Written by Brett McGillivray

The Geography of British Columbia: People and Landscapes in Transition was written as a text book mainly for university students, but it is much more than a text book and very readable by anyone interested in the development of British Columbia.

This is the fourth edition, entailing four years of research; it is designed to expose some of the modern myths of our economy. The first four chapters include themes shaping the province such as physical processes and natural hazards; chapters 5 to 10 chronologically (from colonial impact to the present) trace the many issues – racism, the struggles of First Nations, innovations, wars, recessions, depressions, terrorism, environmental movements, political policies, resource depletion and the many unpredictable events that influenced the settlement and development of British Columbia.

The pursuit of resources, and who is entitled to those resources, is a major theme throughout each of these chapters. Resource dependency leads to conditions of boom and bust; this province has been on that rollercoaster many times. What the final chapter exposes is that British Columbia is no longer a resource dependent province but politicians, and a high percentage of the public, continue to believe that resource development – even if it is the advancement of carbon producing petro-chemicals – is critical for employment and government revenues.  Where people live and work has also radically changed as the Figure and Table below reveal. There are suggestions for a new economy that recognizes the perils of Climate Change.