The eighth instalment of Read Local BC’s nine-part gift guide series
Part 1: Books to Relax With
Part 2: Reading for Pleasure
Part 3: Get Creative
Part 4: Books to Inspire
Part 5: Entertainment, Unplugged
Part 6: Stories for Sharing
Part 7: Knowledge is Power
The glittering history of a dilapidated nightclub. The motorcycle-riding alter ego of a well-known naturalist. The rich, vital world contained in a tidepool. The pleasure in discovery isn’t in seeing new things, but in seeing familiar things in new ways.
For the most curious person on your list, the books on this list unearth untold stories and forge new connections between present and past.
Make a Discovery
Leave no stone unturned with this list, featuring local history, biography, and a guidebook.
The New Beachcomber’s Guide to the Pacific Northwest by J. Duane Sept (Harbour Publishing).
The Pacific Northwest coast is home to one of the most diverse displays of intertidal marine life in the world, including sponges, clams, snails, crabs, sea stars, sea anemones, jellies, fishes, seaweeds and more. The New Beachcomber’s Guide to the Pacific Northwest is a portable and easy-to-use reference for searching out and identifying the hundreds of species of seashore life found on the beaches of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Northern California and Southeast Alaska. Thoroughly revised and packed with handy and accessible information, this guide belongs in the beach bag or backpack of any avid naturalist, amateur beachcomber or adventurous family.
Riding the Continent by Hamilton Mack Laing (Ronsdale Press).
Hamilton Mack Laing was an illustrious early British Columbia writer and naturalist. But few know him as how he described himself in his mid-thirties: a motorcycle-naturalist. During this period in his life he would take on a transcontinental journey, riding across the United States from Brooklyn to Oakland in 1915. His previously unpublished manuscript of this journey has been hidden away for nearly a century. Now, its pages telling the tale of his “six-weeks’ perambulation” will be available to readers for the first time. Riding the Continent tells the story of a pioneering motorcyclist and independently thinking naturalist as well as an unusual road trip. Laing’s tale explores the beauty of North America’s bird life, describes the sights, scenery and people he encountered, and takes us along for the ride on a 1915 Harley-Davidson he named Barking Betsy. Also included are a foreword by Laing biographer and BC historian Richard Mackie and an afterword by editor and motorcycle travel writer Trevor Marc Hughes.
Service on the Skeena: Horace Wrinch, Frontier Physician by Geoff Mynett (Ronsdale Press).
In 1904, Horace Wrinch built the first hospital in the northern interior. Over the next thirty-six years he became widely respected as a doctor and surgeon, hospital administrator, medical missionary, Methodist minister, magistrate, farmer, community leader and progressive politician. Ever innovative, he instituted a form of health insurance for the Hazelton community as early as 1908. In the 1920s, he was a two-term president of the newly established British Columbia Hospital Association and a two-term Liberal Member of the Provincial Legislature for the Skeena riding. While in the Legislature, he championed publicly funded health insurance. Upon his death in 1939, he was called “the most influential and best liked man that ever blessed this district with his presence.” Drawn almost entirely from original and contemporaneous sources, this is the previously untold story of a remarkable British Columbian.
By Snowshoe, Buckboard and Steamer: Women of the British Columbia Frontier by Kathryn Bridge (Royal BC Museum).
Historian-archivist Kathryn Bridge looks at four pioneering BC women—Florence Agassiz, Eleanor Fellows, Violet Sillitoe and Helen Kate Woods—first through their writings and then within the historical context. Winner of the 1998 BC Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing.
Vancouver After Dark: The Wild History of a City’s Nightlife by Aaron Chapman (Arsenal Pulp Press).
In his latest book, bestselling author, musician, and cultural historian Aaron Chapman looks back at the most famous music entertainment venues in Vancouver, a city that’s transforming so fast it has somehow lost some of its favourite nightspots along the way. These are the places locals are still talking about years after they closed, burned down, or were bulldozed in the face of new trends, rising rents, gentrification, and other vagaries. This raucous book tours Vancouver’s legendary hot spots, from the Cave to Isy’s, Oil Can Harry’s to the Marco Polo, the Luv-A-Fair, the Town Pump, the Smilin’ Buddha, and Gary Taylor’s Rock Room, from the city’s earliest saloons to the Chinatown cabarets, punk palaces, East End dives, goth hideaways, discotheques, and taverns. Replete with full-colour photographs and posters from back in the day, Vancouver after Dark is a no-holds-barred history that amply demonstrates how this was never “No Fun” City – at least once the sun went down.