Gold, Grit, Guns
Gold, Grit, Guns is the first book based on the only four surviving diaries written by miners who sought their golden fortunes on British Columbias Fraser River in 1858. What was life like for those adventurers? How did their actions impact the creation of British Columbia? George Beam, an Illinois-born settler on Whidbey Island in Washington Sta …
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. …
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 …
Flourishing and Free
An inspiring and eye-opening collection of true stories about sixteen women who blazed their own trails in life and contributed in a fundamental way to the history of Vancouver Island and the surrounding islands.
In this fascinating follow-up to On Their Own Terms, author Haley Healey chronicles the lives of a whole new crop of resilient, hard-worki …
The Object's the Thing
"To glimpse this diversity is to feel some of the meaning of being Canadian."?R. Yorke Edwards
R. Yorke Edwards was a pioneer in the field of heritage interpretation in Canada. First with BC Parks and then with the Canadian Wildlife Service, throughout the 1960s Edwards developed an approach to the interpretation of natural and cultural history wi …
Uplift
In 1933, the Banff School opened in the stunning surroundings of Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies. From its beginnings offering a single drama course, it has since grown into the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, a renowned cultural destination. Uplift traces its first four decades as it generated ideals of culture and liberal democr …
Deep and Sheltered Waters
This book brings to light the fascinating story of a community and place: Tod Inlet, near Victoria, BC. From the original inhabitants from the Tsartlip First Nation to the lost community of immigrant workers from China and India, from a company town to the development of parkland, the wealth of history in this rich area reflects much of the history …
Railway Nation
A riveting, visually engaging collection of vignettes highlighting the rich heritage of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Since its founding in 1881, Canadian Pacific has made an indelible mark on the lives of Canadians. Most commonly associated with its iconic railway, at its height CP also ran hotels, steamships, and an airline, and had myriad involve …
Ours by Every Law of Right and Justice
Many of Canada’s most famous suffragists lived and campaigned in the Prairie provinces, which led the way in granting women the right to vote and hold office. In Ours by Every Law of Right and Justice, Sarah Carter challenges the myth that grateful male legislators simply handed women the vote when it was asked for. Settler suffragists worked lon …
Queen of the Maple Leaf
As modern versions of the settler nation took root in twentieth-century Canada, beauty emerged as a business. Queen of the Maple Leaf deftly uncovers the codes of femininity, class, sexuality, and race that beauty pageants exemplified, whether they took place on local or national stages. A union-organized pageant such as Queen of the Dressmakers, f …
Making the Best of It
Many women who lived through the Second World War believed it heralded new status and opportunities. But did it? Making the Best of It examines how gender and other identities intersected to shape the experiences of female Canadians and Newfoundlanders during the war. The contributors to this thoughtful collection consider mainstream and minority p …
No Place for the State
“There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation,” Pierre Elliott Trudeau told reporters. He was making the case for the most controversial of his proposed reforms to the Criminal Code, those concerning homosexuality, birth control, and abortion. In No Place for the State, contributors offer complex and often contrasting perspect …
The Bomb in the Wilderness
What can photographs reveal about Canada’s nuclear footprint? The Bomb in the Wilderness contends that photography is central to how we interpret and remember nuclear activities. The impact and global reach of Canada’s nuclear programs have been felt ever since the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. But do photographs alert viewers to nucle …
Vancouver Exposed
Finalist, Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Prize (BC and Yukon Book Prizes)
As the author of such BC best-sellers as Cold Case Vancouver, Murder by Milkshake, and Sensational Vancouver, Eve Lazarus has become adept at combining her well-honed investigative skills with an abiding love for her adopted city. These qualities are on full display in her la …
The Diary of Dukesang Wong
Here is the only known first-person account from a Chinese worker on the famously treacherous parts of transcontinental railways that spanned the North American continent in the nineteenth century. The story of those Chinese workers has been told before, but never in a voice from among their number, never in a voice that lived through the experienc …
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 …
Megantic
Lac-Mégantic, Québec, Canada – July 6, 2013. On a hot summer night, a driverless, out-of-control train descends the slope that leads to the scenic town below and explodes, pulverizing the downtown area and killing forty-seven unsuspecting victims. The devastation, which leaves the people of Lac-Mégantic dazed and in mourning, is quickly the ob …
Canada's Mechanized Infantry
Canada’s Mechanized Infantry explores the development of the Canadian Army’s infantry after the First World War. Modern studies of technology and war have tended to focus on tanks and armour, but soldiers discovered that military success really depends on the combination of infantry, armour, and artillery. Peter Kasurak demonstrates how the Can …
Knowing the Past, Facing the Future
In 1867, Canada’s federal government became responsible for the education of Indigenous peoples: Status Indians and some Métis would attend schools on reserves; non-Status Indians and some Métis would attend provincial schools. The chapters in this collection – some reflective, some piercing, all of them insightful – show that this system s …
Gold in British Columbia
The influx of over 20,000 European and Chinese miners to the Fraser River in the spring of 1858, all of them hungry for gold, compelled the British government to declare the mainland, known then as New Caledonia, the Colony of British Columbia. In an attempt to capture the excitement of this period and the challenges faced by the colonial governmen …
Canada 1919
With compelling insight, Canada 1919 examines the concerns of Canadians in the year following the Great War: the treatment of veterans, including nurses and Indigenous soldiers; the rising farm lobby; the role of labour; the place of children; the influenza pandemic; the country’s international standing; and commemoration of the fallen. Even as t …
A Great Revolutionary Wave
British Columbia is often overlooked in the national story of women’s struggle for political equality. This book rights that wrong. A Great Revolutionary Wave follows the propaganda campaigns undertaken by suffrage organizations and traces the role of working-class women in the fight for political equality. It demonstrates the connections between …
Legacy of Trees
An engaging, informative, and visually stunning tour of the numerous native, introduced, and ornamental tree species found in Vancouver’s Stanley Park, combining a wealth of botanical knowledge with a fascinating social history of the city’s most celebrated landmark.
Measuring 405 hectares (1,001 acres) in the heart of downtown Vancouver, Stanle …
Stagecoach North
An in-depth look at the origins and operations of a pioneering transportation company that moved people and goods across the province throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
At the height of the Cariboo Gold Rush, demand for an efficient transportation route to and from the goldfields was reaching a point of desperation. With a …
Umingmak
Until 1967, the Northwest Territories was governed from Ottawa by appointees who rarely visited the land or peoples they controlled. As part of his drive to integrate and modernize the country, Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson ordered Stuart Hodgson, a feisty British Columbia labour leader and founding member of the NDP, to move a fledglin …
On Their Own Terms
"An engaging contribution to Canadian women's history." —BC Books for BC Schools
A fascinating collection of concise stories about seventeen courageous, independent, and diverse women who shaped the history of Vancouver Island.
From the lush rainforest of Clayoquot Sound to the bustling city streets of Victoria, Vancouver Island has been home to an …
The Final Voyage of the Valencia
A dynamic retelling of the deadly 1906 sinking of the SS Valencia off the southwest coast of Vancouver Island, one of the worst maritime disasters in Canadian history.
There are few places on earth that have such a high record of marine casualties as the short yet treacherous stretch of coastline known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. In the late ni …
Robert Service
"Andra-Warner has given us a great read with this slim biography. Her story-telling skills excel at distilling historical facts into compelling narrative."—Thunder Bay Chronicle-Review
A quick-paced and engaging biography of Canada's favourite northern poet, Robert Service.
Born in England in 1874 to Scottish parents, Robert William Service was rai …
In the Spirit of ’68
The 1960s were a victorious decade for francophones in New Brunswick, who witnessed the election of the first Acadian premier and the opening of a French-language university. But in 1968, students took to the streets, demanding further concessions. Belliveau debunks the idea that students were simply heirs to a long line of nationalists seeking mor …
Duty to Dissent
During the First World War, Henri Bourassa – fierce Canadian nationalist, politician, and journalist from Quebec – took centre stage in the national debates on Canada’s participation in the war, its imperial ties to Britain, and Canada’s place in the world. In Duty to Dissent, Geoff Keelan draws upon Bourassa’s voluminous editorials in Le …
The Trials of Albert Stroebel
On a dreary morning in April, 1893, John Marshall, a Portuguese immigrant and successful farmer on Sumas Prairie in British Columbia, was found lying sprawled across the veranda of his farmhouse, his body cold and lifeless. The farmer's face was a mess, his nose smashed in and cracked blood covering his forehead around a jagged black hole. The shoc …
Unmooring the Komagata Maru
In 1914, the SS Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver Harbour and was detained for two months. Most of its 376 passengers were then forcibly returned to India. Unmooring the Komagata Maru challenges conventional Canadian historical accounts by drawing from multiple disciplines and fields to consider the international and colonial dimensions of the voy …
