Heritage: 497 books
Trail North
The Okanagan Trail of 1858-68 and Its Origins in British Columbia and Washington
Language: English
Release Date: June 12, 2018
A revealing history of the ancient trail that served as a major transportation route between Washington and British Columbia and shaped the cultural and economic ties between the two jurisdictions.
Trails are the most enduring memorials of human occupation. Long before stone monuments were...
Ghost Town Stories of BC: Tales of Hope, Heroism and Tragedy
Tales of Hope, Heroism and Tragedy
Language: English
Release Date: February 1, 2011
Many of BC's old mining towns are now abandoned ruins, disappearing into the wilderness. These once-thriving towns and the pioneers who built them are remembered in 10 fascinating stories of hard work and heroism. A mine rescue worker sadly recounts a tale of death underground at Coal Creek. Three...
by Diana Wilson
Language: English
Release Date: February 1, 2011
Language: English
Release Date: February 1, 2011
Rich in stories, the Crowsnest Pass region in the southern Rocky Mountains still bears evidence of its tragedies, and one monumental triumph—a railroad rammed through the pass in 18 months. Hailed as the greatest project in the Dominion, the Crow's Nest Pass Railway was built by men who toiled with...
Whistle Posts West
Railway Tales from British Columbia, Alberta, and Yukon
Language: English
Release Date: October 23, 2015
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...
Bear Child: The Life and Times of Jerry Potts
The Life and Times of Jerry Potts
Language: English
Release Date: March 30, 2011
The West was a lawless domain when Jerry Potts was born into the Upper Missouri fur trade in 1838. The son of a Scottish father and a Blood mother, he was given the name Bear Child by his Blood tribe for his bravery and tenacity while he was still a teen. In 1874, when the North West Mounted Police...
by Ken Mather
Language: English
Release Date: February 1, 2011
Language: English
Release Date: February 1, 2011
Remarkable cattle drives, famous ranches and legendary characters are at the heart of Ken Mather's account of the early days of ranching in British Columbia. These are stories about drovers, ranchers, cowboys and "mud pups" (the remittance men of the ranching industry). You'll meet such...
Frontier Cowboys and the Great Divide
Early Ranching in BC and Alberta
Language: English
Release Date: April 15, 2013
Despite being neighbouring provinces with long ranching histories, British Columbia and Alberta saw their ranching techniques develop quite differently. As most ranching styles were based on one of the two dominant styles in use south of the border, BC ranchers tended to adopt the California style...
Opportunity Knox
Twenty Years of Award-Losing Humour Writing
Language: English
Release Date: October 13, 2017
Longlisted, 2018 Leacock Medal for Humour
A hilarious collection of Jack Knox's best-loved humour columns.
In this side-splitting follow-up to the bestseller Hard Knox: Musings from the Edge of Canada, Jack Knox presents his best writing, marking his twenty-year anniversary as a humour...
High Peaks Engineering
Rocky Mountain Marvels
Language: English
Release Date: July 7, 2014
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,...
by R. G. Harvey
Language: English
Release Date: August 24, 2011
Language: English
Release Date: August 24, 2011
The sparsely populated southern Interior of British Columbia was rich in resources and ripe for settlement in the late 1800s. The agricultural lands of the Okanagan and Nicola valleys, and the precious metals and coal of the Kootenays, lay largely unused or undiscovered: the challenges was getting...
Port Alberni
More Than Just a Mill Town
Language: English
Release Date: May 8, 2014
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....
by R. G. Harvey
Language: English
Release Date: June 15, 2011
Language: English
Release Date: June 15, 2011
A century of dealmaking and government misdeeds forms the backdrop of this entertaining account of sternwheelers, iron horses and mountain roads. Battling factions of rail builders crossed many a line in the sand as they carved up both the land and the spoils of industry.
Did both federal and...
Hudson's Bay Company Adventures: Tales of Canada's Fur Traders
Tales of Canada's Fur Traders
Language: English
Release Date: February 1, 2011
The early history of the Hudson's Bay Company comes alive in these true tales of fur-trade wars, incredible wilderness journeys, hardships and danger. Founded by the extraordinary adventurers and renegades Radisson and des Groseilliers, the HBC attracted many memorable characters. Explorer Henry Kelsey...
by Rich Mole
Language: English
Release Date: February 1, 2011
Language: English
Release Date: February 1, 2011
In 1897, tens of thousands of would-be prospectors flooded into the Yukon in search of instant wealth during the Klondike Gold Rush. In this historical tale of mayhem and obsession, characters like prospectors George Carmack and Skookum Jim, Skagway gangster Soapy Smith and Mountie Sam Steele come...