A selection of recently published books about British Columbia, recommended by the editorial director of the Encyclopedia of BC, Daniel Francis.

Butterflies of British Columbia,
by Christian Guppy and Jon H. Shepard (UBC Press, 414 pp, cloth, $95).
I know as much about butterflies as I do about nuclear physics. Not a lot. But I know a good book when I see one, and this is a beauty. Printed in full colour, with many gorgeous photographs of butterflies as well as detailed anatomical drawings, this book tells you everything you want to know about the 450 species and subspecies of BC Lepidoptera. It even answers that age-old question, how do butterflies mate?

Bluesprint: Black British Columbia Literature and Orature,
edited by Wayde Compton (Arsenal Pulp Press, 315 pp, paper, $24.95).
If you want to get an idea of the variety of voices in this anthology, imagine James Douglas (that's right, BC's first colonial governor was a "mulatto") and the Vancouver hip hop group Rascalz in the same book. Wayde Compton, a Vancouver poet, has trolled widely in the literature to compile this fascinating collection of Black voices. It's an intimate way of delving into an important aspect of BC's hidden history.

Listening to the Whales: What the Orcas Have Taught Us,
by Alexandra Morton (Ballantine Books, 309 pp, cloth, $39.95).
Alexandra Morton has become something of a legend on the BC coast. Since 1984 she has lived in the tiny community of Echo Bay in the Broughton Archipelago, where she has pioneered the field study of killer whales. Out "in the middle of nowhere," she has made groundbreaking contributions to our knowledge of these iconic coastal creatures. More recently she has carried on a one-woman crusade against the salmon-farming industry, exposing its injurious effect on the coast. The story of how a small-town girl from Connecticut became one of the world's leading marine mammal researchers is told in this memoir. My only regret is that she didn't publish the book with a BC publisher.

Sailing Back in Time: A Nostalgic Voyage on Canada's West Coast,
by Maria Coffey and Dag Goering (Whitecap Books, 208 pp, paper, $19.95).
It is nice to see this delightful book revised and updated. It tells the story of two originals, Allen and Sharie Farrell, who built and lived aboard a succession of wooden boats, most notably the 13-m junk-rigged sailboat China Cloud. The book is an account of a 3-month voyage that the authors took with the Farrells aboard the Cloud. But it also tells the story of the couple's unusual life, the boats they built and the adventures they shared. Both Sharie and Allen have died since the book first appeared in 1996, and this new edition is a fitting tribute to them. A wonderful book for anyone who has sailed the coast, or wanted to--which must include almost everyone.

Pacific Press: The Unauthorized Story of Vancouver's Newspaper Monopoly,
by Marc Edge (New Star Books, 450 pp, cloth, $39).
Marc Edge and his editors at New Star have accomplished one of the most difficult feats in book publishing: transforming an academic thesis into a bona fide page-turner. If you have any interest at all in the hothouse world of the Vancouver media, you will enjoy this gossipy history of the city's newspapers. Edge has rounded up all the usual suspects--Fotheringham, Collins, Keate, Hutchison et al--and embedded them in a serious study of the business of newspapers from the creation of Pacific Press in 1957 to the decision by the Vancouver Sun to switch to morning publication in 1991. It is all here: the labour problems, the boardroom battles, the government inquiries, the clashing egos, the bottle in the bottom drawer. The author makes a serious argument--that Vancouver is poorly served by the increasing consolidation of its media--but along the way there is much fun to be had.

Those Beautiful Coastal Liners: The Canadian Pacific's Princesses,
by Robert D. Turner (Sono Nis Press, 160 pp, paper, $39.95).
No one knows more about the history of transportation in the province than Robert Turner. His latest book is an illustrated history of the Princess line of elegant steamships, owned by the CPR, that plied coastal waters from 1901 to 1981. A feast for the eyes, the book collects dozens of dramatic photographs of the vessels, along with all manner of fascinating bric-a-brac, from ticket stubs to dinner menus. Turner has written about the Princesses before; this book is an updating and repackaging of one he published in 1977. Anyone who cares about the maritime history of the coast will be glad to have it widely available again.

High Grade and Hot Springs: A History of the Ainsworth Camp,
by Edward L. Affleck (Ainsworth Hot Springs Historical Society, paper, 128 pp).
Even the most intrepid explorers of the BC backcountry might be forgiven for missing the tiny community of Ainsworth Hot Springs. Tucked into the west side of Kootenay Lake north of Nelson, this 120-year-old mining town and its surrounding area has a rich history, and no one is better able to tell it than Edward Affleck. Readers of Affleck's other books on paddlewheel steamboats of the Interior know that he is a thorough and reliable researcher, and this new volume continues his exploration of the Kootenay Lake area. The book is well illustrated with dozens of historical photographs. Local history at its best.

North of Caution: A Journey Through the Conservation Economy on the Northwest Coast of British Columbia,
by Ian Gill et al (Ecotrust Canada, 134 pp, paper, $22).
Cape Caution, located on the mainland coast in Queen Charlotte Sound just beyond the north end of Vancouver Island, is generally considered to be the dividing line between British Columbia's central and southern coastlines. Home to several First Nations groups, this vast area is known to the outside world chiefly because of the "eco-wars" that are waged there. But there is another, less polarized future being made north of Caution, and it is the subject of this collection of essays, published by the environmental group Ecotrust Canada. Terry Glavin reviews the history of fishing and fish processing on the coast with his usual blend of fact and passion, then introduces the reader to some people who are experimenting with solutions for the troubled industry. Ben Parfitt's essay on forestry discusses several projects that are transforming the face of coastal logging and milling. Alex Rose tells how First Nations are using tourism to breathe new life into their local economies. And Pauline Waterfall, Doug Hopwood and Ian Gill provide a case study of how the Heiltsuk are planning their own future. As with any Ecotrust book, the maps alone are worth the price.

Namely Vancouver: A Hidden History of Vancouver Place Names,
by Tom Snyders with Jennifer O'Rourke (Arsenal Pulp Press, 299 pp, paper, $19.95).
Anyone interested in the history of the Lower Mainland will want to have a copy of this new handbook, containing the origins of hundreds of area place names and businesses, from soup (the Ovaltine Cafe on Hastings Street) to nuts (coastal pioneer Old Joe Copeland of Copeland Avenue, who used to parade around in full dress Confederate Army uniform). The usual premiers and captains of industry are represented, but there are also lots of stories about more common folk. For example, I discovered that the high school in North Vancouver attended by my children was named for Handsworth, Saskatchewan, because many of the loggers who used to work the Capilano River came from there. This is not an exhaustive compendium of area place names but an entertaining selection nevertheless. A perfect little gift for the family know-it-all.

Two Wolves at the Dawn of Time: Kingcome Inlet Pictographs, 1893-1998,
by Judith Williams (New Star Books, 240 pp, paper, $29).
I've been wanting to visit Kingcome Inlet on the central coast since reading about Jim Spilsbury's visits to the Kwakwaka'wakw village there. Now at least I have Judith Williams's excellent new book to console me until I do. The inlet is one of those places where history rides off in all directions. Ernest Halliday homesteaded there in 1893 and members of his family occupied the spot until quite recently. Not far from this isolated homestead is the community of Gwa'yi, where Dzawada'enuxw people have lived since the myth time. The relationship between the Hallidays and the village people is one of the stories Williams has to tell. She also describes the 1998 painting of a pictograph on the walls of the inlet, the meaning of coppers in First Nations culture, her own visits to Gwa'yi, and several other fascinating subjects, weaving them all together into a provocative account of Native-settler relations on the coast. Williams's narrative is illustrated with 48 historic photographs and the whole package is testament to the high-quality work being done by New Star Books.

The Illustrated History of British Columbia,
by Terry Reksten (Douglas & McIntyre, 280 pp, cloth, $60).
A good illustrated history is more difficult to pull off than it seems. It has to tell a familiar story in a way that tells the knowledgeable reader something new while at the same time informing the novice. For the most part, Terry Reksten manages to maintain this delicate balance in her new Illustrated History of British Columbia. Reksten, a Victoria writer who died shortly after the book's publication, hits all the high points while introducing enough offbeat characters and events to make a lively narrative. There are no new interpretations here. It is old wine served in a very handsome bottle, and it tastes just fine. With 325 photographs, illustrations and maps, it would make a beautiful gift for anyone needing a reliable introduction to the province's past.

Pilots to Presidents: British Columbia Aviation Pioneers and Leaders, 1930-1960,
by Peter Corley-Smith (Sono Nis Press, 239 pp, paper, $29.95).
Aviation buffs will be pleased to learn that Peter Corley-Smith has added another volume to his history of flying in BC. In two earlier books Corley-Smith dealt with the pioneering era of bush pilots and flying boats. In Pilots to Presidents he takes on the story of the major airlines and the individuals who were crucial to their development, a roster that includes Grant McConachie of CP Air, Jim Spilsbury of Queen Charlotte Airlines, the swashbuckling Russ Baker, and Herman Peterson, "the last of the great bush pilots," to name just a few of the characters that populate Corley-Smith's story. And there is a fascinating chapter on early stewardesses to boot. As usual, Sono Nis Press does a first-rate job of presentation and the text is accompanied by dozens of archival photographs.

A Brief History of Asian North America,
by Jim Wong-Chu and K. Linda Tzang (a project of the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month, 2001, 21 pp, paper).
The first Asian to arrive in what is now British Columbia was a Hawaiian woman named Winee. She was sailing on the Imperial Eagle, a British vessel engaged in the sea otter trade, captained by Charles Barkley. Barkley had stopped in the Hawaiian Islands and taken on Winee to be the personal servant of his young bride Frances. It was 1787, and during the voyage the Eagle entered and named Barkley Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The following year the notorious John Meares brought a party of more than 50 Chinese artisans to Nootka Sound to build a trading post. This was the beginning of the Asian presence in BC, and complete details of the history that followed can be found in this thorough chronology. A Brief History of Asian North America is published as a large pamphlet; it is well illustrated and covers everything from Winee the maid to the election of Ujjal Dosanjh as the first Indo-Canadian provincial premier. Teachers in particular will find this a useful document to help them integrate information about Asian Canadians into their classes. The chronology is available from the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society. P.O. Box 74157, Hillcrest R.P.O., Vancouver, V5V 5C8.

Sto:lo-Coast Salish Historical Atlas,
edited by Keith Thor Carlson (Douglas & McIntyre/University of Washington Press/Sto:lo Heritage Trust, 208 pp, cloth, $65).
The publication of this book marks a significant milestone: I cannot think of any other book that so thoroughly documents an area of the province from the aboriginal point of view. Indeed, the authors claim their atlas is the only one of its kind in the world. The Sto:lo are the group of First Nations that occupy the Fraser Valley from the canyon to New Westminster. In a series of illustrated spreads, the Atlas presents the history and culture of these people through a detailed description of their territory. While it contains much fascinating information about the Sto:lo, past and present, the Atlas will appeal to anyone interested in any aspect of the history and geography of the Fraser Valley. Beautifully illustrated and designed, it is a wonderful accomplishment of which the editorial team should be proud.

Turning Trees Into Dollars: The British Columbia Coastal Lumber Industry 1858-1913,
by Gordon Hak (University of Toronto Press, 239 pp, paper, $22.95).
This book was published in 2000, but I want to include it on the Bookshelf because it is a valuable background source on forest policy, a subject that preoccupies government, industry and individual British Columbians. Hak, who teaches history at Malaspina College, has not produced a page-turner that is going to keep you up half the night. But he has compiled a solid summary of logging practices and policies in the province pre-World War I, written in prose that for the most part avoids academic jargon and mystification. Turning Trees into Dollars consolidates a great deal of detailed information about early logging and sawmilling in one convenient source, and I hope that the author is at work on a sequel that will continue the story into the present.

At Home Afloat: Women on the Waters of the Pacific Northwest,
by Nancy Pagh (University of Calgary Press, 179 pp, paper, $24.95).
As someone who has come to coastal cruising only in middle age, I am impatient to make up for lost time. This includes reading everything I can about the subject. At Home Afloat is a book about women "boat tourists" on the coast between 1861 and 1990. Pagh, herself a boater from birth, is a native of Washington state, where she now teaches, but her book covers the coast from Puget Sound north to Alaska. "I began this work with a fairly simplistic desire to discover and celebrate the women participating in Northwest Coast boat travel," she writes. The book contains much theorizing about the role of women in the nautical world; I like it in particular because Pagh discusses many accounts of coastal travel with which I was unfamiliar.

Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meaning,
by Jonathan Raban (Vintage, 437 pp, paper, $23).
When this book came out in 1999 I was irritated by it. Raban is an expatriate Brit who now makes his home in Seattle. One of his earlier books, Coasting, about sailing around Great Britain, is my favourite book about yachting and I felt that Passage to Juneau was a much less successful venture. Raban didn't seem to have a very compelling reason for writing it, his superficial descriptions of life on the BC coast were annoying, and his attempts to combine an account of his travels with a failing marriage seemed clunky. But I reread the book when it came out in paperback and found myself liking it much better. In my experience no one writes as beautifully about sailing and the sea as Raban. Moreover he has interesting, if not original, things to say about coastal First Nations, and his chapter on the death of his father is a very affecting piece of memoir. Whether or not you are a boater, if you like good writing you will find much in this book to admire.

The IWA in Canada: The Life and Times of an Industrial Union,
by Andrew Neufeld and Andrew Parnaby (New Star Books, 321 pp, $50 cloth).

The International Woodworkers of America was a militant union formed in 1937 to represent the interests of loggers and millworkers in the Pacific Northwest. Following World War II it was the largest union in the province, and when BC's own Harold Pritchett became president, it was the first time a Canadian had led an international union. In 1987 it became an independent Canadian union, known today as the Industrial, Wood and Allied Workers of Canada. The IWA in Canada tells the story of this eventful history, not just in British Columbia but in other parts of the country as well. It includes 240 photographs and dozens of sidebars that make the book very approachable for the general reader. The text is also enlivened by interviews with many of the union's rank and file. All in all, an engrossing look at an important part of the BC labour movement.

The Politics of Resentment: British Columbia Regionalism and Canadian Unity,
by Philip Resnick (UBC Press, 172 pp, $34.95 cloth).

This book has two virtues: it is sensible and it is brief. With "western alienation" enjoying a flurry of media attention, we should be grateful to Philip Resnick, a professor of political science at UBC, for throwing some dispassionate light on what this alleged alienation consists of. Resnick describes some of the factors that make BC a distinct region in Canada and reviews the recent history of how British Columbians have responded to issues of national unity. He reminds us that, whatever our grievances, BC is not a nation, it is a region, and clarifying the distinction between the two is one of the most valuable things that his book does. Resnick concludes with some speculation about how Canada might remake itself in the event that Quebec actually does separate, concluding that if it were handled properly a breakup might make the country stronger rather than weaker. The Politics of Resentment is a useful manual for thinking about BC's place in Canada.

Art BC,
by Ian M. Thom (Douglas & McIntyre, 232 pp, cloth, $60).

A coffee table book that gives coffee table books a good name, Art BC presents 100 "masterworks" by 84 of the province's leading visual artists. Each piece is displayed on a full page and is accompanied by another page of lucid commentary that is refreshingly free of the jargon of art criticism. Thom says useful things about the artist and the art, then leaves the reader alone to admire the work. He also provides a concise introduction to the history of the visual arts in the province, and concludes with brief biographies of the artists. The largest section in the book is devoted to the period since 1970, and most readers will be as grateful as I was to be introduced to artists of whom they have not heard. A handsome introduction to a century of art production in BC.

The Transforming Image: Painted Arts of Northwest Coast First Nations,
by Bill McLennan and Karen Duffek (UBC Press, 291 pp, cloth, $65).

This book begins as an account of the Image Recovery Project at the UBC Museum of Anthropology, a fascinating use of infrared photography to rediscover the paintings concealed over the years by the grime of time. But the text expands into a more general study of the painting of coastal First Nations. The book itself is a work of art, including hundreds of photographs--many in colour--of bentwood boxes, housefronts, dishes, chests and other cultural items. The text, while very readable, appeals mainly to the serious student of the subject; the visuals will captivate even the most casual browser.

Nuu-chah-nulth Voices, Histories, Objects & Journeys,
edited by Alan L. Hoover (Royal BC Museum, 389 pp, cloth).

The beautifully illustrated volume Out of the Mist, by Martha Black (see below) was published as a companion to an exhibition of Nuu-chah-nulth cultural treasures held at the Royal BC Museum. Nuu-chah-nulth Voices, also a companion to the exhibition, is a collection of essays and interviews relating to issues in Nuu-chah-nulth history and culture. Of particular interest are a pair of papers that present a First Nations perspective on the history of the west coast of Vancouver Island, and revealing interviews with two well-known Nuu-chah-nulth artists, Art Thompson and Joe David.

Island Timber: A Social History of the Comox Logging Company,
by Richard Somerset Mackie (Sono Nis Press, 309 pp, paper, $39.95).

This is a wonderful example of intelligent local history. Richard Mackie tells the story of the Comox Logging Company, which was one of the largest companies active on Vancouver Island from the early 20th century to the 1940s. But in order to tell the story, Mackie introduces us to the people who were the company, the loggers and their families. He conducted hundreds of interviews for the book and scoured the archives for neglected sources. The result is an engrossing social history of pioneer life on the Island. The large format book contains hundreds of photographs, maps and diagrams, and the material is presented in a very "reader friendly" manner. The result is the most informative book of logging history I've read in a long time.

The Last Great Sea,
by Terry Glavin (Douglas & McIntyre, 244 pp, cloth, $34.95).

If you're familiar with BC writing, you'll know Terry Glavin from his previous books, including A Death Feast in Dimlahamid and This Ragged Place. You'll also know that he writes with passion about the issues that interest him. Glavin subtitles his latest book "A Voyage through the Human and Natural History of the North Pacific Ocean," and like a voyage it lingers along the way at sites that capture the author's imagination. The book is less a sustained narrative than a collection of quite distinct chapters about quite distinct subjects: the arrival of the first people in BC, the state of the salmon fisheries, early exploration of the Pacific, whaling and sealing, pilchards and eulachon. It is a thoughtful book from one of the province's finest writers.

Out of the Mist: Treasures of the Nuu-chah-nulth Chiefs,
by Martha Black (Royal British Columbia Museum, 160 pp, paper).

In July 1999 the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, in collaboration with the Nuu-chah-nulth people of Vancouver Island's west coast, opened an exhibition of Nuu-chah-nulth art and culture. This beautiful book contains highlights of that exhibition, which is now on tour internationally. It includes colour photographs of many of the artifacts from the exhibition, along with historical photographs of Nuu-chah-nulth people and communities and informative text and captions by Martha Black, a curator at the museum. The book is a respectful presentation of one of the province's richest aboriginal cultures.

Pender Harbour Cowboy: The Many Lives of Bertrand Sinclair,
by Betty C. Keller (Horsdal & Schubart, 224 pp, paper, $18.95).

This is certainly in the running for best BC biography of the season. Betty Keller is an experienced biographer, with books on Pauline Johnson and Ernest Thompson Seton to her credit. Here she takes on Bertrand "Bill" Sinclair (1881-1972), one of BC's most successful unknown authors. Pender Harbour Cowboy traces Sinclair's career from the cattle ranges of Wyoming to the West End of Vancouver and finally to Pender Harbour on the Sunshine Coast, where he settled in the 1920s. Keller presents a portrait of a successful writer of formula fiction who churned out story after story, book after book, all the while failing to realize his ambition to become a serious literary artist. Finally, at age 55, in the midst of the Depression, Sinclair abandoned a full-time writing career and became a commercial salmon troller. His was an interesting life, productive (he published 15 novels and hundreds of stories) and venturesome (he circumnavigated Vancouver Island alone in his fishing boat at 83 years of age), and it is ably recounted by Keller and handsomely presented under Horsdal & Schubart's new TouchWood Editions imprint.

The Yuquot Whalers' Shrine,
by Aldona Jonaitis (Douglas & McIntyre/University of Washington Press, 260 pp).

In 1992 I paid a visit to the village of Yuquot (a.k.a. Friendly Cove) on Nootka Island on the far west coast of Vancouver Island. I made the trip as a personal commemoration of the bicentenary of Capt George Vancouver's survey of the Northwest Coast, and also because it was an opportunity to visit one of the most interesting historic sites in Canada, the so-called Whalers' Shrine, located at a small lake just outside the village. Actually, there was not much to see. The contents of the shrine had been removed to the basement of a New York museum 88 years earlier. The shrine has been seen by almost no one since its removal because it has never been put on display; at the same time, it has been seen by millions of people in several famous photographs that were taken before it was dismantled. This paradox is one of several discussed by Aldona Jonaitis in The Yuquot Whalers' Shrine, the first book-length study of the site. Along with a history of the shrine, Jonaitis presents a precise description of its contents, many photographs and several First Nations stories about its origins. The shrine relates specifically to ancient whaling practices on the Pacific coast, but the story of its "purchase," preservation and possible repatriation will appeal to anyone with an interest in First Nations issues. Highly recommended.