“Harold Macy’s sharply drawn characters—log graders and wharf rats, chokermen and food bank angels—live on outcast corners of Vancouver Island and the B.C. coast. Despite their hurts and losses, despite long hours in desperate beer parlors and sleazy motels, they achieve under his affectionate attention a gnarly transcendence, an unlikely but exhilarating triumph of spirit.”
~ Des Kennedy, author of Beautiful Communions
All the Bears Sing
Stories
_____________
HAROLD MACY
Harold Macy’s newest book, a collection of short stories depicting life in British Columbia, resonates with the land and the people who inhabit it.
Whether he’s chronicling the death song of a Douglas fir, the brassy orchestra of trumpeter swans or the sweet sap symphony of a tapped maple, Harold Macy contemplates the beauty of all that British Columbia has to offer with graceful lyricism and appreciation for the
the natural world, highlighting the particular magic of the West Coast.
It is the human ties to the land that shine in Macy’s stories: everyday fishermen and loggers, gardeners and wildland firefighters, maple harvesters, and weekend missionaries. From the rich bounty of the glacial loam to the wondrous stands of Sitka spruce, BC’s natural landscape is as much a character in Macy’s tales as any person.
With a genuine appreciation for the natural beauty of British Columbia, Macy’s collection reflects on how we both shape—and are shaped—by the land we inhabit.
Harold Macy is the author of The Four Storey Forest (Poplar Publishing, 2011) and San Josef (Tidewater Books, 2020), and has been published in various literary journals. He has worked for the BC Forest Service Research Branch, been a silviculture contractor for a local forestry company, fought wildfires, had rain in his lunch pail heli-logging up in the mid-coast inlets, and for many years was the forester at the UBC Oyster River Research Farm, where he wrote and delivered online and weekend courses in small-scale forestry and agroforestry. He studied writing with the UBC Mentorship Program, Victoria (BC) School of Writing, Sage Hills (SK), and North Island College.
Read reviews of All the Bears Sing
All the Bears Sing is published by Harbour Publishing, Madeira Park, BC