Untold Tales of Old British Columbia

Daniel Marshall
Publisher: Ronsdale Press

Book Description

Untold Tales uncovers the B.C. history you’ve never heard but will be thrilled to discover, with Daniel Marshall as your guide. The award-winning Marshall captivates readers with intriguing and unknown tales, everything from Indigenous rights to Native gold; political intrigue to daring feats; mystifying artifacts, the forgotten origin of Canada’s oldest Chinatown and the mysterious traveler Harry (Harriet) Collins.

The book is written in Daniel Marshall’s lively and engaging prose and is rigorously researched with interpretations that offer inclusive narratives while exploring surprising tales of great adventure. These obscure and incredible stories are a gold mine for B.C. history buffs as well as those unfamiliar with the remarkable stories of our province.

Author Bio

Daniel Marshall is a fifth-generation British Columbian whose Cornish ancestors arrived in the Pacific province in 1858, the year of the Fraser River gold rush. He has long been a student of history and received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Victoria. Subsequently, he received his doctorate, first-class, from UBC with his dissertation on the Fraser River gold rush, which included a detailed study of the Native-newcomer conflict known as the Fraser River War. He is currently an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Victoria and lectures in the history of British Columbia and Indigenous-newcomer relations.

He has published numerous articles on British Columbia history and is the author of Those Who Fell from the Sky: A History of the Cowichan Peoples (1999, reprinted in 2007), which received a BC2000 Millennium Award. More recently, Marshall was both host and historical consultant for the documentary Canyon War: The Untold Story, televised on the Knowledge Network, APTN, and PBS, which took honours at both the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival and Worldfest 2010 (the Houston International Film Festival). As the Special Advisor on Gold Rushes to the Royal BC Museum, he acted as Chief Curator for the museum’s “Gold Rush: El Dorado in British Columbia” exhibit in 2015 that also travelled to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau. Marshall’s company, Pacific Reach Consulting Ltd., has been working for some years with First Nations and provincial and federal governments on land and resource issues. In 2008, Marshall (along with Professors Hamar Foster and John Burrows of the University of Victoria) was invited by the First Nations Summit to author a new reconciliation proclamation for the province of British Columbia. He has travelled widely amongst First Nations peoples and makes his home in Victoria, B.C.