History Books From BC

2017 Foreword INDIES Finalist (Historical, Adult Fiction). 1940s Vancouver. The Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbour and racial tension is building in Vancouver. The RCMP are rounding up "suspicious" young men, and fishing boats and property are soon seized from Steveston fishers; internment camps in BC's interior are only months away.

Daniel Sugiura, a young reporter for the New Canadian, the only Japanese-Canadian newspaper allowed to keep publishing during the war, narrates The Three Pleas …

In British Columbia by the Road, Ben Bradley takes readers on an unprecedented journey through the history of roads, highways, and motoring in British Columbia’s Interior, a remote landscape composed of plateaus and interlocking valleys, soaring mountains and treacherous passes.

Challenging the idea that the automobile offered travellers the freedom of the road and a view of unadulterated nature, Bradley shows that an array of interested parties – boosters, businessmen, conservationists, and …

In British Columbia by the Road, Ben Bradley takes readers on an unprecedented journey through the history of roads, highways, and motoring in British Columbia’s Interior, a remote landscape composed of plateaus and interlocking valleys, soaring mountains and treacherous passes.

Challenging the idea that the automobile offered travellers the freedom of the road and a view of unadulterated nature, Bradley shows that an array of interested parties – boosters, businessmen, conservationists, and …

The sacred legends of four First Nations—Lil'wat, Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh—have been passed down from generation to generation through the Elders and are integral to the teachings and Oral Traditions of First Nations peoples. These stories link people to the land and to each other, passing on Traditional Knowledge and history. For the first time, these sacred teachings are collected in an anthology of stories willingly shared by the respected storytellers of each nation and ador …

Diane "Honey" Jacobson's latest book is an important comment about First Nations efforts to save the salmon and her personal youthful journey to find meaning and a sense of place in life. Like the style in her first book My Life in a Kwagu'l Big House, Diane's style in My Life with the Salmon is full of action, amazing adventures and fascinating connections between land, water and people. In My Life with the Salmon, we follow "Honey" through sometimes hilarious and sometimes difficult periods, b …

Honey Jacobson considered herself lucky to live in the last semi-traditional big house of the Kwagu'ł people: a four-storey house filled with a loving extended family of cousins, uncles, aunts and the patriarch and matriarch of the household, Grandpa Moses and Granny Axu. While new smaller houses were spreading throughout her community, Honey really knew only her relatives inside that Big House.

In the 1960s, Western culture captured the fancy of Honey's community and family, and its spell inevi …

Behind Closed Doors features written testimonials from thirty-two individuals who attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School. The school was one of many infamous residential schools that operated from 1893 to 1979. The storytellers remember and share with us their stolen time at the school; many stories are told through courageous tears.

What is family? Is it defined by blood and birth? Or can we invite whomever we want into that intimate embrace?

The Royal BC Museum's new book, The Language of Family: Stories of Bonds and Belonging, invites readers to pull up a guest chair at the family table.

Twenty contributors from across British Columbia – museum curators, cultural luminaries, writers and thinkers young and old, from First Nations, LGBTQ, Japanese Canadian and Punjabi communities, among others – share their vastly differe …