Here’s All About Everything

There are more difficult things to do than write a book review of an encyclopedia, writing an encyclopedia would be harder, for instance, but apart from that and a few things such as wrestling alligators and herding cats it is hard to bring examples of more difficult tasks to mind.

Encyclopedia means the book claims to tell everything that is known and most of the things that are subjects of speculation. Everything. Just turn to it for answers to everything. Any encyclopedia is thus so awesomely large, so detailed and so damnably authoritative in tone, even when it’s wrong, that we ordinary mortals stand in awe.

All this applies to what must be rated Book of The Year 2000 in this province, the Encyclopedia of British Columbia, edited by Daniel Francis, published by Harbour Publishing of Madeira Park. It sells for an even hundred bucks which is only $ a kilo.

The fact that it has already gone into a second printing is a pretty fair testimonial to the scores of people who put it together. However many bad books sell more so the reviewer must address such questions as “How thorough is it?” “Are the front and back covers too far apart?” “How many mistakes can you find?

Looking for omissions is a standard first procedure. As a matter of policy the book excludes Einstein and a multitude of others because they had no direct link to B.C., never having so much as twisted an ankle stepping off a plane here. However Francis Drake makes it because some people think he sailed this far north on his trip around the world. From the B.C. point of view, it’s pretty thorough.

Omissions?

How about Gunanoot, the outlaw? He’s there. So is Pierre Berton who wasn’t born here and lived most of his life back east but had some formative years in this province.

How about Dutch Bill Dietz, the man who started the Cariboo Gold Rush? He’s not a separate entry, but he turns up in the Cariboo section. (Considering the ease with which modern computers arrange such things, the large cross-index secdtion should be twice as big.)

There are of course the expected people, Amor de Cosmos, an early premier, of whom it was said that when he left his native New Brunswick and ended up in B.C. the sanity levels went up in both provinces. But unexpectedly, while checking Fur, I learned that Future Shop was founded by local Iranian immigrant Hassan Khosrowshahi and that the chain has become Canada’s leading computer and consumer electric stores.

And where else might one find a detailed explanation of why salmon strike the Buzz Bomb lure, a B.C. invention?

In fact the characteristic of this book is that you can let it fall open at any page and find something interesting that you never knew before. Page 518: Pioneer Judge Peter O’Reilly (If there is killing in Kootenay, boys, there will be hanging in the Kootenay); The Organized Crime Agency of B.C., The Oriole, oldest commissioned ship of the Canadian Navy with 6,600 square feet in her spinnaker; Historian Margaret Ormsby and the wedding cake glitzy old Orpheum Theatre’s story.

It’s a long, long time to find an omission. Rodeo cowboy Leonard Palmantier of Chilcotin is there, which is good, but Lt. Palmer, who explored Chilcotin in gold rush days and sired a second, secret family in Japan didn’t make it and should have..

As for accuracy, the book has thousands of mistakes. Take my word for it. If you have compiled tens of millions of facts there has to be a few thousand errors. I didn’t find one in several hours of looking but they must be there. Anybody who expects any encyclopedia to be faultless is too fine, too pure and too foolish for this world and might as well be transported right now into the Great Reading Room in The Sky.

The language is clear and it’s all good English, mercifully free of cant and jargon. You won’t find “importantly” substituting for “important” or “opting for” instead of “choosing.”

The many charts are clear and easy to follow. Although it has to compress hundreds of millions of years of mountain building into 9 pages the product is a crisp and clear summary.

Finally, at the start of another thousand years during which mankind may see the end of print on paper, Encyclopedia of British Columbia comes with a compact disc for your home computer.

As with a family bible, every household should have one. Unlike the bible, there are a lot more characters and a much larger variety of subjects.

May/00