In this humorous and refreshing collection of short stories, David Thompson reveals the charm and grit of life in the Yukon. Talking at the Woodpile is a masterful blend of fact and fiction, history and the contemporary and intriguing stories that begin as long as 10,000 years ago. In "Frozen in Time," an unsuspecting miner discovers a frozen carca …

Anzel, a widow in her sixties, lives quietly on her small farm with her grandfather, a Carrier elder from Northern BC. Grandpère and Anzel pass the time playing fierce cribbage games, cutting firewood and tending the vegetable garden. As the days pass Grandpère tells his life story, sharing heart-breaking memories: the death of his family in a de …

Life has always been a bit of a gamble for Darcy Christensen. Born in Ocean Falls in 1929, he was raised in Bella Coola Valley and Anahim Lake on the Chilcotin Plateau. The Christensen family were among the earliest white settlers on the Central Coast and West Chilcotin and his maternal grandfather, John Clayton, was the Hudson's Bay Company's last …

In 1967, in celebration of Canada's 100th birthday, Les Voyageurs left Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, in ten 26-foot canoes. These one hundred gallant men, representing eight provinces and two territories, travelled 5,286 kilometres to Expo '67 in Montreal. The trip took them across such major lakes as Winnipeg, Lake of the Woods, Superior, Nipissi …

The junction of Highways 20 and 97 forms a rough right angle around which lies the city of Williams Lake. These are the coordinates by which Christian Petersen's fiction can be charted. From the building of the Gaol at Soda Creek to ruminations on the origins of the Barkerville fire, All Those Drawn to Me explores the unpredictable, romantic and sp …

When 25-year-old Jo climbed down the ramp of the freighter Canadian Star to set foot in Vancouver, BC, in the summer of 1967, she'd never heard of log salvaging. But within two-and-a-half years, the immigrant from England would quit her teaching job and join forces with one of the most enigmatic salvagers of the Sunshine Coast. Dick and Jo Hammond …

Ambulance lights flash as a baby is born on a busy city street, pine beetles paint forests a palette of new colours, a young boy faces a watery death under the ice of a frozen lake, and a mother stands in a bathtub at midnight wearing only her gumboots. In this anthology of new writing, women poets from Northern BC share their refreshing, intriguin …

There is an epidemic of violence against women in Canada and the world. For many women physical and sexual assault, or the threat of such violence, is a daily reality. Walk Myself Home is an anthology of poetry, fiction, nonfiction and oral interviews on the subject of violence against women including contributions by Kate Braid, Yasuko Thahn and S …

On a foggy evening in November 1905, 48-year-old Thomas Jackson returned to his home on Melville Street in Vancouver after nine months of prospecting north of the Skeena. Jackson was happy because he had made an important gold strike. Four days later he was dead from strychnine poisoning. Any of the other four people living in the house on Melvill …

The story of the railway has never been told in a more charming voice as in these letters by Bernice Medbury Martin who married railroader Leslie Martin in 1912 and arrived in Prince Rupert at the height of rock blasting and railroad building. Lonely for her family in Wisconsin, Bernice wrote frequent letters home in which she described in striking …

In 1930, Emily Carr met Georgia O'Keeffe at an exhibition of O'Keeffe's paintings in New York. Inspired by the idea of a bond between these two powerful painters, award-winning poet Kate Braid has expanded that momentary meeting into a passionate, revolutionary friendship. In Georgia O'Keeffe's voice, she envisions what might have happened if the t …

In 1971 Tor Forsberg was twenty-three and her life was at a crossroads. Having returned to Watson Lake in the Yukon after five years in Montreal, she found her art career at a standstill and the party life of a small town much too alluring. Then one day after a particularly wild night, she bumped into Lynch Callison, the father of an old boyfriend. …

In his second book, Wake-Up Call, Sterling Haynes begins by telling us that at the age of seventy a left hemisphere stroke rearranged his brain. “My right creative side took over and I started to write poetry and humour. I was left with a partially paralyzed right foot, but a writer’s creative right brain. I think I got the better of the deal, …

Understories explores the meeting of the natural, suburban and inner-city experiences of Prince George. These poems look beneath the daily observations of a place jostled between stripmalls and pubs, the university and the mill, and a landscape that presses in at every corner, revealing a sometimes gritty underside. Al Rempel's poetry kicks the sno …

Gumption & Grit is the first in a brand new series being introduced by Caitlin Press which will showcase women of BC: their lives, their successes, their history.

In 2002 the Williams Lake Women's Contact Society posted a request for pioneer stories of the women of the Cariboo Chilcotin. What they received was an overwhelming number of tales of h …

Memorials and the yearning to re-create the past permeate Valley Sutra, award-winning poet Kuldip Gill's new collection. The voices of East Indian communities and families speak up, reminding us that history is not just what is recorded in documents and ledgers, but is a mixture of smells, tastes and textures: the steam of hot rotis rising from met …

In 1934 international entrepreneur and filmmaker Charles Bedeaux hired a team of Canadian men to trail blaze from Edmonton, Alberta, to Telegraph Creek, BC. What started out as adventure for Carl Davidson and Bob Beattie soon became a treacherous and heartbreaking journey. While Bedeaux hob-nobbed with Europe's elite in Paris, Beattie and Davidson …

In the spring of 2007 the Canadian Forces and the Canadian Rangers, the regiment responsible for providing a military presence in isolated communities, set out on a treacherous journey across jagged sea ice and over steep and hostile terrain. Their mission was to travel over two thousand kilometres by snowmobile from Resolute to the Canadian Forces …

In Sarah Robert's debut collection Wax Boats, a rural island community comes to life in action-packed, evocative tales. Cougar ladies fight the BC wilderness and the inevitable extinction of their peaceful island lives. An expectant mother turns to Native traditions to guide her through a safe delivery. A Boy Scout troupe rescues their own leader, …

In 1974 Lorne Dufour moved to Alkali Lake Reserve, a Shuswap community near Williams Lake in British Columbia, to help reopen the local elementary school. Like many First Nation communities across Canada, Alkali Lake had been ravaged by decades of residential schools and forced religion. Colonialism had robbed them of their language and culture and …

Jeremy Stewart's first book, (flood basement, is a young poet's search for and discovery of his place in the local landscape. The poet is haunted by the legacy of colonialism and propelled by the struggles of a community seeking its own identity. (flood basement is the raw, shocking and innocent journey of an emerging artist in a seemingly inflexib …

Enter the Chrysanthemum is a luminous collection of poems about family, love and loss. Employing precise imagery and concise language, Lam plumbs and mines ordinary events and experiences to find a central core of poetic insight and sometimes harrowing truth. Whether written from the vantage point of a young child observing her parents, a single pa …

Here is the definitive fly fisher's guide to BC's Central Interior. Brian Smith writes about the allure of BC's wild rainbow trout that attracts fly fishers from all over the world. He describes in extraordinary detail the fabled Blackwater, Stellako and Crooked rivers and the still waters of the Dragon, Hobson, Hart and Wicheeda, renowned trophy l …

Many Canadians say that British Columbia is the zaniest political province. It's too diverse, too polarized - geographically, demographically and ideologically. But the British Columbia political arena is lively, and it has often led the way in electing women to parliaments - as respected spokespeople for the public and as equal people.

In Seeking B …

Betsy Trumpener's raw fiction hits quickly, cuts deeply and lingers on in the imagination. Her urgent, unique voice pushes fiction north of what's real. The Butcher of Penetang carves up rare slices of savoury stories that are both tough and delicious. A child missing in a dangerous part of town; a draft dodger with bloody hands; a robber armed wit …

"Selected for Poetry in Transit 2009", A Well-Mannered Storm is an exploration of loose correspondence between one of Canada's greatest musicians, Glenn Gould, and "K," an admiring fan. Braid weaves an intimate dynamic as K struggles with the loss of her hearing in one ear, finding her greatest comfort in Gould's music--particularly when he plays …

In Ken Belford's fifth book of poetry he takes us on a journey through Canada's roadless north where he has discovered a third world gaze, looking out at industrialism and its impact on a region abundant in resources and natural beauty. Lan(d)guage is an unsentimental and non-reactionary perspective, a deep investigation of the psychology of both t …

In 1981, John Grain's passion for the outdoors led him to create a consortium that purchased Glimpse Lake Lodge, a neglected fishing camp near Merritt, BC. The discovery of a tattered diary inspired him to write Flylines & Fishtales before time and age erased the events completely or exaggerated them beyond belief. It combines a brief history of th …

Finding Ft. George is the poetic record of Rob Budde's growing love of Prince George and the Cariboo north-central region of BC. The poems are an act of discovery and they describe the various social, political, historical and environmental systems that Budde encounters with the eye of a patient, astute observer. Engaging in the language of locatio …

Marita Dachsel's debut collection is a visceral exploration of the moments of life that stand out in the pages of a family album and the intervals of memory. She playfully and poignantly documents first crushes, first times, weddings and trips across town, across water, and across continents. Dachsel perceptively sprinkles these moments with the de …

"What a wonderful, fresh voice Gillian Wigmore brings to the page. These wise poems know the push and pull within family. They reveal the tender truths behind the rough edges of small-town life. Her voice resonates with authenticity, and whether she is writing about a near drowning or ice fishing, she is ultimately writing about the complications o …

Forbidding canyons, raging rapids and menacing rocks -- this was the daily challenge that faced whitewater men who worked the wild rivers and creeks to bring freight and supplies to northern BC in the years before the Grand Trunk Railway. In particular, the Grand Canyon of British Columbia's Fraser River was infamous for swallowing at least 200 luc …

Mount Slesse, a jagged 2,500-metre peak near Chilliwack BC known locally as "The Fang," lived up to its evil reputation on December 9, 1956, when Trans Canada Airlines Flight 810 slammed into it, killing all 62 aboard. For five months nobody knew what happened. Flight 810 had just disappeared into the night. Adding to the sensation was the fact tha …

Insatiable traveller Vivien Lougheed has hiked many of the world's most renowned peaks, including the Andes and the Himalayas, and published several books detailing her adventures. Now, with From the Chilcotin to the Chilkoot: Selected Hikes of Northern British Columbia, she turns her attention to the northern woods and the place she calls home. Hi …

The reflective poems in Threadbare Like Lace comment on the world as Jacqueline Baldwin has experienced it. She is an expatriate New Zealander who has lived and worked in such far-flung places as Montreal and the remote Robson Valley in the Canadian Rockies. Her poems are a mediation between the private and public worlds and are reminiscent of many …

Jack Boudreau, author of the bestselling Crazy Man's Creek and Grizzly Bear Mountain, is back with another wild and wooly, scarcely believable but nevertheless true tale of misadventure in British Columbia's northern wilderness. Wild and Free, which Boudreau says is his best book yet, tells the stories of two of Canada's most legendary mountain men …

Considered one of British Columbia's most famous pioneer surveyors, Frank Swannell surveyed much of northern BC for the provincial government between 1908 and 1914, taking many striking photographs of the area and its people. Together with his journal, these images constitute the best record of the region during this period of enormous transition. …

Set in the wild and wonderful Kootenay region of British Columbia, this novel probes the on-going battle between environmentalists and loggers over the forests both groups love -- but for very different reasons. Author Steve Anderson has evenly divided the debate, allowing his characters to fully present their perspectives and the reader to decide …

In her second volume of poetry, acclaimed writer Jacqueline Baldwin examines life in the North as a poet, feminist and environmentalist.

For four decades--1952 to 1992--the town of Cassiar thrived in the northern wilderness. Spawned by the post-World War II demand for asbestos and killed, in part, by the growing concerns over asbestosis, the story of Cassiar is the story of the the quintessential company town. People of diverse backgrounds find themselves thrown together in the wild …

Jack's fourth book documents the amazing adventures of the Bowden family in the rugged wilderness of British Columbia's interior. It is largely based on 40 years of diaries kept by Liza Bowden.

Beginning his medical practice in the wild frontier town of Williams Lake, the author reflects on his life, which takes him through northern Canada, Alabama, Africa and Central America.

With stunning photographs and the Elders' stories, author Wim Tewinkel records the lives lead by twenty-one elders of the Interior Salish people. They share with the author the highlights of their lives -- from being a bomber in World War II to being a great-grandmother and master bead worker. Tewinkel's photographic portraits capture both the dept …

Champion of the backwoods, Jack Boudreau entertains with more stories from the wilds of British Columbia. Concentrating on the post-Second World War years, Jack tells us of how men survived, flourished and perished in the northern bush. In this--his third best-seller--Jack tells us of adventures gone awry, bizarre encounters with creatures of the w …

The Adventures of Grey-Dawn is the first in a series of books that brings the knowledge and wisdom of ancient native legends into a new era with renewed life. Metis legends come alive in this tale of courage and perseverance. Grey-Dawn--an outcast from his people because of his eye colour--and his friends Eagle, Moose and Owl make the journey to th …

Chasing Their Dreams recreates the hardships early Chinese settlers faced in Northwestern British Columbia: harsh land and climate, little or no financial resources, deep-set prejudice and sometimes racial violence.

Panning for gold, making ties for the railroad, canning fish, running laundries and restaurants, these people persevered despite persec …

Bal Sethi pens his reflections on all that is happening around him with wisdom and a (sometimes) heavy heart. An example is the poem "Home for the Holidays" where the narrator discovers that his wife has been unfaithful. Yet Bal never seems to lose hope for the world. This is a truly beautiful compilation of poetry concerning all that matters most …

Starting with his first patient, a horse, Ben Dlin discovered that rural doctors are called upon to do things that he never dreamed of when he was an intern.

"I learned that I had to be prepared to do anything, any time and any place, without regard for the hour, the inconvenience, the exhaustion and the absence of assistance."

Set in the post-war pe …

Hot on the heels of his best seller, Crazy Man's Creek, Jack Boudreau writes his sequel. We go back to the small community of Penny, learn what rural kids did to amuse themselves--mother wouldn't approve--and then look over Jack's shoulder as he develops his fascination with the grizzly bear, first as a hunter, then as a photographer.The grizzly be …

It began in childhood, when Bruce was a little distant, and progressed into adolescence when Bruce was withdrawn and aggressive but it wasn't until he attempted suicide that the root of Bruce's behaviour was discovered--schizophrenia. After years of successful and unsuccessful treatments, setbacks and progressions, institutionalization and independ …