Up until the 1930s, Refuge Cove was one of the most remote places on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. Tucked into Clayoquot Sound, it sheltered boats from Pacific storms and its hot springs provided welcome relief for anyone waiting for bad weather to pass. In spite of its natural wonders, the cove was undeveloped and transiently populated. But …

Of the settlers, prospectors, trappers, mountaineers and loggers who came to British Columbia’s remote Bute Inlet between the 1890s and the 1940s, few remained long. August Schnarr, however, trapped far up the Homathko and Southgate Rivers and logged the inlet shores from 1910 until the 1960s. An adventurous photographer, August strapped his Koda …

“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 …

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 BC tradition of fighting back against unfair pay and unsafe working conditions has been around since before the colony joined Confederation. In 1849 Scottish labourers at BC’s first coal mine at Fort Rupert went on strike to protest wretched working conditions, and it’s been a wild ride ever since. For years the BC labour movement was the m …

Salmon gillnetting in the turbulent waters of the Fraser River at the turn of the last century was dangerous, back-breaking work. Skiffs were equipped with a single sail, but most maneuvering had to be accomplished by oars, an almost impossible task against any current or tide. Once towed to the grounds by a cannery tug, the fishermen were on their …

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 …

"Looking back over thirty years of flying for Okanagan, I see the experience has given me an interesting life. I have never really considered flying as work. It is more a way of life, a way of life that nourishes a free spirit, something that not many jobs can give you. I just cannot imagine anything I would... rather have done or any company I wou …

It is not mere coincidence that two-thirds of the population of British Columbia occupies lands bordering its great inland sea, the Strait of Georgia, and connected waterways collectively known as the North Salish Sea. Averaging forty kilometres in width and stretching some three hundred kilometres from Vancouver and Victoria in the south to Powell …

"Call me Chick. I've been called Chick since I was six years old. If you call me Donald, I'll know you don't know me. In this story, I'll tell you how my life unfolded over the last eight decades: how I got that nickname; how I met and married the most beautiful girl in the world; and how I came to own and operate S & R sawmills in Surrey, British …

"No part of the Empire has given up more completely of her splendid men than Yukon ... Such being the case, the Dominion should not be forgetful of this region--the Empire's farthest North, and take pride in the encouragement of the spirit that dominates the people of the Land of the Midnight Sun."

--Dawson Daily News, May 15, 1918

Nearly a thousan …

The West has long attracted visionaries and schemers from around the world. And no other region in North America can outstrip British Columbia for the number of utopian or intentional settlement attempts in the past 150 years. Andrew Scott delves into the dramatic stories of these fascinating, but often doomed, communities.

From Doukhobor farmers t …

Few recent events in British Columbia have seized the public mind like the 2006 sinking of the BC Ferries passenger vessel Queen of the North. Across Canada, it was one of the top news stories of the year. In BC it has attained the status of nautical legend. Ten years later, questions are still being asked. How did a ship that sailed the same cours …

Where Mountains Meet the Sea commemorates the 125th anniversary of the District of North Vancouver's incorporation as a municipality. Combining hundreds of illustrations with the personal accounts of residents and a lively text, the book presents the story of North Vancouver in all its colour and complexity.

Instead of a conventional chronological …

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 …

The name Farrell is synonymous with quality boats to those in the know up and down the British Columbia coast. Working in and around Pender Harbour on the Sunshine Coast, Barrie's father, Allen Farrell, was a much loved eccentric and noted wooden boat builder who created offshore sailing vessels from beachcombed lumber using only basic hand tools. …

The Comox Valley on Vancouver Island is home to a spectacular watershed, the culmination of snowcap and glacier-fed rivers that flow into the Courtenay River and out onto one of the richest estuaries on the West Coast. Along with the long history of K'ómoks First Nation inhabitation, the community of Courtenay and the surrounding regions have been …

Billy Proctor, resident legend of Echo Bay, BC, recounts almost a century's worth of experience with this collection of stories, memories and local knowledge of the central BC coast region around Blackfish Sound. Situated in the beautiful Broughton Archipelago between northern Vancouver Island and the mainland coast, this region boasts a history an …

In a follow-up to his well-received Voices of British Columbia, Robert Budd returns with more captivating tales of the province's pioneering past in the very words of the people who lived them.

Between 1959 and 1966, the late CBC Radio journalist Imbert Orchard travelled across British Columbia with recording engineer Ian Stephen, conducting intervi …

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 …

I was driving back at night from Fulford, having done a house call. There was a guy lying beside the road. He was big, but I was fairly strong at that time, so I put him in the car and got to the hospital, then phoned John to come and help me. The guy had a completely rigid belly. He'd been drinking--I could smell that. So I thought I'd better try …

What if Mike McCardell--beloved reporter of glasses half-full and the brighter side of life--is actually dead... or, more specifically, un-dead? Suppose he has continued to walk among the living ever since he was a sapper with the famous detachment of Royal Engineers who came to British Columbia in 1859 and was known as Jock Linn--the namesake for …

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 …

Centuries before steel, fibreglass, aluminum and automation were applied to shipbuilding, early twentieth-century British Columbian shipwrights hand built fish boats entirely out of wood. Guided by their intuition and knowledge of the sea, they used only basic tools to craft thousands of vessels that shaped the way shipwrights and marine architects …

History in BC grows profusely and luxuriantly, but with odd undergrowth," observed historian J.M.S. Careless many years ago. This claim is fully borne out by this impressive anthology of some of the province's most distinguished historians, geographers, and writers gleaned from over forty years of British Columbia's leading scholarly journal, BC St …

Seymour lies between the City of North Vancouver and Indian Arm and includes the communities of Dollarton, Deep Cove, the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation and the popular Mount Seymour winter sports complex. Compiled with the help of knowledgeable Seymour seniors of the Deep Cove Heritage Society, Echoes Across Seymour provides unparalleled insight into …

Trucks are everywhere--crowding the highways, lining up for the ferries, roaring down dusty logging roads--and yet trucking is often left off the list when talk turns to British Columbia's major industries. It shouldn't be, as this gorgeous new illustrated history celebrating the BC Trucking Association's 100th anniversary shows. With annual revenu …

The history of the Klondike, with its harrowing narratives of climbing the Chilkoot and White passes, braving the rapids of the Yukon River and striking it rich only to go broke again, has become legend. Yet there are still more untold stories that linger in the boarded-up ghost towns, forgotten wilderness cabins and along overgrown trails. Yukon h …

Texada is the largest island in the Strait of Georgia, a long strip of richly mineralized granite and limestone dividing the upper gulf. Travel time from Vancouver is six hours via three ferries. A newcomer's first impression is of an idyllic place with a big sandy beach, a Sunday farmer's market and a scant population of aging loggers, miners, pot …

"Oliver Dubois told me about the time he got in a fight with another guy and all the men came out to see the fun. He said he knocked the guy out cold, but he didn't fall down because there were so many Kleins standing around. He went on to name all of them and he said even Klein Klein was there. He was trying to make the point that at one time ther …

The Kelowna Story is a comprehensive full-length history of the largest metropolitan centre outside BC's Lower Mainland, a labour of love by a leading local historian whose family roots have been entwined with Kelowna's for five generations. It embraces the full sweep of central Okanagan history, starting with the days of the S-Ookanhkchinx, who en …

The Catholic Congregation of the Sisters of St. Ann had a humble start in Quebec in 1850 and at first concentrated on teaching locally. But when Bishop Modeste Demers asked for help at his West Coast diocese, the Sisters said yes. At a time in history when most people were born and raised in the same area in which they would live and die, these wom …

No church in Canada has generated more news coverage for more years than Vancouver's First United. That has everything to do with its location in the heart of the infamous Downtown Eastside and with its role as caregiver and defender of the poor, the needy and the homeless inhabitants of Canada's poorest postal code. Like Mother Teresa's mission to …

Winner of the Lieutenant-Governor Medal

On June 17, 1958, Vancouver experienced the worst industrial accident in its history when the new bridge being built across Burrard Inlet collapsed into the flooding tidal waters of Second Narrows, killing eighteen workers. Photos of the two broken spans tilted into the sea went around the world and provided t …

British Columbia's colourful story has been told many times, but until now no one has attempted to relate the chronicle specifically for young readers. From the gold rush to the Gumboot Navy and from "brideships" to W.A.C. Bennett, BC history comes alive in this highly illustrated and vivid account by award-winning writer and historian Daniel Franc …

Quadra Island, the largest and most populated of the Discovery Islands at the top end of Georgia Strait, has a history loaded with adventure. From the We Wai Kai warriors of the 19th century to the loggers, gold miners, prostitutes and ranchers who followed, its people have provided the stuff of legend. Taylor draws us into the story of her island …

Conspiracies to overthrow the Yukon; terrorism in the Klondike;a bigamist Klondike Casanova; gunfights and how the Mounties got their man; Robert Service's secret love life; the Canadian who fooled Alaskans into making him governor; floods, famine and things found frozen from the past. The Yukon has them all--and more!

History Hunting in the Yukon r …

As BC 150 celebrations have made us aware, modern British Columbia began in the central interior of the province, where Simon Fraser founded the fur trade empire known as New Caledonia. Today only the restored trading post of Fort St. James and the ancient trails remain. Fort St. James and New Caledonia is the first history of this crucial chapter …

At the north end of British Columbia's great inland sea, the Inside Passage divides amongst a scatter of islands whose breathtaking beauty makes them one of the Northwest's most popular cruising destinations. Unofficially known as the Discovery Islands (named after the main passage through them), Read, Cortes, Sonora, Maurelle, Hardwicke, Stuart, R …

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 …

Dig deep into to the history of some of Victoria's most interesting areas; The Ross Bay Villa, D'Arcy Island, Rodd Hill and the Royal Jubilee Hospital. Archeologists, anthropologists, historians and heritage researchers sift through the soil to unravel the mysteries below our feet, and to explore Victoria's unique cultural landscape. Ancient artifa …

Winner of the 2009 BC Book Prizes' Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize

In 1808 seeking a navigable route to the western sea for the North West Company, Simon Fraser descended the great river that now bears his name. Most of us learn that much in school----but who was this blunt, tenacious man, and what drove him to make a dangerous journey halfway ac …

Beautiful Desolation Sound, 150 km north of Vancouver, has for many years been the most popular cruising destination on the BC coast, but is today almost as devoid of local occupants as it was in 1792 when the dyspeptic Captain George Vancouver gave it its misleading name. It has not always been this way. Thick clamshell middens in remote bays, rot …

Finalist for 2006 BC Book Prize – Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize

Shortlisted for George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in B.C. Writing and Publishing

Each year, over eight million people visit Stanley Park, a 400-hectare (1000-acre) haven of beauty that offers a backdrop of majestic cedars and firs and an environment teeming with wildlife ju …