The Dunsmuir Saga

Ann Turner is Financial and Budget Manager, University of British
Columbia Library.

Victoria’s Terry Reksten has a rare gift, first revealed in her
award-winning biography Rattenbury (1978): she can bring history to life
with the skill of a good novelist. In this, her fourth book, the
characters who play out their lives again on her pages are members of
one of B.C.’s wealthiest and most influential families: Scottish-born
coal baron Robert Dunsmuir and two generations of his descendants. The
senior Dunsmuirs made their mark on the Pacific Northwest, and
particularly the coal fields and political life of Vancouver Island, in
the latter half of the nineteenth century. Their colorful descendants
ranged far and wide, enjoying and dissipating the family fortune in
Europe, Great Britain, and the United States. Meticulously researched,
and carefully but unobtrusively documented, their story is illustrated
with 50 historical photographs from the B.C. Archives and private
collections. This is a superb social and personal history, documenting a
significant period in British Columbia’s development.