National Network for Equitable Library Service

The image of a rough frontier – where working men were tempted away from church on Sundays by more profane concerns – was perpetuated by postwar religious leaders troubled by the decline in church involvement. Tina Block debunks the myth of a godless frontier, revealing a Pacific Northwest that rejected organized religion – but not necessarily God. Not just working men but also women, families, and middle-class communities helped to shape the region’s secular identity.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the region of Liangshan in southwest China was plagued by violence. Indigenous Nuosu communities clashed with Han migrants, the Qing and Republican states, and local warlords. The first English-language history of Liangshan, A Frontier Made Lawless challenges the view that ongoing violence was the result of population pressures, opium production, and the growth of local paramilitary groups.

The First Nations of British Columbia, now in its third edition, is a concise and accessible overview of BC’s First Nations peoples, cultures, and issues. Robert J. Muckle familiarizes readers with the history, diversity, and complexity of First Nations to provide a context for contemporary concerns and initiatives. This latest edition of the classic work has been fully revised, with new chapters added and previous ones rewritten, arguments reframed in light of current developments, and resources brought right up to date.

Laura Holland and Mildred Forbes, an inseparable duo, set off from Montreal in June 1915 to serve as nursing sisters in the Great War. Over the next four years, the two cared for each other through sickness and health, air raids and bombings, unrelenting work, and adventurous leaves. This thoughtfully curated collection of their letters home paints a vivid account of nursing through the battles of Gallipoli, Passchendaele, and beyond.

This cultural history of the amateur military tradition traces the origins of the citizen soldier ideal from long before Canadians donned khaki and boarded troopships for the Western Front. Before the Great War, Canada’s military culture was in transition as the country navigated an uncertain relationship with the United States and fought an imperial war in South Africa.

Jean Barman rewrites the history of the Pacific Northwest from the perspective of the French Canadians involved in the fur economy, the Indigenous women whose presence in their lives encouraged them to stay, and their descendants. For half a century, French Canadians were the region’s largest group of newcomers, facilitating early overland crossings, driving the fur economy, initiating non-wholly-Indigenous agricultural settlement, and easing relations with Indigenous peoples.

British Columbia is at the forefront of a secularizing movement in the English-speaking world. Nearly half its residents claim no religious affiliation, and the province has the highest rate of unbelief or religious indifference in Canada. Infidels and the Damn Churches explores the historical roots of this phenomenon. Lynne Marks reveals that class and racial tensions fuelled irreligion in frontier BC, a world populated by embattled ministers, militant atheists, turn-of-the-century New Agers, rough-living miners, Asian immigrants, and church-going settlers.

For the British Empire and its allies of the Great War, 1917 was a year marked by crises. But here and there glimmers of light pierced the gloom. Soldiers began solving the problems posed by trench warfare. The dominions asserted themselves in the councils of imperial power. And the US finally entered the war. This book examines the British imperial war effort during the most pivotal and dynamic twelve months of the war. Written by internationally recognized historians, its chapters explore military, diplomatic, and domestic aspects of how the empire prosecuted the war.

In the late 1970s, feminists urged us to "rethink" Canada by placing women's experiences at the centre of historical analysis. Forty years later, women's and gender historians continue to take up the challenge, not only to interrogate the idea of nation but also to place their work in a global perspective. This volume showcases the work of scholars who draw on critical race theory, postcolonial theory, and transnational history to re-examine familiar topics such as biography and oral history, paid and unpaid work, marriage and family, and women's political action.

For centuries, some of the world’s largest empires fought for sovereignty over the resources of Northeast Asia. This compelling analysis of the region’s environmental history examines the interplay of climate and competing imperial interests in a vibrant – and violent – cultural narrative. Families that settled this borderland reaped its riches while at the mercy of an unforgiving and hotly contested landscape.