Seven Shillings a Year: The History of Vancouver Island by Charles Lillard is a 1986 popular history—awarded the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing—that offers a sweeping narrative of the island from pre-contact Indigenous cultures through the end of World War II. The title references the modest annual rent the Hudson's Bay Company paid the British Crown for the island upon establishing Fort Victoria. The book chronicles the early Spanish and English maritime explorations, the subsequent influx of miners, loggers, and farmers, and the evolution of Victoria from a rowdy frontier outpost to a cosmopolitan capital. Ultimately, it serves as an accessible, engaging, and pioneering single-volume overview of Vancouver Island's colonial and civic development, though modern scholars often contextualize it within the historiographical perspectives of its time.

British Columbia Vancouver Island, Canada, British Columbia History, History, Vancouver Island (B.C.) History, Vancouver, Île de (C.-B.) Histoire

The west coast people Closing the Pacific Years of expansion Fort Victoria Company men Hardrock and soft Breaking the land Manifest destiny Rogues, red lights, and rum Selling the island Industrial convolutions