A fascinating account that links early maritime history, Indigenous land rights, and modern environmental advocacy in the Clayoquot Sound region by award-winning author and historian Barry Gough. Centred on Meares Island, located near Tofino on Vancouver Island’s west coast, Possessing Meares Island weaves a unique history out of the mists of time by connecting eighteenth century Indigenous-colonial trade relations to more recent historical upheavals. Gough invites readers to enter a dramatic epoch of BC’s coastal history and watch the Nuu-Chah-nulth nations spearhead the maritime sea otter trade, led by powerful chiefs like Wicaninnish and Maquinna. Eventually, Meares Island declines into an economic backwater due to overhunting the sea otter, the bloody Clayoquot War of 1855, and most importantly, the proxy of empire—the Hudson’s Bay Company—establishing colonial roots in nearby Victoria. Caught up in the tides of change, the Treaty of 1846 ushers in a new era as the island is officially declared property of the British crown. Gough bridges the gap between centuries as he describes how the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council draw on this complicated history of ownership to invoke their legal claim to the land and defend the majestic wilderness from the indiscriminate clear-cut saw. Possessing Meares Island will not only appeal to history buffs, but to anyone interested in a momentous triumph for Indigenous rights and environmental protection that echoes across the nation today.

From the time of Cook, the British and their Canadian successors were drawn to the Northwest coast of North America by possibilities of trade in sea otter and the wish to find a 'northwest passage'. The studies collected here trace how, under the influences of the Royal Navy and British statecraft, the British came to dominate the area, with expeditions sent from London, Bombay and Macau, and the Canadian quest from overland. The North West Company came to control the trade of the Columbia River, despite American opposition, and British sloop diplomacy helped overcome Russian and Spanish resistance to British aspirations. Elsewhere in the Americas, the British promoted trans-Pacific trade with China, harvested British Columbia forests, conveyed specie from western Mexico, and established the South America naval station. The flag followed trade and vice versa; empire was both formal (at Vancouver Island) and informal (as in California or Mexico). This book features individuals such as James Cook, William Bolts, Peter Pond, and Sir Alexander Mackenzie. It is also an account of the pressure that corporations placed on the British state in shaping the emerging world of trade and colonization in that distant ocean and its shores, and of the importance of sea-power in the creation of modern Canada.

Celebrated historian Barry Gough brings a defining era of Pacific Northwest history into focus in this biography of Richard Blanshard, the first governor of Vancouver Island—illuminating with intriguing detail the genesis and early days of Canada's westernmost province. Early one wintry day in March 1850, after seven weary weeks out of sight of land, a well-dressed Londoner, a bachelor aged thirty-two, stood at the ship’s rail taking in the immensity of the unfolding scene. From Her Britannic Majesty’s paddlewheel sloop-of-war Driver, steadily thumping forth on Imperial purpose, all that Richard Blanshard could make out to port, in reflected purple light upon the northern side, was a forested, rock-clad island rising to considerable height. Vancouver’s Island they called it in those far-off days. This was his destination. Richard Blanshard was only governor of the young colony for three short, unhappy years—only one and a half of which were spent in the colony itself. From the very beginning he was at odds with the vastly influential Hudson’s Bay Company, run by its Chief Factor James Douglas, who succeeded Blanshard as governor of the colony of Vancouver Island and later became the first governor of the colony of British Columbia. While James Douglas is remembered, for better or worse, as a founding father of British Columbia, Richard Blanshard’s name is now largely forgotten, despite his vitally important role in warning London of American cross-border aggressions, including a planned takeover of Haida Gwaii. However, his failures highlight the fascinating struggles of the time—the supreme influence of commerce, the disparity between expectations and reality, and the bewildering collision of European and Pacific Northwest culture.

"The most current and comprehensive book of its kind, Aboriginal Peoples and Natural Resources in Canada explores the opportunities and constraints that aboriginal people encounter in their efforts to use water resources, fisheries, forestry resources, wildlife, land and non-renewable resources, and to gain management power over these resources. This examination begins with a historical perspective, and takes into account cultural, political, legal and geographical factors. From the contemporary research of the author, the reader is informed of the most current developments and provided with a well-reasoned outlook for the future." "This book is an essential resource for aboriginal people engaged in the use and management of natural resources, and for those who seek professional training in the field. Anyone wanting to know more about the social and environmental issues pertaining to more responsible and equitable environmental and ecological management will find a wealth of information in this volume."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Current Geographical Publications (CGP) is a non-profit service to the scholarly community initiated in 1938 by the American Geographical Society of New York. Beginning in 2006, the format changed to include the tables of contents of current geographical journals. The journal titles listed link to web pages or PDF scans of the current issue's contents.

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.

"Every once in a while, an important historical figure makes an appearance, makes a difference, and then disappears from the public record. James Teit (1864-1922) was such a figure. A prolific ethnographer and tireless Indian rights activist, Teit spent four decades helping British Columbia's Indigenous peoples in their challenge of the settler-colonial assault on their lives and territories. Yet his story is little known. At the Bridge chronicles Teit's fascinating story. From his base at Spences Bridge, British Columbia, Teit practised a participant- and place-based anthropology - an anthropology of belonging - that covered much of BC and northern Washington, Idaho, and Montana. Whereas his contemporaries, including famed anthropologist Franz Boas, studied Indigenous peoples as the last survivors of "dying cultures" in need of preservation in metropolitan museums, Teit worked with them as members of living cultures actively asserting jurisdiction over their lives and lands. Whether recording stories and songs, mapping place-names, or participating in the chiefs' fight for fair treatment, he made their objectives his own. With his allies, he produced copious, meticulous records; an army of anthropologists could not have achieved a fraction of what Teit achieved in his short life. Wendy Wickwire's beautifully crafted narrative accords Teit the status he deserves. At the Bridge serves as a long-overdue corrective, consolidating Teit's place as a leading and innovative anthropologist in his own right."--