Somewhere between joyous affirmation of British Columbia's splendour and momentous grief for the destruction of a once thriving salmon culture comes the newest work from acclaimed poet and novelist Tim Bowling. The Lost Coast is a lyrical, impassioned lament for the home Bowling once knew and for the river and creatures that continue to haunt his imagination.
Raised in Ladner, BC, by a gillnetting family, Bowling was a fisherman himself until the mid-1990s. The loss of the West Coast's salmon culture is felt deeply by Bowling; this is a betrayal of his birthright and a decimation of his children's heritage. The Lost Coast asks hard questions of politicians, fishermen, fish farmers, industrialists and of the three million people currently inhabiting Greater Vancouver. What is the story behind the pioneers who built this province? What is the secret life of the killer whale and the great blue heron? And above all else, who caused, and continues to hasten, the diminishment of the Pacific salmon, British Columbia's most totemic creature?
With a poet's attention to details of the spirit, and a novelist's flair for character and story, Tim Bowling elevates his cherished homeland to the realm of enduring myth.
"For [Bowling], the salmon are gods and the Fraser takes on dimensions that make it confluent with the Styx, Thames, Congo and Lethe. There is always something vital at stake in Bowling's work, and rarely do the trivia of modern writers' preoccupations seep in.... [T]his book... is a work of transcendent beauty and anger - and somewhat surprisingly, it is also a work of hope.
"Bowling... offers glimpses into his own present-day existence -- car-free, TV-free, independent -- as a simple example of how one might go about restaking a claim to wildness and severing ties to the massing forces of infinite economic expansion. The more of us who follow his counsel and ways, the better off we'll be."
--Zachariah Wells, Vancouver Review
