Andrew Scott (1947 – 2025)
July 09th, 2025
A former Western Living editor (1980-1987) and longtime Georgia Straight travel columnist (having first contributed to the Straight in 1974) as well as the author of seven books, Welsh-born journalist and writer, Andrew Scott died on June 29 of Parkinson’s-related causes.
Scott became the unparalleled expert on West Coast place names for his well received book, Encyclopedia of Raincoast Place Names: A Complete Reference to Coastal British Columbia (Harbour, 2009) that won the Roderick Haig-Brown Prize for best book about British Columbia and for which Scott also won the 2010 Lieutenant Governor’s medal for best BC historical book from the BC Historical Society.
Upon accepting the first award, Scott said, “I’m glad the Encyclopedia worked out as well as it did, because I sense that Harbour [Publishing] had a tough time coming up with just the right person for the job. i.e., someone willing to devote three years to writing half-a-million words and 4,000 entries. In other words, someone a little bit insane.
“When I got to ‘M’—and its sneaky little offspring ‘Mc’—I was definitely feeling that English had too many letters in its alphabet. But by the time I reached ‘Z’ I was wondering what I was going to do with myself after it was all finished.
“I’m thrilled to win this particular award because Roderick Haig-Brown is a hero of mine. I hope that, by potentially deepening our understanding of the land, through the names we give to its places, my book can, in a curious sort of way, honour Haig-Brown’s legacy.”
One of Scott’s publishers, Howard White of Harbour Publishing says: “Andrew was a writer of unfailing grace and a prodigious researcher. He wrote up all the named communities for the Encyclopedia of BC and I have never had anyone come up to me and say their home town was missed. I think he got every one. His Encyclopedia of Raincoast Place Names is a landmark work I can’t imagine anyone else having done. And through it all he was a delight to work with—a true scholar and a truly gentle man.”
Born in Swansea, Wales on November 26, 1947, Scott emigrated to Canada with his family in 1957, arriving in BC in 1959. He earned a BA from UBC in 1969 and a MA in Canadian Literature from the University of New Brunswick. He worked as a Vancouver Sun reporter, Alaska Airlines Magazine publisher (1987-1989), a Globe & Mail editor (1989-1991) and a major contributor to the Encyclopedia of British Columbia (Harbour, 2000).
Scott’s well-researched The Promise of Paradise: Utopian Communities in British Columbia (Harbour, 2017) is a revised and updated second edition of an important book from 1997, with several new sections, thirty additional photos, a number of maps, an appendix and a detailed index. In it Scott explored the successes and failures of the many idealistic intentional communities that have appeared across BC over the past 150 years, from the “model” Christian villages of the missionaries, through the Doukhobors, the Brother XII cult and the counterculture era, to today’s sophisticated co-housing projects.
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Books by Andrew Scott:
Under the Bright Sky: A Memoir of Travels Through Asia (Caitlin Press, 2021)
Raincoast Place Names: A Complete Reference to Coastal British Columbia (Harbour, 2009)
The People’s Water: The Fight for the Sunshine Coast’s Drinking Watershed (Sunshine Coast Conservation Association, 2009), with Daniel Bouman
Secret Coastline II: More Journeys and Discoveries Along BC’s Shores (Whitecap, 2005)
Painter, Paddler: The Art and Adventures of Stewart Marshall (TouchWood Editions, 2003)
Secret Coastline: Journeys and Discoveries along BC’s Shores (Whitecap, 2000)
The Promise of Paradise: Utopian Communities in BC (Whitecap, 1997/Harbour, 2017)
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