The journalist and author Alan Haig-Brown discusses his new book Raincoast Chronicles 25: m̓am̓aɫa Goes Fishing (Harbour Publishing, 2025), with Joseph Planta.

Raincoast Chronicles 25: m̓am̓aɫa Goes Fishing by Alan Haig-Brown (Harbour Publishing, 2025). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: m̓am̓aɫa Goes Fishing

Text of the introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, British Columbia, at TheCommentary.ca.  

Alan Haig-Brown joins me again. In a new book, he takes us to when he was a teenager in the 1960’s. He hadn’t quite finished high school, but found himself married into a fishing family. The Assu family had been fishing for generations, and since Alan was married to Herb and Mitzi Assu’s daughter Vicki, he found himself working on a fishing boat. It’s often tough work, and Alan recounts it all in Raincoast Chronicles 25: m̓am̓aɫa Goes Fishing. He’s got marvelous stories that provides insight as to what it’s like to make a living as the Assu’s did on the water. You get a sense of what it’s like navigating British Columbia’s west coast; and Herb did that without radar, the fishery resource as it was, and the challenges of life on a fishing boat in such close quarters. It really is a loving look at this formative time in Alan’s life, as he’d go on to work as an educator and then editor of the Westcoast Fisherman, and founding Westcoast Mariner and the Westcoast Logger. The book comes alive with Alan’s stories of adventure, and the occasional misadventure aboard the Assu boat. We also get a sense of the times, the relations that Indigenous peoples had with the commercial fishing industry, as well as how Alan found his way into this family, being a white guy. The book also comes alive with the photographs of Alan’s former wife Vicki Assu Robbins. Taken aboard and from the boat, you see what life was like on the coast over fifty years ago now. Alan Haig-Brown seined salmon and herring until 1973, and served for eleven years as coordinator of Indigenous education in the Cariboo-Chilcotin. A noted international marine journalist, Alan’s award-winning books for Harbour Publishing, which publishes Raincoast Chronicles 25, include Fishing for a Living, The Fraser River, and Still Fishin’, which he was on this program with in 2010. He divides his time between Bangkok, Thailand, and New Westminster, BC where he joined me from last week. Please welcome back to the Planta: On the Line program, Alan Haig-Brown; Mr. Haig-Brown, good morning.

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