Jean Barman was in 100 Mile House’s Storytime Family Bookstore on Sept. 20 promoting her new book British Columbia: Spirit of the People.

During her stop, she made a PowerPoint presentation of some of the spectacular images in the book, and used them as talking points about the province’s history and character.

Published this summer by Harbour Publishing, the book is a fitting commemoration of the province’s 150th anniversary as a Crown colony.

Barman’s 25,000 words of text describing BC’s 10 regions, history, development and look to the

future, are accented by breathtaking images by some of the province’s best photographers. Featured in this mix are photos by Chris Harris of 105 Mile House, Bella Coola’s Mike Wigle, and images of the region by Vance Hanna.

“My words are just little small pieces in the middle of the pages,” says Barman. “It’s the other stuff which makes the book so attractive.”

Barman says the book came about at the invitation of the provincial government to celebrate the province’s sesquicentennial, from its inception in 1858 to the present day. Premier Gordon Campbell wrote the Forward.

The Cariboo, Chilcotin and Central Coast are well represented in the 192-page coffee-table book that retails for $49.95.

Barman was the ideal choice to author this abbreviated version of the province’s history, in bite-sized chunks to make it palatable to those who might know next-to-nothing about BC.

“How do you explain BC in 25,000 words to someone who doesn’t know anything about this region?” Barman asks. That was the challenge she accepted when she willingly took on the project.

She says the government originally commissioned the book to hand out to all the schools, libraries and municipalities in the province, but then Harbour Publishing convinced it to allow production of extra copies to be sold in the marketplace.

Barman says one thing that made her job easier was the fact she wrote a general history book of BC, West Beyond the West back in 1992.

That book, now in its third edition, is described by CBC broadcaster Mark Forsythe as the province’s most widely-read history of itself.

Barman says the stunning photographs chosen for Spirit of the People were a real inspiration, and made the job of writing the text that much easier.

She says one of the good things about going on a book tour around the province is the opportunity to visit some of the places she has written about and to meet the people who live there.

“I’m looking forward to visiting local bookstores and checking out some of the local books in the regions,” she says.

She adds that one of the priorities about doing a book about British Columbia was to give each of the regions equal footing to the large population centres of the Lower Mainland.

“Each of the 10 regions around the province matter,” she says. “They’ve each got their place in the sun.”

She says for the average person living in the Lower Mainland the thought that

there is all this rest of BC is a real revelation.