As the daughter of Mormon leader Winston Blackmore, Mary Jayne Blackmore grew up within the closed-off polygamist community of Bountiful, BC. She spent her younger years riding ponies, raising pet lambs and playing in the hay in the Old Barn. Her family's staunch Fundamentalist Mormon faith imposed fanatical doomsday preparation and carried an inst …

When Cathy Sosnowsky, her husband Woldy, and their little boy Alex first joined the Hemming Bay Community, a cooperative formed to preserve a large piece of wilderness on a remote coastal island of British Columbia, she found the idea of owning part of an island appealing. But the paradise she envisioned reveals itself as a harsh and hostile enviro …

Josephine Caplin (Jo) was born into a world marred by maternal abandonment, alcoholism and traumatic epileptic seizures. In grade three, she was apprehended by child services and separated from her protective brother and her early caregivers, her father and uncle, who were kind men with drinking problems. Placed into many alienating and lonely fost …

The German word zugunruhe translates as the “stirring before moving.” It’s used to describe birds and herds of animals, like wildebeests, before the great migration. Though Jules Torti is neither German nor a wildebeest, she understands this marrow-deep anxiousness all too well; she is just someone looking for a home.

Free to a Good Home is ev …

Wild Fierce Life is a heart-stopping collection of true stories from the Pacific Coast that build a vivid portrait of life on the continental edge and one woman’s evolving place within it.

Author Joanna Streetly arrived on the west coast of Vancouver Island when she was nineteen, and soon adapted to the challenges of working on boats of all sorts, …

The devastating diagnosis of an incurable, debilitating disease does not ordinarily form the starting point of a triumphant story. This, however, is a triumphant story. Heidi Redl was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2004 and immediately chose to fight the disease with the only tools available to her: sheer stubbornness and courage.

Growing up o …

This mouthwatering, intimate, and sensual memoir traces Monica Meneghetti’s unique life journey through her relationship with food, family and love. As the youngest child of a traditional Italian-Catholic immigrant family, Monica learns the intimacy of the dinner table and the ritual of meals, along with the requirements of conformity both at the …

After plans to live in Africa shatter, young journalist Laurie Sarkadi moves to the Subarctic city of Yellowknife seeking wilderness and adventure. She covers the changing socio-political worlds of Dene and Inuit in the late ‘80s—catching glimpses of their traditional, animal-dependent ways—before settling into her own off-grid existence in t …

In 1974, Terry Milos moved to rural northern Canada to pursue her dream of homesteading. Following the seventies trend of the back-to-the-landers, she and her partner left the city life for what they imagined would be a simpler existence. Sometimes humorous and often insightful, North of Familiar is the story of a woman who learned to hunt, fish an …

Andrea Hejlskov was certain of one thing: life could not continue as it was. She and her husband had become disillusioned with their jobs and the pressures of urban living, their four children were spending too much time in their bedrooms with their computers, and conversations had become as elusive as their connection to a meaningful existence. Fo …

When Amy Wilson accepted the job of field nurse for the Indigenous Peoples in the Yukon and Northern British Columbia in 1949, she was told that the north was a fine country for men and dogs but that it killed women and horses. Undaunted, Wilson travelled the Alaska Highway from Whitehorse (Mile 916) to Mile Zero. She served Indigenous Peoples in t …

In the late fifties, Ann Kujundzic, her husband and artist Zeljko, and three children--with a fourth on the way--packed up their lives in post-war Edinburgh and emigrated to the Kootenays in BC, seeking adventure and opportunity. In Nelson, Ann was involved in establishing the Kootenay School of Art in 1960, a remarkable institution whose history h …

Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers is a spiritual journey through experiences that can be liberating but also awkward and sometimes even dangerous, because women are so often excluded from conversations about spirituality. Liberation comes with breaking that age-old code of silence to talk about the messiness of faith, practice, religion …

In the same vein of tree planters and lighthouse keepers, Mary Kelly flips the over-romanticized lifestyle of fire observers made popular by Jack Kerouac and shows us how lonely freedom really is. When Mary meets Daniel, a handsome quirky potter, sarod-player, and fire lookout observer, she falls in with a tribe of young people who earn a living by …

Making Room: Forty Years of Room Magazine celebrates the history and evolution of Canadian literature and feminism with some of the most exciting and thought-provoking fiction, poetry, and essays the magazine has published since it was founded in 1975 as Room of One’s Own. This collection includes poems about men not to be fallen in love with, tr …

On September 3, 2010, the RCMP in Grande Prairie, Alberta, received a 911 call from Mat Crichton about a shooting on a local farm. Seconds later, miles from home, Holly Crichton got a shocking call from her son. "I just shot Dad," Mat told her. The violent end to a violent situation came as no surprise to the community; Holly and her sons had been …

“Wanted: lesbian couple to foster wonderful eleven-year-old African American boy with gender identity issues.” Meet Antwan. Not only has he got gender issues, he’s severely emotionally disturbed, severely demanding and, as he puts it, “born to argue.” In the late nineties, Nicola Harwood and her girlfriend moved to San Francisco in order …

When thirty-two women were hired as mounted police officers in 1974, it was a media sensation. After all, these were not the brawny heroes of Canadian history, or the dashing and handsome Mounties portrayed in over two hundred Hollywood movies. Women were thought to be afraid of guns and incapable of protecting themselves. Training officers at the …

Sometimes tragic, sometimes uproariously funny, This Place a Stranger is a diverse collection of Canadian women writing about their experiences of travelling alone. From the deceptiveness of the everyday to the extremes of geography, weather and violence, these stories go beyond the usual tales of intrepid male explorers and reveal the varied and u …

Gerry Bracewell has lived in the Chilcotin Valley for over seventy-five years. She helped pioneer the valley's early school system and was an advocate for the school district until 1974. Gerry worked and wrote for the Williams Lake Tribune for many years while continuing to run her ranch and raise four children. For five decades, Gerry was a sought …

When 25-year-old Jo climbed down the ramp of the freighter Canadian Star to set foot in Vancouver, BC, in the summer of 1967, she’d never heard of log salvaging. But within two and a half years, the immigrant from England would quit her teaching job and join forces with one of the most enigmatic salvagers of the Sunshine Coast. Dick and Jo Hammon …

On September 27, 1986, pilot Theresa Bond and five passengers took off on a routine flight from Atlin, BC, in her beloved de Havilland Beaver. The Taku Air passenger list that day included local politician Al Passarell, his wife, and three of Atlin’s most prominent citizens–including larger-than-life Atlin Inn owner Joe Florence. After an uneve …

Every town has its celebrities, but Sechelt’s own unique and larger-than-life personality is wholesome enough to satisfy all of North America’s appetite for eccentrics. Asta Bergliot Solberg, or “Bergie,” as her friends knew her, lived life on her own terms. She climbed wild mountain trails to hunt for goats, demanded car rides from unsuspe …

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, …

How does one go from English villager to wilderness dweller?

Chris Czajkowski was born and raised at the edge of a large village in England, until she abandoned the company of others to roam the countryside in search of the natural world. As a young adult she studied dairy farming and travelled to Uganda to teach at a farm school. Returning to Engla …

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 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 …

In the early 1980s, Yvonne Maximchuk, a single mother of two, was living in Whiterock, BC, and making a living as a working artist and art instructor. Then she fell in love with Albert, a crab fisherman who fished the waters of Boundary Bay. Drawn to his seemingly idyllic life and her desire for connection with the natural world, Yvonne and her chi …

Since women started working in the trades in the 1970s, very little has been published about their experiences. In this provocative and important book, Kate Braid tells the story of how she became a carpenter in the face of skepticism and discouragement.

In 1977 when Braid was broke and out of work, her male friends encouraged her to apply as a labo …

As a schoolteacher in Redding, California, in the late 1940s, Doris Lee (née Pope) had a satisfying career, creature comforts, and a fashionable wardrobe. Then she fell in love with John Lee, a kind-hearted rancher who grew up on horseback and hunted for food.

Doris and John were married in 1949, and two years later migrated from the world they kn …

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 1971 Tor Forsberg was twenty-three and her life was at a crossroads. Having returned to Watson Lake in the Yukon after five years in Montreal, she found her art career at a standstill and the party life of a small town much too alluring. Then one day after a particularly wild night, she bumped into Lynch Callison, the father of an old boyfriend. …

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 …

Forbidden Mountains describes the unforgettable journey of two women who embark on the ultimate adventure: sneaking into Tibet from northern Pakistan and cross the country via the South Route, largely unknown to outsiders. Tibet's occupying force--China---has devised unique punishments for travellers who defy its no-go policy, but Vivien and Joanne …