Reviews for West Beyond the West A History of British Columbia

The average rating for West Beyond the West A History of British Columbia based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-05-07 00:00:00 Mariko Gjovig This is the best single-volume history of BC, with caveats. It is very well researched; the bibliography alone is well curated and provides lots of further directions for reading. It is also a well-planned book, weaving the basic facts with political, social, cultural, environmental, labour, and other histories. Further, the author does well to bring in larger Pacific Northwest, Canadian, British, and worldwide historical considerations and how it impacted BC. Further, there is a very good exploration of what is has meant to “be a British Columbian”, Emily Carr’s “British Columbia seeing”, which takes up the final chapter and is peppered throughout. Finally, throughout there is an honest discussion of race and racism in BC and how it has impacted our history. There are drawbacks. I read the third edition, which has been vastly updated. However, there are many spelling and grammatical errors that are clearly due to sloppy editing by U of Toronto Press. Example: changing “twentieth century” to “twentieth-first”. Come on! Also, if the third edition was indeed this updated, why are Indigenous peoples referred to as “Indians” throughout? Not only is it highly outdated, it is sometimes confusing when discussing people whose ancestry is actually from India! Sometimes Indigenous and Indian peoples were discussed together and I had to read it over multiple times, but the larger picture is how the language ill-treats both groups. It is also interesting to note that as a history book published in 2007, it takes the “history” of the province right up to 2006. While laudable, there is no real perspective in time when writing current events as history, since the author cannot know how this recent history will turn out, especially regarding prognostications for the future. For example, writing in 2006 and suggesting what the tonnage passed through Vancouver and Prince Rupert will be in 2016 can be easily checked in 2021 and not surprisingly it missed the mark! Therefore, be warned. I will say that this is a good book and worth reading. Having done so, I have tied together a lot of loose threads of what I understood to be BC history. I am much better at tackling other BC history learning for having read it. However, I would advise to pair this book with also reading Derek Hayes’ “British Columbia: A New Historical Atlas” and Robin Fisher’s “Contact and Conflict” to provide a further overview of BC history, and then the world is your oyster! I think it is time for a new, collaborative, multi-volume BC history to be written that takes into account these issues. I would love to see UBC Press and Harbour Publishing collaborate on such a venture.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-01-09 00:00:00 Rosanna Vigil This was a interesting read