BOOK TOUR: Trading Fate by Graeme Menzies in Vancouver and Vancouver Island, BC

Join researcher, professor, and author Graeme Menzies on his book tour for Trading Fate (September 16th 2025), an incredibly timely and uniquely west-coast take on Canada’s origin story that focuses on a long-forgotten event that nearly led to British Columbia becoming part of the United States.

Long before a certain American president took to social media to express his desire to make Canada the fifty-first state, the west coast of what is today called British Columbia found itself in the crosshairs of two imperial powers, faced with the very real possibility of being ceded to the United States. In the summer of 1789, a political and trade dispute between the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation, imperial Spain, Great Britain, and the USA converged in Nootka Sound, off Vancouver Island. If not for the intervention of the King George’s Sound Trading Company, Vancouver Island and British Columbia’s fate could have turned out very differently.