British Columbia: Land of Promises

Joan Lovisek, Ph.D., is a consulting anthropologist and ethnohistorian
in British Columbia.

British Columbia: Land of Promises is part of a series of regional
histories that make up the Oxford Illustrated History of Canada. This
contribution, dedicated to British Columbia, divides the province’s
history into chronological periods of “great events,” beginning with
an overview of prehistory to 1858 titled “Contesting Empires,”
followed by chapters on the creation of the colony, the completion of
the railway, the two world wars, and various political elections.

The authors adopt “high politics” as their central theme, but their
treatment of various subjects is uneven. Their discussion of Aboriginal
peoples, for example, is undermined by their citation of outdated
sources. Political and Asian issues appear to be better handled. The
narrative is for the most part academic, which is to say uninspired.

The “illustrated” part of the book appears to have been cheaply
produced in predominantly black and white, and does not always have any
relationship to the narrative on the page. One illustration, for
example, shows an Indian Reserve Commission meeting at Sooke, yet the
narrative text on the page is about the Chinese and Japanese in
Vancouver. As an illustrated history, the book would have been more
captivating and informative had the authors started with the
illustrations and then used them as instruments to explore the history.
The text captioned under the illustrations is often more interesting to
read than the disconnected narrative.