Imagining Difference: Legend, Curse, and Spectacle in a Mining Town

David Mardiros is a lawyer and anthropological consultant in Terrace,
British Columbia.

Ethnography has long been the favoured literary form of anthropologists
writing about “exotic” cultures from a first-hand point of
view—the critical outsider who learns about faraway cultures through
participant observation. As this study of the small town of Fernie,
B.C., colourfully illustrates, ethnography is an equally compelling
medium through which the social history of any community can be
presented. It is also part of a recent shift in perspective in the
genre.

Although most ethnographies are written from an outsider’s
perspective, the author of this work had the advantage of a
long-standing family connection to Fernie (through four generations).
This connection served to give the author entry into the lives of older
residents of the community in a way that gives the work a unique
perspective.

The book traces many of the major events of the 20th
century—particularly the World Wars and various waves of
immigration—through the experiences of older residents and describes
how the social fabric has developed, changed, and evolved with the
successive changes in the ethnic and economic makeup of the region. The
curse referred to in the title (a popular local legend) provides the
structure for the book and serves to introduce the complex history of
this former mining town that has recently reinvented itself as an
upscale tourist destination. The author traces the multiple and
conflicting interpretations of the curse and draws parallels with the
often conflicted views of townspeople of the region’s history. There
is a particular focus on the role of Aboriginal peoples in that history
and on how the contributions of Aboriginal people have been perceived by
different segments of the local community. The account of the town’s
recent history is particularly insightful, and the author describes the
development of new social categories—“locals” and “granolas”
are two examples— that mark the shifting social and economic climate
in the region.

For anyone who has an interest in the diversity and complexity of life
in the small towns of the remote valleys of interior British Columbia,
this book is an enlightened and delightful read.