Download or read book The Dunsmuir Saga written by Terry Reksten and published by D & M Publishers. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dunsmuir Saga brings to life three generations of the legendary Dunsmuir family of Vancouver Island. Robert Dunsmuir -- canny, acquisitive and imaginative -- became the richest man in British Columbia; his sons struggled to consolidate the family fortune; his grandchildren spent it. Award-winning author Terry Reksten brings the members of the Dunsmuir family and their colourful saga to life with her lively writing, vivid anecdotes and careful research. A selection of 50 historical photographs depicts the Dunsmuirs and their grand style of life.
Download or read book Robert Dunsmuir written by Lynne Bowen and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though he came to the wilds of colonial Vancouver Island as an indentured coal miner, Robert Dunsmuir became a mine owner, a railway builder, and the richest man in British Columbia.
Download or read book When Coal Was King written by John Hinde and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The town of Ladysmith was one of the most important coal-mining communities on Vancouver Island during the early twentieth century. The Ladysmith miners had a reputation for radicalism and militancy and engaged in bitter struggles for union recognition and economic justice, most notably the Great Strike of 1912-14. This strike, one of the longest and most violent labour disputes in Canadian history, marked a watershed in the history of the town and the coal industry.
Download or read book The Haunting of Vancouver Island written by Shanon Sinn and published by TouchWood Editions. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling investigation into supernatural events and local lore on Vancouver Island. Vancouver Island is known worldwide for its arresting natural beauty, but those who live here know that it is also imbued with a palpable supernatural energy. Researcher Shanon Sinn found his curiosity piqued by stories of mysterious sightings on the island—ghosts, sasquatches, sea serpents—but he was disappointed in the sensational and sometimes disrespectful way they were being retold or revised. Acting on his desire to transform these stories from unsubstantiated gossip to thoroughly researched accounts, Sinn uncovered fascinating details, identified historical inconsistencies, and now retells these encounters as accurately as possible. Investigating 25 spellbinding tales that wind their way from the south end of the island to the north, Sinn explored hauntings in cities, in the forest, and on isolated logging roads. In addition to visiting castles, inns, and cemeteries, he followed the trail of spirits glimpsed on mountaintops, beaches, and water, and visited Heriot Bay Inn on Quadra Island and the Schooner Restaurant in Tofino to personally scrutinize reports of hauntings. Featuring First Nations stories from each of the three Indigenous groups who call Vancouver Island home—the Coast Salish, the Nuu-chah-nulth, and the Kwakwaka’wakw—the book includes an interview with Hereditary Chief James Swan of Ahousaht.
Download or read book Craigdarroch Castle in 21 Treasures written by Moira Dann and published by TouchWood Editions. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Told in 21 objects—including furnishings, artwork, and tools—this approachable museum guide takes readers into the family history, local lore, and oddities of one of Victoria's most famous landmarks. Craigdarroch Castle, built by coal baron Robert Dunsmuir for his wife, Joan, and their family, was completed in 1890. Following Joan's death, the castle was put up for sale in 1908, and later housed a military hospital and the nascent University of Victoria. Since 1979 the castle has operated as a museum and is one of the top tourist attractions in the city, a prime example of a “bonanza castle” and a rich repository of Victorian-era furnishings and décor, as well as objects evoking the hospital and college eras. Author Moira Dann offers the reader 21 selections from the castle's collection, using each artifact as a portal into the history of the building and life in Victorian and more recent times. The Black Forest clock, acquired by Joan on a trip to Europe; the telescope used by the eldest Dunsmuir son, James, aboard his yacht the Dolaura; the castle's famous stained-glass windows; a nineteenth-century intercom system known as a speaking tube—these and 17 more are described with detail and enthusiasm, and accompanied by photographs. Dann provides careful research into each object's provenance and manufacture, while inviting readers to join her imaginative journeys into the lives of the castle's occupants through the years.
Download or read book Colonization and Community written by John D. Belshaw and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2002-10-17 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Colonization and Community John Belshaw takes a new look at British Columbia's first working class, the men, women, and children beneath and beyond the pit-head. Beginning with an exploration of emigrant expectations and ambitions, he investigates working conditions, household wages, racism, industrial organization, gender, schooling, leisure, community building, and the fluid identity of the British mining colony, the archetypal west coast proletariat. By connecting the story of Vancouver Island to the larger story of Victorian industrialization, he delineates what was distinctive and what was common about the lot of the settler society. Belshaw breaks new ground, challenging the easy assumptions of transferred British political traditions, analyzing the colonial at the household level, and revealing the emergent communities of Vancouver Island as the cradle of British Columbian working-class culture.
Download or read book Canada s Entrepreneurs written by John English and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with an accessible overview of the rise of entrepreneurialism in Canada, it features portraits of 61 individuals organized thematically. Here, readers will meet a variety of seminal characters: the merchants of the first trading posts and the commercial empire of the St. Lawrence; the industrialists of the Maritimes, Central Canada, and the West; the railway builders and urban developers; and everyone in between."--Résumé de l'éditeur.
Download or read book The Eternal Flapper written by Jim Alessio and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2009-09 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Eternal Flapper: The Many Lives of Edna Wallace Hopper (1861-1959) is the amazing true story of the legendary actress, songstress, vaudeville star, silent movie star, and Wall Street trader who lived almost a century long. At the request of Edna Wallace Hopper to have her true story revealed in the 21st Century, author Jim Alessio's 20 year investigation reveals locked away secrets, some of which could have changed the course of history. Secrets include those of her stepfather's family, the notorious Dunsmuir family, the once richest family of North America, the dark and corrupt side of Wall Street, the Skull and Bones Society members, the Illuminati and additionally Edna's personal dark secrets. A letter from 1886 sealed with instructions to be opened in the year 2000 leads to a secret of the Royal House of Windsor. While in the midst of this investigation, the author accidently "opens Pandora's Box" and gets caught up in the web of the story as the British MI5 are informed of his findings. This book reads like great fiction yet is completly true. As one the first American stars of entertainment on Broadway, Edna made her transition to Vaudeville by comming out naked and selling the fountain of Youth in her sixties of age, being one of the first silent movie stars and then a key trader in the powerful world of Wall Street until her nineties of age. Thirteen decades of time pass by quickly as the story unfolds with romance, mystery, suspence, humor, historical events, tragedy as it was revealed to the investigative reporter. Not just the story of Edna, the book chronicals the lives of several famous people who surrounder her life. An additional bonus chapter reveals the secrets to the Eternal Flapper's amazing youth, health and beauty.
Download or read book Cowichan Chronicles written by Thomas William Paterson and published by Tom Paterson. This book was released on 2001 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Through the Gate written by Kay Jordan and published by Kay Publishing. This book was released on 2020-08-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of The Wishing Shelf Book Awards 2020 Fifteen-year-old Elsie stumbles onto the scene at her new job—serving the affluent Dunsmuir family in Craigdarroch Castle alongside her widowed mother. Elsie feels her future has never been so bleak. Feeling trapped in her new life, she uncovers a hidden talent for acting that catapults her to the forefront of the family’s parties. But when she discovers an audience of one with a Chinese male servant, it threatens any plans she has to escape the castle. Canada’s West Coast history comes alive in this classic, fun, coming-of-age story.
Download or read book Imperial Vancouver Island written by J. F. Bosher and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2010-04 with total page 839 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "During the century 1850-1950 Vancouver Island attracted Imperial officers and other Imperials from India, the British Isles, and elsewhere in the Empire. Victoria was the main British port on the north-west Pacific Coast for forty years before the city of Vancouver was founded in 1886 to be the coastal terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway. These two coastal cities were historically and geographically different. The Island joined Canada in 1871 and thirty-five years later the Royal Navy withdrew from Esquimalt, but Island communities did not lose their Imperial character until the 1950s."--P. [4] of cover.
Download or read book Kilts on the Coast written by Jan Peterson and published by Heritage House Publishing Co. This book was released on 2012 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Hudson's Bay Company decided to establish its new Pacific coast headquarters at Fort Victoria on Vancouver Island in 1843, the Island was a pristine paradise--or an isolated wilderness, depending on one's point of view--that had sustained its First Nations inhabitants for millennia. It was one of the last places to be discovered and settled by Europeans in North America. It was Scots who came to the Island to manage the Company's business in Fort Victoria, engaging in the fur trade and establishing coal-mining ventures around what is now Nanaimo, where "black diamonds" were found in abundance. From founding father James Douglas and other high-placed Company men to the humble miners from Orkney and Ayrshire who were brought over on harsh voyages around Cape Horn to work Nanaimo's mines, the Scottish influence on the young Colony of Vancouver Island was indelible. Nanaimo author and historian Jan Peterson focuses on events and people who sparked settlement and growth in BC's first Crown Colony over six critical years, 1848 to 1854, and delves deep into the roots of the Island's Scottish presence, tracing the lives of such pioneers as Dr. William Tolmie, Robert Dunsmuir and their descendants.
Download or read book Wish You Were Here written by Peter Grant and published by TouchWood Editions. This book was released on 2002 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The images that Peter Grant has collected are mostly previously unpublished and provide fascinating insights into the social history of life on Vancouver Island from 1904 to 1918. The views capture the life and times, particularly the parties and pleasures, in the Island of this long-ago vanished era. These remarkable photographs were created by artistic photographers, sometimes amateurs, who would wander the streets or backcountry looking for business. The images were often produced by cameras the likes of which have not been seen for ages and are now collectors' prized items. "Wish You Were Here" also gives the reader a full understanding of the process and the history of this overlooked art form.
Download or read book On the Street where You Live Victoria s early roads and railways written by Danda Humphreys and published by Heritage House Publishing Co. This book was released on 2000 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-1800s, Victoria grew from a fur-trading post into a provincial capital--the jewel in British Columbia's golden crown. Meanwhile, many of the early residents, happy to leave the Hudson's Bay Company behind, followed simple trails from the fort or discovered new routes of their own. In her first book, Danda Humphreys introduced readers to some of the people who forged those pioneer pathways. Now she takes us another step back in time to the roads and railways that connected the original city's core to today's suburbs. From Saanich to Sooke, street names tell stories of intrigue and adventure: Rowland Avenue, named for the farm labourer with a sinister sideline: hangman for the HBC. Joan Crescent, where coal baron Robert Dunsmuir's widow once resided in solitary splendour in a castle called Craigdarroch. Sidney Avenue, close to where the Brethour brothers donated land for the northern terminus of the "Cordwood Express," first train to link the city with the Saanich Peninsula and the islands in the Strait of Georgia. In this second book in her On the Street Where You Live trilogy, Danda once again combines her passion for the past with a penchant for lively prose to bring you stories about Victoria's pioneers. You know the streets; now meet the people--their lives, their loves and the legends they left behind.
Download or read book Once Upon a Wedding written by Nancy Millar and published by Calgary : Bayeux Arts. This book was released on 2000 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ghost Stories of British Columbia written by Jo-Anne Christensen and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 1996-09-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has been called Canada's most haunted province. While such a claim is impossible to prove, British Columbia does abound with tales of the supernatural. Ghost Stories of British Columbia is a comprehensive collection of these tales, drawing from the province's history, its archives, and its people. There are ghosts from the distant past, and ghosts from the present day. Legends that are familiar to many, and accounts that, to date, have only been heard by a few. Shady apparitions from the coastline, the interior, and the isolated north. And each story is a true account of someone's experience with a ghost. In Burnaby, a young child is repeatedly urged by two spectral visitors to follow them back "to the other side." The dedicated publisher of the Surrey Leader returns to check on the new issue - weeks after his death. The image of a screaming young woman haunts a grove of bushes in Beacon Hill Park - years before a woman matching the image is murdered there. Barkerville - a town designed to bring the history of the gold rush to life - truly hosts the "spirit" of the past. Victoria honours its British past - with two of its own haunted castles. In Creston - an eccentric stonemason's spirit occupies the unusual home he once planned to be buried in. They are the mysteries, the unexplained, the eerie, and amazing stories meant to be told by campfire or candlelight. They are the true ghost stories of British Columbia, and they wait for you in these pages.
Download or read book The Dunsmuirs written by Rod Langley and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first of three plays about one of Canada's wealthiest and most-ruthless families. Cast of 2 women and 6 men.
