These aren’t the women who built the west. Not nurses orteachers or crusaders for women’s rights, they rarely show up in history books.They are a different breed of women. Adventurous and rebellious, they strayedoutside the permitted and undertook the unexpected. 

Most of the women who came to the west coast of Canadabetween the time of the gold rush and the 1940’s settled in Vancouver orVictoria, or in the growing towns in the interior valleys. Out beyond thecities, a different world existed. Imaginative, determined, often raucous andsometimes raunchy, women in the wilds did what they wanted to do. They rantraplines, hotels and bawdy houses, prospected for gold, lived in thewilderness, and married as many times as they wanted or not at all.  

Rosemary Neering tells the stories of strength, independenceand sheer determination of women such as Lillian Alling, who tried to walk hometo Russia; and Evelyn Penrose, who divined for water, oil and criminaltendencies. Madam, prospector, writer, each of these amazing individuals liveda life that challenged the rules most women lived by.