Pinkerton's and the Hunt for Simon Gunanoot

Pinkerton's and the Hunt for Simon Gunanoot
Author: Geoff Mynett
Publisher: Caitlin Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2021-03-12
Genre:
ISBN: 9781773860503

Pinkerton's and the Hunt for Simon Gunanoot throws new light on the extensive manhunt for an accused murderer in northern British Columbia in the early 1900s. After a double murder in 1906, Gitxsan trapper and storekeeper Simon Gunanoot fled into the wilderness with his family. Despite lack of proof, the police pursued Gunanoot for nearly three years, sending search parties and police operatives into the wilds of northern BC. The hunt was covered by numerous newspapers at the time, describing a melodramatic cat-and-mouse chase--a not-entirely-accurate account. Frustrated by Gunanoot's ability to evade capture, the Attorney General of BC asked Pinkerton's National Detective Agency in Seattle to assist in the pursuit. In May 1909, two Pinkerton's operatives disguised as prospectors were sent to Hazelton, BC, to find and apprehend Gunanoot. From 1909-1910, they delivered regular reports to Pinkerton's office in Seattle detailing their progress. Many of these confidential reports, written around campfires on the treks in the wilderness, provided a vivid picture of life in the frontier town, relations of the settlers and prospectors, and of the conflicting loyalties and tensions in both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. One of the most famous fugitives in BC history, Gunanoot's story has taken on the status of legend. Pinkerton's and the Hunt for Simon Gunanoot is a fascinating tale of turn-of-the-century crime-solving techniques, rural politics and backwoods survival, based on never-before published, firsthand accounts of the two undercover operatives.

Service on the Skeena

Service on the Skeena
Author: Geoff Mynett
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781553805755

His name was Horace Wrinch. It was 1880. He was 14 years old, a farmer's boy from England travelling on his own to Quebec. Twenty years later, a qualified doctor and surgeon, he arrived in Hazelton on the Skeena River in northern British Columbia as a Canadian citizen. At this time the northern interior of the province had no qualified doctors, no surgeons and no hospitals. In 1904 Horace built the first hospital in the northern interior. Over the next thirty-six years he became widely respected as a doctor and surgeon, hospital administrator, medical missionary, Methodist minister, magistrate, farmer, community leader and progressive politician. Ever innovative, he instituted a form of health insurance for the Hazelton community as early as 1908. In the 1920s, he was a two-term president of the newly established British Columbia Hospital Association and a two-term Liberal Member of the Provincial Legislature for the Skeena riding. While in the Legislature, he championed publicly funded health insurance. Upon his death in 1939, he was called "the most influential and best liked man that ever blessed this district with his presence." Drawn almost entirely from original and contemporaneous sources, this is the previously untold story of a remarkable British Columbian.

Murders on the Skeena

Murders on the Skeena
Author: Geoff Mynett
Publisher: Caitlin Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2021-10-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781773860671

Part history, part true crime, Murders on the Skeena: True Crime in the Old Canadian West, 1884-1914 contains the true accounts of murders, crimes, and scandals--some of which remain unsolved to this day--in small-town northern British Columbia. With a focus on the victims as much as the cases themselves, award-winning author Geoff Mynett relates untold stories of BC's deadly history while providing both the natural and social history of the region. Hazelton, situated where the Bulkley River joins the Skeena River, was one of the most important sites in the interior of northern BC from 1870-1913. The gold rush, the arrival of the telegraph, and the ability for steam boats to journey upriver increased outside interest in the region. As new modes of transport were built, more non-Indigenous people arrived, and as colonial law and governance increased, so did tensions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. One such case was that of the murder of Amos "Charley" Youmans in 1884--the escalation of a clash between the laws and customs of the Gitxsan and those of the encroaching traders and settlers. Mynett also recounts the stories of the so-called Skeena River Uprising of 1888, a bank robbery shoot-out, and a deadly dispute between two prospectors. Peeling back historical, social, political, and geographical layers, Murders on the Skeena draws almost exclusively from documents from the time to reveal the fascinating secrets and surprising consequences of these captivating true crime tales.

Compelled to Act

Compelled to Act
Author: Sarah Carter
Publisher:
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2020-09-25
Genre:
ISBN: 9780887559167

"Compelled to Act" showcases fresh historical perspectives on the diversity of women's contributions to social and political change in prairie Canada in the 20th century, including but looking beyond the era of suffrage activism.

Beyond the Legal Limit

Beyond the Legal Limit
Author: Pat Henman
Publisher: Caitlin Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2021-02-19
Genre:
ISBN: 9781773860497

A searingly honest memoir of surviving a head-on collision with a drunk driver, the physical and emotional scars left behind, and the trauma endured in flawed systems intended to support victims.

Call in Pinkerton's

Call in Pinkerton's
Author: David Ricardo Williams
Publisher: Dundurn
Total Pages: 248
Release: 1998-09-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 145971315X

Soon after Allan Pinkerton established his legendary detective agency in the United States, Canadians began seeking their services. Call in Pinkerton's is the history of the agency's work on behalf of Canadian governments and police forces. During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, Pinkerton's operatives hunted legendary train robber Bill Miner in the woods of British Columbia, infiltrated German spy rings during World War I, and helped future prime minister John A. Macdonald to fend off the Fenian raids. They tracked down the Reno Brothers in Windsor, Ontario, and investigated labour unrest in Hamilton. The agency's detectives countered crimes all over Canada, particularly in the West and British Columbia. Pinkerton's activities went as far north as the Yukon, where fears were growing of an imminent invasion by a force of Americans from Alaska. Call in Pinkerton's is the first book to chronicle the agency's work on behalf of Canadian governments and police forces. This entertaining book provides accounts of actual Pinkerton's investigations while detailing the day-to-day activities of a private detective at work. Call in Pinkerton's is a fascinating read for anyone with an interest in crime and espionage.

Through the Mill

Through the Mill
Author: Gail Cuthbert Brandt
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781771861502

"Girls and women were essential to industrialization in Canada, particularly in the cotton textile industry, which was concentrated in Quebec. In 1891, for example, more than 2000 girls and women toiled in Quebec’s cotton mills, representing more than half the industry’s labour force in Quebec. Conventional wisdom would have it that young girls and women were most often quiescent workers who undercut unions’ organizing efforts. In fact, women cotton workers demonstrated remarkable levels of labour activism and militancy across time. these girls and women were instrumental in transforming Quebec, perceived to be a seemingly boundless source of cheap docile labour, into an increasingly urban and industrial society thus heralding the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. At the core of Through the Mill are 84 previously unpublished oral interviews with women born between 1895 and 1934 who worked in Quebec’s cotton textile mills. These working-class women are given a chance to talk freely and in their own words about all aspects of their lives and working conditions in the cotton mills. Gail Cuthbert Brandt also examines the companies’ motivation for employing girls and women, their recruitment methods, demographics, and gender divisions both at home and in the factory, with an eye on changing economic conditions, cultural and social attitudes, and technologies. Through the Mill is an invaluable contribution to feminist labour history and among a handful of studies to analyse the lives of women industrial workers in Canada."--Page 4 of cover.

Chilcotin Chronicles

Chilcotin Chronicles
Author: Sage Birchwater
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781987915334

A collection of historical stories about the early indigenous people, settlers, trappers, and adventurers of BC's Cariboo Chilcotin.A compilation of stories that meld both culture and bloodlines, CHILCOTIN CHRONICLES by Sage Birchwater is set in the wild and untamed country of central British Columbia's Chilcotin Plateau. West of the Fraser River, this high country is contained by an arc of impenetrable mountain ranges that separates it from the Pacific Coast. The first inhabitants of this region were fiercely independent, molded by the land itself. Those who came later were drawn to this landscape with its mysterious aura of freedom, where time stood still and where a person could find solace in the wilderness and never be found.Birchwater reaches back to first European contact in British Columbia when the indigenous population spoke forty of Canada's fifty-four languages and seventy of Canada's one hundred dialects. The land known today as the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast was already an entity when Alexander Mackenzie arrived in 1793. Bonds of friendship, mutual support and family ties had long been established between the Dakelh, Tsilhqot'in and Nuxalk, giving cohesiveness to the region.CHILCOTIN CHRONICLES is about the men and women caught in the interface of cultures and the changing landscape. Indigenous inhabitants and white newcomers brought together by the fur brigades, then later by the gold rush, forged a path together, uncharted and unpredictable. Birchwater discovers that their stories, seemingly disconnected, are intrinsically linked together to create a human eco-system with very deep roots. The lives of these early inhabitants give substance to the landscape. They give meaning to the people who live there today.

Wires in the Wilderness

Wires in the Wilderness
Author: Bill Miller
Publisher: Heritage House Publishing Co
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2004
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781894384582

This is the tale of how Canada's high northern wilderness was brought into civilization's fold through a frail network of wires laboriously strung between poles and trees for hundreds of desolate miles. The Yukon Telegraph started in 1897, when gold was discovered in the Yukon and the government needed a faster way to communicate with its remote northern territory. The isolated residents, too, wanted a more reliable connection with the outside world. Bill Miller takes readers from the line's conception in 1899 to its abandonment in 1952 through to its status today and its potential for future generations, focusing on the colourful people who lived and worked in the area. His account, enhanced by extensive research and engaging storytelling, reveals a fascinating fragment of Canada's rich history.

The Last Show on Earth

The Last Show on Earth
Author: Yvonne Blomer
Publisher: Caitlin Press
Total Pages: 112
Release: 2022-02-11
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9781773860770

In this unflinching and whimsical collection, Victoria's former poet laureate Yvonne Blomer explores death, disability, and the fate of our imperilled world. In The Last Show on Earth, Yvonne Blomer gathers the diverse characters and distinct moments from everyday life, its tragedies, and triumphs, and begins to imagine them in a circus as side shows and exhibitions of the unusual. In her latest collection, Blomer borrows from museum dioramas, the paintings of Robert Bateman, and the animal portraits in National Geographic to question and explore the human element in the lives and survival of other species. In poems that are at times unflinchingly dark yet playful, Blomer balances on a tightrope of grief and hope as she traces the lines from motherhood and caring for aging parents to caring for our planet and its endangered creatures--the whale, the elephant, the wolf, the polar bear--as they face ongoing environmental destruction. In The Last Show on Earth, we are all performers under the bright striped tent or packed on the circus train heading toward an unknown destination.