Happy Holiday

Featured Book

Becoming Vancouver

A History

"Becoming Vancouver" tells the story of the city from its earliest Indigenous inhabitants down to the present day.

Santa Claus (aka Canada Post) brought a wonderful Christmas present to my door this morning: a copy of Arvik! In Pursuit of the Bowhead Whale, hot off the presses. Arvik! is a new book from the Avataq Cultural Institute, a Montreal-based...

My Bookselling Career

August 26, 2013

On the west side of Granville Street in downtown Vancouver, near the corner of Smythe next door to the McDonald’s, there is a storefront which for many years has been occupied by a camera shop. In the 1960s, however, it was home to The Book Barrel, the...

My Newest Purchase

October 25, 2013

This is the only purchase I made during my recent trip to Europe. I bought it in Old Town Prague at the official Spartak outlet store which happens to be located on Husova Street directly beneath the hanging sculpture of Sigmund Freud. The...

Lunch at the Vancouver Club

April 10, 2024

This past weekend the Vancouver Historical Society held its annual luncheon to commemorate the incorporation of the city in 1886. This year's lunch was at the Vancouver Club in the ballroom of its gorgeous 1914 "clubhouse" downtown on Hastings Street...

New Gallery With Long History

March 28, 2024

Construction began last week on a new Vancouver Art Gallery, much discussed but now apparently coming to fruition. It is almost 100 years since a group of wealthy business types in the city announced they were offering $100,000 towards the...

Prize Notes

March 13, 2024

Wayne McCrory has won the Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for his fascinating wildlife study, The Wild Horses of the Chilcotin, from Harbour Publishing. The Stuart-Stubbs Prize goes to the year's outstanding scholarly book on British Columbia. Wild...

Daniel Francis

Reading the National Narrative