Retired fishery officer Randy Nelson's first love was catching poachers. That obsession, plus a devious mind and enthusiasm for marathon running, spelled big trouble for law-breaking fishermen. Thirty-five years in the field (and stream) netted a gold mine of stories: with hair-raising tales of grizzly bear attacks; angry axe-wielding, rock-throwin …

Frank White started writing the story of his life as a pioneer BC truck driver in 1974 when he was only sixty. His boisterous yarn in Raincoast Chronicles about wrangling tiny trucks overloaded with huge logs down steep mountains with no brakes won the Canadian Media Club award for Best Magazine Feature and was reprinted so many times everyone urge …

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 …

End Zones and Border Wars is the story of the CFL's ill-fated period
of expansion into the United States during the early to mid-
1990s. It was a time filled with intriguing characters, from John
Candy to Nick Mileti to Pepper Rodgers, the coach who loved everything
about the Canadian game except the rules and the teams. With
a cast of investors w …

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 …

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 …

The tale begins in sixteenth-century Venice, when explorer Juan de Fuca encountered English merchant Michael Lok and relayed a fantastic story of a marine passageway that connected the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. This tale would be the catalyst for centuries of dreaming, and exacerbate English and Spanish rivalry.

The search for the fabled Northwes …

When Dr. Alan Swan took the job as doctor at Pender Harbour's 13-bed mission hospital in 1954, his first challenge was locating the place. The tiny hospital served a vast coastal frontier occupied by loggers, fishermen and recluses who seldom asked for help, but when they did you knew it was serious. Almost as soon as he arrived, Dr. Swan was calle …

Whether readers are interested in logging history, a good yarn or folk art, they will be enthralled by Now You're Logging, British Columbia's first graphic novel and a enduring West Coast classic, published in celebration of what would have been Bus Griffiths' 100th birthday.

Now You're Logging is the story of Al and Red, who go to work in a small W …

In 1886, the discovery of rich goldfields in the Klondike precipitated a flood of gold-crazed men and women rushing north to the Yukon territory. Suddenly, the northern wilderness and its aboriginal population were overwhelmed by the newcomers. The presence of large numbers of American miners challenged Canada's sovereignty. Yet it was
no lawless …

Roderick L. Haig-Brown is one of the world's most beloved and popular fly-fishing writers. His books bring together exquisite prose and the limitless art and joy of fishing, along with solid and timeless advice.

First published in 1959, and the most popular of Haig-Brown's fishing titles, Fisherman's Summer includes absorbing descriptions of fishing …

In a time when darkness covered the land, a boy named Weget is born who is destined to bring the light. With the gift of a raven's skin that allows him to fly as well as transform, Weget turns into a bird and journeys from Haida Gwaii into the sky. There he finds the Chief of the Heavens who keeps the light in a box. By transforming himself into a …

Centuries before steel, fibreglass, aluminum and automation were applied to shipbuilding, early twentieth-century British Columbian shipwrights hand built fish boats entirely out of wood. Guided by their intuition and knowledge of the sea, they used only basic tools to craft thousands of vessels that shaped the way shipwrights and marine architects …

Seymour lies between the City of North Vancouver and Indian Arm and includes the communities of Dollarton, Deep Cove, the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation and the popular Mount Seymour winter sports complex. Compiled with the help of knowledgeable Seymour seniors of the Deep Cove Heritage Society, Echoes Across Seymour provides unparalleled insight into …

This follow-up to the bestselling book Fishing with Gubby (Harbour Publishing, 2010) continues the adventures of Gubby, a commercial salmon fisherman, who heads home to his village on the Sunshine Coast at the end of another long season. His beloved old boat, the Flounder, is worn out and he commissions a Japanese-Canadian boat builder in historic …

Bestselling author Chris Czajkowski returns with more revelations of life in the far reaches of the Chilcotin.

After nearly three decades of wilderness dwelling far from neighbours and roads, with the nearest community accessible only via float plane or days of hiking, Czajkowski purchases a derelict homestead with rough road access at Ginty Creek, …

For more than a decade, the Globe and Mail has featured comprehensive obituaries of notable British Columbians by columnist Tom Hawthorn. He recounts the lives of the recently departed in an engaging style, finding anecdotes to illuminate personality, giving voice to those who no longer have one. These stories are not about death, but about life in …

Publishing sensation and popular Global TV personality Mike McCardell returns with a new collection of hilarious, heartwarming and honest stories. These are stories of the defender of a handicapped parking spot, a woman who has delivered homemade Valentine cards to neighbours for twenty years, and love between a widower and a woman who had never be …

Song and Spectacle, the third collection by award-winning poet Rachel Rose, is composed of fierce hymns to the particular and universal struggles of birth, passion and loss, and the paradoxical quest for non-attachment in a treacherous, unpredictable and yet deeply beloved world.

Rose delves into the world of myth, using the stories of Daphne and Pe …

Diana Phillips, daughter of Canadian folk legend Pan Phillips, shares more extraordinary tales about her life on the ranch in the remote British Columbian backcountry.

Two years after publishing Beyond the Chilcotin, her remarkable memoir about growing up on her famous father's pioneer ranch in the Chilcotin, Diana Phillips continues her story. Dis …

Trucks are everywhere--crowding the highways, lining up for the ferries, roaring down dusty logging roads--and yet trucking is often left off the list when talk turns to British Columbia's major industries. It shouldn't be, as this gorgeous new illustrated history celebrating the BC Trucking Association's 100th anniversary shows. With annual revenu …

The history of the Klondike, with its harrowing narratives of climbing the Chilkoot and White passes, braving the rapids of the Yukon River and striking it rich only to go broke again, has become legend. Yet there are still more untold stories that linger in the boarded-up ghost towns, forgotten wilderness cabins and along overgrown trails. Yukon h …

From Captain George Vancouver to Muriel "Curve of Time" Blanchet to Jim "Spilsbury's Coast" Spilsbury, visitors to Desolation Sound have left behind a trail of books endowing the area with a romantic aura that helps to make it British Columbia's most popular marine park. In this hilarious and captivating book, CBC personality Grant Lawrence adds a …

Adrian Raeside has created a magical tale of adventure for pet lovers of all ages in The Rainbow Bridge. Using his gift for creating spunky characters, Raeside has created a valuable fable for anyone who cherishes the companionship of a family pet.

Seven-year-old Rick and his beloved dog Koko are inseparable. They cavort in the swimming hole, chase …

By far the largest of the Raincoast Chronicles collections at 420 pages, Fourth Five is living proof that some things just keep getting better. Containing thirty-two inimitable stories, poems and articles, the volume expounds on such diverse matters as supernatural deer, the cannery village of Ceepeecee, fishing-fleet superstitions and the coveted …

"Oliver Dubois told me about the time he got in a fight with another guy and all the men came out to see the fun. He said he knocked the guy out cold, but he didn't fall down because there were so many Kleins standing around. He went on to name all of them and he said even Klein Klein was there. He was trying to make the point that at one time ther …

In September of 1959, freshly minted physician Eric Paetkau and his new bride travelled the narrow, winding road on BC's Sunshine Coast. The road suddenly ended at a twin-gabled, two-storey building perched on a bluff overlooking picturesque ocean bays dotted with islands. The young doctor gazed up at St. Mary's Hospital and thought, "this is for m …

Northwest Coast peoples were maritime engineers who mastered the art of building dugout canoes from gigantic red cedars, using only tools made from bone, stone, and wood. Ubiquitous, these elegant craft were used for everyday and ceremonial purposes, for fishing, hunting and trading, for feasting and potlatching, and in warfare—they were the keys …

The Kelowna Story is a comprehensive full-length history of the largest metropolitan centre outside BC's Lower Mainland, a labour of love by a leading local historian whose family roots have been entwined with Kelowna's for five generations. It embraces the full sweep of central Okanagan history, starting with the days of the S-Ookanhkchinx, who en …

Bill White (1905–2001) was an itinerant ranch hand and trapper, a member of the RCMP and an Arctic traveller, but he was best known for his work as the head of the Vancouver Labour Council and president of the Marine Workers and Boilermakers Union, the largest local union in Canada in his time. It was a position he held for eleven straight years …

An ultra-fan whose home is a shrine to the Vancouver Canucks thinks he may have the answer to the team's shocking collapse in the 2011 playoffs; a homeless man who has become a caring mainstay at the Downtown Eastside shelter run by the First United Church, and many anecdotes of generosity among people who have nothing are only a few of the inspira …

Question: How much in love with a sport does a boy have to be when, at age 14, he asks his parents for permission to leave home and move to England on his own so he can join Reading FC to try to become a soccer professional—and warns that if they say no he will never forgive them? Answer: As much in love as the scared-stiff Bobby Lenarduzzi was w …

In rhyming prose, sure to appeal to both children and their grown-up sous-chefs, this story is both informative and fun. Young readers spend a snowy northern afternoon in the warm kitchen with little Suzie, her dad and their zany sourdough circus, learning a simple method to bake wholesome and tangy sourdough bread.

Kids will be asking their parents …

The Yukon is a mythic place: the land is vast and wild, the climate harsh and uncompromising, the people resourceful and resilient. Say the word "Yukon" and southerners still conjure up images of the rough and ready frontier: whiskered men in plaid shirts or parka-clad women wielding axes in the struggle for survival in a silent, isolated land. The …

Former RCMP Sergeant Charlie Scheideman, author of Policing the Fringe: The Curious Life of a Small-Town Mountie, is back with the same wry humour and a new collection of incredible stories drawn from his twenty-seven years of patrolling the small communities of the interior of British Columbia.

These new adventures have him re-polishing his boots …

"There was nothing but parties in Hogan's Alley," a black musician named Austin Phillips reminisced in 1977, "Night time, anytime, and Sundays all day. You could go by at 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning and you could hear the juke boxes going, you hear somebody hammering on the piano, playing the guitar, or hear somebody fighting."

The black ghetto of …

In 2008 Keith Billington's surprise bestseller, House Calls by Dogsled: Six Years in an Arctic Medical Outpost, vividly described Billington and his wife Muriel's experiences providing medical care to a string of isolated First Nations settlements in the Northwest
Territories during the 1960s. In Cold Land, Warm Hearts: More Memories of an Arctic …

Fishing with Gubby is the marvelously illustrated, authentic account of one season in the life of a salmon fisherman. Based on actual events, the story is told by award-winning children's illustrator Kim La Fave and former fisherman Gary Kent. Together they make the wharfs, boats, fishermen and villages of the BC coast come alive with remarkable de …

Arthur Black's voice is unmistakable on the radio and on the page. His is the voice of reason, with a generous helping of funny; the voice that scolds us for our universal human quirks, but who says it with the tone and words that make us laugh out loud at ourselves and our neighbours.

A Chip Off the Old Black, Black's latest collection of stories …

Winner of the Lieutenant-Governor Medal

On June 17, 1958, Vancouver experienced the worst industrial accident in its history when the new bridge being built across Burrard Inlet collapsed into the flooding tidal waters of Second Narrows, killing eighteen workers. Photos of the two broken spans tilted into the sea went around the world and provided t …

In this fascinating collection Canada's most entertaining sportswriter revisits the glories of a career following sporting events and personalities that spanned five decades. Name any memorable event--from Canada-Russia 1972 to Rick Hansen's Man in Motion tour--or any famous name from Wayne Gretzky to Muhammad Ali to the San Diego Chicken, and Jim …

British Columbia's colourful story has been told many times, but until now no one has attempted to relate the chronicle specifically for young readers. From the gold rush to the Gumboot Navy and from "brideships" to W.A.C. Bennett, BC history comes alive in this highly illustrated and vivid account by award-winning writer and historian Daniel Franc …

Mike McCardell is an institution in BC television with his anti-news stories of oddball inspiration that close the News Hour on Global BC. Lately he has become a publishing institution as well with his series of heartwarming books full of stories about the ways in which ordinary people cope with extraordinary challenges. Fresh
from 2009's bestsell …

"Bring me moose meat! You will not be sorry!" So says Whitehorse author and cook Michele Genest to the hunters in her circle. Wild is wonderful when it comes to Genest's creative treatments for northern viands, with exciting ideas such as moose cooked in Yukon-brewed espresso stout and finished with chocolate, lime and cilantro, Arctic char marinat …

Quadra Island, the largest and most populated of the Discovery Islands at the top end of Georgia Strait, has a history loaded with adventure. From the We Wai Kai warriors of the 19th century to the loggers, gold miners, prostitutes and ranchers who followed, its people have provided the stuff of legend. Taylor draws us into the story of her island …

It is generally known that the West Coast's once-great commercial fishing industry has fallen on hard times, but as Alan Haig-Brown demonstrates in this new book, reports of its demise are exaggerated. A veteran of the industry himself, Haig-Brown here offers a "state of the industry" report, discovering pockets of surprising activity among the vi …

The Pacific Rim of Vancouver Island's wild west coast, with its picturesque coastal villages of Tofino and Ucluelet and expansive wave-washed sands of Long Beach, has become one of Canada's top tourist destinations. In The Wild Side Guide to the Pacific Rim, longtime Tofino resident, wilderness traveller, author and photographer Jacqueline Windh sh …

Conspiracies to overthrow the Yukon; terrorism in the Klondike;a bigamist Klondike Casanova; gunfights and how the Mounties got their man; Robert Service's secret love life; the Canadian who fooled Alaskans into making him governor; floods, famine and things found frozen from the past. The Yukon has them all--and more!

History Hunting in the Yukon r …