Raincoast Chronicles 18

Where land meets sea, strange things happen, and most of them end up as stories. From a study of log barging on the BC coast to a controversial essay on who really shelled the Cape Estevan lighthouse in 1942, this latest compilation delivers an interesting and compelling portrait of BC's maritime history.Meet Al Trice, Don Sorte and Mack Thomson - three eccentric scuba divers who can't or won't recognise an impossible task when they see one - who succeed in building one of the world's first commercial mini-subs with no capital and even less experience in the back of a mushroom warehouse; Claus Botel, who arrived with his family at their pre-emption on the remote northern end of Vancouver Island from Germany in 1913, with no idea of the incredible hardships that lay ahead; gyppo logger 'Svendson' who artfully dodges a cadaverous tax collector in 1919; Hal Dahlie, who at sixteen decided to take a summer job at the coast's most isolated light station with an old keeper who was more than a little strange; and fisherman Hank McBride who recalls the 1930s and '40s at Namu where romances blossomed, booze flowed and fighting was an integral part of life during the golden days of the mid-coast canneries.