Beth Hill, one of B.C.'s leading historians, died on January 24 at age 72. Born in Ontario in 1924 of United Empire Loyalist and potato famine Irish stock, she came to northern British Columbia to establish a regional library out of Dawson Creek for the Alaska Highway. In Dawson Creek she met her husband, Ray, and they were married in 1950. After moving to Vancouver and having two children, she resumed her library career at the Vancouver Public Library before moving to Saltspring Island where she resided for 29 years. She also lived for one year in Northern Ireland and for one year in England where she received her Certificate in Prehistoric Archaeology from Cambridge University. This led to her first book, Indian Petroglyphs of the Pacific Northwest, which was followed by a booklet called Guide to Indian Rock Carvings.

Hill spent two years researching and writing an account of the life of the first woman to circumnavigate the earth on a sailing ship, The Remarkable Life of Frances Barkley: 1769 to 1845. In 1988 she received an Award of Merit from the B.C. Historical Federation for Sappers: The Royal Engineers in British Columbia. Based on the journals of coastal cruising pioneer Francis Barrow and his wife Amy, her Upcoast Summers reflected her own family's explorations by boat forty years after the Barrows. She also produced an illustrated guidebook, Exploring the Kettle Valley and a history of Saltspring Island. The Hills moved to Victoria in 1988. Diagnosed with cancer in 1994, she produced her most personal book, Moonrakers, an investigation of psychic phenomenae, which is being published posthumously this spring. Beth Hill also contributed to numerous publications such as Pacific Yachting, The Islander, Westworld, Alaska Journal and Raincoast Chronicles.

"Not everyone has my luck,"; Hill told the Times Colonist this year. "I've had a blessed life, and I have been given this most beautiful dying; given time to resolve everything.";

[BCBW 1997]