National Network for Equitable Library Service

Respected Cowichan Tribe Elder and botanical expert Luschiim, Arvid Charlie, began his education in early childhood, learning from his great grandparents and others of their generation. Luschiim's Plants represents his dedication to the survival of the Hul'q'umi'num' language and traditional knowledge of plants for future generations.

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.

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 mark. By the end of his first rookie season, he gained the status of top producer among a crew of extraordinary young men and women. Over the course of his twenty-seven-year career, he planted over two-and-a-half-million trees.

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.

Winner of the 2020 Basil Stuart Stubbs Prize—winner of the 2019 Lieutenant Governor's Medal for Historical Writing. A celebration of the richly diverse flora and fauna of Vancouver Island as explored through the records of explorers, settlers, and visitors, and with due respect to the wealth of Indigenous traditional knowledge of the island's ecosystems. In Nature's Realm gathers initial reports, recorded histories, and personal accounts left by Vancouver Island's early naturalists who studied the region's flora and fauna.