British Columbia from the Earliest Times to the Present, Biographical - Vol.3

Cat No.:   CA0361-3:

Published in the same year that the Great War broke out - 1914 - this self contained volume III of the four volume set does its part in telling the history of British Columbia by relating the life stories of about 620 of its prominent citizens. It accomplishes this in the form of individual biographies, many (about 320) of which are accompanied by professionally photographed studio portraits of the subjects. Each biography has been submitted by its subject - or by his family and / or close acquaintances - so there is no real common structure to them but, in general, they provide a familial and working history of the subject's life. In this process his spouse(s), his children, his parents and any siblings are introduced, at least by, name and often by genealogical and national origin. The amount of this content varies from a single paragraph to one of several pages, which also contains a family tree rooted in the mid - 1600's.

This is a thick book, numbering to 1161 pages. Every third (or so) page is given to a single large portrait of one of the subjects, and the backs of these portrait sheets (which are also numbered) are blank so the number of printed pages is about 560. This makes the length of the average Bio. about 90% of a page.

Or, to put it another way, all the Bios. provide good basic information and most contain a wealth of detail about the subject and his family. Amongst the 600 odd subjects are many who were attracted to British Columbia from other parts of Canada by stories of fortunes to be made by exploiting the abundant natural, and renewable, resources including agriculture and forestry, but most notably by the stories of gold. Many of the biographies contain anecdotes of desperate survival while experiencing the hardships of the back country in search of a fortune. Other settlers came with the train construction crews as the link between east and west was forged, and still more followed as a result of this improved means of transportation for produce and manufactured goods.

The four volumes of this complete work are available as four individual CDs, or in two single CDs giving the Biographies (Vol. 3 & 4) and the Complete History (Vol. 1 & 2) or as a complete set comprising all four volumes.

We have placed a sampler of some selected pages from the book - including the whole of the Index of Subjects - on our Downloads page so you can see what the book's content looks like and can see if any of your families might be included.

You can also reach the Sampler by clicking on the following link Sampler

You can return to this page by closing the Sampler Page when you are ready to purchase.

No. of CDs is:  1 ;   Format is:  PDF ;   Searchable?:  YES;

FastFind:  Yes;  ISBN No.:   978-1-897405-73-4 ;