Bright Seas, Pioneer Spirits: A History of the Sunshine Coast, Third Edition

Award-winning authors Betty Keller and Rosella Leslie offer an essential history of the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia that takes the reader from the geological formation of the region to its contemporary social geographies, now updated to 2026.

Just a short ferry ride northwest of Vancouver, BC, the Sunshine Coast is a string of distinct coastal communities shaped by their histories and location. Beginning with a description of land formations during the last ice age, Keller and Leslie follow the evolution of the Sunshine Coast from its forests and wildlife to human inhabitants, with a narrative that centres on the transformations to coastal life that followed the arrival of colonial explorers in the late eighteenth century. Captain George Vancouver’s survey of Howe Sound between 1792 and 1795 marked the beginning of profound change, as subsequent settlement brought lasting disruptions to Indigenous ways of life. This history is closely intertwined with the region’s long relationship to resource extraction, including logging, fishing, farming, mining, canning, tourism, brick making and more recent efforts to export water. Keller and Leslie detail the stories and technologies of coastal enterprise from hand to helicopter logging, from dugout canoe designs to Union Steamship luxury craft, and from log salvage to the Lepage Glue Factory. Along the way, readers meet Shíshálh leaders, settler entrepreneurs, Finnish socialists, and the J-pod resident orcas. Based on archival documents, local histories and memoirs, government reports, and personal interviews, and illustrated with sixty photographs from archival sources, this authoritative and readable history of the Sunshine Coast is a must have for anyone interested in the region.