British Columbiana by Josie Teed is a relatable memoir about feeling a bit lost and not fitting in and finding a way through that.

Either Josie Teed has a wonderful editor, or the friend who once told Josie Teed her writing was terrible, but that she was too sweet for him to be able to critique it properly, was wrong. This is the autobiographical tale of a young woman interning in Barkerville, a former gold rush town in – you guessed it – British Columbia, now turned into a historic attraction.

Like Bridget Jones, I have the impression that Josie Teed has a tendency to overthink things. At university there was a very strong peer pressure to agree with everyone else about controversial topics. In the age of social media, there is a very real fear of saying the wrong thing and being shamed or hounded online. In the small, close-knit pressure cooker of the local community, she meets a variety of different people with a wide range of views. Suddenly she realises she doesn’t know how to defend her beliefs against hostility because she has never had to defend her views before.

Relations with the other employees staying in the compound become increasingly fraught. In her role of caretaker, Josie is expected to remind residents of rules such as cleaning up after themselves in the shared kitchen. As most of them are young and irresponsible, this eventually leads to accusations of misconduct and harassment. Fortunately, her manager backs her up and her friend Daniel comforts her.

I’d say I was pretty ambivalent about this book. Some of it is funny and charming. Sometimes the angst was dialled up too high for me, hence the 3-star rating. But one thing’s for sure, Josie Teed can write beautifully.
“Driving around Wells at night in the fire trucks was surreal. The cold and expansive white light of the trucks reached even small nooks and crannies in the surrounding flora, and cast an eerie glow into the nighttime that a car never could. The trees and shrubs, and the swamp bordering the wilderness just beyond the borders of town, appeared fragile somehow, as if only just keeping the un- tethered growth of nature out. The light, which starkly revealed the subtle movements of the plants and bugs, the wind and animals, made me feel like I was seeing something that was meant to be private. Like the natural world was doing unconscious work that humans were not supposed to know about, and I was spying on it.”

Thank you to NetGalley for the free digital ARC. This review reflects my honest opinions about the book.

As a young professional working in the heritage sector in Canada, I found this book so relevant and really refreshing. There aren't many voices in our generation that I've seen talk about what it's like, and I really loved this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I could not finish enough of this book to be able to leave a comprehensive review, but I hope it finds its audience and I am grateful to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advance copy.

Quite simply, this was the best book I have read in a long time. It was a moving and spare account of Teed’s time as a millennial, newly-graduated uprooting her life again in a gold rush town in British Columbia. I felt like I experienced a whole life time of stories, secrets, and reflections in the one year that this book spans. It was a deep insight into a wonderfully strange life and town that I never thought could have existed. Each person felt like the actual real-life counterpart had been transplanted onto the page; I felt like I got to know everyone incredibly well, and I similarly feel somewhat at a loss and unsure how to say goodbye as if I knew Teed and co. personally. It sounds extremely weird to say since this is a memoir, but it’s the only way I can currently express how I feel towards this book. As this books is only four years out from Teed’s time in Wells, I can’t help but wonder what her response to these individuals and experiences would’ve been later on, especially post-pandemic. I wished that there was a short final chapter reflecting on the final choice she made in real life, and that which makes up the last line, in relation to the pandemic, and if she ever plans on returning.

I highly recommend this memoir, and as my first time reading one I will sure look out for more (creative) non-fiction in the future.

this book was such a treat! funny, attentive, and curious, Josie writes from such a great perspective. as a current master's student, i related big time to this book. that mid-20s urge to move to a new town and have grand adventures is super relatable.

this book follows Josie as she navigates living in a small town, figuring out roommates, navigating friendships and dating, and weekly chats with her (seemingly) wonderful therapist. it was so fun and intriguing to be inside of Josie's thoughts as she worked through all of these experiences.

if you liked the idiot by elif batuman, you'll love this. quirky and clever, yet also sentimental and honest, it'll draw you in!

As someone who grew up and spent most their life in Western Canada, I was very intrigued by the premise of this debut memoir. Josie has just completed her masters thesis, and is unsure of her next steps after graduation. She accepts a position at Barkerville, a remote heritage site in rural British Columbia.

This was such a fun reading experience. Reading about Josie’s self discovery, friendships, dating, and living in close quarters with the various personalities of a tiny town had me giggling. I appreciate the genuine awkwardness of finding yourself in a new place. I feel like people who are going through a transitional phase could really resonate with this book.

This book was equal parts charming and hilarious! If you loved The Idiot by Elif Batuman, I highly recommend adding this one to your reading list!

This book comes out this month, March 2023.

As always, thank you to the wonderful Dundurn Press & Netgalley for a copy of this ebook. And thank you of course Josie Teed for this lovely slice of life read!

When I was a kid, my family took a train across the US every other summer, then drove up into British Columbia to spend a week or two in my grandparents' mountain village. There were a lot of wonderful summer traditions, but one thing we always looked forward to was seeing the Follies in an old gold rush town. Singing and dancing and colorful costumes and drama! So much drama. I suspect that if I watched the Follies now I'd be let down, but as a kid all I could see was glamor.

Barkerville, where Teed temporarily transplanted herself for an internship in an historic gold-rush town, is much farther north and *far* more remote than my grandparents' village—I joke that their village is in the middle of nowhere, and I'm not actually wrong, but it's at least on a highway that connects to other villages and, eventually, towns. It has a population of almost 2,000. The "big city" up the road has a population of almost 8,000. Barkerville, by contrast...let's just say that Barkerville's "big city," Wells, has a population well south of 300. When Teed was in Barkerville, "interpreters" roamed the streets, dressed as characters from the gold-rush era, but any glamor was undercut by daily life in town but *out* of character.

I was interested in this out of curiosity about the town (that Follies nostalgia, plus I'm still waiting for someone to write a book about Cerro Gordo). On that level I'd really have loved more information—how many buildings are in Barkerville, and what are their histories? What stories have been passed down year after year? What would it have been like to be a woman in this remote mining town in the 1800s? And in the present day, how many interpreters roam the streets? How does the still-functioning gold mine(!) fit into the local landscape, and what could the present-day miners (especially the ones who also work in the historic town) say about the difference between mining then and mining now?

A lot of Teed's story is more personal, about self-discovery and, well, figuring shit out. A would-be coming-of-age story, as Teed suggests: "'I'm so happy that you're here,' I said, and I really meant it. I thought we were like two characters at the beginning of an exciting, coming-of-age novel" (loc. 1993). I think the ideal reader is probably somewhere in their twenties, but a lot of this will resonate with anyone who's older now but has been an uncertain, insecure twenty-something (no insult—I count myself in there!).

This is Teed's first book, and I'm curious about what conclusions she might have drawn had she written it a few more years from now. In some places her observations are so very on point, about the space around her but especially about how she reacts to the space around her. In other places I could have used more telling alongside the showing—it felt like the moments she describes were on the edge of adding up to something but hadn't quite gotten there.

I've never lived in a town quite as small as Wells, nor as remote, but one of my takeaways from "British Columbiana" is that perhaps the thing that can make or break long-term living in a town like this is knowing who you are. I could imagine working in Barkerville for a season (honestly, it sounds like quite an adventure), but living there for a long stretch sounds much harder without a good sense of yourself and why this place is right for you.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

I was drawn to this book by it’s splendid cover. It follows the experiences of the author while living for a year in the far flung reaches of British Columbia to work at a heritage site where an entire working town is maintained by a charitable trust. It sounded really interesting. The main part of the book focuses on the authors personal experiences and friendships and contacts she makes. I felt it could have given more detail about the place; her risk taking drives in the snow were about the most engaging episodes. It felt as if it should be marketed towards the young adult angst market rather than a travel memoir.

I was originally attracted to this title because I lived in northern British Columbia for 8 years in the late 70s/early 80s. Though I never visited Barkerville, it was in my territory. I was interested to learn more about the place. As it turns out, the book could have been written anywhere, as it is more a coming-of-age memoir than it is about a place. Still, there was enough about the place (fairly remote and with a winter climate most people never experience) and the kind of people it attracts, to keep me interested. I may have found the author's struggle to get comfortable with herself a bit tiresome had it been set elsewhere, but then, it's been a long time since I was that age.

Josie Teed writes a memoir of her year working in a historic, isolated gold rush town in the Cariboo region of Northern B.C. She works as an archivist and then as an interpreter, dressing up as a schoolteacher from the town’s boom era. I loved learning about the history of Wells and Barkerville and the eccentric people living there today. I read this whole book in one night, staying up late to finish it.
Teed is fresh out of school and looking for a sense of community and belonging. Her memoir captured a lot of that post-grad uncertainty and confusion about one’s place in the world. I enjoyed her honesty and bluntness, and I wish she had explored more of her feelings about Wells at the end of the book. The ending felt a bit abrupt.

A memoir of a year spent in a heritage town in the depths of British Columbia, this has its charms. It's essentially a journey of self discovery by the author as she leaves full time education and starts looking for somewhere she fits. She seems very unsure of herself and quite a bit of the book is taken up with her therapy sessions and her worries about what other people think of her and how she will use that in her therapy. It wasn't for me. I think I am too old for this now. I may have found it clicked more with me when I was of an age with the author.