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Good news. Divorce is back. Matrimonial bliss-off has been laid out for would-be divorcers once more in Alison Sawyer's Divorce Guide for Canada (Self-Counsel $49.95), this time with CD ROM included.

Here's the story.

Having published Divorce Guide for B.C., Jack James, a UBC articling student, walked into Select Books in New Westminster, between the Dairy Queen and the library, and met bookseller Diana Douglas about 31 years ago. It was a guidebook romance. Although Douglas is the daughter of Jim Douglas, founder of J.J. Douglas, forerunner of Douglas & McIntyre, western Canada's best known publishing house, at the time she was leaving behind a one-year stint milking cows on 120 acres near Duncan. She wasn't doing it Dad's way. James and Douglas partnered in business, then marriage, then untied the knot. They knew how. She bought Self-Counsel Press in 1984. A single mom of three, Douglas built a plethora of how-to titles into an empire of sorts-International Self-Counsel Press Ltd-often considered the most consistently successful publishing enterprise in the province.

Like death and taxes, making wills, starting businesses, fund raising, exporting, probate, marketing and 'Get Rich Through Multi-Level Selling' don't wane in significance. Divorce never goes out of style either. According to Self-Counsel, there were 52,712 Canadian divorces in 1998. Sawyer's Divorce Guide for Canada promo makes the sales pitch clearly: Love is grand, divorce is at least ten grand. Alison Sawyer, having specialized in family law and immigration issues, was also Director of Training for the Legal Services Society from 1982 to 1986 and a staff lawyer in the Vancouver intake office of Legal Services from 1987 to 1991. Sawyer is hereby appointed to do a follow-up, How To Miraculously Maintain A Gutted Legal Aid System In Order To Ensure Every Citizen In British Columbia Has Access To Legal Counsel.

1-55180-366-6

[BCBW SUMMER 2002] "Advice"