


A prayer psalter, written entirely in Cree, from St.Then there are the forgotten treasures that slip out of the books themselves: banknotes, love letters, fading school photos (question: did hairdressers/barbers actually hate children in 1966?), baptismal certificates…. Or a set of brass knuckles, or an FBI fingerprint kit, or a fruit pie, all of which have emerged over the years. The book sale volunteers never know what they’re going to find when they open the bags and boxes dropped off by readers each year.Ĭould be a rare first edition like the Alice Munro novel that popped up this week, or it could be yet another copy of Fifty Shades Of Grey. Did Douglas become one of those casualties? And what about the diary itself - was its donation to the book drive intentional?

Douglas of Bassano, Alta., the tiny, pocket-sized diary chronicles life in the trenches in 1916, beginning on New Year’s Day (“Got a double shot of rum”) and ending in the first week of June (“Fighting still fierce as ever, casualties very high.”) It was in a First World War soldier’s diary, found among the hundreds of thousands of books donated to this weekend’s Times Colonist Book Sale.īelonging to a Pte. Then it goes on to talk of gas attacks, blanketless nights in the snow, a young man’s hand being blown off and - a note of joy here - a day with a hot bath. “Terrible bombardment today,” one entry reads.
