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 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illustrated collection Fifth Five gathers volumes 21 through 24 of Raincoast Chronicles along with a new, previously unpublished Raincoast Chronicle 25 by Alan Haig-Brown, focusing on the author’s formative years as a deckhand in the 1960s and early ’70s on a fishing boat run by a We Wai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.