Hidden Lives
A revised and updated edition of a collection of personal essays that illuminate what life is like for those who live with mental illness, and how it impacts their family members.
More than 4 million Canadians and 57 million Americans suffer from a diagnosable mental illness, and yet there are still considerable stigmas and a great deal of misunders …
The Moral Work of Nursing
Reviewing and integrating lived experiences in nursing with theory and research, The Moral Work of Nursing is a blend of life story and overview of factors affecting ethical nursing practice during the past 50 years. Reflecting on her 35-year nursing career, studies in health care ethics in the 1980s and recent developments in Canadian health care, …
The Vegetarian's Guide to Eating Meat
Growing up in a household of food-loving Italian-Americans, Marissa Landrigan was always a black sheep—she barely knew how to boil water for pasta. But at college, she thought she’d discovered her purpose. Buoyed by animal rights activism and a feminist urge to avoid the kitchen, she transformed into a hardcore vegan activist, complete with sha …
Our Place
A collection of essays and articles that reflect upon the ecology, conservation history, missed opportunities and emerging possibilities of a place that could have been about so much more than oil.
Naturalist, hunter, conservation activist and recovering bureaucrat Kevin Van Tighem explores the landscapes and wildlife of one of Canada's most divers …
Butch
Butch: Not Like the Other Girls is a photographic exploration of the liminal spaces occupied by female masculinity in contemporary communities. Its first incarnation exhibited as a public art project in transit shelters around Vancouver in March-April 2013, with a simultaneous gallery show at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre (the Cultch). Accordi …
One Last Cast
One Last Cast is a collection of soul-touching and evocative stories about author and outdoor enthusiast Bruce Masterman's experiences in wild places and with wild critters.
Award-winning Alberta writer, journalist and storyteller Bruce Masterman has been a passionate outdoors enthusiast for more than five decades and has explored Alberta's natural …
Casting Back
Covering a span of more than 60 years, these classic fishing essays are brought together for the first time, celebrating the thoughts, pleasures and adventures of a devoted angler and renowned storyteller as he fishes some of the timeless streams of the Ireland, New Zealand and British Columbia.
Through the pages of Casting Back Peter McMullan takes …
Imagine This Valley
Featuring essays from some of the area’s most beloved personalities, this exceptional literary anthology celebrates the landscape, culture, community and natural history of Alberta’s Bow Valley.
Canmore and Banff are collectively renowned for their mountain culture, diverse wildlife and scenes of breathtaking natural splendour. These vibrant mou …
Hard Knox
2017 long-list finalist, Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour Writing
In Hard Knox, seasoned columnist and consummate everyman Jack Knox offers up his uniquely hilarious views on Canadian life as seen from the western fringes of the country—in particular from the “Island of Misfit Toys” as he aptly calls his Vancouver Island home. This treasure tr …
None of This Was Planned
Mike McCardell has spent his life tracking down thousands upon thousands of stories, from the uplifting to the sobering, from the bizarre to the sublime. As the author of many books and a lifelong reporter, he has stored up a vast collection of anecdotes and is never short of a tale to tell.
With None of This Was Planned, McCardell takes us behind t …
The Hidden Life of Trees
A NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • One of the most beloved books of our time: an illuminating account of the forest, and the science that shows us how trees communicate, feel, and live in social networks. After reading this book, a walk in the woods will never be the same again.
“Breaks entirely new ground .. …
Lawyers’ Empire
Approaching the legal profession through the lens of cultural history, Wes Pue explores the social roles that lawyers imagined for themselves in England and its empire from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Each chapter focuses on a moment when lawyers sought to reshape their profession while at the same time imagining they were sha …
In This Together
What is real reconciliation? This collection of essays from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors from across Canada welcomes readers into a timely, healing conversation—one we've longed for but, before now, have had a hard time approaching.
These reflective and personal pieces come from journalists, writers, academics, visual artists, f …
Boobs
At turns heartbreaking and hilarious, BOOBS is a diverse collection of stories about the burdens, expectations and pleasures of having breasts. From the agony of puberty and angst of adolescence to the anxiety of aging, these stories and poems go beyond the usual images of breasts found in fashion magazines and movie posters, instead offering dynam …
The Best of Funny, You Don't Look Like One
“Drew Hayden Taylor is one of those dangerous writers who knows the potential of humour, and how far it can reach into society, how deep it can cut, how quickly it can heal.” —Thomas King, author of The Back of the Turtle
The Best of Funny, You Don't Look Like One is a collection of the author's handpicked favorites from the popular first …
Rogues, Rascals, and Scalawags Too
National Books for Everybody Pick (Canada)
Never before have as many outrageous and out-sized characters appeared in one place at the same time. Words like rogues, rascals, rapscallions, reprobates and rodomontades don't completely describe these individuals; they are more than each or any combination thereof. They are scalawags. People who claim to …
The Horrors
A darkly mirthful and alphabetical approach to very bad things from comedian Charles Demers.
Comedian-author Charlie Demers, whose brain-bending brand of black humour will be familiar to followers of CBC Radio's The Debaters, offers his madcap perspective in a new collection of essays highlighting a wide range of topics under the heading of Bad Thin …
Tuco and the Scattershot World
A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick
For thirty years, Brian Brett shared his office and his life with Tuco, a remarkable parrot given to asking such questions as Whaddya know?” and announcing Party time!” when guests showed up at Brett’s farm. Although Brett bought Tuco on a whim as a pet, he gradually realizes the enormous obligation he has to t …
The Wild in You
A testament to the miraculous beings that share our planet and the places that they live, The Wild in You is a deeply-felt creative collaboration between one of our time’s best nature photographers and a very talented and creative poet. Inspired by the majestic and savage beauty of Ian McAllister’s photographs, Lorna Crozier translates the wild …
Letters to My Grandchildren
In this inspiring series of letters to his grandchildren, David Suzuki offers grandfatherly advice mixed with stories from his own remarkable life and explores what makes life meaningful. He challenges his grandchildren and us to do everything at full tilt. He explains why sports, fishing, feminism, and failure are important; why it is danger …
The Carefree Garden
What happens when a lifelong gardener finally realizes that he must collaborate with Mother Nature rather than work against her in order to achieve his dream of creating the perfect garden? In this delightful and thoughtful narrative journey of horticultural discovery, Bill Terry asks how and even why we garden, and to what end?
These are personal …
Paint the Town Black
Arthur Black's best lines are like a shot of whisky--sharp, invigorating and with a good kick. Following the success of his many previous titles, the multiple-award-winning humorist once again delivers "black-to-black" laughs with his latest collection, Paint the Town Black.
With his usual off-kilter perspective, Black tackles many of the pressing t …
Ground-Truthing
Derrick Stacey Denholm has spent twenty-five years as a forestry field worker, planting trees, marking cutblock boundaries and timber-cruising. In Ground-Truthing, he combines this experience with his perspective as a poet and artist to guide us through the tangle of social, ecological and economic slash piles that dominate BC’s North Coast. Scie …
Burqa of Skin
Burqa of Skin is a dense collection of writings from Nelly Arcan, channelling harrowing disenchantment and indignation. From her very first novel, Putain (Seuil, 2001), Arcan shook the literary landscape with her flamboyant lyricism and her preoccupations with such recurring themes as our culture's vertiginous obsession with youth, and its reverse: …
Born Out of This
Born Out of This follows Christine Lowther’s journey from the unutterable loss of her mother to the discovery of her own poetic voice through deep reflection and her intimate connection to the coastal rainforest. She looks back on her mother’s poetry and activism. She recalls the day the police arrested her father, and the indifferent beauty su …
Casting Quiet Waters
In Casting Quiet Waters, some of North America’s most respected literary writers take us on a fishing trip and use that as an opportunity to explore issues of the human condition. A little more than five centuries ago an odd English nun named Dame Juliana Berners (The Prioress of St. Albans”) wrote the first book about fishing. Her obscure bu …
Global Chorus
Global Chorus is a remarkable, illustrated collection of 365 daily meditations around some very large and increasingly crucial themes:
“Do you think that humanity can “nd a way past the current global environmental and social crises? Will we be able to create the conditions necessary for our own survival as well as that of other species on the p …
Buffalo Girl Cooks Bison
More than 100 wildly delicious recipes that use North America’s original red meat, from bison rancher and award-winning food writer Jennifer Bain.
Buffalo Girl Cooks Bison is the first comprehensive contemporary bison cookbook for a general North American market. With more than 100 well-tested, delectable recipes, Bain ensures that you’ll have p …
Puckstruck
Longlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize
In Puckstruck, Stephen Smith chronicles his wideeyed and sometimes wincing wander through hockey’s literature, language, and history. On this journey to discover what the game has to say about who we are as Canadians, he seeks to answer some essential riddles. Can hockey make you a better person? What exactly i …
Sensational Vancouver
Winner, City of Vancouver Heritage Award (2015)
#1 BC Bestseller List
History books typically show Vancouver as a pioneer city built on forestry, fisheries, and tourism, but behind the snow-capped mountains and rain forests, the Vancouver of the first half of the 20th century was a hotbed of civic corruption. The top job at the Vancouver Police Depar …
Secular States and Religious Diversity
Nation-states have seen the rise of religious pluralism within their borders, brought about by global migration and the challenge of radical religious movements. This book explores the meaning of secularism and religious freedom in these new contexts. The contributors chart the impact of globalization, the varying forms of secularism in Western sta …
The Perfect Keg
In an entertaining year-long devotion to the near-religious art of brewing beer, Ian Coutts sets out to make the perfect keg. This beer didn’t start with a beer-making kit, which is what most homebrewers use. And it didn’t rely on pre-roasted industrial malt, which is how commercial brewers do it. Coutts made his own malt, and he grew his own b …
Heart & Soil
Writer, environmentalist and gardener Des Kennedy has gathered together his best, most outrageous and most contemplative articles and essays of the past decade into a book full of playful wit and insight.
Kennedy recounts one newspaper's April Fool's Day prank that had men across the UK buying heather in order to propagate a poor-man's Viagra, expan …