British Columbia Historical Textbooks

Textbook pages showing colour map of Canada — Bartholomew, John George. Royal Canadian Atlas: A New Series of Physical and Political Maps. Thomas Nelson and Sons: London, 1900–1912. Pages 18–19, archive.org/details/htroyalatlas/page/n23/mode/2up.

Students at a table looking at textbooks and making notes — Education students analyzing the BC Historical Textbooks collection in Special Collections and University Archives at UVic, Fall 2024.

Textbook pages with series of questions and answers and small illustrations of landscapes — Hodgins, J. George. Easy Lessons in General Geography with Maps and Illustrations. John Lovell St Nicholas Street, 1872. Pages 14–15, archive.org/details/ost-geography-easylessonsingen00hodg/page/n17/mode/2up.

Textbook pages with text and botanical illustrations of parts of plants — Groom, Percy. Elementary Botany. The Copp, Clark Company, Limited: Toronto, 1899. Pages 182–183, archive.org/details/elementarybotany0000perc/page/n197/mode/2up.

Classroom of students looking at archival materials — Education students analyzing the BC Historical Textbooks collection in Special Collections and University Archives at UVic, Fall 2024.

Textbook pages with text and illustrations of human skeleton — Martin, H. Newell. The Human Body: an Elementary Textbook of Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene. W.J. Gage and Co. Limited: Toronto, 1900. Pages 53–54, archive.org/details/HTHumanBody_201903/page/n63/mode/2up.

Textbook pages showing musical notation — McLaughlin, James M., George A Veazie, and William Wallace Gilchrist First Music Reader. Ginn and Company, 1906. Pages 24–25, archive.org/details/firstmusicreader01mcla/page/24/mode/2up.

Textbook pages showing a series of math problems — Smith, Barnard, and Archibald McMurchy. Elementary Arithmetic for Canadian Schools. Copp, Clark and Co.: Toronto, 1872. Pages 86–87, archive.org/details/1827belementaryarith00smit/page/86/mode/2up

Textbook pages with children's poetry and colour illustrations of the poems — N.A. New Canadian Readers, First Primer. W.J. Gage and Company, Limited, 1901. Pages 34–35, archive.org/details/newcanadianreade0000none/page/34/mode/2up

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Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Victoria has a unique collection of British Columbia historical textbooks. These textbooks were used in public schools since the province joined confederation in 1871. The British Columbia Historical Textbooks (BCHT) collection includes books on a variety of school subjects including science, math, health, English and language arts, foreign languages, history, and social studies. These textbooks have touched the lives of many citizens for nearly a century and a half. When we review school textbooks, we gain insights into the people who used them. We can explore the thinking, priorities, values, and assumptions of those who wrote, taught, and read these books.

Browse the digital collection

The development of this digital library is a multi-year project. Through it, we hope to preserve and highlight these unique artefacts of our province’s history. The BCHT will be of interest to the general public, educators, and researchers, specifically historians.

If you have questions about the collection or would like a presentation about the history of how these books were used, please contact the Education Librarian, Pia Russell.
Watch a brief introduction to the BC Historical Textbooks collection (4 minutes).
Listen to episode seven of Taapwaywin, a UVic podcast on truth, memory, and human rights. BCHT is featured in the episode Textbook Colonization: Land, Education, Stories. Ry Moran interviews co-researchers Chaa’winisaks and Pia Russell as they share insights on the BCHT collection. (Our segment runs from minutes 05:24 to 22:12.)
Watch a 20-minute presentation I gave in 2024 to the Children’s History Society Conference in Newcastle, UK, where I compare understandings of settler colonialism in two textbooks.
Read a blog post which compares textbooks used in BC with those used in the UK during the early twentieth-century.
Read a blog post which compares historical education images used in Dutch and BC schools in 1910.
Explore a lesson plan comparing textbooks used in BC and the UK. This lesson plan aligns with BC’s Grade 9 Social Studies curriculum and the UK National Curriculum History Program Stage Three.
UVic SCUA’s BCHT collection is proud to be a member of INEHC, the International Network of Educational History Collections.

We wish to acknowledge the expertise and support of the following people:

Gerry Ambers, Elder in Residence at UVic
Gracie Kelly of The'wa:li (Soowahlie First Nation)
Patrick Dunae, Adjunct Professor—Department of History, UVic
Don Hamilton, Retired Education Librarian—UVic

Support for the BC Historical Textbooks project is provided by:

The University Librarian’s Office at UVic
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant program
Institute of Education at the University College London’s Library, Culture, Collections & Open Science
The Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute, Germany
British Columbia Library Association (BCLA)
Myer Horowitz Conference Presentation Award. Centre for Youth and Society, UVic
Bibliothek and Information International, Germany
The Kalman Award for International Heritage Studies. Cultural Resource Management Program, UVic

To learn more about the history of textbooks in BC, we recommend the following resources:

Professor Patrick Dunae’s ‘The Homeroom: British Columbia’s history of education website’
Professor Penney Clark's research webpages
Professor Helen Raptis’ ‘Education History Museum’

Teacher speaking with a group of students sitting around a table with textbooks — Education students analyzing the BC Historical Textbooks collection in Special Collections and University Archives at UVic, Fall 2024.