National Network for Equitable Library Service

"Few artists are also historians, and few historians have the talent to illustrate the people and events they study. [Gordon Miller's] paintings of ships under sail, wrecked on a lee shore, in storms and in cities are luminous."—Pacific Yachting. In Western myths and imagination, the Pacific is the home of soft, warm, gentle trade winds, idyllic island lagoons and waving palms—the exotic earthly paradise of escapists, adventurers and romantics.

Past the End of the Road recounts a free-range adolescence in mid-century Port Hardy on northern Vancouver Island, at a time when with no roads south, the town was only connected to the rest of the island by air and sea—and the Union steamship was the main mode of travel to and from the sleepy logging village. Michel Drouin's frank and humorous memoir recounts the freedom of his childhood in midcentury Port Hardy.

While studying art in London, Emily Carr seriously undermined her health and was sent to a sanatorium for a complete rest cure. Bridling at the hospital’s rules, which prohibited excitement of any kind, the always rebellious Carr proceeded to make friends, raise birds, and cause trouble. In words and enchanting sketches, Carr presents a funny, poignant account of her 18-month convalescence.

Evangelical pastor, talk-show host, politician. Pentecostal Preacher Woman explores the life of the Reverend Bernice Gerard (1923–2008), one of the most influential spiritual figures of twentieth-century British Columbia, whose complicated blend of social conservatism and social compassion has lessons for our polarized times. Coming out of a difficult childhood, Gerard was attracted to Pentecostalism's emphasis on direct personal experience of God and the use of spiritual gifts, and she became a widely travelled international evangelist.

Retired fishery officer Randy Nelson's first love was catching poachers. That obsession, plus a devious mind and enthusiasm for marathon running, spelled big trouble for law-breaking fishermen. Thirty-five years in the field (and stream) netted a gold mine of stories with hair-raising tales of grizzly bear attacks, angry axe-wielding, rock-throwing, shotgun-blasting fishermen and high-speed chases on dirt roads and through bush. Poachers, Polluters and Politics provides a rare glimpse into the lives of DFO officers and the communities in which they live.

Take a trip across British Columbia with this enchanting collection of essays from thirty local writers. What makes wandering the vibrant land called British Columbia really special? Encounters with locals who are ready to share—over a coffee or a beer—quirky tales and powerful truths rooted in place and time. Consider this book a meet-up with 30 such storytellers—the perfect road companion for your journey real or imagined. The Tyee is the province's oldest and most-read independent source of online news and ideas. Renowned for its range of voices on politics, culture and nature.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, RCMP Sergeant Charlie Scheideman spent much of his time patrolling the "dark corners of the Interior of British Columbia" where "the citizens would meet the modern criteria for redneck: if their veranda collapsed it would kill more than four dogs; they think 'harrass' is two words, and so on." Such places weren't much fun to police—but they were full of characters, many of whom make their way into Charlie's entertaining book, Policing the Fringe.

Of the settlers, prospectors, trappers, mountaineers and loggers who came to British Columbia's remote Bute Inlet between the 1890s and the 1940s, few remained long. August Schnarr, however, trapped far up the Homathko and Southgate Rivers and logged the inlet shores from 1910 until the 1960s. An adventurous photographer, August strapped his Kodak camera to his suspenders and captured his mountain climbing, upriver treks and family homestead. His photo collection is a diary of fifty years of an upcoast life.

In 1888, a prosperous industrial family in Calne, Wiltshire, sent one of its younger sons, a lad judged to have no head for business, to Guelph Agricultural College in Ontario to learn to be a farmer. Joseph Colebrook Harris, the author's grandfather, didn't take to Ontario and after visiting a friend on Salt Spring Island, fell in love with BC. Eventually fetching up on the shores of the Slocan Lake, Joe bought 270 acres of hilly land in the Slocan Valley—less than thirty acres of which was really fit for farming—and began clearing the forest to build a ranch.

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, situated him in all the right and wrong places at all the right and wrong times.