Dr. Daniel Marshall has won the Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for outstanding Scholarly Book on British Columbia for his book Claiming the land: British Columbia and the making of a new El Dorado. The $2,500 prize, given by UBC Library and the Pacific BookWorld News Society, will be awarded at UBC’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre in April.
Published by Rondsale Press, Marshall’s book is a carefully researched narrative of the 1858 Fraser River Valley gold rush that enriches our understanding of that pivotal period in British Columbia and the geopolitical forces at play.
“As I prospected my way down the Pacific Slope through American archival collections, following the trail of the ’58ers back to California, a significant piece of the gold rush puzzle began to emerge that was largely lost to time—an epic telling of violence, native-newcomer conflict, and war with Indigenous peoples on either side of the 49th parallel,” says Dr. Marshall. “The very roots of Indigenous rights and unrest current in the province today can be traced to the 1858 gold rush and the making of a new El Dorado.”
“Dr. Marshall’s book provides a new, richly informative look at a chaotic period in British Columbia’s history,” says Susan E. Parker, UBC’s University Librarian. “We are thrilled to be able to highlight, once again, the work of an author and academic from British Columbia.”
Dr. Daniel Marshall is an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Victoria. He is also the author of Those Who Fell from the Sky: A History of the Cowichan Peoples, which received a BC2000 Millennium Award. Dr. Marshall serves as a Special Advisor on gold rushes to the Royal BC Museum.
Shortlisted titles for the prize are:
Incorporating Culture: how Indigenous People are Reshaping the Northwest Coast Art Industry, Solen Roth (UBC Press).
Don’t Never Tell Nobody Nothin’ No How: the Real Story of West Coast Rum Running, Rick James (Harbour Publishing).
About the Prize
The Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Book on British Columbia, sponsored by UBC Library and the Pacific BookWorld News Society, recognizes the best scholarly book published by a Canadian author on a B.C. subject. The book prize was established in memory of Basil Stuart-Stubbs, a bibliophile, scholar and librarian who passed away in 2012. Stuart-Stubbs’s many accomplishments included serving as the University Librarian at UBC Library and as the Director of UBC’s School of Library, Archival and Information Studies. Stuart-Stubbs had a leadership role in many national and regional library and publishing activities. During his exceptional career, he took particular interest in the production and distribution of Canadian books and was associated with several initiatives beneficial to authors and their readers, and to Canadian publishing.