With a brief nod to aboriginal building methods, the collective story of B.C.'s architectural heritage is told via almost 400 biographies and 600 photos in Donald Luxton's 560-page Building the West: Early Architects of British Columbia (Talon $60).

Cumulatively the reader gains a foundation for understanding the development of British Columbia. For instance, the Southern Transprovincial Highway follows the trail of the Royal Engineers who put the British Empire's mark on the frontier in 1858. Americans were streaming north with a lust for gold, and "Old Squaretoes,"; Governor James Douglas, feared Americanization. The engineers' first order of business was to survey a border along the 49th parallel to secure the region for the Empire.

Those 'sappers' moved on to surveying and clearing land for the mainland colony's first capital at New Westminster. They built churches, schools, jails, transportation routes and laid out plans for towns from Hope to Quesnel Forks. When the engineers were disbanded in 1863, most stayed on, settling on crown land; some became surveyors and architects. "Their work laid the basis for much of the province's development,"; Luxton says.

Part of their legacy is Building the West, impressive from the stumps up. The mostly male architects-with Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart and Sister Mary Osithe as the exceptions-all designed buildings in the period from the earliest colonial days to 1938.

This volume was a major construction project in itself, taking ten years of collaboration by 57 researchers and historians. "Professional qualifications could not easily be verified,"; says Luxton, who wrote approximately 80% of the entries, "and the first wave of settlement brought an odd collection of those with bona fide professional training, as well as master builders equipped with pattern books, competent surveyors and engineers who could also draw building plans, real estate speculators, jerry-builders and ambitious entrepreneurs who later spun off into more profitable pursuits. "Often their origins were as uncertain as their fates. Fuelling this volatile mix was a get-rich-quick frontier mentality and a vigorous distrust of authority.";

It was decades before the profession was regulated. Surviving the unpredictable boom and bust cycles required versatility. An early photo of R.H. Parkinson's business shows signs advertising his services as an architect, surveyor, draughtsman, and mining broker. Victoria's Richard Lewis doubled as a cabinet maker and undertaker.

Much of Victoria's development was propelled by the influx of gold seekers headed for the Cariboo. John Wright and George Sanders took full advantage. Arriving from Upper Canada in 1858, they dominated house, church, commercial and institutional architecture until they departed for San Francisco. They built some of that city's most important buildings, but almost all of them were lost during the 1906 earthquake and fire. Today their legacy remains in Victoria's Richard Carr House and Temple Emanu-El, both designated federal historic sites.

British Columbia's entry into Confederation and the long overdue railway brought development, stability and speculators to Vancouver. "Solid commercial structures and sprawling dwellings demonstrated ambition, greed, pride and hubris, anchored and watched over by the ever-present highest point in town, the church spire,"; writes Luxton.

Money flowed from Ottawa for various Dominion projects, but east/west power struggles were apparent from day one: "The bureaucratic habits of DPW (Department of Public Works) seriously hampered work on the west coast because virtually every action by a resident architect had to be approved by headquarters...";

By the 1880s the railroad was opening up the interior and architects weren't far behind. New wealth created demand for more refined homes and businesses; ornate stone and masonry replaced the early wooden structures that were also prone to fire. Many towns- from Fernie to New Westminster and Gastown-were rebuilt on the ashes of the old.

Henry Bell-Irving, one of Vancouver's earliest architects, rowed three miles to work every day to his Gastown office, and after the great fire, set to rebuilding the city. He later made sockeye famous by shipping salmon from his canneries to markets around the world.

The new frontier welcomed Frances Mawson Rattenbury from Yorkshire in 1892. The late Terry Reksten describes his mercurial rise: "He was only 25 when he arrived in British Columbia in 1892, but within months he pulled off an astounding architectural coup, defeating over sixty other architects to win the design competition for the new Parliament Buildings."; Over the next 38 years, Rattenbury designed some of B.C.'s most impressive structures. Today they're icons: Victoria's CPR's Steamship Terminal, the Empress Hotel, Vancouver and Nelson's courthouses and various CPR tourist hotels. He gambled and lost on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway when its promises for the north were never realized. In 1929 he returned to England with his second wife, and was bludgeoned by her lover in 1935.

Samuel MacClure is possibly B.C.'s second-most famous architect; a water colour artist who designed almost 500 homes in Victoria, Vancouver and the B.C. Interior including Hatley Park for the Dunsmuirs, the richest family in the province. His elegant, half-timbered Victorian Arts and Craft style has been recognized internationally.

William Dalton and Sydney Eveleigh formed a powerful partnership, and for two decades built many of Vancouver's commercial and institutional buildings-from the Royal Bank on Hastings street (site of today's Vancouver Film School) to supervising construction of the Rattenbury-designed Vancouver Court House (now the Vancouver Art Gallery). Building the West comes replete with details. "Eveleigh wanted the massive stone lions flanking the entry to resemble the profile of the twin peaks on the North Shore known as The Lions, so he carved small models for the sculptor out of Ivory soap bars to show his idea of how their noses should be flattened."; The firm also designed buildings in Revelstoke, Vernon, New Westminster and the Tranquille sanitarium near Kamloops.

John McCarter and George Nairne started small by building houses and apartment buildings, but by the late 1920s they were designing Vancouver's first skyscrapers including the Art Deco Medical-Dental Building (blown to dust after much protest in 1989) and the Marine Building with its much-admired terra cotta motifs of coastal history and wildlife. The firm was behind dozens of projects across the Lower Mainland, including Vancouver's General Post Office in the late 1950s.

Building the West is about the famous and almost forgotten, thanks to the membership files of the Architectural Institute of British Columbia and hard digging by the book's contributors. Compiled and edited by Luxton, a founding director of the Heritage Vancouver Society and the Victoria Heritage Foundation, and co-author of a prize-winning book about the Lions Gate Bridge, Building the West is destined to become an important reference work for students of architecture and B.C. history. It has a three-tiered index that's a little cumbersome (Architects, Buildings, General), and the prominent appearance of Luxton's name on nearly every other page beneath the photos of architects is downright distracting, but this volume will clearly serve as an important and enduring work. 0-88922-474-9

[Mark Forsythe/BCBW Winter 2003]