Raincoast Chronicles 20: Lilies and Fireweed: Frontier Women of British Columbia

by Stephen Hume

"Lilies and Fireweed" is packed with unforgettable stories of women surviving in the unforgiving, sometimes hostile environment of pioneer and aboriginal British Columbia. Based on award-winning journalist Stephen Hume's popular series "Frontier Women of BC" that appeared in the "Vancouver Sun" in 2002, this collection of essays contains stories, photographs and other materials that have never before been published.
From hospitals to dance halls, and from the classroom to the cannery floor, this insightful pictorial history examines indigenous and immigrant women's positions in the workplace, home and wilderness. Hume delves into the lives of aboriginal and pioneer women who had an important and multifaceted influence on the development of British Columbia.
We meet women such as 17-year-old Frances Barkley, who insisted on accompanying her husband on a merchant voyage to British Columbia in 1786 and subsequently twice circumnavigated the world; Lady Amelia Douglas - a Cree woman and wife of Governor James Douglas - who had her own important but often overlooked role in the forging of British Columbia; Mrs. Washiji Oya, the first Japanese woman to settle in Canada in 1887; and Maria Pollard Grant, who, in 1895, became the first woman elected to public office in BC.
Brimming with fascinating historical photographs, "Lilies and Fireweed" brings to light the forgotten stories of mothers, dance-hall girls, artists, teachers and adventurers that are as enthralling and diverse as BC itself.

Genres: History

80 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2004

About the author

"Born in England in 1947, Vancouver Sun columnist and senior writer Stephen Hume immigrated to British Columbia with his parents in 1948. He was educated at Mount Douglas Senior Secondary in Victoria, the University of Victoria, the University of Alberta and the Banff School of Advanced Management.

Hume began his writing career as a reporter for the Victoria Daily Times in 1968, joining the Edmonton Journal in 1971 as that paper's Arctic correspondent covering Alaska, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Greenland. He later served the paper for a decade as editor-in-chief and general manager, leading the newspaper to various national and international awards, including a Roland Michener citation for public service journalism in 1983.

In 1989, Hume returned to writing and the West Coast, joining the Vancouver Sun as columnist-at-large. Hume's writing in The Vancouver Sun won the Southam President's Award for commentary in 1991, national newspaper award citations in 1990 and 1993, provincial newspaper award citations in 1993, 1994 and 1996, the Marjorie Nichols Memorial Award for column writing in 1995, a silver medal for feature writing from the Canadian Farm Writers' Federation in 1999 and a Jack Webster Award in 2000.

An award-winning author of six books of poetry, essays and natural history, Hume's writing appears in numerous anthologies and is cited in textbooks including: The Alberta Diamond Jubilee Anthology (1979); Inside Poetry (1984); Home and Homeland: The Canadian Immigrant Experience (1993); Vistas: Exploring Poetry, Prose and Non-Fiction (1993); The Canadian Oxford Guide to Writing (1994), Dimensions II: Precise Thought and Language in the Essay (1996) and Contre-taille: Poemes choisis de vingt-cinq auteurs canadiens-anglais (1996). His collection of essays, Ghost Camps, won the Alberta Writer's Guild Literary Award for best work of non-fiction in 1989. Bush Telegraph: Discovering the Pacific Province, a collection of essays published in 1999, won a B.C. 2000 book award. A new collection of essays, Off the Map: Tales from the Road Less Travelled, is to be published this fall."

Reviews

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love stories about pioneer women and this one about BC ladies was great! It's written in more of a newspaper style though and basically only brushes the surface of most of them. The photographs were really nice and clear. I'm excited to read more about some of them. Recommended if you like Canadian and BC history.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm such a history geek, especially love frontier and northwest history, so when I found this at the library I had to check it out. Compiled of newspaper articles this book has tons of old photos and excerpts from diaries and newspapers of the time and passages from books about these brave women. There are definitely some interesting stories to discover in these pages.

[Yasmin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short look at women of all backgrounds and ages of the "frontier" of British Columbia, Canada. What little there was is interesting and is worth the read.

[Eileen Breseman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Women of the frontier, tough minded, resourceful and capable, this book focuses specifically on those of British Columbia, Canada. Though I live in Washington State only a 100 miles from the border, their stories paralleling those of the first women of my own area, the Canadian - British colonial perspective was fascinatingly different. Women historic figures are mostly absent from the traditional textbooks. But this book doesn't cover only famous women but speaks to the experiences of groups of women, be it in the wilds, the frontier towns, the tribes and other ethnic immigrants arriving and settling on the West Coast and inland. From childbirth, making a home, keeping their families fed and clothed, foraging, mushing dogs, or surviving from lives in dance halls and following the miner camps, women had a hard life. Many followed their husbands or came with the specific purpose of becoming brides, but others chose to shrug off the Victorian, class society ways and forge their own way in a male dominated society, with little to no political/ownership rights to be a citizen. Forging a place in politics, school governance, newspapers, on stage and in literature, each step shaped the frontier. Their early ways, their political struggles, their voices over the centuries created a space for where women are today. I applaud the author Stephen Hume for digging into archives and finding these interesting hidden stories. He includes a wide spectrum of ethnicities and time periods. His narrative covers the time from First Nations to WWI when the shift of industry and women in the workplace no longer constituted "The Frontier".