Turmoil (The Life and Times of Phillip Hankin)

Meticulously researched and engagingly written, Turmoil: The Life and Times of Philip Hankin follows the daring, rocky life of a world traveler, marine charter, four-time acting head of government, and larger-than-life personality who has for too long been an unseen shadow in the background of B.C.’s turbulent early history.

Hailing from a frigid aristocratic family in England, Philip Hankin first landed in Esquimalt, British Columbia in 1847 as a young man in the Royal Navy. By then, he was already a world traveller who had spent time on expeditions hunting slavers on the coast of West Africa and been personally gifted signed portraits from the King and Queen of Hawai’i. A gregarious man with a penchant for gravitating toward the people and positions that would shape the early development of the region, Philip Hankin was a subtle but fascinating force on Vancouver Island in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Turmoil traces a remarkable man’s life from birth, painting an engrossing portrait of both one individual and of a whole region in flux. Philip Hankin touched the history of the islands first as a member of the navy working on the first accurate marine chart of local waters and delineating the boundary with the United States, then as a linguistic enthusiast and negotiator with Indigenous communities, and, finally, as a as a superintendent of the police, an administrator under three governors, and acting head of government on four separate occasions. Published for the first time in Turmoil is also the word list co-created in 1861 by Philip Hankin and a member of Huu-ay-aht First Nation that features three hundred words, thirty-five phrases, numbers, and the Lord’s Prayer. This list was a tremendous early contribution to linguistic scholarship and cross-cultural communication lost to the archives, introduced here by Dr. Henry Kammler of the University of Munich Institute of Ethnology.

Rigorously researched and featuring excerpts from Hankin’s biography, letters, and numerous primary sources, award-winning author and historian Michael Layland reveals mysterious traumas and tipping points in Hankin's life that go unmentioned in his memoir, and from the twists and turns of one man’s journey, outlines the complicated global and regional forces that, with varying degrees of subtlety and force, moulded British Columbia as we know it today.