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 edition 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illustrated collection Fifth Five gathers volumes 21 through 24 of Raincoast Chronicles along with a new, previously unpublished Raincoast Chronicle 25 by Alan Haig-Brown, focusing on the author’s formative years as a deckhand in the 1960s and early ’70s on a fishing boat run by a We Wai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.
In issue 21, 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.
In its passion for storytelling about overlooked but crucial aspects of the past, Fifth Five serves as a fitting tribute to Harbour Publishing’s own deep history.
Jean Barman, professor emeritus, has published more than twenty books, including
On the Cusp of Contact: Gender, Space and Race in the Colonization of British Columbia (Harbour Publishing, 2020) and the winner of the 2006 City of Vancouver Book Award,
Stanley Park's Secret (Harbour Publishing, 2005). Her lifelong pursuit to enrich the history of BC has earned her such honours as a Governor Generals Award, a George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, a Lieutenant Governor's Medal for Historical Writing and a position as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She lives in Vancouver, BC.
Rick James is a writer, maritime historian, photographer and field archaeologist who comes from a long line of smugglers. He has been published in British Columbia Magazine, Canada's History, Western Mariner and other periodicals, and is the author of several books including Raincoast Chronicles 21: West Coast Wrecks and Other Maritime Tales (Harbour Publishing, 2011). He lives in Courtenay, BC.
Judith Williams is an assistant professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia and is the author of Clam Gardens (New Star Books, 2006) and Dynamite Stories (New Star Books, 2003). She lives on Cortes Island, BC.
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 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, 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.
