in 1984, when Sharon Brown's mother Betty became terminally ill with bone cancer, Sharon and her husband (writer Andreas Schroeder) brought Betty home to live her last weeks with them and their two young daughters. With the help of her family, trusted professionals and close-knit community of friends, Brown helped her mother die with dignity, surro …

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 …

This collection of poems is steeped in the west coast tradition of storytelling and mythmaking, a tradition Howard White has nurtured for two decades. The poems are as real, down-to-earth and funny as White's award-winning prose.

He admits to having a messy yard, describes city street crazies and the late-night "undermind," teaches his boys how to h …

Short, funny anecdotes from a natural born recycler, do-it-yourselfer, tinkerer and pack rat all rolled into one. They start during the Depression, when young Caplette learned how to make a perfect slingshot and go after gophers in South Battleford, Saskatchewan. They follow him down the road when he gets the bright idea to ride his bicycle to the …

Tom Wayman has been writing and publishing the poetry of everyday life for over twenty years. This anniversary collection gathers the best of Wayman's published work from eleven previous volumes, along with some provocative new poems, in celebration of his commitment to honest, accessible writing with a sense of humour.

Although Wayman laments the d …

Timmy's home is the Strait of Georgia, where he tows barges to BC's tiny logging communities, large port cities and everything in between, in all kinds of weather. Timmy, Captain Jones and the denizens of the west coast people - otters, whales, seagulls - introduce children to the life and work of the BC coast in fun, colourful style.

"Late at night and wakeful, I don't count sheep as some do. I have another approach. I fish a reach of my river, a Vancouver Island stream born in mountain country that drops by way of riffles and pools and freshet-carved bars to a Strait of Georgia forty miles away."

So begins this gentle, humorous, engaging memoir: a heartfelt appreciation of Brit …

Long known to insiders as one of the most unique personalities in Canadian letters, the celebrated poet Al Purdy begins this story of his life by noting that just as he was about to be born his hometown of Trenton was flattened by a historic explosion as the local munitions factory, "no doubt accounting for any oddity and eccentricity in my charact …

This is a love story; an unlikely convergence of two people from different worlds who were able to make a rich and tender life together, and not only endure each other's company in alarmingly close quarters but revel in it.

Edith Iglauer was born in Cleveland and lived an urban, sophisticated life in New York until she met and married John Daly, a …

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 …

The Canada goose, a beloved cultural symbol for Canadians, is the inspiration for this story for children. It starts near the pulp mill at Powell River, BC, the unlikely spot where two mother Canada geese decide to lay their eggs. Some of the goslings are hatched in an incubator, then end up at a stump ranch where they decide that Crocus the Chines …

Homer Stevens spent half a century in the BC fishing industry, both as a working fisherman and as a leader of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers' Union. His story, an oral autobiography, was recorded and compiled by Rolf Knight.

Stevens grew up in Port Guichon, a poly-glot fishing community on the Fraser River delta. He was one of an extended …

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 …

Sixty stunning duotone photographs by Wakayama, documenting the history of the Powell Street Festival, are interwoven here with the voices of some eighty people involved with the Festival - people of Japanese descent and many other ethnic backgrounds.

The Festival is an annual Vancouver event celebrating the history and culture of Japanese people in …

Jean Pritchard is a supermarket cashier, a news junkie and the mother of three: two teenagers who still live at home and another who speaks in italics and seems to have moved out. Then her kids start getting in fights for defending their Vietnamese neighbours, and her son takes up with "That Charlene," and her long-lost mother comes blasting out of …

Wholesome and filling, yet low in calories and cholesterol, these tempting soups and stews are made with a cornucopia of fresh vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and zesty herbs and spices. There are recipes for hot soups, chilled soups and hearty stews, all made with vegetarian soup stocks so delicious you'll never miss the meat. There's a complet …

When Jim Spilsbury, B.C's most famous pioneer entrepreneur, teams up with master storyteller and literary craftsman Howard White, the result is a spell-binding romp up and down British Columbia's rugged coast; eighty years of fascinating anecdotes and memories distilled into 190 pages.

Jim Spilsbury grew up in a tent on Savary Island, squatting on c …

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 …

In this tale, the ever-wily, ever-hungry Raven visits the generous Snipe family, in the hope of getting lots of free food. When she gets a bit too greedy, however, she finds out the Snipes have a few tricks of their own.

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 …

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 …

Raven is clever and tricky - and greedy. In this story, she persuades her friends Gull, Cormorant, and Puffin to pick berries with her, and tricks them into doing more than their share of work, for less than their share of food. In the end, her friends find a clever way to teach Raven an important lesson.

Paperwork, a provocative sampling of the best new work writing in North America, breaks this taboo. These poems are written by people who build houses and machines, catch fish, take care of children, manage companies, work hard at looking for work, and much more. The writing is funny and tough and sad and angry, and the poems come from insiders - m …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Two fishermen find a whale trapped in their net; neither of them can swim so they must trust the whale to support them while they put away the net and get back to the boat. . . In the wilderness of the Peace River, a man performs delicate surgery on his sick comrade, without anaesthetic, and with only the assistance of a doctor's voice on the radio …

In Timmy Ties Up Timmy pulls a load of dynamite from James Island up to Howe Sound. By now Timmy has been towing cargo up and down the coast for 70 years. He is not as young as he once was. As Timmy approaches Howe Sound a fuel line breaks in the engine room and causes a fire. The Coast Guard manages to separate Timmy from the barge load of dynamit …

Rowan Hanson, the extraordinary heroine of this new novel by bestselling author Anne Cameron, learns to be independent at an early age. Her mother dies in childbirth, she is raised in a floating logging camp by her grandmother, she makes her own way working for the SPCA and BC Ferries. When she gets involved with Jim, she refuses to get involved wi …

"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 …

"Cameron doesn't stop at a wall of despair. Her stories illuminate her faith in compassion and tolerance."
-Vancouver Province

Life isn't easy in Bright's Crossing, the Vancouver Island town where these short stories are set. The locals make their living in the forests, the mines and the ocean; and it is rich strangers in far-off cities who get the …

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 …

Another issue of British Columbia's favorite anthology has arrived, and like its predecessors, Raincoast Chronicles 12 features the variety and style that has made the series a BC publishing phenomenon.

It includes stories from established favorites like Jim Spilsbury, Howard White and Edith Iglauer. It touches on subjects ranging from seineboats to …

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 …

One of British Columbia's most colourful figures was Albert "Ginger" Goodwin, a slight young English immigrant who arrived on Vancouver Island in 1910 to join hundreds of others slaving in the hellholes of the Cumberland mines. What he saw there made him one of the most effective labour leaders the province has ever seen, and led to an untimely and …

Responsibility is the theme of this modern detective story laced with comedy - but with the tragedy of white-Indian relations overshadowing every scene. Annie Charlie was a groundbreaking novel when it first appeared in 1973 and continues to spread to a new audience today.

A novel with many heroines. . .

Some are black, some white; some are babies and some grandmothers. What they have in common is Cassidy, a wealthy and merciless plantation owner in the pre-Civil War American South, for whom the black women are slaves and the white women are concubines.

Their story is the story of thousands of women of their time and p …

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 …

Here is the exciting history of the little-known Queen Charlotte Islands. Since 1774, when Europeans first encountered the proud and mighty Haida, adventurous men and women have been drawn to this farthest west region of Canada. Some were lured by sea otter pelts, others by whales, gold, fish, forest and fertile land. Many came to live among the Ha …

Anne Cameron writes with uncompromising candidness of the relationships between men and women. Her stories combine wit and gritty realism with a clear sense of the storyteller's art. Quite simply she is willing to venture into uncharted territory and speak of the things she finds there in a voice that is clear and at times unsettling.

In South of an …

Once regarded as British Columbia's "voice from the bunkhouse" for his powerful logging poems, Peter Trower, has produced a new collection about life "after the bunkhouse" - seventy new poems about cities and small towns, travel and love.

The Canadian Poetry Contest was launched to provide funds to help Canada India Village Aid in its programme of building dams and digging wells to counter the serious drought conditions that have arisen in northwestern India. A total of 1,255 poets entered no less than 3,223 poems. This collection includes the six prize-winning poems by John Pass (f …

In these magical tales of the Celts, Cameron does for old world mythology what she has done for new world myths in her best-selling Daughters of Copper Woman and Dzelarhons. Cameron adds wit and common sense to symbolism and to the mysteries of life and creation.

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 …

An extraordinary new collection of short stories from the author of Dzelarhons and A Whole Brass Band.

Here is an assortment of relationships: lovers, husbands and wives, children and parents, friends; and of strong individuals: Nan, whose frog causes consternation and chaos; Daleth who defies a fundamentalist sect, only to discover that it's hard …

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 …

A sequel to The Queen Charlotte Islands 1774-1966, this volume is an intimate tour of the mystical Charlottes. Beginning at the northwest tip of the islands, nearly 2000 features are presented in geographical sequence. Thus the reader may journey in a natural progression around the more than 150 islands which make up the group. For the spot reader, …

A traditional northwest coast legend for ages six to adult, told simply and gently be one of BC's best-loved writers.

". . . should be added to any collection of materials concerned with native peoples."
-Canadian Materials