Essentials, The
Lively, illustrated and guaranteed to be controversial, The Essentials: 150 Great BC Books & Authors serves as an unprecedented guide to books from and about British Columbia - culled from Alan Twigg's unrivalled knowledge of more than 200 years of BC literary history. It also identifies 100 essential authors, such as Alice Munro, Earle Birney and …
Strange Bedfellows
The English language has never been overly concerned with purity. For centuries it has slept around and been seduced by many foreign influences, indulging in promiscuous relations that have contributed to many alluring word histories. Combining his etymological talents with those of the muck-raking journalist, Howard Richler exposes the often louch …
Women on Ice
Women on Ice is the first book to focus upon the vibrant world of women's ice hockey in western Canada during the First World War and through the 1920s. The Vancouver Amazons were one of the most important teams during this perod. Their championship laurels and their association with hockey's famous Patrick brothers distinguish the Amazons from oth …
Tibetans in Exile
Alan Twigg has here recovered the amazing story of how George and Ingeborg while travelling in northern India in 1961 encountered many of the Tibetan refugees who had fled over the mountain passes. Appalled by the condition of the children, huddled together with inadequate bedding, surviving on a diet of thin soup and momos, steamed dumplings of mi …
Journey to Atlantis
In this sequel to the prize-winning young adult novel Submarine Outlaw, the sea of myth and legends beckons young Alfred once again, and the intrepid young explorer answers the call. With his loyal crew of a dog and a seagull by his side, Alfred sails across the Atlantic in his homemade submarine and enters the Mediterranean in search of the fabled …
River of Gold
In this sequel to the best-selling novel When Eagles Call, two Hawaiian labourers - Kimo Kanui and his friend Moku - end their contract with the Hudson's Bay Company in For Langley and trek north to join the great Cariboo gold rush of the early 1860s. Along with a black man from the Carolinas and a native Sto:lo woman won and freed in a card game, …
From Green to Gold
Harold Enrico is that rare poet who combines the deepest traditions of our history, our spirituality, with the colourful imagery of the Pacific Northwest. Enrico's poetry has been selected for Chicago's Poetry Magazine and acclaimed by Theodore Roethke, George Woodcock and Choice magazine. From Green to Gold contains the finest poems from Enrico's …
I Have My Mother's Eyes
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 …
The Steppes Are the Colour of Sepia
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 …
Steppes Are the Colour of Sepia, The
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 …
Hollyburn
This is the first book to be published on the rich and diverse history of Hollyburn, the forested, mountainous area above West Vancouver. Numerous photographs, most of which are published here for the first time, provide a visual appeal which evokes the spirit of earlier times. The history takes us from the First Nations people who used Hollyburn's …
Cascadia
This book will appeal to anyone who wants to understand the unique culture and spirituality of the fast-growing Pacific Northwest, which includes British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Envied by people around the world, Cascadia, as it is known, is remarkable for its famed mountains, evergreens, eagles, beaches and livable cities. Most people, ho …
Utopic Impulses
Utopic Impulses: Contemporary Ceramics Practice brings together ten essays and twenty artist projects to explore ceramics as a socially responsible practice. By framing particular ceramics practices as "utopic impulses," this anthology envisions new and stimulating conceptions of how studio ceramics contribute to the social and political fabric of …
Return to Open Water
To Harold Rhenisch, poetry is a wisdom path equal to Zen, or a pilgrimage on the holy road from Seville to Minsk. Here is a breadth of musicality ranging from solo piano improvisations to jazz quartets, klezmer music, music hall, and even operatic arias. In this spirited celebration of the creative spirit, Rhenisch presents a vision of the world th …
Winds of L' Acadie
When sixteen-year-old Sarah from Toronto learns that she is to spend the summer with her grandparents in Nova Scotia, she is convinced that it will be the most tedious summer ever. She gets off to a rough start when she meets Luke, the nephew of her grandmother's friend, and one unfortunate event leads to another. Just when she thinks her summer ca …
Story of Dunbar, The
This home-grown history of a Vancouver neighbourhood speaks to the need people still have, in a time of infinite possibilities, to connect deeply with the place they call home. The Story of Dunbar is a celebration of community roots and a sense of place. The documentation of Dunbar's history, complete with archival photos from private collections, …
Story of Dunbar, The
The Story of Dunbar: Voices of a Vancouver Neighbourhood draws on interviews with more than 350 local residents, including recent arrivals, descendants of pioneer settlers and the aboriginal inhabitants. Their personal accounts are woven together with information from diaries, records in the City of Vancouver Archives and carefully chosen published …
Winds of L’Acadie
When sixteen-year-old Sarah from Toronto learns that she is to spend the summer with her grandparents in Nova Scotia, she is convinced that it will be the most tedious summer ever. She gets off to a rough start when she meets Luke, the nephew of her grandmother’s friend, and one unfortunate event leads to another. Just when she thinks her summer …
Thompson's Highway
For his third volume about BC literary history, Alan Twigg traces the writings of David Thompson, Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser and thirty of their peers, mainly Scotsmen, who founded and managed more than fifty forts west of the Rockies prior to 1850.
This lively and unprecedented panorama introduces remarkable but little-known characters such …
Half in the Sun
In recent years Mennonites have become one of the most visible ethnic literary communities in Canada. With the publication of Half in the Sun, BC writers of Mennonite heritage claim their place in this community. The authors represented in Half in the Sun are West Coast writers who share a history rooted in a dark region littered with stories of re …
Living Language and Dead Reckoning
In this highly personal essay, Ted Chamberlin asks some old, old questions such as "why do we need stories and songs?" Turning frequently to First Nations people, he looks at their culture and asks what it means to listen. In response, he notes that we take great pleasure in the comforts of narration, of finding our way within a story, a kind of "d …
Aboriginality
Following the success of First Invaders, Alan Twigg turns his attention to First Nations writers, unearthing more than 300 books by more than 170 mostly unheralded aboriginal authors.
Taking the reader from residential schools to art galleries, this lively and unprecedented panorama of British Columbia includes trailblazer Pauline Johnson, political …
Sobering Dilemma
Does drug prohibition work? There are many governments, police forces, jailers and drug testers who say it does. Prohibition is the favoured choice in dealing with intoxicants in the world today. But how well does it stand up to the test of history - in particular, our own history in British Columbia? The province has seen two harsh liquor prohibit …
First Invaders
The names Cook and Quadra ring a bell for most of us, as do Bering and Vancouver, but how much do we know about the Greek-born navigator, Juan de Fuca or the Machiavelli of the maritime fur trade, John Meares? British Columbia's earliest authors and explorers are skilfully introduced, for the first time collectively, by Alan Twigg. This is a compel …
Sobering Dilemma
This fascinating history of alcohol consumption in British Columbia focuses on two periods of harsh liquor prohibitions: first on its Native population from 1854 to 1962, and second, on the entire population, during the 1917 to 1921 period. Using formerly closed police files, Douglas Hamilton traces the scandals, corruption and crime that resulted …
Chaos in Halifax
Twelve-year-old Jolene is determined to find independence from her brother, Michael, during a family trip to research the Halifax explosion of 1917 for her father's Museum of Disasters. When her grandfather finds a time crease into the past, Jolene discovers a new friend and the importance of family and loyalty in a world torn apart by World War I. …
Strongman
This compelling biography of Doug Hepburn, the weightlifter who won gold for Canada in Stockholm in 1953 and at the British Empire Games in Vancouver in 1954, delivers fascinating, first-hand information about an unusual Vancouver athlete and the sporting world of the 1950s and 1960s. In this plain-spoken and moving biography of a strength legend, …
Of Irony, Especially in Drama
Ronsdale Press is pleased to announce a new edition of this landmark book on irony, first published in 1935 by the University of Toronto Press, and frequently reprinted. Professor Sedgewick begins his discussion by recognizing that irony is a way of speaking with which we are all familiar, a figure of speech used in daily conversation. But there ar …
Grandchild of Empire
Canada's foremost literary critic looks at the politics of irony in modern writing and explains how it relates to imperial history, how it impacts upon personal memories, how it speaks from the margin, and how it indirectly teaches us to resist presumptuous authority. Funny, informed and emotionally engaging, Grandchild of Empire, an extension of t …
Shadows of Disaster
In this fascinating historical novel, twelve-year-old Jolene travels back in time to the year 1903 and finds herself in the coal mining town of Frank on the eve of Canada's deadliest rockslide. Disguised as a boy, Jolene must face the wrath of an impatient teacher, challenge her ability as a gymnast, and disentangle herself from an embarrassing lov …
Judge's Wife, The
These memoirs offer a compelling account of life in early British Columbia from the 1860s to the first decade of the 20th century. The wife of Judge Eli Harrison, one of the province's foremost lawyers and judges, Mrs. Harrison gives intimate glimpses into daily life in Victoria, Nanaimo and New Westminster, and her visits as a young woman to Granv …
Hurricanes over London
Browsing in his grandfather's study, young Jamie discovers a notebook entitled "This Was My War" and finds himself pulled into the life of East End London teenagers whose adolescent years were overtaken by the devastation of World War II. As Jamie follows his grandfather's story in which "war" changes from silver screen exploits to bombs exploding …
Bialystok to Birkenau
This profoundly honest Holocaust memoir describes the transformation of everyday anti-Semitism into the Holocaust nightmare. Central to the story are the years Mielnicki spent in the camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buna, Mittelbau-Dora and Belsen. Mielnicki's account is a harrowing yet powerfully redeeming human drama. Includes over 30 black and white …
Terra Incognita
This young adult historical novel, set in the early seventeenth century, tells the story of Madeleine Hebert and her brother Philippe who travel to New France to join their father after their mother dies in France. On arriving in Quebec city, they learn that their father, with the Regiment de Carignan, is at Michilimackinac, and possibly ill.
When P …
Professing English at UBC
In her University of BC Sedgewick Lecture for 1999, Sandra Djwa relates the life and times of two illustrious professors of English, who were among the most influential teachers in Canada's history. From the 1920s to the 1970s, Garnett Sedgewick and Roy Daniells shaped the way tens of thousands of students experienced literature.
Sedgewick, the firs …
Green Man
For thousands of years the image of the Green Man - foliage sprouting from his mouth to symbolize humanity's unity with the natural world - has survived in European civilization. Invoking this spirit, John Donlan counsels: "Wear the earth as if it were your skin." He writes of how "the wind's voice, translated through the low/hiss of pine needles, …
Women Overseas
In these Red Cross memoirs, some 30 women tell their stories of volunteer work with the Canadian Red Cross Corps in overseas postings during World War Two and the Korean War. These dramatic narratives take us across oceans infested with enemy submarines to witness Canadian women on duty in the U.K., in Europe and in Asia.
The volunteers shouldered c …
