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A personal and revealing exploration of a life lived close to the earth, from one of Canada's best-loved gardeners.

Called ""a green-thumb rogue"" (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), accomplished novelist, satirist, and garden writer Des Kennedy describes his life journey from a childhood of strict Irish Catholicism in Britain to a charmed existence amid …

“This is Zen and the Art of Donkey Walking. I cannot imagine a more charming, informative, or restful book.” —Jim Crace, author of Being Dead and The Pesthouse.

With a new foreword by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas.

“Can a donkey be a philosopher? Merrifield believes so and, with this modest, lovely little book, makes us believe so, too.” —Boo …

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In this extraordinary adventure, a reluctant visitor to the Arctic thrives in the awesome and unforgiving landscape.

In 1933, Christiane Ritter, a painter from Austria, travelled to Spitsbergen, an Arctic island north of Norway, to be with her husband. He had been taking part in a scientific expedition and stayed on to hunt and fish. ""Leave everyt …

A Year of Living Generously follows award-winning journalist Lawrence Scanlan as he volunteers with 12 different charities, among them well-known institutions Habitat for Humanity, the St. Vincent de Paul Society and Canadian Crossroads.

Drawing from first-hand experiences -- serving in a soup kitchen at "Vinnie's," the St. Vincent de Paul drop-in …

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, …

When her mother, Rosa, begins to show signs of dementia, Caterina Edwards embarks on what turns out to be a search for the meaning of the past and of home. During the four years she cares for her mother, Edwards must navigate between conflicting responsibilities while dealing with her mother's troubled mind and her own exhaustion. This frank memoir …

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""The two greatest things about Carpenter's sterling hunting memoir is how well-informed and precise it is -- positively erudite; but never show-offish or exclusive. The second involves how much this knowing-ness is the natural tropism of the author’s great and generous heart, his love for all creatures -- including the human one."" -- Richard F …

Roadtripping documents a decade of road trips through the fiefdom of Alberta. The men and women who make up the Buffalo Gals first set out in July 1999 to experience the unusual and charming roadside attractions of south-central Alberta. Never dreaming that this one-off adventure would turn into an annual event, it’s ten years later and they cont …

Set partially in Vancouver, partially on a farm in rural Ontario and partially in West Africa, Sweetness from Ashes is a novel about family in its various forms. When Sheila, Jenny and Chris decide to respect a deceased relative’s wishes, and return the ashes to the family farm, the three begin a journey that takes them from their present-day liv …

A trilogy of stories by the Edwards family about their fascinating life in the Bella Coola area. Often called "The Crusoe of Lonesome Lake," because of a best-selling book written by the American journalist Leland Stowe, Edwards has gone on to live at least one more life and reveals himself to be a pioneer of a breed that no longer exists. Best kno …

Meet the dazzling women of Paris: from Colette to Nancy Mitford, Marie Antoinette to Coco Chanel, Napoleon's Josephine to Edith Wharton. Rule breakers and style setters, these women were utterly diverse, yet they shared one common passion -- Paris, the world's headquarters of femininity.

At a turning point in her life, Lucinda Holdforth journeys to …

The legendary Emily Carr was acclaimed as both an artist and a writer. Her first book, Klee Wyck, won the presitigious Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction in 1941.

The Book of Small is a collection of thirty-six word sketches in which Emily Carr relates anecdotes about her life as a young girl in the frontier town of Victoria. She n …

This is the story of one man's war -- the memoirs of Sgt. Charles D. Kipp, who served with the Canadian army on active duty in Europe during the bloody days and weeks following D-Day. What makes this work stand out from other Second World War battlefield journals is its unadorned, almost naive sense -- a guileless attention to small details, horrif …

Born in 1889, Anna Porter's grandfather, Vili Racz, was a patriot and Olympic athlete, a magician and a lawyer, a publisher and a prisoner, a philanderer and a devoted family man. On long walks through the once-grand European capital of Budapest, in confidences whispered in splendid fin-de-siecle coffee houses, Vili shared his stories of heroes and …

It's 1954, the Cold War has shifted into high gear, and on little more than a bet an 18-year-old lumberjack from Aleza Lake in the interior of British Columbia joins the Canadian Navy, a spur-of-the-moment decision that will radically alter the rest of his life.

Starting with basic training in Nova Scotia, The Stoker follows the exploits and adventu …

"p class=""book_description"">""Erudite, charming, and yet sharply appraising, Kelly's ode to Paris evokes the spirit of the city itself. A lovely book."" -- Patricia Pearson

""Paris Times Eight is a fast-paced, breezy read, its substance subtly woven into a tale of a city whose glamour and beauty never fades."" -- Ottawa Citizen

A poignant and often …

Brian Brett’s farm on Salt Spring Island is affectionately known as Trauma Farm. There, he raises chickens, pigs, cows, sheep, and goats, tends an extensive orchard and vegetable garden, concocts fabulous meals from the bounties of the farm, and has various misadventures. This funny and thought-provoking memoir traces one day on Trauma Farm. In i …

"P class=""book_description"">The imaginative, hilarious, and moving memoir of a woman coping with both Parkinson's disease and breast cancer.

At age forty-three, Robyn Levy was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and, eight months later, with breast cancer. With irreverent and at times mordant humour, Most of Me chronicles Levy's early, mysterious s …

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""Small Beneath the Sky is one of the most honest books I ever read. How rare such honesty is, and how hard-won, and radical, and beautiful!"" -- Ursula K. Le Guin

""Like her wonderful poetry, Crozier's prose illuminates our world. She is a writer of the first rank."" -- David Adams Richards, author of The Lost Highway

""This intimate and moving mem …

In 1903, eighteen years after leading the Métis Army against the Northwest Expeditionary Force and the Northwest Mounted Police at Fish Creek, Duck Lake and Batoche, Louis Riel’s Adjutant General Gabriel Dumont dictated his memoirs to a group of friends, one of whom is thought to have written Dumont’s stories out in longhand during that epic …

In 1959, just one step ahead of the law, Ian Ferguson's parents left the sophisticated big-city life of Edmonton and ended up 846 km due north in Fort Vermilion, the third-poorest community in Canada. It was meant to be a temporary move. Like their neighbours, the Ferguson kids -- Ian and his six brothers and sisters -- grew up without indoor plumb …

In 2005, award-winning writer Richard Wagamese moved with his partner to a cabin outside Kamloops, B.C. In the crisp mountain air Wagamese felt a peace he’d seldom known before. Abused and abandoned as a kid, he’d grown up feeling there was nowhere he belonged. For years, only alcohol and moves from town to town seemed to ease the pain.

In One …

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 …

The author takes the reader through a totally frank and sometimes tumultuous career in medicine starting in his last year in high school to his forced retirement due to ill health more than forty years later. His career in retirement in the last twelve years, not far from medicine, has also been very interesting and described with insight and humou …

Winner of the 2009 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour

The cops wanted to shoot me, my bosses thought I was a Bolshevik, and a local lawyer warned me that some people I was writing about might try to test the strength of my skull with a steel pipe. What more could any young reporter hope for from his first real job?

The night Mark Leiren-Young dro …

In 1934, in the middle of the Great Depression, millionaire Charles Bedaux spent $250,000 in an attempt to cross northern British Columbia in five motorized vehicles. The Bedaux Expedition ranks as one of the most audacious and unusual events in the province's history. Bannock and Beans tells the story of this extravagant failure from the perspecti …

When Canadian soldier Fred Doucette was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina as a UN peacekeeper in 1995, he had a premonition that this tour of duty would be different. He had been posted to Cyprus in the 1970s and 1980s, but the horrors of the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s were beyond imagining.

Doucette takes us to the heart of the conflict as the Bos …

In this lyrical memoir, Lily Hoy Price writes with moving detail about her childhood and adolescence in a large Chinese Canadian family in the Cariboo country of northern British Columbia. The ninth daughter in a family of 12 children, Lily is an observant child who tucks away every image of life in rugged Quesnel during the 1930s for one unforgett …

This Holocaust memoir crosses generations. In I Have My Mother's Eyes, Barbara Ruth Bluman chronicles her mother's dramatic journey from Nazi-occupied Poland to western British Columbia, where her legacy lives on. Bluman sets an urgent and intimate tone as she follows Zosia Hoffenberg from her genteel upbringing in Warsaw through the shock of the b …

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""Like many other adventurers before her, Angus bravely sacrificed a host of human comforts to give us a glimpse into an experience most of us wouldn't dare dream of. At the same time, she humbly inspires us to make a small effort to reverse the tide."" -- Ottawa Citizen

In 2005–06, Julie Angus rowed 10,000 kilometers across the Atlantic Ocean, b …

Dodging down back-alleys in bomb-torn Beirut. Wheeling past God and traffic in Mombassa, Kenya. Slipping around the edges of Alzheimer's disease, the Gulf War, and the eternity of CNN.

Set somewhere between here and the heat-death of the universe, Jim Oaten's debut collection serves up random samples of literal and literary truth scooped up at top s …

Pioneers Pan Phillips and his partner Rich Hobson carved their places in ranching history when they discovered "grass beyond the mountains" in the far reaches of the Chilcotin. Thanks to a series of hugely popular books, their exploits became the stuff of legend and Phillips became one of Canada's enduring folk heroes.

But if a man had to be tough …

Written with the author's trademark blend of enthusiasm and insight, My Natural History describes how gardening has always been Liz Primeau's therapy, obsession, and reward. Full of fascinating gardening lore, personal history, and practical insight (including what to do when you notice your son is growing funny tomatoes among your seedlings), this …

The Steppes Are the Colour of Sepia: A Mennonite Memoir invites the reader to embark on a journey that traces the paths of ancestral memory over the steppes of the Russian empire to the valleys of Canada's Fraser River. Connie Braun's narrative continues where Sandra Birdsell's historical fiction Russlander has left off – back to the catastrophic …

The Steppes Are the Colour of Sepia: A Mennonite Memoir invites the reader to embark on a journey that traces the paths of ancestral memory over the steppes of the Russian empire to the valleys of Canada's Fraser River. Connie Braun's narrative continues where Sandra Birdsell's historical fiction Russlander has left off – back to the catastrophic …

Shortlisted for the 2009 George Ryga Award.

This is the story of an average family that has never been the same . . . since its eldest child was swarmed and killed by her peers on a moonlit night, November 14, 1997 . . . It is the story of what sudden and horrific violence can do to a family, and how a family somehow remains intact in the face of …

A great essayist's portrait of British Columbia in the 1960s, following Notes from the Century Before.

In 1968 Edward Hoagland embarked on his second trip to British Columbia. The following year he published the journal from his first trip as Notes from the Century Before, a classic that is still in print today. Early in the Season is the never-bef …

At age seventeen, Jim Taylor began a career in writing as part-time high school sports reporter. Forty-eight years, some 7,500 five-a-week columns, three times as many radio shows and twelve books later, Jim Taylor is undeniably one of Canada's most loved sports writers. In Hello, Sweetheart? Gimmie Rewrite!, Taylor looks back at half a century of …

The Bear's Embrace is a candid, moving, and beautifully written account of survival and recovery. Although grizzly attacks on humans are rare, they are often fatal, and Patriciaís reconstruction of the attack itself is vivid and disturbing. As medical professionals, Patricia and her husband bring a unique perspective to their time in hospital, and …

A riveting follow-up to the best-selling Peacekeeper, including MacKenzie's provocative views on leadership and the current state of the Canadian Armed Forces. Since retiring from the Armed Forces, Lewis MacKenzie has not stayed out of the spotlight but continues to speak his mind. In this straight-talking memoir, he traces his post-military career …

Biography of a significant individual who fought tirelessly for the rights of the Japanese, in British Columbia. This is the story of one remarkable man, Tomekichi Homma, and how his journey led him to become a significant Japanese Canadian pioneer. A gentle and gracious man, from an educated and disciplined family tradition, Tomikichi arrived in B …

This collection of over thirty essays by both well-known and emerging writers explores what it means to "be at home" on Canada's West Coast. Here the rainforest and the wild, stormy cost dominate one's sense of identity, a humbling perspective shared in memoirs by individuals who come to see themselves as part of a larger ecological community.

Alexa …