Bob Ross is well-connected. Vancouver's Cambie Street is named for his great-grandfather Henry Cambie who surveyed the West Coast inlets in 1874 to select a terminus for the first railway. Tatlow Park in Vancouver is named for his grandfather Robert Tatlow, a provincial MLA who also founded the BC Telephone Company. His Cornwall relatives homesteaded the Ashcroft Ranch in 1862. As a retired traffic engineer for the City of Vancouver, Ross has fashioned his memories of a Vancouver boyhood for The Cucumber Tree (Sandhill $18.95). There's nothing particularly special about his childhood, and therein lies the book's charm. It is an attempt to illuminate the typical Kitsilano upbringing during the 1940s and 1950s, with summer camps on Pasley Island, driving trips to the Cariboo and lots tree-climbing in the days before children weren't overly coddled and paranoically protected. 978-0-9812991-0-5