Cynthia Jones & The Union Steamship

"Maybe my story can be a tiny beam of light in a large, dark cave," says Anneke Lucas in the podcast that begins to tell her story, from her book QUEST FOR LOVE.

"Elite pedophilia is the world’s best protected secret.

Your eyes cannot help but see what is here: the sight of someone like yourself

And then you think: How can this be? Is that really all the time there is left?

A chance encounter in the dark winter days of December 2022. A benevolent energy in a hospital room with snaking tubes and mystery signs, the face of a newborn and a lifetime of important people. All gathering for Sebastian. Except for the visitor, who is missing the opportunity to connect.

Naïve but adventurous, twenty-two years young and fresh out of university, Public Health Nurse Marion McKinnon accepts an assignment for a four day, multi stop, two-hundred mile trip from Williams Lake to Anahim Lake into the vast Cariboo-Chilcotin country of British Columbia. It’s December and the first snow has fallen across the land. The year is 1963. The weather forecast: twenty-two degrees below freezing.

The view is breathtaking and the roads treacherous.

And what if she gets lost? Or skids into a snowbank? In 1963, Marion is on her own in the wild but beautiful country, deep in winter - no cell phone, no two way radio. Just a chocolate bar and a candle . . . and the enthusiasm of her youth.

A flight attendant with 25 years seniority works through the early pandemic. An essential worker with close family ties and lots of friends.

Suddenly, her life is upended.

BC author Claudia Cornwall’s discovered almost 30 years ago that she was descended from family murdered in the Holocaust by a Waffen SS Sargent named Arlt. The remaining details were shrouded in the mystery of her grandparents’ last moments, one historical May day in a forest in Minsk. 80 years after their death, Cornwall received their executioner’s first name, his photograph. And many unanswered questions.

What happens to a robust 49-year old 
with Omicron in a BC hospital in 31 days?

A Mother's account of her son's care in a British Columbia hospital between November 2021, and a few days before Christmas.

At 19 weeks pregnant, a young Indigenous woman must make an excruciating decision - within hours - to save the lives of her unborn twins. "I remember being so afraid." This story has it all: fear, love, pain and alienation. Courage, community, and resilience. A generous, joyful storyteller.

Forever changed by her two pregnancies, Amanda Snelson tells of the unpredictable and complicated process of 2 births. As part of the discussion around Women's Choice and Roe v Wade, Amanda's story introduces new considerations to the complex picture of individual soverignty over our bodies.

My Mother's Story is a project that encourages everyone to write the facts of their mothers’ lives. It's a series of anthologies begun by Marilyn Norry. This is the story of DORIS, told by her daughter, Colleen Winton. My Mother's Story: Gone Too Soon is the latest anthology in the series and is now available.

How would your life be different if you couldn't drive a car? If once a week, a steamship arrived at the dock with supplies to keep you going for the next week? If your husband and the father of your children came home on "The Daddy Boat" once a week?

Cynthia Jones Meets The Union Steamship at 1 AM tells of a much simpler time on the Sunshine Coast - when anyone could go out in a sabot and grab a fish with her bare hands, when hospitals were miles from each other, when most lived in float houses by the light of a kerosene lamp.