Bluebacks and Silver Brights A Lifetime in the BC Fisheries from Bounty to Plunder

More than a history of the Vancouver fishing industry, this collection of adventures set on the Pacific Ocean also serves as a compelling memoir. With dozens of salty tales of hardworking and hard-living fishermen and fish industry workers, this is the story of West Coast fishing from the Strait of Georgia, down to Steinbeck's Cannery Row, and even a look into New York's old-time, mob-controlled fish markets. With wisdom and insight, the tales also serve as an ecological warning, recalling the lost bounty of Canada's natural resources of a century ago, and their possible extinction today at the hands of government mismanagement and overfishing.

Norman Safarik has worked in the fish industry his entire life. He followed his father into the business, and has been succeeded by his son. For fifty years, he knew every fisherman and wholesaler in British Columbia, and along the west coast of the United States. His reach extended to New York City, Montreal, Japan, and Cuba. He lives in Vancouver, Saskatchewan. Allan Safarik is a poet and editor. He is the author of All Night Highway, Bird Writer’s Handbook, and How I Know the Sky Is a River. He has been shortlisted twice for the Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry, and he was a winner of the 2003 John V. Hicks Manuscript Award for Literary Nonfiction. He lives in Dundurn, Saskatchewan.