Canada's Mechanized Infantry
Canada’s Mechanized Infantry explores the largely ignored development of the infantry in the Canadian Army after the First World War. Although many modern studies of technology and war focus on tanks and armour, soldiers from the Second World War onward have discovered that success really depends on a combination of infantry, armour, and artiller …
Moments of Crisis
In the past two decades, Québec has been racked by a series of controversies in which the religiosity of migrants and other minorities has been represented as a threat to the province’s once staunchly Catholic, and now resolutely secular, identity. In Moments of Crisis, Ian Morrison locates these controversies and debates within a long history o …
Knowing the Past, Facing the Future
In 1867, Canada’s federal government became responsible for the education of Indigenous peoples: Status Indians and some Métis would attend schools on reserves; non-Status Indians and some Métis would attend provincial schools. The chapters in this collection – some reflective, some piercing, all of them insightful – show that this system s …
Duty to Dissent
During the First World War, Henri Bourassa – fierce Canadian nationalist, politician, and journalist from Quebec – took centre stage in the national debates on Canada’s participation in the war, its imperial ties to Britain, and Canada’s place in the world. In Duty to Dissent, Geoff Keelan draws upon Bourassa’s voluminous editorials in Le …
Moved by the State
From the 1950s to the 1970s, the Canadian government relocated people living in rural and urban communities, often against their will, in order to alleviate the all-too-common lack of social services and economic opportunities. Moved by the State offers a completely new interpretation of this undertaking, focusing on the bureaucrats and academics w …
In the Spirit of ’68
The 1960s were a victorious decade for francophones in New Brunswick, who witnessed the election of the first Acadian premier and the opening of a French-language university. But in 1968, students took to the streets of Moncton, demanding further concessions.
What provoked these students to spark a cultural revolution on par with those overtaking …
Vancouver After Dark
BC Book Prize winner (Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Prize)
In his latest book, bestselling author, musician, and cultural historian Aaron Chapman looks back at the most famous music entertainment venues in Vancouver, a city that's transforming so fast it has somehow lost some of its favourite nightspots along the way. These are the places locals a …
Once Well Beloved
"Our well beloved dead who died that we might live."
In the town of Merritt, in British Columbia's Nicola Valley, stands a granite cenotaph erected in memory of 44 men who died soldiering in the First World War. Those men came from a Nicola Valley that had been suddenly and dramatically settled just a decade before by the will of railway executives …
Fighting with the Empire
Canadians often characterize their military history as a march toward nationhood, but in the first eighty years of Confederation they were fighting for the British Empire. War forced Canadians to re-examine their relationship to Britain and to one another. As French Canadians, Indigenous peoples, and those with roots in continental Europe and beyon …
Capturing Hill 70
In August 1917, the Canadian Corps captured Hill 70, vital terrain just north of the French town of Lens. The Canadians suffered some 5,400 casualties and in three harrowing days defeated twenty-one German counterattacks. This spectacularly successful but shockingly costly battle was as innovative as Vimy, yet few Canadians have heard of it or of s …
The Empire on the Western Front
When Great Britain and its dominions declared war on Germany in August 1914, they were faced with the formidable challenge of transforming masses of untrained citizen-soldiers at home and abroad into competent, coordinated fighting divisions. The Empire on the Western Front focuses on the development of two units, Britain’s 62nd (2nd West Riding) …
Doing Politics Differently?
Women have reached the highest levels of political office in Canada’s provinces and territories, but what difference has their rise to the top made? In Doing Politics Differently? leading researchers from across the country assess the track records of eleven premiers, including their impact on policies of particular interest to women and their in …
Reluctant Warriors
During the “Hundred Days” campaign of the First World War, over 30 percent of conscripts who served in the Canadian Corps became casualties. Yet, they were often considered slackers for not having volunteered. Reluctant Warriors is the first examination of the pivotal role played by Canadian conscripts in the final campaign of the Great War on …
Surveying the 120th Meridian and the Great Divide
Surveying the 120th Meridian and the Great Divide is the second book of a two-part series describing the initial Alberta/BC boundary survey undertaken between 1913-1924. Surveying the 120th Meridian focuses on the years 1918-1924, when the Alberta crew continued the survey of the 120th meridian while the BC crew split off to continue mapping the Gr …
Invisible Generations
Born of Indigenous grandmothers and white grandfathers, Irene Kelleher lived all her life in the shadow of her heritage. Her local community in British Columbia's Fraser Valley treated her as if she was invisible. The combination of white and Indigenous descent was beyond the bounds of acceptability by a dominant white society. To be mixed was to n …
Give and Take
A book about tax history that’s a real page-turner? Give and Take is full of surprises. A Canadian millionaire who embraced the new federal income tax in 1917. A socialist hero who deplored the burden of big government. Most surprising, twentieth-century taxes have made us richer, in political engagement and more. Taxes make the power of the stat …
Assembling Unity
Established narratives portray Indigenous unity as emerging solely in response to the political agenda of the settler state. But unity has long shaped the modern Indigenous political movement. With Indigenous perspectives in the foreground, Assembling Unity explores the relationship between global political ideologies and pan-Indigenous politics in …
Canada on the United Nations Security Council
As the twentieth century ended, Canada was completing its sixth term on the UN Security Council. A decade later, Ottawa’s attempt to return to the council was dramatically rejected by its global peers, leaving Canadians – and international observers – shocked and disappointed. Canada on the United Nations Security Council tells the story of t …
Unmooring the Komagata Maru
In 1914, the SS Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver Harbour and was detained for two months. Most of its 376 passengers were then forcibly returned to India. Unmooring the Komagata Maru challenges conventional Canadian historical accounts by drawing from multiple disciplines and fields to consider the international and colonial dimensions of the voy …
Resisting Rights
From 1948 to 1966, the United Nations worked to create a common legal standard for human rights protection around the globe. Resisting Rights traces the Canadian government’s changing policy toward this endeavour, from initial opposition to a more supportive approach. Jennifer Tunnicliffe takes both international and domestic developments into ac …
Made Modern
Science and technology have shaped not only economic empires and industrial landscapes, but also the identities, anxieties, and understandings of people living in modern times. Made Modern: Science and Technology in Canadian History draws together leading scholars from a wide range of fields to enrich our understanding of history inside and outside …
Ranch Tales
An entertaining, fast-paced look at early ranching in British Columbia.
Frontier historian Ken Mather is known for his fascinating, in-depth profiles of the men and women who established a distinctive ranching culture in Western Canada over a hundred years ago. Now, in this concise collection of stories—based on Mather’s column in the Vernon Mor …
By Snowshoe, Buckboard and Steamer
The vivid, personal accounts of four women who lived and travelled as settlers in early British Columbia.
??a cloud passing away from the face of the moon revealed a band of wild horses bearing down upon us at a full gallop. As they came near and saw us they divided into two groups, passing by on either side. Had the moon not come out they would pro …
At the Bridge
At the Bridge chronicles the little-known story of James Teit, a prolific ethnographer who, from 1884 to 1922, worked with and advocated for the Indigenous peoples of British Columbia and the northwestern United States. From his base at Spences Bridge, BC, Teit forged a participant-based anthropology that was far ahead of its time. Whereas his cont …
New Ground
In the late fifties, Ann Kujundzic, her husband and artist Zeljko, and three children--with a fourth on the way--packed up their lives in post-war Edinburgh and emigrated to the Kootenays in BC, seeking adventure and opportunity. In Nelson, Ann was involved in establishing the Kootenay School of Art in 1960, a remarkable institution whose history h …
The Hot Springs Cove Story
Up until the 1930s, Refuge Cove was one of the most remote places on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. Tucked into Clayoquot Sound, it sheltered boats from Pacific storms and its hot springs provided welcome relief for anyone waiting for bad weather to pass. In spite of its natural wonders, the cove was undeveloped and transiently populated. But …
Searching for Pitt Lake Gold
A smart, concise analysis of the legend of Slumach’s Gold, which strives to uncover the truth behind this mythical gold deposit said to be hidden north of Pitt Lake.
British Columbia is gold country, and with gold comes legends that have been passed down through the generations. Ever since the Fraser Canyon gold rush, prospectors and adventurers h …
When Trains Ruled the Rockies
When Trains Ruled the Rockies is a personal history of the Banff train station from 1948 through 1962.
Drawn from Terry Gainer’s personal memories and experiences from his years living and working at the legendary Banff Railway Station, this entertaining memoir and important historical record beckons the reader into the golden age of railway trave …
Ranching under the Arch
A visually rich, historically epic tale of cattle ranching in southern Alberta, focusing on multi-generational family-owned ranches that are still in existence today.
In the 1880s, a group of fledgling cattle ranchers descended on the plains of southern Alberta. They were drawn by the promise of the West, where the grass seemed endless and they coul …
Resolve
Andy and Phyllis Chelsea met during their years spent at the St. Joseph's Mission School in Williams Lake, BC. Like the thousands of others forced into the church-run residential school system, Andy and Phyllis are no strangers to the ongoing difficulties experienced by most Indigenous peoples in Canada. The couple married in 1964 but brought the t …
Henry & Self
An intimate portrait of privilege and struggle, scandal and accolade, from the Old World to the new colonies of Vancouver's Island and British Columbia.
At the age of 33, Sarah Crease left her home in England to travel with her young family to a farflung outpost of the British Empire on the Pacific coast of North America. The detailed journals, lett …
Cornelius O'Keefe
An entertaining biography of cattle baron and land magnate Cornelius O'Keefe, founder of the Historic O'Keefe Ranch.
From humble beginnings to a life of prosperity in the heart of the Okanagan Valley, Cornelius O'Keefe is best known today through the historic ranch in Vernon, BC, that still bears his name. Established in 1867, the O'Keefe Ranch was …
