BC Studies

With Trading Fate, Graeme Menzies sets out to explore the personalities and contingencies that shaped the colonization of the Pacific Coast. In entering such well-trodden territory, he promises something ambitious: to show how the “little-known” King George’s Sound Company (1785–89) prevented British Columbia from “becoming an American state” (page).

The Red Baron of IBEW Local 213 examines the politics of a British Columbian union local in the shadow of the Cold War and documents the development of a militant minority within a historically conservative international union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW).

I have been party to enough multi-authored anthologies to know editing a collection is a thankless task. Herding cats is more efficient, chewing foil more pleasurable. Reading Mountain Voices reminds me of this because its title, structure, and imagery are compelling, but the essays often lose the trail. The best bits focus on a re-photography project documenting rapid changes in Canada’s western ranges.

Gateways to Trade provides a timely focus on Canada’s gateway cities and their governance of transportation infrastructure. The recent onslaught of Trump’s mercantilism and the undermining of established, overwhelmingly continental (north-south) relations has stimulated Canada to attempt to diversify its trading priorities, internationally and domestically.

Despite their common designation as under-developed or unknowing subjects, especially in Western contexts, youth and children are “so full of knowledge” (Shaw, 2026, 222). The book Tender Labour, written by Jennifer E. Shaw, ends with this phrase.

As the SARS-CoV-2 virus was spreading around the globe in the early months of 2020, a parallel “shadow pandemic” emerged across Canada. From the physical streets of Vancouver’s Chinatown to the digital threads on social media, Asian Canadians were subjected to a resurgence of xenophobia. Anti-Asian Racism and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Canada captures the events and critical analysis of this crisis.

BC Studies no. 229 Spring 2026 | p. 143-145 In Canada, as elsewhere, we are noticing a resurgence of Indigenous place names to counter colonial names that typically pay tribute to high-status Europeans. This can be straightforward – for example, few readers would even bother to remember Haida Gwaii as the “Queen Charlotte Islands,” and most recently Queen Charlotte village adopted the Haida name Daajing Giids.

Julie Andreyev is an artist, researcher and educator in so-called Vancouver, the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ Nations. Her multispecies studio explores more-than-human creativity to develop kinships with local lifeforms and ecologies. The research investigates methods of creative reciprocity using non-invasive technologies. Projects take form as land-based sound art, video, media installation, and long-term tending.

BC Studies no. 229 Spring 2026 | p. 151-153 The Teachings of Mutton: A Coast Salish Woolly Dog brings forward a history that, for many Coast Salish people, was never fully gone—only interrupted, misnamed, or held in places that did not know how to care for it.

Archaeology has only a minor role in Canadian society, but its influence can be profound. It recurs as part of a narrative of adventurism and heroic struggle in popular conception, but the reality is far more mundane and when done well, even boring. This fictitious vision of archaeology is not benign but feeds into dominant cultural tropes that frequently replicate asymmetries and stereotypes regarding issues such as gender, race, and Canada’s historic and ongoing colonialism.