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Edward Mallandaine was there! To prove it he thrust himself into the historic photograph of the "Last Spike" being driven to mark the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Surrounded by the railway dignitaries of the time, his young face peers out amid their frosty beards. Edward had just turned eighteen when he left his home in Victoria, British Columbia, to join the Canadian militia to fight Louis Riel in the North-West Rebellion of 1885. Hired to ride dispatches over the unfinished stretch of railway in British Columbia, he meets highway men, high officials, men of the North-West Mounted Police, and the denizens of saloons hidden away in mountain passes. He survives the lawlessness of remote towns and railway camps, rubs shoulders with Chinese labourers struggling to blast a right-of-way through the towering peaks of Eagle Pass, and makes a freezing midnight ride by railway flatcar to reach the outpost of Craigellachie just in time.
"During the century 1850-1950 Vancouver Island attracted Imperial officers and other Imperials from India, the British Isles, and elsewhere in the Empire. Victoria was the main British port on the north-west Pacific Coast for forty years before the city of Vancouver was founded in 1886 to be the coastal terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway. These two coastal cities were historically and geographically different. The Island joined Canada in 1871 and thirty-five years later the Royal Navy withdrew from Esquimalt, but Island communities did not lose their Imperial character until the 1950s."--P. [4] of cover.
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Framing the West argues that photography was intrinsic to British territorial expansion and settlement on the northwest coast. Williams shows how male and female settlers used photography to establish control over the territory and its indigenous inhabitants, as well as how native peoples eventually turned the technology to their own purposes. Photographs of the region were used to stimulate British immigration and entrepreneuralism, and imagies of babies and children were designed to advertise the population growth of the settlers. Although Indians were taken by Anglos to document their "disappearing" traditions and to show the success of missionary activities, many Indians proved receptive to photography and turned posing for the white man's camera to their own advantage. This book will appeal to those interested in the history of the West, imperialism, gender, photography, and First Nations/Native America. Framing the West was the winner of the Norris and Carol Hundley Prize of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association.
Everybody has a train story. Whether it comes from a distant relative who worked on the railways or from a family train trip that formed a lasting impression of the Canadian landscape, trains inspire a sense of wonder and nostalgia. They are embedded in the history of Canada as a whole and western Canada in particular, and for generations they were how most people travelled and saw the country. Today, trains get the most attention in the context of tragedy, in the aftermath of rare but catastrophic derailments. However, train stories go beyond these modern-day disaster tales or romantic glimpses into the past. Whistle Posts Westpresents a compelling array of stories that illustrate how and why the railways continue to capture our imaginations. From the heartbreaking to the humorous, from the awe-inspiring to the absurd, this fascinating collection of railway tales from BC, Alberta and Yukon is sure to please.
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"On the Edge of Empire" is a well-written, carefully researched, and persuasively argued book that delineates the centrality of race and gender in the making of colonial and national identities, and in the re-writing of Canadian history as colonial history. Utilising feminist and post-colonial filters, Perry designs a case study of British Columbia. She draws on current work which aims to close the distance between 'home' and away in order to make her case about the commonalities and differences between circumstances in British Columbia and the kind of 'Anglo-American' culture that was increasingly dominant in North America, parts of the British Isles, and other white settler colonies. "On t...