Pioneers of British Columbia – serie

Alex Lord, a pioneer inspector of rural British Columbia schools,shares in these recollections his experiences in a province barely outof the stage coach era. Travelling through vast northern territory,utilizing unreliable transportation and enduring climatic extremes,Lord became familiar with the aspirations of remote communities andtheir faith in the humanizing effects of tiny assisted schools. Enroute, he performed in resolute yet imaginative fashion the supervisoryfunctions of a top government educator developing an educationalphilosophy of his own based on an understanding of the provincialgeography, a reverence for citizenship, and a work ethic tuned tochallenge and accomplishment.These memoirs invite the reader to experience the British Columbiathat Alex Lord knew. Through his words, we endure the difficulties oftravel in this mountainous province. We meet many of the unusualcharacters who inhabited this last frontier and learn of their hopes,fears, joys, sorrows, and eccentricities. More particularly, we arereminded of the historical significance of the one-room rural schooland its role as an indispensable instrument of community cohesion. JohnCalam organizes the memoirs according to the regions through which Lordtravelled. Included in the introduction are a biography of Alex Lord, abrief description of the British Columbia he knew, a sketch of theprovince's public education system and an assessment of the placeLord's writing now occupies among other works on education andsociety.

"My husband, alarmed, left me and ran to the Indian ranch returning with one of Quinisco's sisters ... She smoothed up my bed and suggested "whiskey" which I swallowed. I think I would have swallowed anything to get rid of the pain. About nine o'clock next day my baby was born two months too soon, the first white child born in the Similkameen Valley."In 1860, at the age of fourteen, Susan Louisa Moir left England for British Columbia. After settling initially at Hope, she lived briefly in both Victoria and New Westminster, then B.C.'s two most important settlements. Returning to Hope, she helped her mother open the community's first school, and in 1868 she married John Fall Allison, riding on her honeymoon over the Allison Trail into the unsettled Similkameen Valley.Her record of the voyage, of Victoria, New Westminster, and Hope as they were in the 1860s, and her memories of the isolated but fulfilling life she, her husband, and their fourteen children led in the Similkameen and Okanagan Valleys provide a unique view of the pioneer mind and spirit.There were exciting moments – a horseback journey to Hope through a forest fire that made the Skagit River boil, her husband's boat nearly crushed by a gigantic ice floe on Lake Okanagan – but setting the tone of the whole account is an abiding natural curiosity and respect for both of her closest neighbours – the Similkameen and Okanagan Indians and the wilderness itself.It is these qualities, expressed in forceful, uncomplicated prose, that make Susan Allison's Recollections a major addition to Canadian pioneer literature.

This previously unknown collection of letters lets us experiencecolonial British Columbia through the eyes of a young British navalofficer who spent three years on Vancouver Island commanding a RoyalNavy gunboat during the Cariboo gold rush.A keen observer of life in the new world, Edmund Hope Verneycorresponded on a regular basis with his father, a prominent BritishMP. In his letters, which are filled with lively narration anddescription, candid commentary, and fascinating personal detail, hetalks about having 'the opportunity to observe a colony in [itsfirst] stage of existence' and to 'watch the development of acommunity.'