British Columbia-Yukon Sternwheel Days

A.A. den Otter is a history professor at the Memorial University of
Newfoundland.

Beginning with the 1858 Fraser River gold rush, a motley fleet of
sternwheel steamers plied the turbulent rivers of British Columbia and
the Yukon. Copied from American designs, these shallow-draft vessels
carried passengers and freight deep into the continental interior for
the next hundred years.

This book is a detailed account of the days of the sternwheelers.
Beginning with an excellent general description of the vessels, lavishly
illustrated with photographs, the author describes events on the Fraser,
Skeena, Stikine, Columbia, Kootenay, and Yukon rivers, in Kamloops and
Shuswap country, as well as the Okanagan, Arrow, and Kootenay Lakes.

Like a newspaper, the author tends to dwell on hardships and accidents.
After all, what can one write about trips safely and uneventfully
completed? Unfortunately, that approach leaves the erroneous impression
that if a vessel was not ripped apart in boulder-infested rapids, it was
most likely to be blown to bits by a boiler explosion or wrecked in a
sudden storm.