling timeless classic, Peter Gzowski recounts the 1980-81 season he spent travelling around the NHL circuit with the Edmonton Oilers. These were the days when the young Oilers, led by a teenaged Wayne Gretzky, were poised on the edge of greatness, and about to blaze their way into the record books and the consciousness of a nation. W …
Quarantined
Vancouver Island in the late nineteenth century was a major port of entry for people from all walks of life. But for many, the sense of hope that had sustained them through rough sea voyages came to an abrupt halt as soon as they reached land. Quarantined is the heart-wrenching true story of the thousands of forgotten people who arrived on our shor …
Ted Grant
Ted Grant, the undisputed father of Canadian photojournalism, has made a career out of being in the right place at the right time. Over his sixty years in the business, he has immortalized some of the greatest events in history and caught some of the world’s most famous and elusive subjects in rare moments of unaffected humanity. From Pierre Trud …
The Legend of the Buffalo Stone
The Legend of the Buffalo Stone is based on the history of the Blackfoot people—specifically their dependence on the buffalo and how they hunted the great animals on foot before horses were brought to North America—and is retold with the permission and under the advisement of a First Nations scholar and member of the Blackfoot nation.
The story …
Enemy Offshore!
On June 20, 1942, the lighthouse at Estevan Point on Vancouver Island was shelled by the Japanese submarine I-26. It was the first enemy attack on Canadian soil since the War of 1812. But this was only one incident in the incredible and little-known Japanese campaign to terrorize North America’s west coast and mount an invasion through the Aleuti …
The Laird of Fort William
High finance, wilderness adventures, violence, and questionable legal tactics all played important roles in the history of the North West Company. William McGillivray, head of the company from 1804 until 1821, was arguably the most powerful businessman in Canada in the early nineteenth century.
William McGillivray emigrated from the Scottish Highlan …
Gold Panning in British Columbia
“I want to gold pan; I want to strike rich. I’ve been searching for a stream of gold. It’s these fortunes I never win that keep me searching for a stream of gold. And I’m getting old. I keep searching for my stream of gold; and I’m getting close.”
If those words sound like a common refrain, don’t despair. With this newly compiled and …
Cariboo Gold Rush
In 1858, some 30,000 gold seekers stampeded to the Fraser River. Scores perished during the gruelling journey, but some made their fortune and many pressed on northwards to the creeks of the Cariboo. Originally compiled by Art Downs, founder of Heritage House, this is a vivid and detailed account of the first gold strikes, the miners who made them …
Barkerville and the Cariboo Goldfields
The stories of the men and women who dug for gold on Williams Creek are told in this revised and updated edition of a Canadian bestseller.
The legendary town of Barkerville is flourishing today, just as it did more than 150 years ago, but this time under the care of professional and amateur historians. Richard Thomas Wright peels back the pages of h …
Rum-runners and Renegades
On October 1, 1917, prohibition came into effect in the province of British Columbia. Washington and Oregon had gone dry the previous year. The ban on liquor sales led to deadly conflict and legal chaos in the Pacific Northwest, and the legacy of those “booze battles” continues into the 21st century.
Rich Mole introduced readers to West Coast pr …
Sam Steele and the Northwest Rebellion
In the spring of 1885, it appeared that war was about to set the Canadian West aflame. Louis Riel had established a Metis provisional government at Batoche, and the Cree, led by war chief Wandering Spirit, had killed settlers, taken hostages and forced the capitulation of Fort Pitt. Among the forces marshalled to quell the unrest was an elite scout …
Voices of the Elders
There is a special place on the southeastern shores of Barkley Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It is a magnificent landscape of rocky cliffs fronting onto the wild Pacific Ocean, sheltered beaches, lakes, mountains and forests. Since the beginning of time, it has been the ancestral home of the Huu-ay-aht First Nation.
Drawing directly …
Frontier Cowboys and the Great Divide
Despite being neighbouring provinces with long ranching histories, British Columbia and Alberta saw their ranching techniques develop quite differently. As most ranching styles were based on one of the two dominant styles in use south of the border, BC ranchers tended to adopt the California style whereas Alberta took its lead from Texas. But the d …
Tales from the Back Bumper
Buckle up your seatbelt and prepare for a ride on the history highway! Christopher Garrish has collected hundreds of facts and photos (not to mention licence plates) in this astonishing assembly of motoring madness. Discover what the earliest motorists in the province used to build their own licence plates; why some licence plate numbers are worth …
Home to the Nechako
The people of the Nechako region are not unfamiliar with hardship, environmental devastation and protecting what they hold dear. June Wood chronicles the history of the Nechako River and its region, covering the construction of the Kenney Dam, which changed forever the flow of the river and its tributaries; the controversial Kemano Completion Proje …
