Please note that other regional history books may be found under more specific subject headings (Railway, Women's Studies, Biography and Memoirs, etc.)
Historic Guide to Ross Bay Cemetery
Victoria, BC, Canada
John Adams
A must-have for anyone interested in the history and design of late-Victorian-era cemeteries and monuments. Located in Victoria, British Columbia, Ross Bay Cemetery has been in use for 125 years and was designated a Heritage Site in 1997. This revised, extensively illustrated edition contains sixty new gravesite entries plus new research on the architecture, landscape design, and history of Ross Bay Cemetery and the surrounding neighbourhood.
History, 48 pp, 7.5 x 10, 49 b/w photos, maps
ISBN 1-55039-091-0, paper, $9.95
No Better Land
The 1860 Diaries of the Anglican Colonial Bishop George Hills
Roberta Bagshaw
George Hills was installed as the Bishop of British Columbia in 1859 and resigned in 1892. He was a consistent diarist and the lengthiest of his BC entries were made in 1860, reflecting his first impressions of a wide variety of events, experiences, and landscapes. A unique document of the colonial period and Anglican church.
photos, map, 308 pp
ISBN 1-55039-067-8, paper, $21.95
Gabriola: Petroglyph Island
Mary Bentley
and Ted Bentley
Native Indian rock art, the petroglyph, is found all over the northwest coast and is one of the least understood cultural legacies of northwest coast native peoples. Gabriola Island houses several major petroglyph site. Mary and Ted Bentley have spent close to a quarter of a century investigating them ... their book was first published in 1981, selling through two printings. This is a completely revised edition, including new photographs, rubbings, and text.
History/Ethnography, 152 pp, 6 Χ 9, 135+ photos, rubbings
ISBN 1-55039-085-6, paper, $14.95
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 nineteenth-century British Columbia very much as a minority—white and female. Historian-archivist Kathryn Bridge tells the story of each of these pioneering women, first through their writings and then within the historical context of the time.
History/Women's Studies, 231pp, 6Χ9, over 70 b/w images
ISBN 1-55039-086-4, paper, $19.95
The Geography of Memory
Recovering Stories of a Landscape's First People
by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes
The Sinixt, or "Arrow Lakes Indians," are the original inhabitants of the Upper Columbia Basin. Decimated by disease, displaced by settlement, and devastated by the dams that flooded their village and burial sites and eliminated ocean salmon from their territory, they were as a final insult declared "extinct" by the Canadian government in 1956. Yet they have steadfastly maintained close cultural and spiritual ties to their homeland.
In a quest for understanding, Eileen Delehanty Pearkes set out to find the lost story behind the Sinixt First Nation. With the help of contemporary Sinixt people, Pearkes travelled, researched, and interviewed her way through a course of discovery. Her personal account is imbued with a deep respect for the land and its First Peoples.
FIRST NATIONS HISTORY 96 pp 6 x 9 colour maps, colour and b/w photos and illustrations
ISBN 0-9731222-0-X paper $19.95
Made to Measure
A History of Land Surveying in British Columbia
by Katherine Gordon
The settlement history of British Columbiathis rough and beautiful child of imperial ambitionis different from that of any other province in Canada. The work of land surveyors has been fundamental in that history. The story of their work is awe-inspiring.
Made to Measure paints an engaging, vivid portrait of surveyors and their influence on British Columbia, linked inextricably to both past and future settlement of this remarkable province.
HISTORY 320 pp 6.5 x 9.5
ISBN 1-55039-153-4 hardcover $34.95
maps 100 b/w photos
The Slocan
Portrait of a Valley
Katherine Gordon
The Slocan Valley, in the heart of the southern interior of British Columbia, is a slender blue-gold arc of water, pastures, and trees nestled between the Selkirk and Monashee Mountains. Although barely 120 years old in terms of European settlement, the valley has been the amphitheatre in which much of British Columbia's and Canada's most dramatic history has played out.
The Slocan: Portrait of a Valley links the region and its people to the broader history of B.C. and Canada, and opens a window on the culture and lifestyles in the area today. It paints an engaging, vivid portrait of a living valley and tells the compelling stories of its people.
History 260 pp 6½ x 9½
ISBN 1-55039-145-3 paper $24.95
Richard Somerset Mackie charts the history of the largest logging concern on coastal British Columbia—the Comox Logging Company—from the turn of the twentieth century to the devastating Sayward fire of 1938. This story of the heroic age of coastal logging is rich with stories, humour, and pithy sidebars on coastal legends like Big Jack McKenzie, "Greasy" McQuinn, "Promise Bob" Filberg, "Highpockets" Hughie Cliffe, Boomstick Thompson, and Sailor Lehtonen. Dozens of stunning photos and maps that have never before appeared in print.
History, 300 pp, 8½ x 11, b/w photos, maps
ISBN 1-55039-101-1, paper, $39.95
The Wilderness Profound
Victorian Life on the Gulf of Georgia
Richard Somerset Mackie
Revised and updated with new information. In July 1862, George Fawcett Drabble, a prosperous farmer in the English Midlands, impulsively boarded the Silistria, a China Clipper ship bound for the gold colony of British Columbia. Dressed in a top hat and a silk suit, twenty-nine-year-old Drabble had gone to Liverpool to say farewell to his friends, but at the last minute he boarded the vessel, saying Wait Boys! Im going with you! Louisa Drabble, his wife, died soon after his sudden departure, and George Drabble stayed on Vancouver Island, settling eventually on a farm in the Comox Valley. His three young children never joined him.
Biography, 314 pp, 6 x 9
ISBN 1-55039-126-7, $22.95
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
The Business of Power
Hydro-Electricity in Southeastern British Columbia 1897-1997
Jeremy Mouat
The path to power and light in southeastern British Columbia was strewn with intrigue, political skullduggery, torturous terrain, foreign entrepreneurs, and daring feats of engineering. The Business of Power details the history of West Kootenay Power & Light, Canada's oldest continuously operating integrated electric utility. Fully illustrated with rare, archival photos, this meticulously researched account also includes a time-line appendix of major hydro-electric equipment and technology. Essential reading on the history of British Columbia.
History, 200 pp, 6 x 9, b/w photos and maps
ISBN 1-55039-081-3, paper, $21.95
Government House
The Ceremonial Home of All British Columbians
by Rosemary Neering
Photographs by Tony Owen
Government House: The Ceremonial Home of All British Columbians goes behind the scenes for a fascinating look at the past, present, and future of British Columbia's Government House.
In keeping with the House's new status, this book pays tribute to its long history and the role of its primary resident, the Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia. Each former incarnation of the House is described as is the current magnificent building, from its hand-hewn-stone exterior, to the grandeur of its Great Hall, to the opulence of the Royal Suite. The world-class gardens, overseen in part by legions of volunteers, are also detailed and abundantly illustrated.
History 124 pp 10 x 11
ISBN 13 978-1-55039-159-6, ISBN 10 1-55039-159-3 hardcover $39.95
Full Colour
You're on the Air
Sallie Phillips
A freelance broadcaster and pioneering career woman in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Sallie Phillips broadcast over the CBC and most of Vancouver's other radio stations. You're on the Air is a selection of her radio scripts, a charming and fascinating record of life in Canada, and specifically British Columbia, at mid-century. Sallie's voice is just as engaging on the page as it once was over the airwaves. Each script offers a privileged glimpse of a time and place that is strikingly different from—and occasionally surprisingly similar to—our own.
Regional History/Women's Studies, 214 pp, 6 x 9
ISBN 1-55039-104-6, paper, $21.95
No Numbered Runways
Floatplane Pioneers of the West Coast
Jack Schofield
Their aircraft brought the miners, the loggers, and the fishermen, prospectors, preachers, prostitutes, misfits, and visionaries into the myriad inlets and waterways of Canada's unforgiving West Coast. These were the floatplane pilot entrepreneurs who created a succession of coastal airlines dating from the 1920s to the present day.
Jack Schofield's No Numbered Runways recounts the exciting stories of early and latter-day pilots whose floatplanes tracked the British Columbia coast. Often without benefit of charts, weather reports, radio, or navigational aids and, indeed, always without numbered runways, these ingenious aviators shaped the history of commercial flying on Canada's West Coast. This is a companion volume to Flights of a Coast Dog published by Douglas & McIntyre 1999.
Aviation History 148 pp 8Ό x 8Ό
ISBN 1-55039-146-1 hardcover $29.95
Tenderfoot Trail
Greenhorns in the Cariboo
by Olive Spencer Loggins
Originally released in 1983, this classic is back in print.
In 1926, the B.C. Government had a plan: 160 acres of land in exchange for hard work. For Olive Spencer Loggins, who was six months pregnant, and husband Arthur, heading for the Cariboo and leaving the great depression behind in Vancouver was a dream come true. They traded urban soup lines for the thin gruel of their first winter in the north. The greenhorns learned fast. Their Indian neighbours taught them to fish, their community danced them through the night, and they all valued work before money. This is a true story of the Canadian West, complete with bandits, hard-working women, and renegade moose.
History 176 pp 6 x 9
ISBN 0-919203-44-2 paper $18.95
drawings
Plants of Haida Gwaii
Nancy Turner
Haida Gwaii is the traditional name for that beautiful group of islands, sometimes called the Queen Charlottes, off the northern mainland coast of British Columbia. For thousands of years these islands have been the home of the Haida. Plants of Haida Gwaii, written with the cooperation and collaboration of the Haida, is a detailed and insightful record of the uses and importance to the Haida of over 150 species of native plants. Moreover, it explains the knowledge and understanding that enabled the Haida to use the resources of their islands, sustainably from one generation to the next for thousands of years. Beautifully illustrated with over 200 colour and black & white photographs and illustrations, this book is at once beautiful and informative, captivating and thought provoking.
Ethnobotany 256 pp 6.5 x 9.5
ISBN 1-55039-144-5 hardcover $38.95
Steam Along the Boundary
Canadian Pacific, Great Northern and the Great Boundary Copper Boom
by Robert D. Turner and J. S. David Wilkie
Steam Along the Boundary brings to life one of the most fascinating eras of British Columbia's railway and mining history: the great copper boom that seized the Boundary District in the late 1890s and early 1900s. The rival Great Northern and Canadian Pacific railways, along with the fledgling Kettle River Valley Railway, were the major players in a fierce competition for the rich ores and copper wealth from the region.
After less than 25 years the boom was over, the mines depleted and the smelters gone, but the railways remained, carrying passengers, lumber, fruit, and settlers through the rugged and beautiful mountains.
Railway/History 224 pp 11 x 9
ISBN 10 1-55039-158-5, ISBN 13 978-1-55039-158-9 hardcover $49.95
300+ b/w and 27 colour photos 3 colour maps
The Thunder of Their Passing
A Tribute to the Denver & Rio Grande and the Cumbres & Toltec Railroads
Robert D. Turner
Robert Turner's beautiful and moving tribute to the Rio Grande's narrow gauge and the Cumbres & Toltec is his 14th book on western transportation history. This stunning volume chronicles the story of one of the finest preserved steam railroads in North America, from its origins as the Denver & Rio Grande's San Juan Extension in the 1880s silver mining boom, to its present-day operations as the spectacular Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. The book spans more than 125 years of railroading in the beautiful aspen-covered high country of Colorado and New Mexico.
Railway/History 288 pp 11 x 9 1/2
over 500 colour and b/w photos, maps
ISBN 1-55039-129-1 paper $49.95
ISBN 1-55039-130-5 cloth $59.95
West of the Great Divide
The Canadian Pacific Railway's First Century in British Columbia
Robert D. Turner
Updated edition. A complete and detailed history of the CPR in B.C., from the glorious days of huge steam locomotives and elegant dining, to the luxurious Canadian and modern diesels hauling coal and containers. Included are the personal stories of the men who built this railway, and the enormous construction problems, hazards, frustrations, tragedies and engineering triumphs. Detailed accounts of day-to-day operations, endless battles with winter snows and mountain grades. The steam era of the 1920s to 1950s receives particular attention. Over 400 dramatic vintage photos capture the CPR's first century in British Columbia.
Railway/History 352 pp 8.5 x 11
ISBN 1-55039-131-3 paper $42.95
Trapline Outlaw
by David Ricardo Williams
Back in print!
This is a true story of a fascinating episode in the frontier history of Canada. Simon Peter Gunanoot, a prosperous trapper, rancher and merchant of Hazelton, British Columbia was accused of the cold-blooded murder of two men in 1906. He fled into the rugged wilderness of northern British Columbia with his wife and children, his mother and father, and with Peter Himadam, his brother-in-law, also accused of murder, and his wife. Gunanoot and Himadam were outlaws for 13 years and were never caught. Gunanoot surrendered in 1919, stood trial and was acquitted. During his exile, he had changed in the public eye from a common criminal to a folk hero.
HISTORY 200 pp 6 x 9
ISBN 0-919203-98-1 paper $19.95