Crowning Moment

The small town of Lytton, British Columbia, endured the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada during the heat dome of June 2021. The next day, it was largely destroyed by wildfire. Climate activists have since stencilled its name on bridges in Vancouver, along with the question “How do you like the Anthropocene so far?”

Lytton may now be shorthand for ecological disaster, but it was named for Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, the politician who brought the Crown colony of British Columbia into existence. With British Columbia in the Balance: 1846–1871, the historian Jean Barman chronicles the period of direct British rule that followed, graphically evoking the mingled anxiety and hubris that drove this “second England by the Pacific.” Barman refreshes her familiar subject with a close reading of newly digitized correspondence between its governors and the Colonial Office in London. While avoiding grand claims, her granular narrative nonetheless unsettles some...