Creating a Modern Countryside: Liberalism and Land Resettlement in British Columbia.

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

The return of soldiers to their homelands following the end of the First World War sparked urgent government initiatives in many grateful nations to help the veterans re-establish themselves economically and reintegrate themselves into peacetime society. Some of these efforts involved making land available to the returning soldiers so that they could establish new lives and healthy self-sufficiency as independent farmers. Of necessity, these projects involved vacant lands, including those used by the Aboriginal peoples of the areas. Not all of the lands were suitable for farming, or at least for the kind of farming that was promoted for them, and the new settlers struggled to survive. This thoroughly researched and extensively documented study examines two of these WWI Soldier Settlement projects in British Columbia—Merville, near Courtenay/Comox on Vancouver Island, and Camp Lister in the Kootenays—not just to determine how they fared from the veterans’ and government’s points of view, but also to look at them as more general studies in how government promotes occupation and resettlement of lands and extends its authority over them. To this end the study also examines the South Okanagan Irrigation Project, which began as a Soldier Settlement project, the Sumas Lake drainage, dyking, and reclamation project, and the Dominion Relief Land Settlement Program of the Great Depression years. The result is a fascinating look at some of British Columbia’s early environmental and social history, and a new chapter in the history of its settlement.