The Last Voyage of the Loch Ryan
Evicted from his Tofino pyramid for the last time, writer Andrew Struthers has the solution: buy an old fishing boat going cheap via the federal government's Mifflin Plan. He takes up residence onboard with his nine-year-old daughter Pasheabel, and his perennial housing problems are solved. Or are they? The Last Voyage of the Loch Ryan picks up whe …
The Greenpeace to Amchitka
Greenpeace is known around the world for its activism and education surrounding environmental and biodiversity issues. With a presence in more than forty countries across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific, Greenpeace is undoubtedly a dominant force in the realm of environmental activism. This is the story of how Greenpeace came to be.
In S …
The Last Heathen
In 1892, the Bishop of Tasmania set sail for Melanesia with the intent of rescuing islanders from lives of fear, black magic and cannibalism. Over 100 years later, his great grandson, Charles Montgomery, followed the bishop's route through the South Pacific, seeking out the spirits and myths his missionary forebear had sought to destroy.
Montgomery …
Mr. Nasty
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From humble beginnings in East London to the murky world of heroin addiction and murderous gangs, Cameron White takes us on his trip through his drug-dealing life.
p class=""book_description"">He fell afoul of notorious London criminals and was forced to flee to North America; he climbed aboard a cocaine-fueled roller coaster that had him dealing w …
A Test of Will
The gripping tale of one man’s survival in the wilderness.
On the night of April 9, 1997, Warren Macdonald took his final step as a "complete" human being. A fit and experienced hiker, Macdonald had set out with a new Dutch companion to make the grueling climb to the top of Australia’s spectacular Mount Bowen. They lost their way after a full da …
The Village of the Small Houses
In 1959, just one step ahead of the law, Ian Ferguson's parents left the sophisticated big-city life of Edmonton and ended up 846 km due north in Fort Vermilion, the third-poorest community in Canada. It was meant to be a temporary move. Like their neighbours, the Ferguson kids -- Ian and his six brothers and sisters -- grew up without indoor plumb …
The Oriental Question
Patricia E. Roy is the winner of the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award, Canadian Historical Association.
Patricia Roy’s latest book, The Oriental Question, continues her study into why British Columbians – and many Canadians from outside the province – were historically so opposed to Asian immigration. Drawing on contemporary press and governme …
The Book of Small
The legendary Emily Carr was acclaimed as both an artist and a writer. Her first book, Klee Wyck, won the prestigious Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction in 1941.
The Book of Small is a collection of thirty-six word sketches in which Emily Carr relates anecdotes about her life as a young girl in the frontier town of Victoria. She no …
Paddling to Where I Stand
The Kwakwakawakw people and their culture have been the subject of more anthropological writings than any other ethnic group on the Northwest Coast. Until now, however, no biography had been written by or about a Kwakwakawakw woman. Paddling to Where I Stand presents the memoirs of Agnes Alfred (c.1890-1992), a non-literate noble Qwiqwasutinuxw wom …
Denny's Trek
Like many other pioneering North West Mounted Police officers, Cecil Denny was a colourful, independent man with a career full of conquests and controversy. He and his comrades played key roles in the taming of Canada's wild and woolly west, and in this compilation of selected writings from his books The Law Marches West and The Riders of the Plain …
No Time to Mourn
Growing up Jewish in the little town, or shtetl, of Eisiskes near the Polish-Lithuanian border, Leon Kahn experienced a peaceful childhood until September 1, 1939 when Hitler's forces attacked Poland. Only sixteen years of age, Kahn watched as the women and children of his community were herded into a gravel pit and murdered.
Realizing that to stay …
My Turquiose Years
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A touching and hilarious memoir of an absent mother and a vanished time. Throughout her childhood, Marion Farrant heard exotic stories of the sophisticated life her mother, Nancy, led aboard cruise ships and in Australia. Nancy's world of furs, jewels, cigarette holders, and handsome men seemed miles away from the west-coast hamlet of Cordova Bay, …
From the Far Side of the River
As he braves rills, rivers, and ocean waters in search of his elusive quarry, Paul Quarrington's casts are as likely to call up thoughts of his troubled marriage, his father's death, or one of midlife's existential questions as they are to yield a fish, big or small. But whatever his trials and triumphs, he is never without his wickedly perverse se …
My Turquoise Years
Throughout her childhood, Marion Farrant heard exotic stories of the sophisticated life her mother, Nancy, led aboard cruise ships and in Australia. Nancy’s world of furs, jewels, cigarette holders, and handsome men seemed miles away from the west-coast hamlet of Cordova Bay, where Marion lived with her aunt and uncle, running wild on the beach w …
American Whiskey Bar
American Whiskey Bar is a remarkable faux memoir about the un-making of a film--a film which Michael Turner was commissioned to write. However, whether or not this film was ever made is debatable. And only one print is said to exist. Nevertheless, American Whiskey Bar, a film seen by only a handful of people, is well on its way to becoming a curiou …
The School Bus Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
This print-on-demand title is available by request from most booksellers.
Risking it All
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In the spring of 2000, Heather Ingram, a 30-year-old high school teacher in a small town on the coast of British Columbia, was convicted of the sexual exploitation of a minor for having an affair with a 17-year-old student. Why would a highly respected and accomplished teacher take such a risk? Ingram was one of the most popular and highly regarde …
Wings of the North
This is a true story about bush pilots flying in Northern British Columbia. From beside a fleecy cloud where the icy mountain top hides a rising sun that will in moments bathe the little emerald lade with warmth and splendor, I dedicate this book to the 'esprit de corps' that exists among the bush pilots of the north. Knowing that I am not competen …
Salvage King, Ya!
Finalist, ReLit Award
Amazon.ca's 50 Essential Canadian Books selection
First published in 1997 to much critical acclaim, Salvage King, Ya! is a novel firmly rooted in Canada’s favourite national pastime—hockey. Critics have called Salvage King, Ya! “the great Canadian novel,” and a “postmodern Canadian classic.” Drinkwater, Jarman’s n …
Never Fly Over an Eagle's Nest
A BC classic—over 100,000 copies in print!
Joe Garner's father, Oland, was the oldest of four brothers who were run out of South Carolina in 1903 by the Ku Klux Klan. Along with his bride, Lona, Oland headed west to San Francisco, then north to Victoria, BC. He found employment with Emily Carr's father. Ten years later he helped Emily build her …
Birth of a Bookworm
In Birth of a Bookworm, Michel Tremblay takes the reader on a tour of the books that have had a formative influence on the birth and early development of his creative imagination. Included are his readings of and reactions to some of the great classics of world literature by such writers as the Comtesse de Segur, Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson …
Intensive Care
From the notorious Alan Twigg, publisher and editor of BC BookWorld, Canada's largest-circulating publication about books
One night in April, after a Sunday soccer game, Alan Twigg couldn't remember the names of his two sons or his wife - and he couldn't hold a pen. An emergency CAT scan revealed a large brain tumour squeezed against his motor corte …
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 …
A New Exploration of the Canadian Arctic
Nickel Company's grassroots exploration of the Canadian Arctic in the 1960 field season. Exploration of the Canadian Arctic documents the International Nickel Company's grassroots exploration of the Canadian Arctic in the 1960 field season. This well-detailed story of the search for economic mineralization in Canada's most isolated regions is at on …
Swan River
Swan River is a compelling and nostalgic family memoir that explores themes of love, loss, and discovery. As a child, David Reynolds developed a fascination with the story of his grandfather, who had mysteriously disappeared from London decades earlier. Reynolds consulted relatives, read diaries, and slowly pieced together a spellbinding story. Fam …
Coal Dust in My Blood
The men who worked British Columbia's mines have passed into history. Coal Dust In My Blood is a moving account of one coal miner's life, in plain, evocative language. But this book is much more than a personal memoir. Bill Johnstone's mining career spanned several decades and he worked in a wide variety of positions. His broad insights reveal impo …
Twelve Opening Acts
Alongside his dozens of fascinating and award-winning plays, and in addition to this great Chronicles of the Plateau Mont-Royal series of six epic novels, his translations, adaptations, librettos, and acute portrayals of human emotions in a state of both crisis and redemption, Michel Tremblay has left his readers with three magical keys to the secr …
Casanova Sexicon, The
What does Jacques Casanova, demonstrably the world's greatest lover, have to say to heterosexual men of the 21st century? Do his celebrated memoirs provide a message for the muddled swains of our time, whose sex drive is often stuck in neutral because liberated women can be a scary climb? The answer, one that Casanova was accustomed to hearing: si …
Chasing the Story God
Some say Mike McCardell's "feel-good" stories that cap the six o'clock evening news on BCTV are the best part of the program - the only reason they watch the news. One thing is certain, over the years McCardell has earned the loyalty of hundreds of thousands of fans. In this, his first book, he presents an intriguing and often hilarious behind-the- …
Other Side of Eden
Part memoir, part adventure story, part intellectual voyage, The Other Side of Eden begins in the High Arctic of the 1970s. This was where Hugh Brody first lived with hunting peoples and where, as he explains, he first encountered a way of being that would transform how he saw the world. In this marvellous new book, Brody’s travels take him throu …
Door is Open, The
Finalist, Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (BC Book Prizes)
Finalist, City of Vancouver Book Prize
Long listed for CBC Canada Reads 2015
The Door Is Open is a compassionate, reflective, and informative memoir about three-and-a-half years spent volunteering at a skid row drop-in centre in Vancouver's downtown eastside. In an area most renowned for its sh …
Abundant Beauty
"P class=""book_description"">A delightful and informative trek across the globe by a witty, intelligent, and courageous Victorian artist and adventurer.
In 1871, at age 41, Marianne North, an artist with a keen interest in botany, decided to travel the world on a quest to paint as many plants and flowers as she could find in their natural habitat. …
Shelter From the Storm
Buying Saffron, a 24-foot racing sailboat, was an act of desperation meant to help single parent June Cameron and her youngest son validate themselves. It did that and more. A friend persuaded June to race the boat, and over the next decade June, either solo or with her all-female crew, competed in BC's major sailing races, taking home a lot of the …
The Door is Open
Finalist, Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (BC Book Prizes)
Finalist, City of Vancouver Book Prize
Long listed for CBC Canada Reads 2015
The Door Is Open is a compassionate, reflective, and informative memoir about three-and-a-half years spent volunteering at a skid row drop-in centre in Vancouver’s downtown eastside. In an area most renowned for its …
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 …
Country Doctor
Starting with his first patient, a horse, Ben Dlin discovered that rural doctors are called upon to do things that he never dreamed of when he was an intern.
"I learned that I had to be prepared to do anything, any time and any place, without regard for the hour, the inconvenience, the exhaustion and the absence of assistance."
Set in the post-war pe …
Nahanni Trailhead
Tales of how author transported provisions, built their cabin and spent their honeymoon year on the South Nahanni River. A tale of adventure, strength and nature's ever changing moods and faces. The South Nahanni River of Canada's Northwest Territories has captivated canoeists and mountain adventurers for decades. Imagine flying 4,000 pounds of sup …
Sailing Uphill
Sam McKinney has spent many of the best parts of his life on the water -- sailing a dory along Canada’s west coast, crewing on the deck of a river steamer, shipping out deep-sea in freighters across the Atlantic. In the middle of his life, when he sold the hull of an ocean-going sailboat which had absorbed two years of his love and labour, he loo …
The Luckiest Girl in the World
Verity Sweeny Purdy at the age of eleven was sent to England to live with an aunt and train as a classical dancer. This memoir tells of her experience crossing Canada by train, the Atlantic Ocean by ship, and her arrival in England. Her story continues as she tells about her Aunt Doffrie and her bohemian way of life. We learn about her schooling an …
Afloat in Time
Six miles below the headwaters of Dean Channel on the BC coast, the Dean River flows graciously into salt water. Known for centuries as Kimsquit, this is a place of outstanding river, sea and mountain beauty. This is where James Sirois spent his childhood and teenage years alternately between Doc Gildersleeve's logging camp and school in Ocean Fall …
Speaking Likeness, A
In this lavishly produced volume, Joseph Plaskett has created a prose "life in art" as colourful and vital as his finest paintings. He begins with his early life in New Westminster, BC, at a time when there were no private galleries.
Lawren Harris and Jock Macdonald were among his early mentors, and they helped him to win the first Emily Carr schola …
Death So Noble
This book examines Canada’s collective memory of the First World War through the 1920s and 1930s. It is a cultural history, considering art, music, and literature. Thematically organized into such subjects as the symbolism of the soldier, the implications of war memory for Canadian nationalism, and the idea of a just war, the book draws on milita …
Butter Down the Well
In this immensely popular Canadian classic, Robert Collins describes his boyhood growing up in Saskatchewan during the bleak years of the Depression. Featuring the fine realist paintings of well-known painter Len Gibbs, this special illustrated edition evokes the mood of that era both through Collins's humorous and touching stories and through Gibb …
The Ghosts Behind Him
It began in childhood, when Bruce was a little distant, and progressed into adolescence when Bruce was withdrawn and aggressive but it wasn't until he attempted suicide that the root of Bruce's behaviour was discovered--schizophrenia. After years of successful and unsuccessful treatments, setbacks and progressions, institutionalization and independ …