Triple Book Launch Event - Featuring Bill Gaston, Angie Ellis & Terence Young
Schedule
Tue Apr 14 2026 at 07:00 pm to 08:30 pm
UTC-07:00Location
1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC, Canada, British Columbia V8W 1Y2 | Victoria, BC
In Bill Gaston's travel memoir, "Spying on America", he recounts the time he took the Victoria–Port Angeles ferry with his two sons and travelled for eleven days to Tabor, Iowa - the town founded by his great, great, great-grandparents at the westernmost hub of the Underground Railroad. Their trip to Tabor and back takes them up and down and across a swathe of rural red states. Motivated equally by a curiosity to find out what really makes Americans tick and the motto ya gotta stop, the Gastons explore the American west, navigate unmapped dirt roads, eat too many French fries, overnight in clapped-out motels, visit a Buddhist mountain monastery, marvel at spectacular landforms, and enjoy unlikely conversations with real Americans. Both a sideways glance at contemporary American culture and a mordant yet tender account of the true meaning of ancestry, "Spying on America" is an unpredictably insightful exploration of family, Canada’s neighbour, and the “American bald ego.”
Angie Ellis' debut novel, "A Snake and a Feathered Bird", is set on Vancouver Island in 1875. Three-year-old Ben comes to live with Agda and her volatile husband James in their small wilderness cabin. Entranced by the lushly overarching rainforest, he helps his loving adoptive mere in the garden, learns his letters at the kitchen table and wonders what it would be like to go to school. When James takes Ben, age nine, on a whisky run, the boy is plunged into the rough world of a ramshackle coastal city. Left alone in a canoe he can barely paddle, he is saved from drowning by a man who is later found dead in the same sea. The frightened boy waits for James to reappear while in the care of James's sweet but listless niece Lily. When James and Ben return to the cabin, they find Agda injured and limping badly. In a few days, Agda is dead. And grieving Ben suspects James of being involved in both sudden deaths.
And finally, Terence Young's collection of short stories, "Give Us This Day", explores the weight of the past through a kaleidoscope of voices and styles. From retired grandparents thrust into unexpected childcare parenthood to young labourers adrift in mines and road crews, from teachers struggling to find meaning in their classrooms to couples at a crossroads, these stories capture the quiet reckonings of everyday existence. Whether intimate or expansive, meditative or urgent, each story reveals how missteps and circumstances shape identity, and how, for many, the past is never truly left behind. "Give Us This Day" is a profound meditation on regret, resilience, and the fragile beauty of human connection.
What: Triple Book Launch with Bill Gaston, Angie Ellis, & Terence Young
When: Tuesday, April 14th from 7:00-8:30pm (doors at 6:30)
Where: Munro's Books - 1108 Government St
How: Free to attend
Where is it happening?
1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC, Canada, British Columbia V8W 1Y2Event Location & Nearby Stays:



















