Book on coastal travel in '30s still a bestseller
Travels on the coast in the 1930s form the backdrop of The Curve of Time, first published in 1961. More than 45 years later, this treasured memoir of a widow and her five children spending their summers exploring the BC coast on a 25-foot boat, continues to be one of the best-selling non-fiction books in BC.

"This is neither a story nor a log," M. Wylie Blanchet, the author, states in her book. "It is just an account of many long summer months, during many years, when the children were young enough and old enough to take on camping holidays up the coast of British Columbia. Time did not exist; or if it did, it did not matter, and perhaps it was not always sunny."

Kathy Sinclair, BC correspondent for canadiancontent.ca, states in a review on the website: "Think of Blanchet as a kind of motherly, non-painting Emily Carr. Her great enthusiasm for the mountains, waterfalls, wildlife and oceans that become a part of her family's everyday life is what makes these stories so interesting."

The author was navigator, pilot, and engineer. The rugged coastline explored by the family is largely unchanged today--beautiful, unpredictable and, at times, dangerous. There is a story of the family's trip up to Princess Louisa Inlet when the Man from California was building the first log building near Chatterbox Falls; travels up Desolation Sound and Toba Inlet; and the hair-raising tale of entering Seymour Inlet through Nakwakto Rapids.

The Powell River Peak, Canada