British Columbia from the Earliest Times to the Present c1914. - Vol. 2
Cat No.: CA0361-2:
This is Volume two of a four volume work divided into a History (Vol. 1 & 2) and Biographies (Vol. 3 & 4.) This volume is credited to Frederick William Howay (1867 - 1943), and has a count of 727 numbered pages, although the actual number of pages in the book by far exceeds this because the 139 full plate illustrations and their blank rears are unnumbered. (NB: We do not include a placeholder for unnumbered blank pages as it does not disturb the automatic page numbering if we leave it out, and it adds nothing to the books content but numbered blank pages will be marked as such.)This volume 2 picks up BC's fascinating history overlapping the same period in which volume 1 leaves it, namely the discovery of gold and the consequential inrush of hopeful fortune seekers, c1858 without repeating it. Some significant fraction of the book is dedicated to following the progress of the gold rush As well as charting the progress of the discovery and development of the gold fields, author Howay explores the impact this fantastic spurt in population and extension of settled lands had on the province as a whole. Not least amongst these needs were the expansion and extension of the rule of Law (in all its forms and stations) and the building of roads and railway tracks.
Not to imply that Howay ignores the other aspects of BC’s accelerated development: The turnover of administrative duties from the Hudson's Bay Company to an elected group of representatives and the development of Vancouver Island as a self governing entity swiftly followed by the combination of the fledgling mainland and Island governments is explained and reviewed.
The frontier spirit of the hastily assembled mining communities is well known and it put pressure on the rapidly evolving governments to institute effective policing as well as properly organized authorities to administer claim registration and land sales. And as if dealing with the northerly mining area was not enough, additional gold finds in the south west uplands (the Kootenays and Big Bend) started a secondary gold rush. The isolated nature of the geography and the close proximity to gold finds in the US territory bought new challenges to administration.
In the mean time other, more conventional, developments such as agriculture, industry, other mineral mining, fishing as well as improvements to the infrastructure, such as the laying of rail track and the establishment of rail services all grew in response to the overall influx of settlement. Of course the other byproducts of an increasing population, such as systems of local government and the law also grew and became established, as also did more entrepreneurial activities such as retail stores, inns, restaurants and taverns, all of which is discussed as appropriate.
Certain particular events and topics of all this development were important enough to warrant specific discussion or even separate chapters to themselves. Such topics include Oriental Immigration, the Alaska Boundary Dispute, the establishment of Missionaries and the Bench and Bar.
This is a very readable history of the latter portion of the development of the Province of British Columbia with a Canadian slant on events which provide some interesting differences to, for example, the American view as expressed by Bancroft in his history. The four volumes of this complete work are available as four individual CDs, or in two single CDs giving the Biographies (Vol. 3 & 4) and the Complete History (Vol. 1 & 2) or as a complete set comprising all four volumes. A wonderful resource, carefully reproduced and completely computer searchable for any word or phrase. A wonderful resource, carefully reproduced and completely computer searchable for any word or phrase.
We invite you to join in our thanks to the Slocan Community Library, BC and particularly to Joyce, their (then) librarian and a wonderful friend of Archive CD Books Canada, for allowing us to borrow these great books so we could make the digital edition available to the wider Genealogy community. We will be donating copies of the CD to the library so further wear and tear on this great old book can be avoided.
No. of CDs is: 1 ; Format is: PDF ; Searchable?: YES;
FastFind: Yes; ISBN No.: 978-1-927503-09-6 ;