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A community of working men : the residential environment of early Nanaimo, British Columbia, 1875-1891

University of British Columbia

This thesis discusses the growth of the coal mining town of Nanaimo, British Columbia an industrial settlement in a New World wilderness. The people who settled Nanaimo came, for the most part, from British coal mining regions. They came to improve their standard of living, but, as in Britain, worked in a capital and labour intensive industry. This thesis examines their patterns of settlement in this new town on the Pacific and stresses the analysis of occupational mobility, residential segregation, and levels of home ownership. Parallels to and departures from British experiences are discussed. Initially Nanaimo's land was relatively cheap, wages were steady, the town was clean, single family dwellings made an "open" settlement, and some opportunities existed for upward occupational mobility. For these reasons British miners found Nanaimo an improvement over British colliery towns. Yet as Continental Europeans and Asian immigrants increased in number, as the total population grew, as neighbourhoods became more segregated, and as coal markets softened unrest mounted. Increases in land costs, racial animosity, and residential segregation were all forces shaping Nanaimo in 1891, the final year of the study.

Text

2010-03-29

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/22926

Geography

University of British Columbia

Graduate