The Western Maritime Province: Five Recent Histories of the British Columbia Coast

Review article The Western Maritime Province: Five Recent Histories ofthe British Columbia Coast PATRICIA ROY Gerald Rushton, Echoes ofthe Whistle: An I//ustrated History of the Union Steamship Company. Vancouver: Douglas and Mcintyre, 1980. Pp. 143, illus., $24.95. J. Arthur Lower, Ocean ofDestiny: A Concise History ofthe North Pacific, 1500-1978. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1979. Pp. xiv, 242, illus. , $16.50. Barry M. Gough, Distant Dominion: Britain and the Northwest Coast of North America, 1579-1809. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980. Pp. xii, 190, illus., $19.95. Derek Pethick, The Nootka Connection: Europe and the Northwest Coast, 1790-1795. Vancouver: Douglas and Mcintyre, 1980. Pp. 281, illus., $18.95. Robin Fisher and Hugh Johnston, eds., Captain James Cook and His Times. Vancouver: Douglas and Mcintyre, 1979. Pp. 278, illus., $16.95. Their maritime past fascinates British Columbians. Since 1978 two major Vancouver publishers have issued at least five books relating to maritime history and one of them, the University of British Columbia Press, has initiated a series of Pacific Maritime Studies in response to the success of its earlier publications in the field. In scope, the books reviewed here range from an illustrated history of a coastal steamship company to a general history of the North Pacific since 1500 but the most important three deal with aspects of late eighteenth -century coastal exploration. What do these books tell us about British Columbia? The importance of European expansion and involvement in the North Pacific is evident in all five volumes. That this should be so in studies of Captain James Cook, of Nootka, and of British involvement on the northwest coast is self-evident; that it should appear as a major theme in a book arguing the need to study the trans-oceanic relationship of all North Pacific nations seems contradictory. J. Arthur Lower, a retired Vancouver high school teacher and author of Ocean of Destiny: A Concise History of the North Pacific, 1500-1978, neatly avoids the problem of reconciling concept and fact by writing an episodic study rather than a closely argued·thesis. Lower's chief objective is to present an outline of "the relationship between Canadian history and events on the Asiatic coast" (p. xiii). He is particularly conJournal ofCanadian Studies Vol. 16, Nos. 3&4 (Automne-Hiver 1981 Fall-Winter) cerned with Canada's contacts with five other North Pacific nations: China, Soviet Russia, the United States, Japan and Korea. After giving passing notice to possible prehistoric contacts between Asia and America, Lower sketches the history of European exploration and trade in the North Pacific. In certain cases - the sea otter trade is a good example - his concept of a North Pacific bridge fits well. His account of the later whaling industry is less convincing. Similarly, the Europocentrism of his approach as demonstrated by such chapter headings as "Europe Discovers the Pacific (1500-1750)," "The Withdrawal of Europe (1914-36)," and the "End of the European Era (1930-53)," makes the cogency of sustaining the idea of a North Pacific bridge difficult. Writing about five hundred years of history of a land area covering not only 22 million square kilometres but the northern half of the world's largest ocean is an admirable and awesome task. That (except for a few recent references to government publications and Vancouver newspapers) Lower relied almost exclusively on secondary sources is understandable. His bibliography is extensive; it is, however, incomplete and, apparently because of poor proofreading, not entirely accurate. As well, some tertiary material he includes such as a high school survey of Canadian and American history and historical articles in newspaper magazine-supplements are of questionable utility. More worrisome still are the factual errors in the book. Lower's account of Oriental exclusion in Canada offers several examples of ''boners ." The Dominion Franchise Act of 1885 did deny Chinese the right to vote (p. 110) but had nothing to do with the head tax imposed by a quite separate Chinese Immigration Act. Canada's Chinese Immigration Act, 1923, did, as Lower rightly notes (p. 121), almost completely exclude Chinese immigrants but it did nothing to regulate Japanese and East Indian immigration as he implies. Indeed, a...