The memoirs of Cortes and Quadra Island pioneers Charles and Mabel Smith were published by their son Jim Kirk of Denman Island, an historian for the Denman Seniors Museum. The family memoir Goosegrass and Buttercups recalls Mabel's youth on a farm in Quebec and at Powassen, Ontario. Charles Smith from Liverpool went to sea at age eleven, jumped ship in Montreal and met his wife Mabel when they were working at a hotel in North Bay, Ontario. They later lived on Cortez and Quadra Islands, as well as Gibson's Landing and Victoria. Jim Kirk's wife Doris was unable to complete their story prior to her death in 1997, so Jim Kirk eventually released it in pamphlet format.

After more than 50 years on Denman Island, taking over the general store and post office in 1950, Jim Kirk re-published and revised Winnie Isbister's twice-printed My Ain Folk (1976), covering Denman Island's history from 1875 to 2000. Kirk's wife Doris started the Denman Island Seniors Museum. Jim Kirk's own memoirs, This and That and Other Things, are available from the Abraxas bookstore on Denman Island.

[BCBW 2009] "Local History"