National Network for Equitable Library Service

Gold rush fever in the 1860s brought thousands of miners to the new territories of British Columbia and the Yukon armed with rifles, revolvers, and bowie knives. Among them were thugs and outlaws lured by the promise of easy riches. Within months of the first arrivals a provincial police force was formed—the first in western Canada—and constables recruited to preserve order in the colonies. These intrepid lawmen patrolled vast regions of Vancouver Island, the Cariboo, the Kootenays, and the Klondike.

When June Cameron and Paul Holsinger set out in 1983 in Paul's ancient 26-foot wooden sloop, Wood Duck, to cross the perilous Hecate Strait and explore the weather-beaten west coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands (now known as Haida Gwaii), they knew they would face danger. But June had raced her own sailboat for years and Paul was a gifted mechanic, so they put trepidation aside and answered the call to adventure. 26 Feet to the Charlottes takes readers to remote beaches, uninhabited First Nations villages, abandoned mines and sheltered coves.

In this bestselling timeless classic, Peter Gzowski recounts the 1980-81 season he spent travelling around the NHL circuit with the Edmonton Oilers. These were the days when the young Oilers, led by a teenaged Wayne Gretzky, were poised on the edge of greatness, and about to blaze their way into the record books and the consciousness of a nation. While the story of the early Oilers embodies the book, The Game of Our Lives is much more than a retelling of one season in the life of an NHL team.

From the era of wooden sailing ships and Europe’s golden age of exploration, the story of famed British navigator Henry Hudson tells a classic tale of courage, ambition, and treachery on the high seas. As the leader of four Arctic voyages in 1607, 1608, 1609, and 1610, Hudson searched in vain for a navigable route through the polar ice that would open the way to the riches of Asia. In his obsession to succeed, he made reckless decisions that pushed his crew to the brink, with disastrous results.

Scottish nursemaid Janet Smith was the victim of a 1924 tragedy that ignited racial tension in a very young Vancouver. At the core of the issue were the mysterious circumstances surrounding Smith's death, particularly the fact that the only other adult in the house at the time was the Chinese houseboy. When Smith's death was followed by the assassination of Davie Lew, a well-known Chinese man, it only strengthened the European view that Vancouver's Asian community was a hotbed of violence and corruption.

A celebration of the twenty-eight-year history of Western Canada’s most illustrious Shakespeare festival.Over the summer of 1990, six thousand Vancouverites flocked into a rented tent at Vanier Park to watch A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was the inaugural production of what would become one of the city’s most popular and enduring yearly cultural events, the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival. Twenty-five years after Bard’s debut, the company had an operating budget of almost $6 million, and attendance had ballooned to nearly 100,000 for the season.

The blossoming of Métis society and culture in the 19th century marked a fascinating and colourful era in western Canadian history. Drawing from journals and contemporary sources, Irene Ternier Gordon presents a vivid account of Métis life in the area that is now Saskatchewan and Alberta. Here are the stories of the masters of the plains—Métis buffalo hunters, traders and entrepreneurs like Louis Goulet, Norbert Welsh and the legendary Gabriel Dumont. Many enjoyed lives of freedom and adventure, yet also faced heartbreak as their way of life came to an end.

An in-depth look at the life and career of retired judge and conflict-of-interest commissioner Ted Hughes, whose unflinching integrity earned him the reputation as Canada’s moral compass.Throughout his sixty-year career, Ted Hughes has been a model of ethical conduct in the Canadian judicial system. The son of immigrant homesteaders who grew up in Saskatoon during the Depression, he might have retired as a respected senior judge in the town where he was born had his career not been sideswiped by the intense party politics underpinning Canadian judicial appointments in the 1970s.

When Native and Métis unrest escalated into the Northwest Rebellion of 1885, settlers in southern Alberta's cattle country were terrified. Three major First Nations bordered their range, and war seemed certain. In anticipation, 114 men mustered to form the Rocky Mountain Rangers, a volunteer militia charged with ensuring the safety of the open range between the Rocky Mountains and the Cypress Hills. The Rangers were a motley crew, from ex-Mounties and ex-cons to retired, high-ranking military officials and working, ranch-hand cowpokes.

The Red Coat Trail of southern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta runs near the route of the North West Mounted Police’s famous 1874 March West. Today, this lonely highway passes through a windswept land of ghostly abandoned towns. Johnnie Bachusky takes readers back to the heyday of these towns, which sprang up as settlers travelled west during the last great land rush. The Roaring Twenties brought bumper harvests, but also bootleggers and bank robbers; fortunes were won and lost in high-stakes poker games.