Originally published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Alfred Emberson’s All About Victoria, British Columbia serves as a comprehensive travel guide and promotional handbook for the rapidly modernizing provincial capital. The book meticulously catalogs the city’s geography, local customs, transportation networks, and burgeoning hospitality industry, effectively marketing Victoria to tourists and potential investors as a sophisticated enclave of British gentility on the edge of the Pacific wilderness. A keen insight drawn from the work is how the early travel guide actively commodified a highly sanitized version of colonial settlement; by charting hotels and scenic attractions while completely omitting the ongoing displacement of the region's Coast Salish peoples, the guidebook sold Victoria not as a contested frontier, but as an exclusive, fully conquered playground designed solely for Anglo-American leisure.

British Columbia Victoria, Victoria (B.C.)