The Colonist

Richard Blanshard has left little trace in British Columbia, except for the thoroughfare named after him in Victoria. In March 1850, he arrived in what was then the colony of Vancouver Island as its first governor, but he stuck it out there for only eighteen months, half of which he spent waiting for London to accept his resignation. Scholars have echoed Hubert Howe Bancroft, the early chronicler of the province, who wrote him off as a “son of misfortune.” The eminent naval historian Barry Gough, however, contends that a re-examination of Richard Blanshard can both establish him as a sympathetic and considerable figure and remind us of how uncertain early settler colonialism was in the Pacific Northwest.

The Curious Passage of Richard Blanshard is not so much a full life story as a vivid if sometimes prosy narrative of one man’s involvement with Vancouver Island. The author made a wise decision, because the materials for a conventional biography are...