Go Do Some Great Thing
By Crawford Kilian
The voyage north of some 600 blacks from San Francisco to Victoria during the 1858 Fraser Canyon Gold Rush was one of the most unusual mass migrations in North American history.
While the British colonies of the Pacific Northwest were overrun with migrants from all lands on the quest for gold, this black community sought freedom and political enfranchisement as much as fortune. Go Do Some Great Thing describes a history that stands at the crossroads of multiple national narratives-the imperial contest between Britain and the United States, the emergence of Canada as a state, the fate of dozens of First Nations, and the furthest and most unlikely reaches of the global African diaspora.
Originally published in 1978, this new edition adds vital information gathered by Crawford Kilian over the last thirty years.
Crawford Kilian was born in New York in 1941. Raised in Los Angeles and Mexico City, he is a naturalized Canadian citizen living in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife, Alice, and daughters, Anna and Margaret. Formerly a technical writer-editor at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, he has taught English at Capilano College in North Vancouver since 1968. His writing background includes two children’s books (Wonders Inc. and The Last Vikings); critical articles on Charles Dickens and the Canadian writer James De Mille and several radio plays broadcast by the CBC.
