The Earth Remembers Everything
The Earth Remembers Everything is a masterful blend of history, travel and fictional narrative, tracing the author’s journeys to some of the most difficult destinations in the world: the Cui Chi Tunnels in Vietnam, Hiroshima in Japan and Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, First Nations sites such as Mosquito Lake on Moresby Island, Haida Gwaii and Chi …
Women of Brave Mettle
In this much-anticipated second volume in the Extraordinary Women Anthology series, Diana French follows up on Gumption and Grit with more stories of the women who have contributed, or who are still contributing, to the vibrant mosaic that is the Cariboo Chilcotin. The area has more than its share of remarkable women, from educators to rodeo stars, …
Tse-loh-ne (The People at the End of the Rocks)
The Tse-loh-ne from the Sekani First Nation were known as "The People at the End of the Rocks." This small band of people lived and thrived in one of BC's most challenging and remote areas, 1600 kilometres north of Prince George in the Rocky Mountain Trench. They were isolated and nomadic, and survived by following the seasons, walking hundreds of …
Attemptations
Imagine you're given the startling news that your body is only capable of having six more orgasms. "It's either buck up or fuck up," decides Mel in "Six Degrees of Altered Sensation," adding this new restraint to the perplexity of single life with progressive Multiple Sclerosis. In "Flickering," Francis becomes a pyromaniac in order to give her gro …
The Good Hope Cannery
In 1895 Scottish entrepreneur, engineer, and outdoor adventurer Henry Ogle Bell-Irving built the Good Hope Cannery in Rivers Inlet, BC. There was a fortune to be made and Bell-Irving was determined to make one, both for the shareholders of the Anglo-British Columbia Packing Company, and for himself. As sole agent for ABC, he effectively controlled …
Double or Nothing
Life has always been a bit of a gamble for Darcy Christensen. Born in Ocean Falls in 1929, he was raised in Bella Coola Valley and Anahim Lake on the Chilcotin Plateau. The Christensen family were among the earliest white settlers on the Central Coast and West Chilcotin and his maternal grandfather, John Clayton, was the Hudson's Bay Company's last …
A Thoroughly Wicked Woman
On a foggy evening in November 1905, 48-year-old Thomas Jackson returned to his home on Melville Street in Vancouver after nine months of prospecting north of the Skeena. Jackson was happy because he had made an important gold strike. Four days later he was dead from strychnine poisoning. Any of the other four people living in the house on Melvill …
Inward to the Bones
In 1930, Emily Carr met Georgia O'Keeffe at an exhibition of O'Keeffe's paintings in New York. Inspired by the idea of a bond between these two powerful painters, award-winning poet Kate Braid has expanded that momentary meeting into a passionate, revolutionary friendship. In Georgia O'Keeffe's voice, she envisions what might have happened if the t …
Jacob's Prayer
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 …
Seeking Balance
Many Canadians say that British Columbia is the zaniest political province. It's too diverse, too polarized - geographically, demographically and ideologically. But the British Columbia political arena is lively, and it has often led the way in electing women to parliaments - as respected spokespeople for the public and as equal people.
In Seeking B …
The Butcher of Penetang
Betsy Trumpener's raw fiction hits quickly, cuts deeply and lingers on in the imagination. Her urgent, unique voice pushes fiction north of what's real. The Butcher of Penetang carves up rare slices of savoury stories that are both tough and delicious. A child missing in a dangerous part of town; a draft dodger with bloody hands; a robber armed wit …
Flylines & Fishtales
In 1981, John Grain's passion for the outdoors led him to create a consortium that purchased Glimpse Lake Lodge, a neglected fishing camp near Merritt, BC. The discovery of a tattered diary inspired him to write Flylines & Fishtales before time and age erased the events completely or exaggerated them beyond belief. It combines a brief history of th …
Surveying Northern British Columbia
Considered one of British Columbia's most famous pioneer surveyors, Frank Swannell surveyed much of northern BC for the provincial government between 1908 and 1914, taking many striking photographs of the area and its people. Together with his journal, these images constitute the best record of the region during this period of enormous transition. …
Cassiar
For four decades--1952 to 1992--the town of Cassiar thrived in the northern wilderness. Spawned by the post-World War II demand for asbestos and killed, in part, by the growing concerns over asbestosis, the story of Cassiar is the story of the the quintessential company town. People of diverse backgrounds find themselves thrown together in the wild …
Salish Elders
With stunning photographs and the Elders' stories, author Wim Tewinkel records the lives lead by twenty-one elders of the Interior Salish people. They share with the author the highlights of their lives -- from being a bomber in World War II to being a great-grandmother and master bead worker. Tewinkel's photographic portraits capture both the dept …
The Adventures of Grey-Dawn
The Adventures of Grey-Dawn is the first in a series of books that brings the knowledge and wisdom of ancient native legends into a new era with renewed life. Metis legends come alive in this tale of courage and perseverance. Grey-Dawn--an outcast from his people because of his eye colour--and his friends Eagle, Moose and Owl make the journey to th …
Chasing Their Dreams
Chasing Their Dreams recreates the hardships early Chinese settlers faced in Northwestern British Columbia: harsh land and climate, little or no financial resources, deep-set prejudice and sometimes racial violence.
Panning for gold, making ties for the railroad, canning fish, running laundries and restaurants, these people persevered despite persec …
The Spruces
Young, idealistic but frightfully naive, Kevin and Joanne decide to leave the urban streets of Toronto to homestead in the Peace River country. Life on the norther frontier, they learn, is far removed from anything they had experienced in the past. Even being jobless in the mean streets of a large city has nothing to compare with the troubles of ho …
Forests Power Policy
As education minister, Ray Williston introduced the idea of university education for teachers, among other then-radical innovations. As minister of lands and forests, he had his greatest impact. From the mega-power projects to improved forestry practices, all major industrial developments in interior and northern BC during the 1950s and 1960s had W …
Sojourners in the North
Early Chinese settlers in BC lived a shadowy life. Sometimes feared, always misunderstood, these people farmed, mined, and lived in central BC with hopes of returning home to their villages with riches. However, they faced crime, beatings and death in a foreign land. Chow brings us forward from those early days of Chinese settlements to present day …
Hazardous Pursuit
On Christmas Eve 1993, after a high-speed chase over icy winter roads, an RCMP officer shot a member of the Lillooet Nation. What led up to this tragedy? Could it have been prevented? And was justice done? After eighteen months of research, Bruce Strachan has written a gripping account that asks new questions about the often strained relationship b …