National Network for Equitable Library Service

On the morning of June 13, 1886, a rogue wind fanned the flames of a small clearing fire—and within five hours, the newly incorporated city of Vancouver, British Columbia, had been reduced to smoldering ash. Vancouver is Ashes: The Great Fire of 1886 is the first detailed exploration of what happened on that pivotal, yet seldom revisited day in the history of Canada’s third-largest city. Lisa Anne Smith tells the story with numerous archival photographs.

This third and final volume in the Craft Perception and Practice series features 21 essays and critical commentaries by acclaimed Canadian practitioners, educators and curators, demonstrating the range of critical thought about craft as presented in symposiums, exhibition catalogues and art journals. Prominent academics and theorists provide insight into the relationship between skill, technology, history and personal expression.

At the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics an unknown Vancouver runner named Percy Williams shocked the sports world by capturing the 100- and 200-metre gold medals. Some said the feat was a fluke. It wasn't. In 1929 Percy silenced naysayers by sweeping the US indoor track circuit, then he went on to set a world record in the 100 metres that would stand until the arrival of Jesse Owens.

From Franz Boas to Alice Munro: welcome to an unprecedented panorama of the most significant authors and books of British Columbia culled from Alan Twigg's unrivalled knowledge of more than two centuries of B.C. literary history. The Essentials is the new bible of who wrote what, and why, in B.C., produced with the cooperation of Simon Fraser University Library and UBC's Rare Books & Special Collections. Alan Twigg, publisher/writer of B.C. BookWorld, also created the abcbookworld public reference site with information on more than 9,500 B.C. authors.

Father August Brabant (1845–1912) was the first Roman Catholic missionary to live and work among indigenous peoples on the west coast of Vancouver Island during the colonial period. He endured long periods of isolation, built a number of log churches and undertook extraordinarily difficult trips along the west coast in dugout canoes. His thirty-three-year-long effort to transform Nuu-chah-nulth culture gives us a provocative case study of the dynamics that shaped, and continue to define, the settler-colonial relationship between indigenous peoples and the state in Canada.

Women on Ice is the first book to focus upon the vibrant world of women's ice hockey in western Canada during the First World War and through the 1920s. The Vancouver Amazons were one of the most important teams during this perod. Their championship laurels and their association with hockey's famous Patrick brothers distinguish the Amazons from other women's hockey teams of the era.

Still sassy, Doris Gregory takes the reader back over seventy years to the time when she broke with tradition, first by publicly challenging the University of British Columbia’s discrimination against women, and then by joining the Canadian Women’s Army Corps. Her memoir allows us to travel with her across the Atlantic at the height of the U-boat infestation and to take refuge in underground shelters while bombs fall on London.

This collection of over thirty essays by both well-known and emerging writers explores what it means to “be at home” on Canada’s West Coast. Here the rainforest and the wild, stormy cost dominate one’s sense of identity, a humbling perspective shared in memoirs by individuals who come to see themselves as part of a larger ecological community. Alexandra Morton followed the orcas to the Broughton Archipelago and now fights to protect wild salmon from the impact of fish farms.

In this unusual Holocaust memoir, Rhodea Shandler gives a woman's view of life under the Nazis in Holland. She begins by describing her early life in a closely knit Jewish family in northern Holland. There was anti-Semitism, she explains, but it was of a low level, and the Jews with their strong ties to community managed to live relatively normal lives. Then everything began to change with Hitler's rise to power in 1933. Through it all, she tells of life ongoing and how she became a nursing student in Amsterdam.

The series of Craft Perception and Practice volumes gives recognition to the exciting new developments in contemporary craft practice and scholarship. This second volume brings together 22 essays and critical commentaries by 19 independent critics and curators, professional artists, art historians, and studio art instructors. Illustrated with 40 colour photographs of works by some of Canadas finest craft artists, the texts represent the depth and range of critical thought about Canadian craft presented at symposiums and in exhibition catalogues and arts journals.