Knowbc Blog

Six Award-Winning Books About BC

I was in Kamloops on the weekend having dinner with the Lieutenant Governor.

OK, it was a banquet and there were a hundred or so other guests but still, I shook her hand. The occasion was the annual meeting of the BC Historical Federation, of which Her Honour is the honorary patron.

Each year the Fed hands out awards to six distinguished books about the history of... Read this post

BC Vintage Truck Museum Opens

A museum dedicated to the history of the local trucking industry is opening its doors in Cloverdale this weekend.

The BC Vintage Truck Museum began life as the Teamsters Freight Transportation Museum in 1996. It used to be located in a garage in Port Coquitlam but last year found a new home next door to the Fair Grounds in Cloverdale. Since that time a team of volunteers has been moving and re-establishing the collection, which opens to the public during the annual Rodeo weekend.

The vehicles in... Read this post

Lytton and the Lunacy Panic

Pursuing an interest in the history of mental illness, I've been reading a fascinating new book by Sarah Wise titled Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England. If it sounds a little esoteric, it isn't. Rather it is a story full of tragedy and comedy and important insights into the treatment of the mentally ill, surely a subject of perennial interest.

The connection to BC is the unhappy saga of the British statesmen Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-73) and his... Read this post

About Knowbc Blog

This is a blog administered by Daniel Francis, Editor of the Encyclopedia of British Columbia www.knowbc.com. Along with publisher Howard White, we plan to blog about all manner of BC-related subjects, be they cultural, historical, economic or political. We also have invited other EBC contributors to join the discussion. And of course we welcome your comments on whatever you read here. We want to make it a lively space for conversation about what is going on in the province. Join us!