Darril Fosty now runs Dominion Books in Ashcroft, where he combines his love of history, sports, and writing<\/p>\n
It\u2019s only 60 miles from Kamloops to Ashcroft, but Darril Fosty\u2019s journey from the former to the latter took him 35 years.<\/p>\n
That journey took him several thousand miles, to Washington State and then the eastern United States, where he lived for many years, and through several different careers. He has been a journalist and sports reporter, and worked for an Internet security start-up. He never forgot his days growing up in Kamloops, however, where his family moved when he was in Grade One.<\/p>\n
\u201cI used to go to Bob\u2019s PX on Victoria Street, which had books and candy and soda and knick-knacks. My brother would buy books, mostly on World War II, and to me as a kid it was the greatest place to go. It left its mark on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
His father was also a history buff, watching documentaries on TV, and Fosty says his dad and brother\u2019s interest in the subject started rubbing off on him from an early age. \u201cI get my love of history from them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Add to that a lifelong love of sports, and the result was Fosty\u2019s first book, Splendid is the Sun: The 5,000 Year History of Hockey, co-written with his brother George and published in 2003. It was followed in 2004 by Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes 1895-1925, also written with George. A documentary short film called Black Ice, which Fosty wrote, produced, and directed, won the award for Best Documentary Short at the 2008 Roxbury Film Festival in Boston.<\/p>\n
Where Brave Men Fall: The Battle of Dieppe and the Allied Espionage War Against Hitler, 1939-1942 was written by both brothers and published in 2013. It pointed a finger at major news organizations in Britain and America that might have leaked information to the Germans prior to the disastrous Allied raid on Dieppe in August 1942.<\/p>\n
More controversy followed with the publication (in 2022) of Nais-Myth: Basketball\u2019s Stolen Legacy, in which the brothers (along with Brion Carroll) produced evidence to show that basketball was not invented by Canadian James Naismith in 1891, but had instead been invented by a 16-year-old first generation Austrian-American boy in the small New York village of Herkimer in 1890, and had been played in small communities in New York\u2019s Mohawk Valley for a year before Naismith\u2019s \u201cinvention\u201d of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything we write about is very little-known,\u201d says Fosty. \u201cWhat we\u2019re looking for is unknown aspects of things. We were asked to write the Naismith book off a photo. Only four people had ever written about the Black hockey league. We get our starting point and then go down avenues, looking for everything we can possibly find.\u201d<\/p>\n
He laughs. \u201cWe\u2019ve been very successful creating a limited brand.\u201d<\/p>\n
He admits that while both he and George are strong on research and recall, storytelling can be a challenge. \u201cI\u2019m not a natural wordsmith, so it\u2019s a question of \u2018How do you make it palatable?\u2019 What I counter that with is unknown and compelling history, remarkable true stories.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also acknowledges that he\u2019s caught some breaks. \u201cOne was from a Black intern working at ESPN. The documentary on Black Ice really opened some doors. And we\u2019ve been lucky to be covered by major media outlets. People ask \u2018How do you become a writer?\u2019 It\u2019s just luck. You catch somebody\u2019s eye.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fosty is currently working on a book about the Underground Railroad, which will serve as a loose prequel to Black Ice because of the connection between the railroad and Nova Scotia. He\u2019s doing this work from Dominion Books, which he opened on Railway Avenue in Ashcroft in February. The store has more than 2,000 nostly new books, with a large selection of books about local and B.C. history, as well as a good collection of sports memorabilia of all types.<\/p>\n
Opening a bookstore was a natural step for him, because he missed the bookstores he was familiar with in Boston and New York, and because of that early influence of going to Bob\u2019s PX in Kamloops.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole store is based on two things: Bob\u2019s PX, and what I like to see,” he says. “It\u2019s a comfortable space to write in, and has a throwback feel to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I thought \u2018No one will start a bookstore here, so I\u2019ll do it.\u2019 I wanted to add something to the town, and it\u2019s turned into a part-time job. It\u2019s not meant to be a primary source of income; it\u2019s more of a passion.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s had a chance to learn what sort of books locals want, and says there is a big demand for Westerns and for Western Canadian history, two areas he\u2019s continuing to expand. \u201cI can\u2019t keep Canadian histories in stock. I started with 2,000 books in order to fill the space, and ended up with too much of some things, not enough of others, so I want to get the right mix.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea with Dominion Books, he says, is for it to be a very Canadian-oriented thing. He notes that it doesn\u2019t come as naturally for Canadians to celebrate Canada as it does for Americans to celebrate their country.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want the store to become more Canadian with authors, more Canadian books, and things like the hockey cards tie in with that. And I\u2019m happy I named it what I did. Canadians have realized who we are again. It\u2019s easy to forget about our own history.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looks around the shop. \u201cI\u2019m living the dream in some ways. I feel back home again in this area. I\u2019ve lived in the States, and am an American citizen, but you don\u2019t give up who you are, and it\u2019s nice to reconnect with people you knew from first grade.\u201d<\/p>\n
And while he admits to missing the bright lights of New York City, he feels he\u2019s become \u201cpart of the neighbourhood\u201d in Ashcroft. \u201cMy day now is writing in here, talking to people, writing again. I know so many people now, and it\u2019s a stage of life, an experience, so you take it for what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dominion Books is located at 415 Railway Avenue, Ashcroft and is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Darril Fosty now runs Dominion Books in Ashcroft, where he combines his love of history, sports, and writing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[16087,353,49,48,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-18833","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-ashcroftbookstores","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}