Young, idealistic but frightfully naive, Kevin and Joanne decide to leave the urban streets of Toronto to homestead in the Peace River country. Life on the norther frontier, they learn, is far removed from anything they had experienced in the past. Even being jobless in the mean streets of a large city has nothing to compare with the troubles of ho …

One of Murdoch Robertson's law school classmates, now a senior partner at a prestigious law firm in Vancouver, asked him "How could you stand practicing 40 years in a small town?" He replied, "Lots of work, lots of time for family, good friends and a murder trial now and then to keep the adrenaline flowing."
A Touch of Murder, Now and Then tells o …

The Okanagan Valley is noted for its fabulous climate, orchards and vineyards. It is no surprise that such a landscape would attract such an array of outstanding, world-renowned artists. In The Creative Voice, Gary Pearson records the voices, lives and beliefs of 34 of the Okanagan's most prominent artists. The result is a portrait of how art influ …

Sparked by a trip 'home' decades later, Paul Jones begins to remember growing up on the Pembina River, just west of Edmonton. The result is Pembina Country -- a gentle but perceptive look at what it was like to grow up on a hard scrabble farm in the 1930s dust bowl. His finely crafted story recreates the delights and hardships of childhood, no matt …

As the Liard River faces the threat of hydroelectric development, a group of men make what may be one of the final trips on the Liard. Intrigued with the journals of our ancestors as they fearlessly travelled the waves, Wenger writes this book for those who may never know the grandeur of the river.

In Crazy Man's Creek, author Jack Boudreau tells of the characters who have "caught the fever" in the rugged McGregor Mountain Range east of Prince George. Long recognized as some of the toughest bush in British Columbia, it was home to many who chose to lose themselves. Once there, life included confrontations with grizzly bears and raids by wolve …

The Colour of Water is the story of a complicated family trying to hold itself together across the generations in the harsh, stunning Kootenay climate.

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 …

Cree Adelaide McCauley and her two children witness the shooting of their Metis husband/ father by a crazed white miner. She attempts to nurse him back to life but he dies after several painful days. This tragedy takes place in the Robson Valley and the nearest court of justice is 300 miles away, over treacherous mountain trails, in Golden, BC. Ade …

As education minister, Ray Williston introduced the idea of university education for teachers, among other then-radical innovations. As minister of lands and forests, he had his greatest impact. From the mega-power projects to improved forestry practices, all major industrial developments in interior and northern BC during the 1950s and 1960s had W …

"O'Byrne is a natural storyteller. His ability to take you along for the ride gives you a unique perspective of cowboy life almost as if you were on the back of the horse... Tim has a talent that is the gift to bring the personality of an animal to light... Cowboys & Dog Tales will teach you something about the bonds created between man and animals …

Early Chinese settlers in BC lived a shadowy life. Sometimes feared, always misunderstood, these people farmed, mined, and lived in central BC with hopes of returning home to their villages with riches. However, they faced crime, beatings and death in a foreign land. Chow brings us forward from those early days of Chinese settlements to present day …

"Can you type?" asked the colonel. So began young Sue Ward's induction into army life. She joined the army ' the first ever Canadian Women's Army Corps ' hoping to go overseas to entertain the troops fighting World War II. Instead, she spent the next four years travelling from coast to coast, entertaining the home troops and, as lieutenant, looking …

Forbidden Mountains describes the unforgettable journey of two women who embark on the ultimate adventure: sneaking into Tibet from northern Pakistan and cross the country via the South Route, largely unknown to outsiders. Tibet's occupying force--China---has devised unique punishments for travellers who defy its no-go policy, but Vivien and Joanne …

In a series of short stories based in her native Britain, as well as in her adopted country of Canada, Margaret Thompson delights us with her pictures of ordinary life... or is it so ordinary? Sometimes brittle, sometimes gentle, she delivers telling shots at individuals and society's foibles.

After moving in with her grandparents in the small close-knit community of Dearing Bay, on the east coast of Newfoundland, Patience discovers what really is the key to happiness. Patience of Dearing Bay is a poignant story of growing up in rural Canada which offers a fond portrayal of a vanishing way of life.

On Christmas Eve 1993, after a high-speed chase over icy winter roads, an RCMP officer shot a member of the Lillooet Nation. What led up to this tragedy? Could it have been prevented? And was justice done? After eighteen months of research, Bruce Strachan has written a gripping account that asks new questions about the often strained relationship b …

These poems span fifteen years of life in the northern industrial output of Prince George, BC. They portray family, friendship, sex, death, health, work, love and human hope as subjects of a harsh social, economic, and bureaucratic system that is itself trapped in its own contradictions and ironies. The Centre is McKinnon's first full-length book s …

These articles, stories and poems are selected from ten years' worth of work by the Prince Rupert Writers' Group. Some of the contributors have since moved away from Prince Rupert; others are as deeply rooted in the North Coast as lily pads in a creek bed; still others roam. The contributions to this anthology come from as far away as the Queen Cha …

These wildly funny articles, observations of life in the tiny village of Nazko in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, were first published in the Quesnel Cariboo Observer. Just about everyone in the Cariboo started out as babies when they were quite young, which gives Kishkan a lot of material right there. The other subjects of these real-life stories range fro …

In the manner of a good fireside chat with a favourite aunt or uncle, Life in the Cariboo chronicles the Lees' life in one of BC's most rugged areas. We hear about swamp ranches, education by mail, life before universal TV. Best of all, there are tales of some of the Cariboo's legendary - almost mythical - characters, such as Annie Basil and the ki …

In this twenty-year retrospective of Barbara Munk's work, she pays close attention to the world around her: the man who rustles through garbage cans and dumpsters for his food, the undertaker who wants his ashes spread outside the Elks hall, a robin outside the window. And she invites the reader to look at the world in new ways.

While Munk's poetry …

Fifteen years after his death, a mention of the name Ben Ginter still raises hackles across Canada. A man who accomplished much, he also angered many. Newspapers loved him, as he aIways made good copy, surrounded by controversy as he was. As a road builder, he was rumoured to be in cahoots with then Highways Minister "Flying Phil" Gaglardi. As beer …

Once again northern Canada's best-known storyteller takes us on a tour of the town of New Totem on the "Vast Northern Prairie." We meet again with the Trotter family and their friends in this second book of tall tales based on growing up in the Peace River country. A hilarious collection of nineteen short stories, The Ice Cream Bucket Effect makes …

Poems by Barbara Munk, George Stanley, Barry McKinnon and Ken Belford try to dispel the cultural myth that the north is a work hard, die young region with no room for poetry. This first ever northern anthology explores the beauty, tradition and life in the North.

Somehow, the idea of charity balls and Mount Everest just don't fit together. But neither does the idea of someone from backwoods BC organizing an Everest attempt, which normally involves millions of dollars, high-profile sponsors -- even royal backing.

Prince George's Peter Austen proved that, while all that might be nice, it's not necessary. Work …

Charlie [Lindbergh] was working on his plane when I arrived, writes Andrew Cruickshank as he awaits completion of his own duplicate of the Spirit of St. Louis. With this plane, Cruickshank starts the first airline in the Yukon. It was 1927, long before the legendary Grant McConachie's time. Andrew Cruickshank, a dashing and brave young RCMP officer …

Escaping from Communist Czechoslovakia on skis with his family in 1948, Jan Drabek's experience of World War II was anything but ordinary. Thirteen follows a young Drabek growing up in tumultuous Prague where Nazi propaganda, clandestine BBC radio broadcasts, conspiratorial talk at home and escapist comedies in the theatres provided an unconvention …