BC Books From the Mainland/Southwest

Out of print for more than 40 years, this is an intimate and heartwarming biography that throws a whole new light on one of Canada's most beloved and iconic artists.

In 1916, Emily Carr wasn’t famous. She was poor, and she taught art classes to children to make a living. One of her students was seven-year-old Carol Pearson. Pearson spent hours every day with Carr: they painted together at the water’s edge, and she helped care for the dogs, birds, monkey and other animals that Carr kept as pet …

Out of print for more than 40 years, this is an intimate and heartwarming biography that throws a whole new light on one of Canada's most beloved and iconic artists.

In 1916, Emily Carr wasn’t famous. She was poor, and she taught art classes to children to make a living. One of her students was seven-year-old Carol Pearson. Pearson spent hours every day with Carr: they painted together at the water’s edge, and she helped care for the dogs, birds, monkey and other animals that Carr kept as pet …

The fourth collection from award-winning poet Rachel Rose, Marry & Burn is a journey through a troubled relationship and a troubled city, charting the territory of love and addiction, and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Inspired by struggles both personal and global, these are not gentle poems--they probe deep into comforting personal and cultural myths, rending them to pieces even as they expose the beauty in the bright shards that remain.

Although the language of blazing passio …

Forecast recovers early out-of-print work by Governor General's Award-winning poet John Pass. The poems engage potentialities--travel, an orchard he cares for, evolving relationships, house-building, becoming a poet and husband and father. They're grounded in place and time, but attuned, as he says, to constancy. Those for his young sons are poignant with the perilous hope of new parenthood: "asking courage of me / as never I needed nor knew it in sorrow."

Darker premonitions--dislocation, envir …

In its heyday in the 1950s and '60s, the remote community of Elsa, 300 miles north of Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, was the epicentre of one of the world's most lucrative silver mining operations--an enterprise that far surpassed the riches produced during the iconic Klondike gold rush. For twelve of those years, Gerald Priest was the chief assayer for United Keno Hill Mines (UKHM), the major player in the region. Priest was a clever man who could as easily carry the role of refined gentlem …

Frank White started writing the story of his life as a pioneer BC truck driver in 1974 when he was only sixty. His boisterous yarn in Raincoast Chronicles about wrangling tiny trucks overloaded with huge logs down steep mountains with no brakes won the Canadian Media Club award for Best Magazine Feature and was reprinted so many times everyone urged him to write more. He started in his spare time but kept having so many new adventures he didn't finish until 2013--his hundredth year. Although Fra …

Where Mountains Meet the Sea commemorates the 125th anniversary of the District of North Vancouver's incorporation as a municipality. Combining hundreds of illustrations with the personal accounts of residents and a lively text, the book presents the story of North Vancouver in all its colour and complexity.

Instead of a conventional chronological narrative, Where Mountains Meet the Sea divides the story of North Vancouver's development into three major parts: 1) the origins of the community, it …

Grandma finds the perfect spot for her home on the shore of a lake. As her family gets bigger, the house grows too--and eventually becomes a castle! Bursting with toys, bunk beds, bedrooms and pies, the castle is a magical place full of love and traditions. Whole walls are reserved for family photos and grandchildren's drawings, and a huge playground fills the yard. Grandma and her family love boating, watching the loons, and having meals together in Grandma's giant dining room.

The castle is bu …