Glasstry news

On his blog and at the remarkable online history review site The Ormsby Review , Daniel Francis considers the letters of Alan Collier, Ontario artist turned labourer in the relief camps established by British Columbia in the dirty thirties The camps were an attempt to deal with the challenge of unemployment and the social unrest the government feared would result. Tens of thousands of single men were travelling across the country looking for work and when work was not available, looking for relief. A large number congregated in Vancouver, which became known as �the Mecca of the Unemployed.� But the city was overburdened and could do very little for the men. Collier's letters from the camps are collected in Alan Caswell Collier, Relief Stiff: An Artist's Letters from Depression-Era British Columbia , edited by historian Peter Neary and newly published by UBC Press.

PM Trudeau and Tsilhqot'in representatives Writer Terry Glavin, always an interesting -- and unpredictable -- writer on British Columbia and much else, has a recent couple of notable pieces of historical journalism in  Maclean's, where he is a contributor. One is a solid backgrounder on the Chilcotin/Tsilhqot�in war of 1864, which led to the hanging of six First Nations leaders Lhats�as?in, Biyil, Tilaghed, Taqed, Chayses, and Ahan. This was the event for which the government of Canada formally apologized in the Canadian Parliament. The shame and disgrace at the heart of the Chilcotin War�s legacy occurred shortly after 8 a.m. on Aug. 15, 1864, when the war leader Lhats�as?in and several of his comrades agreed to enter the encampment of William Cox, the leader of an expeditionary force of several dozen armed men dispatched by the just-appointed Governor Frederick Seymour, to talk truce. Instead, Lhats�as?in and his warriors were arrested and put in chains. Seeking ...