There’s No Such Thing as a Full Bookshelf
I first started reading BC history books as a teenager, drawn in by a desire to learn more about my community and the connection of my story. Very little regional history was taught at my Nanaimo high school in the 1990s and Canadian history was hyper-focused on politics and European settlement in the eastern provinces. Few local history books were available, so I tracked down as many out-of-print books as possible and searched for brief mentions in other BC history books. As I pursued local history, more and more pieces of the past emerged and fit together. Decades later, stories continue to surface and become more nuanced.
My interest in history has broadened over the years and so has the availability of book topics. History is a major player on the weekly BC Bestseller List — often half of the top fifteen most popular books explore BC’s past! Self-publishers and small presses produce an astounding array of titles on a regular basis. With no shortage of new material, my dilemma is how to read all the books I’ve crammed into my bookshelf — which is rapidly becoming a safety hazard — before I pick up more.
Why did you start reading about BC history?
Aimee
The impact of women on resource-based communities is often overlooked. Boom & Bust: The Resilient Women of Historic Telegraph Cove seeks to balance the scales by including stories of over twenty-five women who lived in the Cove during the last one hundred years. Their contributions to Telegraph Cove resulted in a distinct sense of community and reveal much about the experience of living in an isolated area.
Telegraph Cove was aptly named after the tiny telegraph station — little more than a shack built for the lineman who maintained the telegraph
