About BC Books Online
BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
Description
Fifteen years before the 1858 Fraser River gold rush, a Hudson’s Bay Company clerk named Alexander Caulfield Anderson threaded his way through mountain passes and down rapids-filled rivers in search of a safe all-British route through the mountains that separated the HBC fort at Kamloops from Fort Langley on the Pacific coast. Eventually, Anderson discovered four routes, succeeding where Alexander Mackenzie and Simon Fraser before him had failed. Without his explorations, historian Derek Pethick once wrote, British Columbia may never have come into being or become a part of the Dominion of Canada.
For Anderson, the cross-country expeditions he undertook were welcome antidotes to a fur-trade life that wasn’t quite what he’d expected it to be. By the time he joined, in 1831, the fur trade was in fact a tightly controlled business that was very different from the adventurous trade that had inspired him. But though he may not have had his dream life, his spirit of adventure kept him going. As explorer, map-maker, artist and writer, he created a wealth of information to guide those of his time and far beyond, and his work—first in the fur trade, then in the communities in which he lived, and finally as Fisheries Inspector and Indian Reserve Commissioner for British Columbia—was always aimed at improving the future of the people he lived among.
Recommended Age, Grade, and Reading Levels
- Age:
- 15
- Grade:
- 10
Editorial Reviews
“A biography of Alexander Caulfield Anderson has been needed for many years. In The Pathfinder, Nancy Anderson deftly reconstructs the main stages and episodes of her ancestor's important career as fur trader, explorer, trail-maker, customs and fisheries officer, farmer, Indian Reserve commissioner, cartographer, scholar and historian. This engrossing biography of A.C. Anderson is what we've been waiting for.” —Richard Somerset Mackie, author of Trading Beyond the Mountains and Mountain Timber
“He [A.C. Anderson] has a rightful place in our history books for all of the work he did for the company, the colony and the province. His knowledge of B.C. geography was probably unsurpassed in his day, and he worked hard to share that information with others. Nancy Marguerite Anderson's The Pathfinder helps us to remember all that he accomplished on our behalf.” —Dave Obee, the Times Colonist
“A long-overdue comprehensive account of one of British Columbia’s pioneering but often overlooked explorers, a mapmaker par excellence, who in his time probably knew more about the geography of British Columbia than any other.” —Derek Hayes, author of Historical Atlas of the North American Railroad
“Nancy Anderson has plumbed the archives on two continents to produce a meticulously researched, unflinching account of A.C. Anderson. His life, and this book, open a window onto the Pacific Northwest’s restless transition from fur trade fiefdom into the place we know today.” —Jack Nisbet, author of Sources of the River and The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest
“A.C. Anderson was truly a maker of British Columbia. This well-researched, highly readable account of his remarkable, multi-faceted career as fur trader, explorer, civil servant and pioneer settler of Vancouver Island will help to give him the recognition he deserves. This book is a 'must read' for anyone interested in the fascinating history of the Pacific North West in the 19th century.” —Sylvia Van Kirk, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, fur-trade historian and author of Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur Trade Society, 1670-1870
“Nancy Anderson and Heritage House publishers of Canada have done A.C. proud with their book . . . It’s a fully-realized biography that erases all boundaries of politics, economics, and race as it follows one wiry, active, keenly intelligent man across a landscape that was changing under his feet.” —Jack Nisbet, the North Columbia Monthly
