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Kilts on the Coast: The Scots Who Built BC (Heritage House, $22.95)
Jan Peterson of Nanaimo finds and remembers stories wherever she goes.
When she looks out her window and sees Gallows Point on Protection Island, she knows Siamasit, the son of a Snuneymuxw chief, and Squeis, son of a powerful chief of a Cowichan tribe, were hung there in 1853 for shooting Peter Brown, a Scottish shepherd.
Scots are the basis for Kilts on the Coast: The Scots Who Built BC (Heritage House, $22.95), her tenth book on Vancouver Island history, in which she describes settlement and growth during six critical years from 1848 to 1854. Entire families arrived in Fort Victoria from Scotland, indentured to the Hudson's Bay Company for three to five years, to engage in the fur trade and establish coal mining ventures.
In 1849, Snuneymuxw chief Ki-et-sa-kun, known as Coal Tyee, informed the Hudson's Bay Company of the presence of coal in the Nanaimo area. Kilts on the Coast traces the lives of "founding father"; James Douglas and other "company men"; as well as the miners who arrived from Orkney and Ayrshire to work in Nanaimo's mines.
Coal baron Robert Dunsmuir, whose Wellington Colliery became the largest producer of coal on Vancouver Island, built Craigdarroch Castle in Victoria (between 1887 and 1890) for his wife Joan. Hatley Castle, the present-day Royal Roads University, was completed in 1908 for his son James.
In Kilts on the Coast, Peterson calls Dunsmuir an "educated coal miner and an astute businessman.";
Chinese workers got paid half the rate of the white workers. Native men didn't get paid and instead received tickets they could exchange for goods at the HBC store. Over 600 men were killed over the years at 50 mining sites in the Nanaimo area.
As with all of her books, Peterson spoke to descendants of pioneers and consulted diaries, journals, letters, logs and reports at the British Columbia Archives and the Nanaimo Community Archives. The Hudson's Bay Company "daybooks"; in the community archives were an essential resource as they note the names of the workers and their assignments.
Jan Peterson was twenty years old when she and her family arrived in Canada from Scotland on June 7, 1957. In 1963, Peterson met and married her husband, Ray. They moved to Vancouver, then Ladner, before heading to Port Alberni in 1972 with their three children.
Freelancing on the arts long before she got paid for it, Peterson became a reporter for the Alberni Valley Times. In 1982, Peterson was one of three finalists to receive the Jack Wasserman Award for her first year of investigative journalism on social and environmental affairs. At the awards presentation at the Vancouver Press Club, Peterson was introduced as "the middle-aged housewife from Port Alberni."; She says, "We always get a good laugh about that.";
In early 1987, Peterson collapsed in the offices of the Alberni Valley Times and was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. She hasn't stopped writing books since.
First, she plunked herself down at the Port Alberni archives and produced The Albernis, 1860-1922 (Oolichan, 1992), donating all royalties to the Alberni District Historical Society. During her tenure as president of the Alberni Valley Community Arts Council, Peterson oversaw renovation of a heritage building that became the Rollin Art Centre and donated her royalties from Twin Cities: Alberni-Port Alberni (Oolichan, 1994) to the project.
Peterson and her husband "retired"; to Nanaimo in 1996 where she continued to write. When she wanted to learn more about Barkley Sound, Peterson went to the docks in Port Alberni with her friend, the late Dorrit MacLeod, and talked to people in the coffee shop. The result of her listening to the stories that emerged was Journeys down the Alberni Canal to Barkley Sound (Oolichan, 1999).
Her trilogy of books on Nanaimo are
Black Diamond City: Nanaimo - The Victorian Era (Heritage, 2002); Hub City: Nanaimo 1886 - 1920 (Heritage, 2003) and Harbour City: Nanaimo in Transition 1920-1967 (Heritage, 2006).
Writing in BC Studies (winter, 2004),
reviewer Patrick A. Dunae noted Peterson "has a keen eye and a good nose for local history"; but he did criticize her books for being "long on action but short on analysis.";
"That's not my purpose,"; Peterson responds. "Let the academics do that. I don't feel like analyzing. I feel like getting the facts out and letting people draw their own conclusions.
"I learned from my mother that you give as much as you take. Community has given to me so I give back to them,"; Peterson says.
Jan Peterson has been awarded many honours for historical research including Certificates of Honour from the B.C. Historical Federation.
With two more books in the works, she writes every day-never tiring of Vancouver Island stories.
9781927051276
Mary Ann Moore is a freelance writer
based in Nanaimo.
[BCBW 2012]
When she looks out her window and sees Gallows Point on Protection Island, she knows Siamasit, the son of a Snuneymuxw chief, and Squeis, son of a powerful chief of a Cowichan tribe, were hung there in 1853 for shooting Peter Brown, a Scottish shepherd.
Scots are the basis for Kilts on the Coast: The Scots Who Built BC (Heritage House, $22.95), her tenth book on Vancouver Island history, in which she describes settlement and growth during six critical years from 1848 to 1854. Entire families arrived in Fort Victoria from Scotland, indentured to the Hudson's Bay Company for three to five years, to engage in the fur trade and establish coal mining ventures.
In 1849, Snuneymuxw chief Ki-et-sa-kun, known as Coal Tyee, informed the Hudson's Bay Company of the presence of coal in the Nanaimo area. Kilts on the Coast traces the lives of "founding father"; James Douglas and other "company men"; as well as the miners who arrived from Orkney and Ayrshire to work in Nanaimo's mines.
Coal baron Robert Dunsmuir, whose Wellington Colliery became the largest producer of coal on Vancouver Island, built Craigdarroch Castle in Victoria (between 1887 and 1890) for his wife Joan. Hatley Castle, the present-day Royal Roads University, was completed in 1908 for his son James.
In Kilts on the Coast, Peterson calls Dunsmuir an "educated coal miner and an astute businessman.";
Chinese workers got paid half the rate of the white workers. Native men didn't get paid and instead received tickets they could exchange for goods at the HBC store. Over 600 men were killed over the years at 50 mining sites in the Nanaimo area.
As with all of her books, Peterson spoke to descendants of pioneers and consulted diaries, journals, letters, logs and reports at the British Columbia Archives and the Nanaimo Community Archives. The Hudson's Bay Company "daybooks"; in the community archives were an essential resource as they note the names of the workers and their assignments.
Jan Peterson was twenty years old when she and her family arrived in Canada from Scotland on June 7, 1957. In 1963, Peterson met and married her husband, Ray. They moved to Vancouver, then Ladner, before heading to Port Alberni in 1972 with their three children.
Freelancing on the arts long before she got paid for it, Peterson became a reporter for the Alberni Valley Times. In 1982, Peterson was one of three finalists to receive the Jack Wasserman Award for her first year of investigative journalism on social and environmental affairs. At the awards presentation at the Vancouver Press Club, Peterson was introduced as "the middle-aged housewife from Port Alberni."; She says, "We always get a good laugh about that.";
In early 1987, Peterson collapsed in the offices of the Alberni Valley Times and was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. She hasn't stopped writing books since.
First, she plunked herself down at the Port Alberni archives and produced The Albernis, 1860-1922 (Oolichan, 1992), donating all royalties to the Alberni District Historical Society. During her tenure as president of the Alberni Valley Community Arts Council, Peterson oversaw renovation of a heritage building that became the Rollin Art Centre and donated her royalties from Twin Cities: Alberni-Port Alberni (Oolichan, 1994) to the project.
Peterson and her husband "retired"; to Nanaimo in 1996 where she continued to write. When she wanted to learn more about Barkley Sound, Peterson went to the docks in Port Alberni with her friend, the late Dorrit MacLeod, and talked to people in the coffee shop. The result of her listening to the stories that emerged was Journeys down the Alberni Canal to Barkley Sound (Oolichan, 1999).
Her trilogy of books on Nanaimo are
Black Diamond City: Nanaimo - The Victorian Era (Heritage, 2002); Hub City: Nanaimo 1886 - 1920 (Heritage, 2003) and Harbour City: Nanaimo in Transition 1920-1967 (Heritage, 2006).
Writing in BC Studies (winter, 2004),
reviewer Patrick A. Dunae noted Peterson "has a keen eye and a good nose for local history"; but he did criticize her books for being "long on action but short on analysis.";
"That's not my purpose,"; Peterson responds. "Let the academics do that. I don't feel like analyzing. I feel like getting the facts out and letting people draw their own conclusions.
"I learned from my mother that you give as much as you take. Community has given to me so I give back to them,"; Peterson says.
Jan Peterson has been awarded many honours for historical research including Certificates of Honour from the B.C. Historical Federation.
With two more books in the works, she writes every day-never tiring of Vancouver Island stories.
9781927051276
Mary Ann Moore is a freelance writer
based in Nanaimo.
[BCBW 2012]
Submitted on September 4, 2012 in By David.
