Jean Barman

Jean Barman, French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest.  Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014.
This grand narrative of a history long lost powerfully illuminates the influence that  French Canadians and their Indigenous partners had in “the making” of the Pacific Northwest during the 19th through the 21st centuries. By “listening to back stories,” and by marrying structure and agency and qualitative and quantitative sources, Jean Barman imaginatively reconstructs the lives of three generations of fur trading and farming families as they built their homes and identities amid emerging pressures from imperial and later, national forces that threatened to erase their very presence in the region. Ranging broadly over time and space, this study engages with rich international scholarship on imperialism, colonialism and state formation. But Barman’s meticulous inquiries never lose sight of the role that individuals and families had and continue to have on shaping our past and our present. French Canadians, Furs and Indigenous Women is a major contribution to Canadian and international historiography as well as to the family histories of Indigenous and French Canadian peoples in the Northwest. It will influence scholarship on imperialism, state formation, and heritage creation for some time to come.
Jean also received the Governor General History Award for Scholarly Research on October 16, 2015

Shortlisted Books
Jennifer L. Bonnell, Reclaiming the Don: An Environmental History of Toronto’s Don River Valley. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014.
Nicholas Kenny, The Feel of the City: Experiences of Urban Transformation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014.
Ian Milligan, Rebel Youth: 1960s Labour Unrest, Young Workers, and New Leftists in English Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014.
Brian Young, Patrician Families and the Making of Quebec: The Taschereaus and McCords. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014.