Shortlisted for Ontario Silver Birch Award 2010

Selected, Canadian Children's Book Centre's "Best Books for Kids & Teens" (Starred selection, 2009)

Since Halloween, things are getting back to normal for Cat Peters. Now the big drama in her life isn’t a battle against diabolical fairies, but a battle of the sexes on the soccer field. Meanwhile, ever …

In the fourth installment of the Grim Hill series, Cat, Clive, Jasper, and the rest of the crew are back, and everyone is buzzing about Darkmont High’s student exchange to Sweden. For Cat, it means hanging out with her friends in a foreign country, travelling without parents, and not having to keep an eye on her clingy kid sister. Even though Soo …

“The Grim Hill series gets another satisfying go-round with this fantasy/mystery romp…Another appealing mix of realism, whimsy, and legend.”—Booklist

The third installment of the Grim Hill series unfolds during the season of romance, when an easterly fairy wind blows through town. For months, Cat Peters has been wishing to live the normal li …

“Oertel knows how to develop a scene for maximum humorous or scary effect.”—Kirkus Reviews

When their friend is accused of stealing ancient artifacts, Cody, Eric, and Rachel spring into action. And this time, that action takes them far away from their sleepy town of Sultana and deep into the jungles of Panama! Can these smart thirteen-year-old …

A full-colour, all-in-one regional field guide to every bird species found in BC and the Pacific Northwest, featuring 900 photographs.

Discover more than four hundred bird species in Birds of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest—the quintessential guide for serious birders or those who are ready to take their bird-watching to the next level. …

The influence of the Royal Navy on the development of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest was both effective and extensive. Yet all too frequently, its impact has been ignored by historians, who instead focus on the influence of explorers, fur traders, settlers, and railway builders. In this thoroughly revised and expanded edition of his cla …

A political insider offers a revealing perspective and examines the public and private life of BC’s controversial premier.

In the blood-sport arena of provincial politics, BC’s enigmatic premier, Christy Clark, has defied the pundits to win both party leadership and an upset election victory against all odds. Made deputy premier in 2001 shortly …

A wholesome and hearty collection of authentic recipes and local history from ranch country.

Come ‘n’ Get It is an authentic collection of down-home recipes and early Western Canadian ranch lore. Featuring material and recipes gathered from letters, history books, family cookbooks, and interviews with ranching families, this book represents a cr …

A fun-for-all-ages collection of over thirty spooky stories in settings across Western Canada.

When friends and family gather around a campfire, good times and scary stories are sure to follow. In Campfire Stories of Western Canada, Barbara Smith, the author of twenty books of true ghost stories from across Canada, presents a creepy collection of ta …

Daggers Unsheathed: The Political Assassination of Glen Clark is the story of the Glen Clark era in British Columbia politics. From the 1995 announcement of his NDP leadership aspirations to the day in 2002 when he was acquitted of criminal charges in a BC court, Glen Clark was the dominant personality in West Coast politics. Clark's style and poli …

Everybody has a train story. Whether it comes from a distant relative who worked on the railways or from a family train trip that formed a lasting impression of the Canadian landscape, trains inspire a sense of wonder and nostalgia. They are embedded in the history of Canada as a whole and western Canada in particular, and for generations they were …

The new kid at Darkmont High, Cat Peters is already desperate to get out. So when she hears that Grimoire, the private school nearby, is offering scholarships to the winners of a Halloween soccer match, Cat jumps at the chance to apply, despite her sister Sookie’s warnings that there’s something creepy about the old school on the hill. Sookie� …

In the thrilling third instalment in the popular Shenanigans series, Cody, Eric, and Rachel are back in the present after their time-travelling adventure and ready to return to their boring lives in the sleepy town of Sultana, Manitoba. But no sooner have they settled into their old routine than they run into a suspicious pair of divers who claim t …

The year is 1936, and seven children (aged eight to sixteen) are sprung from their boarding schools in England to the coast of British Columbia to embark on a summer sailing adventure like no other. On the way, they discover the true story of Brother XII, a shadowy figure recently disappeared from his island compound, who is rumoured to have buried …

This is the story of a rebellious girl from British Columbia who travelled the world in pursuit of her calling only to find her true inspiration in the Canadian landscape she’d left behind. Both a prolific painter and an accomplished writer, Carr was more comfortable in the raw wilderness than in the tea rooms of London, and more at home with her …

The expansive ancestral territory of the Blackfoot Nation ranged from the North Saskatchewan River in Alberta to the Missouri River in Montana and from the Rocky Mountains east to the Cypress Hills. This buffalo-rich land sustained the Blackfoot for generations until the arrival of whiskey traders, unscrupulous wolfers, smallpox epidemics, and the …

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 …

In their last adventure, Cody, Eric, and Rachel were clever enough to fool townspeople with a homemade "ancient Egyptian" tablet. Their exploits brought some much-needed tourism to Sultana, Manitoba, but their deception ensured they would spend the summer doing community service. While mowing the grass in the local cemetery, they stumble across som …

The sequel to Shirlee Smith Matheson’s critically acclaimed Prairie Pictures follows the main character, Sherri, as she is uprooted once again and forced to adjust to life in Calgary and get ready to start at yet another new school. Sherri is thrilled to instantly make a new friend in Sam, the girl next door. A year older than Sherri, Sam is happ …

When the members of Canada’s First Arctic Expedition set out from Victoria aboard HMCS Karluk in the summer of 1913, it was a moment of great optimism. The three-year mission would chart unexplored landmasses of the Western Arctic and secure Canada’s place in the international geographic community. Little did the team of distinguished scholars …

Jayne Seagrave—author of the bestselling Camping British Columbia and Yukon—is back with a book that only an avid camper with children could write. Camping with Kids in the West: BC and Alberta’s Best Family Campgrounds is the definitive guide for parents who want to introduce their children to the wonders of nature and create family memories …

Before her plane even touches down in Newfoundland, Cheryl is already plotting her escape. She knows life on this rock will be no better than it was in the other places she’s been forced to live ever since her parents launched their cross-Canada tour. The unwilling spectator of her father’s morbid fascination with “dying cultures,” Cheryl h …

At the end of the nineteenth century, Canada’s prairies were still sparsely populated. Crimes such as horse theft, random murders, and prison escapes were the order of the day, and the North West Mounted Police continued to rely on their horses, their contacts, and their wits to apprehend the culprits. By the mid-1930s, a sea change in technology …

In August 1914, Canada found itself jolted from its splendid isolation by the onrush of a European catastrophe. In Victoria, British Columbia, five hundred youth who had been educated at Victoria High School went to war and were forever changed by the experience.

From Classroom to Battlefield follows the experiences of this cohort through the Second …

In the traditional Algonquian world, the windigo is the spirit of selfishness, which can transform a person into a murderous cannibal. Native peoples over a vast stretch of North America—from Virginia in the south to Labrador in the north, from Nova Scotia in the east to Minnesota in the west—believed in the windigo, not only as a myth told in …

In 2009, Victoria's CHEK-TV became the first employee-owned television station in North America after corporate owner CanWest Global threatened to shut it down. The David-and-Goliath story made national headlines and reawakened a belief in local, independent broadcasting. In the five years since the employee purchase of the station, CHEK has weathe …

From the era of wooden sailing ships and Europe’s golden age of exploration, the story of famed British navigator Henry Hudson tells a classic tale of courage, ambition, and treachery on the high seas. As the leader of four Arctic voyages in 1607, 1608, 1609, and 1610, Hudson searched in vain for a navigable route through the polar ice that would …

Life is getting more dismal by the minute in the town of Sultana, Manitoba. Thanks to a dry season that nearly dried up the river, no one wants to camp there anymore. There aren’t enough tourists to keep the local restaurant busy and, if Cody’s best friend’s mom loses her job there, the family will have to move away.

Cody, his best friend, Er …

For twelve-year-old Sherri, moving is a way of life. Her family has lived in seven different places in as many years, three in the last year alone. But no place has ever been as strange as Gardin, Alberta, a ranching community right out of the Old West and struggling to accommodate new industries.

Sherri makes friends with Jamie, another newcomer, w …

Sisters Jennifer and Sarah were once part of a happy, stable family, but their idyllic life comes to an abrupt halt with the death of their mother. Unable to cope with his grief and the needs of his two young daughters, their father finds comfort in alcohol, gets fired from his job, and loses his grip on his family.

As twelve-year-old Jennifer appro …

In early-1980s Vancouver, Ivan Henry was an ex-convict still adjusting to civilian life when he was detained on a break-and-enter charge. A short time later he found himself on trial for ten charges of sexual assault—crimes he vehemently denied committing. Henry spent twenty-seven years in prison before a 2010 DNA test proved his innocence and se …

Building transportation routes through the Rockies is dangerous. It always has been. It is also expensive, labour-intensive, and highly political. But railway and highway construction through the western cordillera succeeded thanks to scientific innovation and sheer human grit. In the nineteenth century, steam locomotives, railways, tunnels, trestl …

Through his incredibly varied fifty-year career, John J. Healy left an indelible mark on the Canadian and American west. At different points in his storied life, Healy was a soldier, a trapper, a prospector, a free trader, an explorer, a horse dealer, a scout, a lawman, a newspaper editor, a speculator, a merchant, a capitalist, a historian, and a …

Haida Gwaii, ancestral home of the Haida First Nation, was once as inaccessible and mysterious as it was beautiful. The tight cluster of islands off British Columbia’s northwest coast remained virtually untouchable for millennia, allowing its people to develop a distinct and exceptional cultural identity that was known and revered across the regi …

They endured the torments of scurvy and the vagaries of deep fogs, adverse winds, and contrary currents. They suffered through appalling quarters and rotting food. They spent years away from their homes and families, never knowing whether they would return. Their orders from Spain might well arrive long after they were needed, six months or longer …

In this fully revised, expanded, and updated edition of her bestselling camping guide, Jayne Seagrave lays the groundwork for anyone planning to get out of the city and explore the best that nature has to offer. Whether you’re camping with kids, travelling in an RV, or looking for a comfort upgrade, Camping in British Columbia and the Yukon offer …

Any community that has ever been labelled a “mill town” carries both the promise of prosperity and the constant threat of collapse, its fortune hinging on a single industry whose performance is as much related to the whims of a global economy as it is to the abundance of a key natural resource. The people of Port Alberni, located deep in Vancou …

Often called one of the Seven Wonders of Canada, the canoe has played a particularly important role in British Columbia. This seemingly simple watercraft allowed coastal First Nations to hunt on the open ocean and early explorers to travel the province’s many waterways. Always at the crossroads of canoe culture, BC today is home to innovative art …

In this bestselling timeless classic, Peter Gzowski recounts the 1980-81 season he spent travelling around the NHL circuit with the Edmonton Oilers. These were the days when the young Oilers, led by a teenaged Wayne Gretzky, were poised on the edge of greatness, and about to blaze their way into the record books and the consciousness of a nation. W …

One Friday morning in the spring of 1972, an ad in the Vancouver Sun caught Nick Marach’s eye: GILLNETTER FOR SALE. A young architect who had just returned to the west coast from a yearlong motorcycle trip abroad, Marach was not looking for a change of career—but he was looking for a boat to live on, and the price of the old gillnetter was chea …

A man who has spent his professional life measuring the flow of northern rivers, climbed Alaska’s Mount McKinley, was a member of both Yale University and Maine University’s scientific expeditions to the Antarctic, guided a film crew documenting the late Robert Kennedy’s ascent of Mount Kennedy, and crossed the St. Elias mountain range is cer …

Vancouver Island in the late nineteenth century was a major port of entry for people from all walks of life. But for many, the sense of hope that had sustained them through rough sea voyages came to an abrupt halt as soon as they reached land. Quarantined is the heart-wrenching true story of the thousands of forgotten people who arrived on our shor …

The Legend of the Buffalo Stone is based on the history of the Blackfoot people—specifically their dependence on the buffalo and how they hunted the great animals on foot before horses were brought to North America—and is retold with the permission and under the advisement of a First Nations scholar and member of the Blackfoot nation.

The story …

On June 20, 1942, the lighthouse at Estevan Point on Vancouver Island was shelled by the Japanese submarine I-26. It was the first enemy attack on Canadian soil since the War of 1812. But this was only one incident in the incredible and little-known Japanese campaign to terrorize North America’s west coast and mount an invasion through the Aleuti …

Ted Grant, the undisputed father of Canadian photojournalism, has made a career out of being in the right place at the right time. Over his sixty years in the business, he has immortalized some of the greatest events in history and caught some of the world’s most famous and elusive subjects in rare moments of unaffected humanity. From Pierre Trud …

High finance, wilderness adventures, violence, and questionable legal tactics all played important roles in the history of the North West Company. William McGillivray, head of the company from 1804 until 1821, was arguably the most powerful businessman in Canada in the early nineteenth century.

William McGillivray emigrated from the Scottish Highlan …

In 1964, Patricia MacKay immigrated to Canada from England in search of the wild-open lands and cowboy culture that captivated her as a child. In the 1960s, the Wild West was still alive and kicking in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, although it had been tamed—a little. Old-time hospitality and helping anyone in need was the acknowledged way of life.

Pat l …

“I want to gold pan; I want to strike rich. I’ve been searching for a stream of gold. It’s these fortunes I never win that keep me searching for a stream of gold. And I’m getting old. I keep searching for my stream of gold; and I’m getting close.”

If those words sound like a common refrain, don’t despair. With this newly compiled and e …

In 1858, some 30,000 gold seekers stampeded to the Fraser River. Scores perished during the gruelling journey, but some made their fortune and many pressed on northwards to the creeks of the Cariboo. Originally compiled by Art Downs, founder of Heritage House, this is a vivid and detailed account of the first gold strikes, the miners who made them …

On July 3, 1961, Ian Parsons reported to RCMP Depot Division in Regina as a raw recruit. It was the beginning of a 33-year adventure that took him from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island and many points between. By the time he retired with the rank of inspector, Parsons had a policeman’s trunk full of colourful stories and insightful observations t …