Böcker utgivna av Caitlin Press

"What strange gravity draws two people together? What pulls them apart? In The Small Way, a woman re-evaluates herself and her marriage as she comes to terms with a spouse's transition. Intimate and powerful, the poems celebrate the courage of a partner coming out as a trans woman and records the confusion in facing a partner's changing gender identity. Speaking to the tenderness that exists between two people, the book explores shifting bodies and changing emotional landscapes, and examines what it really means to love someone. The poems reside in the stillness of two bodies and in the intersection between time and grief. The Small Way is a passionate record of love and loss, and a naked exploration of vulnerability. The book is an elegy to love and memory, a chronicle of holding on and letting go."--

Back by popular demand, Dancing in Gumboots is the long-awaited sequel to Caitlin Press' wildly successful anthology, Gumboot Girls. After the extraordinary success of Gumboot Girls comes the sequel anthology, Dancing in Gumboots. Having relocated to Comox, Jane encountered a new group of women who traveled to the Comox Valley in the 1970s. Fascinated by their stories, Lou Allison and Jane Wilde return to their dynamic partnership to bring us an anthology that shines a light on these trailblazing women and their unique stories. The 1970s was a time of intense cultural shifts for women all over North America. Freedom from traditional gender roles and expectations encouraged widespread relocation of young women seeking adventure and meaning, often migrating from urban to rural locations. The agricultural area of the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island offered a unique opportunity to these young women. Dancing in Gumboots collects the stories of thirty-two women who traveled from around North America to Vancouver Island, eventually settling in and around the Comox Valley. The young women who chose the agricultural Vancouver Island area to make their homes, showcase the personal challenges and struggles arising from such radical change.

After plans to live in Africa shatter, young journalist Laurie Sarkadi moves to the Subarctic city of Yellowknife seeking wilderness and adventure. She covers the changing socio-political worlds of Dene and Inuit in the late '80s--catching glimpses of their traditional, animal-dependent ways--before settling into her own off-grid existence in the boreal forest. There, she experiences motherhood and its remarkable synchronicities with the lives of caribou, dragonflys and other creatures. As a mother, and as a journalist, Sarkadi speaks up for abused women and children, creating controversies that entangle her in long, legal battles. When she looks to animals and the natural world for solace, she encounters magic. Lessons from the natural world arrive weekly, if not daily: black bears roam her dreams, as well as her deck, teaching introspection; wolves inspire her to persevere. This evocative memoir explores a more than two-decade long physical and spiritual journey into the wild spaces of northern Canada, around the globe and deep within.

"Usually, we take for granted or plain ignore the Earth we walk on, the Sky above, the Water we drink and bathe in or that falls as rain, the Fire we assume for heat, and the Wood that makes up our landscape and building materials. But over fifteen years as a construction carpenter, Kate Braid began to pay more attention to the materials she worked with and depended upon. Out of these she has crafted an intimate picture of what it is like to be wholly engaged with the elemental materials of earth, sky, water, fire and wood that we depend upon every day. Elemental is a poignant, intelligent collection that asks us to look more closely at ourselves and the details that construct our rich and delicate world."--

"When Melanie Farrell visits the neurologist and is told she has multiple sclerosis she isn't surprised by the diagnosis. What does shock her is the related prognosis. It seems that based on a new study that she only has six orgasms left. Six! Fortyish and single, Mel must decide how best to spend, save or at least not waste those precious orgasms. Mel's plans to make the most of her sex life proves easier said than done when other realities of living with MS demand even more of her attention. Should she max out her credit card on an experimental procedure in Costa Rica? How can she work to financially support herself and get the care she needs when she can hardly leave the house? Where are her friends when she needs them? Her choices become even more confusing when one day she meets a man who loves butterflies and is good with his hands. Is this the man of her dreams? Is romance what she's really looking for right now? Or is she looking for something even more? Funny, honest, heartbreaking and hopeful, A One-Handed Novel offers a fresh take on independence and disability, ambition and love, and the communities that help us cope when our bodies and our desires are ever-changing."--

"Eileen MacPherson is a child of eight when her beloved sixteen-year old brother, Francis, leaves home after a violent family episode. Over the next 25 years, everything she understands to be true changes but she never wavers in her yearning to understand the forces that have torn her family apart. The Light a Body Radiates tells the story of Eileen's passionate search for explanations in whispered fragments of conversation she overhears whenever she can slip into a room unseen. She gathers a whole storehouse of truths and myths, including her own, that lead her to a deeper understanding of how people, who love each other deeply, can find it impossible to bridge the gulf dividing them. While navigating the uneven road that leads to becoming a woman, Eileen's loyalty to family and home is pitted against her desire for love and art and a wider worldview. Along the way, she uncovers the cracks and crevices in her family's well-defended hearts and minds. The discovery that Francis is gay is only one piece of a larger puzzle-and when, in the end, it is a devastating AIDS diagnosis that brings Francis home, Eileen learns how love can transcend the forces of poverty and culture and distance. Set in working class Cape Breton, against the backdrop of the 60s revolution, the AIDS epidemic of the 80s, and the "culturally imperative migration" that urged so many away from the places they called home, The Light a Body Radiates is a story that engages powerfully with questions of place, secrets, loyalty, and what it means to "take care of your own.""--

By examining the brutal death of Sumas Lake, historian Chad Reimer revives aspects of Sto: lo culture and emboldens the cause for environmental conservation. In his new book, Before We Lost the Lake, Chad Reimer sets out to truly reclaim Sumas Lake, to restore it to its proper place in the history of the Fraser Valley, BC and the Northwest Coast. Drawing on extensive primary material, Reimer reconstructs the life history of Sumas Lake from the glacial age through the lake's demise and after. Before We Lost the Lake examines the lake's natural history and ecology, its occupation and use by the Sema: th and other First Nations, its colonization by White immigrants, the environmental changes brought about by introduced plants and animals, and the campaign to drain it. Drainage proponents had their way and gradually the promised benefits were realized. But these benefits came at a heavy cost to the environment and for the Sema: th, whose traditional way of life was irretrievably lost.

Imprint is a profound and courageous exploration of trauma, family, and the importance of breaking silence and telling stories. This book is a fresh and startling combination of history and personal revelation. When her son almost died at birth and her grandmother passed away, something inside of Claire Sicherman snapped. Her body, which had always felt weighed down by unknown hurt, suddenly suffered from chronic health conditions, and her heart felt cleaved in two. Her grief was so large it seemed to encompass more than her own lifetime, and she became determined to find out why. Sicherman grew up reading Anne Frank and watching Schindler's List with almost no knowledge of the Holocaust's impact on her specific family. Though most of her ancestors were murdered in the Holocaust, Sicherman's grandparents didn't talk about their trauma and her mother grew up in Communist Czechoslovakia completely unaware she was even Jewish. Now a mother herself, Sicherman uses vignettes, epistolary style, and other unconventional forms to explore the intergenerational transmission of trauma, about the fact that genes can be altered and carry memories, which are then passed down--a genetic imprinting. With astounding grace and strength, Sicherman weaves together a story that not only honours her ancestors but offers the truth to the next generation and her now nine-year-old son. A testimony of the connections between mind and body, the past and the present, Imprint is devastatingly beautiful--ultimately a story of love and survival.

Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers is a spiritual journey through experiences that can be liberating but also awkward and sometimes even dangerous, because women are so often excluded from conversations about spirituality. Liberation comes with breaking that age-old code of silence to talk about the messiness of faith, practice, religion and ceremony, to confess our sublimely unconventional modes of spiritual yearning. The writers in this volume, including Sharon Bala, Carleigh Baker, Eufemia Fantetti, Sue Goyette, K.D. Miller, Zarqa Nawaz, Alison Pick, Sigal Samuel, Ayelet Tsabari, Betsy Warland and others, many from marginalized or misunderstood communities, are speaking out so that others will speak up. Enough of fear. Enough of hiding out, tongue-tied. It's time for joy, humanity and frankness. It's time to step up and lead--not by running after answers, but by asking caring, daring questions. It's time for body and soul.

In her first full-length collection, award-winning poet Ruth Daniell offers work that is both earnest and hopeful, even in the face of trauma. In formally-exquisite and lyrical poems, The Brightest Thing tells the story of a young woman who is raped by her first boyfriend and her struggle afterwards to navigate her fairy-tale expectations of romantic love. This contemporary story of hurt and healing is paired with poems that give voice to silenced princesses from fairy tales--including Rapunzel, Donkeyskin, the little mermaid's sister and the princess who feels the pea beneath two hundred mattresses. At turns heartbreaking and joyful, with an unabashed eye for beauty and an unapologetic hope for love, Daniell questions the pursuit of "happily ever after," and probes deep into darkness while looking into the light.

Resolve: The Chelsea Story and a First Nation Community's Will to Heal explores the harrowing, personal journey of the Chelseas. Andy and Phyllis Chelsea met during their years spent at the St. Joseph's Mission School in Williams Lake, BC. Like the thousands of others forced into the church-run residential school system, the couple brought the trauma of their mission school years into their marriage and developed an unhealthy relationship to alcohol, as a result. When their own seven-year-old daughter refused to come home with the Chelsea's after a night out, Andy and Phyllis chose sobriety to preserve their family. This decision sparked a lifetime of activism for the couple, which included overcoming the challenges caused by Canada's disregard for their community. Throughout the twenty-seven years Andy was Chief of the Alkali Lake Esk'et First Nation, the Chelseas worked to eradicate alcoholism and took steps to overcome the rampant intergenerational trauma that existed for the people of Alkali Lake. Their efforts, their story and the perseverance of the members of their village have inspired Indigenous groups facing similar struggles throughout the world.

'I love this book.'' --Jann Arden ''Jules Torti takes you on a wild spin of a joy ride through her life as she looks for a place to call home.'' --Laurie Gough, author of KISS THE SUNSET PIG, KITE STRINGS OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS and STOLEN CHILD ''A walker, a talker and one helluva writer. An avid explorer of this flawed and fabulous world, a fearless and hilarious examiner of the heart's mysteries, Jules Torti is a brilliant dynamo who reminds us that the optimism of youth and the courage to be true to oneself are shining examples of how to live large, go big and find a forever home and true love. Unless you are a terminally timid wannabe writer with envy issues or a judgey prune with a pickle up your bum, you'll love this wonderful book!'' --Caroline Woodward, author of SINGING AWAY THE DARK and LIGHT YEARS: A MEMOIR OF A MODERN LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER

When a brain tumour takes the life of Becky Livingstons twenty-three-year-old daughter Rachel, her life makes an unconventional turn. Rachel, an avid traveller, had one wish: to keep exploring the world. So, for twenty-six months Livingston travels untethered and alone to Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, India, England, Ireland and North America, coast to coast. In her suitcase: Rachels ashes, heavy but compact. As she gradually merges her daughters remains with the elements, Livingston learns how to forge a new sense of belonging in an unfamiliar world. Is it reckless for a fifty-three-year-old mother to quit her job and set off overseas with no agenda or timeline? Is such a journey squandering a life, or saving it? The Suitcase and the Jar is a profoundly moving story of a mothers courage and resilience. It explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: how one finds the strength to reconfigure a new life by necessity. A poignant memoir, The Suitcase and the Jar is the story of a mothers transformative journey of surrender and belonging.

"What keeps us together? What breaks us apart? In Love Me True, 27 creative nonfiction writers and 15 poets explore the enormity of marriage and committed relationships and how they have challenged, shaped, supported and changed them. The stories and poems in this collection delve deep into the mysteries of long-term bonds. The authors cover a gamut of issues and ideas-everything from everyday conflicts to deep philosophical divides, as well as jealousy, adultery, physical or mental illness, and loss. There's happiness here too, along with love and companionship, whether the long-term partnering is monogamous, polyamorous, same-sex or otherwise. From surprise proposals, stolen quickies, and snoring to arranged marriage, affairs, suicide, and much more, the wide-ranging personal stories and poems in Love Me True are sometimes funny, sometimes harrowing, and always engaging as they offer their intimate and varied insights into the complex state that is marriage."--

Beautifully illustrated children''s story about Canadian wildlife by famed Canadian conservationist and Governor General Award-winning author, Roderick Haig-Brown. First published as a limited edition in 1980 by Colophon Books, ALISON''S FISHING BIRDS by BC''s acclaimed author and conservationist Roderick Haig-Brown is the story of a young girl''s encounter with some of BC''s most intriguing river birds. Alison''s favourite bird, the Dipper, lives along the river by her house. She spends many hours watching the "fierce and splendid" bird as it fishes for dinner, "bob, bob, bobbing" as it skitters and dives below the surface, always emerging with a tiny fish. Farther up the river bank, Alison catches a glimpse of the Belted Kingfisher hovering above the water, just waiting patiently for the perfect moment to "drop like a stone, headfirst in the water" only to emerge a few seconds later with a tiny wiggling silver fish in its beak. Alison encounters many other birds on her adventures and, true to Haig-Brown''s other stories, every bird, whether it is the Osprey, the Heron, or the Merganser, all have a lesson to share about their life and the natural world around them. For almost a century, Haig-Brown has been teaching children and adults alike to explore, learn, and respect our forests, oceans, and rivers. As one of Haig-Brown''s lesser-known stories, ALISON''S FISHING BIRDS is a gem that is long overdue on the shelves of popular children''s fiction. ALISON''S FISHING BIRDS is richly illustrated by acclaimed and talented artist Sheryl McDougald, and includes a preface by Valerie Haig-Brown.

Kara-lee MacDonald is a survivor. These poems are sophisticated explorations of anorexia and bulimia, from within and in retrospect, as the semiautobiographical narrator faces and overcomes her complex drives and compulsions. Through a variety of poetic forms, she explores the deep structures of body images and societal pressures that create and promulgate eating disorders and the culture of shame surrounding them. The poems will strike a chord in those who have experience with the illnesses and subtly educate those who have not. Throughout MacDonald maintains an edgy authenticity that will both horrify and inspire. From Princess Diana to the problem with baking and the tyranny of mirrors, this collection brings new life to a topic often discussed but seldom understood. Part trauma travelogue, part self-analysis, part cultural critique, part healing journey, MacDonald addresses the hidden world of the binge/purge purgatory. You will share in her struggle and triumph.

When author Kay Johnston first met Mazie Baker, she came to know her as the reigning queen of bannock, selling out batch after batch of fluffy, light frybread at local powwows. She soon learned that Mazie, a matriarch and an activist, had been nurturing and fiercely protecting her community for a lifetime. In 1931, Mazie Antone was born into the Squamish Nation, a community caught between its traditional values of respect-for the land, the family and the band-and the secular, capitalistic legislation imposed by European settlers. When she was six, the police carried her off to St. Paul''s Indian Residential School, as mandated by the 1920 Indian Act. There, she endured months of beatings, malnourishment and lice infestations before her family collected Mazie and her siblings and fled across the border. Once in Washington, the Antones weathered the Depression by picking fruit and working in the shipyard. After the war, the children were old enough that the family could safely return to their home on the Capilano Reserve. At sixteen, Mazie began working at a cannery; she packed salmon for eleven years, all the while learning to defend herself from supervisors and fellow packers foolish enough to make her a target. Mazie married her sweetheart, Alvie Baker, and together they raised nine children. Part of the legacy of residential school was that Mazie and her generation were alienated from their culture and language, but through her children, she reconnected with her Squamish identity. She came to mourn the loss of the old style of government by councils of hereditary chiefs and to criticize the corruption in the band leadership created in 1989 by federal legislation. Galvanized by the injustices she saw committed against and within her community-especially against indigenous women, who were denied status and property rights-she began a long career of advocacy. She fought for housing for families in need; she pushed for transparency in local government; she defended ancestral lands; she shone a bright light into the darkest political corners. Her family called her ch''sken: Golden Eagle. This intimate biography of a community leader illuminates a difficult, unresolved chapter of Canadian history and paints a portrait of a resilient and principled woman who faced down her every political foe, unflinching, irreverent, and uncompromising.

Jane Byers' Acquired Community is both a collection of narrative poems about seminal moments in North American lesbian and gay history, mostly post-World War II, and a series of first person poems that act as a touchstone to compare the narrator's coming out experience within the larger context of the gay liberation movement. The "parade" poems such as "Celebration Was a Side Effect, 1992" explores the important role parades have played in the queer movement and how they have transformed from activism to celebration. "St Patrick's Day Parade, 2014" takes the Boston St. Patrick's Day committee's homophobia to task, reminding us that this is not ancient history, but an ever-transforming experience. In her long poem, "Keen," Byers imagines a dialogue between a young queer university student and Michael Lynch, an AIDS activist, poet and scholar who helped found many gay community institutions. In this compelling poem we are reminded that the AIDS epidemic had a rippling effect, touching the lives of everyone within the gay community and well beyond. In this second book by Byers her poems go beyond the historical perspective of LGBT rights and are living examples of progress. Acquired Community examines and celebrates community resilience.

A young woman chronicles the experience of living on the margins, in spaces and places where body and mind are flayed by guilt, disappointments and betrayals. Her poems record the shattering trauma of struggling to survive through periods of doubt, fear, rage and pain, creating a narrative of disconnection, indignation, alienation and emptiness, the extremes of suffering and desperation. Employing lyrical free verse, Rani Rivera has skillfully employed the short line to pinpoint moments of acute perception. Unadorned, taut and precise cries of pain, loss and fury draw the reader deeper and deeper inside this in-your-face confrontation with a dark world of foreboding alleviated by flashes of mordant wit and grace under fire.

In 1917, during Canadas 50th anniversary, there was little celebration in the country as it entered the fourth year of World War I. This conflict had a tremendous economic and emotional impact on the various levels of government in the country and on the lives of many people in Canada. In western Canada, despite the turmoil and uncertain outcome of the war, one of the countrys major surveying projects continued. In 1913 the Alberta, British Columbia, and Dominion governments began surveying and marking the boundary between the two provinces along the Rocky Mountains. British Columbias representative, A O Wheeler, scaled many of the peaks along the Great Divide and did the phototopographic surveying. R W Cautley, the representative for the Alberta and Dominion governments, mapped the boundary through the economically important mountain passes. During the years of 1913-1917, the Boundary Commission surveyors mainly covered the area from Kicking Horse Pass to the United States border.

This mouthwatering, intimate, and sensual memoir traces Monica Meneghettis unique life journey through her relationship with food, family and love. As the youngest child of a traditional Italian-Catholic immigrant family, Monica learns the intimacy of the dinner table and the ritual of meals, along with the requirements of conformity both at the table and in life. Monica is thirteen when her mother is diagnosed with breast cancer and undergoes a mastectomy. When her mother dies three years later, Monica considers the existence of her own breasts and her emerging sexuality in the context of grief and the disintegration of her sense of family. As Monica becomes an adult, she discovers a part of her self that rebels against the rigours of her traditional upbringing. And as the layers of her sexuality are revealed she begins to understand that like herbs infusing a sauce with flavour, her differences add a delicious complexity to her life. But in coming to terms with her place in the margins of the margins, Monica must also face the challenge of coming out while living in a small town, years before same-sex marriage and amendments to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms created safer spaces for queers. Through risk, courage, and heartbreak, she ultimately redefines and recreates family and identity according to her own alternative vision.

Making Room: Forty Years of Room Magazine celebrates the history and evolution of Canadian literature and feminism with some of the most exciting and thought-provoking fiction, poetry, and essays the magazine has published since it was founded in 1975 as Room of One's Own. This collection includes poems about men not to be fallen in love with, trans womanhood, the morning-after pill, the "mind fuck" of being raped by a romantic partner, and a tribute to the women who were murdered in the Montréal Massacre. In one story, a group of sexual assault survivors meet weekly and come up with a unique way to help police capture their assailant, while in another a dinner party turns to witty talk of racism, sexism, pornography, and time travel. One author recounts how she learned multiple languages in order to connect with her father, another reluctantly walks down the aisle in order to stay in Canada with the man she loves. For forty years, Room has created a space for diverse voices. As Amber Dawn says in her opening essay, "There is Room. We do fit." Contributors include Carol Shields, Audrey Thomas, Marian Engel, M. NourbeSe Philip, Carmen Aguirre, Eden Robinson, Daphne Marlatt, Dorothy Livesay, Ayelet Tsabari, Ivan Coyote, Tracey Lindberg, Sina Queyras, Evelyn Lau, Jen Sookfong Lee, Gail Anderson-Dargatz, and more. With forewords by Eleanor Wachtel and Amber Dawn, interviews with four former Room editors, and an afterword by Room's current publisher and managing editor. "As you read this anthology, you will undoubtedly regard it as a timely collection of seventy-eight exceptional literary works. Please, also take a moment to marvel at how scarcity and shame have not claimed a single page, not a single line or word of this anthology. You, dear readers, and I, and the seventy-five remarkable contributors are both teaching and learning a new message, right now. Say it with me. There is Room. We do fit. " -- Excerpt from Amber Dawn's Overturning Scarcity: Forty Years of Abundant Change

Curious about the previous inhabitants of the lake community where her family has vacationed for over one hundred years, author Shelley O'Callaghan starts researching and writing about the area. But what begins as a personal journey of one woman's relationship to the land and her desire to uncover the history of her family's remote cabin, soon turns into an exploration and questioning of our rights as settlers upon a land that was inhabited long before we came.O'Callaghan's research discovers a depth to the history of the Valley that runs as deep as the 1000 metre lake. She discovers her grandfather's intriguing connection with the First Nation's chief whose ancestry goes back to the earliest recorded history at the lake, and her grandmother's attendance at a school where First Nations girls were taught servitude instead of knowledge.Through the summer of her research, she shares her discoveries with her six grandchildren as they set off on expeditions that make the past come alive. Together they find the headstone of an American scout with the 1858 International Boundary Commission Survey, a 1916 silver mine set up by Chief Sepass, and remnants of the original Indian Trail. They learn about trapper and prospector Charlie Lindeman, who introduced her grandfather to the lake in the early 1920s, and rescued her mother and grandmother from a fire that engulfed the lake in the 1930s.Together with her grandchildren they consider the impact of the legacy of white settlement in the area-what is received from the past and what is given to the future. And as they reflect on the essence of a "summer cabin," a place that brings family together and that nourishes the soul with its solitude and beauty, they gain a new perspective on the inevitable nature of change and privilege."Only someone with O'Callaghan's intimate attachment to 'the lake' could have written such an appealing history-cum-memoir of this out of the way corner of the province. A charming portrait of family life set against the historical changes that threaten the tranquility and isolation of so many unique wilderness retreats. Highly recommended." -- Daniel Francis, editorial director, Encyclopedia of British Columbia

Edited by Miriam Matejova, Wherever I Find Myself is a diverse collection of stories about the joys and struggles of immigrant women living in Canada. Often bringing with them the shadow of war and the guilt of leaving, the women in this new anthology expose their emotional pain but also their gratitude for being able to call Canada home. Their stories paint touching and charming portraits of cultural and linguistic misunderstandings, bureaucratic hurdles, attempts to navigate unfamiliar landscapes, and a desire to be accepted despite differences in accent, skin colour, or taste in food. Together they form a mosaic of emotions and world-views that underline the immigrant condition for women. A yellow dress with ruffles, a kind Grade 1 teacher with a surname that's difficult to spell, cockroaches in the bathroom, the contempt of strangers, and Whitney Houston on the radio-a Filipino woman recalls her experience as a six-year-old immigrant in a ghetto in Mississauga in the 80s. Browsing through a Polish fashion magazine at a European deli, a woman sees herself in an alternative universe of what her life might have been had she never immigrated to Canada. A same-sex couple moves from Minnesota to Ontario to find refuge for their love, but first they must drive a seventeen-foot truck through a blizzard and make it through the frustrating net of Canadian bureaucracy. In search of her origins, a Jewish woman travels to her birthplace in Passau, Germany. There, among rows of European picturesque houses and foreign tombstones of a Jewish cemetery, she finds no memories, only the shadow of Hitler and the ghosts of her parents. Through these stories of courage, aloneness, and hope, new and established writers reach out to both immigrants and those whose families long ago ceased to identify with the immigrant label. Through their struggles and, at times, endearingly critical looks at Canada, they remind us that many of our perceived divisions are nothing but artificial creations of mind and that all of us are past, current, or potential immigrants.

In 1945, Alfred Adams, a respected Haida elder and founding president of the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia (NBBC), was dying of cancer. After decades of fighting to increase the rights and recognition of First Nations people, he implored Maisie Hurley to help his people by telling others about their struggle. Hurley took his request to both heart and mind, and with $150 of her own money, started a small newspaper that would become a powerful catalyst for change: The Native Voice. At that time, the Welsh-born Hurley had been an advocate for First Nations clients in court. She did not have a law degree, but was graced with the courage and confidence to challenge all who stood in her way. When defending a First Nations woman accused of stealing a hotel clerk''s wallet, she seared the hapless plaintiff with such a withering cross examination that his off-colour rejoinder earned him a night in jail for contempt after he refused to pay the fine. After Hurley launched The Native Voice, it became the official newspaper of the NBBC, one of the largest democratic First Nations organizations in the country, but she continued to serve on the editorial board as publisher and director for many years without remuneration. At a time when telecommunication was expensive and often inaccessible in Aboriginal communities, The Native Voicereported relevant news and stories of everyday life to First Nations throughout the province, including hard-won rights such as the right to vote provincially (1949) and federally (1960). As the official publication of the NBBC, the VOICE chronicled both the realities of Aboriginal life and a vision for the future, enabling and inspiring overdue change in Canada. Maisie Hurley''s dedication to improving the lives of those she referred to as "my people" was honoured through several First Nations naming ceremonies by people of the Skeena, Squamish/North Vancouver and Comox areas. The story of the NBBC, The Native Voice and Maisie Hurley offer an inspiring testament to the power of cooperation and vision to create powerful change.