Vancouver Past: Essays in Social History

David Mattison is a librarian with the B.C. Provincial Archives and
Records Services Library.

Centennials bring out the good, the bad, and the mediocre in historical writing. The prestigious BC Studies journal issued this collection of original essays as its contribution to Vancouver’s 100th birthday. Most of the authors are academics from the province’s three universities. None of the work is particularly groundbreaking except archivist Paul Yee’s engaging study of the Sam Kee Company. Most of the essays, and Yee’s is no exception, are extensions of earlier research and publications.

As the subtitle suggests, the essays look at the history of Vancouver’s various social groups, particularly the working class, mothers (from a biological and left-wing perspective in two essays), elementary school pupils, and criminals. Housing is the theme of the first and last essays.

Several of the essays are set in the inter-war years, a period supposedly neglected by many Vancouver historians. Patricia Roy’s not entirely comprehensive bibliographic essay on Vancouver’s historiography shows that in fact much has been written about pre-Depression Vancouver. What makes some of these new papers different is the element of quantification through statistical data and the sometimes surprisingly vague and tentative conclusions.

This is a solid, reputable anthology destined for footnotes and bibliographies. Some papers are illustrated with photographs and maps.