Harbour City: Nanaimo in Transition, 1920-1967

The final volume in Jan Peterson's Nanaimo trilogy traces the city's development from 1920 through 1967, as it continued its transformation from small mining town to bustling city. Nanaimo lived through the same 20th-century challenges as the rest of Canada, but many of its triumphs have been one-of-a-kind. Overcoming adversity, including two devastating fires, has been a defining characteristic. During the Depression, the city built a dam, a project that employed hundreds and still supplies water today. Adaptability has been another attribute: when coal gave way to oil, the city made forestry its economic base and developed its port, turning it into a vital transportation centre. Leading readers through the Roaring Twenties, the hardscrabble Depression years, the disruptions of two world wars and beyond to the prosperous 1950s and rocking '60s, Peterson brings to life Nanaimo's people and the events that shaped it.