BC Books for BC Schools

For years, the prospect of parliamentary reform has been a hot-button issue in Canada. More and more Canadians find themselves frustrated with how Parliament works (or doesn't) and end up increasingly checked out from politics as a whole, feeling like their voices don't matter to those in power.

When he introduced the "Reform Act" bill in 2013, Conservative MP Michael Chong brought the issue of parliamentary reform to the forefront, proposing changes that would empower MPs and hold party leadersh …

The water belongs to itself. undercurrent reflects on the power and sacredness of water—largely underappreciated by too many—whether it be in the form of ocean currents, the headwaters of the Fraser River or fluids in the womb. Exploring a variety of poetic forms, anecdote, allusion and visual elements, this collection reminds humanity that we are water bodies, and we need and deserve better ways of honouring this.

Poet Rita Wong approaches water through personal, cultural and political lense …

A coming-of-age novel contrasting a daughter's disappointment in her mother's abandonment with the generational differences around feminist values. Summer 1971. While women demand equality, protests erupt over the Vietnam War, and peace activists march, adolescent Maybe Collins' life in quiet Oak Bay is upended by the appearance of her mother, who disappeared nine years earlier.

And with her return comes another surprise: she's written a best-selling memoir called The Other Mother, about motherho …

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 …

Witness, I Am is divided into three gripping sections of new poetry from one of Canada's most recognized poets. The first part of the book, "Dangerous Sound," contains contemporary themed poems about identity and belonging, undone and rendered into modern sound poetry. "Muskrat Woman," the middle part of the book, is a breathtaking epic poem that considers the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women through the reimagining and retelling of a sacred Cree creation story. The final section o …

"Amber McMillan's writing balances an eye for the unusual and resiliently beautiful with a sympathy for the frailties common to all her islanders."
-Kevin Chong, author of Baroque-a-Nova, Neil Young Nation and Beauty Plus Pity

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The Woods: A Year on Protection Island is a personal memoir that probes the unique and sometimes unsettling tenor of life on one of BC's smallest gulf islands. The measure of one's success here, the author discovers, doesn't rely on status or income, but on the ability t …

At first, Canadians showed little interest in marking the centennial. The announcement of a federal program to plan the celebration was met with initial indifference. After all, the event to be celebrated was spectacularly uninteresting—the nation was founded not in blood and revolution, but by discussion and negotiation, bewhiskered men in nineteenth-century frock coats sitting around tables for palaver. But a funny thing happened in the weeks leading to New Year’s Day, 1967. Canadians embr …

In August 1989, Jane Rule – novelist, essayist, and the first widely recognized “public lesbian” in North America – summed up the first eight years of her correspondence with Rick Bébout, journalist and editor with the Toronto-based Body Politic: “It seems to me that what has concerned us is richly human and significantly focused on the concerns of our time and our tribe.”

Rule lived in a remote rural community on Galiano Island in British Columbia but wrote a column for the magazin …