The largest of BC’s southern Gulf Islands, beautiful Salt Spring Island has long been a favoured holiday destination and a prized real-estate area for those in search of an idyllic rural residence. Now available in trade paper, Salt Spring: The Story of an Island chronicles the island’s rich history from the days when Coast Salish people inhabited Salt Spring’s shores, through some 150 years of settlement by many diverse groups.

Because of the island’s rugged geography, the early story of Salt Spring is largely the story of hard-working people in small isolated communities industriously carving farms out of rough terrain. Many of the settlers who followed came to find a place where they could live their lives free of the constraints of most societies. This was as true for the African-Americans, many of whom were among the first non-aboriginal settlers to arrive in 1859, as it was for those fleeing conventional middleclass life and for Americans seeking to avoid the Vietnam War. And it’s true of almost every new islander who arrives today with a unique personal dream.