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Ranald Macdonald: Pacific Rim Adventurer Jo Ann Roe Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1997 Book Reviews uj colonies of Vancouver Island and British as an outcome of the American mainland British Columbia, he was Revolution and the War of 1812 made fiercely resented by many of the settlers a hero of a man who was rejected by a who remained after the gold rush. He British company and betrayed by faced a much more difficult situation rogue Americans. Douglas, striving to than had McLoughlin. Although his­ maintain British control on a volatile torians have restored his reputation, he frontier, was perceived to be autocratic has not received the acclaim accorded by settlers from Upper Canada, who McLoughlin. The smouldering re­ had very recently achieved responsible sentment among Americans against the government. Ranald MacDonald: Pacific Rim Adventurer Jo Ann Roe Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1997. 256 pp. Ilus., map. $28.95 paper. The City of Yes Peter Oliva Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1999. 336 pp. $21.99 paper. By Jean Wilson UBC Press F YOU ARE a fur trade aficionado, Between 1848 and 1858 he wandered especially of Hudson's Bay the world as an ordinary seaman and I Company (HBC) lore and lives, you as a whaler, visiting ports in Britain, will have heard of Ranald MacDonald. Europe, Africa, the United States, His life, by any measure, was ad­ Hawaii, and Asia. He also lived for a venturous and his legacy long-lasting, year in Japan and in Australia before and references to him crop up in many returning to North America to parti­ HBC and Pacific Northwest histories. cipate in the Cariboo gold rush and The first son of HBC clerk Archibald the Vancouver Island Exploring McDonald (his children adopted the Expedition (viEE 1864), and to settle "Mac" spelling) and Koale'zoa, daughter into the roadhouse business and then of the Chinook leader Concomly, ranching near Ft. Colvile, where he Ranald lived a long life (1824-94) died. during which he spent time as a child It is MacDonald's experience in and young man at Ft. George and Ft. Japan that is perhaps most noteworthy Vancouver in the Columbia District and that is the focus of Jo Ann Roe's as well as at Red River in Rupert's biography and a parallel theme to the Land and St. Thomas, Upper Canada. main narrative in Peter Oliva's novel. 114 BC STUDIES Roe is a travel and history writer based as are other statements about North­ in Bellingham. Her biography is west Coast Aboriginal peoples. somewhat disjointed and occasionally My greatest frustration with Roe's simplistic or inaccurate, but it is also book is its idiosyncratic organization a fascinating reconstruction of a and lack of documentation. I fully ap­ remarkable life. Her enthusiasm and preciate that RanaldMacDonald is in­ fascination with her subject are evident, tended primarily for a general audience, and she succeeds in describing Ranald and that is commendable, but readers MacDonald's full history. would have been better served by a In a life of many adventures, pro­ proper bibliography than by only an bably MacDonald's greatest was to be unkeyed list of references pertaining the first known White foreigner to to each chapter at the back of the gain entry into Japan and to survive book. There are few notes, so on the as well as to leave a mark. He entered whole it is difficult to determine what by faking shipwreck off the Hokkaido the sources are for most of Roe's ob­ coast of northern Japan in 1848, being servations, though much of her material rescued by Japanese villagers and then, obviously is based on MacDonald's subsequently, being interned by high- story as written up by his friend ranking officials. MacDonald had been Malcolm McLeod between the 1860s fascinated by Japan since he was a boy and 1890s. As well, chapters are often and had heard of three Japanese sailors short (the first chapter is a mere four shipwrecked off the Olympic Peninsula, pages) and would have been better imprisoned by Natives, and later re­ combined, and there is a disconcerting leased by HBC officials. MacDonald disjuncture in the narrative about half became determined, despite the risks, way through the book when Roe to see this "forbidden" country. During abandons MacDonald in Canada in the year he spent as a relatively com­ order to insert two chapters about the fortable prisoner, MacDonald taught completion of Perry's mission. They're English. The men he taught were later interesting, but the Perry story could instrumental in effecting treaty nego­ have been condensed, even summarized, tiations between Commodore Matthew in a note. Perry and Japanese officials in 1854. Peter Oliva, who is a well established My frustrations with Roe's bio­ Alberta writer and owner of the Calgary graphy have to do with a rather cavalier bookstore Pages on Kensington, ob­ approach to justification for statements viously became as fascinated by made and some obvious inaccuracies MacDonald's story as did Roe {The — for example, E. Herbert Norman City ofYes was shortlisted for the Giller was not an American historian, he was Prize). Although Ranald MacDonald a Canadian diplomat who also wrote is not the focus of Oliva's story, his one of the most important books about life provides an interesting parallel to Japan subsequent to his posting there the anonymous narrator's, he being a (Japans Emergence as a Modern State young Albertan hired to teach English [1940]); Toronto did not, as far as I in contemporary Japan. While there can determine, ever have a newspaper he learns of MacDonald's adventure called "the Toronto Press"; and surely and success in teaching men who the statement that "slaves of coastal became well established translators. Indians lived a miserable life, indeed" The novel gets its title from the an­ is something of a gross generalization, cient name for Hokkaido - Yesso - Book Reviews 115 and from a poem by Yevgeny he has adopted, even if only for the Yevtushenko: term of a one-year teaching contract. His life as an English teacher, his in­ I am like a train teraction with other teachers and rushing for many years now students, his portrayal of Santa Claus between the city of Yes and other attempts to portray North and the city of No. American customs, his whimsical "Yes" was also the name of the VIEE'S tending of a colony of praying mantises, last camp on Vancouver Island, his sexual relationship with the char­ MacDonald's journal of the trip ismatic Hiroko - all these experiences being the only one to mention this are interspersed with lyrical descriptions fact. of MacDonald's experiences. Oliva's narrator is as curious to Reading these two books in tandem learn more about the alien Japanese is yet another parallel complementing culture as was Ranald MacDonald, those in The City of Yes. It was parti­ and when he learns about MacDonald cularly interesting to read first the bio­ and his experience in the country graphy and then the novel. Peter Oliva almost 200 years earlier, he is struck dextrously weaves fact and fiction; Jo by the parallels in their encounters Ann Roe assiduously presents all the with the Japanese. MacDonald's ex­ facts of MacDonald's life, from which perience becomes a metaphor for the Oliva so successfully draws. There is narrator's own search to become more certainly still room for a scholarly ver­ than just "an outside person - an ap­ sion of MacDonald's life, but in the parition made real" (57) and for Japan meantime Ranald MacDonald: Pacific itself to become more than "an affec­ Rim Adventurer and The City of Yes tionate prison" (287). He is trying, bring this attractive and venturesome instead, to become part of the world man vividly to life. The Burden of History: Colonialism and the Frontier Myth in a Rural Canadian Community Elizabeth Furniss Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999. 237 pp. $29.95 paper. By Jo-Anne Fiske University of Northern British Columbia MAGES OF PIONEERS figure largely and mark a pioneer era as both heroic in the identity of central British and the foundation of a stable and I Columbia communities. Tales of meaningful rural culture. In Burden of extraordinary self-reliance, unparalleled History, Furniss unravels the under­ feats of courage, personal sacrifice, and lying assumptions and symbols of these enviable economic success saturate local narratives, conceived as "the frontier histories and community celebrations myth," in order to demonstrate how .
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