Late in May, 1808, a quarter century before Hardy Ivy built his settler's cabin hereabouts, Simon Fraser and his North West Company voyageurs discovered the Quesnel River, a Fraser River tributary of central B.C., named after the explorer-clerk Jules Maurice Quesnel. But unlike Atlanta whose founding dates (Terminus, 1837, Marthasville, 1843, Atlanta, 1845) roughly parallel Quesnel's discovery, gold strike, and early settlement phases, the latter town is taking its time to grow—population, say, 6,000 as compared with Greater Atlanta's one and one half-million. Just the same, it enjoys a good school system, administered at the time of writing by an aggressive board and a persuasive superintendent.

In 1875, women began leaving their homes and boarding schools to attend Smith College. They arrived from farms, barely settled western states, and from cities as large as New York and Chicago; but the largest number came from small New England towns. The fathers of some were artisans of even unemployed laborers, but more commonly they held positions of responsibility in business firms or in the professions. A few girls as young as fifteen came, as did a number of women in their twenties, but usually they began study at age seventeen or eighteen.

France acquired the world's second largest overseas empire during the nineteenth century. This achievement appears all the more remarkable when measured against the scant holdings retained at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the nation's weak industrial base, the banking community's marked preference for investment in the state debts of European and Mediterranean countries, the stagnant demographic pattern, and the mass of the population's distaste for imperialist adventures. Among those clamouring for the extension of imperial holdings could be found many military men and missionaries and a more restricted number of ideologues and politicians. But the strongest support for imperialism came from the business elites of the port cities and the centres of textile production. Despite their frequent invocations of grandeur and the mission civilisatrice, the motives of these bourgeois magnates remained essentially economic. They wanted the semi-colonial areas, as well as the colonies, to supply them with markets, raw materials and more profitable returns on investments. Local Chambers of Commerce, not unnaturally, became the pivotal institutions providing sustained support for imperialist endeavours. The provincial business communities discovered, however, that the realization of their economic dreams required more than economic activity. Most obviously, they had to deploy their substantial political influence in efforts to sway government policy. During the Third Republic, when France's empire reached its greatest extent, they also utilized the Chambers of Commerce to lend support to local geographical societies, colonialist organizations, colonial congresses, and endeavours in the field of imperial education. If these undertakings never completely realized the hopes of their backers, they still enjoyed successes substantial enough to call forth continued support.