UBC prof gets top prize for history book

A UBC history professor has won the the country's top award for academic history writing.

Prof. Jean Barman will receive a gold medal as the winner of the Governor General's History Award for Scholarly Research: Sir John A. Macdonald Prize on October 16 at Rideau Hall in Ottawa.

Governor General David Johnston will present the award to Barman for her 2014 book, French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the making of the Pacific Northwest (UBC Press).

Barman's book presents evidence that the relationships between French-Canadian fur traders and aboriginal women were important determinants in the future history of what we now call British Columbia.

"When the Hudson's Bay Company took over the Pacific Northwest fur trade from the Northwest Company of Montreal in 1821, the French Canadian employees stayed on mainly because of their relationships with indigenous women," Barman wrote in a release.

"Although England was inclined to give up the area to the United States when a boundary was decided in 1846, the Hudson's Bay Company convinced England to keep today's British Columbia because there was money to be made there.

"Were it not for these French Canadian employees, Canada would have no Pacific shoreline today."

Earlier this year, Barman won the Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book on British Columbia for the same book. And last year, she won the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, B.C.'s most prestigious literary honour.