Home Truths: Highlights from BC History

History in BC grows profusely and luxuriantly, but with odd undergrowth, observed historian J.M.S. Careless many years ago. This claim is fully borne out by this impressive anthology of some of the province’s most distinguished historians, geographers, and writers gleaned from over forty years of British Columbia’s leading scholarly journal, BC Studies.

This collection includes fascinating articles on the Fraser Canyon by Cole Harris; on Fort Simpson, Metlakatla, and Port Essington by Daniel Clayton; on Victoria’s early Chinese community by Patrick Dunae and others; on the eviction of Kitsilano and Squamish people from Vancouver and Stanley Park by Jean Barman; on early home design styles in Vancouver by Deryck Holdsworth; on the failed utopias of Wallachin and Sointula by Nelson Riis and Mikko Saikku; on life in a 1970s logging camp by Peter Harrison; on fly-fishing and dispossession at Penask Lake by Michael Thoms; and on the perennial lonesome prospector by Megan Davies.

The overarching theme is provided by George Bowering in his classic essay, Home Away, concerning the search for a home on the West Coast–a new one for settlers and an old one for indigenous peoples.