Frances Macnab was the pseudonym for the globe-trotting and undaunted 19th century journalist Agnes Fraser, one of the first women to write about British Columbia. Already an experienced world traveller, she took the new CPR railway line across Canada to British Columbia in 1897 where she went from Victoria to Alberni and commented, "The great defect in the British emigrant is his unadaptibility, and many men would be useless in any but one capacity, while others appear to regard a change of occupation as degrading." She went to Nanaimo, back to Victoria, up the Fraser River, from the Okanagan to the Kootenays, to Rossland and Trail, always contemptuous of Americans. She was robbed in Grand Forks, explored the Columbia Valley, visited Banff and returned to Liverpool via Quebec. Her 369-page book derived from her trip is British Columbia for Settlers: Its Mines, Trade and Agriculture (1898).

BOOKS:

Relics: Fragments of a Life (1894).

On veldt and farm, in Bechuanaland, Cape Colony, the Transvaal, and Natal (London: Edward Arnold, 1897).

British Columbia for Settlers: Its Mines, Trade and Agriculture (London: Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1898).

A Ride in Morocco Among Believers and Traders (Edward Arnold, 1902)