It began twelve years ago when Vicke Bassewitz, a BC librarian, showed a copy of The California Compendium, an encyclopedia of the state, to Howard White at Harbour Publishing. White had long wanted to publish a definitive reference work on BC, and he and Bassewitz collaborated on the early planning for an encyclopedia of British Columbia.

The project gathered steam when Daniel Francis joined as Editorial Director in the early 1990s. Francis is a historian with an M.A. in Canadian studies, author of 6 social studies textbooks produced for Ontario, Manitoba and BC, and 10 trade books on Canadian history, most recently National Dreams: Myth, Memory and the Canadian Imagination. He is an editor with Geist magazine and has served on the executive of the Writers' Union of Canada, the BC Federation of Writers, the Vancouver Word on the Street Festival and the West Coast Book Prizes Society. Francis has a wealth of experience with large publishing projects. From 1985 to 1987 he was Editorial Director of the Horizon Canada project, an illustrated bilingual popular history of Canada. He was a contributor to the Canadian Encyclopedia and a contributing editor to the Junior Encyclopedia of Canada.

For ten years Francis worked closely with the editorial team at Harbour and more than 200 contributors throughout BC to compile some 4,000 entries for the EBC. He made it a priority to work directly with British Columbians in many areas of the province, and travelled extensively throughout BC to ensure complete coverage of local features, people and events.

Articles were prepared for several working subject categories and were selected for inclusion in the EBC by the editors, with the guidance of a special Board of Advisors who provide broad direction on the content of the EBC. Contributors include many of British Columbia's most distinguished experts and authorities.

All EBC articles were then reviewed carefully by experts and by the EBC editorial team.

In September 2000, after ten years of work by Francis and the EBC editorial, production, marketing and administration teams, the first edition of the Encyclopedia of BC was published as a sumptuous full-colour 824-page book and companion CD-ROM. The critics raved and British Columbians snapped up their copies so fast the EBC was rushed back into print four weeks after it was published. The EBC had become a BC-grown success story of the best kind.

But the EBC team has not stopped working. As British Columbians have discovered the EBC and delved into it, updated information and ideas for new articles have flowed in. Staff and contributing editors are hard at work compiling updates and new articles and images. These appear regularly on the on-line edition of the EBC. The process of creating a definitive reference work for the province is never-ending, and that's half the fun of it.