National Network for Equitable Library Service

Finalist, 2023 Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize—BC and Yukon Book Prizes. A beautifully illustrated collection of inspiring life stories of fifty extraordinary historical women from BC and Yukon. This fascinating, informative, and charming book introduces young readers to a diverse group of women who changed the face of history in unexpected ways and defied the expectations and gender norms of their times.

No matter where people live on the BC coast, says Howard White, they have certain shared experiences: frustration with rain and ferries, familiarity with gumboots, bumbershoots, seagull droppings and barnacles in the wrong places. But each little community clings to its own sense of uniqueness and considers itself the true West Coast. As a case in point, White offers fifty funny sketches of life as he has come to know it in sixty-odd years of living along that hundred-mile stretch of monsoon-prone shoreline—ironically known as the Sunshine Coast.

The powerful story of a mother's struggle to save her son from addiction—and the strength and hope for change that she found in her grief. When the author's son, Tristan, began experimenting with drugs at age of fourteen, Kathy Wagner told herself it was just a phase. But by the time he was fifteen, she had to face the gravity of Tristan's addiction.

A mother's beautiful elegy to her son lost to overdose. Holden After and Before is a moving meditation on grief—a stunning book that traces Tara McGuire's excavation and documentation of the life path of her son Holden, a graffiti artist who died of an accidental opioid overdose at the age of twenty-one. Beginning with Holden's death and leaping through time and space, McGuire employs fact, investigation, memory, fantasy, and even fabrication in her search for understanding not only of her son's tragic death, but also his beautiful life.

Curious about the previous inhabitants of the lake community where her family has vacationed for over one hundred years, author Shelley O'Callaghan starts researching and writing about the area. But what begins as a personal journey of one woman's relationship to the land and her desire to uncover the history of her family's remote cabin, soon turns into an exploration and questioning of our rights as settlers upon a land that was inhabited long before we came.

City of Vancouver Book Award winner—Lambda Award winner. Amber Dawn's sophomore book reveals a poignant and personal landscape—the terrain of sex work, queer identity, and survivor pride. This memoir told in prose and poetry offers a frank, multifaceted portrait of the author's experience, from hustling the streets of Vancouver in the mid-90s to her present life as an outspoken feminist storyteller. This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA).

Emily Carr’s journals from 1927 to 1941 portray the happy, productive period when she was able to resume painting after dismal years of raising dogs and renting out rooms to pay the bills. These revealing entries convey her passionate connection with nature, her struggle to find her voice as a writer, and her vision and philosophy as a painter.

Through humorous anecdotes and compelling stories, trail-blazing George Zukerman recounts his life in music as concert bassoonist and impresario. George Zukerman, known as both the Pablo Casals and the Eddie Van Halen of the bassoon, describes how his worldwide touring kindled audience awareness of this unusual instrument and freed the bassoon from penal servitude in the back ranks of the symphony orchestra.

The captivating story of Mary John (who passed away in 2004), a pioneering Carrier Native whose life on the Stoney Creek reserve in central BC is a capsule history of First Nations life from a unique woman's perspective. A mother of twelve, Mary endured much tragedy and heartbreak—the pangs of racism, poverty, and the deaths of six children—but lived her life with extraordinary grace and courage. Years after her death, she continues to be a positive role model for Aboriginals across Canada. In 1997 she received the Order of Canada.

Nick Raeside worked at many jobs in the logging business but the one that he specialized in was starting fires—small, (hopefully) controlled fires used to clean up logging slash or debris-laden sites left after the merchantable timber had been removed. It was a crude way of reducing fire hazard and clearing the ground for replanting, and there was a constant danger that the controlled burns would get away and become real wildfires, destroying millions of dollars' worth of standing timber. Raeside found this challenge irresistible.