In Colonization and Community John Belshaw takes a new look at British
Columbia's first working class, the men, women, and children beneath and
beyond the pit-head. Beginning with an exploration of emigrant
expectations and ambitions, he investigates working conditions,
household wages, racism, industrial organization, gender, schooling,
leisure, community building, and the fluid identity of the British
mining colony, the archetypal west coast proletariat. By connecting the
story of Vancouver Island to the larger story of Victorian
industrialization, he delineates what was distinctive and what was
common about the lot of the settler society. Belshaw breaks new ground,
challenging the easy assumptions of transferred British political
traditions, analyzing the colonial at the household level, and revealing
the emergent communities of Vancouver Island as the cradle of British
Columbian working-class culture.