As one might guess from the author and from the title, this is not a standard classroom history text. It is an occasionally personal, often quirky, and almost always readable look at B.C.

Why swashbuckling? An odd word in this context, but then I realized that it doesn’t apply to the way the history is written or to the two-time Governor General’s Award winning poet who wrote it, but to me: to me and all the other interlopers who have come to this part of the world by sea and river and mountain pass in search of furs, gold, wood, and prosperity and who, in the process, have swashbucklingly imposed our own vision of history upon the peoples who have been here for thousands of years before us.

This imposition is one of Bowering’s themes as he charts a course from 10,000 years ago to the present day. For a one-volume history it is comprehensive and, as a relatively new British Columbian, I learned a great deal about my province’s sometimes murky past. Inevitably, many of the author’s stories are familiar, and there is not space to tell more than is commonly known about Mackenzie and Vancouver and Bill Miner, but the intrigues of some of the West Coast’s lesser known characters make equally fascinating reading.

Bowering’s style is chatty, and this is well suited to describing the strangeness of some of the recent players on the B.C. political scene. Unfortunately, it works less well in the earlier chapters and is at times overly flippant (as when he puts modern idioms in the mouths of 18th-century Nootka fishermen). He also overuses pet expressions such as “USAmericans.”

Overall, Bowering’s B.C. is an enjoyable read and there are probably enough recent arrivals in Lotus Land, or easterners who have long struggled to make sense of B.C. politics, to provide an audience that will benefit from this light overview.