In 1910, young Pierre Maturie bid farewell to his comfortable bourgeois existence in rural France and travelled to northern Alberta in search of independence, adventure, and newfound prosperity. Some sixty years later, he wrote of the four years he spent in Canada before he returned to France in 1914 to fight in the First World War. Like that of so many youthful pioneers, his story is one of adventure and hardship - perilous journeys, railroad construction in the Rockies, panning for gold in swift-flowing streams, transporting goods for the Hudson's Bay Company along the Athabasca River....

Comprising a series of conversational recollections, this book tells the story of Rena Point Bolton, a Sto: lo matriarch and craftswoman. The narrative touches on Point Bolton's childhood by the Fraser River during the Depression, her ancestor, the warrior Xeyteleq, and her later years on a reserve. While the Sto: lo people kept secret their cultural practices to avoid persecution by paternalistic institutions, Point Bolton helped to revive some of the old crafts and ceremonies. The result of a long-term collaboration between Richard Daly and Point Bolton, this book attests to Point...