Ghost towns looming silently out of the fog, villages torn apart by storms, forest fires fought with "flying boats" as big as jetliners, the Chilcotin War, grizzlies and sasquatches, life in a float camp tethered to a rocky shore - this is Raincoast Chronicles Eleven Up. The book comprises numbers 11-15 of the Chronicles, and about 35 pages of new …

Great Canadian hockey stars aren't born, they're made - many of them, like Bobby Clarke, in the teams that make up the Western Hockey League. This first history of the WHL, tracing the league from its establishment in the 1960s to the present day, has all the stories of all the teams, coaches and stars: who they are (or were), how their skills deve …

Successor to Island Adventures, More Island Adventures outlines - you guessed it - over two dozen more hiking, fishing, canoeing and camping trips across Vancouver Island. Destinations include Loon Bay, Tsusiat Falls, Klaskino Inlet and Mount Arrowsmith. Each entry notes key points of interest, contacts, directions, tips and nearest services; all a …

Geography as an academic discipline dates back to the last few decades of the nineteenth century. However, during the preceding centuries a large body of English-language literature relevant to the field of special geography was published. Four Centuries of Special Geography lists all the works published before 1888 and includes descriptions of eac …

Through diary entries, notes and photographs, In the Company of Whales explores Alexandra Morton's efforts to better understand the habits and behaviors of the killer whale off Canada's west coast. As a fascinating introduction to the life of a scientist working in the field, the book will entertain and inspire readers young and old. After fourteen …

In They Write Their Dreams on the Rock Forever, ‘Nlaka’pamux elder Annie York explains the red-ochre inscriptions written on the rocks and cliffs of the lower Stein Valley in British Columbia. This is perhaps the first time that a Native elder has presented a detailed and comprehensive explanation of rock-art images from her people’s culture. …

This second book by the Vancouver Sun columnist, author of the successful Robin Ward's Vancouver, offers 60 drawings of structures in Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle and points between. The Sun Yat Sen Gardens and Cathedral Place in downtown Vancouver, the Empress Hotel and Eaton Centre in Victoria, historic structures in Britannia Beach and Port Town …

The Empress Has No Closure contains, as a centre-piece, the “Alefbet Transfers,” a meditative, spacial explication of the 22 figures of the Hebrew alphabet.

Originally published in 1977, Contact and Conflict has remained an important book, which has inspired numerous scholars to examine further the relationships between the Indians and the Europeans – fur traders as well as settlers. For this edition, Robin Fisher has written a new introduction in which he surveys the literature since 1977 and commen …

These rollicking ballads and poems come from the great oral tradition of BC woodsmen during the first half of this century - when real men not only read poetry but wrote it and recited it and bought it.

Robert Swanson, once known as the "Bard of the Woods," is one of many men who knows and loves BC coast bunkhouse ballads, but he is one of a very fe …

In his introduction to this provocative collection of essays, George Woodcock describes his response to a recent question about national unity. "I remarked impatiently that what interested me was not the achievement of 'national unity, but the accomplishment of creative anti-national disunity."

Woodcock argues that if Canadians are angry about their …

As a young man living in England at the time of the Allied Landing at Dieppe, Canadian novelist and screenwriter Ernest Langford acquired a special affection for the Canadian soldiers who fought so valiantly and suffered so harshly in the ill-fated raid.

On August 19,1942, Major-General J. M. Roberts led 5000 troops of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Divi …

Crossing Canada by rail has long been among the travel wonders of the world, but in 1990 government cutbacks forced the remarkable Canadian to make its last run from Vancouver to Toronto. Amid the political controversy that raged during the last years of the route's existence, Terry Pindell covered 18,000 miles of Canadian rails. In this fascinatin …

"During his years as captain of the Canadian government steapship Quadra, John T. Walbran became fascinated with the BC coast and set to work on his classic British Columbia Coast Names, which was published in 1909. Reprinted here in facsimile edition, this book is an essential item in any library of Northwest history."

From 1942 to 1949, a group of innocent Canadians were uprooted from their homes and businesses on the west coast, dispossessed, and forced to disperse across Canada, merely on the basis of their Japanese ancestry. Some 4,000 were even exiled to wartorn Japan.
These injustices remained unresolved for nearly forty years. Then in the 1970s, a handful …

Here is the latest issue of an enduring legend on the BC coast, packed as usual with articles, stories, tall tales, photographs and drawings by people who know and love the raincoast. From bush pilots and lightkeepers to logging and fishing, the subjects in this anthology are fascinating history and plain good reading. Contributors include Howard W …

From BC's colonial days through 1950, the BC Provincial Police were the province's main law enforcers and, in many places, the only ones. It was up to them to catch and prosecute thieves, gold-rush swindlers, brawlers, bootleggers and murderers throughout BC's vast wilderness, and constables also acted as tax collectors, coroners, census takers, pa …

In savage blizzards, blinding whiteouts and 60-below-zero temperatures, steel axles snap like twigs; brakes and steering wheels seize up; bare hands freeze when they touch metal. The lake ice cracks and sometimes gives way, so the roadbuilders drive with one hand on the door, ready to jump.

John Denison and his crew waited for the coldest, darkest d …

If you have food allergies or food sensitivities, this book was written for you. The All Natural Allergy Cookbook offers a wealth of information valuable to people with food allergies and to those interested in improving their diets by cutting down on eggs, meat or dairy. The book begins with some basic cooking tips to facilitate success in the kit …

Edith Iglauer has been a journalist for four decades, working for The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly and other publications. This book is a lively retrospective of her writings, from the 1940s when she covered Eleanor Roosevelt's press conferences, through the 1960s when she was present at the founding of Canada's first Inuit co-operati …

The Hour's Acropolis, John Pass's tenth book of poetry, is a classical meditation rebounding between domesticity and myth. Ben Johnson's Olympic disgrace is counterpoint to poetry's inspirational lightning, Steve Fonyo appears next to Odysseus, Orpheus listens to Lou Reed.

Stylistically, this book is a complex and ingenious construct, a poetic acrop …

Why did Canada abandon four decades of peace to join the United States in the Persian Gulf War? The author of this provocative book argues that Canada's status as a nuclear colony of the US military paves the way for Canadian participation in American military adventures abroad. One nuclear outpost is Nanoose Bay on Vancouver Island, where the US N …

Canada’s first poet laureate George Bowering is one of the best known writers and literary personalities in the nation. Poet, novelist, essayist, historian, critic and teacher, he is a prolific, irrepressible writer whose works have been published and produced in an extraordinary variety of forms. A Record of Writing traces the development of Bo …

As history is overcome by progress, Jens Skolleborg captures the essence of the past in this small volume of exquisite pen-and-ink drawings. These detailed sketches are rigidly accurate yet flowing and warm in feel and texture.The artist has researched each historic building to absorb the authentic character of the time and that chameleon like graf …

"MY WIFE HAS GONE CRAZY - one of the isolated upcoast lightkeepers in this astonishing book writes to his Victoria supervisor. "PLEASE SEND SOMEONE UP HERE AT ONCE."
It could be an incident from any one of many poignant stories which unfold as Don Graham, himself keeper of Vancouver's famous Point Atkinson Light, breaks the lighthouse fraternity's …

As we enter the 1990s, we mark the 100th anniversary of the decade which saw the establishment of a white settlement at Sechelt, British Columbia. The first of those settlers, Thomas John Cook, was the grandfather of Helen Dawe, who established for herself a reputation as the foremost chronicler of Sechelt history. Helen Dawe's Sechelt brings toget …

Seasoned tale-spinner Arthur Mayse has combined a vivid setting with an involving and suspenseful plot, and the result is a classic juvenile book and a memorable west coast story. Fourteen-year-old Paddy sets out to make the money handlining off the coast of British Columbia, and finds it a more daunting prospect than he thought. Setting up camp on …

"I recommend this book to you. It is a book of poetry whose authorship is plural, but I hesitate to call it an anthology because of certain conventions which the mention of the term causes the reader to expect. This is a book whose mythic spectrum is broad. Very. I took on the project as editor because the body of work presented me by publisher and …

This book is drawn from Haida Monumental Art, the most important work yet published on Haida culture. Chiefs of the Sea and Sky presents an overview of extensive research carried out by archeologist George MacDonald in the 1960s and 1970s to document the history of the Haida villages of the Queen Charlotte Islands.

In this abridgement, MacDonald re …

The publication of Sticks & Stones, George Bowering’s first book of poems, has been one of Canada’s great literary mysteries for almost three decades. Rumoured to have been published by the Rattlesnake Press in 1962, yet only ever found in the darkened vaults of secretive bibliophiles in the form of imperfectly collated, incomplete press proofs …

The Canadian Yearbook of International Law has been published under the auspices of the Canadian Branch of the International Law Association since 1963. Each volume contains articles on important and topical issues as well as book reviews, notes and comments, sections on Canadian practice in international law, a digest of important cases, and comme …

Once again, Kathleen Dalzell has captured the mystery and the adventure of the Queen Charlotte Islands. In this, her third book on the islands, Dalzell focuses on her parents, free-spirited pioneers who risked everything to settle on the islands they loved. The result is a story that is both fascinating and informative, a look at history from the i …

One of Canadian poetry's best-kept secrets is Maureen McCarthy, whose first book She Reminds Me of Vermeer drew accolades across the country. Nine years later, her second collection drew even higher praises.

"I have the sense of seeing things with her eyes and mind, of actually being in her situation, and it's this intimacy that gives her poems pow …

Tom Wayman has earned an international reputation as a work poet, anthologist and essayist. This new collection of 64 poems deals with blue-collar working conditions, labour strikes and unemployment, the hierarchy of business and its philosophy of "money above all considerations" in the workplace. Some new travel poems and a few well-chosen comment …

One of the first books published to deal with the phenomenon of residential schools in Canada, Resistance and Renewal is a disturbing collection of Native perspectives on the Kamloops Indian Residential School(KIRS) in the British Columbia interior. Interviews with thirteen Natives, all former residents of KIRS, form the nucleus of the book, a fra …

An authentic recreation of an extraordinary life set against the turbulent background of colonial Africa. Schermbrucker’s enigmatic prose creates a sweeping historical saga from Cairo to the Cape.

Mimosa is Bill Schermbrucker’s second published work of fiction. His first book Chameleon was published by Talonbooks to high critical acclaim.

Reactions to Alan Twigg's first book of interviews with Canadian authors, For Openers:

"For Openers is much the best thing of its kind I've ever read, and much more difficult to achieve than the casual reader would guess. "
-Hugh MacLennan

"One can appreciate the zest, the engaging lack of stuffiness, with which Twigg confronts his authors."
-Ken Ada …

Ethel Wilson has delighted readers with her art, her humour, and her extraordinarily perceptive eye. She turned out six novels and a book of short stories - all highly acclaimed by famous critics and writers and all written after she reached the age of 49.

Mary McAlpine, a close friend of Wilson, has produced a biography that is very personal, humou …

On January 22, 1979, an eleven-year-old Native girl died of a ruptured appendix in an Alert Bay, B.C. hospital. The events that followed are chronicled here by Dara Culhane Speck, a member by marriage of the Nimpkish Indian Band in Alert Bay. She has relied mainly on interviews, anecdotes and public records to describe how this small, isolated Nati …

Who would have suspected the power of bubble gum? Atlas is bored. It's raining, so he sits inside, chewing a gumball. He blows a bubble and imagines that it is Australia. Then the stove becomes a Chinese dragon; the fridge is Antarctica, inhabited by penguins; the bathtub melts away into the Seven Seas; and the piano turns into an African elephant. …

Anne Cameron is well-known for her humourous retellings of North West Coast Indian legends - Daughters of Copper Woman and Dzelarhons. In the present collection of poetry, she enters a darker, more eerie and threatening corner of this world. "The Sickness That Has No Name" is an exploration of alienation and Indian mysticism, and of a woman's deter …

Orca's Song is the tale of the love between Orca and Eagle-Flies-High, and explains the origin of the killer whale's song and exuberant dance.

When Ethel Wilson published her first novel, Hetty Dorval, in 1947, she was nearly sixty years old. With her following books, she established herself as British Columbia's most distinguished fiction writer and one of Canada's best loved and most studied authors. Although she enjoyed and even encouraged her reputation as an unambitious latecomer who …

The Canadian Yearbook of International Law is issued annually under the auspices of the Canadian Branch of the International Law Association (Canadian Society of International Law) and the Canadian Council on International Law.

Vancouver journalist-broadcaster Alan Twigg examines Evans' earliest, out-of-print novels and magazine serials, as well as his masterpieces Mist on the River and 0 Time In Your Flight, and his poetry. The plot synopses and criticism make this an important reference guide for students of Canadian literature, and Evans' own comments on his craft prov …

A beautifully illustrated book for children ages 6 and up relating the classic northwest coast myth telling how Raven, the trickster, freed the moon from the old fisherwoman's cedar chest and carried it to its rightful place in the heavens. Entrancingly retold from the female viewpoint by the celebrated author of Dreamspeaker and Daughters of Coppe …

The Crystal Spirit, George Woodcock's intellectual biography of George Orwell, won the 1966 Governor General's Award for non-fiction. In this book he turns his attention to 1984, the novel which expresses Orwell's fears for the future, and his exhortations against totalitarianism.

First-hand experience with twentieth-century politics combines with e …

With 81 contributors, Women & Words was the most ambitious collection of writing published during the rise of Canada women's writing in the 1980s, and the first one to be published in both French and English. It includes short fiction, poetry and dramatic pieces by well-known writers like Marian Engel, Nicole Brossard, Jane Rule, Louky Bersaniuk an …

Kids will love The A to Z of Absolute Zaniness. While their parents read the six-line alliterative captions, children will be dazzled by the bold, colourful drawings illustrating each letter with objects, animals, and people.

Carol Mills wrote the short stories that describe the bizarre feats of people and animals, real and ridiculous. Susanne Ferri …