Vancouver’s story recast Examining the life of an ‘unconnected’ man On Stormy Seas, The Triumphs and Torments of Captain George Vancouver, By Brenda Guild Gillespie, Horsdal & Schubart, $18.95. ILLIONS, IF not billions, of people know his name, although few know his work and even fewer have a sense of the man,” author Brenda Gillespie la- ments in the epilogue of her remarkable “‘history’”’ of Capt. George Vancouver. Aside from her book, that tack is unlikely to be soon remedied, though June 22, 1992, marked the bicentennial of Vancouver's meeting with Spanish explorers Galiano and Valdez off what is: now Spanish Banks. The city that bears his name seems uneasy about the political correctness of celebrating the anniversary of ex- plorations that opened the Pacific Northwest to European exploita- tions and indigenous native cultures to swift decline. To the captain’s credit, he evi- dently shared their reservations. Having served as midshipman with the celebrated Capt. James 44... what Vancouver accomplished was nothing less than. the equivalent ofa return. trip to Mars, in contemporary terms ... 99 Cook 15 years before, he sadly observed conspicuous signs of social and physical deterioration among the native populations of both the Sandwich Isiands, (Hawaii), and the Pacific North- west after a scant decade and a half of contact with only a relative _ handful of Europeans and Ameri- cans. To Gillespie’s credit, she breathes life into an important his- torical figure usually seen as a mystery at best; at worst, a dull plodder. Taking the literary per- sona of George’s brother, John, is a fictional risk that would give Joan Moore BOOK REVIEW most conventional historians a bad case of psychosomatic scurvy, but by doing so she gives her narrative the dramatic force of a good his- torical novel. In its course, she explores the pessible reason for Vancouver's reputation as an enigmatic bore; most of George’s copious service journals and relevant papers suspiciously went missing from the bureaucratic pack-rat’s dream of the admiralty archives in his life- time, the prime suspect being a disgraced but well-connected junior officer, Thomas Pitt, Lord Camelfford, whose implacable persecution may have helped bear Vancouver, broken in body and spirit, to an early grave at the age of 41. Like the more scrupulous histo- rians of the period, Gillespie turns a microscopic eye on the waters in which men like Cook, William Bligh and George Vancouver were obliged to swim. The Royal Navy, the main chance of fame and for- tune for socially “unconnected” men, Was an organization so utter- ly corrupt, so rife with nepotism and open graft above decks and the virtual slavery of impressment below, that it seems nothing short of a miracle that Britannia should - have ruled anything larger than a _stagnant puddle, never mind the waves of the known world. Yet rule them she did, largely through the unrequited efforts, life-long loyalty and fathomless courage of men like Vancouver, often at the cost of their personal health, reputation — even their lives. Gillespie’s account helps us recall how vast and relatively Local authors in print private busiress is laboring under “tthe new bureaucracy,’ Virginia Jones Harper, of North Vancouver: Time Steals Softly, Dorrance Publishing, 221 pp., $16.95 hardcover. This historical novel chronicles the fascinating story of Lydia Boggs Shepherd Cruger, an independent, deter- mined woman who played a vital role in the development of northwestern Virginia from the time spanning the American Revolutionary War until the Civil ar Herschel Hardin, of West Van- couver: The New Bureaucracy, Waste and Folly in the Private Sector, McClelland and Stewart, 384 pp., $29.95 cloth. Hardin blows a hole in the image of the private sector as_ cost-efficient and more economically virtuous than government. He argues that modelled on the “old” civil service model where paper shuf- fling is the norm and more hap- pens in appearance thanin reality Grace Green, of West Van- couver: Risk of the Heart, Harle- quin (Harlequin presents), 186 pp., $2.89 softcover. Trying to escape her match-making father, a young heiress takes a vacation on an isolated island off the B.C. coast only to find herself fighting her attraction for the mysterious caretaker of the resort. Romantic Times magazine ascribes to Green an ability to diffuse ‘‘in- tensely poignant situations with appropriate flashes of humor leading to a strong novel with a soft romance.’ unknown the world was then and how pathetically smal! were the ships of the men who dared to explore and map it. Vancouver is oiten pilloried for supposedly missing both the Col- umbia and Fraser Rivers, yet his notes indicate he knew of their ex- istence. His commission simply did not extend to the exploration of inland waterways. Even so, it was a superhuman challenge: what Vancouver accomplished was nothing less than the equivalent of a return trip to Mars, in contemporary terms, and the accurate survey of a quadrant of that remote planet. 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