Nenamook, a Fishermen’s Reserve vessel.

Event type: In-person
Time and Date: 7pm, Tuesday, September 24 (6:30pm Doors Open)
Location: Rotary Gallery of the Courtenay and District Museum
Speaker: Catherine Gilbert
Tickets: $5 for Historical Society members; $6 for general public. Advance tickets recommended. Tickets can be purchased over the phone by calling 250-334-0686 ext 2.

During World War II, the Canadian army, navy and air force each constructed their own boats and ships to be employed in the service of the war. Many of these vessels, as well as fishermen’s boats and other commercial vessels commandeered for the war effort, patrolled the west coast.

Quadra Island sailors. Photo from J. Lewis collection.

Their crews performed a variety of duties including mine sweeping, looking out for enemy submarines, laying cable, bringing supplies to coastal defence sites, towing targets and transporting military personnel, and some eventually went overseas. It could be dangerous work!

Photo by Heather Hughson

While some of these crews were seasoned sailors, others came from the Prairies and had never been on a boat in their life! Survival meant they had to learn quickly. Many images used in this pictorial presentation come from private collections of veterans and families of veterans, and so too, do the stories that go with them.

Award winning author and historian Catherine Gilbert will be giving a PowerPoint presentation on the war at sea and will include a discussion about the WW II fort at Yorke Island, which was the focus of her first book, Yorke Island and the Uncertain War.

Event type: In-person
Time and Date: 7pm, Tuesday, November 5 (6:30pm Doors Open)
Location: Rotary Gallery of the Courtenay and District Museum
Speaker: Howard White
Tickets On Sale: October 1, 2024
Tickets: $5 for Historical Society members; $6 for general public. Advance tickets recommended. Tickets can be purchased over the phone by calling 250-334-0686 ext 2.

Writer, editor and publisher, Howard White, presents an in-person talk based on the recently released Raincoast Chronicles: Fifth Five.

Brimming with stories and images, this fascinating collection celebrates Harbour Publishing’s fifty-year commitment to recording the unique ways of life that have sprung from the West Coast.

Half a century and hundreds of book releases have rolled by since Harbour Publishing was founded in 1974. So it is only appropriate to mark this golden anniversary with a new omnibus of Raincoast Chronicles, the series that has always been at the heart of Harbour’s mission to express the rich culture and history of BC’s coast. Indeed, it was the Chronicles, which began publication in 1972, that inspired the creation of Harbour itself, as the expansive articles grew into book-length works.

The lushly illustrated collection, Raincoast Chronicles: Fifth Five gathers volumes 21 through 24 of the series, along with a new, previously unpublished Raincoast Chronicle #25, by Alan Haig-Brown, which focuses on the author’s formative years as a deckhand in the 1960s and early ’70s on a fishing boat run by a We Wai Kai family he married into as a teenager. The history of commercial fishing and of BC itself, in all its twisting relations with Indigenous peoples, is mirrored in Haig-Brown’s vivid account of life aboard, where “there are no typical days” despite the tightly choreographed tasks and immense local knowledge required by this ever-risky business.

Also included in Raincoast Chronicles: Fifth Five is West Coast Wrecks and Other Maritime Tales, maritime historian Rick James leads an authoritative tour of BC’s most famous shipwrecks, as weathered sailors and divers share lore about one of the most dangerous stretches of coastline in the world. Also included are pieces from some of Canada’s most exciting and iconic writers—Al Purdy, Anne Cameron, Edith Iglauer, Patrick Lane and Grant Lawrence, along with stories of disasters at sea, scarcely believable bush plane feats, eerie events at coastal ghost towns and reminisces of the Schnarr sisters who kept cougars as pets.

Photo by Zoë Mackenzie

In its passion for storytelling about overlooked but crucial aspects of the past, Raincoast Chronicles: Fifth Five serves as a fitting tribute to Harbour Publishing’s own deep history.

Howard White 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 of Pender Harbour, BC. He started Raincoast Chronicles and Harbour Publishing in the early 1970s and his own books include A Hard Man to Beat, Spilsbury’s Coast, The Accidental Airline, Writing in the Rain, The Sunshine Coast and A Mysterious Humming Noise (Anvil, 2019). 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.

Raincoast Chronicles: Fifth Five will be available for purchase ($60 plus tax) and signing after the talk.