In this marriage of memoir and manifesto, Elizabeth May reflects on her extraordinary life and the people and experiences that have formed her and informed her beliefs about democracy, climate change, and other crucial issues facing Canadians. The book traces her development from child activist who warned other children not to eat snow because it c …

Ex-logger and gas station owner Frank White says living to the age of one hundred is not all it's cracked up to be but it has some plusses. When he trundles down to the local shopping centre in Pender Harbour pretty girls hug him and everybody in town seems to be glad he's lived another day. But celebrity has its drawbacks--when he was only fifty a …

"Lane is a poet more of the individual, hard-hitting poem; like physical blows, he wields his pieces like small threats of intense beauty."
--Globe and Mail

Following the success of his award-winning memoir There is a Season (2004) and his bestselling novel Red Dog, Red Dog (2008), Patrick Lane felt his celebrated poetry career might be at an end an …

Canada’s most opinionated dog is reunited with her adoring readers in this handsome tenth-anniversary edition of TouchWood Editions’ bestselling title.

It was ten years ago that this charming book first stole the hearts of dog lovers everywhere. Written from the point of view of Lonesome, a lovable dog of great intellect and character, Lonesome …

Born in the seventies in North Korea, Lucia Jang grew up in a typical household -- her parents worked in the factories, and the family scraped by on government rations of rice and what little food they could grow in their small garden. Every night before bed, Jang dusted the frame around the portrait of Kim Il-sung, as her little sister looked on. …

In 1954, when Florence Kaefer was just nineteen, she accepted a job as a teacher at Norway House Indian Residential School of Manitoba. Not fully aware of the difficult conditions the students were enduring, Florence and her fellow teachers nurtured a school full of lonely and homesick young children.

Edward was only five when he was brought to the …

Born Out of This follows Christine Lowther's journey from the unutterable loss of her mother to the discovery of her own poetic voice through deep reflection and her intimate connection to the coastal rainforest. Lowther looks back on her mother's poetry and activism. She recalls the day the police arrested her father, and the indifferent beauty su …

Sir Alexander Mackenzie is known to schoolchildren as a great Canadian explorer who gave his name to the country's longest river, but hardly anyone could name the man who mentored Mackenzie and mapped much of northwestern Canada before him. Soldier,fur trader and explorer Peter Pond, the subject of this long overdue book, is a man whose legend has …

The Tse-loh-ne from the Sekani First Nation were known as “The People at the End of the Rocks.” This small band of people lived and thrived in one of BC’s most challenging and remote areas, 1600 kilometres north of Prince George in the Rocky Mountain Trench. They were isolated and nomadic, and survived by following the seasons, walking hundre …

The art of storytelling through textiles, exploring the many ways in which narrative can be expressed through cloth and needle.

Strange Material explores the relationship between handmade textiles and storytelling. Through text, the act of weaving a tale or dropping a thread takes on new meaning for those who previously have seen textiles--quilts, b …

Paddlenorth tells the riveting story of ’s 54 day paddling adventure on the Back River, in the northern wilderness of the subarctic, as she and her five companions battle raging winds, impenetrable sea ice, and treacherous rapids. The perils include rising tensions among the group, but these are tempered by grizzly sightings, icy swims, and the c …

In its heyday in the 1950s and '60s, the remote community of Elsa, 300 miles north of Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, was the epicentre of one of the world's most lucrative silver mining operations--an enterprise that far surpassed the riches produced during the iconic Klondike gold rush. For twelve of those years, Gerald Priest was the chief as …

Bestselling author and TV personality Mike McCardell, known for his humorous and touching portraits of ordinary BC lives, turns a new page and crafts a bittersweet memoir of his own hardscrabble childhood in New York City.

Written with all the warmth and ironic humour his fans have come to know and love, Cardboard Ocean is an affectionate evocation …

Every town has its celebrities, but Sechelt's own unique and larger-than-life personality is wholesome enough to satisfy all of North America's appetite for eccentrics. Asta Bergliot Solberg, or "Bergie," as her friends knew her, lived life on her own terms. She climbed wild mountain trails to hunt for goats, demanded car rides from unsuspecting lo …

Nikki van Schyndel is not your typical grizzled survivalist. She is a contemporary, urban young woman who threw off modern comforts to spend nineteen months in a remote rainforest with her housecat and a virtual stranger.

Set in the Broughton Archipelago—a maze of isolated islands near northern Vancouver Island—Becoming Wild is a story of surviv …

How does one go from English villager to wilderness dweller?

Chris Czajkowski was born and raised at the edge of a large village in England, until she abandoned the company of others to roam the countryside in search of the natural world. As a young adult she studied dairy farming and travelled to Uganda to teach at a farm school. Returning to Engla …

Still sassy, Doris Gregory takes the reader back over seventy years to the time when she broke with tradition, first by publicly challenging the University of British Columbia’s discrimination against women, and then by joining the Canadian Women’s Army Corps. Her memoir allows us to travel with her across the Atlantic at the height of the U-bo …

In an entertaining year-long devotion to the near-religious art of brewing beer, Ian Coutts sets out to make the perfect keg. This beer didn’t start with a beer-making kit, which is what most homebrewers use. And it didn’t rely on pre-roasted industrial malt, which is how commercial brewers do it. Coutts made his own malt, and he grew his own b …

Retired fishery officer Randy Nelson's first love was catching poachers. That obsession, plus a devious mind and enthusiasm for marathon running, spelled big trouble for law-breaking fishermen. Thirty-five years in the field (and stream) netted a gold mine of stories: with hair-raising tales of grizzly bear attacks; angry axe-wielding, rock-throwin …

Mark Boyter's Crescent Moon Over Laos is a true account travel narrative of an 18-day journey in Laos, just months after the country had been re-opened to Western travel after ten years being closed. For Boyter, after three years living and travelling in Asia, Laos was a setting both familiar and foreign, comforting and disquieting. About to return …

One Friday morning in the spring of 1972, an ad in the Vancouver Sun caught Nick Marach’s eye: GILLNETTER FOR SALE. A young architect who had just returned to the west coast from a yearlong motorcycle trip abroad, Marach was not looking for a change of career—but he was looking for a boat to live on, and the price of the old gillnetter was chea …

Where the Hell Were Your Parents? is a coming-of-age true story about what happens when you let your kids run feral — it’s half Goodfellas, half Stand By Me, and three-quarters Dukes of Hazzard.This comic memoir is an unapologetic romp through the rural South with the Weathington Boys, the most scrumptious delinquents since Huckleberry Finn. Na …

"I don’t know how to describe me as a real person." -- From "My Real Truth," a poem by Grace Chen

"Put her away and forget about her." This was the blunt advice Grace Chen's grandfather gave Grace's parents when she was born with Down Syndrome.

Twenty-four years later, Grace writes, "I always dream to be a famous writer." When Judy McFarlane is ask …

Frank White started writing the story of his life as a pioneer BC truck driver in 1974 when he was only sixty. His boisterous yarn in Raincoast Chronicles about wrangling tiny trucks overloaded with huge logs down steep mountains with no brakes won the Canadian Media Club award for Best Magazine Feature and was reprinted so many times everyone urge …

A behind-the-scenes story of a global superstar's rise to fame.

In 1993, Beverly Delich discovered an 18-year-old singer named Michael Bubl� in a Vancouver talent contest, became his manager, and moved with him to Toronto, and then L.A., as he tried to break into a tough, unforgiving business. This book is her vivid, behind-the-scenes story of …

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 …

A diminutive cowboy with a full beard and a Texas drawl stands onstage at Expo 86 in Vancouver telling wild and woolly stories of life in the Chilcotin backcountry. The audience is mesmerized by his poetic ballad of an alcoholic dog that rode on the back of his saddle in Anahim Lake. The performer is Luther Corky Williams.

Originally from Texas, Cor …

Lost in North America is a caustic, humourous exploration of a Canada we don’t often talk about-a collective mental creation of great charm and complexity, hovering precariously somewhere in Video North America, in disguise as the most successful colony in the history of the world. Lost in North America is a personal, idiosyncratic tour of the co …

Winner of the Bill Duthie's Booksellers Award!

In addition to being a CBC host, an eminent indie-rock alumnus, and the award-winning author of the bestselling book Adventures in Solitude, Grant Lawrence has another claim to fame: as a toddler, he spent the majority of a plane ride from Toronto to Winnipeg on Bobby Orr's lap. Grant, his parents, Bobb …

Short-listed for the Governor General's Literary Award and the Banff Mountain Book Award and winner of the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction.

With Enbridge Inc.'s Northern Gateway proposal nearing approval, supertankers loaded with two million barrels of bitumen each may soon join herring, humpbacks and salmon on their annual migration th …

In 1964, Patricia MacKay immigrated to Canada from England in search of the wild-open lands and cowboy culture that captivated her as a child. In the 1960s, the Wild West was still alive and kicking in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, although it had been tamed—a little. Old-time hospitality and helping anyone in need was the acknowledged way of life.

Pat l …

A chronicle of family love, unspeakable loss, and the power of healing

Ginny Dennehy was living the dream: a good marriage, two wonderful teenagers, a fulfilling career. Life in Whistler, B.C., seemed tailor-made for her outgoing, athletic family of four. But in 2001, the world turned upside down when her son, Kelty, committed suicide at the age of …

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 …

Ron Liversedge could hardly wait for the call from the International Brigades. A veteran of the Great War, Canada's Great Depression, and scores of battles for social justice, he wanted to get to Spain to fight against Franco's attack on the young Spanish republic. It was the spring of 1937; Liversedge was nearly 40. The call came on May Day. Liver …

Finalist, Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (BC Book Prizes)

Wood is a pop-culture meditation on parenthood and all its complexities and complications. In her third collection, Harper deftly inhabits the lives of sons and daughters, fathers and mothers - the real, the mythical, the dreamed-up, and the surrogate. Pinocchio tries to make his father proud i …

Farley Mowat's outrageous memoir begins with his unlikely conception in a canoe and follows a childhood full of adventure.

Piloted by a father with itchy feet and adventurous whims, the Mowats move frequently, finally leaving Ontario for Saskatoon. Small, bookish, and ill at ease in a hockey rink, Farley is most at home in the natural world. Whereve …

On July 3, 1961, Ian Parsons reported to RCMP Depot Division in Regina as a raw recruit. It was the beginning of a 33-year adventure that took him from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island and many points between. By the time he retired with the rank of inspector, Parsons had a policeman’s trunk full of colourful stories and insightful observations t …

Roderick L. Haig-Brown is one of the world's most beloved and popular fly-fishing writers. His books bring together exquisite prose and the limitless art and joy of fishing, along with solid and timeless advice.

First published in 1959, and the most popular of Haig-Brown's fishing titles, Fisherman's Summer includes absorbing descriptions of fishing …

There is a dark underbelly to every city, and one group of professionals spend most of their time lurking within. Unloved, unappreciated and mostly unseen: tow truck drivers. Join accomplished magazine columnist and 20-year towing veteran Aidan Coles as he blows the hood off the true story of what being a towman is.Ever wondered why tow trucks seem …

In the early 1980s, Yvonne Maximchuk, a single mother of two, was living in Whiterock, BC, and making a living as a working artist and art instructor. Then she fell in love with Albert, a crab fisherman who fished the waters of Boundary Bay. Drawn to his seemingly idyllic life and her desire for connection with the natural world, Yvonne and her chi …

Here, at last, is a book about commercial salmon fishing, by well-known fisherman and industry analyst Dr. Don Pepper--one that is sure to become a West Coast classic. Pepper fished salmon as a crewman every season from 1953 to 1969. After a hiatus in the '70s, he returned to fishing in the '80s, balancing his life at sea with a career as a profess …