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 …

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 …

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 …

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."

When Jane Rule’s first novel, Desert of the Heart, was published in 1964, it was an auspicious beginning for a writer who would build a reputation on her unflinching views about sexuality, relationships and the painful constrictions of societal convention. Even more astonishing is the way in which the novel has retained its cool quiet beauty and …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

The Athabasca Ryga presents essays, short stories, plays, and selections from a novel that George Ryga wrote in Athabasca and in Edmonton before his move to British Columbia in the early 1960s. Very little of this work has ever been published before. Almost all these early writings evoke and portray the sights, sounds and people of Deep Creek, Atha …

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 …

"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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

"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 …

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 …

Judgement at Stoney Creek has been released in a new edition of an aboriginal studies classic: an engrossing look at the investigation into the hit-and-run death of Coreen Thomas, a young Native woman in her ninth month of pregnancy, at the wheels of a car driven by a young white man in central BC. The resulting inquest into what might have been ju …

Vancouver Island is one of the world's best year-round salmon fishing areas. This comprehensive guide describes popular fishing holes, including a map of each and data on gear, best time of year, methods and more.

"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 …

While Mary Burns is a writer of exceptional talent in the “social-realism” school, Shinny’s Girls is a collection of stories which are more than just a “good read.” All of the stories in this collection are about mothers and daughters, written from a sensitive and perceptive “post-feminist” point of view, examining the lives of the fi …

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 …

Robert Brown, a twenty-one-year-old Scotsman, arrived on Vancouver Island in 1863 for the purpose of collecting seeds, roots, and plants for the Botanical Association of Edinburgh. Relations with his employer quickly deteriorated, however, and when the opportunity arose in 1864 to head the Vancouver Island Exploring Expedition, Brown eagerly accept …

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 …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.