The West Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia

Louis A. Knafla is a history professor at the University of Calgary.

Composing distance-education courses for the Open Learning Agency of
British Columbia, and teaching at the regional campuses, has placed
Barman in an unusual position to write a comprehensive history of the
province from 1741 to 1990. A member of the Department of Social and
Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia, Barman has
written a history that not only will supersede previous ones, but also
will stand for some time. Her method involves weaving political,
economic, and social history within a narrative framework, giving as
much attention to the eighteenth and twentieth centuries as to the
nineteenth. But unlike most provincial histories, this book allows
people, not politics, to prevail. Unusual attention is given to the
history of agriculture, fishing, mining, and forestry; of education,
religion, immigrants, and women; and of commercial and business
enterprises, work, and unions. Not only does political life not prevail,
but politicos are spared false glorification: their stories are rendered
in a rather evenhanded manner.

The result is a book that brims with detail, and that is often
difficult although interesting to read. Escaping the traditional sources
of textbook writing, Barman dwells on personal detail throughout, using
the rich archival remains of contemporary fiction, memoirs, diaries, and
correspondence to illuminate the overarching narrative. What pulls the
book together, however, is context: a willingness to see British
Columbia within Western Canada, the Dominion, North America, and the
Empire. The text is enhanced with some carefully selected end matter: a
series of tables on political, population, gender, and economic
statistics; a good bibliography; and a finely crafted index of persons,
places, and subjects.