Over the holiday season, a new blog appeared - KnowBC - written by Dan Francis, a British Columbian historical writer and researcher with a number of books to his credit and by Howard White, writer, poet and publisher.
They intend to cover "all manner of BC-related subjects, be they cultural, historical, economic or political." So far they've had posts on BC business history, movie stars in BC, artists, voting, neglected classics (Janet Smith - oh no! not again - a BC 'in' story) and Trotsky. Quite a mix!
Oh, and then there's a poll about changing British Columbia's name. (For me, it's 'no, thank you, I'm British!' - another in joke although it doesn't quite fit. Salish names I'd be interested in though for my home towns - both are named for 'dead white men'. Maybe when the land claims are settled someday...)
Dan Francis was editorial director for the Encyclopedia of British Columbia and he's on the Editorial Board of Geist magazine. His latest books are Red Light Neon: A History of Vancouver’s Sex Trade , 2006, A Road for Canada: The Illustrated Story of the Trans-Canada Highway, 2006, Far West: The Story of British Columbia, 2006, and Operation Orca: Springer, Luna and the Struggle to Save West Coast Killer Whales, 2007. He also writes a Canadian history blog - HistoryWire: What's Past is Prologue - for Historica.
Howard White is co-owner with Mary White of Harbour Publishing, always a very independent company and well known here for the hundreds of great British Columbia history books it's published and promoted. The company's original offerings, RainCoast Chronicles, collections of articles about BC life and history, are now classics and have been reprinted several times. He's also the publisher of The Encyclopedia of British Columbia. My favourite of his own books is A Hard Man to Beat The Story of Bill White: Labour Leader, Historian, Shipyard Worker, Raconteur, 1983.
They'll be inviting others to join their discussions. I hope they'll be thinking of adding some genealogy to that mix.
LINKS
KnowBC: http://knowbc.blogspot.com/
Encyclopedia of British Columbia (Pay site, but there is a 30 day free trial available): http://www.knowbc.com/
History Wire: http://historywire.ca/
Harbour Publishing: http://www.harbourpublishing.com/index.php
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