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About the Book
'My husband, alarmed, left me and ran to the Indian ranch returning with one of Quinisco's sisters ... She smoothed up my bed and suggested "whiskey" which I swallowed. I think I would have swallowed anything to get rid of the pain. About nine o'clock next day my baby was born two months too soon, the first white child born in the Similkameen Valley.'
In 1860, at the age of fourteen, Susan Louisa Moir left England for British Columbia. After settling initially at Hope, she lived briefly in both Victoria and New Westminster, then B.C.'s two most important settlements. Returning to Hope, she helped her mother open the community's first school, and in 1868 she married John Fall Allison, riding on her honeymoon over the Allison Trail into the unsettled Similkameen Valley.
Her record of the voyage, of Victoria, New Westminster, and Hope as they were in the 1860s, and her memories of the isolated but fulfilling life she, her husband, and their fourteen children led in the Similkameen and Okanagan Valleys provide a unique view of the pioneer mind and spirit.
There were exciting moments -- a horseback journey to Hope through a forest fire that made the Skagit River boil, her husband's boat nearly crushed by a gigantic ice floe on Lake Okanagan -- but setting the tone of the whole account is an abiding natural curiosity and respect for both of her closest neighbours -- the Similkameen and Okanagan Indians and the wilderness itself.
It is these qualities, expressed in forceful, uncomplicated prose, that make Susan Allison's Recollections a major addition to Canadian pioneer literature.
About the Author(s)
Margaret A. Ormsby (editor) is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She was head of the History Department of the University of British Columbia from 1965 until 1974.
Table of Contents
Illustrations
Introduction
Some Recollections of a Pioneer of the Sixties
Some Recollections of a Pioneer of the Seventies
Memoirs of a Pioneer of the Eighties
When the River Rose
Appendices
1. Account of the Similkameen Indians of British Columbia
2. The Big Men of the Mountains
3. The Glittering Hair
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
Reviews
Reviews of this title are not available at this time.
Sample Chapter
A sample chapter of this title is not available at this time. For further information, please email info@ubcpress.ubc.ca.
Related Topics
History > Canada
History
BC Studies
BC Studies > History
Other Ways To Order
In Canada, order your copy of A Pioneer Gentlewoman in British Columbia from UTP Distribution at:
UTP Distribution
5201 Dufferin Street
Toronto, Ontario
M3H 5T8
Phone orders: 1(800)565-9523 or (416)667-7791
Fax orders: 1(800)221-9985 or (416)667-7832
Email: utpbooks@utpress.utoronto.ca
Ordering information for customers outside Canada
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