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- …

A born naturalist, Ian McTaggart-Cowan grew up exploring the woods around his North Vancouver home and went on to embrace his passion and energize others with his enthusiasm and knowledge. He greatly influenced conservation and scientific documentation of nature within the province and beyond.

Ian McTaggart-Cowan contributed significantly to the Roy …

"Lane is a poet more of the individual, hard-hitting poem; like physical blows, he wields his pieces like small threats of intense beauty."
--Globe and Mail

Following the success of his award-winning memoir There is a Season (2004) and his bestselling novel Red Dog, Red Dog (2008), Patrick Lane felt his celebrated poetry career might be at an end an …

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- …

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 …

Adrian Raeside has created a magical tale of adventure for pet lovers of all ages in The Rainbow Bridge. Using his gift for creating spunky characters, Raeside has created a valuable fable for anyone who cherishes the companionship of a family pet.

Seven-year-old Rick and his beloved dog Koko are inseparable. They cavort in the swimming hole, chase …

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 …

The Yukon is a mythic place: the land is vast and wild, the climate harsh and uncompromising, the people resourceful and resilient. Say the word "Yukon" and southerners still conjure up images of the rough and ready frontier: whiskered men in plaid shirts or parka-clad women wielding axes in the struggle for survival in a silent, isolated land. The …

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 …

In 1992, Chuck Cadman was regarded by his Surrey neighbours as a typical suburban couch potato, a man who, despite the ponytail left over from his days as a small-time rock musician, had settled into a nine-to-five job and seemed content to pay down the mortgage, watch TV, drink a few beers and enjoy family life. Then, on October 17, his sixteen-ye …

Shortlisted for the 2008 Acorn-Plantos Award for People's Poetry
Longlisted for the 2007 Victoria Butler Book Prize

Last Water Song, the first collection of new poetry from award-winning poet Patrick Lane since Go Leaving Strange (Harbour, 2004), is divided into two parts. The first part is a series of 16 long elegies on writer acquaintances who hav …

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 …

British Columbia is known for the colourful pioneers who helped build and shape the character of this weird but wonderful province. And few were as colourful as Portuguese Joe Silvey - a saloon keeper, whaler and pioneer of seine fishing in British Columbia.

Born on Pico Island, of Portugal's Azores Islands, sometime between 1830 and 1840, Joseph Si …

Russell Thornton has the rare ability to be both keenly observant of the minute details of his environment and intensely introspective. His poetry is full of startling images that will stay with you long after turning the final page.

In House Built of Rain, Thornton takes his readers on a dizzying journey of human experience - from the yearning of a …

For almost thirty years, poet Tom Wayman has celebrated the language of everyday life and work. Praised for his wit, sensuality and conversational style, Wayman can weave the mundane with the mysterious and shed new light on both.

In his latest collection, My Father's Cup, Wayman examines the conflicting emotions that arise when a parent dies, when …

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 …

The Everest disasters of recent years have focused world attention on humanity's obsession with high-altitude mountaineering. What is it that drives people to court such awful risk? And what is the real cost in human terms? Nobody has written more eloquently about these matters than BC author Maria Coffey. Fragile Edge details her love affair with …

"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 …

This light-hearted murder mystery features Jimmy Sung, an unsuccessful private investigator who was once a certified whiz kid but has since sunk into a dreamy existential malaise.

When schoolgirl Janet MacDougall hears that her playboy brother Martin has committed suicide, she doesn't believe it. Desperate to learn the truth, Janet hires Jimmy Sung, …

in 1984, when Sharon Brown's mother Betty became terminally ill with bone cancer, Sharon and her husband (writer Andreas Schroeder) brought Betty home to live her last weeks with them and their two young daughters. With the help of her family, trusted professionals and close-knit community of friends, Brown helped her mother die with dignity, surro …

Rowan Hanson, the extraordinary heroine of this new novel by bestselling author Anne Cameron, learns to be independent at an early age. Her mother dies in childbirth, she is raised in a floating logging camp by her grandmother, she makes her own way working for the SPCA and BC Ferries. When she gets involved with Jim, she refuses to get involved wi …