Thanks to a generous gift from the UPS Foundation and Pflag Canada, our chapter has a selection of books available for loan. You can view the list of books here.

If there is a title that you'd like to borrow, let us know and we'll arrange to get it to you. If there are any books that you have enjoyed and would recommend we add to our library, we'd love to hear about those as well!

Tomboy Survival Guide isn’t labeled an autobiography, but in it, Ivan Coyote tells stories arranged chronologically from their childhood in the Yukon and Nanaimo, B.C., to their present life as a speaker and activist. Read from beginning to end, it tells the story of their life to date, yet each chapter can be read separately as a wonderful short story or essay.

Coyote’s mother and grandmother were the main influences in their early life. “The women in my family handled most of the practical details of everyday life.”

Ivan always felt that something in their life was not quite right, but navigated elementary and high school being pretty much an outsider, but with one or two good friends. They then chose a career as an electrician, which meant studying and apprenticing in a group of men and one other woman. Again there were bullies and one or two quietly supportive people who saw them through.

Many of the stories are about extended family, with whom Ivan is very close. They are supportive to the point where one cousin was reluctant to attend the “gender reveal” party of another, saying gender wasn’t that important. Ivan persuades him to go, and after the big moment when the baby is revealed to be a girl, this cousin mutters “For now”.

One chapter is all about scars, from one on their chin incurred while trying a jump too far as a six year old, to the two circles on their chest from top surgery at forty-four. Like the rest of the book, this chapter is about Ivan, the whole human being, as well as Ivan, the trans man.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in sexual and gender diversity. It provides a unique insight into one person's experience of what it is to be trans.

As an added bonus the reader may learn something from the detailed diagrams of appliances and various types of knots.