Nation-states have seen the rise of religious pluralism within their borders, brought about by global migration and the challenge of radical religious movements. This book explores the meaning of secularism and religious freedom in these new contexts. The contributors chart the impact of globalization, the varying forms of secularism in Western sta …

Winner of a 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards Bronze Medal

One size fits all does not apply to pregnancy and childbirth. Each one is different, unique, and comes with its share of pleasure and pain. But how does one prepare for an unexpected loss of a pregnancy or hoped-for baby? In How to Expect What You’re Not Expecting, writers share their …

Often when a religious minority challenges mainstream customs, the phrase “reasonable accommodation” is at the centre of the ensuing debate. But does reasonable accommodation achieve its goal of integrating the rights of religious minorities with those of mainstream society, or does it really emphasize inequality? Reasonable Accommodation seeks …

In a series of playful and startling prose meditations, celebrated writer Lorna Crozier brings her rapt attention to the small matter of household objects: everything from doorknobs, washing machines, rakes, and zippers to the kitchen sink.

Operating as a sort of literary detective, she examines the mystery of the everyday, seeking the essence of ea …

At age eighty, Tony Taylor journeys from Sydney, Australia, to British Columbia to fish the Cowichan River with his eight-year-old grandson, Ned. The trip is an opportunity for Tony to return to a landscape that has had a profound effect on his life and his way of thinking, and to share this place with his grandson. As Tony teaches Ned the patient …

History in BC grows profusely and luxuriantly, but with odd undergrowth," observed historian J.M.S. Careless many years ago. This claim is fully borne out by this impressive anthology of some of the province's most distinguished historians, geographers, and writers gleaned from over forty years of British Columbia's leading scholarly journal, BC St …

The Light Through the Trees is a remarkable and deeply wise reflection on land, farming, a sense of place, connecting with nature and what it means to live on this earth. As a third-generation farmer, the author's roots go deep into the land but her work also captures her thoughts on such current issues as the environment, environmental identity, a …

Christine Allen and Michael Kluckner's portrayal of life on Killara Farm moves thoughtfully through a year of gardening with a rich, detailed narrative that evokes the many pleasures of life in rural Southwestern BC.

Allen, a master gardener, is also a lyrical writer, expressing the tiny details of life on the farm--the "winter jasmine, doggedly flo …

Publishing sensation and popular Global TV personality Mike McCardell returns with a new collection of hilarious, heartwarming and honest stories. These are stories of the defender of a handicapped parking spot, a woman who has delivered homemade Valentine cards to neighbours for twenty years, and love between a widower and a woman who had never be …

Home front. It’s hard to separate that word from war. In the First and Second World Wars, the home front was a clear entity and location: if you weren’t on the frontlines, you were on the home front. But during current times of peacekeeping, peacemaking and armed interventions, the notion of home front seems to comprise only those who are in so …

Winner, City of Victoria Butler Book Prize

Finalist, Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction

Nominated for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction

Afflictions & Departures is a collection of first-person experiential essays. However, this is not the realm of traditional memoir—in addition to incidents and feelings recaptured from memory …

In this compilation of David Suzuki's latest thoughts and writings, the renowned scientist, author, and broadcaster explores the myriad environmental challenges the world faces and their interconnected causes. In doing so, Suzuki shows that understanding the causes—and recognizing that everything in nature, including us, is interconnected—is cruc …

Few men have been as set on isolated adventures and as passionate about the wild landscape of Canada as R.M. Patterson. He spent over 30 years in exploration, from northern rivers such as the Nahanni and the Liard, to the foothills of the Rockies, and he recorded his discoveries in vivid words and breathtaking photographs along the way. His memorab …

Living is a process of continuous transformation: we have been embryos, children, adolescents, thin, fat, sick, better again. And as humans, we are always at odds with at least one part of our bodies. Have we inherited the family nose? Is there nothing to be done for our finicky stomach or our limp hair?

In the Flesh is an intelligent, witty, and pr …

The 13 short pieces featured in Passionate Gardener roam widely and wildly, examining, among other things, common idiosyncrasies and the collective chaos of garden clubs, the host of psychopathologies that afflict "plants people," and obsessive-compulsive behavior such as the chronic moving of plants. This is an irreverent exploration of the fierce …

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Curious by Nature showcases Candace Savage's exploration of the varied ways we relate to wildlife, from our retelling of fairytales about the big, bad wolf to our struggles to find a balance between harvesting trees and allowing grizzly bears the space to roam. Creating a livable future for ourselves and for other species calls for both knowledge …

Bob Edwards, the Great White North's equivalent to H. L. Mencken, remains a singular figure in Canadian journalism. His newspapers, published in Wetaskiwin, Leduc, High River, Strathcona, Winnipeg, Port Arthur, and most famously Calgary, skewered politics, society, and business leaders with a fearlessness and outrageousness rarely seen then, now, o …

When the Mayan Calendar runs out on December 21st, 2012, all manner of possible disasters will befall the earth, from collision with a rogue planet to biblical flooding, to attacks by swarms of gnats. But just because life as we know it will come to an end, it doesn't mean you can’t survive and even prosper financially in the post-apocalyptic worl …

Northwest Coast peoples were maritime engineers who mastered the art of building dugout canoes from gigantic red cedars, using only tools made from bone, stone, and wood. Ubiquitous, these elegant craft were used for everyday and ceremonial purposes, for fishing, hunting and trading, for feasting and potlatching, and in warfare—they were the keys …

An ultra-fan whose home is a shrine to the Vancouver Canucks thinks he may have the answer to the team's shocking collapse in the 2011 playoffs; a homeless man who has become a caring mainstay at the Downtown Eastside shelter run by the First United Church, and many anecdotes of generosity among people who have nothing are only a few of the inspira …

Universal stories of longing and belonging.

Our quest for origin and, by extension, identity is universal to the human experience. For the twenty-five contributors to Somebody’s Child, the topic of adoption is not—and perhaps never can be—a neutral issue. With unique courage, each of them discusses their experience of the adoption process. Som …

Universal stories of longing and belonging.

Our quest for origin and, by extension, identity is universal to the human experience. For the twenty-five contributors to Somebody’s Child, the topic of adoption is not—and perhaps never can be—a neutral issue. With unique courage, each of them discusses their experience of the adoption process. Som …

Winner of the Governor General's award for Nonfiction

In this wry, sensual, and entertaining journey into the greatest lake country on earth, Allan Casey examines how lakes provide an open door to wilderness for average people, how our deepest relationships with nature may be forged on their shores. It is a tale of hope and threat combined, for our …

For twenty years, Ian McAllister has explored the rugged north coast of British Columbia, known as the Great Bear Rainforest, one of the last places on the planet where wolves live in an undisturbed way. This book describes McAllister's experiences over that period following two packs of wolves, one that dominates the extreme outer coastal islands, …

In her best-selling first book, Home: Tales of a Heritage Farm (2005), Anny Scoones introduced readers to historic Glamorgan Farm. In Home and Away, Anny presents more stories about the joys and sorrows, excitements and mishaps and also takes readers farther afield, sharing with them her travels to other parts of Canada, to New York and to such pla …

"Exploded View contains various stairways into the past, sightings of a childhood heart...gracefully caught and intricately mapped..." -- Michael Ondaatje

The exploded view -- a diagram that shows how each component of an object relates to the whole -- is usually thought of in connection with carburetors or washing machines. In these pages, author J …

"...a warm, wise, witty response to Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck." -- Huffington Post

"I Feel Great About My Hands sends a strong and supportive message about the future." -- Winnipeg Free Press

With wisdom and humour, forty-one remarkable, mature women over 50 revel in the joys of aging.

Nora Ephron struck a chord with I Feel Bad about My …

Since 9/11, national governments in the global North have struggled to govern populations and manage cross-border traffic without building new barriers to trade. What does citizenship mean in an era of heightened tension between global capitalism and the nation-state? Building on Foucault’s concept of biopolitics and an examination of national bo …

Arthur Black's voice is unmistakable on the radio and on the page. His is the voice of reason, with a generous helping of funny; the voice that scolds us for our universal human quirks, but who says it with the tone and words that make us laugh out loud at ourselves and our neighbours.

A Chip Off the Old Black, Black's latest collection of stories …

Following the lead of her earlier bestselling books, Anny Scoones once again charms and inspires readers with her insights and observations. Using her experiences on a farm as a backdrop, Anny muses on the environment, fate, time and aging.

In this collection of personal memoirs, Anny reaches deeper into what nature, rural life and agriculture mea …

In this expanded version of an inspiring speech delivered in December 2009, David Suzuki reflects on how we got where we are today and presents his vision for a better future. In his living memory, Suzuki has witnessed cataclysmic changes in society and our relationship with the planet: the doubling of the world’s population, our increased ecolog …

This book is a lyrical testament to a great love affair between the writer and his region. In A Walk with the Rainy Sisters, one of British Columbia's favourite authors writes with passion about his favourite topic--the geography of British Columbia. Stephen Hume guides readers through the natural world, moving from the thin, cold air of British Co …

In this fascinating collection Canada's most entertaining sportswriter revisits the glories of a career following sporting events and personalities that spanned five decades. Name any memorable event--from Canada-Russia 1972 to Rick Hansen's Man in Motion tour--or any famous name from Wayne Gretzky to Muhammad Ali to the San Diego Chicken, and Jim …

Mike McCardell is an institution in BC television with his anti-news stories of oddball inspiration that close the News Hour on Global BC. Lately he has become a publishing institution as well with his series of heartwarming books full of stories about the ways in which ordinary people cope with extraordinary challenges. Fresh
from 2009's bestsell …

'A Room in the City' is a self-revelatory journey into a world of darkness and light, a place of blatant lies and transcendent truths. Photographer Gabor Gasztonyi presents a Vancouver with deep roots in an otherwise forgotten past, and an East End populated by people seeking shelter, safety, and love in extreme social conditions. 'A Room in the Ci …

Accomplished novelist, satirist, and garden writer Des Kennedy describes his life journey from a childhood of strict Irish Catholicism in England to a charmed existence amid the gardens of his Gulf Island home in British Columbia. From his First Holy Communion to his days as a young seminarian, through the Beat poetry scene in New York and the soci …

Bird-watching is one of the most popular recreational activities in North America — North American birders are estimated to spend as much as $32 billion annually. Many of the world's greatest natural history writers have penned eloquent, informative and profound essays about these alluring creatures. This timeless evocation of our passion for bird …

It is generally known that the West Coast's once-great commercial fishing industry has fallen on hard times, but as Alan Haig-Brown demonstrates in this new book, reports of its demise are exaggerated. A veteran of the industry himself, Haig-Brown here offers a "state of the industry" report, discovering pockets of surprising activity among the vi …

Unique among the artist's published works for its combination of words and drawings, this charming addition to the Emily Carr Library presents a poignant yet wry account of her convalescence in the English countryside.

While studying at the Westminster School of Art in London, England, Emily Carr so undermined her health by overwork that she was sen …

The legendary Emily Carr was acclaimed as both an artist and a writer. Her first book, Klee Wyck, won the presitigious Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction in 1941.

The Book of Small is a collection of thirty-six word sketches in which Emily Carr relates anecdotes about her life as a young girl in the frontier town of Victoria. She n …

Completed just before Emily Carr died in 1945, Growing Pains tells the story of her life, beginning with her girlhood in pioneer Victoria and going on to her training as an artist in San Francisco, England and France. She writes about the frustration she felt at the rejection of her art by Canadians, of the years of despair when she stopped paintin …