“George Garrett is one of the most remarkable reporters of news that I have ever known. He has always had the ability to smell a good story and to report on it honestly and accurately.”

—Jim Pattison, Canadian business magnate

Starting from humble beginnings as a farm boy in Saskatchewan, George Garrett rose through the ranks of journalism and …

British Columbia wouldn’t exist without the railway; the province was brought into the Canadian Confederation in 1871 in exchange for the promise of a transcontinental line to the West Coast. It was the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1886 that set off economic development in the province, created the city of Vancouver and spurred othe …

“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 …

“... without a doubt the greatest poet English Canada has ever produced.”

—Dennis Lee

“A hundred years from now, one of the few Canadian poets whose work will still be read will be Al Purdy.”

—Maclean’s

Al Purdy (1918–2000), known as Canada’s unofficial poet laureate, wrote poetry that anyone could read. Having come from working-class …

The poems in The Broken Face explore a sacramental, imaginative vision within contexts of crime, perception, memory and love. In this collection, Russell Thornton returns to the vital themes of intimacy and family, loss, fear and hope, bringing to each poem the essential quality of a myth or incantation. Reverent and revealing, within those familia …

The title poem in David Zieroth’s the bridge from day to night follows the speaker across the Second Narrows Bridge to North Vancouver, a well-worn moment in a daily commute that opens a window into the sublime: “from the apex / of the bridge with traffic flying / I look directly into / their deepest clefts.” Such moments occur throughout the …

In 1970, twenty-two-year-old Thom Henley left Michigan and drifted around the northwest coast, getting by on odd jobs and advice from even odder characters. He rode the rails, built a squatter shack on a beach, came to be known as "Huckleberry" and embarked on adventures along the West Coast and abroad that, just like his Mark Twain namesake, situa …

In response to her brother's sudden death, Cornelia Hoogland explores the shift in gravity his dramatic absence creates. Set on the Salish Sea on Vancouver Island's east coast, Trailer Park Elegy reaches back two thousand years to the First Peoples, as well as to the brother whose delight was summers spent at Deep Bay.

Hoogland looks to her child- …

With bright and bold illustrations of the wild and magical West Coast by celebrated artist Roy Henry Vickers, this sturdy board book will delight babies and toddlers as they begin to experience and recognize the sights and sounds of the natural world. Hello Humpback!, a "first words" book, introduces iconic West Coast animals, from hungry sea otter …

"...one of those rare books--a satisfying mystery that has no criminal content whatsoever ... even the most hidebound mystery reader is likely to be delighted by this well-written and intriguing tale."

--The Toronto Star

"...a worthy successor to her short fiction collection ... Woodward interweaves several intriguing narrative threads into this in …

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 …

The inspiring story behind today's craft beer revolution is the subject of this lively memoir by Frank Appleton, the English-trained brewmaster who is considered by many to be the father of Canada's craft-brewing movement. Appleton chronicles fifty years in the brewing business, from his early years working for one of the major breweries, to his pa …

The children of the Tsimshian village of Kitkatla love to play at being hunters, eager for their turn to join the grown-ups. But when they capture and mistreat a crow, the Chief of the Heavens, angered at their disrespect, brings down a powerful storm.

The rain floods the Earth and villagers have no choice but to abandon their homes and flee to the …

Beginning in 1880, thousands of young, upper-class British men with few prospects were sent to the Canadian West to distance them from British society. Still supported by their families, thus earning them the title "remittance men," these men set out to continue their lives of leisure in this new land.

With education, respectable breeding and the b …

Birding is one of the fastest-growing hobbies in North America--one in five Canadians enjoy identifying, photographing or filming birds. With easy access to coastal mountains, marshes and mudflats of the Fraser delta, temperate rainforest, and rocky shores of the Pacific Ocean, the Vancouver area is a wonderful destination for birdwatchers. Of the …

Raincoast Chronicles, Spilsbury's Coast, The Accidental Airline, A Hard Man to Beat, The Men There Were Then. . . and now another one to top off the list. Writing in the Rain features the same fascination with British Columbia and the same ability to bring its stories to life that have brought Howard White numerous awards and accolades, including t …

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

Crash landings were part of the job in the early 1930s, when Rex Terpening started out in arctic aviation. As an air engineer for Canadian Airways in the Northwest Territories, Terpening took the right-hand seat in the cockpit and flew "on operations" daily, warming the oil a …

Forecast recovers early out-of-print work by Governor General's Award-winning poet John Pass. The poems engage potentialities--travel, an orchard he cares for, evolving relationships, house-building, becoming a poet and husband and father. They're grounded in place and time, but attuned, as he says, to constancy. Those for his young sons are poigna …

The fourth collection from award-winning poet Rachel Rose, Marry & Burn is a journey through a troubled relationship and a troubled city, charting the territory of love and addiction, and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Inspired by struggles both personal and global, these are not gentle poems--they probe deep into comforting persona …

Is there such a thing as British Columbia culture, and if so, is there anything special about it? This is the broad question Dr. Maria Tippett answers in this work with an assured "yes!" To prove her point she looks at the careers of eight ground-breaking cultural producers in the fields of painting, aboriginal art, architecture, writing, theatre a …

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 …

Norval Morrisseau's revered work has been honoured, copied and recognized throughout the art world and beyond. Less widely known but equally captivating is the artist's personal life story, which poet and biographer Armand Garnet Ruffo related in his powerful narrative biography, Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing into Thunderbird (Douglas & McIntyre, …

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 …

Orca Chief is the third in a series of Northwest Coast legends by Roy Henry Vickers and Robert Budd. Their previous collaborations, Raven Brings the Light (2013) and Cloudwalker (2014), are award-winning national bestsellers.

Thousands of years ago in the village of Kitkatla, four hunters leave home in the spring to harvest seaweed and sockeye. Whe …

In British Columbia, like most of the world, the wealth of the richest one percent has grown exponentially in recent decades, while the majority have found their incomes stagnant or even declining. The top 10 percent in BC now hold 56.2 percent of the wealth, a greater share than anywhere else in Canada. Our richest have wealth counted in the billi …

Wayne Cope has TV to blame for starting him on his long career as an officer of the Vancouver Police Department. He grew up watching gunslingers like James Arness and Richard Boone, inspiring him to join up even before he finished college--and his real-life working career has turned out to be more exciting than he could have hoped. In his years on …

David Zieroth's Albrecht Dürer and me, an autobiographical travelogue spanning the author's journeys through central Europe, explores the transformative effect of dislocation. Inspired by and responding to art and music, history and war, architecture and place, this collection unearths knowledge that can only be realized by leaving home.

Throughout …

It has often been observed that the First World War jolted Canada into nationhood, and as Mark Forsythe and Greg Dickson show in this compelling book, no province participated more eagerly in that transformation or felt the aftershock more harshly than British Columbia. In From the West Coast to the Western Front, Forsythe, host of CBC Radio's mid- …

Tell me, how do I write better poetry? You can't? I'm not surprised. You can write it yourself but damned if you can tell someone else how, your classes to the contrary.
—Al Purdy

The truth is none of us who write poetry should allow ourselves to make public critiques of the others, not in a small country like this where we know each other too we …

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 …

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 …

Diane Tucker's Bonsai Love is an eloquent book of poems about the sensual delicacy of love. Carefully pruned, intricate in design, and sensitive to intrusion, these poems create an image of intimacy through reflection and in relation to nature, the universe, music, literature and art.

The voice that comes forth is one of self-doubt seeking reassura …

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 …

Nature heals! This compact waterproof field guide introduces readers to 26 common Canadian wild plants with extraordinary healing properties. Use arnica blossoms to heal muscle inflammation, improve digestion with chickweed and soothe a toothache with yarrow root--learning to identify and use wild medicinal plants is both fascinating and useful.

Eac …

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 …

The crows pick at the waste on the asphalt.
The men push jingling shopping carts. Or stand and mimic life
in a prison yard. The wild white swan is dead. Where I caught
trout as a child, no trout swim now. The drives
and crescents gouge ravines, make creeks disappear. Where wild
baby fish run, they run the gauntlet of penned fish. They are eaten al …

Dogs are tops--35 percent of Canadian households include at least one canine--and anyone who's been owned by one (yes, that's right) will tell you why: we share in each other's joy and pain; they cheer us up when we're blue; they strive to please us and are indispensable workers, serving us even at their peril; we pamper and play with them, train t …

In her bestselling book The Zero-Mile Diet (Harbour, 2010), gardening activist Carolyn Herriot inspired readers to put organic homegrown fruits and vegetables on the table, using time-saving, economical and sustainable methods.

Now Herriot is back with even more ideas to cook up fresh food from the garden throughout the year. The Zero-Mile Diet Cook …

Salt Spring, Pender, Galiano, Mayne and Saturna are the best known of the Southern Gulf Islands. Their residents value a rich food and drink heritage, and experiment busily with new foods and approaches to improve diversity and flavour, and support special diets and local sustainability. They celebrate slow foods--and slow islands; and many embrace …

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 …

Christine Allen and Michael Kluckner's portrayal of life on Killara Farm moves thoughtfully through a year of gardening with a rich, detailed narrative that evokes the many pleasures of life in rural Southwestern BC.

Allen, a master gardener, is also a lyrical writer, expressing the tiny details of life on the farm--the "winter jasmine, doggedly flo …

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 …

Tom Wayman's newest collection of poems, Dirty Snow, unflinchingly considers the impact of the Afghan War: its absence and presence in Canadians' everyday lives as citizens of a nation at war.

The collection explores Wayman's view that Canada's military intervention in a civil war between two odious sets of combatants has degraded Canadians' quality …

Okay, they didn't quite win the Stanley Cup, but the Vancouver Canucks still made their fortieth season in the NHL one to remember for years to come. After spending much of those four decades racking up a record of futility matched by few other sports franchises, the Canucks came closer to hockey supremacy than any Canadian team in eighteen years a …

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 …