The Eventful Life of Philip Hankin World-Wide Traveller and Witness to British Columbia’s Early History

In 1849, at just 13 years old, Philip Hankin entered the Royal Navy and engaged in campaigns to suppress the trade of enslaved people on the coasts of Africa. His naval career brought him to Vancouver Island in 1858, where he helped survey the coastline. In his journeys on Indigenous homelands, Hankin learned several Indigenous languages, a skill that would prove pivotal in his career. After leaving the navy at age twenty-eight, he walked from Yale to Barkerville to try his hand at prospecting. In this, despite family connections to Billy Barker, he failed miserably. Broke, he returned to Victoria, where within months he was appointed Superintendent of Police for the Colony of Vancouver Island, but the merger of the colonies in 1866 left him again jobless. He served as colonial secretary in British Honduras and later in British Columbia. Hankin was at the centre of BC politics in the years before BC’ s accession to Canada in 1871. In The Eventful Life of Philip Hankin, Geoff Mynett tells the story of the adventurous and often tumultuous life of this “ rolling stone” and reveals his remarkable resilience.

Geoff Mynett is a retired lawyer. His first book, Service on the Skeena: Horace Wrinch, Frontier Physician (Ronsdale Press, 2019), received a Jeanne Clarke Memorial Award. His second book, Pinkerton's and the Hunt for Simon Gunanoot, his third book, Murders on the Skeena, and his fourth book, River of Mists, were published by Caitlin Press; all three books appeared on the BC Bestseller List. Geoff and his wife, Alice, live in Vancouver and have two sons.