Why we do what we do…

THE STORY OF 608 Hope Street

I figure that if you have made it to this page it is because you are slightly curious about who is behind 608 Hope Street. So here it is!

My name is Darcy Jamieson, the creative mind behind it all! Over the past 20 years I have accumulated a mishmash of experience in various Project Coordination positions in industries such as the Home Entertainment, Advertisement, Garment Trade, Electrical Manufacturing, Interior Design, Outdoor Goods, and then some!

Since 2009 Graphic Design has moved to the forefront of my activities. I have freelanced but also have worked for various companies. My flavour is print medias! Flyers, Posters, Cards, Books, T-Shirts, etc. What you can hold in your hands and feel with your fingertips! I will agree to design visuals meant for the interwebs, but I stubbornly refuse to take on website design. Even getting my own site going was several months of disgruntled procrastination (lol!). I do have some fantastic collaborators though.

608 Hope Street started in 2017, a year after I had relocated my life from Montreal to the West Coast of British Columbia. Six zero eight was the door number on the first home I rented after my bold (but necessary) restart. I didn’t literally live on Hope Street but it felt just as such. A hopeful new beginning! For a while I designed Driftwood Jewelry and Driftwood Home Decor accessories. In all honesty, it simply allowed me to indulge in my Beach Combing proclivities but, I quickly resumed taking on freelance Design projects. In the more recent years I’ve been offered self-publishing book projects which have set my soul on fire! I will admit to being one of those people who will spend several hours in a second hand book store for the simple reason that it makes me genuinely happy. Full-on dopamine release and shivers up the spine! #booknerd. My most prized book is a 1896 Macmillan Co. copy of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. I’ve spent as much time smelling it as I have reading it!

The ultimate goal with 608 is to build a publishing house comprised of thousands of unassuming authors. A collective, if you will. Unsung wordsmiths, poetic underdogs, unpolished tale tellers, diffident story vaults. Through my own life’s journey I have learned that every story deserves to be told and that you do not need to be an academic prodigy or a best-selling author to hold thoughts and wisdom deserving of an audience. The reservoirs of our individual successes and battles are a panacea for our collective wounds. There is a healing force in writing, as much as there is a regenerative power in the blessing and witnessing of the reader.

I often describe the making of a book similar to the process of surrogacy: You hand me your seed and I will deliver your baby. And it makes me so unbelievably happy to do it! A humble honour and privilege to be part of your literary legacy.

I hope that I will get to read YOUR story!