BC Books From Vancouver Island & the Coast

The hidden life of Howe Sound and the transformative power of Coast Salish culture and environmental science. An exhilarating mix of natural history and personal exploration Whale in the Door is a passionate account of a woman's transformative experience of her adopted home. For thousands of years, Howe Sound, an inlet in the Salish Sea provided abundant food, shelter, and stories, for the Squamish Nation. After a century of contamination from pulp mills, a chemical factory, and a copper mine, t …

A lavishly illustrated story that teaches children about the marine ecosystems of coastal Pacific rocky shores.

Siblings Crystal and Sam and their Aunt Kate and Uncle Charlie explore the tide pools of Eagle Cove, a sheltered inlet on the Northwest Pacific Coast. The children discover that you don’t have to go far to encounter a great variety of remarkable creatures, including crabs, sea stars, sea anemones, sea urchins, snails, shrimps, clams, jellyfish, and much more. With the help of Ada, an …

A concise history of the five women who changed the course of history and brought Canadians one step closer to equality.

On August 27, 1927, five women gathered at a house on Edmonton’s Southside to sign a letter that would change the course of Canadian history. Those women were Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, Irene Parlby, and Henrietta Muir Edwards, who would become known as the Famous Five.

The meeting of the women had been prompted by Emily Murphy, an Alberta magistrate, whose …

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 …

A richly illustrated exploration of the art, life, and historical impact of artist Frederick Whymper, who documented the landscape of the North American west.

Before the advent of photography, the topography of the colonial North American landscape was recorded by travelling artists hired to reproduce what they saw with unadulterated realism. One of these artists was British-born Frederick Whymper, a young man whose honest vitality and unabashed worldview are evident in work he leaves behind.

Thro …

Longlisted, 2018 Leacock Medal for Humour

A hilarious collection of Jack Knox's best-loved humour columns.

In this side-splitting follow-up to the bestseller Hard Knox: Musings from the Edge of Canada, Jack Knox presents his best writing, marking his twenty-year anniversary as a humour columnist at the Victoria Times Colonist, the newspaper that made him a household name. Revisiting his most—and least!—popular columns, Knox weighs the potential benefits of a marijuana-like drug that reduces an …

A young Canadian spitfire pilot finds adventure, love, and a remarkable dose of luck on the frontlines of the Second World War.

Rejected by the Royal Canadian Air Force in the summer of 1939, Keith “Skeets” Ogilvie joined the British Royal Air Force instead. A week later he was on a boat to England and a future he could not have imagined.

As a Spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain, Skeets established his credentials with six confirmed victories and several enemy aircraft damaged. On leave i …

Malcolm Bidwell is young, smart, and ambitious-and he's just been hired by mistake by newly elected Premier Steven Davis as his "go-to guy" for every political mess that needs cleaning up. And there are plenty of messes-from a cabinet minister caught in a vice sting to the premier's animal cruelty charge for killing a crow. Negotiating his way through the treacherous and wickedly funny corridors of power, Malcolm is forced to make difficult choices: between what's right and what's expedient, and …