Does the occupant of a West End high-rise have more or less privacy than someone who lives in a prairie farmhouse? Do small families living in big houses have less bonding between generations than our ancestors? With an eye to privacy, UBC historian Peter Ward has traced the evolution of each Canadian room over three centuries in A History of Domestic Space (UBC 1999). His book White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy Towards Orientals in British Columbia (MQU 1990) received a 1990 Certificate of Merit from the Social Science Federation of Canada as one of the top twenty best books written in English in the Social Sciences during the preceding half century.

He received his Ph.D from Queens University in 1972 and is professor emeritus of history at UBC.

Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
British Columbia: Historical Readings
A History of Domestic Space: Privacy and the Canadian Home

BOOKS:

British Columbia: Historical Readings, edited by W. Peter Ward and Robert A.J. McDonald. (Douglas & McIntyre Limited, 1981)

White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy Toward Orientals in British Columbia (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1978; 2nd ed., 1990)

Courtship, Love and Marriage in Nineteenth Century English Canada (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990)

Birth Weight and Economic Growth: Women's Living Standards in the Industrializing West (University of Chicago Press, 1993)

A History of Domestic Space: Privacy and the Canadian Home (UBC Press, 1999) $39.95 978-0-7748-0684-2

The Clean Body: A Modern History (MQU 2019) $37.95 978-0-7735-5938-7

[BCBW 2019] "Racism"