Books published by Caitlin Press

In this debut collection of short stories, Roberts introduces thought-provoking characters caught between the encroaching modern, industrial world and the hard truths of lives lived at the edge of everything.

In 1934, international entrepreneur and filmmaker Charles Bedeaux hires a team of Canadian men to trailblaze from Edmonton, Alberta, to Telegraph Creek, British Columbia. What starts out as adventure for Carl Davidson and Bob Beattie soon becomes a treacherous and heartbreaking journey. Photos.

Whelan became the first woman to accompany the Canadian Rangers on a never-before-patrolled route of the northwestern coast of Ellesmere Island. Here, she shares her personal journey and the global significance of the Canadian High Arctic.

Memorials and the yearning to re-create the past permeate this new collection by award-winning poet Gill. The voices of East Indian communities and families speak up, reminding readers that history is not just what is recorded in documents and ledgers, but is a mixture of smells, tastes, and textures.

The story of men who braved the dangerous waterways of the upper Fraser River to build the GTP Railway.

This is a young poet''s search for and discovery of his place in the local landscape. The poet is haunted by the legacy of colonialism and propelled by the struggles of a community seeking its own identity. "(flood basement" is the raw, shocking and innocent journey of an emerging artist in a seemingly inflexible world. In this collection Stewart shares a collage of fragments that amount to a portrait of the Prince George of his youth, a transcription of a midnight audio journey, and an introspection of the fluctuating and sometimes fragile identity of the writer. Stewart''s work pushes the boundaries of innovative and experimental poetry while weaving a visual narrative of the world in which he lives.

In 1974 Lorne Dufour moved to Alkali Lake Reserve, a Shuswap community near Williams Lake in British Columbia, to help reopen the local elementary school. Like many First Nation communities across Canada, Alkali Lake had been ravaged by decades of residential schools and forced religion. Colonialism had robbed them of their language and culture and had left a legacy of abuse and alcoholism. But in 1972, Chief Andy Chelsea and his wife Phyllis took it upon themselves to lead their community on a long and painful road to sobriety and what ensued was a dramatic transformation of a people enslaved by a seemingly unstoppable plague. By 1985, Alkali Lake was almost a hundred percent dry and had become a role model for many other communities in BC. "Jacob''s Prayer" takes place during this time of transformation and it speaks to the unexpected existence of resiliency in the most unassuming of characters. It centres around one tragic Halloween evening in 1975 when two men lose their lives and another is saved by a friend who chooses not to be destroyed by his own tragedy and devastating loss. Jacob''s Prayer is the haunting and poetic story of a community''s suffering, loss and eventual healing.

This is a luminous collection that takes us on a keen-eyed journey from childhood to parenthood: from a child''s perspective of her parents, through to the transition to adulthood as a single parent, then finally to the witnessing of a parent''s decline and death. Lam details the slow and sometimes painful transformation into motherhood, the transition of generations, the inherent politics behind relationships, and the essential solitude and struggle of being outside the traditionally defined family. In her title poem "Chrysanthemum", Lam remembers her mother''s gentle hand with the watercolour brush: "Then, from the finest brush, the outline/ of each petal. Flesh flowed from the fuller one,/ tipped with yellow or lavender,/ until every crown had bloomed/ amid the throng of leaves./ How her hand knew paper through brush/ If only I had been paper,/ that upturned and delicate face,/ stroked and stroked again with such/ precise tenderness, such a patient hand". Lam''s new collection is fundamentally as much an exploration of profound loss as it is of love and an individual''s reconnection to humanity. This is her second book of poetry.

In Ken Belford''s fifth book of poetry he takes us on a journey through Canada''s roadless north where he has discovered a third world gaze, looking out at industrialism and its impact on a region abundant in resources and natural beauty. This is an unsentimental and non-reactionary perspective, a deep investigation of the psychology of both the electronic revolution and postmodernism. It is also a collective conversation having to do with the mobile geographies of inequality. The poems are a study in the social cost of privilege and what it means to have access to power, surveillance and identity.

This is an exploration of loose correspondence between one of Canada''s greatest musicians, Glenn Gould, and "K", an admiring fan. Braid weaves an intimate dynamic as K struggles with the loss of her hearing in one ear, finding her greatest comfort in Gould''s music -- particularly when he plays Bach. Gould''s poems don''t directly reply, but they do echo a response as he struggles with his own difficult life; his family, his health, his strong beliefs in how music should be presented and his personal habits considered "eccentric" by an ever-watchful press. K starts to accept her changing world, just as Gould begins a downward spiral into disintegration. In his final reflection, Gould acknowledges that in spite of his personal trials, his music now circles the world in the spacecraft Voyager as Earth''s example to other possible life forms of what is most beautiful in this civilisation. This is a striking and masterful volume of poems that does justice to Gould''s brilliance, offering insights into his personal life and art, even as it showcases Braid''s own virtuosity.