Joseph William McKay
Finalist, 2021 Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing
An intriguing look at the accomplishments and contradictions of Joseph William McKay, best known as the founder of Nanaimo, BC, and one of the most successful Métis men to rise through the ranks of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the late nineteenth century.
When examining the history …
Heard Amid the Guns
"Carmichael captures the anguish and the wonder of war in flashes of colour, humour, and gems of human detail mined from letters, diaries, interviews, [and] her own family history." —Halifax Chronicle Herald
A rich and varied tapestry of the First World War, highlighting the personal stories of over 150 men and women from across North America who …
River of Dreams
A picturesque, reflective journey along the route of the ancient Milk River, from southern Alberta into northern Montana.
The Milk River is a small and dreamy river, flowing lazily through some of the loneliest lands of North America, the dry plains of Alberta and Montana. Dwarfed by such giants as the Saskatchewan and Mississippi Rivers, it is inde …
Critters for Kids
For decades, Tom Hunter's outstanding artwork and clever brainteasers have provided both entertainment and a valuable educational resource for children, parents, and teachers. In Critters for Kids, Hunter introduces a wide range of creatures found in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. From racoons and roadrunners to armadillos and whales, the a …
A Not-So-Savage Land
A richly illustrated exploration of the art, life, and historical impact of artist Frederick Whymper, who documented the landscape of the North American west.
Before the advent of photography, the topography of the colonial North American landscape was recorded by travelling artists hired to reproduce what they saw with unadulterated realism. One of …
Sonny Assu
A stunning retrospective highlighting the playfulness, power, and subversive spirit of Northwest Coast Indigenous artist Sonny Assu.
Through large-scale installation, sculpture, photography, printmaking, and painting, Sonny Assu merges the aesthetics of Indigenous iconography with a pop-art sensibility. This stunning retrospective spans over a decad …
Whale Child
New in paperback—A lost young girl finds her way home when her spirit unites with that of a newborn grey whale.
Whale Child tells the story of a little girl who is separated from her family and her village after a great earthquake. Escaping the shoreline in a canoe, she is swept far out to sea. Though lost and afraid, she realizes she is not alon …
Out of Concealment
A stunning collection of powerful and whimsical photo collages celebrating supernatural female beings rooted in Haida culture.
Out of Concealment presents the oral narratives of the Haida Nation through the vibrant depiction of its female supernatural beings. Passed on from generation to generation through oral tradition, these stories are importan …
The Valiant Nellie McClung
Although her name today is synonymous with the women’s suffrage movement in Canada, Nellie McClung’s long and varied career covered several fields—from social activist to elected politician, from novelist to journalist. McClung was instrumental in Canadian women gaining the right to vote before their British and American counterparts—2016 m …
Hard Knox
2017 long-list finalist, Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour Writing
In Hard Knox, seasoned columnist and consummate everyman Jack Knox offers up his uniquely hilarious views on Canadian life as seen from the western fringes of the country—in particular from the “Island of Misfit Toys” as he aptly calls his Vancouver Island home. This treasure tr …
Battle Scars
“A satisfying read.”—Kirkus Reviews
Cousins Walt and Nate McGregor, and Sunday, the former slave on Nate’s father’s plantation, have survived the carnage of the Battle of Shiloh. But the American Civil War rages on, and the three young men find themselves reunited at the notorious Libby prison in Virginia. Within its walls, Nate is a guar …
The Flags of War
Nate and Walt MacGregor are cousins who have never met, living on opposite sides of a deeply divided continent. Nate, the privileged son of a plantation owner in the American South, and Walt, an abolitionist son of a pioneer farmer in Canada West, are both profoundly affected by the story of a runaway slave named Sunday. While Nate prepares to figh …
The Great Blackfoot Treaties
“A must-read for historians and their students.”—Annette Bruised Head, Kainai High School Principal, Blood Tribe
The expansive ancestral territory of the Blackfoot Nation ranged from the North Saskatchewan River in Alberta to the Missouri River in Montana and from the Rocky Mountains east to the Cypress Hills. This buffalo-rich land sustained …
The Great Blackfoot Treaties
The expansive ancestral territory of the Blackfoot Nation ranged from the North Saskatchewan River in Alberta to the Missouri River in Montana and from the Rocky Mountains east to the Cypress Hills. This buffalo-rich land sustained the Blackfoot for generations until the arrival of whiskey traders, unscrupulous wolfers, smallpox epidemics, and the …
Baby Wild Animals
Do you want to know what an elk calf looks like? Or a mountain goat kid? How about playful bear cubs romping in the grass? This sweet and colourful picture book introduces children to over thirty species of young animals in the wild. It is an ideal guide for teaching kids about North American wildlife.
Stone by Stone
Stone by Stone takes readers on a fascinating journey across the short-grass prairie of southern Alberta and Saskatchewan in search of tangible evidence of the region’s ancient past—a civilization dating back at least twelve thousand years.
In this revised and updated edition of her one-of-a-kind guidebook, author Liz Bryan explores archaeolog …
Arctic Ambitions
Captain James Cook is justly famous for his explorations of the southern Pacific Ocean, but the exploration of the northern Pacific and the Arctic are equally significant. On his third and final great voyage, Cook surveyed the northwest American coast hoping to find the legendary Northwest Passage. While dreams of a passage proved illusory, Cook’ …
Dangerous Spirits
“Highly readable and well researched.” —Canada's History
In the traditional Algonquian world, the windigo is the spirit of selfishness, which can transform a person into a murderous cannibal. Native peoples over a vast stretch of North America—from Virginia in the south to Labrador in the north, from Nova Scotia in the east to Minnesota in …
Healy's West
Through his incredibly varied fifty-year career, John J. Healy left an indelible mark on the Canadian and American west. At different points in his storied life, Healy was a soldier, a trapper, a prospector, a free trader, an explorer, a horse dealer, a scout, a lawman, a newspaper editor, a speculator, a merchant, a capitalist, a historian, and a …
Enemy Offshore!
On June 20, 1942, the lighthouse at Estevan Point on Vancouver Island was shelled by the Japanese submarine I-26. It was the first enemy attack on Canadian soil since the War of 1812. But this was only one incident in the incredible and little-known Japanese campaign to terrorize North America’s west coast and mount an invasion through the Aleuti …
Voices of the Elders
There is a special place on the southeastern shores of Barkley Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It is a magnificent landscape of rocky cliffs fronting onto the wild Pacific Ocean, sheltered beaches, lakes, mountains and forests. Since the beginning of time, it has been the ancestral home of the Huu-ay-aht First Nation.
Drawing directly …
Frontier Cowboys and the Great Divide
Despite being neighbouring provinces with long ranching histories, British Columbia and Alberta saw their ranching techniques develop quite differently. As most ranching styles were based on one of the two dominant styles in use south of the border, BC ranchers tended to adopt the California style whereas Alberta took its lead from Texas. But the d …
George Littlechild
George Littlechild: The Spirit Giggles Within is a stunning retrospective of a career that has spanned nearly four decades. Featuring more than 150 of the Plains Cree artist’s mixed-media works, this sumptuous collection showcases the bold swaths of colour and subtle textures of Littlechild’s work.
Littlechild has never shied away from political …
Smugglers of the West
Do you think the smuggling of drugs and people is a new phenomenon in Canada’s west? Think again! Between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries, many daring smugglers carried contraband goods and people into western Canada across the US–Canada border or into BC from Asia. Smugglers of the West tells the dramatic tales of the bold criminals who sm …
People of the Fur Trade
The years from the fall of New France in 1763 to the amalgamation of the Hudson’s Bay Company and North West Company in 1821 were marked by fierce competition in the fur trade. Traders from the warring companies pushed west, undertaking incredible voyages in their search for new sources of furs. Irene Gordon explores the eventful lives of those w …
War on Our Doorstep
In June 1942, Japanese troops occupied the Aleutian islands of Attu and Kiska in Alaska, the first enemy occupation of US territory since the War of 1812. For the next year a bloody conflict raged that was nearly invisible to most North Americans as Canadian and American soldiers, airmen and sailors went north to hold the Japanese in check.
This is …
Raptors of the West
Winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Design and Artistic Merit
"Quite simply, it's among some of the best action bird photography ever published."
With their striking looks, keen vision and hunting prowess, birds of prey—eagles, hawks, falcons and owls—have long captured the human imagination. This book is a collection of some of the most r …
The Cowboy Cavalry
When Native and Métis unrest escalated into the Northwest Rebellion of 1885, white settlers in southern Alberta's cattle country were terrified. Three major First Nations bordered their range, and war seemed certain. In anticipation, 114 men mustered to form the Rocky Mountain Rangers, a volunteer militia charged with ensuring the safety of the op …
Hockey Night in Dixie
During the 1980s, the geography of minor-league professional hockey changed radically, moving from its roots in the Canadian Maritime provinces, New England and the Midwestern states into the American south. In addition to cities like Dallas, Charlotte, Norfolk and Oklahoma City, which had long traditions of minor-league hockey, unlikely places suc …
Ice Warriors
Technically it was a minor league, but for hockey fans west of the Mississippi, the Western Hockey League provided major-league entertainment for over 25 years.
The WHL was a determined and ambitious professional league, with some 22 teams based in major American and Canadian cities. Known as the Pacific Coast Hockey League prior to 1952, the WHL a …
The Pig War
On May 15, 1859, an American settler on San Juan Island shot a pig belonging to the Hudson’s Bay Company. This seemingly insignificant act was the spark that almost set aflame the strangest of many confrontations between Britain and the United States on the northwest coast of North America.
On one side of the border dispute over the strategicall …
David Thompson
Surveyor, cartographer, fur trader, adventurer, naturalist and entrepreneur, David Thompson is now recognized as one of the greatest explorers and geographers of all time. By 1812, he had surveyed almost four million square kilometres of the North American wilderness and become the first European to navigate the entire length of the Columbia River. …
Edward S. Curtis Above the Medicine Line
For almost three decades, Edward Curtis photographed the First Peoples of the North American West and studied their cultures. As part of his fieldwork, he cruised the Pacific Northwest coast and ventured into the lands of the Blackfoot Confederacy, both north and south of the Medicine Line.
Alarmed that the traditional Aboriginal ways of life seemed …
Maskepetoon
As a leader, Maskepetoon was respected for his skill as a hunter, his generosity and his wisdom. He was considered a “lucky” chief, a man who found buffalo on the edge of the plains, who avoided unnecessary conflicts with enemies, but protected his camp like a mother grizzly with her cubs. And in the turbulent mid-1800s, that’s exactly the ki …
Broken Circle
Now an approved curriculum resource for grade 9–12 students in British Columbia and Manitoba.
Theodore (Ted) Fontaine lost his family and freedom just after his seventh birthday, when his parents were forced to leave him at an Indian residential school by order of the Roman Catholic Church and the Government of Canada. Twelve years later, he lef …
Broken Circle
“Too many survivors of Canada’s Indian residential schools live to forget. Theodore Fontaine writes to remember.”
– Hana Gartner, CBC’s The Fifth Estate
Bestselling Memoir, McNally Robinson Booksellers
Approved curriculum resource for grade 9–12 students in British Columbia and Manitoba.
Theodore Niizhotay Fontaine lost his family and fre …
