"At first I'm calm as the trees fall. But suddenly a rat's nest of wood, bent horizontal and cribbed into the trees above us, comes down in a rush of a hundred machine gun snaps. Trees caught in the nest flail around before hitting the ground. Our eyes dart everywhere, trying to keep track of every moment. Trees break free and swing themselves like …

In 1970, twenty-two-year-old Thom Henley left Michigan and drifted around the northwest coast, getting by on odd jobs and advice from even odder characters. He rode the rails, built a squatter shack on a beach, came to be known as "Huckleberry" and embarked on adventures along the West Coast and abroad that, just like his Mark Twain namesake, situa …

"Looking back over thirty years of flying for Okanagan, I see the experience has given me an interesting life. I have never really considered flying as work. It is more a way of life, a way of life that nourishes a free spirit, something that not many jobs can give you. I just cannot imagine anything I would... rather have done or any company I wou …

Vector Sorn—intellectual and athletic prodigy—witnesses the tragic death of his mother when he is just fourteen years old. For the next four years, he does his best to maintain a sense of purpose, and at eighteen sets his sights on Quest University. The night before he departs, his grandparents give him his mother’s journal, a tome filled wit …

Malcolm Bidwell is young, smart, and ambitious—and he’s just been hired by mistake by newly elected Premier Steven Davis as his “go-to guy” for every political mess that needs cleaning up. And there are plenty of messes—from a cabinet minister caught in a vice sting to the premier’s animal cruelty charge for killing a crow. Negotiating …

One day Poppy the Pug meets Smudge the Maine Coon cat at the park, and so begins an extraordinary friendship and a series of adventures ranging from a disastrous coffee-and-play group to a terrible house fire. These eight linked stories also introduce Poppy’s human companion Danielle, cheeky Jackson, Baby Gillian, the dog-hating Wenda, and the dr …

When Emily Patterson arrives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and children in 1862, she finds herself worlds away from Bath, Maine, the staunchly pious township of her birth. Up the remote reaches of Vancouver Island’s Alberni Canal, Emily learns much about self-reliance in a fledgling milltown where pioneer loggers and the native Tsesha …

It is not mere coincidence that two-thirds of the population of British Columbia occupies lands bordering its great inland sea, the Strait of Georgia, and connected waterways collectively known as the North Salish Sea. Averaging forty kilometres in width and stretching some three hundred kilometres from Vancouver and Victoria in the south to Powell …

In response to her brother's sudden death, Cornelia Hoogland explores the shift in gravity his dramatic absence creates. Set on the Salish Sea on Vancouver Island's east coast, Trailer Park Elegy reaches back two thousand years to the First Peoples, as well as to the brother whose delight was summers spent at Deep Bay.

Hoogland looks to her child- …

Living alone in the remote wilderness, Chris Czajkowski has given her dogs a rich life, although not without its difficulties. Often residing in areas accessible only by float plane, the dogs have encountered grizzlies and cougars, slept in the snow, hiked with packs of food and equipment, and occasionally gotten themselves into scrapes, such as be …

Winner of the 2017 Banff Mountain Book Award for Mountain Literature (Non Fiction). Winner of the 2017 Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature. Winner of the National Outdoor Book Awards.

A profound and moving biography of one of the international climbing world's most respected, complicated and reclusive mountaineers.

Voytek Kurtyka remains o …

"Call me Chick. I've been called Chick since I was six years old. If you call me Donald, I'll know you don't know me. In this story, I'll tell you how my life unfolded over the last eight decades: how I got that nickname; how I met and married the most beautiful girl in the world; and how I came to own and operate S & R sawmills in Surrey, British …

When he became a commercial pilot at age nineteen, Bill Grenier never imagined that one day he'd be captain of the largest commercial plane the world had seen, flying the highest profile routes of a proud national carrier. Even less could he have imagined, at age nineteen and with barely a penny to his name, that he'd one day be a wealthy man. But …

The time is the early 1980s. Judith Plant and her new partner, Kip, are ready for a change. Inspired by the charismatic Fred Brown, their communications professor at Simon Fraser University, they join a commune in a remote valley near the Yalakom River, deep in BC's Coast Mountains. Culture Gap: Towards a New World in the Yalakom Valley tells the s …

These popular cruising companions offer charts, tips and data that will enhance the enjoyment and safety of any voyage. The guides feature informative and charming hand-drawn shoreline plans of selected marinas and small boat anchorages, ranging from safe all-weather havens to secluded picnic spots and marine parks. Intended to complement official …

Still compact and the perfect size for travelling, Pacific Reef & Shore has been updated with new species, up-to-date scientific information and many brilliant photographs of the more than 300 common plants and animals found in the intertidal zone off the coast of North America—from the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, to Point Conception, California. E …

A naïve and unbalanced teenage girl with claims of extraterrestrial origins only wants two things in the whole world--family and fame--but she can't help getting entangled in the lives of the eccentric and troubled humans she meets along the way: Alisen Eden, a pill-popping, unemployed waitress who finds the girl strangely familiar; Neil Manson, t …

Though But When We Look Closer is a collection of eighteen stories that approaches its subjects from a parade of landscapes, running through these tales is a singular motif--taking control. Characters find themselves in skins they wish to shed, with vices held close and with voices that must be heard. Whether it be seeking a life in a foreign land, …

Aaron Cordic and Samantha Riske are a couple of twenty-something hypochondriacs living in east-end Toronto. While Aaron works part-time at a bathroom supply store, donning surgical masks, plastic gloves, and a backpack full of sanitary products, Samantha hides herself away in their apartment, tip-toeing around naked and spying on the neighbours. Be …

Nancy Shaw was an award-winning poet, scholar, and critic who was formative in shifting the ground of Canadian literature and poetics. She was co-director of the influential Kootenay School of Writing (KSW) and Writing magazine, was an artist-in-residence at the Western Front in the 1980s, and served as a chair of the Vancouver New Music Society.

In …

"No part of the Empire has given up more completely of her splendid men than Yukon ... Such being the case, the Dominion should not be forgetful of this region--the Empire's farthest North, and take pride in the encouragement of the spirit that dominates the people of the Land of the Midnight Sun."

--Dawson Daily News, May 15, 1918

Nearly a thousan …

A dog's tail is incredibly versatile. They use them to communicate everything from the furious, full-body wiggling "I'm so happy to see you I could burst!" to the tucked-under-the-bum "N-O-O-O! Is that the vet's office we're pulling up to?" They also keep noses warm on cold nights and conveniently sweep food off coffee tables.

Tails Don't Lie 2 is …

The West has long attracted visionaries and schemers from around the world. And no other region in North America can outstrip British Columbia for the number of utopian or intentional settlement attempts in the past 150 years. Andrew Scott delves into the dramatic stories of these fascinating, but often doomed, communities.

From Doukhobor farmers t …

With bright and bold illustrations of the wild and magical West Coast by celebrated artist Roy Henry Vickers, this sturdy board book will delight babies and toddlers as they begin to experience and recognize the sights and sounds of the natural world. Hello Humpback!, a "first words" book, introduces iconic West Coast animals, from hungry sea otter …

"...one of those rare books--a satisfying mystery that has no criminal content whatsoever ... even the most hidebound mystery reader is likely to be delighted by this well-written and intriguing tale."

--The Toronto Star

"...a worthy successor to her short fiction collection ... Woodward interweaves several intriguing narrative threads into this in …

With over forty years since its original printing, and over 30,000 copies sold, this bestselling guide still remains a trusted and much-consulted reference for those interested in identifying, foraging and growing wild plants for food and medicine. Now Some Useful Wild Plants is back in print for a new generation of foragers and herbalists.

Some Us …

The inspiring true story of how one organization has tried to alleviate the struggles faced by indigenous peoples in Canada by building houses and developing livable communities for those in desperate need.

The people who were living here on Turtle Island (North America) before us have been pushed aside from their own land for decades. Mining compa …

This print-on-demand title is available by request from most booksellers.

From bulls to balloons, from horses to helicopters, Working in the Woods chronicles the myriad changes which have swept through west coast logging since Captain Vancouver came ashore to cut spars in the eighteenth century. By far the most authoritative book ever written on th …

Since the 1990s, there has been an upsurge in renewable electricity co-operatives across Canada as hundreds of community organizations have turned to the sun, wind, and rivers as sources of local power generation. Empowering Electricity offers an illuminating analysis of these co-operatives within the context of larger debates over climate change, …

In the next decade, a 60-metre-high wall of compacted earth will stretch more than a kilometre across the main stem of the Peace River, causing the waters behind it to swell into a 93-square-kilometre artificial lake, drowning the best topsoil left in the BC north. The waters will swallow fifty islands and a valley that is home to farmers, ranchers …

Like John Muir, David Pitt-Brooke stepped out for a walk one morning--a long walk of a thousand kilometres or more through the arid valleys of southern interior British Columbia. He went in search of beauty and lost grace in a landscape that has seen decades of development and upheaval. In Crossing Home Ground he reports back, providing a day-by-da …

Gerry St. Germain's story begins in "Petit Canada" on the shores of the Assiniboine, growing up with his two younger sisters, his mother and his father--a shy Metis trapper and construction worker who sometimes struggled to put food on the table. St. Germain was initially troubled in school, scrapping with classmates and often skipping out to shoot …

Few recent events in British Columbia have seized the public mind like the 2006 sinking of the BC Ferries passenger vessel Queen of the North. Across Canada, it was one of the top news stories of the year. In BC it has attained the status of nautical legend. Ten years later, questions are still being asked. How did a ship that sailed the same cours …

Red Robinson details the life and career of Red Robinson, one of Canada's most celebrated pioneers of rock and roll. Robinson began spinning hits while in high school in the early 1950s, laying the foundation for what would become a glamorous, impossible-to-stop and ultimately fulfilling career that has made him a household name west of the Rockies …

Briony, a prairie girl with a disfigured face, is adopted when she is nine by a childless older couple, Dagget and Moll, who appear mysteriously at her orphanage one day. They take her to their remote town of Crowsbeak in northern Saskatchewan, where Briony struggles to fit in. Tormented by her schoolmates for her scarred face and dark skin, and ha …

What does it mean to be a nobody? How does it feel to be a somebody? And why is it so hard to be ourselves? These are the questions at the heart of Nobodies, a darkly comedic collection in which a neurotic teenager experiences his first rejection; a stalker emails her favourite movie star; a young man wages war against God; and an aspiring philosop …

Cell: no service. Email: down. Internet: off. TV: nothing. Radio: static. Communication: minimal. Chaos: unstoppable. Press Any Key to Start. PR hack Tristan Schultz is buried deep in the endless code of Millennial life, slogging away for a major pharmaceutical company in Seattle. Hopelessly drowning in a world of texts, emails, Tweets and status u …

In this dark and gritty crime novel, the vacant Skyward Fairgrounds loom in the background as regional police officers pursue a stolen car and its unpredictable driver. A dangerous, high-speed chase unfolds. A few miles from the frozen highways, relentless Detective Kyle McVeigh pushes the boundaries to arrest local troublemaker Stan Hill; McVeigh …

Mike McCardell has spent his life tracking down thousands upon thousands of stories, from the uplifting to the sobering, from the bizarre to the sublime. As the author of many books and a lifelong reporter, he has stored up a vast collection of anecdotes and is never short of a tale to tell.

With None of This Was Planned, McCardell takes us behind t …

Cell: no service. Email: down. Internet: off. TV: nothing. Radio: static. Communication: minimal. Chaos: unstoppable. Press Any Key to Start. PR hack Tristan Schultz is buried deep in the endless code of Millennial life, slogging away for a major pharmaceutical company in Seattle. Hopelessly drowning in a world of texts, emails, Tweets and status u …

The inspiring story behind today's craft beer revolution is the subject of this lively memoir by Frank Appleton, the English-trained brewmaster who is considered by many to be the father of Canada's craft-brewing movement. Appleton chronicles fifty years in the brewing business, from his early years working for one of the major breweries, to his pa …