This book is a biography of two British Columbian ships that performed legendary service in the Canadian Arctic. The St. Roch , now on permanent display at the Vancouver Maritime Museum, is the better known of the two, although North Star of Herschel Island is still sailing and still adding to her legend. Historian Bruce Macdonald—who, along with his wife, owns North Star of Herschel Island —has meticulously researched the origins and service logs of each ship and created a book that will enthrall old Arctic hands, maritime history buffs and anyone who appreciates well-written Canadian history. Under the command of Captain Henry Larsen, the sturdy RCMP vessel St. Roch spent years showing the Canadian flag in the Arctic, performing many duties including delivering medical supplies and taking census information in addition to enforcing the law in the North. St. Roch is world renowned for achieving many firsts, including being the first vessel through the Northwest Passage west to east, the first vessel to navigate the passage in both directions and the first vessel to circumnavigate North America. Inspired by St. Roch, renowned trapper and Inuit leader Fred Carpenter designed the elegant North Star, the ultimate ice vessel used to transport furs and people to and from remote Banks Island. Together, the two iconic ships have helped to solidify Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic and have become symbols of unity among Northern communities. In Sisters of the Ice , Macdonald documents in vivid detail the adventurous histories of these two vessels, as well as the history of the Northern communities in which they gained renown. Detailing daring escapes from dangerous ice conditions to thrilling sea voyages to raucous whaling towns, Macdonald reveals the perilous and often lawless climate in which these vessels operated and the ties of Canadian identity that they helped forge.
No matter where people live on the BC coast, says Howard White, they have certain shared experiences: frustration with rain and ferries, familiarity with gumboots, bumbershoots, seagull droppings and barnacles in the wrong places. But each little community clings to its own sense of uniqueness and considers itself the true West Coast. As a case in point, White offers fifty funny sketches of life as he has come to know it in sixty-odd years of living along that hundred-mile stretch of monsoon-prone shoreline ironically known as the Sunshine Coast. Included is what must be one of the most admiring testaments ever written about the virtues of the old-time outhouse; fond remembrances of saltwater fishing when a bad day meant you didn’t hook something in twenty minutes; and explorers who stooped to naming islands after favourite racehorses. We also meet a “bouquet of characters,” including a lyrical logger known as Pete the Poet; a diabolical seagoing remittance man; the saintly Quaker philosopher Hubert Evans and White’s barrier-busting Aunt Jean who taught him the advantages of “scientifically enlarging the truth.” Along with accounts of waste disposal wars and wry observations on modern technology, Here On the Coast offers a West Coast counterpart to such favourites as Letters From Wingfield Farm and Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town .
Lilliana, a young nature lover, adores chorus frogs. Her room is already full of frog posters and toys but one night as she listens to frogs singing, she decides to bring home some real, live frogs. Chorus frogs are hard to find and catch, but that won’t stop Lilliana! Oh dear. Chorus frogs are very small and very fast and very loud . The frogs have escaped! But Lilliana, with a little inspiration, knows just what to do. Based on author and illustrator Scot Ritchie’s fond memories of exploring Camosun Bog as a child (he really did bring home a box full of frogs), Lilliana and the Frogs is a humorous story with playful illustrations that will inspire young readers to explore nature—but to leave it outside.
With humour and sensitivity, <i>Boys, Girls & Body Science</i> provides no-nonsense answers for children – and parents – with questions about sex. Specifically designed for young readers, <i>Boys, Girls & Body Science</i> walks children through the wonders of their bodies in a direct, easy-to-read manner. The story begins with Nicholas, 7, and Jenny, 5, learning about different types of science in their class – from ecology to the digestive system. Then Meg Hickling, a guest speaker, comes to talk to them about a new type of science. Hickling talks about the «science names» for the children's body parts, about good and bad touches and about making babies. She coaches the children not to be embarrassed or shy about body science: «We are going to make this just like a science lesson, we will learn to think like a scientist and we will learn the scientific names for our private parts,» she says. <br/> <br/>Hickling is a Registered Nurse who has been teaching sexual education for over 25 years. She is an outstanding educator, and her ability to convey difficult material with sensitivity, gentle humour and warmth distinguishes her as a remarkable teacher and role model. In this latest publication, Hickling brings her award-winning lesson into the homes, schools and libraries of inquisitive children everywhere!
One of British Columbia's most colourful figures was Albert «Ginger» Goodwin, a slight young English immigrant who arrived on Vancouver Island in 1910 to join hundreds of others slaving in the hellholes of the Cumberland mines. What he saw there made him one of the most effective labour leaders the province has ever seen, and led to an untimely and controversial end. Susan Mayse combines the skills of novelist ( Merlin's Web ) and historian in this gripping biography of one of BC's most controversial labour figures, a hero among Vancouver Island miners and a dangerous subversive in the eyes of the authorities.
“It makes no sense. You would be strangers / if not for this.” In Strangers , Rob Taylor makes new the epiphany poem: the short lyric ending with a moment of recognition or arrival. In his hands, the form becomes not simply a revelation in words but, in Wallace Stevens' phrase, “a revelation in words by means of the words.” The epiphany here is not only the poet’s. It’s ours. A book about the songlines of memory and language and the ways in which they connect us to other human beings, to read Strangers is to become part of the lineages (literary, artistic, familial) that it braids together—to become, as Richard Outram puts it, an “unspoken / Stranger no longer.”
“Eco-lit needs more attention, and devotees will be pleased to discover a new addition from the Icelandic author Andri Snaer Magnason, who writes with a Seussian mix of wonder, wit and gravitas … immensely satisfying.”— New York Times Finalist for the 2021 Nordic Council Literature Prize Asked by a leading climate scientist why he wasn’t writing about the greatest crisis mankind has faced, Andri Snær Magnason, one of Iceland’s most beloved writers and public intellectuals, protested: he wasn’t a specialist, he said. It wasn’t his field. But the scientist persisted: “If you cannot understand our scientific findings and present them in an emotional, psychological, poetic or mythological context,” he told him, “then no one will really understand the issue, and the world will end.” Based on interviews and advice from leading glacial, ocean, climate, and geographical scientists, and interwoven with personal, historical, and mythological stories, Magnason’s resulting response is a rich and compelling work of narrative nonfiction that illustrates the reality of climate change and offers hope in the face of an uncertain future. Moving from reflections on how one writes an obituary for a glacier to exhortation for a heightened understanding of human time and our obligations to one another, throughout history and across the globe, On Time and Water is both deeply personal and globally minded: a travel story, a world history, a desperate plea to live in harmony with future generations—and is unlike anything that has yet been published on the current climate emergency.
A searing story about memory and betrayal from the acclaimed and bestselling Russell Banks In his late seventies and dying of cancer, famed Canadian-American documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, one of sixty thousand draft evaders who fled to Canada to avoid Vietnam, has agreed to one final interview, determined to bare all his secrets and demythologize his mythologized life. But the story that unspools in front of the camera and an intimate chorus of observers, including Fife’s wife, his nurse, and his acolyte and former star student Malcolm Macleod, is confoundingly unexpected, the dark and affecting account of a man entirely unknown to all. A searing novel about memory, betrayal, love, and the faint grace note of redemption, Russell Banks’s Foregone is a daring and resonant work about the scope of one man’s mysterious life, revealed through the fragments of his recovered past.
Providing an account of the policy response to COVID-19 in England, this book analyses the political and long-term systemic factors associated with the failures to control the first wave of the pandemic during 2020. It explores the part played by key policy actors, particularly politicians and scientists, and focuses on two difficult policy issues during the first wave: the establishment of a ‘test, trace and isolate’ system and responses to the high death rate in care homes for older people. Drawing on a wide range of documentary evidence, including parliamentary papers and SAGE minutes, this book draws attention to the importance of longstanding structural problems in public health and the care sector, especially the impact of outsourcing and privatisation.
Risk has emerged as a key mechanism for controlling the future and learning from past misfortunes. How did risk influence policy makers’ responses to COVID-19? How will they be judged for their decisions? Drawing on case studies from the UK, China, Japan, New Zealand and the US, this original text explores policy responses to COVID-19 through the lens of risk. The book considers how different countries framed the pandemic, categorised their populations and communicated risk. It also evaluates the role of the media, conspiracy theories and hindsight in shaping responses to COVID-19. As we reflect on the ‘first wave’, this book offers a vital resource for anticipating future responses to crises.