Beyond the City Limits: Rural History in British Columbia ed. by R.W. Sandwell (review)

Book Reviews 393 began by reading published accounts offirst-generation immigrant men, women, and children, representing differing cultural backgrounds and 'all colours of skin.' With twenty-one chapters, extensive bibliographic notes, an index, and a list ofmigrants, this book is a virtual encyclopedia of the immigrant experience. One of its obvious strengths is the geographical and ethnic diversity of its sources; another is the detailed bibliographic references. The narratives are understandably uneven, but they contain insights into conditions that relate to a world that few ofus will ever know first hand. When the author seeks to impose his particular and sometimes narrow understanding of complex settlement patterns, ethnic relationships, economic trends, and political events, the flow of the book suffers. In light of the design of the book, this criticism is perhaps inevitable. To interpret an era dating from the destruction ofthe Spanish Armada in 1588 to the arrival in Canada of immigrants from Haiti and Hong Kong three hundred years later is to invite debate about historical detail. This book is overwhelmingly a catalogue of dreams only partly realized, ofthe hopes of people 'let down' by Canada, or beaten down by social circumstances not of their making: Is this a limitation in the genesis ofthis kind of evidence, a matter of selection, or a hint of bias? Did those who felt themselves to have been more successful leave fewer life stories? One wonders. Ifnot, where are their accounts? Although the author describes this as a book about Canadian society in the making, its focus is predominantly in frontier communities in the North and the West. Other areas are mentioned, but the balance is away from the more settled areas. In addition to being the historian of record, Hoerder also appears as an interlocutor, participant, and apologist. Transitions to and from these roles are not always seamless and, from time to time, the author's voice intrudes. The images of immigrant lives that Hoerder has uncovered offer a necessary corrective to the generations-old nation-building narrative that was once the stuff of Canadian history. This is a monumental work of research-in-progress, offering enriching detail and insight into Canadian lives lived. Those who wish to understand these aspects of Canadian society cannot afford to overlook this book. KENNETH MCLAUGHLIN University ofWaterloo Beyond the City Limits: Rural History in British Columbia. Edited by R.W. SANDWELL. Vancouver: UBC Press 1999. Pp. 320, illus. $85.00 By producing this collection ofessays, editor Ruth Sandwell hopes to correct and to refocus the record ofhistorical research on British Columbia. 394 The Canadian Historical Review In a carefully reasoned introduction, she argues that the 'overwhelmingly urban and industrial emphasis within the historiography' ofthe so-called company province greatly distorts reality. For one thing, such a discourse has served only to 'erase the very real distinctions between rural and urban.' Even though industrialization propelled the province to urban status early in the twentieth century, well ahead ofmost major Canadian regions, Sandwell argues that this dominant fact should not marginalize the study ofBritish Columbia's rural past. The province's history is more than a narrative about the staple trades, the tensions between metropolis and hinterland, or the peopling of the region. For Sandwell and her colleagues, rural British Columbia is worthy of serious consideration; it is imperative to redress the rural deficit. But what comprises the rural of their interest? In short, it is the ruralness of the lived experience that takes place, metaphorically, 'beyond the city limits.' For this reason, we are not offered a comprehensive rural history of British Columbia - it is much too early in the research task to do so. Rather, we are offered well-researched and well-written essays about some of the meanings of living and negotiating the ruralness of the province; we are invited to explore rural history in British Columbia. The thirteen essays that accept this agenda are divided into three sections: exploring power relations, land and society, and gender and society. Not unexpectedly, several ofthe essays that explore power relations deal with the Aboriginal peoples. John Lutz writes of capitalist land dealings between Europeans and the Lekwammen (or the Songhees to Europeans ) in the Victoria...