British Columbia Logging Industry

Reviews Gordon Hak’s book Turning Trees Into Dollars: The British Columbia Coastal Lumber Industry, 1858-1913.

Hak’s volume explores the first fifty years of the B.C. coastal logging industry. It is a traditional industry history rather than a labour or social history. Hak emphasizes the industrialization of the industry, the chaotic market conditions and labour’s remarkably low degree of unionization, organization and political action.