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Experience the grit and glory of homesteaders through Marianne's captivating narratives. Each book is a portal to a time when survival was an art form!

Thank you for visiting our bookshop. Our book ordering process is simple and personalized. When you fill out the order form, an email with your information is sent directly to a human. After we receive your order, we will reply with payment options (eg.Cheque, Etransfer or PayPal), including shipping costs. After payment is received, we will send your books with an estimated arrival time!

Book

The Homesteader's Daughter

Life and times of Noveta Higgins Leavitt

$24.95 & shipping*

• 22.4cm * 15.1cm * 2.0cm, 539grams
• Content: 340 pages, map, 76 b/w photos
• ISBN 978-0-9782492-0-5

“I found this book fascinating...and difficult to put down.” ~ Robert Siegl

In the spring of 1914 Edward Higgins brought his young wife and children from Oregon to a homestead he had carved deep in the wilderness of the British Columbia Interior. In 1917 a daughter, who proved to be as unique as her name, was born.
      Noveta Higgins dutifully worked alongside her mother and sisters in the small log cabin but yearned for the times when she could be outdoors, helping her father, “doing men’s work. I was as like him as I could be,” she would say.
      When she married, it was Noveta Higgins Leavitt who did much of the homesteading for her own family, coping with life on the frontier and relying on her ingenuity to persevere. Her stories flow with humour, adventure and tragedy. Woven through her memories are historic people who were part of her world. Colorful anecdotes provided by family members enrich the book.
      The Homesteader’s Daughter preserves a way of life that is forever lost in the technologies of the modern world, where there are few frontiers left. 

Book cover

Book

The Wanderer

Spar Trees & Mammoth Tusks

$19.95 & shipping*

• 22.4cm * 15.1cm * 1.0cm, 320grams
• Content: 196 pages, map, 64 b/w photos
• No ISBN

Harold Gangloff grew up in a much different world from that of today, one where families survived on homesteads surrounded by wilderness, working together with courage and ingenuity to build a life in a new country. It was a world where a young man could wander from place to place, working for a living as he went and having unique adventures along the way.
     In 2003 Harold decided that the time had come to put together a simple accounting of the variety of jobs he had through the years and the many places he had lived as a legacy for his children. However, it was obvious that he was a natural storyteller with a book’s worth of tales to tell. Every story was perfect in the telling, from his unforgettable memories of life on a homestead, the sounds of steam engine whistles and wolves on moonlit nights, to his detailed descriptions of gold dredges, mammoth tusks, skyline logging, and Ocean Falls. 

Book

The Buffalo Man

$19.95 & shipping*

• 22.4cm * 15.1cm * 1.1cm, 274grams
• Content: 166 pages, 56 b/w photos
• Revised Edition ISBN 978-1-926747-43-9

The Buffalo Man is the story of Albert Walters, a man of few words whose quiet demeanor hid a life of adventure and a toughness that only true cowboys have. This book grew to become the story of a family that sets out in search of prosperity, with twelve children in tow. They venture from their prairie farm in southern Saskatchewan, into bush country near Hythe, Alberta. The father's chronic illness forces his young boys to take over much of the time.
     Continuing west, the family leaves in a wagon train and settle on a ranch near Sundrie, Alberta. From there, Albert heads into the Yukon on historical surveys and into the Rockies on early grizzly studies. He takes part in old-style Calgary Stampede chuck wagon races. In time, he moves to BC, to the Cariboo where he obtains a permit for the first buffalo operation in the province. His love and pride in his buffalo soon bring the world to his door.
 

A Teacher's Story book cover

Book

A Teacher’s Story

Forest Grove 1951

$19.95 & shipping*

• 22.4cm * 15.1cm * 0.5cm, 119grams
• Content: 66 pages, 64 b/w photos
• ISBN 978-1-77084-107-9

“To teach at Forest Grove was indeed a privilege. To be taught a way of life by Forest Grove proved a lifetime blessing.” ~ John Calam

John Calam is an educator whose remarkable career began in a rural school in the small community of Forest Grove in the Cariboo District of British Columbia. Calam went on to teach in Lac La Hache, Smithers District, Kitimat, and West Vancouver High School. His career extended to McGill University in Montreal, Columbia University in New York, and the University of British Columbia.
     Throughout his journeys in education, he retained an interest in rural schools. In 1991, his biography of an rural school inspector in the Cariboo/Chilcotin, “Alex Lord’s British Columbia. Recollections of a Rural School Inspector” was published by the University of British Columbia Press. In 1985 John was named Professor Emeritus at UBC.
     He and his wife Renée retired to Salt Spring Island where John continues to write and to enjoy life on the beautiful island. 

Book

Along The Clearwater Trail

The Girl Who Loved Horses

$19.95 & shipping*

• 22.4cm * 15.1cm * 0.9cm, 245grams
• Content: 150 pages, map, 59 b/w photos
• ISBN 978-1-77084-347-9

“From my home in the mountains
I never can part,
Cause I’m still a farmer
Down deep in my heart.”
~ Toody Shirran (1988)

In 1925 Everett Greenlee brought his young family to Canim Lake in the Cariboo District of British Columbia. The family settled at Sand Point just below the Clearwater Trail, an ancient route used by First Nations people to travel to the Clearwater Country. Toody Greenlee Shirran and her three sisters worked with their parents, doing “whatever had to be done” to survive on a wilderness homestead. It was a hard life but one that shaped the girls’ futures as women who pioneered in a man’s world, working as independent loggers, truck drivers and well drillers.
     Toody’s stories and poems tell of a time when there were no roads, neighbours were few and far between, and a chance to go to school meant the world to a young girl.

Cariboo Christmas book cover

Book

Cariboo Christmas

Illustrated by BC artist Tom Godin

$14.95 & shipping*

• 22.4cm * 15.1cm * 0.4cm, 98grams
• Content: 54 pages, 15 b/w illustrations
• ISBN 978-1-77084-500-8

A collection of pioneer depictions of Christmas celebrated in years past. On remote homesteads, longstanding traditions from homesteader’s countries of origin were adapted to their new home, sometimes in quite unique ways. In other ways, Christmas was much the same as it is today, a hundred years later: food, music, friends and neighbours, and the season’s peace and joy, for children and adults alike.

A Mill Behind Every Stump book cover

Book

A Mill Behind Every Stump

Louis Judson on homesteading and early days in the Cariboo forest industry

$19.95 & shipping*

• 22.6cm * 15.3cm * 1.1cm, 331grams
• Content: 196 pages, map, 71 b/w photos
• ISBN 978-1-77203-116-4

In 1922 Marion Judson brought his family by covered wagon to Ruth Lake in the Cariboo District of British Columbia. The story of the family's life on a remote homestead is told through the memories of his son Louis.
     Louis' stories are humorous, tragic at times, rich with detail and sprinkled with wisdom. He tells of working at a gold mine in Bralorne at a young age, riding the rails, how he lost his foot in a milling accident, witching for gold and water.
     Most of all, this is the story of early sawmills in Cariboo forests, before chainsaws and skidders, how they ¬flourished and how they declined, and the men who worked so hard on them, often at great cost to themselves.
     Louis is a direct descendant of the legendary Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. He is proud of his family’s friendship with local First Nations and tells of what he learned about how to fish, trap and live within nature.

Available through Heritage House Publishing:
www.heritagehouse.ca/book/a-mill-behind-every-stump
 

Six Who Served book cover

Book

Six Who Served

$14.95 & shipping*

• 21.2cm * 13.8cm * 0.5cm, 113grams
• Content: 74 pages, 6 b/w photos
• No ISBN

Six Who Served tells the stories of six young people, teenagers for the most part, who found themselves thrown into deadly situations under fire in World War Two. They are the stories of remarkable courage and resiliency of Larry Bakken, Gillis Bailey, Sylvia Collier, John Hood, Lloyd Junor and Jack Hunt.

Letters from Bradley Creek book cover

Book

Letters From Bradley Creek 

$15.95 & shipping*

• 21.2cm * 13.8cm * 0.7cm, 152grams
• Content: 102 pages
• ISBN 978-0-2285-0550-1

Doug Page was an early programmer for Macintosh. His computer shut off at four every day and he would ride his bike to our farm in Southern Ontario for a visit. Doug gave me a “Baby Mac” and encouraged me to write.
     In 1993 we moved to a cabin on Bradley Creek, in the BC interior. It was a step back in time to a world where Nature is close at hand and everything is done in unhurried Cariboo time. I wrote very long letters to Doug telling him about this amazing new world. He suggested that I gather the letters into a book. I saw him once after that, in Ontario. I did not know that he was ill. I have finally done as Doug suggested. 

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