Review: "British Columbiana" by Josie Teed

 

British Columbiana by Josie Teed
Published March/April 2023 via Dundurn Press
★★★

When I was a kid, my family took a train across the US every other summer, then drove up into British Columbia to spend a week or two in my grandparents' mountain village. There were a lot of wonderful summer traditions, but one thing we always looked forward to was seeing the Follies in an old gold rush town. Singing and dancing and colorful costumes and drama! So much drama. I suspect that if I watched the Follies now I'd be let down, but as a kid all I could see was glamor.

Barkerville, where Teed temporarily transplanted herself for an internship in an historic gold-rush town, is much farther north and far more remote than my grandparents' village—I joke that their village is in the middle of nowhere, and I'm not actually wrong, but it's at least on a highway that connects to other villages and, eventually, towns. It has a population of almost 2,000. The "big city" up the road has a population of almost 8,000. Barkerville, by contrast...let's just say that Barkerville's "big city," Wells, has a population well south of 300. When Teed was in Barkerville, "interpreters" roamed the streets, dressed as characters from the gold-rush era, but any glamor was undercut by daily life in town but out of character.

I was interested in this out of curiosity about the town (that Follies nostalgia, plus I'm still waiting for someone to write a book about Cerro Gordo). On that level I'd really have loved more information—how many buildings are in Barkerville, and what are their histories? What stories have been passed down year after year? What would it have been like to be a woman in this remote mining town in the 1800s? And in the present day, how many interpreters roam the streets? How does the still-functioning gold mine(!) fit into the local landscape, and what could the present-day miners (especially the ones who also work in the historic town) say about the difference between mining then and mining now?

A lot of Teed's story is more personal, about self-discovery and, well, figuring shit out. A would-be coming-of-age story, as Teed suggests: "I'm so happy that you're here," I said, and I really meant it. I thought we were like two characters at the beginning of an exciting, coming-of-age novel (loc. 1993). I think the ideal reader is probably somewhere in their twenties, but a lot of this will resonate with anyone who's older now but has been an uncertain, insecure twenty-something (no insult—I count myself in there!).

This is Teed's first book, and I'm curious about what conclusions she might have drawn had she written it a few more years from now. In some places her observations are so very on point, about the space around her but especially about how she reacts to the space around her. In other places I could have used more telling alongside the showing—it felt like the moments she describes were on the edge of adding up to something but hadn't quite gotten there.

I've never lived in a town quite as small as Wells, nor as remote, but one of my takeaways from British Columbiana is that perhaps the thing that can make or break long-term living in a town like this is knowing who you are. I could imagine working in Barkerville for a season (honestly, it sounds like quite an adventure), but living there for a long stretch sounds much harder without a good sense of yourself and why this place is right for you.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.