The Sunshine Coast From Gibsons to Powell River

By Howard White, photos by Keith Thirkell & Others

ISBN 13: 978-1-55017-081-8

ISBN 10: 1-55017-081-3

 Price: $29.95 CAD; $29.95 USD

Hardback

 8.5 X 11 - 128 pp - 1996

From deep rain forests to logging camps, Indian villages and bustling ports, The Sunshine Coast offers an insider's look at one of the most fascinating regions on the BC coast.

BC's Sunshine Coast is 100 miles of sublimely scenic shoreline just 40 minutes north of Vancouver. Award-winning humorist and Historian Howard White brings his ample experience as a lifelong coast denizen to bear in this fresh look at a unique place and its unique people.

The Sunshine Coast covers the waterfront in words and over 150 full-colour photographs from Gibsons, where the long-running TV series the Beachcombers was filmed, to Powell River, the largest community in the region and home to one of the world's largest pulp and paper mills. Visit Pender Harbour, where some local fishing folk still do their Saturday shopping in motorized "kicker" boats. Drop anchor in Princess Louisa Inlet, where the likes of John Barrymore and Andrew Carnegie once came to marvel at its canyon-like splendour. Stopover in Sechelt, whose name is a remnant of the shi'sha'lh or Sechelt Nation who once occupied the bulk of the Sunshine Coast territory. And sojourn in Roberts Creek, whose patron saint Harry Roberts put the Sunshine Coast on the map when he emblazoned the slogan "The Sunshine Belt" on a freight shed at the nearby steamer dock.

Join Howard White as he explores the rugged area with its reputation for being the maverick among BC's favoured south coast regions. The painters, writers, hermits, handloggers, stumpranchers, trappers, prospectors, fishers and draft dodgers met along the way will find a permanent haven in your heart.

Harbour Publishing wrote this timeless classic in 1996 and makes an enjoyable coffee table. This book has been given to clients by realtors in the region to their clients as it is an excellent compendium of local sights.

Profusely illustrated with photography by Keith Thirkell of West Vancouver BC, the book is more an examination of the modern day Sunshine Coast and not a work of history. The definitive history of the Sunshine Coast is yet to be written.

Illustrated and written about in an eye-pleasing layout, the unofficial trademark of Harbour Publishing, brings to life Gibsons, Sechelt and Pender Harbour.