“We operated perfectly legally. We considered ourselves philanthropists! We supplied good liquor to poor thirsty Americans ... and brought prosperity back to the Harbour of Vancouver ...”—Captain Charles Hudson

At the stroke of one minute past midnight, January 17, 1920, the National Prohibition Act was officially declared in effect in the Uni …

In 1888, a prosperous industrial family in Calne, Wiltshire, sent one of its younger sons, a lad judged to have no head for business, to Guelph Agricultural College in Ontario to learn to be a farmer.

Joseph Colebrook Harris, the author’s grandfather, didn’t take to Ontario and after visiting a friend on Salt Spring Island, fell in love with BC. …

The traditional territory of the Ts'elxwéyeqw First Nation covers over 95,000 hectares of land in Southwestern BC. It extends throughout the central Fraser Valley, encompassing the entire Chilliwack River Valley (including Chilliwack Lake, Chilliwack River, Cultus Lake and areas, and parts of the Chilliwack municipal areas). In addition to being a …

Gerry St. Germain's story begins in "Petit Canada" on the shores of the Assiniboine, growing up with his two younger sisters, his mother and his father--a shy Metis trapper and construction worker who sometimes struggled to put food on the table. St. Germain was initially troubled in school, scrapping with classmates and often skipping out to shoot …

This print-on-demand title is available by request from most booksellers.

Magic.
The world is full of magic.
It's everywhere ...

"When I was eight or nine - or maybe ten or eleven - I don't remember for sure now, Klopinum would share her stories with me."

And thus it begins, the long-awaited successor to Anne Cameron's ground-breaking Daughters of Co …

From the author of The Boreal Gourmet comes another irresistible tribute to foods of the North, and this time she devotes special attention to feasts. Michele Genest’s feasts cover the whole spectrum—for small groups or large, extensively planned or spontaneous, as elaborate as a 12-course tasting menu or as simple and satisfying as a pot of L …

Roy Henry Vickers is known around the world for his unique artistic style marked by clean lines, vivid colours and natural themes drawn from the rugged beauty of the west coast of British Columbia. Influenced by his Tsimshian, Haida, Heiltsuk and British heritage, Vickers unites the stylized forms of his aboriginal ancestry with the realism of Euro …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Carrying on "Irregardless" is a handsomely illustrated paperback based on the first exhibition to focus on humour in Northwest Coast First Nations art. The show, mounted by the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art in Vancouver is titled after one of Bill Reid's favourite deliberate grammatical blunders that were part of the sense of humour that …

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 …

Winner of the John Lyman Book Award for best Canadian naval and maritime history
Finalist for the Nereus Writers' Trust Non-fiction Award
Finalist for the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, BC Book Prize
Longlisted for the 2007 Victoria Butler Book Prize
Honourable Mention for the Canadian Nautical Research Society's Keith Matthews Award

Fortune's …

Bolivia is an isolated, land-locked, sparsely populated country--a land that has Amazon jungle, snow covered mountain peaks and every ecological niche in between. Within the country's borders are the world's most dangerous roads, highest navigable lake, richest silver mine and largest salt lake.

Understanding Bolivia is a traveller's history that re …

Finalist for the 2009 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction

If you want to drive from North America to South America, you'll have a hard time when you reach Panama's southernmost province, Darien. The Pan-American Highway ends just sixty miles short of Colombia. It's the only missing link in what would otherwise be uninterrupted highway from …

Longlisted for the 2007 Victoria Butler Book Prize

The southern Gulf Islands between Nanaimo and Victoria are among British Columbia's greatest scenic treasures, projecting an appeal so powerful as to make nesomanes (island lovers) of the most unromantic souls. Ranging in size from Saltspring (pop. 12,000) to unoccupied D'arcy, they first began to a …

Whales and Dolphins of the North American Pacific is the most comprehensive photographic guide to the marine mammals of the North American Pacific (Baja California, Mexico to South East Alaska), covering all 38 species of cetacean (whales, dolphins and porpoises), six species of seals and sea lions, and the sea otter.

Whales and Dolphins of the Nort …

Tiny, island-dotted Belize, perched on the Caribbean, south of Mexico and east of Guatemala, is a fascinating blend of Creole, Mestizo, Maya, Garifuna, English, East Indian, Mennonite, Lebanese and Chinese cultures. With its colonial background (English remains the official language) and a history of fending off its Latin neighbours, Belize has eme …

Jim Coleman saw the Victoria Cougars win the Stanley Cup in 1925 and the Team Canada-Russia hockey showdown in 1972. He saw Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth slam homers in training camp and was there when Jack Dempsey KO'd Jack Sharkey. He interviewed a young man named Jackie Robinson who wistfully dreamed of the day when black men might play in baseball's …

They are all legendary entertainers who made stops in Vancouver, BC, leaving flakes of stardust behind. A wonderful horde of showbiz lore has accumulated over the decades but has been jealously guarded by industry insiders. For example, Coquitlam's Steelhead Lodge, a secluded fishing retreat, was frequented by the likes of Clark Gable and Kim Novak …

When Clayton Mack was a child, his parents wrapped him in wolf skin and dumped him in water four times so he would grow up strong and fierce in the woods like a wolf. True to this Nuxalk tradition, Mack grew up to be a world-famous grizzly bear hunter and guide.

Clayton Mack's first book of amazing tales about bears and q'umsciwas (white men), Grizz …

Since its first publication in 1981, Daughters of Copper Woman has become an underground classic, selling over 200,000 copies. Now comes a new edition that includes many pieces cut from the original as well as fresh material added by the author. Here finally, after twenty-two years of gathering dust, is the complete version of the groundbreaking be …

Before the birth of Trans Canada Airlines (TCA) in 1937, Canada was one of the very few countries of the world that had no organized air service connecting its principal cities. In 1936, many of the one million people who travelled on scheduled flights in the United States were Canadian citizens who needed to travel south of the border to reach des …

The largest of BC's southern Gulf Islands, beautiful Salt Spring Island has long been a favoured holiday destination and a prized real-estate area for those in search of an idyllic rural residence. Now available in trade paper, Salt Spring: The Story of an Island chronicles the island's rich history from the days when Coast Salish people inhabited …

In January 1887 a delegation of chiefs from the Nisga'a and Tsimshian peoples of northern British Columbia, seeking restitution from a government that had stolen their lands without a treaty or compensation, arrived by steamship in Victoria's Inner Harbour. They were met by Premier William Smithe, who refused them entry to the provincial legislatur …

In April 1999, the Inuit dream of a self-governing territory in the eastern Arctic - Nunavut (Our Land) - became a reality. In celebration of this historic event comes a new edition of Inuit Journey, a firsthand account of another turning point in Inuit history: the establishment in the early 1960s of member-owned, member-run Inuit co-operatives, w …

In this new collection, Canadian poet Tom Wayman, long honoured for his incisive observations on life in the workplace and the classroom, takes a more personal turn. Many of these poems celebrate the gains and losses of "middle-aging," while others reflect on the deaths of parents and friends. Readers of "Life with Dick" and "The Big O" will be rel …

Whales, although among our most important and interesting animals, have been little studied until recently. Almost a third of about seventy living cetacean species have been recorded in North American Pacific coast waters.

Our word whale describes glimpses of surfacing cetaceans; its Old English root hvael means "a wheel." A large whale's rolling ba …

A young brother and sister in the village of Sliammon must go out after dark to fetch their grandmother, and even though they are good children, they are caught by The One Who Takes Bad Children. It is up to the brother and sister to free themselves and all the other children by doing what they have been taught: stay calm, pay attention, and use ev …

More and more North Americans have been moving away from a meat-centred diet, for health, ideological, environmental and/or economic reasons. This latest book by Jeanne Marie Martin, an internationally known natural food writer, is a complete guide to the new lifestyle.

There are more than 120 recipes for mouth-watering and guilt-free appetizers, so …

"Paul Bunyan was in BC, that much we can prove. For evidence there is the Inside Passage, the Gulf Islands, Mount Baker and canned meat." So begins Paul Bunyan on the West Coast, a chronicle of Paul's last adventures, when he worked his way across the continent and finally reached the great conifer forests of the West Coast. It was here he faced hi …

Why did Canada abandon four decades of peace to join the United States in the Persian Gulf War? The author of this provocative book argues that Canada's status as a nuclear colony of the US military paves the way for Canadian participation in American military adventures abroad. One nuclear outpost is Nanoose Bay on Vancouver Island, where the US N …

In this tale, the ever-wily, ever-hungry Raven visits the generous Snipe family, in the hope of getting lots of free food. When she gets a bit too greedy, however, she finds out the Snipes have a few tricks of their own.

Raven is clever and tricky - and greedy. In this story, she persuades her friends Gull, Cormorant, and Puffin to pick berries with her, and tricks them into doing more than their share of work, for less than their share of food. In the end, her friends find a clever way to teach Raven an important lesson.

Responsibility is the theme of this modern detective story laced with comedy - but with the tragedy of white-Indian relations overshadowing every scene. Annie Charlie was a groundbreaking novel when it first appeared in 1973 and continues to spread to a new audience today.

A novel with many heroines. . .

Some are black, some white; some are babies and some grandmothers. What they have in common is Cassidy, a wealthy and merciless plantation owner in the pre-Civil War American South, for whom the black women are slaves and the white women are concubines.

Their story is the story of thousands of women of their time and p …

A traditional northwest coast legend for ages six to adult, told simply and gently be one of BC's best-loved writers.

". . . should be added to any collection of materials concerned with native peoples."
-Canadian Materials

A traditional northwest coast legend for ages six to adult, told simply and gently be one of BC's best-loved writers.

". . . should be added to any collection of materials concerned with native peoples."
-Canadian Materials

Orca's Song is the tale of the love between Orca and Eagle-Flies-High, and explains the origin of the killer whale's song and exuberant dance.

A beautifully illustrated book for children ages 6 and up relating the classic northwest coast myth telling how Raven, the trickster, freed the moon from the old fisherwoman's cedar chest and carried it to its rightful place in the heavens. Entrancingly retold from the female viewpoint by the celebrated author of Dreamspeaker and Daughters of Coppe …

The famous northwest coast Indian myth, sometimes called "Raven Steals the Light" telling how Loon, Raven, and all the animals rallied to retrieve the daylight from behind its wall of ice after it was stolen by evil spirits. Amusingly retold for ages six to adult by the well-known Canadian poet and novelist.