Articles
article
article
article
article
We acknowledge that we live and work on unceded Indigenous territories and we thank the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations for their hospitality.
Established in 1969, BC Studies is dedicated to the exploration of British Columbia's cultural, economic, and political life; past and present.
Each issue offers articles on a wide range of topics, in-depth reviews of current books, and a bibliography of recent publications.
BC Studies welcomes the submission of articles, research notes, and soundworks dealing with all aspects of British Columbia.
Featuring an interactive map of BC Studies articles; photos and videos of BC, and BCS blogs.
The latest news and announcements from BC Studies including upcoming events and more.
To read the full issue online, visit our OJS site.
Add to Cart - $20.00 View in OJSarticle
article
article
article
Book Review
The history of Canada’s Pacific relations has long been a neglected subject. The general consensus was that Pacific relations were not central to understanding the history of the country and its place in the world....
Book Review
In this important book, Ilya Vinkovetsky of Simon Fraser University places the story of Russia’s American experiment fully within the history of colonialism. Russian America was a unique colonial adventure, he argues, in which the...
Book Review
Arv Olson’s second edition of Backspin expands readers’ acquaintance “with accounts of some of the people, places, and events” that shaped the 120 year history of golf in British Columbia (11). A journalist and golf...
Book Review
Train Master: The Railway Art of Max Jacquiard, the new book by the noted transportation historian Barry Sanford, looks at British Columbian railways from 1925 to 1955, as depicted in ninety-nine paintings by Jacquiard. The...
Book Review
This book is splendid work of popular political history, biography, and related media study that co-authors Geoff Meggs (a former communications director to Premier Glen Clark) and Rod Mickleburgh (a veteran of the west coast...
Book Review
In this book, Grace Li Xiu Woo, a retired member of the BC Bar, steps away from a standard case law analysis and instead analyzes Supreme Court decisions related to Aboriginal and treaty rights based...
Book Review
People’s Citizenship Guide: A Response to Conservative Canada is just that. It uses Discover Canada, the new Canadian Citizenship Guide, as a launch pad for critiquing the current federal government’s ideological leanings, leanings expressed in...
Book Review
The twelfth and most recent volume in NeWest Press’s Writer as Critic series, Roy Miki’s In Flux: Transnational Shifts in Asian Canadian Writing, like others in the series, approaches writing as praxical intervention. Beginning with...
Book Review
Wrong Highway is the memoir of Stella Jenkins, a middle-class mother of four from Victoria, who in 1948, recently divorced, formed a relationship with Bob Smith, a trapper and labourer. Stella left Victoria with her...
Book Review
In Hearts and Minds, Dan Azoulay includes part of a 1913 letter from a young woman lamenting her lack of companionship: “although I like Vancouver very much I am not acquainted with many people, and...
Book Review
Although the Chilkoot Trail is the most famous trail to the Klondike, there were a wide variety of other routes that gold seekers used to reach the interior of the Yukon between 1896 and 1900....
Book Review
The Canadian Scottish (Princess Mary’s) regiment recently celebrated its 100th anniversary. Popularly known as the Can Scots, it is the only militia unit on Vancouver Island. The regiment had previously been honoured with the freedom...
Book Review
The struggle to build trade unions in the extractive and manufacturing industries of Canada — mining, forestry, fishing, clothing, furniture, and others — was meteoric and its demise equally rapid. Raising the Workers’ Flag provides...
Book Review
Architecture has been a key site in the evolution of cultural Modernism; the elevator is often cited as an important early Modernist manifestation, and the idea that function creates its own form is a key...
Book Review
The Vancouver Sun turned one hundred in 2012. To mark this event, reporter Shelley Fralic compiled a (roughly) chronological account of goings-on in the city and at the paper itself. It is not so much...
Book Review
This slim and well-designed identification guide focuses primarily on nineteenth century American and European manufacturers of ceramics for those working to identify ceramic shards. Despite the back cover’s reference to “North American sites,” it draws...
Book Review
Canada’s single industry towns (SITs), especially resource towns, continue to be the focus of considerable academic and policy attention. Canada’s population may be highly urbanized, indeed urbane, with the major metropolitan and even medium-sized urban...
Book Review
Keith Billington has had a long career as a nurse in British Columbia and the Yukon as well as being Band Manager for the Fort Ware Sekani/Kaska band (later known as Kwadacha Nation). The first part...
Book Review
Like many female artists of her generation, Ina D.D. Uhtoff, née Campbell, had a difficult time sustaining a career as a professional artist. The daughter of middle-class Scottish parents, she did not lack opportunity. In...
Book Review
Book Review
Book Review
Book Review
Book Review
Book Review
Book Review
Book Review
Book Review
Book Review
Book Review
Book Review
Book Review
Book Review
What if? Ah yes, that perennial question. What would a city look like if the “unbuilt” were actually built? What if a municipality’s proposed plans were followed “to a tee”? Sometimes the rejection of a...
Book Review
Book Review
Book Review
Robert Ratcliffe Taylor’s The Spencer Mansion, A House, a Home and an Art Gallery is, as the title suggests, really two books. One half considers the “life and times” of the five families who made...
Book Review
In “Tracing the Fortunes of Five Founding Families of Victoria” (BC Studies 115/116 1998/1999), Sylvia Van Kirk revealed the mixed cultural background of some of Victoria’s most important settler families (the Douglases, Tods, Works,...
Book Review
The history of Canada’s Pacific relations has long been a neglected subject. The general consensus was that Pacific relations were not central to understanding the history of the country and its place in the world....
Book Review
Book Review
Book Review
Book Review
On the growing list of books on Canadian environmental history, University of Toronto historian Laurel MacDowell’s new textbook An Environmental History of Canada should take a prominent place. The evolution of this field of study...
Book Review
The field of Canadian environmental history has blossomed over the past two decades. Consequently, instructors of Canadian environmental history courses are becoming increasingly spoiled with good options to choose from for course readers. In all...
Book Review
Book Review
Contributors
Hugh Johnston is a professor emeritus in history at Simon Fraser University and recent author of Jewels of the Qila: The Remarkable Story of an Indo-Canadian Family (2011).
Richard McCandless is a retired senior BC government public servant with an interest in history and public policy. He was the lead government facilitator of the transfer of the driver licensing program to ICBC in the early 1990s. He has a history degree from the University of Victoria and a Master of Public Administration from Queen’s University, and lives in Saanich, BC.
Robert McCandless began his professional career in oil and gas and mining exploration. For several years while living in the Yukon, he was a contract researcher and writer, which led to his publishing Yukon Wildlife: A Social History (University of Alberta Press, 1985). He later worked for Environment Canada mainly on pollution prevention in mining, and also for several years advising on Aboriginal affairs including treaty negotiations.
Isabel Wallace is a doctoral candidate at Queen’s University. Her research focuses on South Asians and public health in BC and the Pacific Coast states in the early twentieth century.
LiLynn Wan is a potter who completed her PhD in history at Dalhousie
University. She has a particular interest in the history of race and First Nations in British Columbia, where she is originally from. She is currently the proprietor of WaterDragon Pottery, which operates out of her studio in Herring Cove, Nova Scotia.