British Columbia from the Earliest Times to the Present, Biographical - Vols. 3 & 4

Cat No.:   CA0361-B:

Published in the same year that the Great War broke out - 1914 - these two volumes, III & IV of the four volume set do their part in telling the history of British Columbia by relating the life stories of about 1320 of its prominent citizens. It accomplishes this in the form of individual biographies, many (about 530) of which are accompanied by professionally photographed studio portraits of the subjects. Each biography has been submitted by its subject - or by his family and / or close acquaintances - so there is no real common structure to them but, in general, they provide a familial and working history of the subject's life. In this process his spouse(s), his children, his parents and any siblings are introduced, at least by, name and often by genealogical and national origin. The amount of this content varies from a single paragraph to one of several pages, which also contains a family tree rooted in the mid - 1600's.

These are two thick books, totaling some 2366 pages. Every fourth (or so) page is given to a single large portrait of one of the subjects, and the backs of these portrait sheets (which are also - mostly - numbered) are blank so the number of printed pages is about 1306. This makes the length of the average Bio. about 99% of a page.

Or, to put it another way, all the Bios. provide about a page of good basic information and the majority contain a wealth of detail about the subject and his family. Amongst the 530 odd subjects are many who were attracted to British Columbia from other parts of Canada by stories of fortunes to be made by exploiting the abundant natural, and renewable, resources including agriculture and forestry, but most notably by the stories of gold. Many of the biographies contain anecdotes of desperate survival while experiencing the hardships of the back country in search of a fortune. Other settlers came with the train construction crews as the railroad link between east and west was forged, and still more followed as a result of this improved means of transportation to grow produce and make manufactured goods.

We have placed a sampler of some selected pages from these books - including the whole of both Indices of Subjects - on our Downloads page so you can experience what the book's content looks like and can see if any of your families might be included.

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.

We invite you to join in our thanks to the Slocan Community Library and to the Vernon & District Family History Society (of BC) and particularly to Joyce and Nancy, their librarians, for allowing us to borrow these wonderful books so we could make the digital edition available to the wider Genealogy community.  We will be donating copies of the CD to the libraries so further wear and tear on the original of this great old book can be avoided

You can also reach the Sampler by clicking on the following link Sampler

You can return to this page by closing the Sampler Page when you are ready to purchase.

No. of CDs is:  1 ;   Format is:  PDF ;   Searchable?:  YES;

FastFind:  Yes;  ISBN No.:   978-1-897405-88-8 ;