History books typically show Vancouver as a pioneer city built on forestry, fisheries, and tourism, but behind the snow-capped mountains and rain forests, the Vancouver of the first half of the 20th century was a seething mass of corruption. The top job at the Vancouver Police Department was a revolving door with the average tenure for a police chi …

Canada is often held up as an example of a healthy democracy. However, the Canadian public is less enthusiastic about the way our democracy works. This first-of-a-kind book approaches the “democratic deficit” from the perspective of everyday Canadians and assesses the performance of Parliament and the media in light of their perceptions and exp …

Haida Gwaii, ancestral home of the Haida First Nation, was once as inaccessible and mysterious as it was beautiful. The tight cluster of islands off British Columbia’s northwest coast remained virtually untouchable for millennia, allowing its people to develop a distinct and exceptional cultural identity that was known and revered across the regi …

It has been well known since Marius Barbeau’s review of the first edition of Franz Boas’s Tsimshian Mythology in 1917, that something was seriously amiss with Boas’s alleged “translations” of the stories gathered by his chief Tsimshian informant, Henry Tate. But what, exactly, was it that Boas was doing with Tate’s stories? It is this q …

Make money planning events with style and impress your clients. 'Start & Run a Meeting and Event Planning Business' shows would-be business owners how to start and run a successful enterprise planning events of all kinds—from weddings and private parties to corporate events, meetings, conferences, and sporting events. This book will show you not …

"God Telling a Joke and Other Stories is a collection of new stories by the author of Bix's Trumpet and Other Stories, named Book of the Year at the Saskatchewan Book Awards and a finalist for the ReLit Award in 2007.

Among the characters in the collection's 19 stories are a 99-year-old stand-up comedian wearily challenging God to deliver the punch …

Art, love, and history furnish the setting in this tale of fate and destiny. Set in Vancouver in 1962, we follow Cyril Andrachuk, son of immigrant parents from the former Ukraine, as he makes his way from high school to menial labour jobs, from first love to first heartbreak, from sibling rivalry to malicious family betrayal.

Cyril is the only Canad …

“A comprehensive and well-informed review of canoeing and kayaking in British Columbia.” —BC Studies

Often called one of the Seven Wonders of Canada, the canoe has played a particularly important role in British Columbia. This seemingly simple watercraft allowed coastal First Nations to hunt on the open ocean and early explorers to travel the …

“To get at turn away.” In Thrum, her second collection of poetry, Natalie Simpson reveals how making sense is not always the same as making meaning. Her supple and agile poems seduce the weary reader away from representation and toward sound, texture, and absence. Here, a sentence is no longer a sentence, but “a word in pieces, plastered, fas …

Diane Tucker's Bonsai Love is an eloquent book of poems about the sensual delicacy of love. Carefully pruned, intricate in design, and sensitive to intrusion, these poems create an image of intimacy through reflection and in relation to nature, the universe, music, literature and art.

The voice that comes forth is one of self-doubt seeking reassura …

Where the Hell Were Your Parents? is a coming-of-age true story about what happens when you let your kids run feral — it’s half Goodfellas, half Stand By Me, and three-quarters Dukes of Hazzard.This comic memoir is an unapologetic romp through the rural South with the Weathington Boys, the most scrumptious delinquents since Huckleberry Finn. Na …

The events at Oka in 1990 saw the might of the Canadian Armed Forces in the service of the governments of both Quebec and Canada confront some 40 armed Mohawk “Warriors” who were defending their local community’s resistance against a further colonial encroachment on their native lands. The events of that summer have etched themselves indelib …

"I don’t know how to describe me as a real person." -- From "My Real Truth," a poem by Grace Chen

"Put her away and forget about her." This was the blunt advice Grace Chen's grandfather gave Grace's parents when she was born with Down Syndrome.

Twenty-four years later, Grace writes, "I always dream to be a famous writer." When Judy McFarlane is ask …

In the landmark Lavallee decision of 1990, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that evidence of “battered woman syndrome” was admissible in establishing self-defence for women accused of killing their abusive partners. This book looks at the trials of eleven battered women, ten of whom killed their partners, in the fifteen years since Lavallee. D …

City of Victoria Butler Book Prize: M.A.C. Farrant, The World Afloat (Winner)

In The World Afloat, a series of seventy-five “miniatures” that melds narrative with elements of prose poem and farce, master of the absurd and expert observer M.A.C. Farrant peers into the complexities of human experience – through the rear window.
Inside the lin …

Joey is a happy Nuu-chah-nulth boy, eager to help and quick to see the bright side of things. But when he loses his beloved grandmother, the sun goes out in his world. Fortunately, she has left something of herself behind—a song, which keeps knocking on Joey's heart, and a dance, which urges him to get up on his feet and choose again.

In the 1930s and ’40s, Japanese rulers in Manchukuo enlisted writers and artists to promote imperial Japan’s modernization program. Ironically, the cultural producers chosen to spread the imperialist message were previously left-wing politically. In Glorify the Empire, Annika A. Culver explores how these once anti-imperialist intellectuals prod …

Based on his own experience transforming himself from a degenerate bar fly into a dedicated runner who qualified for the Boston Marathon, Ben Kaplan provides a week-by-week training program, split into four sections, each concluding with a race from 5km to a full 26.2-mile marathon. With wit, self-deprecation, and the input of experts from around t …

Sir John Seeley once wrote that the British Empire was acquired in “a fit of absence of mind.” Whatever the truth of this comment, it is certainly arguable that the Empire was dismantled in such a fit. This collection deals with a neglected subject in post-Confederation Canadian history – the implications to Canada and Canadians of British de …

The first-ever synthesis of both the patriotic and the problematic in wartime Canada, Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers shows how moral and social changes, and the fears they generated, precipitated numerous, and often contradictory, legacies in law and society. From labour conflicts, to the black market, to prostitution, and beyond, Keshen acknowledge …

Rod Langley’s Bethune chronicles the medical and political career of Norman Bethune, a Canadian-born doctor who died a national hero in the Republic of China in 1939. He remains an esteemed figure in China today, for his selfless contributions to the Communist Party of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), when he trained rural …

I was driving back at night from Fulford, having done a house call. There was a guy lying beside the road. He was big, but I was fairly strong at that time, so I put him in the car and got to the hospital, then phoned John to come and help me. The guy had a completely rigid belly. He'd been drinking--I could smell that. So I thought I'd better try …

Author Julie Fowler began a quest to find out more about an artist from the Cariboo named Sonia Cornwall (1919-2006). Through interviews, letters, original artworks, articles, exhibition catalogues, imaginings of conversations and occurrences, along with her own reflections on the experience, she pieced together a story of pioneering, love and the …

In 1889, in an obscure corner of the British Empire called New Westminster, a few dedicated lacrosse players and sportsmen put together a team of world-beaters. In today's era of manufactured teams with generic names, the New Westminster Salmonbellies stand with the old guard: the Yankees, the Canadiens, the Celtics and the Packers. The Salmonbelli …

A behind-the-scenes story of a global superstar's rise to fame.

In 1993, Beverly Delich discovered an 18-year-old singer named Michael Bubl� in a Vancouver talent contest, became his manager, and moved with him to Toronto, and then L.A., as he tried to break into a tough, unforgiving business. This book is her vivid, behind-the-scenes story of …

What if Mike McCardell--beloved reporter of glasses half-full and the brighter side of life--is actually dead... or, more specifically, un-dead? Suppose he has continued to walk among the living ever since he was a sapper with the famous detachment of Royal Engineers who came to British Columbia in 1859 and was known as Jock Linn--the namesake for …

A startling and unexpectedly rich collection of images from Vancouver's pre-gentrification past.

Vancouver may be a youngster among major cities, but it has a rich and beguiling history. Past Tense Vancouver blogger Lani Russwurm is a regular contributor to the popular website Vancouver Is Awesome; in this fascinating book, produced in conjunction w …

Fred A. Reed’s fifth book on the Middle East and “the wars of the Ottoman succession” traces the roots of Islamic fundamentalism, as currently enacted by Hezbollah and other Islamic fundamentalist organizations, to the iconoclasts of sixth- and seventh-century Damascus.

The emergence of Iconoclasm, as sudden and overwhelming as it was catalyti …

Lost in North America is a caustic, humourous exploration of a Canada we don’t often talk about-a collective mental creation of great charm and complexity, hovering precariously somewhere in Video North America, in disguise as the most successful colony in the history of the world. Lost in North America is a personal, idiosyncratic tour of the co …

Harold Mortimer-Lamb’s name is in the index of almost every book written on the history of Canadian art, yet his place in that world has never been clear. Photographer, writer, painter, promoter—he was a man of many parts and the ideal patron and friend to some of Canada's most famous artists, including A.Y. Jackson, Emily Carr, and Jack Shadbo …

Harold Mortimer-Lamb’s name is in the index of almost every book written on the history of Canadian art, yet his place in that world has never been clear. Photographer, writer, painter, promoter—he was a man of many parts and the ideal patron and friend to some of Canada's most famous artists, including A.Y. Jackson, Emily Carr, and Jack Shadbo …

Finding Jim describes Susan Oakey-Baker’s struggle to confront the realities of life after the death of her husband, renowned mountain guide Jim Haberl, the first Canadian to summit the most difficult mountain in the world: K2. For fifteen years they had spent time adventuring together around the world: skiing the Himalaya, rafting in Nepal and m …

In 1964, Patricia MacKay immigrated to Canada from England in search of the wild-open lands and cowboy culture that captivated her as a child. In the 1960s, the Wild West was still alive and kicking in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, although it had been tamed—a little. Old-time hospitality and helping anyone in need was the acknowledged way of life.

Pat l …

“Kate Rawles sets out to discover about global warming the hard way …” -- Michael Palin, author of Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole

“A wonderfully rich and insightful narrative ... an extraordinarily revealing series of vignettes. Kate’s workaday belief that the principal purpose of philosophy is ‘to question the assumptions …

Pilgrimage opens in the deep winter of 1891 on the Métis settlement of Lac St. Anne. Known as Manito Sakahigan in Cree, “Spirit Lake” has been renamed for the patron saint of childbirth. It is here that people journey in search of tradition, redemption, and miracles.

On this harsh and beautiful land, four interconnected people try to make a lif …

George Ryga Award for Social Award: Jordan Abel, The Place of Scraps (Finalist)
BC Book Prize, Poetry: Jordan Abel, The Place of Scraps (Winner)

The Place of Scraps revolves around Marius Barbeau, an early-twentieth-century ethnographer, who studied many of the First Nations cultures in the Pacific Northwest, including Jordan Abel’s ancestral Nisg …

This 2nd edition offers an insightful and provocative look at the inside world of political marketing in Canada—and what this means about the state of our democracy in the twenty-first century—from a leading political commentator.

“Never mind what you may have heard about Canadians being hewers of wood and drawers of water. Forget all those e …

First Nations are the fastest growing population in the country. There are thousands upon thousands of young First Nations people growing up today who, together with the kind of individuals whose stories are told in this book, represent a future for this country that is brighter than it has been for a long, long time.
—from the foreword by Shawn …

One Peace celebrates the "Power of One," and specifically the accomplishments of children from around the globe who have worked to promote world peace. Janet Wilson challenges today's children to strive to make a difference in this beautifully illustrated, fact-filled and fascinating volume of portraits of many "heroes for today."

Canadian Craig Ki …

Since the death of her parents in 1791, Lily McEvoy has lived as a recluse in her isolated Armagh County manor with her two maidservants and Titus, the farmhand who has become her whipping boy. But tonight, the heiress is expecting company. Her guest is Master Anselm, the legendary stone cutter who has transformed the estate’s abandoned salt mine …

Kelli Deeth's first book since her acclaimed 2001 debut The Girl without Anyone (a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year) is a collection of stories about missed connections and unrequited desire. Deeth's female protagonists confront the emotional complexities of marriage, childlessness, adoption, adolescent longing, friendship, and death; they mour …

The dramatic and hilarious story of risk and survival, as well as the importance of our connections to the planet, on a human-powered journey across the ocean

It was to be an expedition like no other—a run across the Atlantic from Morocco to Barbados aboard an experimental rowboat. There would be no support vessel, no stored water, no sails or mot …