Books
NEW BOOK RELEASED IN OCTOBER 2011:
Gracie’s Got a Secret
a picture book by Heather Conn, illustrated by Lillian Lai
a paperback published by MW Book Publishing
“There’s a spunky energy in the writing that goes along with the central motif.”
– Children’s author Dennis Lee
In Gracie’s Got a Secret, an impatient and feisty goldfish named Gracie escapes her fishbowl and leaves her family, determined to share a secret with the outside world. Along the way, she befriends a weepy alligator who’s stuck in the sewer and a circus elephant with dreams of freedom. By helping her new pals, Gracie learns to slow down and go with the flow, gaining remarkable results and a clear way back to a loving home.
This uplifting story invites children to believe in themselves, support others, and find their inner stillness. It comes with engaging questions to prompt discussion and help kids look at challenges with confidence and a positive attitude.
Gracie’s Got a Secret is available at select bookstores and on amazon.com. For details on author readings and related events, become a Facebook friend of Gracie’s Got Secret and check the Events Page of the Gracie website.
HEATHER’S PREVIOUS BOOK PUBLICATIONS:
Vancouver’s Glory Years: Public Transit 1890-1915
by Heather Conn and Henry Ewert
Whitecap Books, 2003
“A delightful and engaging tour”
State-of-the art vehicles attracted world attention. A specially designed hobbleskirt car found short-lived success with female passengers. Thieves and ne’er-do-wells terrorized riders while stray livestock and frightened horses caused traffic accidents. Discover the colorful human history of early public transit in Vancouver’s formative years, from political intrigue and racist policies to the little-known track work of Boris Karloff.
Learn how the birth of streetcars in Vancouver in 1890 spawned more than two decades of dizzying construction and expansion, transforming a rough terminal city into a booming urban center. Most of today’s major downtown streets and historic buildings appeared during this heady period.
This engaging photo history shares a new, sociocultural look at the city’s past, combined with many significant, never-before-seen images.
Here’s a peek at some content:
Vancouver’s Hobble Skirt Car – an antidote when a woman’s bare ankle was deemed obscene
To order the book from Whitecap Books, click here:
http://www.whitecap.ca/books/vancouvers-glory-years
To order from amazon.com, click here:
http://www.amazon.com/Vancouvers-Glory-Years-Public-Transit/dp/1552855171?tag=dogpile-20
The book features
- 170 B&W historic photos, some from private collections and published here for the first time
- 224 pages, with a foreword by former Vancouver mayor Larry Campbell
For more on this book, Read Urban Legends, a cover-story interview in Vancouver’s weekly West Ender (Dec. 18-23, 2003 issue): “A historian and author recreates Vancouver’s boom, and early fascination with transit”
“My goal was to look at the socio-cultural impact of transit. . .The rank and file are not officially part of the history, so I wanted to include them, and the role of women. . .Also there was phenomenal racism at the time against Asians. I wanted to make it as inclusive as I could.”
– quoted in cover story for Vancouver weekly WestEnder, Dec. 18-23, 2003
Here are some reviews:
“This fascinating book documents the beginnings of public transit in Vancouver with more than 150 photographs from the era. . . This is a great book for those interested in Vancouver’s early history.
– Trek (UBC alumni magazine)
“Vancouver had 65 years of electric streetcar service . . .A 2003 book, Vancouver’s Glory Years: Public Transit 1890-195, by Heather Conn and Henry Ewert, is a wonderful and profusely illustrated record of that era.”
– Chuck Davis, Vancouver Author and Historian, from webpage The History of Metropolitan Vancouver
www.vancouverhistory.ca/sunspots_apr.htm
“There is a marvelous fascination in reviewing the young city’s photographs documenting economic and cultural development. The authors make an excellent case for the introduction of electric street railways as a defining characteristic of present-day regional geography.”
– Victoria Times Colonist
“These stories are fleshed out wonderfully with many archive photos, some never before published, of a Vancouver that is beyond most of our living memories.”
– Coast Reporter
“Vancouver’s Glory Years: Public Transit 1890-1915 is a delightful and engaging tour of Vancouver’s transit history. Authors Heather Conn and Henry Ewert have provided all of us with an insightful reminder of how deep an imprint the streetcars and interurbans left on Vancouver and the surrounding region. Congratulations to them for their tremendous efforts.”
- Vancouver mayor Larry Campbell, from the book’s foreword
“Vancouver’s Glory Years comes on the eve of a mini-interurban revival in B.C., as transit heritage societies in Burnaby, Richmond and Chilliwack work feverishly to display refurbished trams in their communities.”
- WestWorld magazine, summer 2004 (see news for full text)
The book’s origins
While archiving historic photos at BC Transit, I marvelled at the images of turn-of-the-century vehicles and passengers. However, these photos from decades past sat in boxes in a cupboard, unseen by anyone. This inspired me to seek a way to share the photos with others. Why not a book?
I discussed the idea with consultant Henry Ewert, an expert on transit history who was helping me to identify and document many of the images. (We had a surprisingly great time working in a windowless cubbyhole, swapping stories like two kids unwrapping treasures in a secret attic.) Henry loved the idea of a book. I went ahead and wrote a proposal, we made a successful presentation to Whitecap Books, and off we went.
We pored over thousands of photos in various archives across B.C.’s Lower Mainland, delighting in our then-and-now perspective. We narrowed down our selection initially to about 500 images. We made our final picks based on regional and thematic representation, quality, rareness, and publication rate of each photo.
Other books
My writing has appeared in these books:
- Vancouver, Victoria & Whistler: Colour Guide – a feature on Vancouver’s arts and entertainment scene plus a tourist summary of the Sunshine Coast, B.C., Formac Publishing, Halifax, NS, 2009
- Vancouver & Victoria: Colour Guide — a tourist summary of the Sunshine Coast, B.C., Formac Publishing, Halifax, NS, 2008
- Vancouver’s Trolley Buses, 1948 - 1998 - Celebrating a Half-Century of Service, BC Transit, Surrey, BC, 1998
- “The Roommate”, Supernatural Stories Around British Columbia, Penticton Writers & Publishers, Penticton, 1997
- “Early Coastal Explorers” and “The Origins of Stanley Park”, The Greater Vancouver Book, edited by Chuck Davis, The Linkman Press, Vancouver, 1996
- Inner Expression - a journal celebrating women (five poems), edited and published by Shera Street, Galiano Island, 1996
- “Adrift”, Chasing Halley’s Comet (creative non-fiction), Laughing Willow Press, Vancouver, 1995
Review of Vancouver’s Trolley Buses:
“This superb book, produced by enthusiastic transport professionals, raises the standard expected of official histories . . .With a good mix of formal narrative, nuts and bolts detail, and personal anecdote, the book will appeal to enthusiasts and interested locals alike.”
– John Priestley, Journal of the National Trolleybus Assocation (Jan/Feb 1999)