Imperial Vancouver Island

Imperial Vancouver Island, Who was Who 1850-1950 is an enlarged second edition of an A to Z biographical dictionary of about 800 British officers, civil servants, and others from the British Isles and other parts of the Empire who retired to Vancouver Island or who lived there for some 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."--Page 4 of cover.

In Islands of Truth, Daniel Clayton examines a series of encounters with the Native peoples and territory of Vancouver Island in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although he focuses on a particular region and period, Clayton also meditates on how representations of land and people, and studies of the past, serve and shape specific interests, and how the dawn of Native-Western contact in this part of the world might be studied 200 years later, in the light of ongoing struggles between Natives and non-Natives over land and cultural status. Between the 1770s and 1850s, the Native people of Vancouver Island were engaged by three sets of forces that were of general importance in the history of Western overseas expansion: the West's scientific exploration of the world in the Age of Enlightenment; capitalist practices of exchange; and the geopolitics of nation-state rivalry. Islands of Truth discusses these developments, the geographies they worked through, and the stories about land, identity, and empire stemming from this period that have shaped understanding of British Columbia's past and present. Clayton questions premises underlying much of present B.C. historical writing, arguing that international literature offers more fruitful ways of framing local historical experiences. Islands of Truth is a timely, provocative, and vital contribution to post-colonial studies.

During the century 1850-1950, Vancouver Island attracted Imperial officers, civil servants, medical officers, businessmen, and others from India, the British Isles, and elsewhere in the Empire. Victoria was the main British port on the northwest 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, as well as seventy miles apart. The Island and British Columbia were combined in 1866 and joined Canada in 1871. Thirty-five years later, the Royal Navy withdrew from its Esquimalt station, but the Island communities did not lose their Imperial character until the 1950s. J. F. Bosher's first ancestor on Vancouver Island was Sarah Taylor Marsden (1833-1916), who sailed 14,300 miles from Liverpool around Cape Horn in the "Bride Ship" Robert Lowe, arriving in Victoria in January 1863. The author's father emigrated from Berkshire in 1920 and became an inspector of commercial bulb crops for the Dominion Experimental Station in Saanich. After a Dipl me d' tudes sup rieures at the Sorbonne and a Ph.D. at London University, the author taught history at King's College London, the University of British Columbia, Cornell University, and York University in Toronto.

During the century 1850-1950, Vancouver Island attracted Imperial officers, civil servants, medical officers, businessmen, and others from India, the British Isles, and elsewhere in the Empire. Victoria was the main British port on the northwest 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, as well as seventy miles apart. The Island and British Columbia were combined in 1866 and joined Canada in 1871. Thirty-five years later, the Royal Navy withdrew from its Esquimalt station, but the Island communities did not lose their Imperial character until the 1950s.J. F. Bosher's first ancestor on Vancouver Island was Sarah Taylor Marsden (1833-1916), who sailed 14,300 miles from Liverpool around Cape Horn in the "Bride Ship" Robert Lowe, arriving in Victoria in January 1863. The author's father emigrated from Berkshire in 1920 and became an inspector of commercial bulb crops for the Dominion Experimental Station in Saanich. After a Dipl�me d'�tudes sup�rieures at the Sorbonne and a Ph.D. at London University, the author taught history at King's College London, the University of British Columbia, Cornell University, and York University in Toronto.

Imperial Eden is a collection of poems written mainly by citizens of Victoria, British Columbia, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries about that city. Established in 1843 as a Hudsons Bay Company trading post, Victoria became the capital of the province in 1866. Before the opening of the Panama Canal and the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, however, its inhabitants were relatively isolated from the rest of North America. The citys beautiful location and its semi-Mediterranean climate inspired visitors, locals, and poets to describe it as a paradise. But this remote Eden, surrounded by mountains, forest and the sea, was deeply loyal to Great Britain, believing that its far-flung empire was the repository of freedom and many civic and moral virtues. As well, local writers exhibited a militarism usually associated with Prussia. Eager to defend the British Empire, many of its citizens enthusiastically supported England in the remote South African War (1899-1902) and volunteered for service in the Great War (1914-18). Both wars were seen as a defence of decency and civilization embodied by Britain.This book shows how local poets lauded the beauty, the Britishness of Victoria and the imperial connection, but also how, confronted with the realities of modern warfare, their loyalty to the Empire waned c. 1920.