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 hundre …

Set in the wild country north of Lillooet and west of the great Fraser River, Old Lives: In the Chilcotin Backcountry paints the rugged landscape and equally rugged lives of the Chilcotin’s enigmatic old-timers: Aboriginal and settler, male and female, deceased and alive. It takes vigilance, persistence, courage and humour to live where survival …

Surveying Southern British Columbia, Jay Sherwood's fourth and final book about prominent BC surveyor Frank Swannell, covers the years from 1901 to 1907, before Swannell began surveying for the BC government. Gore & McGregor, one of the leading surveying companies in the province, hired Swannell to work on projects throughout southern British Colum …

Forty years ago, droves of young women migrated away from urban settings and settled in rural areas across North America. Many settled on the north coast of British Columbia, on Haida Gwaii or around Prince Rupert. Gumboot Girls tells the stories of thirty-four women, through their own eyes, as they moved from their comfortable city-dwelling surrou …

In June 1967, Norway House Indian Residential School of Manitoba closed its doors after a somewhat questionable past. In 1954, when Florence Kaefer was just nineteen, she accepted a job as a teacher at Norway House. Unaware of the difficult conditions the students were enduring, Florence and her fellow teachers nurtured a school full of lonely and …

In 1926, Lillian Alling, a European immigrant, set out on a journey home from New York. She had little money and no transportation, but plenty of determination. In the three years that followed, Alling walked all the way to Dawson City, Yukon, crossing the North American continent on foot. She walked across the Canadian landscape, weathering the ba …

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 …

In Keith Billington's new book, The Last Patrol, he shares one of the most tragic stories of the far north. It was a quiet December morning in 1910 when Inspector Fitzgerald and his crew left Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, on a dog team patrol to Dawson City, Yukon. Their departure was without fanfare, and after a brief handshake and a salu …

Most of this novel is based on historical fact, including the actual names of rivers, mountains and towns — a few of which were christened by those who actually constructed the telegraph line. By early 1866, the overland telegraph line had been built to Fort Fraser, east of Prince George. Exploration had been conducted to a point a few miles nort …

In his third book, The Junction, John Schreiber invites us to join him on a journey into the hidden corners of BC's Cariboo Chilcotin, where he observes and describes a land of mountains and old trails, coyotes and bighorn sheep, Indigenous Peoples, homesteaders, ranchers and the stories of long ago.

Driven by his love of this land, Schreiber wander …

A Trail of Two Telegraphs is a fascinating collection of historic tales that portray the strong spirit of BC's rugged North from Prince George to Prince Rupert. Stevenson writes of Perry Collins's dream, in 1864, of connecting North America to Europe by telegraph. She introduces us to Captain Charles East, whose mission it was to recover Japanese f …

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 …

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, …

In the late 1960s and '70s a small group of idealistic young women and men, self-described as "volunteer peasants," moved to the tiny town of Wells in British Columbia's Central Interior. These hippies, with their waist-length hair and handlebar moustaches, long paisley skirts and gumboots, rusted cars and worn sofas, brought with them a Canadian v …

In this humourous and refreshing collection of short stories, David Thompson reveals the charm and grit of life in the Yukon. Talking at the Woodpile is a masterful blend of fact and fiction, history and the contemporary and intriguing stories that begin as long as 10,000 years ago. An unsuspecting miner discovers a frozen carcass while digging fo …

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 …

In 1967, in celebration of Canada's 100th birthday, Les Voyageurs left Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, in ten 26-foot canoes. These one hundred gallant men, representing eight provinces and two territories, travelled 5,286 kilometres to Expo '67 in Montreal. The trip took them across such major lakes as Winnipeg, Lake of the Woods, Superior, Nipissi …

The story of the railway has never been told in a more charming voice as in these letters by Bernice Medbury Martin who married railroader Leslie Martin in 1912 and arrived in Prince Rupert at the height of rock blasting and railroad building. Lonely for her family in Wisconsin, Bernice wrote frequent letters home in which she described in striking …

Gumption & Grit is the first in a brand new series being introduced by Caitlin Press which will showcase women of BC: their lives, their successes, their history.

In 2002 the Williams Lake Women's Contact Society posted a request for pioneer stories of the women of the Cariboo Chilcotin. What they received was an overwhelming number of tales of h …

Memorials and the yearning to re-create the past permeate Valley Sutra, award-winning poet Kuldip Gill's new collection. The voices of East Indian communities and families speak up, reminding us that history is not just what is recorded in documents and ledgers, but is a mixture of smells, tastes and textures: the steam of hot rotis rising from met …

In 1934 international entrepreneur and filmmaker Charles Bedeaux hired a team of Canadian men to trail blaze from Edmonton, Alberta, to Telegraph Creek, BC. What started out as adventure for Carl Davidson and Bob Beattie soon became a treacherous and heartbreaking journey. While Bedeaux hob-nobbed with Europe's elite in Paris, Beattie and Davidson …

In the spring of 2007 the Canadian Forces and the Canadian Rangers, the regiment responsible for providing a military presence in isolated communities, set out on a treacherous journey across jagged sea ice and over steep and hostile terrain. Their mission was to travel over two thousand kilometres by snowmobile from Resolute to the Canadian Forces …

Here is the definitive fly fisher's guide to BC's Central Interior. Brian Smith writes about the allure of BC's wild rainbow trout that attracts fly fishers from all over the world. He describes in extraordinary detail the fabled Blackwater, Stellako and Crooked rivers and the still waters of the Dragon, Hobson, Hart and Wicheeda, renowned trophy l …

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 …

Forbidding canyons, raging rapids and menacing rocks -- this was the daily challenge that faced whitewater men who worked the wild rivers and creeks to bring freight and supplies to northern BC in the years before the Grand Trunk Railway. In particular, the Grand Canyon of British Columbia's Fraser River was infamous for swallowing at least 200 luc …

Mount Slesse, a jagged 2,500-metre peak near Chilliwack BC known locally as "The Fang," lived up to its evil reputation on December 9, 1956, when Trans Canada Airlines Flight 810 slammed into it, killing all 62 aboard. For five months nobody knew what happened. Flight 810 had just disappeared into the night. Adding to the sensation was the fact tha …

Jack Boudreau, author of the bestselling Crazy Man's Creek and Grizzly Bear Mountain, is back with another wild and wooly, scarcely believable but nevertheless true tale of misadventure in British Columbia's northern wilderness. Wild and Free, which Boudreau says is his best book yet, tells the stories of two of Canada's most legendary mountain men …

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. …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Charlie [Lindbergh] was working on his plane when I arrived, writes Andrew Cruickshank as he awaits completion of his own duplicate of the Spirit of St. Louis. With this plane, Cruickshank starts the first airline in the Yukon. It was 1927, long before the legendary Grant McConachie's time. Andrew Cruickshank, a dashing and brave young RCMP officer …

Escaping from Communist Czechoslovakia on skis with his family in 1948, Jan Drabek's experience of World War II was anything but ordinary. Thirteen follows a young Drabek growing up in tumultuous Prague where Nazi propaganda, clandestine BBC radio broadcasts, conspiratorial talk at home and escapist comedies in the theatres provided an unconvention …