Overview

""The ways in which we can redress the past are many and varied,"" writes Jean Barman, ""and it is up to each of us to act as best we can."" The seventeen essays collected here, originally published between1996and2013, make a valuable contribution toward this laudable goal. With a wide range of source material, from archival and documentary sources to oral histories, Barman pieces together stories of individuals and groups disadvantaged in white settler society because of their gender, race and/or social class. Working to recognize past actors that have been underrepresented in mainstream histories, Barman's focus isBCon ""the cusp of contact."" The essays in this collection include fascinating, though largely forgotten, life stories of the frontier-that space between contact and settlement, where, for a brief moment, anything seemed possible. This volume, featuring over thirty archival photographs and illustrations, makes these important and very readable essays accessible to a broader audience for the first time.

Full Product Details

9781550178968

Table of Contents

Reviews

Reading a book by local historian Jean Barman is like looking at the negative of a well-loved picture. By reversing the light and the dark, she forces us to see the edges, the margins, the details pushed aside by the Technicolor myths of accepted history. -- Geoff D'Auria

Reading a book by local historian Jean Barman is like looking at the negative of a well-loved picture. By reversing the light and the dark, she forces us to see the edges, the margins, the details pushed aside by the Technicolor myths of accepted history. --Geoff D'Auria, Vancouver Review

""Reading a book by local historian Jean Barman is like looking at the negative of a well-loved picture. By reversing the light and the dark, she forces us to see the edges, the margins, the details pushed aside by the Technicolor myths of accepted history."" -- Geoff D’Auria

Author Information

Jean Barman, professor emeritus, has published more than twenty books, including On the Cusp of Contact: Gender, Space and Race in the Colonization of British Columbia (Harbour Publishing, 2020) and the winner of the 2006 City of Vancouver Book Award, Stanley Park’s Secret (Harbour Publishing, 2005). Her lifelong pursuit to enrich the history of BC has earned her such honours as a Governor General’s Award, a George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, a Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing and a position as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She lives in Vancouver, BC. Margery Fee, Professor Emeritus, has shaped national understanding of Canadian literature, culture and regional and national forms of Canadian English usage. She has recently published Literary Land Claims (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2015) and Polar Bear (Reaktion, 2019). Margery Fee, Professor Emeritus, has shaped national understanding of Canadian literature, culture and regional and national forms of Canadian English usage. She has recently published Literary Land Claims (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2015) and Polar Bear (Reaktion, 2019).

Tab Content 6

Countries Available