Have you hiked in Strathcona Park? Taken in the wildflowers? Maybe even snowshoed there in the winter?
It’s BC’s oldest provincial park. But for the last hundred years, different people have fought over how the park should be used. Should it be a tourist destination? A natural conservation area? A mine?
That’s the story Catherine Marie Gilbert tells in her book, Journey Back to Nature. And her work of historical writing has just won a prize in BC.
The NorthIsle resident’s book just won third place in the Lieutenant Governor’s award for historical writing.
“It was a thrill to receive the news,” Gilbert told the Campbell River Mirror. “And to be in such good company as fellow award winner and historian Barry Gough, whose writing I love and admire.”
Gilbert joins Barry Gough, who won first place in the competition for his book on Meares Island. Possessing Meares Island: A Historian’s Journey into the Past of Clayoquot Sound ties together three hundred years of history between Indigenous and colonial governments in the region.
Journey Back to Nature contains historical pictures of the region that have never been published. It details how the landscape changed over the decades and the people who brought about those changes.
You can buy an autographed copy of the book from Gilbert’s website or at bookstores in the Campbell River and Comox Valley regions.
