Découvrez l’histoire inspirante d’Auntie Vie, cette grand-tante hors du commun devenue icône médiatique grâce à son charisme et sa philosophie de vie.

A rivetingly imagined re-telling of the voyages of Frances Barkley (1769-1845), who as a young woman travelled the world on a trading mission with her sea captain husband. Over two hundred years ago, Frances Barkley, a seventeen-year-old girl fresh out of a convent school in France, met twenty-six-year-old sea captain, fell deeply in love, and married him after a six-week courtship. Five weeks later, she stepped aboard his ship, the Imperial Eagle, to set sail on an eight-year voyage that would take them around the world twice.   Frances Barkley's story is a remarkable one. It is a story born of discovery, of firsts, of hardship, of disease, of illness, and of death. Relying on her strength of character and wit, this young woman survived fierce seas, shipwreck, and capture by pirates. When Frances was approaching her seventh decade, at the behest of her daughter, she put pen to paper and wrote down what she could remember of her life with her husband in the merchant sea trade. Frances Barkley: Eighteenth-century Seafarer is not simply a re-issue of Frances's own reminiscences, but a work of creative non-fiction-an extensive reimagining of her time at sea, supplemented through extensive historical, geographic, and nautical research.

Received an Honourable Mention for the 2018 Lieutenant Governor's Medal for Historical Writing The first book on Agnes Deans Cameron, BC's first female principal, itinerant traveller, and journalist.Agnes Deans Cameron was an extraordinary woman who was ahead by a century. Born in Victoria in 1863, she was the first female school principal in the province, but she worked tirelessly to achieve work equality and voting rights for women. One of Canada's most well known writers of her time, she put western Canada on the map through her writing, which was published internationally including in the Saturday Evening Post. She was also a trailblazer in sports, becoming the first "Lady Centurion" in the West.A consummate trailblazer, in the summer of 1906, Cameron travelled 10,000 miles down the Mackenzie River and out into the Beaufort Sea-something no other European woman had done-in one short season.Cameron was named one of the top 150 most significant individuals in the history of the province of British Columbia. This is the first book commemorating her life.

"Cathy Converse has given us a welcome commentary on Capi Blanchet and her world, one that enriches our understanding of both." —The TyeeA paperback edition of the BC Book Award–nominated biography of Capi Blanchet, the author of the BC coastal classic, The Curve of Time. After her husband died in 1926 from a suspected drowning, Capi Blanchet spent every summer cruising BC’s west coast with her five children and their dog in the family’s 25-foot boat. The Curve of Time is the book Capi wrote chronicling these adventures, and it remains a bestseller and a classic in the annals of nautical literature. But little is known about the rest of her life. Cathy Converse found herself asking: who was this skipper, this mother, this writer? In this biography, Converse offers insiders' recollections of this enigmatic woman, along with family photos and updated information about the villages, inlets and islands described in The Curve of Time. Following the Curve of Time is essential reading for anyone who has ever been captivated by the book, the West Coast or Capi herself.

Frances Barkley was just eighteen when she became the first European woman to set foot on the west coast of North America. After a sheltered upbringing in England, Frances found herself boarding the Imperial Eagle in 1786 to set sail on an adventurous, round-the-world voyage with her husband, Captain Charles William Barkley. With great wisdom and wit, Frances recounted her eight years at sea in her Reminiscences as she found herself in a wider world, helping her husband in his business, giving birth to her children, surviving the tragedy of a young daughter's death and meeting strange and foreign peoples. Today's place names of Barkley Sound, Frances Island, Imperial Eagle Channel and others on Vancouver Island-as well as the ship Frances Barkley-are standing memorials to the enterprising and courageous Barkleys. Originally researched by writer Beth Hill, The Remarkable World of Frances Barkley has been expanded on by writer and historian Cathy Converse to bring the intrepid young bride and her world to life for a new generation of readers.