Contesting Rural Space: Land Policy and Practices of Resettlement on Saltspring Island, 1859-1891An intriguing mix of African-American, First Nation, Hawaiian, and European, the early residents of Saltspring Island were neither successful farmers nor full-time waged workers, neither squatters nor bona-fide landowners. Contesting Rural Space explores how these early settlers created and sustained a distinctive society, culture, and economy. In the late nineteenth century, residents claiming land on Saltspring Island walked a careful line between following mandatory homestead policies and manipulating these policies for their own purposes. The residents favoured security over risk and modest sufficiency over accumulation of wealth. Government land policies, however, were based on an idea of rural settlement as commercially successful family farms run by sober and respectable men. Settlers on Saltspring Island, deterred by the poor quality of farmland but encouraged by the variety of part-time, off-farm remunerative occupations, the temperate climate, First Nations cultural and economic practices, and the natural abundance of the Gulf Island environment, made their own choices about the appropriate uses of rural lands. R.W. Sandwell shows how the emerging culture differed from both urban society and ideals of rural society. |
Contents
Reading the Rural with a Microhistorical Eye | 3 |
Land Policies and the Agricultural Vision in British Columbia | 15 |
Settling Up the Wild Lands | 40 |
Rocks and poor soil characterized much of Saltspring Island | 93 |
Clark Whims | 102 |
Cordwood stacked at Beaver Point awaiting shipment | 112 |
Political Economy and Household Structure | 122 |
Road crew is working on a bridge across Cusheon Creek | 130 |
Violence Racism | 159 |
Mural on the wall of an island pub celebrating the life and work | 167 |
The murder scene | 175 |
Melvin Estes son of William Estes | 184 |
Cohesion and Fracture in Saltspring Island Society | 193 |
The Bittancourt family on the porch of their large house | 199 |
Log schoolhouse at Central Settlement near Ganges | 219 |
Sylvia Stark | 227 |
Other editions - View all
Contesting Rural Space: Land Policy and Practices of Resettlement on ... R.W. Sandwell Limited preview - 2005 |
Contesting Rural Space: Land Policy and Practices of Resettlement on ... Ruth Wells Sandwell No preview available - 2005 |
Contesting Rural Space: Land Policy and Practices of Resettlement on ... R.W. Sandwell No preview available - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
1892 Assessment Roll Aboriginal acres African-American areas argued arrived average BCSP Begg's Settlement Bittancourt Booth Bay British Colonist British Columbia Attorney British Columbia Department Canadian Census of Canada cent Certificates of Improvement chapter colonial Cowichan and Saltspring culture Department of Land discourse early economic emption ethnic evidence families farm farmers Fulford Harbour Gender Gulf Islands Assessment historians household heads Indian Islands Assessment District Joseph Trutch land clearance land on Saltspring Land Register landholders landowners listed living Louis Stark married married couples ment murder Native neighbours nineteenth century Nominal non-Native occupation population pre-empted land pre-emption claims Pre-Emption Records pre-emption system pre-emptors province relations rural society Salt Spring Island Saltspring Island Database Saltspring Island residents Sandwell Schedule settlers social sources SSIA suggests Surveyor of Taxes Sylvia Stark take up land tion Trage Vancouver and Gulf Vancouver Island Vesuvius Bay Victoria waged labour William Robinson women