British Columbia ⁱ/ˌbrɪtɪʃ kəˈlʌmbiə/ (B.C. or BC) (French: la Colombie-Britannique, C.-B.) is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu ("Splendour without Diminishment"). Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858. In 1871, it became the sixth province of Canada.

As well as being the westernmost province of Western Canada, British Columbia is also a component of the Pacific Northwest, along with the US states of Oregon and Washington. The province has strong cultural and personal ties to the Prairie Provinces and Ontario as well as to the West Coast of the United States and to Alaska and the Yukon.

The capital of British Columbia is Victoria, the 15th largest metropolitan region in Canada. The largest city is Vancouver, the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada, the largest in Western Canada, and the second largest in the Pacific Northwest. In 2009, British Columbia had an estimated population of 4,419,974 (about two and a half million of whom were in Greater Vancouver). The province is currently governed by the BC Liberal Party, led by Premier Christy Clark, who became leader as a result of the party election on February 26, 2011.

Steven Rinella is an American writer, television personality, hunter, and outdoorsman. He is the author of the The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine and American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon, as well as numerous magazine and newspaper articles about hunting, fishing, food, and travel. In 2011, he hosted the eight-part Travel Channel series, The Wild Within.

Rinella was born in Twin Lake, Michigan on February 13, 1974. He was raised along with his two older brothers, Matthew and Daniel Rinella. He began hunting and fishing at a very young age, and was commercially trapping muskrats by the age of ten. Rinella graduated from Reeths Puffer High School in 1992. He finished his college degree at Grand Valley State University in December, 1996, after attending classes at Muskegon Community College and Lake Superior State University. Steven received a Masters of Fine Arts in 2000 from The University of Montana-Missoula.

The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine was published in 2006 by Miramax Books. After stumbling upon Auguste Escoffier’s culinary milestone Le Guide Culinaire, Rinella embarked on a prolific quest to procure all the ingredients necessary to recreate an elaborate forty-five course meal using Escoffier’s recipes exclusively. Rinella accounts his pursuit of these ingredients as he traverses the country in a year long culinary and hunter-gatherer escapade. The documented adventures are visceral experiences that ultimately bring to light the modern disconnect between ourselves and what we eat. "Outdoorsman and travel writer Steven Rinella brings bohemian flair and flashes of poetic sensibility to his picaresque tale of a man, a cookbook and the culinary open road."