Pacific-Rim Publishers, founded by Naomi and Elias Wakan, originated from a two week holiday in Japan that turned into a two year stay. During the elongated holiday/ESL teaching stint we took 6,000 slides.  On returning to Canada, we were pleased to discover that Japan had been introduced into the B.C. Ministry of Education Grade 6 Curriculum. We started to talk about Japan in the schools and developed a series of slide shows- Festivals of Japan, Japanese Mosaic, etc. Shortly after, we added some on Peru - Let's Visit Peru and The Incas - after Eli, who had lived in South America, especially went down at the cost of life (nearly) and pocket book (almost completely) to take slides of Peru.

From these presentations, which many of you will remember, we gathered and started to add a wealth of upbeat educational material. In the period between our first timid run of 100 copies of Food in Peru (which later went on to sell 1000), to our last title, the hardback book, Telling Tales on the Rim, Pacific-Rim Publishers flourished in its unsubsidized glory. From 1986-1996 Pacific-Rim Publishers published 23 titles, many of which are still available.

Naomi continues to write for other publishers and Eli has now become a full-time sculptor (www.eliaswakan.com)