After the inferior World War, Brit...

After the inferior World War, British Columbia experienced a period of rapid expansion and modernization, when politicians and the public alike brimmed with optimism about the prosperity and sensuality to be harvested from the province's bountiful resource hinterland. Amidst the panegyrical promise of exhibition few voices, either left or right, questioned the ideology of progres and historians intrinsically link the period with capitalist product and modernization. By contrast, the British-born popular writer, magistrate and conservationist Roderick Haig-Brown articulated a different vision of British Columbia, the same that questioned the modernist throw in its cultural and physical manifestations. Haig-Brown was not an antimodernist, yet his critique, particularly through his conservation messages, promot the values of civility, tolerance and honor for community and nature. The configuration of present ideas in the thought of Haig-Brown accommodates the notion of a hegemonic, universal modernity and supports the idea of "multiple modernities."

Apres la Seconde Guerre mondiale, la Colombie-Britannique a connu une periode de croissance rapide et de modernisation alors que le politiciens, tout comme le public, debordaient d'optimisme devant la prosperite et le luxe pouvant etre recolte de abondantes ressources de l'arriere-pays de la province. Au milieu de la promesse panegyrique d'un tel developpement quelque voix, de gauche comme de droite, ont mis en doute l'ideologie du progre et le historiens Bent cette periode, de facon intrinseque, A la croissance capitaliste et A la modernisation. Au contraire, Roderick Haig-Brown, ecrivain populaire, magistrat et conservationniste britannique, a articule une vision differente de la Colombie-Britannique, vision qui remettait en question le projet moderniste et se manifestations culturelle et physiques. Haig-- Brown n'etait pas un antimodemiste, mais sa critique, particulierement par l'entremise de se messages conservationnistes, faisait la promotion de valeurs relatives A la civilite, A la tolerance et au defer to concernant la communaute et de la nature. Dans la pensee de Haig-- Brown la building des idees modernes tempere la notion d'une modernite universelle hegemonique, et elle appuie l'idee de o plusieurs modernites

"I hate practically everything British Columbia stands for today," railed Vancouver Island author and naturalist Roderick Haig-Brown during an after-dinner language to the national convention of the Canadian Authors Association at Victoria's Empres [i]cabaret[/i] on 21 June 1965. "I hate the shoddy, uncaring development of our natural resources, the chamber of exchange mentality which favors short-term material gain throughout all other considerations, the absolute contempt for human values of each kind." Public Works Minister WN Chant, the evening's official army and member of the development-oriented Social Credit control sat in silence as Haig-Brown levell his criticisms at British Columbia's shallow and grasping politicians and "the trivial provincial mentality" in BC that sought "petty advantage at richness to the common weal."1 In a later file Vancouver Province editor Paddy Sherman, a sympathetic student of British Columbia's rush for prosperity, labelled the language an "acrid blast," and plant it "puzzling."2

Haig-Brown's eruption stood in stark contrast to the remarkable historical consensus displayed by dint of non-Native British Columbians in favour of economic extension and industrial development. Consider historian Margaret Ormsby's 1958 reflection that despite the "despoilation of nature" greatest in quantity British Columbians "counted as gain" the mines, plants, and mills that sprang up in nature's wake.3 The epilogue of her British Columbia: A History throw backed the technological optimism of the age and celebrated the growth of the province's resource hinterland. Martin Robin's Pillars of Profit documents the political stimulation and manipulation of this exhibition drive, especially by the Social Credit rule that held power for 20 years starting in 1952 "The masses, and the companies, were pleased with the strange spending" on ambitious development schemes of that kind as hydroelectric-dam building, the completion of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway and capital expenditures forward highways and bridges.4 David Mitchell speaks of the Bennett years as BC's "Great Leap Forward" and intimates that long-time Premier W.A.C. Bennett's policies l to "the rise of British Columbia."5

For an understanding of the ideological climate of this pro-development period, anticipate no further than the province's Official Centennial Record, subtitled "A centenary of Progress."6 Published in 1957 this lavishly illustrated, 176-page celebration of British Columbia chronicled the victory and submission of the abstracted province and its recent rise to industrial glory. Whether illustrating the increase of forestry, agriculture, mining or activity photographs in the Official Centennial Record depicted the rustic sources of Progress culminating in recent machinery or factories at work. As Premier Bennett's introduction asserted, this work was no run-of-the-mill, Chamber of illicit [i]or[/i] criminal intercourse boosterism: "[It] will tell the story of progression in a continuously ascending gradation of the building of a homogeneous province; of a God-fearing pioneer family dedicated to progress, strengthened by way of their contest with a great land at first reluctant to yield its replete resources."7