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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.
Debut of our new section “This Space Here” featuring an excerpt from Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun’s “Artist Statement.” Articles by Richard C. McCandless, Mary Leah de Zwart, Duane Thomson, and David Bell.
To read the full issue online, visit our OJS site.
Add to Cart - $20.00 View in OJSThis Space Here
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Book Review
Ian McTaggart Cowan (1910-2010) was a BC scientist, conservationist, and educator whose influence extended to over 300 authored and co-authored publications on a wide range of animal species, and the supervision of over ninety graduate...
Book Review
In the Power of Feasts, Hayden, an SFU archaeologist, provides a “theoretical synthesis” of the history of feasting, explains the theory of its influence on human societies over time, and argues that feasting contributed to...
Book Review
The inclination to characterize the fur trade as an English-speaking enterprise is, very fortunately, behind us. The determination to perceive the economy as grab-and-dash has also for the most part disappeared from view. Two new...
Book Review
The Canadian Pacific Railway’s travel literature boasts marvellous scenery, adventure, and extravagance. “You shall see mighty rivers, vast forest, boundless plains, stupendous mountains and wonders innumerable, and you shall see in all in comfort, nay...
Book Review
Veronica Strong-Boag announces at the outset of her latest book that “Lords and ladies are rarely in fashion for critical scholars or democratic activists. This is unfortunate” (3). Thankfully she decided to take on Ishbel...
Book Review
Here we have two books about crises in the history of Vancouver. They nevertheless cry out to be called chalk and cheese because they strike such a different balance between narrative form and theoretical density....
Book Review
Few figures in the history of western Canadian mountaineering are held in such high regard as Conrad Kain. Arriving in Banff in 1909 to work for the young Alpine Club of Canada (ACC), Kain came...
Book Review
Those who would wish to time-travel to the Comox Valley of the First World War era need only to walk the streets of today’s Courtenay downtown core. There they will encounter numerous large publicly-displayed photographs...
Book Review
The history of the Chinese in British Columbia tends to focus on the lives of men, who were the vast majority of settlers and sojourners from China in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet...
Book Review
The fourth volume of the Osgoode Society’s Canadian State Trials is a critical analysis of the powers, both theoretical and practical, of Canada’s judiciary and political executive, and how Canadian state officials used such...
Book Review
This welcome new study concerns the operations of Canada’s west coast fleet in the two decades after the Second World War. Soon after 1945, defence policy came to be dominated by Canada’s contributions to NATO...
Book Review
This small stack of books reviewed here are all doctors’ memoirs of practice centred primarily in remote or rural regions of British Columbia in the 1960s through the 1970s. Clearly, they are not academic works,...
Book Review
Andrew Struthers self-identifies as “L’Étranger” of the “F___book™” age and I’m prepared to believe him, though I’m not sure how Camus might see it. For that matter, what would Camus make of F___book™? Struthers...
Book Review
In 1958, during the post-war building boom, the federal government decided to devote one per cent of airport construction costs to artwork. Within a few years the facades and foyers of airports from Gander, Newfoundland,...
Book Review
The cover and larger format pages of this handsomely produced book are drear images of demolition in the older inner suburbs of Vancouver. An array are pictured on the back cover rather in the manner...
Book Review
The history of Indigenous peoples and parks — notably their exclusion from such places — is a field of study that has blossomed over the past two decades. Courtney Mason’s Spirits of the Rockies: Reasserting...
Book Review
Historian Patrick Wolfe has foregrounded the contradictory condition of Indigenous labour within Euro-American settlement by arguing that mythic narratives of settler diligence coexisted with a heavy reliance on colonized Indigenous labour. As he observes in...
Book Review
Canada is no stranger to Aboriginal direct action: “Oka, Ipperwash, Caledonia. Blockades, masked warriors, police snipers” (3). Citing this excerpt from the 2006 report of Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal peoples to introduce the collection...
Book Review
The work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) between 2009 and 2015 is especially relevant to British Columbia. Residential schools and their impact are interwoven with the history, contemporary situation, and future development of...
Book Review
A portion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) mandate laid out in Schedule N to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement [IRSSA] of 2006 said that the Commission was to “Produce and submit to...
Book Review
When discussing genocide in history, precision of language and analysis is essential. “Genocide” is a powerfully emotional term whose misuse will inflame people and inhibit understanding rather than facilitating it. Careless use of “genocide” will...
Book Review
Street Sex Work and Canadian Cities: Resisting a Dangerous Order aims to give voice to street-based sex workers in urban Canada, in particular Indigenous women who face intersecting stigma associated with sex work, racism, and...
Book Review
Statistics confirm that Indigenous women are far more likely to disappear or be murdered than non-Indigenous women in Canada. This horrific truth is exposed in Amber Dean’s Remembering Vancouver’s Disappeared Women and Lori Shenher’s...
Contributors
David Bell discovered Minnie Sharp’s 1919 “autobiography” forty years ago and he has dabbled in her story, and that of her husband Tappan Adney, ever since. A law professor at the University of New Brunswick (Fredericton), his usual work is on the colonial Maritimes.
Mary Leah de Zwart is a sessional instructor and cohort advisor for the Home Economics: Human Ecology and Everyday Life master of education program at ubc. She holds a PhD from ubc and lives in Vernon, BC. Her research interests include women’s history, home economics pioneers and food history.
Richard McCandless, a past contributor to BC Studies, is a retired senior BC government public servant with a continuing interest in history and public policy.
Bonita Russell is a member of the Faculty of Management at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, BC and has her own consulting business. She is also a Master Knitter.
Hilary Russell has a BA in women studies and knits in her spare time.
Duane Thomson is an Associate Professor Emeritus of History at UBC Okanagan whose field of interest is relations between First Nations and Europeans in British Columbia. He consults on land claims issues in the BC interior, the Fraser Valley and the Gulf Islands. His current passion is to raise money to develop the Okanagan Rail Trail, which will become a wonderful asset for the Central Okanagan and North Okanagan communities and an attraction to cyclists and pedestrians, locally and internationally.
Jim Wood has taught at several post-secondary institutions, including Trent University, the Royal Military College of Canada, UBC Okanagan, and the University of Victoria. In addition to articles published in BC Studies, he has published articles in Canadian Military History, The Journal of Military History, and The American Review of Canadian Studies, His book publications include We Move Only Forward: Canada, the United States, and the First Special Service Force, 1942-44 (2006) and Militia Myths: Ideas of the Canadian Citizen Soldier, 1896-1921 (UBC Press, 2010). He currently teaches history at Okanagan College and UBCO.
Jo’Anne Yearley is a retired faculty member of Vancouver Island University. She received her Master of Nursing from the University of Victoria. She enjoyed a forty year nursing career in various roles; as a direct care provider, a nursing administrator, and a university-college professor. Jo’Anne now advances her knowledge and passion for fibre arts through weaving, spinning, and knitting as a member of the Tzouhalem Spinners and Weavers Guild.
Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun graduated from the Emily Carr School of Art and Design in 1983 with an honours degree in painting. Yuxweluptun’s strategy is to document and promote change in contemporary Indigenous history in large-scale paintings (from 54.2 x 34.7cm to 233.7 x 200.7cm), using Coast Salish cosmology, Northwest Coast formal design elements, and the Western landscape tradition. His painted works explore political, environmental, and cultural issues. His personal and socio-political experiences enhance this practice of documentation. Yuxweluptun’s work has been included in numerous international group and solo exhibitions, such as INDIGINA: Contemporary Native Perspectives in 1992. He was the recipient of the Vancouver Institute for the Visual Arts (VIVA) award in 1998.