Who was this skipper, this mother, this writer? These questions motivated Cathy Converse to re-trace the route of famous pacific seafarer M. Wylie Capi Blanchet, and write a biography in the process. Widowed in 1926, Blanchet cruised the coast with her five children and their dog in a 25-foot boat that had been rescued from the seafloor. The Curve of Time, Blanchet's resulting book, remains a bestseller and a classic in the annals of nautical literature, but little is known about ...

A rivetingly imagined re-telling of the voyages of Frances Barkley (1769–1845), who as a young woman travelled the world on a trading mission with her sea captain husband.Over two hundred years ago, Frances Barkley, a seventeen-year-old girl fresh out of a convent school in France, met twenty-six-year-old sea captain, fell deeply in love, and married him after a six-week courtship. Five weeks later, she stepped aboard his ship, the Imperial Eagle, to set s...

Frances Barkley was just eighteen when she became the first European woman to set foot on the west coast of North America. After a sheltered upbringing in England, Frances found herself boarding the Imperial Eagle in 1786 to set sail on an adventurous, round-the-world voyage with her husband, Captain Charles William Barkley.With great wisdom and wit, Frances recounted her eight years at sea in her Reminiscences as she found herself in a wider world, helping her husband in his busin...

Received an Honourable Mention for the 2018 Lieutenant Governor's Medal for Historical WritingThe first book on Agnes Deans Cameron, BC’s first female principal, itinerant traveller, and journalist.Agnes Deans Cameron was an extraordinary woman who was ahead by a century. Born in Victoria in 1863, she was the first female school principal in the province, but she worked tirelessly to achieve work equality and voting rights for wome...

Brought into the media spotlight by her great-niece Pamela Anderson, Auntie Vie burst onto the scene as Pamela’s biggest supporter on “Dancing with the Stars.” Unexpectedly, Auntie Vie’s distinctive balance of earned wisdom and chic glamour quickly charmed the media and viewers of all ages. Her door suddenly stormed by cameras and reporters, Auntie Vie never missed a beat. Having harnessed the power of simply being herself, she has captured imaginations and inspired people with her rare pe...

Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands are home to over two dozen active lighthouses. For over a century, these coastal beacons have guided ships through the fog and represented hope for countless mariners. Today, the lighthouses on BC’s southern islands are ideal destinations for day trippers and coastal explorers of all ages who are looking for historical sites in spectacular maritime settings.To the Lighthouse: An Explorer’s Guide to the Island Lighthouses of Southwestern BC

At the height of the Great Depression, two Prairie children struggle with poverty and uncertainty. Surrounded by religion, law, and her authoritarian father, Cora Wagoner daydreams about what it would be like to abandon society altogether and join one of the Indian tribes she’s read so much about.Saddened by struggles with Indian Agent restrictions, Hunter George wonders why his father doesn’t want him to go to the residential school. As he too faces drastic change, he keeps himsel...

Between 1870 and 1970, 26 million Italians left their homeland and travelled to places like Canada, Australia and the United States, in search of work. Many of them never returned to Italy. Against this historic backdrop comes the story of Rosina, a Calabrian matriarch, who worked as a midwife in an area where only one doctor served three villages. She was also the only member of the Russo family to remain in Italy after the mass migration of the 1950s. Written by Rosina’s great-great- gra...

Unsettling Canada, a Canadian bestseller, is built on a unique collaboration between two First Nations leaders, Arthur Manuel and Grand Chief Ron Derrickson.Both men have served as chiefs of their bands in the B.C. interior and both have gone on to establish important national and international reputations. But the differences between them are in many ways even more interesting. Arthur Manuel is one of the most forceful advocates for Aboriginal title and rights in Canada a...

The third book in Roy Innes' mystery series sends RCMP Inspector Coswell and the newly promoted Sergeant Blakemore to the rugged district of West Cariboo in British Columbia, where a young Mountie constable has been found dead in his burnt-out cruiser at the bottom of a ravine. But what looks like an accident quickly reveals itself as a poorly disguised murder. With a young and ambitious Tribal Police intern as their unexpected ally, Coswell and Blakemore's investigation takes them from ca...

Esa Withrod is a young woman struggling over recent events in her personal life—a failed first relationship and resulting pregnancy—as well as the legacy of her desolate upbringing. Eccentric and enigmatic, Esa’s childhood has prepared her to deal with the world with endurance and resilience, but not with joy. She remains “mystified by kindness” and the friendship offered to her by her employer, Merle, a cartographer, and his partner, Daniel. The only bright spot in Esa’s childhood was the...

Sixteen-year-old Whisper, who has a cleft palate, lives in an encampment with three other young rejects and their caregiver, Nathanael. They are outcasts from a society (in the not-too-distant future) that kills or abandons anyone with a physical or mental disability. Whisper’s mother visits once a year. When she dies, she leaves Whisper a violin, which Nathanael teaches her to play. Whisper’s father comes to claim her, and she becomes his house slave, her disfigurement hidden by a black v...