About the Author

Jean Barman, professor emeritus, has published more than twenty books, including On the Cusp of Contact: Gender, Space and Race in the Colonization of British Columbia (Harbour Publishing, 2020) and the winner of the 2006 City of Vancouver Book Award, Stanley Park’s Secret (Harbour Publishing, 2005). Her lifelong pursuit to enrich the history of BC has earned her such honours as a Governor General’s Award, a George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, a Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing and a position as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She lives in Vancouver, BC.

Reviews

"Reading a book by local historian Jean Barman is like looking at the negative of a well-loved picture. By reversing the light and the dark, she forces us to tee the edges, the margins, the details pushed aside by the Technicolor myths of an accepted history."
--Geoff D'Auria, Vancouver Review

"Jean Barman reveals the 'secret' past of Vancouver's greatest park in this engaging and well-written story of the families who lived within Stanley Park's current boundaries. Barman shatters forever our idea of Stanley Park as a pristine wilderness carefully set aside for future generations."
--David Rahn, Western Mariner

"Stanley Park's Secret offers another history, another way of seeing people, land and how the two intersect when interests conflict. . . . Drawing on oral histories and hundreds of documents, she gives voice to those who have been silenced."
--Candace Fertile, The Vancouver Sun