Ya Ha Tinda
An illustrated history celebrating the 100th anniversary of this historic, working horse ranch located along the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies.
The story of the Ya Ha Tinda and its evolution into the only continuously operating federal government horse ranch in Canada is much more than the story of the people who worked and lived there. Its …
Crerar’s Lieutenants
In 1943, General Harry Crerar noted that there was still much confusion as to “what constitutes an ‘Officer.’” His words reflected the preoccupation of army officials with inventing an ideal officer who would not only meet the demands of war but also conform to notions of social class and masculinity. Drawing on a wide range of sources and …
Blood, Sweat, and Fear
Going postal. We think of the rogue employee who snaps. But in Blood, Sweat, and Fear, Jeremy Milloy demonstrates that workplace violence never occurs in isolation. Using violence as a lens, he provides fresh and original insights into the everyday workings of capitalism, class conflict, race, and gender in the United States and Canada of the late …
It Can Be Done
"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 …
Griffintown
This vibrant biography of Griffintown, an inner-city Montreal neighbourhood, brings to life the history of Irish identity in the legendary enclave. As Irish immigration dwindled by the late nineteenth century, Irish culture in the city became diasporic, reflecting an imagined homeland. Focusing on the power of memory to shape community, Matthew Bar …
Louis Riel
Louis Riel, prophet of the new world and founder of the Canadian province of Manitoba, has challenged Canadian politics, history and religion since the early years of Confederation. In Canada’s most important and controversial state trial, Riel was found guilty of “high treason,” sentenced to hang and executed on November 16, 1885. With 2017 …
National Manhood and the Creation of Modern Quebec
This perceptive intellectual history explores the role of manhood in French Canadian culture and nationalism. In the late nineteenth century, Quebec was still an agrarian society, and masculinity was rooted in the land and the family and informed by Catholic principles of piety and self-restraint. As the industrial era took hold, a new model of man …
The Land on Which We Live
Legendary tales of pioneers and adventurers cultivating BC's Cariboo Plateau in between the 19th and 20th century. The romantic backwoods landscape known as the North Bonaparte, stretches east from 70 Mile House to Bridge Lake and is full of small remote ranches, hidden abandoned homesteads, and rutted roads leading to graves in forgotten meadows. …
Dominion of Race
How has race shaped Canada’s international encounters and its role in the world? In Dominion of Race, leading scholars demonstrate the necessity of placing race at the centre of the narratives of Canadian international history. Destabilizing conventional understandings of Canada in the world, they expose how race-thinking has informed priorities …
Infidels and the Damn Churches
British Columbia is at the forefront of a secularizing movement in the English-speaking world. Nearly half its residents claim no religious affiliation, and the province has the highest rate of unbelief or religious indifference in Canada. Infidels and the Damn Churches explores the historical roots of this phenomenon from the 1880s to the First Wo …
In Defence of Home Places
As environmental deterioration became a major social and political issue near the end of the twentieth century, activists in Nova Scotia stood together to defend the places they called home. Political radicals and conservatives alike worked to achieve legislative and social success, even as they disagreed over fundamental principles. In Defence of …
British Columbia by the Road
In British Columbia by the Road, Ben Bradley takes readers on an unprecedented journey through the history of roads, highways, and motoring in British Columbia’s Interior, a remote landscape composed of plateaus and interlocking valleys, soaring mountains and treacherous passes.
Challenging the idea that the automobile offered travellers the free …
Mark Bate
An insightful look at the first mayor of Nanaimo, BC, drawing heavily on his prolific and insightful written observations.
Mark Bate, elected Nanaimo’s first mayor in 1875, was a renaissance man. He loved music, writing, literature, the outdoors, community affairs, and of course politics. Bate served as mayor for sixteen terms—most by acclamati …
The Year Canadians Lost Their Minds and Found Their Country
At first, Canadians showed little interest in marking the centennial. The announcement of a federal program to plan the celebration was met with initial indifference. After all, the event to be celebrated was spectacularly uninteresting—the nation was founded not in blood and revolution, but by discussion and negotiation, bewhiskered men in ninet …
Blood, Sweat, and Fear
Finalist, Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award
During his forty-two-year-career he helped detectives in Vancouver, Victoria, and throughout BC solve hit-and-runs, safe-crackings, and some of the most sensational murder cases of the 20th century. Vance was constantly called to crime scenes and to testify in court because of his skills in serolo …
Finding John Rae
This creative nonfiction biography of the celebrated Arctic explorer Dr. John Rae begins in 1854 when, on a mapping expedition to the Boothia Peninsula, Rae discovers the missing link in the Northwest Passage. On the same trip, a chance encounter with an Inuit hunter leads him to uncover the tragic fate that befell the officers and crew of the long …
Engaging the Line
For decades, people living in adjacent communities along the Canada–US border enjoyed close social and economic relationships with their neighbours across the line. The introduction of new security measures during the First World War threatened this way of life by restricting the movement of people and goods across the border. Many Canadians rese …
From the Klondike to Berlin
"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 …
The Nor'Wester
This gripping novel for young readers begins in 1805, when fifteen-year-old Duncan Scott and his sister Libby lose their parents in a Glasgow cotton mill fire. Their tragedy is compounded when, through one reckless act of grief, the Scott children become fugitives as well as orphans, and must flee Scotland. Across the border in England, Duncan and …
Chilcotin Chronicles
A collection of historical stories about the early indigenous people, settlers, trappers, and adventurers of BC's Cariboo Chilcotin. A compilation of stories that meld both culture and bloodlines, Chilcotin Chronicles by Sage Birchwater is set in the wild and untamed country of central British Columbia's Chilcotin Plateau. West of the Fraser River, …
The Promise of Paradise
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 …
How Deep Is the Lake
Curious about the previous inhabitants of the lake community where her family has vacationed for over one hundred years, author Shelley O’Callaghan starts researching and writing about the area. But what begins as a personal journey of one woman’s relationship to the land and her desire to uncover the history of her family’s remote cabin, soo …
White Settler Reserve
In 1875, the Canadian government created a reserve for Icelandic immigrants on the southwest shore of Lake Winnipeg. Hoping for a better life in Canada, many of the New Iceland colonists found only hardship, disappointment, or death. Those who survived scurvy and smallpox faced crop failure, internal dissension, and severe flooding that nearly ende …
Creating Canada’s Peacekeeping Past
Creating Canada’s Peacekeeping Past illuminates how Canada’s participation in the United Nations’ peacekeeping efforts from 1956 to 1997 was used as a symbol of national identity – in Quebec and the rest of the country. Delving into four decades’ worth of documentaries, newspaper coverage, textbooks, political rhetoric, and more, Colin Mc …
Spirit Builders
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 …
Time Travel
In the 1960s, Canadians could step through time to eighteenth-century trading posts or nineteenth-century pioneer towns. These living history museums promised authentic reconstructions of the past but, as Time Travel shows, they revealed more about mid-twentieth-century interests and perceptions of history than they reflected historical fact. These …
From Left to Right
In From Left to Right, Brian Thorn explores what motivated Canadian women to become politically engaged in the 1940s and ’50s. Although women in these decades are often depicted as being trapped in the suburbs, they joined diverse political parties, including the CCF, Social Credit, and the Communist Party of Canada. Thorn argues, controversially …
The Secular Northwest
The image of a rough frontier – where working men were tempted away from church on Sundays by more profane concerns – was perpetuated by postwar religious leaders troubled by the decline in church involvement. Tina Block debunks the myth of a godless frontier, revealing a Pacific Northwest that rejected organized religion – but not necessaril …
The Valiant Nellie McClung
Although her name today is synonymous with the women’s suffrage movement in Canada, Nellie McClung’s long and varied career covered several fields—from social activist to elected politician, from novelist to journalist. McClung was instrumental in Canadian women gaining the right to vote before their British and American counterparts—2016 m …
Trudeaumania
In 1968, Canadians dared to take a chance on a new kind of politician. Pierre Trudeau became the leader of the Liberal Party in April and two months later won the federal election. His meteoric rise to power was driven by Trudeaumania, an explosive mix of passion and fear fueled by media hype and nationalist ambition. This book traces what happened …
Capturing Hill 70
In August 1917, the Canadian Corps captured Hill 70, a vital piece of ground just north of the French industrial town of Lens. The Canadians suffered some 5,400 casualties and defeated three days of determined German counter attacks. This spectacularly successful but shockingly costly battle was as innovative as Vimy, yet only a handful of Canadian …
The Queen of the North Disaster
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 …
All the Fine Young Eagles
"Based on extensive interviewing, this is what used to be called a cracking good read, and Bashow, a Canadian Forces fighter pilot himself, can understand the emotions and reactions of his forebears."
--Quill & Quire
During the six years of the Second World War, Canadian fighter pilots flew and fought with great distinction in every theatre of war to …
