A NOVEL IN PROGRESS
Five Days in November
She was sent to civilize a colony. She had other plans.
Sponsors financed Annie Weaver's passage on the understanding that she would marry, bear children and help curb the colony’s slide into depravity. She considered it a fair trade.
PASSENGER MANIFEST
Passenger
Annie Weaver, 18, factory worker
Origin
Liverpool, England
Destination
Granville, British Columbia
Prospects
A new life in a settlement of sawmills and saloons
Kate and Annie on Hastings Street, Vancouver, circa 1908. Philip Timms photograph #6678, Vancouver Public Library.
THE STORY
Vancouver is changing. So is Annie.
When eighteen-year-old Annie Weaver boards the bride-ship in Liverpool, all that matters is leaving behind the factory where she has worked since childhood. If the sponsors who financed her passage expect her to marry, have children and help curb the colony’s slide into depravity, she considers it a fair trade.
Then Vancouver’s fortunes change. The anticipated arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railroad draws ambitious land speculators and hundreds of eligible young men to the young city. Amid a mob storming the sawmill, a fiercely contested municipal election and a devastating fire, Annie marries just in time to avoid a scandal.
Years later, over five snowy days in November, the streetcars stop, the telephones go down and Annie is stranded alone in the West End. With Robbie’s ambition pulling their family apart, she must decide whether she is willing to create a happiness of her own.
Interweaving authentic local characters and historical events with fictionalized ones, Five Days in November explores land speculation, labour disputes, the illegal purchase of Senakw , and the changing place of women in Edwardian society.
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Photo by Jennifer Bonnycastle
ABOUT DJ MACKINNON
From the archives to the page.
I’ve always been captivated by the idea of time travel and imagining daily life in other times and places. I began as a news reporter and an academic, then found my way to fiction after becoming a parent and making up stories for my kids.
Five Days in November grew from my many years at the Vancouver Archives, where I helped researchers uncover documents about the city’s history and imagined the people who experienced them.