The basking shark, a fish the size of a London bus, used to appear off the BC coast every spring. During World War II, the fish became a nuisance to commercial nets and fishing trollers. Gliding just below the surface, the basking shark was an easy target for a new pest eradication program that touted killing one of the "plankton-eating monsters" a …

Backup to Babylon collects three shorter works by Maxine Gadd, a writer who has based her life and her work in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside for more than two decades. The first section, "Greenstone," follows an arc between rural life, shaped by idealism, and the city. Feminism, activism, and utopianism are among Gadd's concerns. "Backup to Babylon …

Most North Americans are overspent, overtired, overweight, and overworked and believe that more money, more stuff, more time, more of everything will lead to more happiness. In this anti-retirement guide for the boomer generation, Bruce O'Hara dismisses this idea and offers seven keys to happiness in the second half of life. Instead of working too …

Evicted from his Tofino pyramid for the last time, writer Andrew Struthers has the solution: buy an old fishing boat going cheap via the federal government's Mifflin Plan. He takes up residence onboard with his nine-year-old daughter Pasheabel, and his perennial housing problems are solved. Or are they? The Last Voyage of the Loch Ryan picks up whe …

Welcome to BC's frontier days, when loggers and laundresses penned poetry, and entertainment consisted of reciting verse 'round the fire. The Old Red Shirt is a rollicking collection of old-fashioned pioneer poetry. Selected by longtime amateur BC historian, Yvonne Klan, the poems address the social issues of the day, teach moral lessons, and refle …

With Hammertown, Peter Culley establishes himself as a stylistic virtuoso utilizing a startlingly broad range of reference to result in a body of work at once intimate and prophetic. It is above all a portrait of a town. Caught by a passing reference in George Perec's Life: A User's Manual to a "village on Vancouver Island," Culley began to re-imag …

On the edge of adulthood, self-discovery, coming out; in university towns, Europe, Vancouver, Toronto, Sydney, the protagonists of Calendar Boy unravel cultural heritage, community, identity on the road to — they hope — love, happiness, and self-acceptance. Set around the globe, sixteen adventurous stories weave fiction with real-life smarts, g …

Joan Givner engages the heart and mind in this refreshing and readable collection of short stories and essays. Nineteen pieces demonstrate, with the author's trademark acuity, how biography — and autobiography — finds its way into fiction.

Implicitly feminist, Givner's compassionate yet unflinching eye vividly renders each secret pain and joy of …

Skookum, cultus, hyack, saltchuck, klahowya, tillicum: It is in words like these that the last vestiges of a lost British Columbian language remain. It was known as "Chinook." Its use today is mainly confined to colloquialisms, and place names like Boston Bar, Canim Lake, Illahee Mountain, Snass Creek, and Skookumchuck. It began as a trading jargon …

As a girl growing up in British Columbia, and now as a mother with a family of her own, Theresa Kishkan has travelled and camped the length and breadth of the province. In these lyrical essays describing her journeys, Kishkan brings to life a landscape impregnated with history and memory, from the Skeena Valley in the north through the dry plateau …

"Engaging ... Williams writes sensitively and with a minimum of academic jargon ... successfully reveals some of the anxieties of the colonial project in British Columbia without losing sight of the fact that the war, far from being a mere anecdote on the colonial stage, was the 'thin edge of the wedge' of the latent violence that has always simmer …

A hilarious, illustrated account of life in the previously sleepy town of Tofino, during the heated controversy over the proposed logging of BC's Clayoquot Sound. The Green Shadow, which was originally serialized in the Georgia Straight, earned Struthers a 1995 National Magazine Award for Humour and a nomination for two 1995 Western Magazine Awards …

Chiwid was a Tsilhqot'in woman, said to have shamanistic powers, who spent most of her adult life "living out" in the hills and forests around Williams Lake, BC. Chiwid is the story of this remarkable woman told in the vibrant voices of Chilcotin oldtimers, both native and non-native. Chiwid is number 2 in the Transmontanus series.

The Adam's River sockeye run is one of the natural wonders of the world. Every October, the river turns red as hundreds of thousands of mature, scarlet?humped sockeye salmon return from the Pacific Ocean to spawn and die in the same gravel beds where they hatched four years earlier.

Adam's River tells the story of the salmon's epic journey far out i …

Fed up with the old "one'size?fits?all" workweek? Do you want more time for family, friends, education, travel, or recreation? Do you want a work schedule that is customized to fit your life — and not the other way around?

A comprehensive guide to the flexible workplace, Put Work in Its Place is a practical, and often humorous handbook explaining …

In the 1960s, futurists predicted that advances in technology and increased automation would bring about an Age of Leisure and Abundance. Technology has performed its miracle: today's workers can produce twice as much per hour as their 1950s counterparts. So why are we told that we must work longer and harder — for less money — to survive in to …

In his portrait of eleven British Columbia rivers, veteran Vancouver Sun reporter Mark Hume focuses on the environmental impact of our communities and ways of life. In BC's multifaceted ecological problems, Hume covers the problem to solution spectrum in detail, suggesting logical solutions to prevent further damage.