When Coal Was King

John R. Hinde has taught at the University of Victoria and Malaspina University College. His first book, Jacob Burckhardt and the Crisis of Modernity (2000), was awarded the 2001 Wallace K. Ferguson Prize by the Canadian Historical Association.

• IllustrationsIntroduction1 A Selfish Millionaire2 A Town of Merry Hearts3 Down in the Dark and Gloomy Dungeons4 Death's Cold Hand5 From Pillar to Post6 The Great Strike7 No Ordinary RiotConclusionNotes; Bibliography; Index

John R. Hinde has written an engaged, subtle, and provocative account of coal miners on Vancouver Island. His study focuses on the 1898-1913 and on the mines in the vicinity of Ladysmith, but it includes context that illuminates the history of the industry throughout the island. - Alan McCullough (Western Historical Quarterly, Summer 2005) John R. Hinde's rather understated title seems to imply that his book is simply as study of Vancouver Island's coal industry as viewed through one community: Ladysmith. But his book is much more, for Hinde has a number of points to make about such topics as class-consciousness, radicalism, and militancy. In fact, this book is meant to be corrective. Throughout the text, he challenges interpretations other historians have developed while studying the area's coal mines. Canadian labour historians will find the book interesting reading. - David A. Wolff, Black Hills State University (Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Spring 2005) Hinde's community study is well researched and well grounded in Canadian working-class historiography. - Sean T. Cadigan (Canadian Literature 184, Spring 2005) The author provides a thorough and sensitive post-mortem of Ladysmith's most troubled days. Well-researched, lucid, and supplemented with almost two dozen photographs, When Coal was King will appeal to a variety of readers. - Chris Morier, University of Victoria (Scientia Canadensis, Vol. 28, 2005) This history of coal-mining in and around Ladysmith on Vancouver Island from the 1850s to the First World War is scholarly and well research, sympathetic to the coal miners and their families and aware of the context and the times of their rough lives. - Patricia Marchak (University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 1, Winter 2006)