Part travelogue, part natural history, this enchanting book explores life over the course of a year by waters that extend from Port Renfrew on the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Desolation Sound. After moving to Vancouver Island from the Prairies in the early 2000s, Carolyn Redl made it her mission to learn as much as she could about life along the Salish Sea. She wanted to know about all the things that dig, float, swim, or merely grow in and around her new salt-water realm. With each passing day, she discovered answers to her many questions. Four Seasons by the Salish Sea evolved over more than two decades of observation, curiosity, discovery, and delight at the natural wonders and seasonal ebbs and flows along this magnificent stretch of coastline. This profoundly personal and deeply informative book contains facts about plants, animals, history, parks, and communities. It highlights events in nature, such as spring flower blooms and herring and salmon spawns, and reveals mysteries in the water and in the coastal cedar, hemlock, and Douglas-fir rainforest. It describes places as diverse as Malcolm Island, the Sunshine Coast, and Stamp Falls. Experiences range from viewing orcas in the distance to finding sand dollars, Turkish towels, and nudibranchs in the intertidal zone. While celebrating the area’s idyllic setting and warm climate, the book also recognizes potential threats such as earthquakes, water shortages, and challenges for gardeners. Illustrated throughout with stunning photography, Four Seasons by the Salish Sea is a must-have book for anyone who dreams of living by the sea.

It is not mere coincidence that two-thirds of the population of British Columbia occupies lands bordering its great inland sea, the Strait of Georgia, and connected waterways collectively known as the North Salish Sea. Averaging forty kilometres in width and stretching some three hundred kilometres from Vancouver and Victoria in the south to Powell River and Campbell River in the north, the North Salish Sea has long sheltered a bounty of habitable lands and rich maritime resources ideal for human settlement. While the region's intricate shoreline of peninsulas, promontories, estuaries and plains has been occupied by human communities for millennia, the last century and a half has been an unprecedented age of rapid colonization, industrialization and globalization. Many books have been written about individual communities and industries around the great waterway, but none have examined the region as a geographical unit with its own dynamic systems, which can best be understood as an interrelated whole. The Strait of Georgia has influenced human affairs, even as people have changed the Strait, in a complex relationship that continues today. British colonization and the commodification of the Strait's resources launched a resource rush around the sea that began in earnest in the decades before the First World War, often at the expense of Indigenous populations. Coal mining developed earliest and grew rapidly. Fishing, lumbering and metal mining were also established by the 1880s and soon experienced exponential growth. From the earliest salmon canneries to today's cruise ship industry, all have depended on the Strait to ensure economic prosperity and the easy movement of people and goods. As competition for space and resources increases, and as the effects of climate change are amplified, the pressure on this ecologically vulnerable area will only intensify. If this precious sea is to be passed to future generations with any semblance of its inherent richness and diversity intact, then it will need to be effectively managed and vigorously defended. The first step is to understand the complex story of the region, making this essential reading not only for history buffs but anyone with an interest in the future of British Columbia.

Celebrated historian Barry Gough brings a defining era of Pacific Northwest history into focus in this biography of Richard Blanshard, the first governor of Vancouver Island—illuminating with intriguing detail the genesis and early days of Canada's westernmost province. Early one wintry day in March 1850, after seven weary weeks out of sight of land, a well-dressed Londoner, a bachelor aged thirty-two, stood at the ship’s rail taking in the immensity of the unfolding scene. From Her Britannic Majesty’s paddlewheel sloop-of-war Driver, steadily thumping forth on Imperial purpose, all that Richard Blanshard could make out to port, in reflected purple light upon the northern side, was a forested, rock-clad island rising to considerable height. Vancouver’s Island they called it in those far-off days. This was his destination. Richard Blanshard was only governor of the young colony for three short, unhappy years—only one and a half of which were spent in the colony itself. From the very beginning he was at odds with the vastly influential Hudson’s Bay Company, run by its Chief Factor James Douglas, who succeeded Blanshard as governor of the colony of Vancouver Island and later became the first governor of the colony of British Columbia. While James Douglas is remembered, for better or worse, as a founding father of British Columbia, Richard Blanshard’s name is now largely forgotten, despite his vitally important role in warning London of American cross-border aggressions, including a planned takeover of Haida Gwaii. However, his failures highlight the fascinating struggles of the time—the supreme influence of commerce, the disparity between expectations and reality, and the bewildering collision of European and Pacific Northwest culture.

A fascinating compendium of stories chronicling the creation of local nature conservancies, and the people behind them, on seventeen islands on the Salish Sea from the 1990s to the present day. Voices for the Islands brings together the stories and experiences of those who rose to protect areas at risk within their island communities. Narratively linked by author Sheila Harrington’s three-year sailing journey among the islands to interview more than fifty veteran conservationists, the book shares an in-depth view of local protests and the history and evolution of local conservancies from their timely emergence through legal battles and successful partnerships. It highlights how local, provincial, and national support was won, through the collaborative efforts of dedicated locals, resulting in hundreds of new protected areas and parks within one of the most at-risk ecological communities in Canada—the islands of the Salish Sea. Beginning in the 1980s, when logging and development threatened the fragile ecosystems and natural habitats, and culminating in the creation of more than seventeen local conservancies and the Gulf Island National Park Reserve, Voices for the Islands will inspire readers to turn apathy into action and support the cause of conservation and reconciliation in an era of species extinction and climate change. Full of colour photos, maps, and fascinating first-hand stories by unsung heroes of conservation—many of whom are now elders—this book reveals how local people and grassroots movements have the power to transform the future of our precious planet.

From bombs to bombillas, Snow Nomad: An Avalanche Memoir, chronicles the fifty seasons author Alan Dennis worked in the avalanche patch, travelling between Canada, New Zealand, Scotland and Argentina. This unconventional journey on an undulating career path is one riddled with wit and wisdom he gained when plying his trade at ski resorts, mining camps, highway operations, film sets and beyond. Dennis introspectively recalls the times when he was in over his head, but learned to rely on his training, intuition and, perhaps most of all, luck. Snow Nomad is a humble and heartfelt tribute to his family, friends and colleagues (and sometimes even foes) with who he shared these decades, whether shooting artillery in Canada’s remote reaches, scrambling up a summit in the Scottish Highlands or bunking in a mining camp in Argentina’s Andes.

Gorgeous, fascinating and unconventional, the Islands in the Salish Sea show aspects of the Gulf Islands that are most beloved by the residents, from heritage orchards, fishing spots and patches of endangered wild orchids to ancient First Nations' sites and bird colonies. The community on each island decided what elements should be depicted, and local artists then created each of the magnificent and wildly different maps. This volume is a treasure-trove of cherished information that could have been lost, presented with imagination and great beauty. The Islands in the Salish Sea Community Mapping Project was coordinated by Sheila Harrington and Judi Stevenson, who live on Salt Spring Island.