Catalog of British Columbiana and Pacific Northwest Americana

British Columbia, one hundred years of geographical change examines the sweeping macro-scale settlement patterns and shifting resource economies situated across the vast, heavily glaciated cordillera and rugged coastal margins of Canada's westernmost province. Robinson and Hardwick detail how the region's formidable physical geography—specifically the immense, isolating barriers of parallel mountain ranges, the fertile but narrow interior river valleys, and the highly constrained coastal lowlands of the Lower Mainland—strictly dictated the margins of urbanization, industrial timber extraction, and transcontinental transportation routing. By mapping the historical evolution from scattered, isolated frontier outposts into a highly centralized core-and-hinterland spatial structure tethered by precarious alpine transit corridors, the narrative highlights how this specific mountainous terrain anchored the province's starkly uneven demographic footprint. Ultimately, this geographical record serves as a macro-level spatial history, demonstrating how the immense topographic hostility, concentrated coastal access, and vast resource hinterlands of this Pacific Northwest landscape fundamentally shaped the highly centralized, terrain-constrained character of modern British Columbia.

63 pages : maps ; 21 x 28 cm

"In 1910 a highly unlikely party of politicians, poets, social butterflies and an overweight cook, all led by a Shakespeare-quoting bushrat named Hughie Horatio Nelson Baron Bacon, set out from the Willows Hotel in Campbell River to explore the wild interior of Vancouver Island. They were launched on a noble, and for its time, highly imaginative mission: to assess the fitness of the region to become a wilderness park, the first in BC history. They survived with only minor injuries and produced such a glowing report that Strathcona Park, BC's first provincial park, was duly created on 19 March 1911"--Jacket

264 p. : ill. (chiefly col.), map ; 28 cm.

British Columbia Waters: The Explorations of Vancouver and the Spanish is a continuation of the author’s previous narratives which included the original source material from the earliest maritime exploration in the Pacific Northwest. The author’s first two books traced the visits by the Spanish and George Vancouver to inland Washington waters. These books included transcriptions of the actual journals of our earliest explorers. This follow-up book resumes the saga and follows Vancouver and the Spanish in 1792 through British Columbia waters while they complete their circumnavigation of Vancouver Island. It contains the journals of George Vancouver, Alcala Galiano and Cayetano Valdéz and four of Vancouver’s men. These journals provide the first European descriptions and observations of our inland waters as well as the First Nations encountered while they rowed their longboats through previously uncharted territory. Complete with all of their charts, this is a fascinating read directly from the men who made our early history.

288 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

British Columbia recalled a picture history 1741-1871 examines the early maritime exploration and gradual coastal settlement mapped across the deeply indented fjords and heavily forested archipelagos of the Canadian Pacific coast. Pethick and Baumgarten detail how the region’s formidable macro-geography—specifically the labyrinthine marine waterways, the towering coastal mountain ranges plunging directly into the sea, and the dense temperate rainforests—strictly dictated the placement of early European fur trading outposts and subsequent colonial expansion. By charting the visual evolution of these scattered, precarious anchorages into established colonial ports, the narrative highlights how the rugged maritime topography anchored the region's early economic dependency entirely to deep-water navigation and immediate coastal resources. Ultimately, this visual historical record serves as a macro-level spatial history, demonstrating how the complex coastal geography and immense geographic isolation of this northern Pacific frontier fundamentally shaped the maritime-dependent, tightly constrained character of early British Columbia.

96 pages : illustrations ; 28 cm

Whether the names come from the First Nations peoples, the English and Spanish explorers who sailed along BC's coast, or the fur traders, gold prospectors and settlers, the stories behind the place names reveal much about the places themselves and the history of the province: - Babine Lake takes its name from the French word for large lip and refers to the former practice of the local First Nations people of inserting half-inch pieces of wood or bone between the teeth and lower lips of their women - Barkerville was named for Billy Barker, a gold prospector from the Cariboo Gold Rush Days who struck it rich but later died in poverty - In 1920, the residents of Harper's Camp voted almost unanimously in favour of changing their community's name to Horsefly in honour of that pesky insect that visits every summer - Lulu Island, on which the city of Richmond sits, was named for 16-year old American actress Lulu Sweet who won the hearts of a detachment of Royal Engineers - Squamish is an anglicization of the Squamish people's name for themselves, the Skwxwú7mesh, the word means mother of the wind and many refer to the steady wind that blows off Howe Sound into the city - Vancouver's famous clothing-optional Wreck Beach was named after three ships that were sunk off its shores in 1928 to create a breakwater for a log-storage site - Tête Jaune Cache is French for Yellow Head's hiding place and refers to the yellow-haired Pierre Bostonais, an Iroquois Métis fur trapper and trader who worked as a guide for the North West and Hudson's Bay companies.

336 pages : portrait ; 21 cm

British Columbia Place Names by the distinguished historical research team of George Philip Vernon (G.P.V.) Akrigg and Helen B. Akrigg is a definitive toponymic reference work—with a significantly expanded and widely cited edition published in 1986—that catalogs the origins of the province's geographic names. The book meticulously documents the fascinating stories and linguistic roots behind the naming of British Columbia's cities, towns, rivers, mountains, and coastal features. It traces these designations through various eras of the region's past, highlighting Indigenous terminology, the navigational records of early Spanish and British maritime explorers, and the legacies of fur traders, gold rush prospectors, and pioneer settlers. Ultimately, it serves as an indispensable and highly engaging resource for regional historians, genealogists, and geographers, offering a unique linguistic lens through which to explore the complex cultural and colonial heritage of Canada's Pacific coast.

195p

Elephant Crossing. Houdini Needles. Miniskirt, Tickletoeteaser Tower, and Why Not Mountain. These are just some of the many names of places, rivers, mountains, and lakes that you will come across in the newest edition of British Columbia Place Names. This classic which, in its various editions, has sold over 29,000 copies, covers about 2,500 geographical features, cities, towns, and smaller communities in the province. The book abounds with fascinating historical facts, stories, and remarkable characters involved with the names of towns, cities, rivers, lakes, mountains, and islands. The selection was determined by the geographical importance of the feature as well as story of the naming. In the introduction the authors deal with the stages by which B.C. acquired its place names, the history of research into those names, and the categories into which they fall. The latter range from the honorific and commemorative to the comic and disrespectful. Aboriginal names receive particular attention. The location of each place is clearly indicated and the text is accompanied by detailed maps. Brief biographical accounts of persons with places named after them as well as an abundance of anecdotes make this a fascinating book for browsers and an invaluable resource for historians.

xxv, 304 pages : maps ; 24 cm

"Esteemed historian Jean Barman brings new insights on the seemingly disparate events that converged to lay the foundation of the present-day province. By examining newly accessible private correspondence exchanged with the Colonial Office in London, Barman pieces together the chain of events that caused the distant colony of British Columbia to join the Canadian Confederation as opposed to the very real possibility of becoming one or more American states. Following the division of the Pacific Northwest between Britain and the United States in 1846, it took British Columbia just a quarter of a century to be transformed from a largely Indigenous territory in 1871, into a province of the recently formed Canada Confederation. In this detailed exploration of colonial politics, including fur trader and politician James Douglas's governance and the critical role played by the many unions between white settlers and and Indigenous women, Barman expertly weaves together seemingly disparate events that converged to lay the foundations of today's Canadian province."-- Provided by publisher

319 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm

Co-authored by Provincial Librarian E. O. S. Scholefield and historian F. W. Howay, British Columbia from the Earliest Times to the Present is a monumental four-volume history detailing the province's evolution from Indigenous territories and fur-trade outposts into a modernized Canadian province. The exhaustive 1914 work extensively chronicles the era of maritime exploration, the monopoly of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the chaotic gold rushes that forced the rapid implementation of British colonial administration. In keeping with the era's subscription-based publishing model, the historical narrative is heavily supplemented with flattering biographical sketches of prominent local patriarchs, effectively celebrating the region's industrial and political development as a triumph of Anglo-Saxon enterprise. A keen insight drawn from the work is how the collaboration between the state's chief archivist and a sitting judge served to officially institutionalize a legalistic justification for colonial expansion; by framing the province's history as an orderly, bureaucratic progression from corporate rule to British law, the authors deliberately obscured the unceded nature of First Nations land behind a veneer of inevitable constitutional progress.

4 volumes frontispieces, plates, portraits, maps, facsimiles 27 cm

During his years as captain of the Canadian government steapship Quadra, John T. Walbran became fascinated with the BC coast and set to work on his classic British Columbia Coast Names, which was published in 1909

546 pages, plates : 1 folded map

British Columbia chronicle, 1788-1846: adventures by sea and land examines the precarious maritime exploration and grueling overland fur-trade expansion across the vast, geographically fractured expanse of early British Columbia. The Akriggs detail how the region's formidable physical barriers—specifically the violent, storm-battered archipelagos of the Pacific coast, the massive, impenetrable spine of the Rocky Mountains, and the treacherous, rapid-choked currents of the Fraser and Columbia river canyons—strictly dictated the margins of early human survival, indigenous contact, and imperial commerce. By mapping the immense physical labor required to pilot fragile sailing vessels through uncharted, tide-swept coastal fjords and to force precarious canoe routes and portages across sheer alpine divides, the narrative highlights the monumental endurance necessary to scientifically chart and commercially exploit this demanding, highly varied environment. The profound geographic isolation from established global empires initially forced these remote maritime expeditions and rugged overland brigades into a strict reliance on the precise topography of sheltered marine anchorages and inland river corridors, completely anchoring their physical survival and geopolitical claims to the severe hydrological forces and unpredictable winter climates of the northern wilderness. Ultimately, this comprehensive historical record serves as a macro-level spatial history, demonstrating how the immense geological scale, extreme coastal hydrology, and rugged terrestrial divides of this Pacific Northwest frontier fundamentally shaped the fiercely resilient, strictly terrain-dependent character of the region's earliest global exploration and fur-trade networks.

xv, 429 pages, 12 unnumbered leaves of plates : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 23 cm

The region dealt with contains those parts of North Pacific Slope where British interests have prevailed. Before the year 1846 this included the valley of the Columbia River, and also, in a sense, the Snake River Country. The backbone of the narrative, which extends from the early maritime fur-trade days of the eighteenth century down to the present, is largely economic in character.

xv, 408 pages illustrations (maps) 25 cm

Charles A. Banks’s British Columbia and Sir James Douglas, K.C.B. (1803-1877) chronicles the urgent administrative and physical subjugation of a vast, aggressively fractured continental wilderness spanning from the remote maritime enclave of Vancouver Island to the towering alpine barricades of the mainland interior. The narrative maps how the severe environmental realities of this untamed expanse—defined by treacherous coastal fjords, impenetrable temperate rainforests, and the violent hydrology of the Fraser River canyon—initially threatened to plunge the region into lawless chaos during explosive inland gold rushes, forcing early colonial authorities to rapidly impose terrestrial and civic order. By detailing Douglas’s crucial transition from commanding isolated corporate fur-trading outposts to directing the monumental, explosive engineering of the Cariboo Wagon Road directly through sheer granite river gorges, the text illustrates how the projection of imperial sovereignty was strictly dictated by the necessity of physically breaching these massive topographical barricades. Ultimately, the account demonstrates that artificially carving mechanized transit corridors into this forbidding alpine landscape and deploying robust governmental infrastructure to conquer the profound geographical isolation of the interior were the absolute prerequisites for transforming a vulnerable, heavily contested frontier into the unified, governable colony of British Columbia.

27 pages illustrations.

British Columbia was among the last temperate places on Earth to appear on the map of the world, a function of its position-remote from Europe. When gold was finally discovered in quantity in 1858, leading to the gold rush that created British Columbia as a new colony, the interior was mostly unknown except for the routes blazed by the fur traders seeking the "soft gold" that characterized the exploration of much of Canada. The efforts of the explorers, the fur traders, the gold seekers, and the railway builders all involved the production of maps that showed what they had found, the routes and the settlements, the plans and the strategies that developed the province into what we know today. In British Columbia: A New Historical Atlas, acclaimed map historian Derek Hayes has curated nearly a thousand maps — the majority of which have never been published before —along with concise text, and extensive captions. Added to numerous other illustrations, the result is a geographically visual history, a unique and fascinating viewpoint on our province's past.

1 atlas (368 pages) : illustrations (some color), maps (some color) ; 35 cm

A comprehensive review of the physical and natural environments of the Province, written for interested laypersons, describing the natural history of BC by ecological region. Also discusses threatened ecosystems, climate change and introduced species

310 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 27 cm

British Columbia: a history examines the complex territorial expansion and arduous pioneer settlement across a vast, fractured landscape defined by extreme topographical and climatic divides. Ormsby details how the region's formidable physical barriers—specifically the massive, impenetrable spine of the Rocky Mountains that effectively severs the province from the rest of the continent, alongside the steep, heavily timbered Coast Mountains and the violent, rapid-choked currents of the Fraser River Canyon—strictly dictated the margins of overland migration, resource extraction, and human survival. By mapping the immense physical labor required to carve precarious gold rush trails deep into the rugged Cariboo interior and to blast transcontinental railway lines through sheer alpine gorges, the narrative highlights the monumental effort necessary to anchor permanent communities within this demanding, highly varied environment. The profound geographic isolation and utter lack of viable east-west overland routes initially forced the early coastal enclaves into an absolute reliance on the perilous deepwater marine highway of the Pacific, while anchoring interior outposts to the severe hydrological realities of the inland river systems. Ultimately, this comprehensive historical record serves as a macro-level spatial history, demonstrating how the severe geological extremes, immense physical scale, and rugged intermountain topography of this Pacific Northwest frontier fundamentally shaped the fiercely resilient, geographically partitioned character of British Columbia.

566 pages : illustrations, maps

"For more than two centuries, people from around the world have been irresistibly drawn to British Columbia. Some have sought to make their fortunes in furs, or gold, or lumber, some have dreamt of establishing utopian communities, many others have hoped simply to find a steady job, or a piece of land to farm and raise a family on. At times BC has lived up to the most extravagant expectations. But at times it has not, and in either case the costs have often been high, especially for the region's First Nations. In British Columbia: Land of Promises Patricia E. Roy and John Herd Thompson trace the social, economic, and political history of the province through a lively narrative and a wealth of carefully annotated illustrations, including maps, paintings, photographs, and cartoons."--Jacket

216 pages, 10 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps (some color), portraits (some color) ; 24 cm

This history of British Columbia celebrates an enigmatic and beautiful frontier. At the same time, author Geoffrey Molyneux delivers barbs about the corrupt politicians and bizarre development plans that have threatened to compromise this majestic region. With over 100 photographs and excerpts from writers Douglas Coupland and Terry Glavin, this book provides a short but engaging history of Canada's westernmost province

174 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Explores British Columbia's stunning ecology with a focus on climate change. The province's geological history, updated information on the mountain pine beetle and the future of B.C.'s biodiversity. This edition includes new illustrations, photos, sidebars, and new and revised maps. A must for anyone who wants detailed and uptodate information about British Columbia's dazzling natural world

365 pages : illustrations (some color), color maps ; 26 cm

Bruce Ramsey’s Britannia: The Story of a Canadian Mine provides an industrial and social history of the Britannia copper empire, which operated on the eastern shoreline of Howe Sound from 1904 to 1974. Ramsey chronicles how mineral deposits discovered on Britannia Mountain were developed into one of the largest copper producers in the British Commonwealth, mapping deep underground workings, aerial tramways, and gravity mills directly into the coastal mountains. The text examines the isolated coastal logistics of the community, detailing how mine workers and their families depended exclusively on Union Steamship vessels running between Vancouver, Porteau, Minaty Bay, Furry Creek, and Britannia Beach prior to the completion of the railway and highway. Ramsey documents the devastating 1915 Jane Mine avalanche and the catastrophic 1921 flood and fire, highlighting the corporate resilience, multi-ethnic labor forces, and technological adaptations that sustained operations across seven decades.

viii, 177 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

In 1831 a delegation of Northwest Indians reportedly made the arduous journey from the shores of the Pacific to the banks of the Missouri in order to visit the famous explorer William Clark. This delegation came, however, not on civic matters but on a religious quest, hoping, or so the reports ran, to discover the truth about the white men's religion. The story of this meeting inspired a drive to send missionaries to the Northwest. Reading accounts of these souls ripe for conversion, the missionaries expected a warmer welcome than they received, and they recorded their subsequent disappointments and frustrations in their extensive journals, letters, and stories. Bringing Indians to the Book recounts the experiences of these missionaries and of the explorers on the Lewis and Clark Expedition who preceded them. Though they differed greatly in methods and aims, missionaries and explorers shared a crucial underlying cultural characteristic: they were resolutely literate, carrying books not only in their baggage but also in their most commonplace thoughts and habits, and they came west in order to meet, and attempt to change, groups of people who for thousands of years had passed on their memories, learning, and values through words not written, but spoken or sung aloud. It was inevitable that, in this meeting of literate and oral societies, ironies and misunderstandings would abound. A skilled writer with a keen ear for language, Albert Furtwangler traces the ways in which literacy blinded those Euro-American invaders, even as he reminds us that such bookishness is also our own.

xii, 226 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 23 cm

For well over a century, the bright seas of the Sunshine Coast have been attracting visitors to the waterfront resorts, fishing lodges and beaches that rest between Howe Sound and the spectacular Princess Louisa Inlet. These coastal hotspots and communities were settled by a few courageous and daring pioneers whose names are still familiar today: Gibsons, Roberts, Whitaker, Donley, Silvey, Griffiths. Bright Seas, Pioneer Spirits tells the stories of the homesteaders, loggers, prospectors and fishermen who carved out a living on the treacherous mountainside that rises straight out of the inlets. These men and women came with nothing in their pockets and founded logging empires, shingle mills and sawmills, launched fish canneries, a glue factory and even a well-known jam factory, and scaled the mountainsides to start copper and gold mines. They travelled and traded by boat, long before coastal roads were built in the 1950s, and their pioneering spirits still ride the bright seas of the Sunshine Coast today.

245 p. : ill., map, ports. ; 23 cm.

Authored by historian Tomás Bartroli, Brief Presence: Spain's Activity on America's Northwest Coast, 1774–1796 chronicles Spain's aggressive late-18th-century maritime expeditions and territorial assertions along the Pacific Northwest coast. The book details pioneering voyages led by explorers like Juan Pérez, Bruno de Heceta, and Salvador Fidalgo who mapped uncharted waters, established short-lived outposts like Fort San Miguel, and traded with Indigenous nations in a desperate bid to secure the region against British and Russian encroachment. Drawing heavily from Spanish naval archives and primary logs, the text illuminates the logistical hurdles and geopolitical anxieties that characterized Madrid's fleeting imperial footprint in the North Pacific. A keen insight drawn from the work is how imperial overextension doomed Spain's Pacific ambitions; by trying to police a vast, distant coastline with limited supply lines and sparse settlers, the Spanish crown ultimately transformed its maritime explorations into an expensive reconnaissance mission that inadvertently paved the way for British and American dominance.

62 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

In 1986, the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act set into motion one of the great land-use experiments of modern times. The act struck a compromise between protection of a singular Western landscape-the majestic Gorge carved by Ice Age floods, which today divides Washington and Oregon-and encouragement of compatible economic development in communities on both sides of the river. In Bridging a Great Divide, environmental journalist Kathie Durbin draws on interviews, correspondence, and extensive research to detail what's happened in the Gorge since the act's passage. Sweeping change has altered the Gorge's landscape: upscale tourism and outdoor recreation, gentrification, the end of logging in national forests, the closing of aluminum plants, wind farms, and a population explosion in the metropolitan area to its west. In this insightful and revealing history, Durbin suggests that the story of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area is the story of the Pacific Northwest in microcosm, as the region shifts from a natural resource-based economy to one based on recreation, technology, and quality of life. Book jacket

xiii, 312 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Emma Ritchie De Hullu and Evelyn E. Cunningham’s Bridge River Gold chronicles the arduous pioneer history and booming industry of British Columbia's most prolific gold-producing region. The narrative meticulously maps the treacherous topography of the Bridge River Valley, located deep within the rugged Coast Mountains northwest of the historic inland hub of Lillooet. By detailing the establishment of remote, large-scale hard-rock mining camps like Bralorne and Pioneer Mine, the authors illustrate how prospectors navigated steep canyons and punishing alpine environments to extract vast mineral wealth. Ultimately, the book captures the extreme physical isolation of this remote Canadian landscape, highlighting how human endurance and industrial ambition temporarily transformed the unforgiving mountainous wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.

viii, 88 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm