April 6 was designated Vancouver’s official birthday in 2019. It was on that date in 1886 that the city was first incorporated. In honour of Vancouver’s 140th birthday, here is a list of the 10 most recent Vancouver-themed books featured on the NewsRadio Bookshelf.
This June will see the start of the biggest sporting event on the planet — maybe even the biggest sporting event in history — the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Seven of the matches will be played in Vancouver, and six more will be played in Toronto. Winning Pitch by Murray Mollard is part chronicle, part call to action — aimed at both neophytes and football aficionados alike.
Imagine growing up in a foreign country while your parents lived and worked on the other side of the ocean. That was the reality for generations of children from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and elsewhere living in Canada in the 1970s and 80s. The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street by Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho is the story of one such ‘astronaut child.’
It seems making ends meet is tougher than ever these days. Author Steve Burgess admits that while he’s always been something of a tightwad, being a freelance journalist in a city as expensive as Vancouver made him frugal out of necessity. Cheapskate in Lotusland combines a lifetime of his penny-pinching wisdom along with expert analysis.
These days, the messages spelled out by the tile lettering on The Penthouse marquee seem to get more attention than the nearly 80-year-old establishment itself. A Sign of the Times, by “sign guy” Ben Jackson and historian Aaron Chapman, is a coffee table-style book that plays like a greatest hits of those viral moments.
When it comes to fan favourites, few Canucks are as beloved as the late Gino Odjick. Now, nearly three years after his death, comes a biography by Patrick Johnston and Peter Leech. Gino is a look at the man in full: a complex character who didn’t always make the right choices, but whose loyalty to friends, family, and teammates was non-negotiable.
“By sea, land, and air we prosper” has long been the motto of the City of Vancouver. “By sea” also sums up A Perfect Day for a Walk by the Water by Bill Arnott, which takes the reader on a series of excursions in, on, and even under the waters of our city. It has a lot to offer, whether you use it as a guidebook or just an easy armchair read.
Baseball has long been a part of the fabric of Vancouver and, indeed, British Columbia. Play Ball! celebrates this legacy, from the first recorded baseball game in Victoria in 1863 to today’s Vancouver Canadians. Author Tom Hawthorn tried to make it as accessible as possible with stories and pictures to please both fans and non-fans alike.
Once a bustling commercial hub in the 1960s and 70s, the gradual decline of Vancouver’s Chinatown began in the 1980s and 90s. While the fate of the neighbourhood remains to be seen, Chinatown Vancouver author and illustrator Donna Seto celebrates the Chinatown of her childhood, while making the case that it is indeed a place worth saving.
The May 1914 sinking of the Empress of Ireland in the mouth of the St. Lawrence River is still considered the worst peacetime maritime disaster in Canadian history. Beneath Dark Waters author Eve Lazarus first came upon the story when she was asked to research one of its survivors, Gordon Charles Davidson, a PhD candidate from Ontario who lived in Vancouver and lectured on History at UBC.
Joe Fortes is one of the most celebrated figures in Vancouver history — best known for teaching generations of children how to swim and saving many more from drowning. But what if our image of him is inaccurate, or, at best, incomplete? In Searching for Serafim, author Ruby Smith Díaz argues that much of what has been written about Fortes has been filtered through a White colonial lens.