A NOVEL IN PROGRESS
Five Days in November
They sent her to build a respectable life. Annie intended to build one of her own.
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
Bradford, England
Destination
Granville (later Vancouver), BC
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 18-year-old Annie Weaver boarded the bride-ship in Liverpool, all that mattered was that she was free from the factory where she’d worked since she was a girl.
Her sponsors expected her to marry, have children, and help curb the colony’s slide into depravity. Annie considered it a fair trade—until Vancouver’s transformation offered her possibilities she had never imagined.
STORIES FROM THE ARCHIVE
The history is real. The excerpt is yours to keep.
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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.