Gold, Grit, Guns
The first book to reveal the 1858 mining milieu by those who witnessed it firsthand.
"An extraordinary book." - The Tyee
Only four extensive miners' journals are known to have survived from 1858. Quoting generously from the diaries, Alexander Globe focuses on the miners' actual words providing an engaging authenticity and bringing the miners' distinc …
The York Factory Express
Every March between 1826 and 1854, the York Factory Express began its journey from the Hudson's Bay Company's headquarters on the Pacific Ocean, where the express-men paddled their boats up the Columbia River to the base of the Rocky Mountains at Boat Encampment, a thousand miles to the east. At Jasper's House they were 3,000 feet above sea level. …
Firebird
Firebird explores a period in our history - one year in particular (1915-1916) - when a massive number of newcomers were deemed "enemy aliens," arrested and put into internment camps set up all across Canada. Alex Kaminsky, a fourteen-year-old Ukrainian immigrant boy, suffers burns to his hands and face when his uncle's farmhouse burns down. Rescue …
Claiming the Land
This trailblazing history of early British Columbia focuses on the 1858 Fraser River gold rush. Marshall's detailed account becomes an adventure, prospecting the rich pay streaks of B.C.'s "founding" event and the gold fever that gripped populations all along the Pacific Slope. In doing so, Marshall unsettles many of our romanticized assumptions ab …
Louis Riel
Louis Riel, prophet of the new world and founder of the Canadian province of Manitoba, has challenged Canadian politics, history and religion since the early years of Confederation. In Canada’s most important and controversial state trial, Riel was found guilty of “high treason,” sentenced to hang and executed on November 16, 1885. With 2017 …
Finding John Rae
This creative nonfiction biography of the celebrated Arctic explorer Dr. John Rae begins in 1854 when, on a mapping expedition to the Boothia Peninsula, Rae discovers the missing link in the Northwest Passage. On the same trip, a chance encounter with an Inuit hunter leads him to uncover the tragic fate that befell the officers and crew of the long …
The Nor'Wester
This gripping novel for young readers begins in 1805, when fifteen-year-old Duncan Scott and his sister Libby lose their parents in a Glasgow cotton mill fire. Their tragedy is compounded when, through one reckless act of grief, the Scott children become fugitives as well as orphans, and must flee Scotland. Across the border in England, Duncan and …
Hope's Journey
The fifth volume in the “Forging a Nation” series begins in 1791. The year a new province is created in the country that will one day be called Canada. The year Hope Cobman’s life turns around. At thirteen, she must leave the orphanage where she has lived since her mother’s death one year ago. Alone in the world, she dreams of finding her f …
The De Cosmos Enigma
This biography explores what drove William Smith to change his name, in the gold fields of California in the 1850s, to Amor De Cosmos. Hawkins traces how De Cosmos became one of the most feared journalists in British Columbia and then how he forced his way into British Columbia politics, becoming BC’s second premier. Although De Cosmos played a c …
The Journal
Lois Donovan’s new historical fiction, The Journal, begins in 2004 when thirteen-year-old Kami receives a bizarre offer involving a historic house in Edmonton, from her estranged grandfather. A move to Edmonton was definitely not part of Kami’s “best-year-ever” plan, but her mother insists it is an opportunity to reconnect with the father s …
Journal, The
This novel begins when 13-year-old Kami, the daughter of a Japanese-Canadian mother and a Scottish-Canadian father, moves with her mother from Vancouver to Edmonton. Here she hopes to reunite with the father who appears to have abandoned her. While rummaging through family boxes, she finds an old diary written by her great-grandmother. While readin …
White Oneida, The
In her fourth historical novel dealing with British North America and the American Revolution, Jean Rae Baxter focuses on Broken Trail, a young boy who was born white but captured and adopted by the Oneida people. The great Mohawk leader Thayendanegea - known to Euro-Canadians as Joseph Brant - has chosen Broken Trail to assist him in the daunting …
Vancouver Is Ashes
On the morning of June 13, 1886, a rogue wind fanned the flames of a small clearing fire—and within five hours, the newly incorporated city of Vancouver, British Columbia, had been reduced to smoldering ash. Vancouver is Ashes: The Great Fire of 1886 is the first detailed exploration of what happened on that pivotal, yet seldom revisited day in t …
Vancouver Is Ashes
On the morning of June 13, 1886, a rogue wind fanned the flames of a small clearing fire-and within five hours, the newly incorporated city of Vancouver, British Columbia, had been reduced to smoldering ash. Vancouver is Ashes: The Great Fire of 1886 is the first detailed exploration of what happened on that pivotal, yet seldom revisited day in the …
Left in British Columbia, The
This comprehensive history of the left in British Columbia from the late nineteenth century to the present explores the successes and failures of individuals and organizations striving to make a better world. Nineteenth-century coal miners and carpenters; Wobblies, Single Taxers, and communists; worker militancy in two world wars; the New Democrati …
Freedom Bound
In this, the final instalment of Jean Rae Baxter's best-selling young adult trilogy, eighteen-year-old Charlotte sails from Canada to Charleston in the beleaguered Thirteen Colonies to join her new husband Nick. During these final months of the American Revolution, she must muster all her wit and courage when she has to rescue Nick from being tortu …
Father August Brabant
Father August Brabant (1845–1912) was the first Roman Catholic missionary to live and work among indigenous peoples on the west coast of Vancouver Island during the colonial period. He endured long periods of isolation, built a number of log churches and undertook extraordinarily difficult trips along the west coast in dugout canoes. His thirty-t …
Opening Act, The
The conventional opinion is that professional Canadian theatre began in 1953 with the founding of the Stratford Festival. But Susan McNicoll asks how this could be, when the majority of those taking the stage at Stratford were professional Canadian actors. To answer this question, McNicoll delves into the period to show how in fact the unbroken cha …
Private Journal of Captain G.H. Richards, The
Captain Richards' journal is an account of three survey seasons on Vancouver Island aboard two British Navy ships, the HMS Plumper and the HMS Hecate. Between 1860 and 1862 Richards and his dedicated crew surveyed and charted the entire coastline of Vancouver Island, creating baseline information for the nautical charts we use today.This monumental …
Charlie
The story of the 100,000 British children who came to Canada as child immigrants between 1870 and 1938 is not well known. Yet the descendants of these “Home Children” number over four million people in Canada today. The author is one of them. Charlie was her father. Charlie is a compelling account of an English boy who is sent to an orphanage f …
Private Journal of Captain G.H. Richards, The
Captain Richards' journal is an account of three survey seasons on Vancouver Island aboard two British Navy ships, the HMS Plumper and the HMS Hecate. Between 1860 and 1862 Richards and his dedicated crew surveyed and charted the entire coastline of Vancouver Island, creating baseline information for the nautical charts we use today.
This monumental …
Broken Trail
Broken Trail is the story a thirteen-year-old white boy, the son of United Empire Loyalists, who has been captured and adopted by the Oneida people. Striving to find his vision oki that will guide him in his quest to become a warrior, Broken Trail disavows his white heritage — he considers himself Oneida. But everything changes when Broken Trail, …
Tragic Links
Tragic Links is award-winning author Cathy Beveridge's fourth young adult novel focusing on Canadian disasters. This time Jolene and her family find themselves in Quebec where Jolene's father is conducting research for his Museum of Disasters. When Jolene finds a time crease, she discovers Montreal in the 1920s. Back there at the church, Jolene sai …
Way Lies North, The
This young adult historical novel focuses on Charlotte and her family, Loyalists who are forced to flee their home in the Mohawk Valley as a result of the violence of the "Sons of Liberty" during the American Revolution. At the beginning, fifteen-year-old Charlotte Hooper is separated from her sweetheart, Nick, who sympathizes with the Revolutionar …
Winds of L’Acadie
When sixteen-year-old Sarah from Toronto learns that she is to spend the summer with her grandparents in Nova Scotia, she is convinced that it will be the most tedious summer ever. She gets off to a rough start when she meets Luke, the nephew of her grandmother’s friend, and one unfortunate event leads to another. Just when she thinks her summer …
Thompson's Highway
For his third volume about BC literary history, Alan Twigg traces the writings of David Thompson, Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser and thirty of their peers, mainly Scotsmen, who founded and managed more than fifty forts west of the Rockies prior to 1850.
This lively and unprecedented panorama introduces remarkable but little-known characters such …
Chretien and Canadian Federalism
Constitutionalist Ted McWhinney draws on his extensive experience in the workings of our federal system to discuss the need for modernization and updating to meet the radically new demands of the plural, multicultural Canada of the 21st century. His focus is on law-in-action - the "living law" of contemporary intergovernmental practice - rather tha …