Go Do Some Great Thing: The Black Pioneers of British Columbia examines the migration and settlement of African Americans who sought refuge and economic opportunity across the rugged coastal and inland landscapes of the British Columbian frontier during the mid-nineteenth-century gold rushes. Kilian details how the expansive marine highway of the Pacific seaboard channeled these pioneers away from an increasingly oppressive California to the strategically sheltered deepwater port of Victoria on Vancouver Island. The narrative highlights how the formidable physical barriers of the region—from the treacherous, rapid-choked gorges of the Fraser River canyon to the dense, heavily timbered slopes of Salt Spring Island—dictated the grueling physical labor required to carve out permanent agricultural homesteads and mercantile networks. By mapping their adaptation to this challenging environment, the book illustrates how the profound geographic isolation of these northern island and riverine outposts provided a vital spatial sanctuary from American institutionalized racism. Ultimately, this foundational record serves as a deeply localized spatial history, demonstrating how the unforgiving marine and mountainous topography of the Pacific Northwest fundamentally shaped the resilient, independent character of British Columbia's earliest Black communities.

Biographies, Black Canadians British Columbia History, Black Canadians History, Black people, Black people British Columbia Biography, Black people British Columbia History, British Columbia, British Columbia History, Canada, British Columbia Minorities, History, Personnes noires Colombie-Britannique Biographies, Personnes noires Colombie-Britanniq

Introduction

1. Free negroes and other obnoxious persons
2. I think the land is full of gold
3. A God-sent land for the coloured people
4. If you go in blind you will come out skinned
5. Shall white men or niggers rule in this colony
6. They always want a little more liberty than white men
7. A most orderly and useful and loyal section of the community
8. Have we any rights in common with white men?
9. They are the uncrowned kings
10. The war of complexional distinction is upon us
11. The world is my country epilogue: and all mankind my countrymen