Raincoast Chronicles 18

(Paperback)

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Where land meets sea, strange things happen, and most of them end up as stories. From a study of log barging on the BC coast to a controversial essay on who really shelled the Cape Estevan lighthouse in 1942, this latest compilation delivers an interesting and compelling portrait of BC's maritime history. Meet Al Trice, Don Sorte and Mack Thomson - three eccentric scuba divers who can't or won't recognise an impossible task when they see one - who succeed in building one of the world's first commercial mini-subs with no capital and even less experience in the back of a mushroom warehouse; Claus Botel, who arrived with his family at their pre-emption on the remote northern end of Vancouver Island from Germany in 1913, with no idea of the incredible hardships that lay ahead; gyppo logger 'Svendson' who artfully dodges a cadaverous tax collector in 1919; Hal Dahlie, who at sixteen decided to take a summer job at the coast's most isolated light station with an old keeper who was more than a little strange; and fisherman Hank McBride who recalls the 1930s and '40s at Namu where romances blossomed, booze flowed and fighting was an integral part of life during the golden days of the mid-coast canneries.

Author Bio

Howard White was born in 1945 in Abbotsford, British Columbia. He was raised in a series of camps and settlements on the BC coast and never got over it. He is still to be found stuck barnacle-like to the shore at Pender Harbour, BC. He started Raincoast Chronicles and Harbour Publishing in the early 1970s and his own books include A Hard Man to Beat (bio), The Men There Were Then (poems), Spilsbury's Coast (bio), The Accidental Airline (bio), Patrick and the Backhoe (childrens'), Writing in the Rain (anthology) and The Sunshine Coast (travel). He was awarded the Canadian Historical Association's Career Award for Regional History in 1989. In 2000, he completed a ten-year project, The Encyclopedia of British Columbia. He has been awarded the Order of BC, the Canadian Historical Association's Career Award for Regional History, the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, the Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award and a Honorary Doctorate of Laws Degree from the University of Victoria. In 2007, White was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He has twice been runner-up in the Whisky Slough Putty Man Triathlon.