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 …

Mike McCardell’s instinct for finding the perfect story at just the right time has led him to a lifetime of great scoops and gripping tales as an author and Vancouver news icon. Years of chasing and reporting human-interest stories have honed his ability to see the deeper meaning behind the everyday, and to capture the universal and familiar in e …

“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 …

To the sea, to the sea,

who or what waits here for me?

Pairing two dozen of Carol Evans’s wonderful watercolours with a lilting rhyming story by Caroline Woodward, A West Coast Summer tells of a timeless, idyllic season where “Sea salt in the air floats everywhere / and cedars smell so sweet beside the shore.” Children race bikes along sand fl …

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 …

"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 …

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 …

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 …

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- …

Living alone in the remote wilderness, Chris Czajkowski has given her dogs a rich life, although not without its difficulties. Often residing in areas accessible only by float plane, the dogs have encountered grizzlies and cougars, slept in the snow, hiked with packs of food and equipment, and occasionally gotten themselves into scrapes, such as be …

"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 …

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From bulls to balloons, from horses to helicopters, Working in the Woods chronicles the myriad changes which have swept through west coast logging since Captain Vancouver came ashore to cut spars in the eighteenth century. By far the most authoritative book ever written on th …

In the next decade, a 60-metre-high wall of compacted earth will stretch more than a kilometre across the main stem of the Peace River, causing the waters behind it to swell into a 93-square-kilometre artificial lake, drowning the best topsoil left in the BC north. The waters will swallow fifty islands and a valley that is home to farmers, ranchers …

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 …

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 …

Red Robinson details the life and career of Red Robinson, one of Canada's most celebrated pioneers of rock and roll. Robinson began spinning hits while in high school in the early 1950s, laying the foundation for what would become a glamorous, impossible-to-stop and ultimately fulfilling career that has made him a household name west of the Rockies …

Mike McCardell has spent his life tracking down thousands upon thousands of stories, from the uplifting to the sobering, from the bizarre to the sublime. As the author of many books and a lifelong reporter, he has stored up a vast collection of anecdotes and is never short of a tale to tell.

With None of This Was Planned, McCardell takes us behind t …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Grandma finds the perfect spot for her home on the shore of a lake. As her family gets bigger, the house grows too--and eventually becomes a castle! Bursting with toys, bunk beds, bedrooms and pies, the castle is a magical place full of love and traditions. Whole walls are reserved for family photos and grandchildren's drawings, and a huge playgrou …

Each fisherman steps onto the docks, sees Peter Gordon's boat the MV Kalua, glances at the other members of the charter and feels a rush of anticipation. The challenge is on to see who will catch the biggest fish.

Told with a skipper's authority, Stalking Salmon and Wrestling Drunks recounts the highs and lows of fishing with tourists, including de …

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. …

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 …

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Magic.
The world is full of magic.
It's everywhere ...

"When I was eight or nine - or maybe ten or eleven - I don't remember for sure now, Klopinum would share her stories with me."

And thus it begins, the long-awaited successor to Anne Cameron's ground-breaking Daughters of Co …

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Like most of us, William Hagelund sees whales through compassionate eyes now, and marvels at the boom times of BC's whaling industry when he and a host of legendary old harpooners hunted down the great sperm and humpback herds off Vancouver Island without a trace of remorse. …

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Today, it takes just a few comfortable hours to drive from Vancouver to Squamish, Whistler, or Pemberton. Regular ferry service runs between the Lower Mainland, the Sunshine Coast and Howe Sound islands, such as Bowen, Gambier and Keats. Passengers and supplies move easily t …

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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 …

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 …

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 …

For decades, Hudson Mack has been the face of television news on Vancouver Island. In 2004, when he "crossed the street" from CHEK to The New VI, it was an industry-wide sensation. As he recalls that life-changing event in this autobiography he admits he wasn't sure where his new path might lead. CHEK was established, respected and popular in Victo …

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 …

In its heyday in the 1950s and '60s, the remote community of Elsa, 300 miles north of Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, was the epicentre of one of the world's most lucrative silver mining operations--an enterprise that far surpassed the riches produced during the iconic Klondike gold rush. For twelve of those years, Gerald Priest was the chief as …

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

When Elsie Hulsizer was little, she lived on the shores of Puget Sound in Washington where she spent the summers sailing in a small open sailboat with her parents. Her parents would always start out by sailing to windward, or against the wind, so they would have an easy ride …

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, …

When the first edition of Raincoast Chronicles was produced by a couple of novice publishers in the unlikely location of Pender Harbour in 1972, it boldly announced that it was going "to put BC character on the record." Printed in sepia ink and decorated with the rococo flourishes characteristic of that extravagant era, the unclassifiable journal-c …

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 …

On the morning of July 12, 2012, Mandy Bath left her picturesque home and garden in Johnson's Landing, BC, for a day trip to nearby Kaslo. She had no forewarning of what the placid summer day would bring. But just over an hour later, a massive landslide tore into the community, destroying her home and killing four people: Valentine Webber, aged 60, …

Long-time journalist Cam Tait has seen some interesting times on the sports beat--rolling alongside Rick Hansen in the Man in Motion tour, playing in fundraising golf tournaments, and tipping back some cold ones with Wayne Gretzky, to name a few. His personal life hasn't lacked excitement either--memorable moments include parasailing, winning a sta …

Dal Richards and author Jim Taylor recount the life story of the legendary bandleader in One More Time: The Dal Richards Story. These are Dal's memories of the stars and the wannabes, the hustlers and bootleggers and hat-check chicks, all of whom paraded through his life in the days when Vancouver's nightclub scene rivaled San Francisco's and Holly …

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- …

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 …

Cloudwalker, describing the creation of the rivers, is the second in a series of Northwest Coast legends by Roy Henry Vickers and Robert Budd. Their previous collaboration, Raven Brings the Light (2013), is a national bestseller.

On British Columbia's northwest coast lies the Sacred Headwaters--the source of three of British Columbia's largest salmo …