Recollections of the Pioneers of British Columbia 2 A Pioneer Gentlewoman in British Columbia

Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press Light Creasing on Front, Rear Covers, Spine; Front, Rear Covers, Spine Lightly Chipped; Spine Moderately Cocked; Edges Lightly Soiled; Moderate Yellowing Due to Age. SUB-TITLE: The Recollections of Susan Allison. COVER DESIGNED BY: Chris Bergthorson. CONTENTS: Illustrations; Introduction; Some Recollections of a Pioneer of the Sixties; Some Recollections of a Pioneer of the Seventies; Memoirs of a Pioneer of the Eighties; When the River Rose; Appendices; Notes; Acknowledgements; Index. EDITION: Trade Paperback. Abridged Edition. This is an abridged edition of the extensively annotated volume published in 1976. The full text of Mrs. Allison's memoirs is contained in this book. SERIES: 2nd in series. A Pioneer Gentlewoman in British Columbia is the second volume in a series of editions of important documents of the colonial and early provincial history of British Columbia. The first volume is The Reminiscences of Doctor John Sebastian Helmcken, edited by Dorothy Blakely Smith. J. S. Helmcken was British Columbia's pioneer doctor, first Speaker in the legislature, and one of the negotiators of the colony's entry into Confederation. SYNOPSIS: "My husband, alarmed, left me and ran to the Indian ranch returning with one of Quinisco's sisters... She smoothed up my bed and suggested 'whiskey' which I swallowed. I think I would have swallowed anything to get rid of the pain. About nine o'clock next day my baby was born two months too soon, the first white child born in the Similkameen Valley." In 1860, at the age of 14, Susan Louisa Moir left England for British Columbia. After settling initially at Hope, she lived briefly in both Victoria and New Westminster, then B.C.'s two most important settlements. Returning to Hope, she helped her mother open the community's first school, and in 1868 she married John Fall Allison, riding on her honeymoon over the Allison Trail into the unsettled Similkameen Valley. Her record of the voyage, of Victoria, New Westminster, and Hope as they were in the 1860's, and her memories of the isolated but fulfilling life she, her husband, and their 14 children led in the Similkameen and Okanagan Valleys provide a unique view of the pioneer mind and spirit. There were exciting moments--a horseback journey to Hope through a forest fire that made the Skagit River boil, her husband's boat nearly crushed by a gigantic ice floe on Lake Okanagan--but setting the tone of the whole account is an abiding natural curiosity and respect for both of her closest neighbours--the Similkameen and Okanagan Indians and the wilderness itself. It is these qualities, expressed in forceful, uncomplicated prose, that make Susan Allison's Recollections a major addition to Canadian pioneer literature. Dr. Ormsby has also included as an appendix to this volume two selections from the "Indian legends" Susan Allison wrote based on the tales she was told by her Indian neighbours. Margaret A. Ormsby is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and Her British Columbia: a History, the revised edition of which appeared in 1971, has become the standard history of the province. She holds honorary degrees from the University of Victoria, Simon Fraser University, and the University of British Columbia, where she was head of the history department from 1965 until 1974. She is the author of numerous articles on British Columbia history, and among her contributions to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography are biographies of Frederick Seymour and Sir James Douglas. At present she is working on the introduction to the Hudson's Bay Record Society's edition of the Fort Victoria journals.. Abridged Edition. Trade Paperback. Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.