Westcoast Series

London - 1850 - A fast moving saga of a pioneer family leaving an established life behind to work as indentured colonists for the Hudson's Bay Company in Fort Victoria on British Columbia's rugged West Coast. Margaret Manson packs up herself and her two sons to follow her husband halfway around the world to an uncertain future.

Several generations after his great-grandmother Margaret Manson leaves Scotland for the rugged Pacific Northwest, Jack Manson becomes intrigued when some of the unresolved mysteries of Margaret’s adventures surface.

WESTCOAST CHRONICLES In the third of the 'Westcoast Series, we explore the exciting events and history of Victoria and British Columbia's west coast through the last half of the 1800's. To tell this tale, we follow the life of 'Vickie, the precocious daughter of Maggie and Mark Holland, who we met in the first volume, Westcoast Legacy. A life filled with change and challenges, during periods of growth that included epidemics, gold rushes, race-riots, opium, gambling and whore houses.

After the deadly smallpox epidemic, Victoria dealt with the influx of tens of thousands of miners and undesirables searching for gold. The city was ill-prepared to handle this volume, with limited accommodations, eating places, water or sewage systems, so the result was a wild scramble to satisfy the varied appetites of both body and spirit. It had a reputation over the entire west coast as a licentious city, known for its gambling halls and the largest selection of saloons, opium dens and whore houses.