The Judge's Wife: Memoirs of a British Columbia Pioneer

Ann Turner is the financial and budget manager of the University of
British Columbia Library.

The judge was Eli Harrison, circuit judge in the B.C. interior in the
last quarter of the 19th century and later a judge on Vancouver Island,
then a Supreme Court justice. His wife, Eunice, compiled these memoirs
from her own and her husband’s diaries and other family papers to
record their experiences and observations during the formative years of
the province. These memoirs ran as a serial in the Northern Digest soon
after her death in 1950, but this is their first publication in book
form, using the original typescript. Even as a child Eunice was
observant. Her story begins with recollections of her early childhood
home in Ontario and her family’s journey by sea to New Westminster.
They later moved to Victoria, where she grew up and was educated as a
young lady of the Victorian upper class. This was ideal preparation for
her later life as the wife of a prominent judge in very “British”
British Columbia. Through her husband’s law practice she regularly met
early political leaders of the province and members of the social elite.


Her memories wonderfully detail day-to-day life and the social graces
of the era. She writes freely and colorfully, with a lively sense of
humor. An excerpt from her husband’s account of his experiences
traveling up the Fraser Canyon to the B.C. interior in the 1870s leads
into her own from when she accompanied him on a later trip there. The
memoirs conclude with her experiences when she and two of her children
were stranded in San Francisco during the earthquake and fire of 1906.
Her granddaughter, Louise Wilson, has supplied many annotations to the
text explaining terms and providing background information. As a
firsthand record of life in early B.C., this is a rare and valuable
addition to the province’s history. It is also a thoroughly enjoyable
read.