Kirjahaku

Beautifully illustrated by BC folk hero Bus Griffiths who wrote and illustrated the popular comic book Now You're Logging, Patrick and the Backhoe is a classic story of decency and guts triumphing over arrogance and greed.Patrick lives in a little town on the side of a high mountain. Patrick's mother and father own the town bookstore, and his brother Simon is a bookworm. Patrick can't concentrate on books. The only book he likes is Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel.Although no great scholar, Patrick does have a talent with levers and knobs and switches. He likes to take things apart and climb up on things. "Once when he was quite small he learned how to make the door of the car work when Dad was driving, and he fell out on his noggin."Patrick has a special friendship with his Grampa who operates an old backhoe which Patrick loves "because it has more levers and knobs and buttons on it than anything in the world." Occasionally, Patrick is allowed to ride on the backhoe with Grampa.One day it begins to rain and doesn't stop. "The creek rose higher and surged under the bridge. Then a big boulder came loose and rolled down the hill, plugging the hole under the bridge. The raging waters of Cypress Creek backed up and began to wash away the land on which the town was built." The only thing that can move that boulder is Grampa's backhoe and when Grampa gets stuck under the bridge it's up to Patrick to save the town.

This collection of poems is steeped in the west coast tradition of storytelling and mythmaking, a tradition Howard White has nurtured for two decades. The poems are as real, down-to-earth and funny as White's award-winning prose.He admits to having a messy yard, describes city street crazies and the late-night "undermind," teaches his boys how to hammer, and sits down to dinner with fancy people. He takes the trouble to figure out that if Canada's unemployed people were laid head to toe, they'd stretch from Vancouver to Winnipeg. His poems are rich with west coast denizens-loggers, fishermen, executives and industrialists, slugs, ravens, loons, and even Old Scabby Mackay, who got his nickname for breaking one strike in 1937 and who says, "We Canadians, we gotta be the stupidest damn race of people that ever walked.""His work is as refreshing, as spirited and melodious as a vibrant April shower. White's style is always crisp, fresh and ebullient."-Virginia Aulin, Vancouver Sun"Howard White is a pure delight to read."-George Melnyk, Calgary Herald"White's is a major coastal voice. . . the best of his work is about seeing."-Charles Lillard, Victoria Times-Colonist

British Columbia's Sunshine Coast is a sublimely scenic 160-kilometre stretch of waterfront between Howe Sound and Desolation Sound, reached by a 40-minute ferry ride from West Vancouver. Join Howard White, award-winning humorist and lifelong coast denizen, on a guided tour from Gibsons, where the long-running TV series The Beachcombers was filmed, to Powell River, the largest community in the region. Along the way, sojourn in Roberts Creek, whose patron saint, the irrepressible Harry Roberts, invented the name "Sunshine Coast." Stop over in Sechelt, named for the Shi'sha'lh or Sechelt Nation who once occupied the bulk of the Sunshine Coast territory. Follow the seriously twisty highway to visit Pender Harbour, where some local fishing folk still do their Saturday shopping in kicker boats. Drop anchor in Princess Louisa Inlet, and discover why the likes of John Barrymore and Andrew Carnegie once came to marvel at its canyon-like splendour. With paintings by local artists, poems by local poets, tall tales by local characters, miracles by Sechelt medicine men, tips on predicting the weather, a fair share of risqu gossip about historical figures, a good mix of bold opinions and hard facts and over 150 beautiful colour photographs, The Sunshine Coast is a book to be treasured, not just by residents and visitors, but by anyone with an eye for fascinating places. First published in 1996, this fully revised edition contains updated text and all new photographs of coast life from the area's most talented photographers including Dean van't Schip and Keith Thirkell.

Howard White says, "Some poets try to capture rare butterflies in their writing. The things I go after are more like houseflies." The comparison does him no favours but it is true inasmuch as his writing is notably unpretentious and concerned with common and everyday realities. That is, if your everyday realities include such things as sinking docks, driving bulldozers, arguing about sand, baseball, pouring without a funnel, dancing in the street, thought guns, coition, brainfarts, not sending sympathy cards, not shooting your father, and sea otters. In this book he also writes quite a bit about writing, not so much the kind of personal writing he does in this book so much as that he has done as an "accidental chronicler" for "a galaxy of voices" he acted as a "conduit" for in his work as a memoirist and publisher.

Real Dads Real Leaders is a compilation of over 40 stories by fathers and daughters about lessons learned that they still utilize today. Real Dad Real Leaders is designed to help men be better dads. It is through the lessons learned in these short stories and the implementations of the growth thoughts at the end of each story men will grow to be better dads. There are stories of triumph, neglect, good times, bad times, love and lack. Just remember that in all of our stories there are lessons to be learned. Real Dads Real Leaders is must for any DAD in your life.

Bill White (1905-2001) was an itinerant ranch hand and trapper, a member of the RCMP and an Arctic traveller, but he was best known for his work as the head of the Vancouver Labour Council and president of the Marine Workers and Boilermakers Union, the largest local union in Canada in his time. It was a position he held for eleven straight years during WWII, the heyday of the West Coast shipbuilding industry. Known as "Bareknuckle Bill," White was fierce and unrelenting in his condemnation of the companies and governments that refused to treat their workers like human beings. He personally fought one of the first big right-to-work cases in BC history, all the way to the Privy Council of England. From the scaffolds and docks of the shipyards to the battleground of the bargaining table, White's stories about the struggle for labour and human rights in Vancouver in the '40s and '50s make for harrowing and fascinating reading. A Hard Man to Beat not only covers all the major labour events of the period, but brings to life the personality of the man, Bill White, in his own colourful--and sometimes expletive-filled--language. Author Howard White spent years of intensive research and worked closely with Bill to create this oral history, which sold out its first printing in two days when it was first published in 1983. A Hard Man to Beat is one of ten Vancouver 125 Legacy books, an initiative created by the City of Vancouver, the Office of Vancouver's Poet Laureate Brad Cran and the Association of Book Publishers of BC to bring back into print a collection of books to celebrate Vancouver's 125th anniversary.