A deeply personal travel memoir that combines alpine adventure, family connections, and spiritual encounters in two very different worlds: a Himalayan village and Vancouver, Canada.

In 2012, Michael Schauch and his wife, Chantal, undertook an expedition deep in the Himalaya of northern Nepal, into a remote valley that had been closed off to outsider …

An unparalleled memoir that grapples with the complex relationships that exist within the mountaineering community and how personal choices can have deep and tragic consequences.

On January 20, 2003, at 10:45 a.m., a massive avalanche released from Tumbledown Mountain in the Selkirk Range of British Columbia. Tonnes of snow carried 13 members of two …

The devastating diagnosis of an incurable, debilitating disease does not ordinarily form the starting point of a triumphant story. This, however, is a triumphant story. Heidi Redl was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2004 and immediately chose to fight the disease with the only tools available to her: sheer stubbornness and courage.

Growing up o …

Imprint is a profound and courageous exploration of trauma, family, and the importance of breaking silence and telling stories. This book is a fresh and startling combination of history and personal revelation.

When her son almost died at birth and her grandmother passed away, something inside of Claire Sicherman snapped. Her body, which had always …

BC Bestseller! From its Coast Mountain skyline to its seedy waterfront tattoo parlors, from the private downtown booze-cans of the city's business elite and the Faux Chateau enclave of Whistler, to the riot-shaken streets of the early Sixties and the history of pipe bomb attacks in the city, Moore has been there, done that. He's been a graveyard sh …

Patricia Sorbara has been a political operative for more than forty years—a mainstay in the background of both federal and provincial politics in Ontario, dedicating her career to the Liberal Party. She’s worked for and with Liberal Opposition Leaders, Premiers, Members of Parliament, Members of Provincial Parliament and more candidates than an …

David Neel was an infant when his father, a traditional Kwakiutl artist, returned to the ancestors, triggering a series of events that would separate David from his homeland and its rich cultural traditions for twenty-five years. When the aspiring photographer saw a mask carved by an ancestor in a Texas museum twenty-five years later, the encounter …

In 1983, at nineteen, Greg Nolan was hired (reluctantly) by his older sister’s boyfriend—a treeplanting contractor based in Northern British Columbia. His crewmates didn’t know what to think of the wide-eyed kid whose mom drove him the 750 kilometres to hook up with his first job. But within a week, Nolan was hitting the thousand-trees-a-day …

How do you establish trust and meaningful connection with a sibling who suffers from schizophrenia? In an attempt to rekindle her relationship with her estranged brother Steve, Joan meets him at the Art Studios in Vancouver, where he takes part in art classes for individuals with a mental illness in a safe, supportive environment. This marks the be …

An anthology of fiction, memoir, and poetry by LGBTQ2 writers (Canada-born, immigrated or refugee). The common thread throughout is that for LGBTQ2 people, Canada is the place to be. Nominated for the 2019 GEORGE RYGA AWARD - an annual literary prize for social awareness. Authors: Teryl Berg, Kyle Chen, Wendy J. Cutler, Corrie H. Furst, Kevin Henry …

Raymond Souster Award nominee. Finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award. In 2012, poet Elee Kraljii Gardiner precipitously lost feeling in, and use of, her left side. The mini-stroke passed quickly but was symptomatic of something larger: a tear in the lining of an artery known as the tunica intima. This long-poem memoir tracks the author's experiences …

“... without a doubt the greatest poet English Canada has ever produced.”

—Dennis Lee

“A hundred years from now, one of the few Canadian poets whose work will still be read will be Al Purdy.”

—Maclean’s

Al Purdy (1918–2000), known as Canada’s unofficial poet laureate, wrote poetry that anyone could read. Having come from working-class …

A life story sure to inspire a new movement of self-discovery and soul-searching for years to come. A story that captures a life richly lived, celebrating fantasy, passion and the ideals that lie within our soul. Who is to say that the outer stories of our lives are more important than the images that haunt our imagination? What if memoir could cap …

Sitting Shiva on Minto Avenue, by Toots is the story of a man who had no obituary and no funeral and who would have left no trace if it weren't for the woman he'd called Toots, who took everything she remembered of him and — for seven days — wrote it down.

Erín Moure, a poet who once lived in Vancouver, begins this "work of the imagination" ("m …

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 …

Author and playwright Dan Needles has long delighted readers and audiences alike with his insightful and laugh-out-loud perspective on small-town life, published in such bestselling books as Wingfield's World (Random House, 2011), Wingfield's Hope (Key Porter, 2005), With Axe and Flask (McFarlane, Walter and Ross, 2002) and Letters From Wingfield F …

An inspiring memoir that details one man’s determination to help disadvantaged children through the power of sport while dealing with the dramatic realities of his body’s own physical limitations.

In 2010, at age 55, Martin Parnell began tackling a series of extreme sporting challenges which became known as “Quests for Kids,” designed to hel …

A coming-of-age novel contrasting a daughter's disappointment in her mother's abandonment with the generational differences around feminist values. Summer 1971. While women demand equality, protests erupt over the Vietnam War, and peace activists march, adolescent Maybe Collins' life in quiet Oak Bay is upended by the appearance of her mother, who …

An inspiring and passionate memoir that details one man’s determination to help disadvantaged children through the power of sport.

In 2010, at age 55, Martin Parnell began what eventually came to be known as “Quests for Kids,” an extreme sporting challenge designed to help 20,000 children by raising $1,000,000 for the international children’ …

Like John Muir, David Pitt-Brooke stepped out for a walk one morning--a long walk of a thousand kilometres or more through the arid valleys of southern interior British Columbia. He went in search of beauty and lost grace in a landscape that has seen decades of development and upheaval. In Crossing Home Ground he reports back, providing a day-by-da …

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 …

"Amber McMillan's writing balances an eye for the unusual and resiliently beautiful with a sympathy for the frailties common to all her islanders."
-Kevin Chong, author of Baroque-a-Nova, Neil Young Nation and Beauty Plus Pity

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The Woods: A Year on Protection Island is a personal memoir that probes the unique and sometimes unsettling tenor of life …

In 2007, at the age of sixty, Betsy Warland finds herself single and without a sense of family. On an impulse, she decides to travel to London to celebrate her birthday, where she experiences an odd compulsion to see an exhibit on the invention of military camouflage. Within the first five minutes of her visit, her lifelong feeling of being aberran …

A harrowing, wry, and riveting account of a therapist's struggle with alcohol and his quest to find a better way of treating addiction

“With tactile intimacy and surgical wit, Pond invites us to share the tragedy of his addiction with a sad smile. And then reveals a singular truth about how people quit. Truly one of a kind . . . A masterful job o …

When diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour, Gudrun Pflüger was told she had eighteen months left to live. Taking the wolf—a true “endurance athlete”—as her model, she immerses herself in the wilderness of the mountain ranges of western Canada and focuses her mind and body on a mysterious and inspirational path toward self-healing.

Throu …

A vividly wrought memoir, Last Dance in Shediac is a collection of the author’s personal memories of her mother—celebrated Canadian artist Molly Lamb Bobak—and a tender meditation on life and death.

“I had always assumed that neither of my parents would end up in an old folks’ home. And yet here was Mum, ensconced in a world of pad-covered …

A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick

For thirty years, Brian Brett shared his office and his life with Tuco, a remarkable parrot given to asking such questions as “Whaddya know?” and announcing “Party time!” when guests showed up at Brett’s farm. Although Brett bought Tuco on a whim as a pet, he gradually realizes the enormous obligation he has to t …

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 …

In 2007, Caroline Woodward was itching for a change. With an established career in book-selling and promotion, four books of her own and having raised a son with her husband, Jeff, she yearned for adventure and to re-ignite her passion for writing. Jeff was tired of piecing together low-paying part-time jobs and, with Caroline's encouragement, appl …

“[Brett’s] writing is so vivid, the observations so telling, that a reader can virtually feel the smooth heft of a collected egg in the palm of a hand or hear the goofy, honking dawn call of the peacock.” —Globe & Mail on Trauma Farm

A raucous biography of a remarkable parrot and an incisive exploration of how we relate to those who are dif …

Taking as her alter-ego Lily Briscoe–the painter in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse–Mary Meigs paints a portrait of herself, her family and her friends in Lily Briscoe: A Self-Portrait, a book that is both autobiography and memoir. In it, she describes the three major decisions of her life: "not to marry, to be an artist" and to listen to he …

A memoir about fathers and sons, breaking out of gender norms, and reconciling with a dangerous childhood.

Lambda Literary Award finalist

Michael V. Smith is a multihyphenate force of nature: a novelist, poet, improv comic, filmmaker, drag queen, performance artist, and occasional clown. In this, his first work of nonfiction, Michael traces his ear …

The Tse-loh-ne from the Sekani First Nation were known as “The People at the End of the Rocks.” This small band of people lived and thrived in one of BC’s most challenging and remote areas, 1600 kilometres north of Prince George in the Rocky Mountain Trench. They were isolated and nomadic, and survived by following the seasons, walking hundre …

Nikki van Schyndel is not your typical grizzled survivalist. She is a contemporary, urban young woman who threw off modern comforts to spend nineteen months in a remote rainforest with her housecat and a virtual stranger.

Set in the Broughton Archipelago—a maze of isolated islands near northern Vancouver Island—Becoming Wild is a story of surviv …

Where the Hell Were Your Parents? is a coming-of-age true story about what happens when you let your kids run feral — it’s half Goodfellas, half Stand By Me, and three-quarters Dukes of Hazzard.This comic memoir is an unapologetic romp through the rural South with the Weathington Boys, the most scrumptious delinquents since Huckleberry Finn. Na …

"I don’t know how to describe me as a real person." -- From "My Real Truth," a poem by Grace Chen

"Put her away and forget about her." This was the blunt advice Grace Chen's grandfather gave Grace's parents when she was born with Down Syndrome.

Twenty-four years later, Grace writes, "I always dream to be a famous writer." When Judy McFarlane is ask …

A behind-the-scenes story of a global superstar's rise to fame.

In 1993, Beverly Delich discovered an 18-year-old singer named Michael Bubl� in a Vancouver talent contest, became his manager, and moved with him to Toronto, and then L.A., as he tried to break into a tough, unforgiving business. This book is her vivid, behind-the-scenes story of …

Lost in North America is a caustic, humourous exploration of a Canada we don’t often talk about-a collective mental creation of great charm and complexity, hovering precariously somewhere in Video North America, in disguise as the most successful colony in the history of the world. Lost in North America is a personal, idiosyncratic tour of the co …

In 1964, Patricia MacKay immigrated to Canada from England in search of the wild-open lands and cowboy culture that captivated her as a child. In the 1960s, the Wild West was still alive and kicking in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, although it had been tamed—a little. Old-time hospitality and helping anyone in need was the acknowledged way of life.

Pat l …

A chronicle of family love, unspeakable loss, and the power of healing.

Ginny Dennehy was living the dream: a great marriage, two wonderful teenagers, a fulfilling career. But in 2001, the world turned upside down when her son, Kelty, in the grip of depression, committed suicide at the age of seventeen. Just eight years later, her daughter, Riley, d …

"People of the Deer was...a wake-up call, the spark that struck the tinder that ignited the fire from which many subsequent generations of writers and activists have lit their torches, often ignorant of where that spark came from in the first place." -- Margaret Atwood

In 1886, the Ihalmiut of northern Canada numbered 7,000 souls; by 1946, when 25-y …