In 1888, a prosperous industrial family in Calne, Wiltshire, sent one of
its younger sons, a lad judged to have no head for business, to Guelph
Agricultural College in Ontario to learn to be a farmer.
Joseph Colebrook Harris, the author's grandfather, didn't take to
Ontario and after visiting a friend on Salt Spring Island, fell in love
with BC. Eventually fetching up on the shores of the Slocan Lake, Joe
bought 270 acres of hilly land in the Slocan Valley, less than thirty
acres of which was really fit for farming, and began clearing the forest
to build a ranch. Here is the story of Harris's life and the next 120
years of the ranch's, including the discovery of a silver-lead mine on
the property, a period as a Japanese internment camp, brushes with
American counterculture and the back-to-the-land movement, family
conflicts, and an uncertain future.
In detail, Ranch in the Slocan is a very particular story, but its
elements have repeated themselves across Canada. Settlers lived within
bounded space, of which the Harris ranch is an extreme example, and
adapted to cultural and social changes. Drawing from letters, diaries,
family stories and recollections, photographs, as well as official
records, Harris offers a case study in the history of homesteading, and
a portrait of his family's experiences in the Slocan Valley. The Harris
ranch produced a little income now and then but was not, and never has
been, a commercial success. Its yield was not so much measured by the
market as by the more intangible pleasures of living within a diverse
local economy in a remarkable place.
