The Broad Canvas
Portraits of Women by Women
Linda Rogers
with photos by
Barbara Pedrick
This richly illustrated book follows the stories of thirty women overcoming pain, politics, and prejudice as they sing, dance, act, write, and paint toward the new millennium. Every story of these mothers of artistic freedom is at once intimate and inspirational. Like Renaissance murals full of contemporary faces, this is a broad canvas of familiar heads talking.
Art/Biography/Women's Studies, 176 pp, 9 x 8, 50+ b/w and colour photos and art reproductions
ISBN 1-55039-097-X, paper, $24.95
By Snowshoe, Buckboard & Steamer
Women of the Frontier
Kathryn Bridge
Winner of the 1998 Lieutenant-Governor's Medal for Historical Writing!
Florence Agassiz, Eleanor Fellows, Violet Sillitoe and Helen Kate Woods lived and travelled in British Columbia very much as a minority—white and female. Historian-archivist Kathryn Bridge looks at each of these pioneering women, first through their writings and then within the historical context of the time.
History/Women's Studies, 231pp, 6×9, over 70 b/w images
ISBN 1-55039-086-4, paper, $19.95
A Curious Cage
A Shanghai Journal 1941-1945
Peggy Abkhazi
Peggy Pemberton-Carter was one of many Europeans living in Shanghai immediately prior to World War II. Until the Japanese invasion Europeans and Americans lived comfortable, almost idyllic lives, protected from the social upheavals of a changing China by their extra-territorial rights. When the Japanese took control of Shanghai in 1941, all foreigners lost these rights and became “Enemy Subjects.” Freedom of movement was curtailed, some foreigners were arrested, money was devalued and homes and possessions were confiscated. In 1943 all foreigners were interned in camps where they remained until the end of the war. A Curious Cage records Peggy Pemberton-Carter’s life in Shanghai from the Japanese invasion until the war’s end.
Biography, 176 pp, 6 x 9
ISBN 1-55039-124-0, $19.95
A Curious Life
The Biography of Princess Peggy Abkhazi
Katherine Gordon
When Princess Peggy Abkhazi died in 1994 in her adopted hometown of Victoria, British Columbia, she not only bore a royal title, she also ruled over an exceedingly beautiful garden that had won international acclaim. It was a far cry from her unremarkable birth into tenuous circumstances in Shanghai.
Most remarkably, Peggy not only suffered internment in a Japanese camp in China during the Second World War, but she kept a clandestine journal during her entire two and a half years there. This journal was later published (and recently reprinted; see p. 15), offering a unique window onto the internment experience and illuminating Peggy's equally unique strength of spirit.
Biography, 210 pp, 6 x 9, over 125 photos
ISBN 1-55039-125-9, paper, $22.95
Gilean Douglas
Writing Nature, Finding Home
Andrea Lebowitz and Gillian Milton
This book is at once a collection of some of the best writings of Gilean Douglas and a fascinating biography. Included are texts never before published, along with some of the best writing from each phase of her career as poet, nature writer, and journalist. Abundantly illustrated with Douglas's own photographs.
Biography/Women's Studies, 227 pp, 6 x 9, 170+ b/w photos/illustrations by Gilean Douglas
ISBN 1-55039-096-1, paper, $21.95
Hamilton Mack Laing
Hunter-Naturalist
Richard Mackie
Hamilton Mack Laing was a long lived, widely published, notable Canadian naturalist. Laing's naturalist beliefs were common to his era: animal management was part of healthy environmental work. This biography explores a man and a philosophy of conservation that insisted the naturalist be a good man with a gun.
Biography, 234 pp, 6 x 9, b/w photos
ISBN 0-919203-74-4, cloth, $25.00
Henry & Self
The Private Life of Sarah Crease 1826-1922
Kathryn Bridge
Sarah Crease was an extraordinary Englishwoman whose long life and marriage encompassed privilege and hardship, scandal and accolade, in the Old World and the new colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. Kathryn Bridge's thoroughly researched biography includes extracts from Crease's letters and diaries, and an annotated edition of Crease's 1880 journal that records her travels with her husband. Lavishly illustrated with both archival photographs and Crease's own drawings and paintings.
Biography/Women's Studies, 216pp, 6×9, over 80 b/w and colour images
ISBN 1-55039-071-6, paper, $21.95
Journey Back to Peshawar
Rona Murray
Shaped as a quest narrative, Journey Back to Peshawar vividly recalls author Rona Murray's early years in the India of the British Raj and her return fifty years later to the very different India of the 1980s. Throughout the book, the clarity of the author's vision acts as a fascinating foil to the essential recognition of mystery which has always been at the heart of India's identity.
photographs, 304 pp
ISBN 1-55039-034-1, $19.95
Living on the Edge
Nuu-Chah-Nulth History from an Ahousaht Chief's Perspective
Chief Earl Maquinna George
Chief Earl Maquinna George, hereditary chief of the Ahousaht First Nation of Clayoquot Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, presents his compelling life story, told in his own words. Born in the village of Maaqtusiis, on Flores Island, Chief Maquinna lost his mother when he was very young, and spent his childhood years, until Grade 8, at the Ahousaht Indian Residential School. Despite this institutional influence, he received traditional training from the elders at Maaqtusiis, as well as learning the skills of fishing and a sea-going life from his father, MacPherson George. He also worked as a logger and with the Canadian Coast Guard, eventually earning his skipper's papers. He lost his first wife to illness, and he later re-married, taking responsibility for two large families. He took on a major role in Nuu-Chah-Nulth Treaty negotiations with the provincial and federal governments, and as an elder, began a university education, receiving a B.A. in History and an M.A. in Geography from the University of Victoria.
Biography/History • 160 pp • 6 x 9
ISBN 1-55039-143-7 • paper • $19.95
Memory of Elsewhere
Rona Murray
Acclaimed author Rona Murray searches for meaning in the aftermath of a serious car accident she survived five years ago. A fascinating, wide-ranging, thought-provoking reflection on the near-death experience.
Memoir/Philosophy, 158 pp, 6 x 9
ISBN 1-55039-100-3, paper, $14.95
Released in time to celebrate the centennial of the British Columbia Parliament Buildings, this revised edition examines previously unknown details about Rattenbury's involvement with the Empress Hotel. Terry Reksten also discloses the aftermath of the infamous Rattenbury murder trial, including what happened to the architect's children and George Stoner, the chauffeur convicted of his murder.
Biography/History, 204 pp, 6 × 9, 40 b/w illustrations
ISBN 1-55039-090-2, paper, $18.95
10,000 Hours
A Helicopter Pilot in the North
Peter Corley-Smith
This is a first-hand account of a veteran helicopter bush pilot who flew early Bell 47 helicopters all over the Canadian Arctic in the '50s and '60s. The helicopter, able to land where fixed wing aircraft could not, brought an enormous change to surveys, mining and exploration, opening up the North and its resources. Written with insight, candour, and good humour, this is a book to read and enjoy and then read again.
Aviation/Memoir
250 pp, 6 x 9, colour and b/w photos
ISBN 1-55039-059-7, paper, $21.95
A Wilderness of Days
Maxwell Bates
Canadian painter Maxwell Bates is one of the very few men who experienced and survived both the infamous "long march" of Allied prisoners into Germany at the fall of France and the equally notorious march out of Germany before the advancing Allied troops in 1945. In A Wilderness of Days he brings to life the experience of the marchers and the intervening five years spent in a prisoner-of-war camp.
Art/Memoir, 133 pp, 6 × 9, 26 drawings
ISBN 0-919462-56-1, cloth, $25.00
A Woman of Influence
Evlyn Fenwick Farris
Sylvie McClean
A must-read for anyone interested in women's history! Evlyn Fenwick Farris (1878-1971), founder of the University Women's Club of Vancouver, was a major force in the establishment and development of UBC and a key player in the election of the first Liberal government of British Columbia. This is a remarkable biography of a fascinating, contradictory woman, who both fostered and was caught by change.
Women's Studies/History, 280 pp, 6 x 9, photos
ISBN 1-55039-074-0, paper, $22.95
At Sea and By Land
The Reminiscences of William Balfour Macdonald, R. N.
S. W. Jackman
This service autobiography of William Balfour Macdonald, the first British Columbia-born individual to be named cadet at Britannia, is a must-have for navel history enthusiasts. Macdonald served in the Pacific Rim, from Hawaii to China, and commanded one of the first two vessels of the infant Canadian navy.
Nautical, History, 152 pp, 6" × 9", b/w photographs
ISBN 0-919203-05-1, paper, $8.95