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First Invaders: The Literary Origins of British Columbia
First Invaders The Literary Origins of British Columbia Author:Alan Twigg First Invaders, a feast of fascinating characters, events and intrigues, offers the first overview of all written works pertaining to British Columbia prior to 1800. The names Cook and Quadra ring a bell. And Bering and Vancouver. But did you know the first year-round European resident of B.C. was an Irish drunkard named John Mackay, who volunta... more »rily wintered at Nootka Sound in 1786, and that the first European woman to visit British Columbia was the young bride Frances Barkley, who circumnavigated the globe with her husband after making a lasting impression at Nootka with her long red hair? How about the Greek navigator Juan de Fuca or the Machiavelli of the fur trade, John Meares? This unprecedented volume about British Columbia’s first explorers is as entertaining as much as it is enlightening. Alan Twigg has researched and skillfully introduced the first people to write about British Columbia, traced their publications, provided extracts, gathered images and let the composite story unravel like a mini-series. Some fifty pre-nineteenth-century authors are presented—each with his or her own entry—with the unlikely inclusions of Jonathan Swift and Denis Diderot. Bibliographies about the early maritime explorers are also provided. First Invaders concludes with Alexander Mackenzie and his overland trek to the Pacific in 1793, an event that marks the end of this unusual history of early British Columbia.« less