Jesse Donaldson – författare

BC Bestseller! Even before it was a city, Vancouver was a property speculator's wet dream. "There are more speculators about New Westminster and Victoria than there were in Winnipeg during the boom," CPR Chief WC Van Horne warned a friend in 1884, "and they are a much sharper lot. Nearly every person is more or less interested and you will have to be on your guard against all of them." Ever since Europeans first laid claim to the Squamish Nation territory in the 1870s, the real estate industry has held the region in its grip. Its influence has been grotesquely pervasive at every level of civic life, determining landmarks like Stanley Park and City Hall, as well as street names, neighbourhoods, even the name "Vancouver" itself. Land of Destiny aims to explore that influence, starting in 1862, with the first sale of land in the West End, and continuing up until the housing crisis of today. It will explore the backroom dealings, the skulduggery and nepotism, the racism and the obscene profits, while at the same time revealing that the same forces which made Vancouver what it is, speculation and global capital, are the same ones that shape it today, showing that more than anything else, the history of real estate and the history of Vancouver are one and the same. And it's been dirty as hell. About the Series: Land of Destiny is the first title in Anvil's new series "49.2: Tales from the Off Beat," an ongoing series dedicated to celebrating the eccentric and unusual parts of city history. From Jesse Donaldson, author of the Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award finalist book This Day In Vancouver, and a host of other local historians, the series will be an in-depth examination of the weird, the wonderful, and the terrible, injecting fresh details into well-worn local lore, or digging deep into the obscure people, places, and happenings of the last 130 years. From psychedelic hospitals to town fools, from communist organizers to real estate scumbags, 49.2 will take pains to break down the myths surrounding the City of Glass.

Fool's Gold: The Life and Legacy of Vancouver's Official Town Fool is the second release in Jesse Donaldson's 49.2: Tales from the Off Beat, an ongoing series dedicated to celebrating the eccentric and unusual aspects of Vancouver. In Fool's Gold, Donaldson explores the legacy of Joachim Foikis. On April 1, 1968, a tall, bespectacled, 35-year-old former social worker named Joachim Foikis received $3,500 from the Canada Council for the Arts in order to finance a unique, self-imposed mission unseen since Elizabethan England: reinvent the vanished tradition of "Town Fool." The 35-year-old Foikis, who held two university degrees (one in economics from the University of Berlin, and the other in literature from the University of British Columbia), was already well known throughout the city for his off-kilter antics. His aim, according to interviews with The Sun and The Province, was "to spread joy and confusion" while at the same time "mock the four pillars of society: money, status, respectability, and conformity." Praise for Donaldson's previous book, This Day in Vancouver: "Donaldson combed through archives all around the city and consulted with experts of all stripes to put together the book. The result is a fascinating read - it's everything you never knew about Vancouver and didn't think to ask. Once you flip through this book, you'll never look at the city the same way again." (The Province)

From the street, New Westminster's Hollywood Hospital didn't look like much - just a rambling white mansion, mostly obscured behind the holly trees from which it took its name. But, between 1957 and 1968, it was the site of more than 6000 supervised acid trips, as part of the burgeoning (and controversial) field of psychedelic psychiatry. Under the care of Medical Director J Ross MacLean, and ex-spy/researcher Al "Captain Trips" Hubbard, it became a mecca for alcoholics, anxiety patients, and unhappy couples (as well as celebrities like Andy Williams), its unorthodox methods boasting a success rate of nearly 80%. But the same media attention that brought the hospital to prominence also assured its downfall, as prohibition forces drove their work underground for more than 50 years. Written by 49.2 regular Jesse Donaldson and academic historian Erika Dyck, The Acid Room takes readers into the hospital's inner sanctum, charting its meteoric rise and fall as it opened up brave new worlds in medicine, and put Canada at the forefront of a movement that is only now being fully explored.

The City of Vancouver has been through a lot in its first 125 years. Its a city that has played host to the likes of Mark Twain, Alice Cooper, Elvis Presley, Winston Churchill, The Beatles, Louis Armstrong, Howard Hughes, Expo 86, and the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. Its the birthplace of Canadas first female MLA, the countrys first (and largest) clothing-optional beach, and the reason for the first nationwide prohibition legislation. It was the final resting place of Errol Flynn, and the city where two of his genital warts were briefly (and posthumously) kidnapped. It has been a hotbed of political activism, technological innovation, and bitter racial tension. It is the site of the West Coasts first electric light, and the nations first female police officers, as well as home to world-renowned actors, deadly snipers, twisted serial killers, UFOs, the founders of Greenpeace, an official Town Fool, and even the headquarters for the Canadian Ku Klux Klan. Its a city on a journey; a journey that has taken it from being an unrefined, out-of-the-way, frontier logging village, to its current position as one of the most livable cities in the world. This Day in Vancouver will be the story of that 125-year journey, one day at a time. Adapted from The Dependent magazines highly successful online column of the same name, and drawn from more than 13 months of research, each of the books pages will be dedicated to a day of the calendar year, featuring a noteworthy event,historical curiosity, or ridiculous headline from Vancouvers past. Seeking to capitalize on renewed interest in the citys historyan interest fostered by recent 125th anniversary celebrationseach entry will seek to relate the days events to the history and development of the city as a whole, thus providing not only a historical snapshot, but a broader understanding of many of the individuals and locations that have contributed to the creation of Vancouvers unique cultural identity. In addition, many of the entries will be accompanied by a relevant full-sized historical photograph on the facing page, selected from the thousands of images available in the city archives.

One day, Jesse Donaldson wakes up in Portland, Oregon, and asks his wife to uproot their life together and move to his native Kentucky. As he searches for the reason behind this sudden urge, Donaldson examines both the place where he was born and the life he’s building. The result is a hybrid—part memoir, part meditation on nostalgia, part catalogue of Kentucky history and myth. Organised according to Kentucky geography, with one passage for each of the commonwealth’s 120 counties, On Homesickness examines whether we can ever return to the places we’ve called home.