British Columbia : a history

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1SITY COLLEGE LIBRARY BRITISH COLUMBIA

British Columbia: a History T H E M A C M IL L A N S I N CAN ADA. i g g 8

Copyright, Canada, i 95g f,y Ma c m i l l a n c o m p a n t o f Ca n a d a l im it e d . AH rig h ts reserved_no p art of this book m a y be reproduced in a n y form w ith o u t perm ission in w r itin g fro m the publisher, except b y a re v ie w e r w h o w ishes to quote b rief passages in connection w ith a re v ie w w ritte n fo r in clusion in a m a ga zin e or new spaper. th e

P R IN T E D A N D B O U N D I N C A N A D A A T E V E R G R E E N P R E SS, V A N C O U V E R , B R IT IS H

C O L U M B IA . T Y P O G R A P H Y A N D D E SIG N B Y RO B E RT R . RE ID .

First printing 1958 Reprinted 1959

CON TEN TS

Approach from the Sea

2

CH APTER

l

28

CH APTER

2

Outpost of Commercial Empire

50

CH APTER

3

Outpost of Empire

82

CHAPTER

4

Colony on the Seaboard.

110

CH APTER

5

T he Gold Colony

134

CHAPTER 6

Jewel in Queen Victoria’s Diadem

164

CHAPTER 7

Maritime Union

196

CH APTER 8

Canada on the Pacific

T he Great Potlatch

232 258 294

“ T he People’s Dick”

326

Splendor Sine Occasu

Approach from the Mountains

C H A P T E R C) CHAPTER

10

CHAPTER

11

CH APTER

12

374

CH APTER

13

“ Honest John” and the Liberals

404

CHAPTER

14

Work and Wages

436

CHAPTER

15

By Sea and Land W e Prosper

480

E P IL O G U E

497

N O T E S O N C H A P T E R IL L U S T R A T IO N S

T he Spoilt Child of Confederation

499

CH APTER NOTES

526

A N O T E O N SO URCES

527

S E L E C T B IB L IO G R A P H Y

535

IN D E X

557

ACKNOW LEDGEM EN TS

ILLU STRATION S

Early Coloured Engravings— a portfolio

F O L L O W IN G P A G E 1 5 0

Selected Photographs, 1864-1896

F O L L O W IN G PA G E 2 1 4

Selected Photographs, 1900-19$g

F O L L O W IN G P A G E 2 7 8

M APS

A General Map of British Columbia

F O L L O W IN G PA G E

54

Settlement— 1871

F A C IN G P A G E 3

10

Settlement — 1871-1910

F A C IN G PAGE 3

10

Settlement — 1911-1930

F A C IN G P A G E 3 4 2

Settlement — 1931-1954

F A C IN G P A G E 3 4 a

P O L IT IC A L C AR TO O N S

Peace ! ! !

PAGE

T he East Welcomes the West

PAGE 2 5 4

British Columbia in a Pet

PAGE 2 7 0

T he Heathen Chinee in British Columbia

PA G E 2 8 0

Van’s Reserve Pudding

PA G E 3 0 8

Light Breaking in the Far West

PA G E 3 1 0

T he Sleeping Beauty

PAGE 3 4 0

A t Beacon H ill, M ay 24

PAGE 3 4 2

IX

20

IL L U S T R A T IO N S

Speculators in B. C. Lands

pa g e 3 5 8

If the Doukhobors Come to B. C.

pa g e 3 6 0

“ British Columbia ’Orse— Charge!"

PAGE 3 6 4

T he N ew Baby

PAGE 3 6 6

W hat W ill Come Out of It?

PAGE 3 6 8

Beady for the Jump

PAGE

422

H ey, Mister! Your Horse Is Gone!

PAGE 4 3 2

“ D u ff" for Prem ier

PAGE

Our Own L ittle “ Group"

PAGE 4 5 4

“ Queer Doings"

PAGE 4 6 2

Touring B. C.

PAGE 4 7 2

T he Hostile Chieftain

PAGE 4 7 4

Dropping the Pilot (B. C. Version)

PAGE 4 7 6

T he Belle of the Ball

PAGE 4 8 8

“ One Thing Before W e Go In

”

x

450

PAGE 49O

Approach from the Sea

from the travelled sea-lanes and girdled by mountains, British Columbia stood apart from the civilized world until late in the eighteenth century. In the year 1749, no government official in London could have foreseen that it would be desirable to establish a British colony on the north-western seaboard of the North American continent one hundred years later, for no one knew in 1749 that a continuous coastline ex­ tended northward from California to Alaska. If the new French maps were accurate, the land mass between 470 and 530 North Latitude was broken by a great “ sea of the west” penetrating to the heart of the continent. Perhaps the North W est Passage so long sought to shorten voyages to the Orient could be found in this bay: the reward of £ 20,000 offered to merchant vessels by the British Parliament in 1745 for the discovery of a passage lying west of Hudson Bay still lay unclaimed. Had the facts been known, there would have been little to

D

3

is t a n t

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encourage a voyage of discovery to the remote region. Off the coast of British Columbia, the Pacific Ocean completely belies the name given to it by Magellan. Whipped by cruel winds, the waters of the sea strike islands that rise as the peaks of sub­ merged mountain chains, or attack an indented mainland shore­ line, swirling at the base of cliffs and dashing into narrow inlets and straits. Even on summer days fog may obscure rocky head­ lands or the few stretches of sandy beach on Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands. A t the base of towering snow­ capped mountains surrounding the deep waters of mainland inlets, a coniferous forest soaks up drenching rain precipitated by clouds blown in from the sea; the Aleutian and Kurile Islands, which provide what is almost a land bridge between North America and Asia, are exposed to the full blast of conflicting weather systems. Between islands, and between islands and mainland, rip tides and currents make the navigation of pas­ sages hazardous. Shoals used to lie at the mouth of the mighty Fraser River. A coast of indescribable beauty, it offers almost every kind of natural challenge to explorer and mariner. Its products are the products of northern seas and forests, and none of these may be obtained without fortitude and effort. Farther south, on islands and along coastlines exposed to a warmer sun and bathed by gentler waters, European merchant adventurers had for years been picking up cargoes of gold and silver, pearls, spices, logwoods and silks. The richest harvests were in Spanish hands, for since the days of the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Spain had extended her control from the West Indies across the Isthmus of Panama, south to Peru and the valley of the Plate, and north to Mexico and California. Annually from the Philippines, the Manila Galleon sailed to Acapulco, carry­ ing delicate Chinese porcelains, multi-coloured silks and fragrant teas to exchange for Mexican and Peruvian gold and silver. Across the Pacific Ocean, the Portuguese who had been the first to use the Cape of Good Hope route to the Spice Islands, China and Japan, had withdrawn to seaports on the Indian Ocean. The Dutch, still masters of the Asiatic archipelago, controlled the great commerce built on the valuable spiceries. Their ex­ plorers had already discovered the shore-lines of Australia, Tas­ mania and New Zealand, but Dutch maritime power was waning, 4

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anH no great advantage would be taken of discoveries in the new lands. Eastward, the British East India Company tightened its grip on the India and the China trade and, to the detri­ ment of the French, advanced political control in India. Its vigour contrasted with the weakness of the South Sea Company, its only British competitor trading in Pacific waters. The South Sea Company was now chiefly a financial institution, and had almost ceased to develop the fisheries off the South American coast or to trade in bar iron with the southern Spanish colonies. As eastern cargoes rose in value, the centre of the British Empire’s trade shifted from the Atlantic to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and interest revived in discovering a new seaway to the Far East. W hile Spain controlled the Isthmus of Panama, there were only two approaches to the Pacific Ocean for British ships. One, through the Straits of Magellan or round Cape Horn — which Elizabethan buccaneers had used to harry Spanish treasure ships and ravage towns— was too lengthy for regular trade; the other, round the Cape of Good Hope, which the ships of the British East India Company used, was legally under the control of the Dutch East Indies Company. Since the voyages of Luke Fox and Thomas James in 1631, there had been little hope of finding a channel to connect Hud­ son Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s men had been in and around the bay’s western shores since 1670, but as yet no servant of the Company had reported the existence of a waterway to the west or to the south. Two further prospects remained to be investigated: a route might be found to the north of Hudson Bay or, what was more likely, the “Mer de L ’Ouest” of the French maps might be established for fact. Not even the Adm iralty knew that the cartographers, in placing the great bay on their maps, had worked from the fabrications of the Greek pilot Juan de Fuca, who claimed that he had found such a strait between 470 and 48° North Latitude in 1592, and of “Admiral” Bartholomew de Fonte, who had written that a river which he named “Los Reyes” could be entered at 530 North Latitude. W hile the British made their plans to launch a new search for the North W est Passage, royal orders from Madrid stirred indolent Spanish government officials in Mexico to fresh activity. 5

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The Rim of Christendom had long remained fixed at the SonoraArizona boundary, and little had been done to consolidate Spain’s position in Alta California or to make the Spanish Lake secure. No Spanish ship had followed Vizcaino’s track of 1603 to the Oregon coast. Startled by hearing from the Spanish ambassador at St. Petersburg that Russian fur-traders, promishlenniki, had advanced to the Kindle and Aleutian Islands, Carlos III decided that the time had come to extend northward from San Diego and Monterey the line of militarized posts and Franciscan missions. It would be well, too, for navigators to explore the northern coastline to see if new harbours could be discovered which would be useful for the Pacific commerce. The need for new routes was not so pressing as for the British, but tran­ shipment costs were mounting for tea, which was becoming in­ creasingly important as the main commodity in the China trade. Unloaded from the Manila galleons in Pacific ports, it was too bulky and expensive an article to carry across the Isthmus of Panama for reloading on ships of the Atlantic fleet. The Russian fur-hunting operations which had aroused the curiosity and uneasiness of the Spaniards and led their king to order a reconnaissance of northern shores, were the incidental result of scientific expeditions which the Imperial Russian government had sent out in 1764 and 1768 to gather information about the lands and the peoples on the eastern fringes of Asia. The Russian drive to the Pacific, starting about 1580 from the Urals, had had sufficient momentum to reach Kamchatka and cross to the Aleutian Islands. In Asia, the Russians failed to gain control of the Am ur River, the great waterway leading to the Pacific, but being more realistic than Englishmen and Spaniards, and even Frenchmen who dreamed of discovering new waterways, they resigned themselves to sledding trade goods and furs across Siberian snows. From the walled and impregnable Chinese Empire which was so reluctant to have its ancient civilization disturbed by contact with a cruder western world, the Russians had gained some commercial privileges. For a while their Emperor’s cara­ vans were allowed to go to Pekin; then they were stopped; after an interval private trading was permitted at Kiakhta on the Chinese-Siberian border. It was the desire to develop this 6

A P P R O A C H F R O M T H E SEA

barter trade that attracted fur-hunters to rocky, unwooded islands, infested with Arctic foxes, where, as Vitus Bering found, the sands were too cold to warm a man stricken with scurvy. Something was known of the value of the furs to be found there, for survivors of the tragic Bering-Chirikov expedition of 1741 had brought back fine peltries to St. Petersburg. Of the geography of the area, the traders had only a hazy impression: they knew that Bering had proved in 1728 that no land con­ nection exists between Asia and America and that he had dis­ covered Mount St. Elias on the mainland in 1741. But the Bering Sea was still unmapped, and not until Captain Cook’s visit to Unalaska Island in 1778 would they realize the finwealth of Prince W illiam Sound or desire to claim that district for the Russian Crown. Encouraged by lack of official trade regulations, they continued their quiet operations in the face of danger and risk, gradually drawing the Alaskan Islands, and then Alaska itself, into the Asian orbit. Spain responded to this encroachment into her territorial waters by organizing the Department of San Bias to supervise and outfit expeditions for northern explorations and investiga­ tion, and to supply the new California posts. From the warm port of San Bias, the Viceroy of New Spain, Antonio Bucareli y Ursua, Conde de Cordova, sent sailors north through stormy seas to discourage Russian incursions and to chart new coast­ lines. The first of these expeditions set out in the spring of 1774 under the command of Juan Josef Perez Hernandez, veteran of the Manila-Acapulco rim and explorer of the coastline of northern California. As the Santiago approached 550 North Latitude, on July 17, 1774, a Franciscan friar who had joined the expedition at Monterey caught, through fog and lowering skies, the first recorded glimpse of the Queen Charlotte Islands. Tempestuous seas and the sickness of the crew forced the ship to turn back. Sailing south, Perez came on August 8 to a safe anchorage at “ San Lorenzo” , near the entrance to the body of water which Captain Cook later named Nootka Sound. Here he traded with the natives for furs, but made no landing. The Santiago went north again in the spring of 1775. Her new commander, Bruno de Hezeta, a naval expert from Spain, decided to return to Mexico when at about 470 North Latitude, 7

A P P R O A C H F R O M T H E SEA

he became separated from his consort, the Sonora. Drifting off course, the Santiago sighted mountains on Vancouver Island before she found the coastline near the mouth of the Columbia River. The tiny thirty-six-foot Sonora, commanded by Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, the most intrepid of Spanish explorers in the North Pacific, pushed on until she reached Alaska. From the two expeditions, the authorities in N ew Spain gleaned some information about the configuration of a northern coastline. For the most part, only the shore-lines of Vancouver Island, the more northerly islands and part of Alaska had been seen. Interest in searching for the western sea flagged when the ships reported that neither coming nor going had they found the Strait of Juan de Fuca. For the time being, the Viceroy was satisfied with Quadra’s act of possession at 570 20' and with Perez’s discovery of a good harbour, and instead of immediately sending another expedition, the government put its efforts into founding a presidio and mission at San Francisco. The knowledge that the northern Indians would exchange furs of fine lustre for trinkets, pieces of cloth or the abalone shells that were so easily obtained at Monterey and at Carmel was not utilized, and until 1789 no action was taken either to make formal claim to Nootka Sound or to plant a colony there. W hile Spanish troops and colonists made their w ay overland from Sonora to San Francisco, Captain James Cook was out­ fitting ships for his third Pacific voyage. W ith national pride bolstered by victories over the French in both North America and India, and by new claims to lands in the South Pacific, Parliament in 1776 extended to ships of the Royal N avy oppor­ tunity to compete for the reward offered for discovering an entrance to the mid-continent. No one yet suspected that the rebellion of the American colonists would drag Great Britain into a prolonged war which would turn into a contest with France, Spain and Holland. Cook’s scientific and exploratory work had been recognized by the Royal Society, and he had attracted attention by keeping scurvy under control during his second Pacific voyage. On that voyage, as well as on his third, he used the new Harrison chronometer by which longitude west from Greenwich could be charted more accurately than 8

1

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by lunar observation. The Admiralty supplied him with the obsolescent Resolution, which he had used on his second voyage, and with the Discovery, a sturdy and manoeuvrable W hitby collier, just under 300 tons. A ll things considered, there seemed every prospect that this expedition would end for all time speculation about the location of the fabled passage to Cathay. In a leisurely progress towards North America, Captain Cook spent a year in the South Seas. After leaving Tahiti, he dis­ covered some of the Sandwich Islands in January, 1778, and then set sail for New Albion. He reached the Oregon coast just below 450 North Latitude and, before winds drove him off shore, named Cape Foulweather and Cape Perpetua. On March 22, he named Cape Flattery, but missed the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Once more winds drove him to sea. A week later, he found shelter in Nootka Sound, near Perez’s San Lorenzo. A t Resolution Cove, Captain Cook’s men “ perceived no frost in any of the low ground” .1 On the contrary, “vegetation pro­ ceeded very briskly” . Indians greeted them, paddling canoes “with their utmost strength and activity” . One welcoming chief stood in a canoe, wearing a mask and shaking a rattle, and bawling “most vociferously” . Sea-otter peltries and other furs were offered to “King George’s men” . The natives wore nose rings of iron, brass and copper, and had iron chisels and knives, as well as two silver spoons, but Captain Cook could find no evidence of direct contact with other Europeans. Impressed with the friendliness of the Indians, he planned a month’s stop-over to caulk the leaking Resolution and to brew spruce beer. In spite of “manifest indications of an approaching storm” , Captain Cook put to sea again on the evening of April 26 and coasted rapidly through strong gales, squalls and rain towards 600 North Latitude. On M ay 9, where the coast turns to the west at Mount St. Elias, he commenced a careful survey and search for a waterway. Briefly, he stopped at K aye’s Island, to place at the foot of a tree on a small eminence a bottle con­ taining the names of his ships, the date of discovery and two silver twopenny pieces of English coin. On completing the exploration of Prince W illiam Sound, he realized on M ay 17 that he was “upward of 520 leagues westward of any part of 9

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Baffin’s, or of Hudson’s Bay, and whatever passage there may be, it must be, or at least part of it must lie to the north of latitude 72 deg. Who could expect to find a passage or strait of such extent?” By August g he was at the narrowest part of Bering Strait, having followed Bering’s route north of the chain of Aleutian Islands. In these few weeks, he had proved beyond doubt that no break exists in the Alaskan coastline, and that the Alaskan peninsula is part of North America. No entrance could be found through the ice-pack in Bering Strait or in the Asian side of the Strait. On his return to refit at the Aleutian Islands, he met a Russian trader who informed him that Russians were hunting furs on northern islands. A fter Captain Cook’s death at the island of Hawaii on Feb­ ruary 14, 1779, Captain Charles Clerke carried on exploration during the second season. The ships were again blocked by ice at about 7o°, the point reached the year before. Since they had been following the Asian coastline, they turned to examine the Arctic shores of Siberia, but after a short voyage returned to Petropavlovsk. Captain Cook had done his work thoroughly; no waterway existed north of 6o°, and if one existed at all, it must lie in the neighbourhood of 48° or 49 °. So long as Great Britain was at war, no ship could be spared for a further search. A t last, on January 1, 1790, a commander was appointed for a second naval expedition. The Spanish Armament Crisis delayed his departure; in December, Captain George Vancouver was chosen for a combined diplomatic mission and scientific voyage. The journals of Captain Cook’s last voyage were published in 1784. Disappointment over the great mariner’s failure to dis­ cover the long-desired sea passage was somewhat offset when it was found that they contained good charts of the North Pacific, remedies for the treatment of scurvy, and substantial evidence that the new instruments made navigation safer. A l­ though this information was valuable, much more interest was aroused by a fortuitous reference to sea-otter furs, obtainable by barter at Nootka Sound, Prince W illiam Sound and Cook’s Inlet, which sold for high prices in China. W ithin Spain’s “ closed sea” lay a new and unsuspected treasure trove. Almost immediately British joint stock companies were organized to 10

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finance fur-trading ventures to the distant North W est Coast. Sea-otter furs purchased at Whampoa from seamen on board the Resolution and the Discovery apparently reached Canton in 1779. In 1783, Pekin obtained peltries from Russian sources. Overnight, the wearing of these lustrous furs became high fashion in China. Merchants clamoured to supply the demands of mandarins and of ladies of quality. The long peltries were used, without piecing, to make full-length mandarin robes. Narrow lengths of furs were wanted to trim exquisitely embroidered silk gowns and to entwine with pearls to make handsome sashes; even the tips of tails were sought to enhance the attractiveness of caps and mittens. Funds obtained from the sales of furs enabled traders to purchase teas, silks, nan­ keens and “ chinoiserie” . As trans-Pacific commerce emerged, the waters off the western littoral became a zone of international competition. Their proximity to the fur fields and their good fortune in having in their employ the Aleuts, who had mastered the science of killing the shy marine animals by shooting arrows from kayaks, gave the Russians in Alaska the initial advantage in developing the China market. The greater variety of their trade goods, however, soon enabled British traders to persuade the Haida and other northern Indians to barter skins on such favourable terms that they were able to divert importation into China from Kiakhta to Canton. No longer subject to restrictions placed on the China trade by the East India Com­ pany, Boston merchants inaugurated a triangular trade between New England, the North West Coast and China. Rivalry to gain the favour of the Indians on the North West Coast intensified as the lines of Russian, British and American private endeavour converged. Marine fur-traders disregarded Spain’s traditional rights in the Pacific Ocean with impunity. Since Elizabeth’s time, Englishmen had maintained their right to make settlements at places not in the possession of a civilized nation, and the marauding incursions of Drake and Cavendish, Anson and Byron, had won their applause. Americans were no more inclined than Englishmen to respect a claim that was based on Pope Alexander V i ’s bull Inter Caetera of 1493, dividing the 11

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known world between two great Catholic powers, Spain and Portugal. Private Russian fur-trading companies ignored Spain’s monopoly. For their Alaskan operations, they were now trying to enlist the support and protection of the Imperial Russian government. The most aggressive of British traders were as ready to violate the rights of British companies and to circumvent Chinese regulations as they were to defy Spain. The South Sea Com­ pany had sole British right to trade and to fish in an area extending 300 marine leagues west of the shores of North America and South America. In this preserve lay provisioning islands and sea-otter fields. The East India Company had the privilege of exclusive British commerce east of the Cape of Good Hope and the sole British right to purchase tea in China. A t Canton, the only Chinese port open to Western Europeans, the expulsion of traders who were not attached to the Com­ pany’s Factory virtually eliminated private trade after 1780. Chinese regulations interfered with the freedom of enterprise by channelling foreign trade through the Hong merchants. A ll these restrictions served as an invitation to interlopers. The journals of Cook’s voyage contained a suggestion that the East India Company make the marine fur trade an adjunct of its China trade. Officers of the Company had the trade’s prospects investigated by licensed private traders. On conditions similar to those of its “ Country Trade” , the Company permitted two groups of merchants to engage in trading ventures. Early in 1785, the Committee of Directors granted Richard Cadman Etches and a group of London merchants licences for two ships, in return for a bond of £20,000 and a pledge that journals and logs of the voyage would be turned over to the Company.2 After securing a licence from the South Sea Company also and permission from the British government, the King George’s Sound Company acquired two large ships, the King George, 320 tons, and the Queen Charlotte, 200 tons, and selected as their captains, Nathaniel Portlock and George Dixon, both of whom had served under Captain Cook. Portlock, the commander of the expedition, was instructed to establish factories at suitable places, King George’s Sound (Nootka Sound) being suggested as a “ centrical location” . He did not carry out this part of the 12

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plan. The King George and the Queen Charlotte arrived at Canton in November, 1787, with the largest cargo of furs to reach that port up to that time. Their 2,500 peltries brought only $50,000.* The ships then freighted Chinese goods to England. Before they arrived, Etches sent two smaller vessels, the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal, to trade for furs. Shortly after Etches received his licences, the Council of Bombay agreed to aid James Charles Stuart Strange and his patron David Scott, a Director of the Company, with a ship, soldiers, and guns and ammunition.4 Strange’s ships, the Captain Cook, a snow of 350 tons, and the Experiment, 150 tons, sailed from Bombay in December, 1785, and arrived at Nootka, after a number of mishaps, on July 6, 1786. There a young surgeon, John Mackay, was left to winter among the Indians and prepare the establishment of a post during the following season. Returns from this expedition were not sufficiently high to warrant further outlay, so Strange abandoned his plan to build a depot for furs. Losing interest in the fur trade, the East India Com­ pany now turned its attention to making the tea trade with England more remunerative. John Henry Cox, an interloping trader, found that the Com­ pany’s indifference suited his purpose very well. Cox had been granted special permission to enter Canton in 1782 for a period of three years so that he might dispose of his firm’s stock of “ singsongs”— clocks, watches and jewelled toy automata.8 Not long after his arrival, he set up an agency for “Privileged Trade” for East India Company officials and for licensed Country Traders and then purchased two ships to freight cotton and opium from Calcutta to sell to private Chinese merchants. W hen he heard in 1785 of the profits that Cook’s men had made from the sales of sea-otter furs, he interested some of his East India Company friends in the fur trade, and returned to Canton to outfit the first trading-vessel to be sent to the North West Coast. Captain James Hanna was engaged to sail the 6o-ton Sea Otter to Nootka to barter iron bars for furs. There he did a profitable trade; after he used firearms, the Indians near Cook’s Friendly Cove parted with 560 peltries which sold for $20,400 on his return to Macao,6 the Portuguese port in Canton Roads. Satisfied with his success, Cox organized the Bengal Fur Company with fur­ 13

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ther assistance obtained in India. John Meares, a retired lieu­ tenant in the Royal N avy, joined him in 1786. The Bengal Fur Company’s first ships sailed from Bengal in March, 1786. Meares made his w ay north in the snow Nootka to Russian posts at Unalaska, and then wintered in Prince W il­ liam Sound. The following M ay, Portlock and Dixon found him there, his ships iced in, twenty-three members of his crew dead of scurvy and the rest facing starvation. Portlock provided food and supplies; then instead of seizing the Nootka as the law per­ mitted, exacted a promise of an immediate return to China. After pledging his word and paying a bond, Meares continued trading. His consort, the snow Sea Otter, Captain W illiam T ip­ ping, was lost after leaving Prince W illiam Sound. Hanna re­ turned safely to Canton from his second voyage to Nootka, but with only a small cargo since Strange’s ships had preceded him. The Lark, which had sailed from Bengal to join Hanna, was wrecked near Petropavlovsk. The season was a disappointing one for Cox: two ships with 100 hands were lost, and his returns amounted only to $22,ooo.T Another blow was to fall; before 1787 ended, he was expelled from Canton. But his firm con­ tinued in existence, his business now being carried on under the protection of foreign flags, first by John Reid, a former member of the Bengal Marine, a naturalized Austrian subject, appointed Austrian Consul, and then by Daniel Beale, a natural ized Prussian subject, appointed Prussian Consul. Reid and Beale soon victimized Charles W illiam Barkley, a young sea captain who left the service of the East India Com­ pany in 1786 to take command of the Imperial Eagle, a former East Indiaman of 400 tons. Barkley arrived at Nootka in July, 1787, with his seventeen-year-old bride, the first European woman to reach British Columbia’s shores. His ship flew Austrian colours, and as Captain James Colnett, captain of the Prince of Wales, soon discovered, had no licence. Colnett did not embarrass Barkley, since he had found him both courteous and civil, and he was allowed to proceed to Macao with a cargo of 700 skins, valued at $30,000. There he discovered that the owners were ready to sell the vessel in which he had invested £3,000, since they had “ found they were not warranted in trad­ ing to China and the North West coast, even under the Austrian 14

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flag, the change being well known and for what purpose” .8 Although he later received some compensation, the fittings and stores which he had laid in the ship at his own expense, as well as his nautical instruments and charts, were turned over to John Meares, “ who was in the same employ, though not acknowledged to be so” .9 In the autumn of 1787, heavy importations of sea-otter furs at Canton depressed market prices. Meares met the challenge of competition by selling the Nootka and with the assistance of merchants living in India bought two new ships. Through a Portuguese resident at Bombay, he acquired Portuguese flags and papers, supposedly to permit his ships to take advantage of lower port charges at Canton. A n unidentified organization, “ The Merchant Proprietors” , formulated instructions which seem to have been intended to protect him against interference by licensed British traders. He now planned to develop the marine fur trade, as the Russians did, from a land base. Ice-free Nootka Sound, where furs were readily available and where John Mackay had resided for a winter without molestation by the Indians, suited his purpose better than remote and inhospit­ able Prince W illiam Sound. Meares arrived at Nootka in M ay, 1788, with European and Chinese artisans, materials for constructing a schooner of 40 tons for coast-wise trade, and lumber to build a shelter. From the famous Indian chief Maquinna he acquired— he later said bought— a “ spot of ground” 10 on which to erect a house, which was later described as a tolerably strong garrison or place of defence. He found considerable activity in the Sound. The small trading-ships of the Etches company appeared, and at the close of the season, the first American ships, Columbia Rediviva and the Lady Washington, arrived from Boston. During most of the summer he traded from a centre in Clayoquot Sound which he called Port Cox, and then late in August he was joined at Nootka by his second ship, the Iphigenia, which had been in Alaskan waters. On September 20, the North West America, the first boat built on the North West Coast, was launched. Four days later, he sailed with furs for China, leaving the Iphigenia and the North West America to winter in the Sandwich Islands. Shortly after Meares’s return to Canton, John Etches, who had 15

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travelled as supercargo of his company’s smaller ships, arrived. Meares lost no time in making an arrangement between the firm of Cox and Beale and a company which had properly licen­ sed ships. John Etches agreed to keep the Princess Royal in the fur trade and to transfer Captain Colnett from the Prince of Wales, which was returning to England with tea, to a new ship, the Argonaut. Colnett was to join Captain W illiam Douglas of the Iphigenia at Nootka Sound, and there build a factory, “a Solid establishment, and not one that is to be abandon’d at pleasure” .11 Unknown to Meares, other plans were being made to build a post at Nootka. The fourth Spanish northern expedition return­ ed to San Bias in 1788, reporting that it had heard at the Shelekhov post at Three Saints Bay in Cook’s Inlet, that the Russians intended to occupy Nootka to forestall English traders. Since Spain had just conceded possession of Prince W illiam Sound to Russia, Florez, the Viceroy of New Spain, decided that action must be taken before there was further loss of territory. Rela­ tions with Britain had improved since 1786, but he feared the Russians and suspected that the Americans wanted to obtain a foothold at the only good port so far discovered north of San Francisco. Esteban Jose Martinez was chosen to build the military post. A conscientious pilot and mariner, Martinez had just completed the Alaskan voyage. Fifteen years earlier, he had guided the Santiago safely into the harbour of San Lorenzo, and Perez had named a point to the south of the harbour in his honour. He left San Bias in February, 1789, with a promise that reinforce­ ments would be sent by sea, and that troops, missionaries and colonists would arrive by land. Only part of this support arrived. Martinez found on his arrival that Nootka Sound had become headquarters for foreign trading-vessels. Jealous of his nation’s rights, he had good reason for suspicion when he discovered that one of these, the Iphigenia, although obviously commanded by a Britisher, carried papers signed by the Portuguese governor of Macao and sailing orders in Portuguese containing an offensive suggestion as to the treatment of Spanish and British ships. A t first he hesitated to take action; then he decided to seize the ship. 16

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When her captain gave security, she was released to sail to China after her furs had been transferred to the American ship Columbia which was standing by. On June 8, the North West America returned from a trading-cruise. She also had Portu­ guese papers, and her ownership appeared to he the same as that of the Iphigenia. After seizure, her crew was sent to China on one of the American ships, and she was converted to Spanish service under a new name. By June 24, the gun emplacement built by the Spaniards was finished, and the buildings and fort were nearing completion. In an elaborate ceremony, Martinez took possession of Nootka Sound and of “ adjoining districts, seas, rivers, ports, hays, gulfs, archipelagoes” . Late in the eve­ ning of July 2, Captain Colnett arrived from China, passing the licensed Princess Royal as she sailed out of the Sound. Near its entrance, he met Martinez, who was looking for his reinforce­ ments. On being questioned, Colnett claimed that he had authority from the King of England to take possession of the Sound, and instructions from Meares and a group of merchants at Macao to found a colony. The following day, after a quarrel, Martinez seized Colnett’s ship, ran up the Spanish flag and removed twenty-nine Chinese workmen. On her return, the Princess Royal was also seized. After sending the Argonaut and the Princess Royal to San Bias as prizes, Martinez did some exploratory work, and then abandoned his settlement on October 31. This proved to be a tactical error, since Spain did not remain in continuous occupation of the site. During this misadventure, Martinez had been irascible, haughty, and violent. From his point of view, all foreign vessels were engaged in contraband trade, yet he interfered little with American ships which were in the neighbourhood. It was the perfidy of British traders that aroused his animus. He could hardly have known that the events in which he had played such a large part would focus the attention of the capitals of Europe on a strip of seacoast whose existence had been known only for ten or fifteen years. More important, they would invite scrutiny of Spain’s proud assertion, on the grounds of traditional right and exploration, of exclusive sovereignty, navigation and commerce in the Pacific Ocean, and give Britain the opportunity to argue for a principle of possession based on continuous occupation and use. 17

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Through the British charge d’affaires at Madrid, an incom­ plete report of the seizure reached the British government late in January, 1790. On February 11, the Spanish ambassador presented a stiff note, complaining of the invasion of Spain’s territorial rights and demanding restraint of British expeditions. Pitt vacillated for a while; then, realizing that the popularity of his administration had waned since the Regency Crisis of 1789, and that British prestige must be maintained in Europe, he decided to take a strong stand.12 On February 26, he asked for a complete restoration of property and satisfaction for the insult to the British flag. About the same time, a report reached England that Spain was garrisoning her North American forts and preparing a fleet of twelve ships of the line. Before the British government was informed that Madrid had instructed the Viceroy to release the captured vessels as an act of courtesy, John Meares, whose trickery had caused the embroglio, arrived in London to claim indemnity. His Memorial was hurriedly prepared, and printed at government expense. Concealing his firm’s illicit activities, he complained bitterly about seizure of British property and harsh treatment of pris­ oners. When he inflated the figure of his losses, Captain George Dixon, who had not forgotten their meeting in Prince W illiam Sound, could not restrain his indignation. Through pamphlets, he attacked Meares’s honesty, his veracity, and even his nautical ability— he was capable, said Dixon, of making only a “ butterpat” of a chart.13 Impressed by Meares’s representation, Pitt decided on April 30 to mobilize the Navy. On M ay 5, after a royal message, the House almost unanimously voted a grant of £2,000,000. Four­ teen ships of the line were readied, forts in the colonies pre­ pared, and Holland and Prussia, Britain’s allies in the Triple Alliance, were asked for support. British claims were extended to include restoration of property, indemnity for damages, and surrender of Spanish claims to exclusive sovereignty so that all European nations might occupy unsettled areas and trade with the settlements of other nations. On June 24 the Spanish gov­ ernment recognized the British claim to satisfaction as the pre­ liminary to negotiation, but no further progress was made for three months. W hen it became clear that the Bourbon Coalition 18

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had been shattered by the Revolution in France, Pitt threatened war. Finally, on October 28, the two governments reached agreement. Spain’s dominion was limited to discoveries secured by treaties and immemorial possession. Buildings and tracts of land on the North West Coast of which British subjects were dispossessed about April, 1789, were to be restored; reparations paid for property destroyed; and the navigation and fishery in the Pacific Ocean opened to British subjects except within ten leagues of the coasts occupied by Spain.14 By subsequent agree­ ment, Meares and his associates received compensation amount­ ing to $210,000. The actual limits of Spain’s possessions still remained to be established. Spaniards had reoccupied Nootka Sound at the height of the crisis, and there they were busy rebuilding the fort of San Miguel. But Spain had waited too long to protect the fringe of her empire: British traders were everywhere in the Pacific, as ready to loot tropical islands of spices and food­ stuffs as they were northern reefs and shoals of sea otters. W ith the British government sponsoring the cause of freer trade, they would invade the trade routes of Spain’s royal companies and reduce the volume of Chinese goods that reached Spain through the Philippines. Events in France foretold the doom of special privilege for Crown and Church in European states and col­ onies; those at Nootka, the doom of commercial monopoly in the Pacific. For its own subjects, the British government freed trade in the whole Pacific area by limiting the rights exercised by the East India Company. During the Spanish Armament Crisis, British shipping and manufacturing interests, convinced that the charges preferred against Warren Hastings were proof of the East India Company’s misrule in India, had pressed for a share in the India trade. This right was recognized in the early years of the nineteenth century. In 1793 Parliament forced the East India Company to grant licences for the fur trade on more liberal terms, and new Nootka Sound Regulations were prepared in 1795. Cox’s firm, which, after his death in 1791, continued to do business at Canton as a “Prussian” company, helped to undermine the Company’s position in China. Exclusive rights in the China trade were surrendered after 1833. 49

A T T T C

P

e a

A f r s CF. Z Z A J V T

c

e

/ / /

Samuel Collings, a friend and associate of Thomas Rowlandson, satirizes British policy during the Spanish Armament Crisis. This caricature, which appeared in the second edition of the English periodical T h e A t t ic M is c e l­ la n y ; o r, C h a r a c t e r is t ic M ir r o r o f M e n a n d T h in g s , London, 179 ° ’ waf etched by 1 . Barlow, the engraver who executed the illustrations for R ees s E n c y c lo p e d ia .

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The war which developed between Britain and France in 1793 prevented integration of the North West Coast’s economy into that of the Far East under the auspices of free British trade. British seamen were withdrawn from merchant ships for naval service, and the abandonment of Nootka left British traders without a land base for collecting and processing furs. As American manufacturing expanded and as American traders learned to adjust supplies of trade goods to meet the tastes of the natives, control of the sea-otter trade passed into their hands. The “ Boston men” , like Colnett, provided the Indians with muskets, powder and shot,18 and encouraged an indiscriminate slaughter of sea otters. In some instances, they joined forces with the Russians to poach in Spain’s California waters. By the close of the Napoleonic wars, the end of the first staple industry of the North Pacific was in sight. During the five short years that a Spanish governor and Spanish troops occupied Nootka Sound, Spain’s long-delayed search for Fuca’s Strait and for Fonte’s Strait was prosecuted energetically. In 1790, Manuel Quimper used the Princess Royal, which had been returned to Nootka for recovery by Colnett, to chart the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. In the name of Carlos IV, he took possession of points in Sooke Inlet, in Royal Roads, and on the southern shore of the Strait. In the summer of 1791, Francisco Eliza, commandant at Nootka, with the help of Jos6 Maria Narvaez, investigated Rosario Strait and Haro Strait, Nanaimo harbour and the Gulf of Georgia to Texada Island. Before he heard the results of Eliza’s expedition, Conde de Revillagigedo, the new Viceroy of Spain, ordered examina­ tion of the continental shore-line of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, since he wished to propose, in the interest of restoring amicable relations with Britain, the removal of the Spanish post to a position south of the Strait, and the establishment of a perman­ ent boundary line through the Strait. Dionisio Alcala Galiano and Cayento Valdez left Nootka on June 5, 1792, to carry out this commission. They visited Neah Bay and Esquimalt, and then proceeded from the southern point of Lopez Island to Bellingham Bay and to Boundary Bay. Inside Birch Bay, they saw the lights of a vessel, and as they left Boundary Bay in the early morning hours, they met a longboat containing an English 21

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naval officer. Lieutenant Broughton informed them that the British ships Discovery and Chatham were close by. A few days later, they met Captain Vancouver returning by boat from Burrard Inlet. The Nootka Sound Convention had forced the Adm iralty to expand the plans it had originally made for a second naval expedition to the North Pacific. When it became clear that the leader of the expedition would have to assume diplomatic functions, the commander first chosen was replaced by Captain George Vancouver, who had accompanied Captain Cook on his first and last voyages, served with Rodney’s fleet in the West Indies and fulfilled his naval duties in Jamaica with distinction. Vancouver was charged with the responsibility of receiving at Nootka restitution of the territories seized by the Spaniards, as well as procuring accurate information about the establishments of foreign nations. He was also to make an accurate survey of the Pacific coastline north from 30° North Latitude to Cook’s Inlet, determining its general line and direction and the extent of its considerable inlets, “ whether made by arms of the sea, or by the mouths of large rivers, as m ay be likely to lead to, or facili­ tate” 16 communication with lakes in the interior of the continent. Since this expedition was to complete Captain Cook’s work and settle for all time the location of the North West Passage, and since it was to make a show of British naval strength, the Admiralty made elaborate preparations for the voyage. The Discovery, a fully rigged sloop of war, 340 tons, was “ copperfastened, sheathed with plank, and coppered over” , supplied with four ten-pounders and ten swivel guns, and commissioned with 100 men. The Chatham, an armed tender of 135 tons with four three-pounders and six swivels, under the command of Lieutenant W. R. Broughton, had 54 men. The ships carried the best stores of the naval arsenals, fishing seines and large stocks of sauerkraut, the “rob” of lemons and oranges, and the essence of malt and spruce. Vancouver was supplied with chronometers which he was to use in conjunction with lunar observation. Archibald Menzies, a surgeon in the Royal N avy who had visited the Pacific in a fur-trading vessel, went along to collect botanical specimens for King George I l l ’s “ very valuable collection of exotics at Kew” . 22

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By the time Captain Vancouver reached North America in April, 1792, fur-traders had named coves, islands and capes after their patrons, sponsors and relatives, and had visited all the western inlets between the mouth of the Columbia River and the Queen Charlotte Islands. But their predatory raids of mainland inlets had been too hurried to provide an accurate knowledge of the coastline. Captain George Dixon, however, had established the insular nature of the Queen Charlotte Islands, and Barkley had discovered the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The Admiralty was interested in John Meares’s story that he, too, had entered the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and that Captain Robert Gray, in the American sloop Washington, had found a channel leading from the Strait and terminating at Nootka Sound. Nothing was known in London about the Spanish searches in the neighbourhood of 490 and 530, but the authori­ ties very sensibly advised Vancouver, if he met Spanish ships, to give assistance and make a reciprocal exchange of informa­ tion. — Captain Vancouver was the very person to chart the intricate coastline of the North West Coast; no one could have been more methodical and painstaking, or more intent on carrying out the letter of his instructions. In order not to lose time, he was told not “ to pursue any inlet or river further than it shall appear to be navigable by vessels of such burthen as might safely navigate the Pacific Ocean” . His rigid compliance with orders may explain his failure to enter the estuaries of the Columbia, Fraser and Skeena Rivers. Signs of the Columbia River were seen soon after Vancouver made his landfall on N ew Albion. Through his desire to take advantage of favourable weather, he did not stop to examine what he recognized as “river-coloured water” . To its north he met Captain Gray, who tendered his opinion that a great river existed in the neighbourhood of 46° North Latitude; but Van­ couver was much more interested in obtaining information about the channel through which G ray was said to have travelled to Nootka. The reconnaissance of the southern shore-line of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, undertaken in open boats, resulted in charting the waters of Puget Sound and islands in the San Juan Archi­ 23

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pelago. On the King’s birthday, June 4, Vancouver went ashore to take possession of the coast north from 390 20' to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and to claim the interior sea which he named the Gulf of Georgia. By June 12, he had fixed the continental shore as far as Point Roberts. The following day he named Point Grey. Between the two points, the small open boats had been forced by a shoal almost into the middle of the gulf, and Vancouver retained the impression that the space between them was occupied by “ a swampy flat, that retires several miles, before the country rises to meet the rugged snowy mountains” . Through two small openings, he thought only canoes could navigate. He went on to enter Burrard Inlet, and from there proceeded up Howe Sound and Jervis Inlet. As his men were rowing back to Point Grey on the morning of June 22, they observed a brig and a schooner wearing Spanish colours. Vancouver “ experienced no small degree of mortification” in learning that Spaniards had visited “the external shores of the gulph” , but he was comforted by their failure to chart minute features of extensive arms and inlets. The Sutil and the Mexicana seemed to him to be “the most ill calculated and unfit vessels that could possibly be imagined for such an ex­ pedition” , but the conduct of their commanders was “replete with that politeness and friendship which characterizes the Spanish nation” . He exchanged information with them and arranged for a joint expedition northward. The four ships pro­ ceeded north through Malaspina Channel and worked together until July 13, when the Spaniards left to examine the mainland coastline, and Vancouver continued through Discovery Passage and Johnstone Strait to Queen Charlotte Sound. He was exam­ ining the labyrinthine windings of Fitzhugh Sound, Burke Channel and south Bentinck Arm, when he decided to abandon the survey and proceed to Nootka to meet his supply ship and to negotiate with Bodega y Quadra, now commandant of San Bias, who was awaiting him. Quadra and Vancouver spent the last days of August ex­ changing civilities and permitting a warm friendship to develop between them. When they started to negotiate, however, they found their opinions too divergent for agreement. Working from Martinez’s reports and from supporting evidence supplied 24

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by American traders, Quadra was convinced that Spain had nothing to deliver up and no damage to make good. Without prejudice to Spain’s legitimate rights, he offered to surrender the houses and garden belonging to Meares’s men, promising that Nootka would be Spain’s last and most northerly settle­ ment and that the territory north of it would be open for the use and commerce of both parties. Vancouver, who believed Meares’s statements that he had purchased territory in 1788 and subsequently taken possession of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, could not be satisfied with retrieving a mere plot of land. When an impasse was reached, both men decided to make reference to their governments. To indicate his high personal regard for Quadra, and to commemorate their meeting on what he now knew to be an island, Vancouver named it “Quadra and Van­ couver” . Lieutenant Broughton carried Vancouver’s request for further instructions to England. On his way, he located the Columbia River, which Gray, who had called in at Nootka late in August to repair his ship, said he had discovered and entered on M ay 11. Broughton crossed the bar, and after sounding and observing the river for 100 miles, took possession for Britain. Captain Vancouver went south to visit the Spanish post at San Francisco and to winter in the Sandwich Islands. In March, 1793, he was back at Nootka Sound, ready to continue his sur­ veys. His men went north along the mainland coast to Port­ land Canal, taking soundings in inlets where their lines were often too short to plumb the deep waters. No sign could be found of a waterway. Spanish names were placed on the charts as a courtesy to Jacinto Caamano, who had explored the neigh­ bourhood of 530, searching for the Strait of Fonte. After another winter in the Sandwich Islands, Vancouver returned for his final season in North American waters. The Alaskan surveys completed his work. The last hope of finding intercontinental communication was shattered; the existence of a whole new region proven. As yet, no navigator or seaman cared to discover what lay beyond the heads of inlets, but the maps would have to be redrawn to replace the great “ sea of the west” with an unbroken coastline. During Captain Vancouver’s absence from England, Britain 25

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and Spain had developed more friendly relations. The execution of King Louis X V I engendered such dread in both countries of the spread of revolutionary ideas, that they concluded a com­ mercial, defensive and offensive alliance in M ay, 1793. At Madrid, the views of Revillagigedo gradually acquired merit, and Spain decided to withdraw her outpost from Nootka Sound. On March 23, 1795, a British and a Spanish commissioner met at Nootka Sound for the brief ceremony of restoring British buildings and unfurling the British flag as a sign of possession. British and Spanish nationals, it had been agreed, would in future only visit there and erect temporary buildings. The two countries would work together to prevent any other power from establishing sovereignty. The Spanish fort where the Volunteers of Catalonia had maintained the courtly tradition of Castile was now dismantled. There they had known long winters of rain, frost and snow, but in summer, the deep forests had been fringed with an abundance of wild roses, elder trees and aramanth.17 They had lived in harmony with the natives, unaware that the social and economic pattern of Indian life was being changed by the impact of the white man’s values. Skilful mariners, avaricious traders, restrained diplomats and well-drilled troops had all approached British Columbia’s shores from the sea, but none had remained as permanent settlers. Nootka, the centre of off-shore trading where events had taken place that had almost plunged all Europe into war, was aban­ doned to the natives. Spain was in retreat in the Pacific Ocean; Great Britain and the United States, the centres of a dynamic and expanding commercialism, on the advance; and Russia, through the Russian-American Company and that Company’s informal alliances with American traders, holding its line. More profitable fur markets than Canton would be discovered, and when they were, the trans-Pacific bond would weaken. Until desire for profit spurred men on again, no European would return to Galiano’s Sasamat, the Indian River of Burrard Inlet, where “the enormous masses of the mountains [are] clad with pines and crowned with snow, which when it melts forms most lovely cascades” .18

26

Approach from the Mountains

Chapter 2

h i l e American barques were still doing a good trade for sea otter along the North West Coast, voyageurs and fur-hunters from Montreal, searching for the River of the West, pushed their frail birch-bark canoes westward from Lake Atha­ basca to that “ immense chain of mountains which run from north to south of the continent of America” .1 Beyond the Con­ tinental Divide they found that rivers formed a maze of water­ ways difficult to untangle. Swiftly-moving mountain streams provided clues to the location of passes and of serene lakes, sheltered valleys, sun-drenched parklands and fertile lowlands, but seldom did they flow directly westward and nowhere could the traders discover a long, wide river suitable for navigation throughout its length. The wild turbulence of the Fraser River ended in quiet stretches only near the sea; saddle as well as canoe would have to be used to make it the focus of their operations.

W

29

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Interlopers in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s preserve, these Nor’Westers, like others of their company before them, had travelled by light canoe from Grand Portage on Lake Superior to the Saskatchewan River, reaching Lake Athabasca by Methy Portage. From Fort Chipewyan, the fur trade of the Mackenzie River basin had already been directed towards the warehouses of Montreal; now, ready to extend their commercial network into the Pacific slope, they sought new beaver ponds and loca­ tions in the forest belt where clear lakes and tranquil rivers provided natural pathways for the Indians. On the upper reaches of the Peace and the Fraser they found likely spots, and here, from logs, they built small stockaded posts. These tiny inland trading-centres, so different in plan and conception from the grandiose schemes of Captain James Strange and Richard Cadman Etches for a plantation of felons at Nootka Sound, or the Utopia which a Boston sea-trading firm tried to promote in the wilderness of Vancouver Island, became the nucleus of the first permanent settlements in British Columbia. The North West Company’s advance to the mountains waited on voyages of discovery to the Arctic. In the spring of 1789, while the British fleet was mustering for war with Spain, A lex­ ander Mackenzie, a partner in the Company, whose imagination had been fired by reports of Captain Cook’s profitable trade in Alaska and by Peter Pond’s theories of a westward-flowing river, left Fort Chipewyan to seek a route to Cook’s Inlet. Great Slave Lake was still filled with ice when he reached it, and the longest days of the short northern summer were nearing their end before he could advance to Great Bear Lake. His course from there, instead of leading westward, took him northward down the Mackenzie River to the Frozen Ocean. The myth of a navigable inland sea passage was now demolished. Scientific curiosity spurred the young Scot to make a second attempt to solve the riddle of the western waterways. In prepar­ ation, he spent the winter of 1791 in England perfecting his knowledge of astronomy and of navigation, purchasing new technical equipment and obtaining instruction in its use. On his return to Fort Chipewyan, he deduced from all the available evidence that he could best approach and pierce the mountain ramparts by following the Peace River to its source. He left 30

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Lake Athabasca on October 10, 1792, and racing the freeze-up, reached the forks of the Peace and the Smoky Rivers in time to establish a trading-post. By spring, he had drawn this area into the commercial life of the North West Company’s Atha­ basca Department. But his interrogation of the Peace River Indians had yielded little information about his distance from the sea or about the nature of the foothills, mountains and rivers to the west. His great adventure, his overland voyage to the Pacific Ocean, started on M ay 9, 1793. Mackenzie and his lieutenant, A lex­ ander M cKay, with six voyageurs and two Indians as hunters and interpreters, stepped into a twenty-five-foot-long canot du nord, so well constructed that it carried a ton and a half of baggage— pemmican, instruments and trading goods— in addition to ten men. After sighting the Rockies, the party reached the Peace River Canyon; here it became necessary to raise the canoe up the steep face of the canyon, portage for ten miles over a pathway hacked through the forest, and then pole the canoe, its seams already strained, up the rain-swollen river. A t the forks of the Finlay and the Parsnip Rivers, Mackenzie had to make his first important decision about the choice of a route. Against his better judgment, he followed the treacher­ ous Parsnip River southward. The w ay became more difficult, the men grew discouraged, and the speed slackened. A t last, on June 12, they reached the divide. Only 817 paces away was a small lake, from which flowed a tributary of the Fraser River, a stream so dangerous that Simon Fraser later called it the “Bad River” . The canoe was almost shattered in its rushing waters; the voyageurs threatened desertion, but were persuaded to push on after Mackenzie praised their endeavours. On June 17, they enjoyed, after all their toil and anxiety, “the inex­ pressible satisfaction” of finding themselves “on the bank of a navigable river, on the West side of the first great range of mountains” .2 The Indians called the river “Tacoutche Tesse” ; Mackenzie thought it was the Columbia. Tremendous hazards lay ahead. On June 19, he embarked his party at three o’clock in the morning; half an hour later, in the early morning haze, they slipped past the Nechako River, the most direct route to the Pacific. Shortly afterwards, the 3*

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walls of the Fraser River contracted. A portage had to be made, and the canoe, now heavy with patchings of hark and gum, cracked as the men bore it on their shoulders. A quarter of a mile along, the exhausted men attempted to run successive cascades; “ in a very turbid current, and full of whirlpools” , their canoe filled, and they reached the bank in a half-drowned condition. Below the confluence of the Quesnel and the Fraser Rivers, Carrier Indians, waiting to attack with bows, arrows and spears, lined the river banks. W ith iron nerve, Mackenzie landed, paraded unarmed, and luring them with mirrors, beads and presents of sugar for their children, gained their confidence. From them, his interpreters learned that the river ran towards the mid-day sun, that its current was uniformly strong, and “ that in three places it was altogether impassable” . The follow­ ing day, June 21, a party of Indians at “ Stella-yah” , “ the end of navigation” , advised Mackenzie to strike overland by a trail through lowlands, small lakes and rivers, by which they were accustomed to reach after six days’ time, the place where they met “ the people who barter iron, brass, copper, beads . . . for dressed leather, and beaver, bear, lynx, fox, and marten skins” . He had now travelled 400 miles down the Fraser River; a decision to turn back was bound to weaken the confidence of his men, but on the other hand, the season for exploration was far advanced and he had lost most of his ammunition in the Parsnip River. He decided to return to the West-Road River and there on July 4 two caches were built and the canoe left on a stage “bottom upwards” . During fifteen days’ march overland, guides provided by In­ dian tribes deserted almost daily. Finally, friendly Indians offered to take the party down the Bella Coola River in canoes. A t Friendly Village, they were presented with roasted salmon, and from one of his chests the Indian chief produced and dis­ played articles obtained in trade: a garment of blue cloth, trimmed with brass buttons, probably of British origin, and one of flowered cotton, fringed with leather in the Spanish manner. Further hospitality was extended at a second village. Then Mackenzie came to a deserted village; while inspecting one of its houses, he caught his first sight of an arm of the sea. The 32

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journey was nearly over; “ at about eight” , on July 20, his canoes glided from the river’s mouth into Bentinck Arm. Paddling toward the open sea, the party continued along Labouchere Channel and down Dean Channel. Here they en­ countered three canoes filled with disdainful, insolent and angry Indians. One of them, somewhat appeased by Mackenzie’s gifts, declared that he and his friends had been fired on from a large canoe which had recently been in the bay by a man called “Macubah” (Vancouver). That night, surrounded by hostile In­ dians, and tensely expecting attack, but reluctant to leave before he had made observations for latitude and longitude, Mackenzie camped on a rock near Elcho Harbour. A t daylight, he mixed “some vermilion in melted grease” , and on the rock where he had passed the night, inscribed “in large characters” , the brief and unpretentious memorial to the first crossing of continental North America: “Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three” . By only a few weeks, he had missed Lieutenant Johnstone, who charted the channel for Captain Vancouver. Thirty-three days later he was back at Fort Chipewyan. His failure to reach the open sea was a bitter disappointment; still more bitter was the realization that the difficult route which he had travelled could never be utilized for the fur trade. In his journal, published in 1801, Mackenzie drew up a master plan for extending British fur trade to “the markets of the four quarters of the globe” .3 Envisaging victory over the Americans, he advocated the union of the Canadian and British fur-trading companies, the opening of a supply route by w ay of Hudson Bay, the Nelson, Saskatchewan and “ Columbia” Rivers, the founding of regular establishments throughout the interior and on both seacoasts, and entry into the China trade through licence from the East India Company. His partners, who were already experimenting with shipments of furs from Montreal to Canton, thought his ideas too ambitious, and instead of seriously considering them, turned their attention to stabilizing the Saskatchewan beaver trade. For twelve years, the North West Company’s struggle for position in the Canadian fur trade and the intensification of its 33

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rivalry with the Hudson’s Bay Company, delayed its intrusion into the region beyond the mountains. Then, in 1804, by absorbing the rival X Y Company, it gained dominance over the Montreal trade. To provide employment for new personnel and dividends for new shareholders,4 the partners, concerned about the growing scarcity of beaver in the Saskatchewan valley, decided in 1805 to extend the Athabascan operations beyond the headwaters of the Peace River, and the Saskatchewan trade to the Columbia and Missouri Rivers. Success in the transmontane venture, they knew, depended upon solving the problem of safe and easy transportation routes through the mountains, and be­ tween the mountains and the seacoast. In addition, areas must be found which were rich in furs and where the Indian demand for European commodities was not yet satisfied. In the face of stiff competition from the Hudson’s Bay Company, difficult problems had been solved before; now, with the confidence born of past successes and the knowledge that the Hudson’s Bay Com­ pany had no legal rights in the Pacific slope, the North West Company went ahead with its plans. To open the new western area, the partners chose Simon Fraser, a man of much less scientific training than Alexander Mackenzie, but of indomitable courage. According to Fraser’s own admission, the journal he kept was “ exceedingly ill wrote worse worded and not well spelt” ,5 yet the record of his ex­ ploratory work is chiefly marred by the ungenerous spirit which led him to criticize Mackenzie’s failure to find the Pack and the Nechako Rivers, the result, Fraser said, of the great explorer’s habit of indulging himself “ sometimes with a little sleep” .8 Fraser had the benefit of information provided by David Thompson’s survey of the Peace River in 1804 and by James Finlay’s earlier examination of the Finlay and Parsnip Rivers. Using Rocky Mountain House as his base, he carried out further investigation of the upper valley of the Peace River in 1805, and then followed Mackenzie’s track up the Parsnip River. Chang­ ing direction, he turned up Pack River and reached the territory of the Sekani Indians. On McLeod Lake, James McDougall helped him found Fort McLeod, the first post west of the Rocky Mountains. In the autumn, Fraser returned to the present Hud­ son Hope at the lower end of Peace River Canyon to establish 34

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Rocky Mountain Portage as a supply base for the line of western posts which he intended to construct during the following sea­ son. W hile wintering there, he heard that the Carrier Indians were obtaining American goods from the seacoast by w ay of the Skeena and Babine Rivers. To stop this traffic, he returned to Fort McLeod with John Stuart in the spring of 1806 and there made preparations for the construction of a post on Stuart Lake. Fort St. James, built during the summer, later became the capi­ tal of the fur-trading district which Fraser called New Cale­ donia. That autumn, the salmon were late in arriving at Stuart Lake, so Fraser sent Stuart to a well-stocked lake forty miles southwest of the Nechako River. They met there late in the year and constructed Fort Fraser. After reinforcements were received late in 1807, Fort George was built at the junction of the Nechako and Fraser Rivers. The fur-trading posts founded by Fraser in N ew Caledonia, like the Russian coastal establishments on Kodiak Island and at Sitka, soon combined mercantile pursuits with permanent settlement. Adjacent food and timber resources made them more self-sufficient than the Russian posts, and an overland trans­ portation route, however treacherous its circuitous track from the mountains, kept them better supplied with trade goods. Gradually inter-tribal commerce was drawn inland and away from the seacoast. Apart from the knowledge obtained by Mackenzie, little was yet known about the speed, direction and navigability of the river which was still thought to be the Columbia. Fraser had tapped only its northern branches; the whole drainage basin might be rich in furs. The brigade arriving from Fort Chipewyan in the autumn of 1807 brought instructions to descend the “ Grand Riviere” . Preparations for the voyage were made during the winter months, and on M ay 22, 1808, accompanied by John Stuart, Jules Maurice Quesnel, nineteen voyageurs and two Indian guides, Fraser left Fort St. James in four canoes to descend the Nechako River. He reached Fort George on M ay 28, and the following day successfully passed down the great muddy Fraser River, arriv­ ing at sunset at a clear river flowing from the north-west which he later named in honour of Quesnel, its explorer. On M ay 30, 35

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the company passed through country which at first had a “romantic and pleasant appearance” ,7 but just above Soda Creek became extremely rugged. Soon they reached a rapid of “ an awful and forbidding appearance” ; as portaging through the high rocky hills seemed impossible, Fraser sent his five best men down it in a lightly loaded canoe. Flying from whirl­ pool to whirlpool, it was dashed against a low projecting rock; to haul it up by line, Fraser and six companions inched their way down a steep bank, where their lives, he wrote, “hung, as it were, upon a thread” . The remaining three canoes were portaged. He had reached Stella-yah, the place where Alexander Mackenzie had been forced to turn back. Shuswap Indians ad­ vised him to proceed by land across the rolling hills to Thompson River, but he would not deviate from his original intention. Peril and tribulation increased. On June 2, the river, which was in freshet, rose eight feet within twenty-four hours. By lightening the canoes, the next whirlpools and rapid were safely run. Before attempting another turbulent rapid, Fraser sent men to reconnoitre. Painfully, “ their feet full of thorns” , they climbed precipices and descended ravines. On their return, they reported more cascades ahead. Then the channel narrowed, and it “ being absolutely impossible to carry the canoes by land, all hands without hesitation embarked as it were a corps perdu upon the mercy of this awful tide” . Expertly, the voyageurs steered the canoes to safety, but now Fraser was ready to believe Lillooet. Indians who told him that the river was “ a dreadful chain of apparently insurmountable difficulties” . Near Pavilion, he had the canoes placed on a scaffold and goods cached, and started overland. Well-marked trails led from the Lillooet Indian encamp­ ment to Lytton, but the fare of berries, moss and dog flesh was meagre, the men’s moccasins were cut by sharp stones, and the pack-loads were heavy. A t Lytton, Indians showed him Euro­ pean goods which they said came from across the mountains, and concluding that the large, sparkling river flowing into the main river at that point must lead to the North West Company’s posts in the Saskatchewan Department, he named it in honour of David Thompson, who, at the orders of the Company, was then exploring the upper waters of the Columbia River. 36

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Cedar dug-outs obtained from the Indians at Lytton soon had to be abandoned, and the party began to scramble along the river banks. A t Black Canyon, one of the Indians climbed to the summit to pull each of his companions up by a long pole; at H ell’s Gate, they could scarcely make their w ay “ with even only our guns” . “ I have been for a long period among the Rocky Mountains,” Fraser wrote, “ but have never seen any­ thing like this country. It is so wild that I cannot find words to describe our situation at times. W e had to pass where no human being should venture; yet in those places there is a regular footpath impressed, or rather indented upon the very rocks by frequent travelling. Besides this, steps which are formed like a ladder or the shrouds of a ship, by poles hanging to one another and crossed at certain distances with twigs, the whole suspended from the top to the foot of immense precipices and fastened at both extremities to stones and trees, furnish a safe and convenient passage to the Natives; but we, who had not had the advantage of their education and experience, were often in imminent danger when obliged to follow their ex­ ample.” W ith utmost caution, the men crawled along the path to Spuzzum, and on to Yale. A t last the river was navigable. As they paddled dug-outs down the widening stream, they saw Mount Baker in the dis­ tance, and marvelled at the size of “ cedars five fathoms in circumference and proportionate height” . In tidal waters, fierce Cowichans almost blocked their way, but on July 2 they were in sight of the mountains of Vancouver Island and almost ready to enter the Strait of Georgia. A t the village of Musqueam, a few miles from the sea, they disem­ barked to inspect an Indian house, 1,500 feet long and 90 feet wide. They were gone only a short time. In that interval, the ebbing tide beached their canoes, and as they were launching them, hostile Indians suddenly emerged from the forest. The pursuit continued by water. Fraser retreated six miles. Then he arrived at the sorry decision to abandon his expedition. He had had no time in which to make an observation for longitude, but he had discovered that “ the latitude is 490 nearly, while that of the entrance of the Columbia is 46° 20'. This river therefore is not the Columbia!” The river flowing towards the 37

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mid-day sun was not the River of the West, and Fraser, like Mackenzie before him, had failed to reach the open sea. To add to his disappointment, the great river which he had examined and which David Thompson named after him8 was unsuitable for transport, and most of the country through which he had travelled below Stella-yah was too warm and too hare to be rich in furs. Inter-tribal jealousies among the Indians of the southern interior, he had discovered, were sufficiently strong to interfere with barter trade, and the Indians near the seacoast were already well supplied with European goods. Of the vast region through which he had journeyed, New Caledonia offered the best prospects, although transportation charges to Montreal on its fine black beaver peltries were too high for great profit. A new outlet and a shorter supply route were needed, and since the Hudson’s Bay Company still refused the North West Com­ pany access to Hudson Bay, the opening of communication with the Pacific seaboard appeared to offer the best hope for the future of the new trading-district. W hile Fraser had been building his posts in New Caledonia, David Thompson, a former Hudson’s Bay Company man, al­ ready famed for his ability as astronomer and surveyor, had undertaken the expansion of the Saskatchewan Department’s trade across the mountains. In M ay, 1807, accompanied by his wife, his three small children and three men, he travelled west from Rocky Mountain House on the North Saskatchewan River with ten pack-horses to “ stupendous and solitary Wilds covered with eternal Snow”9 where “ Mountain [is] connected to Mountain by immense Glaciers, the collection of Ages” . Here he was delayed by deep snows; when these started to melt, the rush down the mountain sides “ equalled the Thunder in Sound, overturning everything less than solid Rock in its Course, sweep­ ing the Mountain Forests, whole acres at a Time from the very Roots, leaving not a Vestige behind” . On June 24, the party crossed the height of land to the upper Columbia River, and soon began to follow the course of the wild Blaeberry River. Canoes were built, and the Columbia River was ascended to Lake Windermere. About two miles from the lake, Thompson con­ structed Kootenae House, the first trading-post in the Columbia basin. 38

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In April, 1808, about a month before Fraser set out to descend the Nechako River, Thompson crossed to Kootenay River, con­ tinued down-stream, and after further exploration through the present states of Montana and Idaho returned to Kootenae House. After preparing his furs, he left in June to take them to Rainy Lake. The following year, 1809, he accompanied his annual ship­ ment to Fort Augustus, near the present city of Edmonton, returned again by w ay of Howse Pass to the Columbia River, crossed M cG illivray’s Portage, later to be known as Canal Flat, and again descended the Kootenay River. Going overland he selected a place on Pend d’Oreille Lake to build Kullyspell House and a site near Clark Fork River for Saleesh House. In­ terest in trading and in exploration had carried him to the south and to the east. W hen Thompson again reached Rainy Lake late in July, 1810, he learned something of the plans made by John Jacob Astor, a New York business man, to build a depot on the Co­ lumbia River. The North West Company had similar ambitions, and had instructed its agents in London to enquire whether the British government would permit the building of an Am eri­ can establishment, and whether its own aspirations could be assisted by the government’s sending a ship to the Columbia10 and granting a charter of exclusive trade between the latitudes of 42° and 6o° for a period of twenty-one years.11 Thompson was given no specific instructions at Fort W illiam, but for two years he had been engaged in surveying the Columbia River, and his interest in completing the project was probably in­ creased. He returned to Rocky Mountain House to discover that Piegan Indians had interfered with the transit of supplies which had been shipped ahead from the east. He decided, therefore, not to use Howse Pass. After manufacturing snow-shoes and sleds, he started on December 29 from Athabasca River to cross the mountains in twenty-degree-below-zero weather. His new route to Wood River and to Boat Encampment at the confluence of the Canoe and the Columbia Rivers later became the high­ w ay for the Hudson’s Bay Company’s express brigades. In April, 1811, he left the Big Bend in a canoe he had con39

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structed of split cedar to ascend the Columbia River to its source. Again he crossed Canal Flat and descended the Kootenay River. Then, after visiting Saleesh House and newly established Spokane House, he travelled to Kettle Falls, constructed another canoe, and with seven voyageurs and two Indians, started to explore the Columbia River, “in order to open out a passage for the interior trade with the Pacific Ocean” .12 A t the junction of the Snake and the Columbia Rivers, Thompson claimed territory for Great Britain on July 9. The next day he received news that the American traders had arrived on the Columbia River. He continued his survey, filling in the details on his map, and on July ig reached the mouth of the river, where he found the Americans already established at Fort Astoria. The sea expedition sent by Astor from New York had arrived on March 22; four log huts had been con­ structed and trading operations in the interior were about to commence. By founding his depot at the mouth of the Columbia, Astor, the masterful merchant who already traded with Canton and had almost secured control of the south-west fur trade, had hoped to enter the marine fur trade, unite it with the overland trade, and monopolize the China market. His strategy had been worked out by John Meares years before, and Captain James Strange and Alexander Dalrymple, hydrographer, had placed similar proposals before the officers of the East India Company. Sir Alexander Mackenzie and Duncan M cGillivray had also urged the feasibility of such a plan, but only now was the North West Company becoming interested in establishing a Pacific outlet. The Americans received Thompson well and he enjoyed their hospitality for a week. Then, in the company of one of their number, David Stuart, cousin of John Stuart, he left for the interior to visit his posts and to continue trading. Below the junction of the Snake River, the friendly rivals parted, Thompson to return to Spokane House and Stuart to go up the Columbia River to select a site for an inland post. After leaving Thompson, David Stuart founded Fort Okano­ gan at the junction of the Okanogan and Columbia Rivers, and then started north through the grass lands of Okanagan Valley. 40

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Crossing the height of land separating the Columbia and the Fraser watersheds, he reached Thompson River. Here, at last, was the solution to the problem of communication on the transmontane slope: Stuart had found a land route, admirably suited for transport by pack-train, which could serve to unite the fur districts of the upper Fraser and the lower Columbia Rivers. W ith Thompson River as the point of contact, the vast hinter­ land between the Coast Range and the Rocky Mountains could be organized into a single fur-trading district. A profitable winter’s trade among the Shuswap Indians con­ vinced Stuart that Thompson River abounded in beaver. On his return to Fort Okanogan, Alexander Ross set out with horses on a trading expedition to “ Cumcloups” , the “ meeting of the waters” of the North and South Thompson Rivers. There he found two thousand Indians so anxious to trade that he bartered five tobacco leaves for one beaver skin and one yard of white cotton for twenty prime skins.13 On his return, David Stuart went north with supplies to establish a post. He had hardly completed his building when Joseph Larocque, who had recently arrived from Fort W illiam with the McTavish overland expedi­ tion, appeared to found a trading-centre for the North West Company. Compelled by the challenge of competition to concentrate on their Columbia enterprise, the Nor’Westers had renewed their application to the British government for aid and support in establishing a base on the Pacific. Busy with plans to bring the war with Napoleon to an end, and worried about the deteriora­ tion of relations with the United States, Whitehall avoided com­ mitment until after the American declaration of war against Great Britain in June, 1812, when it was persuaded that the commercial enterprise had national significance. In July, the partners of the North West Company, assembled in annual meeting at Fort William, received David Thompson’s report of his trading operations in the Columbia basin and of his recent exploration to the river’s mouth. Donald McTavish was immediately ordered to England to arrange for a ship and convoy to be sent to the Columbia, and John George McTavish was chosen to lead an overland expedition to the Pacific. John Stuart, appointed supervisor of the New Caledonia district, was 41

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instructed to join the overland expedition at some point on the Columbia River the next spring and to travel with it to meet the ship from England.14 In compliance with his instructions, Stuart, Fraser’s lieutenant from 1805 until 1809, left Fort St. James on M ay 13, 1813, to search for water communication with the Columbia River. Knowing the Fraser well, he left it above Soda Creek, and taking horses, travelled overland. A t a distance of 150 miles he reached Okanagan Lake, leading south to the Columbia River. The final link joining the great waterways had at last been found; Sir Alexander Mackenzie’s dream of a great trans­ continental commercial network approached realization. American western competition still had to be eliminated. As it turned out, this was easily achieved. The Astor venture was ill-fated. In August, the Tonquin, the ship which had brought the advance party to choose a location for a trading-centre near the position reached by the American explorers Meriwether Lewis and W illiam Clark in 1805, was destroyed, and its crew massacred by Indians in Clayoquot Sound. The party sent overland from Lachine, by way of the Missouri, did not arrive until the spring of 1812. Two more supply and trading-ships met disaster. Of the string of forts which Astor had projected for construction between the Missouri and the Columbia Rivers, only two or three were successfully founded. W ith every month, prospect of diverting trade from the “ Boston pedlars” on the seacoast and from the Canadians in the interior diminished. Meanwhile, the importunities of the North West Company’s agents in London prevailed with the British government, and in March, 1813, the Isaac Todd sailed from Portsmouth under convoy, carrying twenty guns and bearing letters of marque. The overland expedition preceded her. Carrying news of the declaration of war, McTavish arrived at Spokane House late in 1812, and proceeded to Astoria in the spring of 1813. When his supply ship did not arrive, he retired up-river; then, in October, he reappeared with a strong force of 75 men. The plight of the Americans was serious; no supplies had arrived since the spring of 1812 when the Beaver had called at Fort Astoria on her w ay north to sell trade goods to the Russian posts and to pick up Russian furs for Canton. Their provisions low, 42

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the returns from the interior posts disappointing, the grip of the Nor’Westers tightening, and seizure threatened, the associates of the Pacific Fur Company decided on October 16 to sell their posts, property and stock of furs to their rivals. On November 30, H.M.S. Racoon, 26 guns, the naval escort for the Isaac Todd, arrived in advance of the merchant vessel. The peaceful transaction which had taken place was not at all to the liking of her commander. A man of action, he was not to be denied the pleasure of serving his King by taking posses­ sion of the country and running the British flag up over an American fort. “ Country and fort I have taken possession of in name and for British majesty . . he reported on December 5. “ Enemies party quite broke up they have no settlement what­ ever on this River or Coast.” 15 West of the mountains, the North West Company now had monopolistic control, a Pacific base and an inland transportation system. But the great distances separating fur-producing areas and the employment of additional canoemen, traders and trap­ pers to supply the posts acquired from the Pacific Fur Company, made for high administrative costs. These charges were not, as had been expected, offset by opening the coastal trade. To meet the competition of the Boston vessels, the Company, by employ­ ing Sandwich Islanders as seamen, incurred heavy expenses. Entering the China trade also brought few rewards. When the East India Company declined to issue a licence or permit purchase of tea at Canton, an attempt was made at interloping. After discharging her supplies at Fort George, as Fort Astoria had been renamed, the Isaac Todd carried furs to Canton in 1814, somehow disposed of them at a good price, but had to return to England freighting East India Company tea. Failure to obtain return cargoes of Chinese commodities made later voyages of Company ships equally unprofitable. In 1815 an arrangement was made with the Perkins firm of Boston to carry British manufactured goods to the Columbia, load furs for Can­ ton, and invest the funds from the sales in purchases of tea and other Chinese goods for the American market.18 The Nor’Westers paid well for this service, and the American firm made good profits, since it avoided dealing with the Hong merchants. In the Columbia basin, disgruntled Nor W esters who had 43

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joined Astor’s overland expedition from Lachine and been re­ absorbed into the Company’s service after 1813, carried out an energetic expansion of the land trade. Using the Company’s traditional methods, they pushed into all parts of the huge Columbia basin with their packs of trade goods, searching for new Indian tribes. Among them they found such a steady de­ mand for European wares that they were able to establish a high tariff on furs. After 1816, trapping expeditions were out­ fitted to go into the Willamette, Umpqua and Snake valleys. New forts were built: Fort W alla W alla in 1818 as a trade centre for the treacherous Nez Perce Indians, and Fort A lex­ andria at Stella-yah in 1821 as transhipment point for the horse train from Fort Okanogan and the canoe brigade to Fort St. James and the other northern posts. West of the mountains, the Nor’Westers were for a period of seven years “ the great nabobs of the fur trade” .17 Their position assured, some of the traders stationed at the depot at Fort George, losing much of their earlier energy, began to indulge their taste for luxury and extravagance, and failed to keep their clerks and their men fully occupied. Comforts were demanded to compensate for the hardships experienced during years of wilderness life. According to Alexander Ross, a former Astorian, “ ship after ship doubled Cape Horn in regular succession, with bulky cargoes to the full of every de­ mand” ,18 and even birch rind, still preferred to the fine Coast cedar for canoe construction, was shipped all the w ay from Montreal to London and round the Horn. In addition to the usual stock of goods kept at frontier posts, Fort George had among its stores such items as ostrich plumes and coats of m ail;19 fustians and velvets; jewellery and perfumery; silk stockings; gloves and unbrellas.20 In keeping with this extravagance, a new depot, “ a Gibraltar of the W est” , “more fit for eagles than for men” ,21 replaced the little collection of log huts at Fort George. Here, and at Spokane House where there were handsome buildings and a ballroom, traders and clerks sat down to a good table and fine wine, and enjoyed the companionship of attractive native women, music and a supply of fairly entertaining literature. W hen the com­ plement of men was expanded by importations of Iroquois and 44

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Sandwich Islanders, traders had more leisure. In some instances, their lives became almost sedentary as the long, wet, winter months dragged slowly by. Their spirits depressed by the heavy and continuous rainfall, bourgeois and clerks became victims of ennui. Escape from the monotonous recurrence of the same conversational topics was sought in “ a remnant of a newspaper . . . even an auctioneers advertisement, or a quackdoctor’s puff . . . ,”22 The tempo of life at the depot quickened as the time grew near to despatch the spring brigade to Fort William. Finally, April 1 arrived, and under a salute and with flags flying, the express left by light canoe. W ith a feu de foie, it was welcomed back on October 20. Life in New Caledonia had a stark simplicity that was un­ known at the Columbia River posts. The duties of Daniel Williams Harmon, a pious Vermont Yankee who was stationed in New Caledonia from 1810 until 1818, occupied no more than one-fifth of his time. Prayer, meditation and reading filled his spare hours.23 For companions he had his Indian wife, his halfbreed children, pure-blooded French-Canadian voyageurs and the Carrier Indians with whom he did his business. Unlike Peter Skene Ogden, who later found the Carriers “ a brutish, ignorant, superstitious beggarly sett of beings, lavish of prom­ ises” ,24 Harmon was happy enough living among them. To establish a hold over the northern Indians, Fraser and John Stuart had already introduced the debt and the lending system: Indians who brought in packs of furs were advanced blankets, capots, tobacco, powder and shot, and those setting out to trap beaver received on credit “ Tranches axes Amminition Knives &c” .25 To discourage clandestine trade with the Americans on the seacoast, gratuities of leather, a scarce commodity in New Caledonia, were distributed. Imported from the plains, leather was sometimes carried over a new land route which was being opened through Yellowhead Pass to the headwaters of the Fraser River. Liquor had been introduced: among the Nor’Westers, the New Y ear’s D ay “regale” was a great event,26 and Harmon, although he was embarrassed when Indians ob­ served debauches of voyageurs, permitted Indian chiefs who were his guests at dinner on New Year’s D ay to drink “ a flagon or two of spirits” . 45

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Provisioning the New Caledonia posts was a constant worry. Supplies of salmon, salted, dried and smoked, were nearly al­ ways exhausted about August, and each year there was anxiety lest the run he late or fail altogether. A post required some 25,000 salmon for its annual sustenance; the daily allowance for each man was four. Every effort, including bartering beaver and the most valuable trading articles, was adopted to encourage the Indians to set up more weirs and string more nets. To fore­ stall starvation and avert dependence during summer months on berries and an occasional rabbit, grouse or duck, Harmon seeded small vegetable patches. The potatoes, barley, turnips and car­ rots which he grew offered a welcome change from the dreary diet of dried fish and cold water. But for survival, salmon was essential, and the appearance of the first fish of the autumn run was an event to be celebrated with rations of rum. After 1814, New Caledonia was supplied with trading goods brought by ship from England and transported by canoe from Fort George to Fort Okanogan and from there by pack-train to the upper Fraser over the route discovered by David Stuart, Alexander Ross and John Stuart. A few provisions, absolute necessities, arrived by brigade from Montreal and Fort William. Furs collected from the New Caledonia posts were assembled into ninety-pound packets at Fort McLeod. From there, a few were sent to the Columbia for shipment to China, but the greater number were transferred to Fort Chipewyan to join the Fort W illiam brigade to Montreal. Even more than at Fort George, the arrival of the brigade from the east was occasion for joy. The full-throated songs of the voyageurs ringing through the narrow valleys and rebound­ ing from the mountain walls heralded their approach to the palisades. On the shores of the lakes, the voyageurs dressed in grey blanket coats, leather trousers and gaily striped cotton shirts unloaded precious supplies of spirits, tea and salt, while the traders recounted news from headquarters, and sometimes brought welcome notice of rotation leave. More often than not, after 1816, the news had an ominous overtone. For serious troubles had developed in Assiniboia, where the Earl of Selkirk, with the approval of the Hudson’s Bay Company, had founded a colony astride the North West 46

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Company’s main transportation route and provision centre. In 1816, the same year that Simon Fraser, so well and favourably known in New Caledonia, was appointed to take charge of the Company’s Red River Department, rivalry with the Hudson’s Bay Company erupted into warfare. Avenging the Massacre of Seven Oaks, Selkirk captured Fort William, imprisoned the part­ ners, seized documents and correspondence, and in 1817 arrested Fraser for complicity in the “murder” of Governor Robert Sem­ ple and twenty settlers. Long and involved litigation ensued. Violence, although not of the same magnitude, occurred all along the northern fur frontier, for the Hudson’s Bay Company, having instituted reforms patterned largely on the North West Company’s organization, had acquired a new aggressiveness. In the Far West, its activity was viewed with alarm: Joseph Howse had made a feint towards the Columbia River in 1810, Athabasca had been invaded, and by 1820 John George McTavish expected an imminent thrust towards New Caledonia.27 Nor was this all. In 1818, under the eyes of an American commissioner, the Union Jack, so jubilantly raised in 1813, was lowered at Fort George by another British naval captain. By successfully arguing that the naval capture constituted an act of war, John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State and future President of the United States, had, under the terms of the Treaty of Ghent, won restitution of the fort to the United States. Since Astor was unprepared to reoccupy it, and the question of title to the region still remained unsettled, the Nor’Westers for the time being continued in occupation and use. The Conven­ tion of October, 1818, granted them reprieve for ten years, for although territory east of the mountains was to be partitioned by the 49th parallel, citizens of both the United States and Great Britain retained the right of free entry to territory in the ultimate west. Underscoring his determination not to let Ameri­ can claims in the Northwest go by default, Adams in 1819 obtained surrender of Spanish rights west of the Arkansas River and north of the 42nd parallel. Two years later, the Russians who in 1812 had established a post at Bodega Bay, 65 miles north of San Francisco, by imperial ukase claimed exclusive rights north of Queen Charlotte Sound. Canadian commer­ 47

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cial supremacy was being threatened by the politics of inter­ national diplomacy. Harassed on all sides, the field of its operations over-expanded, lacking a reserve fund, rent by internal quarrels, and nearing the date for the termination of the agreement of 1804 between the wintering partners and their Montreal agents, the North West Company was fast approaching bankruptcy and dissolu­ tion. The outbreak of open revolt on the part of the bourgeois against representatives of the Montreal agents at the annual meeting at Fort W illiam in 1819, provided the excuse for one of the wintering partners, Dr. John McLoughlin, to make an indirect approach to officials of the Hudson’s Bay Company. When agents of the North West Company also made an over­ ture and enlisted the sympathetic support of members of the British government, the Hudson’s Bay Company, concerned about its mounting losses and tired of the long struggle with its competitor, permitted negotiations to be conducted in Montreal and London. In March, 1821, coalition of the two companies became fact. Most of the North West Company’s wintering partners, men who had been trained as interlopers, now entered as “ commissioned gentlemen” the service of a monopolistic com­ pany almost as old and as powerful as the East India Company. In a period just short of thirty years, the magnetic pull of the overland beaver trade had changed the economic orientation of the Pacific North West. Ties with Canton had weakened and the Lords of the Lakes and the Forests had discovered and opened the principal transportation routes between the moun­ tains and seacoast. Canadian enterprise had underwritten the expense of exploration; Canadian experience in the wilderness had triumphed over obstacles of geography and topography. Montreal had supplied the capital, the organizing ability and the techniques for commercial development. Men garrisoned in the remote trading-posts of New Caledonia knew that even if they had new employers, their professional attachments with Canadian business men had developed into friendships and created bonds with the east which distance and the abandon­ ment of the great canoe route to Montreal could not sever.

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Outpost o f Commercial Empire

Chapter 3

of the com­ panies in 1821 was a victory for monopoly. It was also a victory for English capital, for English manufacturers and for English business organiza­ tion. Economy, conservation and discipline could now be practised in the fur trade, and an attempt made to abolish the abuses born of competition: the sale of liquor and ammunition to the Indians, the giving of gratuities, and the debt and lending system. The days of revels at the famous Beaver Club in Montreal were over, and the depot at Fort W illiam was closed. A ll routes from the north-western interior were now adjusted to lead to Norway House on Lake Winnipeg, a business and ad­ ministrative centre, and to York Factory on Hudson Bay, the terminus of the shipping lane from England. The traders in the field noticed these changes, but for them there were still the same wearisome and dangerous duties to be performed. Not a year went by without hardship and peril:

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starvation, exposure, death in the rapids and at the sand-bar, fire in the night, treachery, murder, sometimes mutiny. South of the Columbia River, nearly every summer there were war expedi­ tions, as John Work wrote, against “ savages made brave by rum . . . trust me, m y friend, it is no jest being engaged in them, a ball from an Indian w ill send a poor d — 1 home as well as from a white man” .1 “ The privations and fatigues of a barbarous country” 2 were still their lot, and “ the vapid monotony of an inland trading Post”3 was broken only by the arrival of the express with Canadian newspapers and with letters from old companions, now stationed at distant posts or living in retire­ ment in Montreal and other Canadian towns. The need for companionship drove many a clerk and trader to take an Indian wife “ after the custom of the country” ; on long and dangerous trapping expeditions, the “ little partner” , or more affectionately, “ the little rib” , made camp-life endurable and performed many heavy tasks. Men like John Work were kind to these women, ordering trinkets for their adornment (“ It is for the girl, I want these things, Some necklaces & earrings” ) ,4 schooling them, and providing what comforts they could. No matter how much the traders might long to leave the service and return to civilization, affection and gratitude helped to keep them in the Indian country. Often the little partner presented her master with so many sons and daughters that he remained at his post to earn a “ com­ petency” for their education, perhaps at the Red River Acad­ emy, or later, at the Fort Vancouver school or at the new Methodist missions on the Columbia River. Even those traders who professed to be deists or agnostics felt a keen sense of responsibility for inculcating in their half-breed children prin­ ciples of “morality” and “habits of industry” : to friends in Canada and England they sent begging letters, pleading to have their children taken in as members of more civilized households and apprenticed to trades. By 1840, however, the vogue for Indian and half-breed wives was changing; on their furloughs, traders now chose English and Scottish brides and brought them back to live in a country which previously had been considered “no place for a white woman” . In the new coalition, it was the NorW esters who were 52

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affected most by the change. Authority and a class structure based on rank were substituted for the egalitarianism of the old co-partnership. West of the mountains, most of the “ commis­ sioned gentlemen” were former Nor’Westers. As Chief Factors and Chief Traders they were allotted a share in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s earnings. Chief Factors were also given a voice in the administration of one of the Departments, the large units into which the Company divided its territories, and exercised the right of nomination for promotions. But above them now stood their masters in Fenchurch Street, the Governor and Committee in London, and their immediate superior, George Simpson, Governor of the expanded Northern Department of Rupert’s Land. The clerk and the bourgeois who could earn “ the approval of the great folks” was most quickly advanced, and every officer of the Company hoped to benefit from “ the disposal of their favours” . A magnificent comradeship between equals had existed in the days of the North West Company: this esprit de corps old Nor’­ Westers were as determined to retain as they were to transfer their loyalty to the Hudson’s Bay Company. W ith the convic­ tion that they were energetically applying their talents in the new service, and confidently expecting his recognition and approval, they awaited Governor Simpson’s first visit to the Far West. When Sunday, August 15, 1824, arrived and the ship bearing his instructions from London had not yet appeared at York Factory, Governor Simpson could no longer restrain his impa­ tience to inspect the Columbia Department. Since taking office in 1821, he had reconstructed the fur trade in all his other districts; new and challenging problems awaited solution in the area west of the mountains. A career man, thirty-seven years of age, with good connections, he had served only a short apprenticeship in the field. A t his station on Lake Athabasca during the winter of 1820, he had learned something from per­ sonal experience about the transport problem of New Caledonia. The only basis of his knowledge, as yet, of conditions in the Columbia Department was rumour and report. He was im­ patient to be off: the season for northern navigation was draw­ ing to a close, and Dr. John McLoughlin, appointed a Chief 53

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Factor of the district at the recent meeting of the Council of the Northern Department, was already twenty days on his w ay to Fort George. Simpson decided to wait no longer; with Chief Trader James McMillan, he embarked in a canot du nord on the rough waters of Hayes River. Travelling a new and difficult route by w ay of Nelson River, Frog Portage, Churchill River and Methy Portage, Simpson arrived at Isle a la Crosse on September 5, and eleven days later, just before reaching Athabasca River, overtook his sur­ prised, vexed and very much dishevelled subordinate. The speed of the expedition was now slackened “in order to give the D r an opportunity of keeping up” ,8 but even so, Simpson was able to cut travel time from York Factory to Fort George at the mouth of the Columbia River, a distance of some 3,500 miles, from 104 to 84 days. Along the way, Governor Simpson halted to consult with the men in the field. He had his own ideas concerning reforms to be made and innovations to be introduced into the fur trade, but it was his habit to weigh every opinion. Since the coalition of the two great fur companies, economies had been effected by closing duplicate posts in the west and reducing personnel; he now wished to collect information which would help him to redirect and reorganize the transport system. The “ most tedious harrassing and expensive transport in the Indian Coun­ try” was canoe freighting to and from New Caledonia. As he approached the mountains, and continued on his journey from Jasper House through Athabasca Pass to Roat Encampment, he pondered the advisability of substituting for the dangerous route along the Parsnip and Peace Rivers, the leather-shipment route through Athabasca and Yellowhead Passes, and then transferring New Caledonia’s valuable furs to York boats at Edmonton for shipment by the Saskatchewan River route to York Factory. But it was too soon to reach a decision; he intend­ ed to winter at Fort George on the lower Columbia, and by spring he would have more information. After leaving Boat Encampment, Simpson turned his atten­ tion to the request of the Governor and Committee in London that he investigate the possibility of developing trade on the north side of the Columbia River. The Americans might assert 54

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their right to repossess Fort George at any time, and the boun­ dary discussions then in progress might terminate the ten-year arrangement for joint British and American occupation of the region west of the mountains. From Chief Trader McMillan, who had explored the upper Columbia River with Thompson in 1809, he sought a voluntary offer to undertake new exploration. When nothing came of this suggestion, he returned to the sub­ ject later in the day, spiritedly remarking that “rather than allow an other Season pass without obtaining a knowledge of the Coast natives & resources of that part of the Country (our ignorance of which after being established on the Coast upwards of Fourteen years being a disgrace to the whole Concern) ” , he, Governor Simpson, would go himself. Chagrined over his own original lack of enthusiasm, M cM illan immediately offered his services for “this dangerous and unpleasant mission” . At Spokane House, Governor Simpson received his first in­ timation that “ everything on the Columbia . . . except the Trade [was] on too extended a scale. . . .” “ If m y information is cor­ rect”, he wrote in his journal, “the Columbia Deptmt from the Day of its Origin to the present hour has been neglected, shame­ fully mismanaged and a scene of the most wasteful extravagance and the most unfortunate dissention.” He further observed that “the good people of Spokane District and I believe of the inter­ ior of the Columbia generally have since its first establishment shewn an extraordinary predilection for European Provisions . . . all this time they m ay be said to have been eating Gold; such fare we cannot afford in the present times. . . . ” A taste for salmon would have to be cultivated, the cost of conveying “Eatables Drinkables and other Domestic Comforts” reduced, and the men at present engaged in transporting luxuries, re­ leased for more essential service. Moreover, greater economy and more productive effort would have to be apparent in the Snake River trapping expedi­ tions. For political rather than for commercial considerations, Governor Simpson decided to reverse his usual policy of con­ servation and launch an offensive to destroy this rich beaver preserve. Ordering Peter Skene Ogden to “ proceed direct for the heart of the Snake country towards the Banks of the Spanish River or Rio Colorado”, he took the first step to make this stra55

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tegic area, so seriously exposed to American penetration, a fur desert. A t Fort Okanogan, he ordered reduction of staff. A t Fort W alla W alla, he found the traders too indulgent of the extrava­ gant whims of their Indian wives, and criticized for his lassitude Chief Trader John W arren Dease, said by his friends to be a “ great Tea Drinker", although Simpson’s prying eye told him better: “ Were he to drink a pint of W ine with his Friends on extraordinary occasions, get up earlier in the morning eat a hearty breakfast and drink less Tea I should have a much better opinion of him.” Anticipating the establishment of an American claim to the south bank of the Columbia River, Simpson, before he left, made plans for Fort W alla W alla’s removal to the north side of the river. By the time he arrived at Fort George, he had persuaded himself that “mismanagement and extravagance [had] been the order of the day” in the whole Columbia Depart­ ment, and that a radical change must be effected. Reduction of staff at Fort George, W alla W alla, Spokane House and Fort Kamloops from 151 to 83 officers and men, making for an annual saving of over £2,000, would be one step in this direction. In the course of his tour, Governor Simpson had kept in mind the present view of the Governor and Committee in London that although the best days of the beaver trade might be over in the Columbia Department, evacuation and withdrawal to New Caledonia, a step which had been contemplated two years earlier, would now be unwise. George Canning, the great British Foreign Minister, had pointed out to officers of the Company the vital importance to the Pacific trade of the coastline between the Columbia River and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Lack of definition of the western section of the International Boundary Line and equal sharing of trading rights with the Americans made the future uncertain, but attention to trade under the pre­ sent territorial arrangement might yield national as well as commercial advantage. Collision between the diametrically opposed commercial prac­ tices of British and American fur-traders would, however, be difficult to avoid. In all of British North America lyin g outside the established colonies, from Labrador to the Rocky Mountains, the British government had sanctioned paternalism and monop­

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oly; in the Far West, American activity since the appearance of the first Yankee trader had been characterized by individual­ ism and competition. Fortunately for the Hudson’s Bay Com­ pany, no interference from British competitors need be feared, for in spite of the growing popularity of Adam Smith’s theories and the increasing British dislike of monopolistic privileges, the reorganized company had obtained in 1821, by Boyal Licence, for a period of twenty-one years, the exclusive trading rights in the region lying between Rupert’s Land and the Rocky Moun­ tains, and in addition, by parliamentary act, the sole British right to trade in the “ Indian Territory” west of the mountains. During his residence at Fort George, Governor Simpson, to his own surprise, found himself growing more and more en­ thusiastic about trade prospects in the Columbia Department. With extension of trade, and with proper management, he soon decided, the Department could be made to yield double the profit of any other part of North America. Formerly, in the days of the North West Company, New Caledonia, although supplied from the Columbia, had been merely an extension of the Athabasca Department, and the inland trade had vastly overshadowed the coastal. For the coastal trade, Fort George had served little useful purpose: the Nor’Westers, like the Yankee pedlars, were supplied with trading goods brought round the Horn, and like them, used their sailing ships as mobile bases. Simpson intended to change all this; he would integrate the inland and the coastal trade and choose a new and more central location for the Pacific depot. Convinced that “Frazers River appears to be formed by nature as the grand communication with all our Establishments on this side the mountain” , he allowed McMillan, his “ Staunch & M anly Friend and Fellow Traveller” , only eleven days’ rest before despatching him on a northern expedition. Accompanied by John Work and a party of forty men, includ­ ing Sandwich Islanders and Iroquois, M cM illan left Fort George on November 18. After portaging in “ weighty rain” most of the w ay to G ray’s Harbour, he followed the Chehalis River and again portaged to Puget Sound. Continuing along the eastern channel of the Sound to above the 4gth parallel, he entered the Nicomekl River at Boundary Bay. Ascending this 57

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stream to a portage across the black and loamy soil of Langley Prairie, he reached Salmon River, and paddling down its ser­ pentine course, entered Fraser River on December 16 near the site later to be chosen for Fort Langley. The first Europeans to reach the lower Fraser River since Simon Fraser’s exploration were impressed by its size. “ A t this place” , wrote John Work, “ it is a fine looking River at least 1000 yards wide as wide as the Columbia at Oak Point” .6 As the men ascended to Hatzic Lake, they found the country well populated with Indians who were ready to trade. Simpson had hoped that M cM illan might be able to push north to Thompson River, but winter was upon him, and he was not properly equipped for an overland journey. Turning back, he travelled quickly down the river, and on December 20 his canoes, follow­ ing the South Arm , successfully entered the Strait of Georgia from the main channel of the river. Probably because Governor Simpson sought confirmation for a preconceived intention, he read into M cM illan’s report rather too much that was favourable. He decided to move the main depot to the Fraser River. A desire to meet Russian competition on the North West Coast from a more strategic base influenced his judgment. The Russian-American Company was still very active in the north­ ern fur trade, although it was not the threat that it had been a decade or so earlier when, after considering extension of its operations to Nootka Sound and the mouth of the Columbia River, it had established its post in California. The construction of Fort Kilmaurs on Babine Lake by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1822 had helped to direct the inter-tribal commerce of the Skeena River towards the Interior, and further diversion would probably result from the proposed establishment of Chilcotin and Connolly’s Lake. But what Simpson called the “sweeping and absurd Ukase of the Russian Government” 7 had fenced in the territory and waters north of 5 1 0 North Latitude. The pointed warning given by President James Monroe against further European colonization of the North American continent had been followed, in 1824, by delimitation of Russian and American spheres of influence, with 54040' as the dividing line. The directors of the Hudson’s Bay Company in London, already

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aware in 1824 that an Anglo-Russian agreement was in the offing, purchased the brig William and Ann, hoping to he able to use her for northern coastal trading. They were not disap­ pointed; the Convention of February, 1825, established a demarcation line commencing in latitude 540 40', extending up Portland Canal to 56° North Latitude, and then running along the summit of the mountain range parallel to the Coast as far as the intersection with the 141st parallel. Across the lisiere, later known as the “Alaskan Panhandle” , British sub­ jects obtained the right of navigation and, for a period of ten years, the right to trade in coastal waters and to use the port of Sitka. W ith Fraser River as its main base, Simpson was cer­ tain that the Hudson’s Bay Company “ could with greater facil­ ity and at less expence extend our discoveries and Establish­ ments to the Northward . . .” .8 But the immediate task to be taken in hand was the selection on the north bank of the Columbia River of a new site for Fort George. Chief Factors Alexander Kennedy and John McLoughlin, sent to choose one, reported that they could find “no eligible Situation to Build on nigher the Entrance of the River” 9 than Lieutenant W . R. Broughton’s Belle Yue Point, a spot about eighty miles from the sea and near the mouth of the Willamette River. Buildings were erected there during the winter and goods transferred in the spring. Simpson intended the new tradingpost to be secondary in importance to his prospective depot on Fraser River, but when he visited the site in the course of his return voyage, he was more than pleased with its location. “ It w ill in Two Years hence be the finest place in North America” , he wrote; “ indeed I have rarely seen a Gentleman’s Seat in England possessing so many natural advantages and where ornament and use are so agreeably combined” .10 To identify British claim to the soil with Captain Vancouver’s discovery of the river and coast, Simpson decided to name it in honour of “that distinguished navigator” . Mustering the “ Gentlemen, Servants, Chiefs & Indians” , at sunrise on Saturday, March 19, 1825, he “ Baptised it by breaking a Bottle of Rum on the Flag Staff and repeating the following words in a loud voice, ‘In behalf of the Honble Hudsons Bay Coy I hereby name this Establishment Fort Vancouver God Save Bang George 59

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the 4th’ with three cheers.” In his journal he added a notation: “ Gave a couple of Drams to the people and Indians on the occasion.” The “ little emperor” , who had had so few words of praise for any of his officers, had now arrived at almost all his major decisions for revitalizing the Columbia Department’s fur trade. In the interest of retrenchment, he ordered imports to be re­ duced and attention paid to agriculture: “ It has been said that Fanning is no branch of the Fur Trade but I consider that every pursuit tending to leighten the Expence of the Trade is a Branch thereof. . . ,” u As the site for a post to replace Spokane House, he selected for Fort Col vile land near Kettle Falls “where as much Grain and potatoes may be raised as would feed all the Natives of the Columbia” .12 He revised transportation routes, and believing that the Fraser River could serve as highway from New Caledonia to the sea, he decided to abandon his earlier plan for rerouting that district’s transport through Edmonton. The Snake and Umpqua trapping expedi­ tions were reorganized. Taking the larger view of political and commercial prospects, which he felt the Council had failed to do, he proposed direct entry into the Canton trade. Finally, he invested Chief Factor John McLoughlin with wide discretionary power in making appointments and other important arrange­ ments. A temporary Council of the Northern Department which met at Norway House on June 20, 1825, gave approval to Simpson’s plans. Less than a fortnight later, the Council in full session at York Factory granted his desire to annex New Caledonia to the Columbia for purposes of supply and transport, and directed Chief Factor W illiam Connolly, in charge of the Northern District, to take the New Caledonia returns to Fort Vancouver in the spring of 1826, and there obtain the outfit.13 Presumably warned by Chief Factor John Stuart, whom he met on his return journey, that the Fraser River would have to be more carefully investigated before it was opened to transport, Simpson restored to use for the time being the North West Company’s route from the Columbia River through the Okan­ agan Valley. A fter the July meeting of the Council, he proceeded to Eng­ 60

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land to spend the winter. Even at this distance, he interested himself in the affairs of the Columbia Department, continuing to send detailed instructions to Dr. McLoughlin, his senior both in years and in experience. Relations between the two men were still warm and friendly, although their views on important matters differed. McLoughlin neither accepted his superior’s fatalistic attitude concerning the eventual surrender of territory south of the Columbia River to the Americans, nor shared his interest in establishing Fraser River; still, he was willing to comply with orders. M cLoughlin’s first attempt to establish a post at the mouth of the Fraser River in 1826 failed when “freemen” , former servants of the Company, deserted to the Saskatchewan. In 1827, as instructed, he made use of the Cadboro, a small schooner of 72 tons burden, which had been sent from England for the coasting trade. On July 12, James McM illan, recently appointed a Chief Factor, embarked at Whidbey Island with a party of twenty-five men. Three days later the Cadboro reached the mouth of the Fraser River and then for nine days searched for a channel through the sand-heads. Finally, she was able to enter the river, and continuing up-stream past the “HB Tree” which M cM illan had marked on the south bank three years earlier, anchored in deep water near the place where he had first reached the river, about thirty miles from its mouth. On July 30, a start was made at clearing the ground for Fort Langley. The work was laborious, “ from the timber being strong, and the ground completely covered with thick under­ wood, interwoven with Brambles & Briars” ,14 but by August 11 one bastion was “nearly at its height” , and by September 8, the picketing of the stockade was completed, the gates were hung, and two twelve-foot bastions were ready to be occupied by the “ artillery” . “The Tout ensemble must make a formidable enough appearance in the eyes of Indians” , M cM illan exulted. On November 26 a flagstaff was cut and erected in the fort’s southeast corner, and the usual form of baptism gone through. To celebrate the event, the men were regaled. New Year’s Day was celebrated in greater style: “Every one in high glee” , wrote McM illan, “ Jean Baptiste considerably elevated, and as a matter of course displaying his Manhood.” 61

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W hen Chief Trader Archibald McDonald arrived nine months later to take charge of the fort, he found it well fortified and its size, 135 feet by 120, impressive. A small log house of two compartments housed the “ gentlemen” , a large building of three compartments the men; a dwelling-house with “ an excel­ lent cellar and a spacious garret” was ready for wainscoting and partitioning, and another building containing two square rooms, each with a fireplace, had an adjoining kitchen. The storehouse was “furnished with three thousand dried salmon, sixteen tierces salted ditto, thirty-six cwt. flour, two cwt. grease, and thirty bushels salt” and each of three fields had been planted with thirty bushels of potatoes.15 To examine this new post, ascertain its suitability as the main Pacific depot and determine positively whether or not the Fraser River was navigable throughout its length, Simpson, now Gov­ ernor of both the Northern and Southern Departments, returned to the Columbia in 1828. On this visit, important decisions would have to be made, for the Hudson’s Bay Company’s retirement from the Columbia River was now an imminent possibility. The British and Ameri­ can governments, having failed again to reach agreement on a suitable boundary west of the mountains, had decided in 1827 to renew indefinitely the arrangement for joint occupancy, on the understanding that either nation might terminate it on a year’s notice. During the discussions, the British government, which during Canning’s time had recognized the strategic im­ portance of the Columbia River, had now seemed indifferent to its future; in contrast, the American spokesman had reflected President John Quincy Adams’s feeling that the territory now becoming known as Oregon was destined by the Law of Nature to be a field for American colonization. W ith the Americans showing more interest in the area, Simpson knew that the time had come to demonstrate, particu­ larly to the Indians, the power and might of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Display and fanfare marked his westward progress. W ith three cheers and a salute of seven guns from the garrison, he took his leave of York Factory at one o’clock in the morning of July 12. His north canoe, one of “ faultless grace and beauty” , 62

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its bow “ gaudily but tastefully painted” ,10 and its paddles ver­ milion red, carried a crew of nine, and as passenger, a young Highland piper, ready to play strathspeys at the Governor’s pleasure. In a second canoe rode Doctor Hamlyn and Chief Trader Archibald McDonald, both on their w ay to stations in the Columbia Department. Neither was particularly good com­ pany for Simpson: McDonald, he found, was “not a [James] McMillan, the former is all jaw & no work the latter all work & no jaw ” ,17 but both were useful to “watch time” so that the party might make an early morning start at two o’clock. On this express journey the voyageurs, paddling until eight o’clock in the evening and making only the briefest of stops for “ noon­ ing” , covered between 90 and 100 miles a day. From Fort Chipewyan, the expedition followed Sir Alexander Mackenzie’s route of 1793 to the source of the Peace River, arriving unexpectedly at Fort McLeod on September 11. There they found John Tod and his two men “on short commons, their fishery having been very uncertain throughout the sum­ mer” . The overland trip of only one hundred miles to Stuart Lake took five days and proved to be “ a very fatigueing part” of the journey. A t the last camp, the party entertained a hand­ ful of Carrier Indians by playing the bagpipes, the bugle and “the musical box that excited their astonishment most, especial­ ly when it was made to appear to be the Governor’s Dog that performed the whole secret” . The next morning, the men “ for the sake of the Indians” changed into their sky-blue uniforms in preparation for “ an imposing entree into the Capital of Western Caledonia” . W ithin a thousand yards of the fort, a gun was fired, the bugle sounded, and the piper commenced the march of the clans; the guide carrying the British ensign led the procession; Governor Simpson on horseback was followed by H am lyn and McDonald on their chargers, then by twenty men carrying packs, and “Mr. M cGillivray [with his wife and light infantry] closed the rear” . Under “ a brisk discharge of small arms and wall pieces from the Fort” , the Governor was greeted by James Douglas, a young clerk who had taken charge of the post during Chief Factor Connolly’s absence at Fort Vancouver. Living conditions in New Caledonia, Simpson found, were 63

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far from satisfactory. A t all the posts, fish “with an occasional treat of Berry Cake prepared by the Natives, and a Dog Feast on high Days and holydays” constituted the means of living, and McLeod’s Lake seemed to him to be “ the most wretched place in the Indian country” . Yet however miserable these condi­ tions, he recognized that they were “no wise to be compared” with those of the early part of the administration of John Stuart, the Nor’Wester. The annual profit from the district, he thought, could be increased from £9,000 to between £10,000 or £12,000, but not beyond. On September 27, the party arrived at Fort Alexandria, the end of navigation. There the men divided into two groups, Simpson with Hamlyn, McDonald and two men to travel by horseback to Kamloops, and the others, under the leadership of James M urray Yale, to descend the Fraser River to its junction with the Thompson. After “ a ride occupying Eight Days, and possessing all the agreeable and disagreeable varieties of Scenery & Road, which the most ardent admirer of the Wilds could de­ sire” , the “respectable cavalcade” , flag flying, pipes playing, and with “much firing on both sides”, was led by the indefatig­ able Governor at dusk into Fort Kamloops, that “ very un­ profitable establishment” . There a boat was hastily constructed and two days later, the party embarked “in full puff” to descend the Thompson River. A t first, the going was relatively easy; then the river banks became rugged and the rapids formidable. Most of the distance to Lytton was covered in a single day, but near Lytton, the boat was nearly swamped while running one of the rapids. “The whitened countenances of the boldest amongst us,” wrote Simp­ son, “ even that of our dark Iroquois Bowsman who is nearly amphibious, shewed that we felt any thing but comfortable: indeed there was no comfort in the whole passage of this tur­ bulent River. . . .” The Thompson River had proven unnavigable, but the Governor’s hopes began to rise at Lytton where he received an encouraging report from James M urray Yale, who had descended the Fraser River from Fort Alexandria and found that its navigation required “more confidence than Skill” . After leaving Lytton, Simpson was obliged to admit defeat: “ The banks now erected themselves into perpendicular Moun­ 64

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tains of Rock from the Waters edge, the tops enveloped in clouds, and the lower parts dismal and rugged in the extreme; the descent of the Stream very rapid, the reaches short, and at the close of many of them, the Rocks, (which at times assumed singularly grotesque & fantastic shapes and at others all the different orders of architecture on a most stupendous scale) overhanging the foaming Waters, pent up, to from 20 to 30 yds. wide, running with immense velocity and momentarily threatening to sweep us to destruction.” Extolling the “ great exertions and unwearied perseverence” of Fraser and Stuart, Simpson regretfully concluded that “ Frazers River, can no longer be thought of as a practicable communication with the interior; it was never wholly passed by water before, and in all probability never w ill again. . . . I shall therefore no longer talk of it as a navigable stream, altho’ for years past I had flattered myself with the idea, that the loss of the Columbia would in reality be of very little consequence to the Honble. Coys, interests on this side the Continent; but to which I now, with much concern find, it would be ruinous, unless we can fall upon some other practicable route.” Ry the time he reached Langley, the Columbia River had taken on new significance as arterial highway to the In­ terior, as provisioning centre and as window on the Pacific. Fort Langley, instead of becoming the major depot on the Pacific, would have to be relegated to the position of a mere coastal establishment. Instead of returning to Kamloops to travel the Okanagan Valley route to Fort Okanogan, as he had intended, Governor Simpson proceeded direct by boat to Fort Vancouver. There he found that much progress had been made since his first visit and that Dr. McLoughlin had zealously carried out his orders. The post had a herd of over 150 cattle, and its farm lands pro­ duced good crops of corn, wheat, barley, peas, oats and potatoes. The small staff of twenty men, about half the size of the North West Company’s original complement at Fort George, had built a flour-mill and a sawmill and had constructed two small vessels. A t Fort Vancouver, Simpson turned his attention to the coastal trade, but not before he had received a full briefing on all the obstacles impeding its development. During the last

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phase of the W ar of 1812, the British blockade of American ports had reduced the number of Yankee pedlars visiting the North West Coast. Now they were back in greater force and doing a lively commerce in the ports of South America, Cali­ fornia, the Sandwich Islands, the Dutch East Indies and Russian Alaska. In the Canton trade, they were more strongly en­ trenched than ever before; in addition to supplying the fur mart, they were importing sandalwood from the Sandwich Islands. Every season they plied the waters north of the Colum­ bia River looking for the now scarce sea otter and picking up quantities of land furs, for despite the provisions of the RussoAmerican agreement of 1824, they were trafficking with the Indians in arms, ammunition and liquor. Their scarlet blankets and other trading goods often excelled British manufactures in appeal, and since they made high profits from freighting and exchanging cheap goods for luxury articles on voyages that lasted three years, they could afford to reduce their tariff. Im­ porting its trading goods directly from England, and having only furs to carry back, the Hudson’s Bay Company had much higher costs, and nothing but a monopoly of the fur trade would make its operations profitable. Rather than abandon the field, it adopted delaying tactics, meeting American competition at American prices, even though, as Archibald McDonald com­ plained: “ 1000 Blkts: w ill only draw 1000 Beaver in these days” .18 In the interval between Governor Simpson’s two visits in 1824 and 1828, the Company had endeavoured to secure per­ mission from the East India Company to trade directly with Canton. Neither this attempt nor the endeavour to open other Asian markets had succeeded, and after 1828 all shipments of furs were directed to London. W ith prices on the London market rising, Simpson was no longer greatly concerned about these failures, but he was determined to do what he could to liberate the coastal trade in land furs from the American grip and to make a bid for the supply trade with the northern Rus­ sian posts. M cLoughlin’s efforts along these lines had been frustrated by shortage of supplies, lack of shipping, and the indifference or the insubordination of the captains of the Company’s supply 66

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ships. In what was supposed to be a reconnaissance cruise of the northern seacoast in 1825, the captain of the William and Ann had spared himself the trouble of obtaining the informa­ tion which the Hudson’s Bay Company needed, but he had, on his return, relayed from a friendly American sea captain a report which led McLoughlin to conclude that Nass River was the great centre of the trade in land furs. Although this fact was still not substantiated, Simpson hoped that the Nass River might offer a new route from the seacoast to New Caledonia, and impelled by his desire to maintain monopoly rights on the North West Coast, made plans to build a post there. To the Governor of the Russian-American Company at Sitka, he sent notice of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s entry into the coastal trade and an offer to provision the Russian posts at low prices with imported English goods and agricultural produce from Fort Vancouver. This overture, intended as in­ vitation to joint effort against the American traders, was not taken up by the Russians, and the Hudson’s Bay Company was then left to devise its own methods for meeting American com­ petition. During his winter at Fort Vancouver, Simpson, with the ad­ vice and co-operation of McLoughlin, worked out the details of the Company’s new policy. To put this on a proper basis, he reported to the Governor and Committee, more ships were needed; to keep these ships fully employed, the Company could use them during “ the dead season” to carry salmon to California and lumber to the Sandwich Islands. McLoughlin soon ceased to share the Governor’s enthusiasm for trading-vessels: his ex­ perience during the next few years convinced him that the coastal trade could best be developed by trading establishments. On parting, neither man knew that for the next eight years the Chief Factor, this “ very bustling active man” ,19 would have no opportunity for direct consultation with the higher officers of the Company, and that Governor Simpson himself would be unable to return to the Columbia Department until 1841. U n­ aware of the measure of independence he would attain, M c­ Loughlin was left with the responsibility of organizing the new branch of the Company’s trade. A t first, his plans went awry. In March, 1829, almost on the 67

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eve of Governor Simpson’s departure, the inward-bound supplyship, William and Ann, which Simpson had decided to sub­ stitute in the coastal trade for the small and vulnerable Cadboro, was wrecked on the bar of the Columbia River, and her crew and cargo were lost. In 1830, the Columbia bar took another toll: the supply ship Isabella. Finally, in 1831, Lieutenant Aemilius Simpson, R.N., went north in the Cadboro, and with the assistance of Peter Skene Ogden, founded Fort Simpson. The location proved difficult of access for sailing-vessels, and three years later the post was moved from the Nass River to the present Port Simpson on the Tsimpsean Peninsula. In 1833, McLoughlin added two new posts along the seacoast: Fort McLoughlin on Milbanke Sound near Bella Bella, and a southern shipping and provisioning depot, Fort Nisqually, at the end of Puget Sound near the Cowlitz River route to Fort Vancouver. The site for a third post, one on the Stikine River beyond Russia’s territorial ten-mile limit, was selected, but when Ogden went north in the Dryad in the spring of 1834, he found the Russians blocking the river with a gunboat under the pro­ tection of a fort which they had constructed during the previous winter. “ I trust John Bull w ill answer these hairy beasts in their own w ay— and see justice done to the loyal and dutiful subjects of his Britanic majesty” , -wrote one indignant furtrader.20 On receiving M cLoughlin’s estimate of £22,150 for loss of business, the Hudson’s Bay Company, using tactics reminis­ cent of those of John Meares, pressed for compensation and enlisted the services of the Foreign Office. This diplomatic sup­ port proved useful in preparing the w ay for the advantageous agreement made in 1839 with the Russian-American Company. As Superintendent of the Columbia Department, McLoughlin introduced his own improvisations into the Company’s policies. When Lieutenant Simpson died soon after founding the post on the Nass River, the Chief Factor abolished the office of Marine Superintendent which Governor Simpson had created, and turned over to Ogden the management of the post and its marine trade. In 1832, when the schooner Vancouver ran ashore and was severely damaged, McLoughlin sent Chief Factor Dun­ can Finlayson to Honolulu to procure another ship, using in part the credits built up by the Company’s export trade. When 68

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Finlayson purchased the American brig Lama and engaged her commander, Captain W . H. McNeill, a Bostonian with experi­ ence in the American interloping trade, McLoughlin approved Finlayson’s action. To meet American competition, he per­ mitted, in violation of the Company’s rules and of international agreement, sales of arms, ammunition and liquor to the Indians. The strategy of matching American prices, or undercutting them, he took for granted. To one decision which was made for him, he took violent exception. In what he must have regarded later as an illconsidered proposal, he had suggested in 1827 that a steamboat be sent to the Pacific Coast. The idea appealed to Simpson: in August, 1832, he pointed out to the Governor and Committee that a steam vessel “would afford us incalculable advantages over the Americans, as we could look into every Creek and cove while they were confined to a harbour by head winds and calms . . . a Steam Vessel would, in our opinion, bring the contest to a close very soon, by making us masters of the trade” .21 Two years later, the Governor and Committee acted on this suggestion and placed the order for construction of a paddle-wheel steamer of two engines, each of 35 horsepower. The Beaver, in the company of the new barque Columbia, supply ship for the Columbia Department, left Gravesend in August, 1835, to sail round Cape Horn to the Sandwich Islands and on to Fort Vancouver to be fitted as a steamer. On June 18, 1836, the pioneer steamboat on the Pacific Coast left the depot, never, because of the dangerous Columbia bar, to return. Even before he saw her, McLoughlin was convinced that she was an expensive luxury; his suspicion was increased when on her first trading cruise to Fort McLoughlin and Fort Simpson she took along a crew of 31, including four stokers and thirteen woodcutters, finding use for the services of all as she voraciously consumed 26 cords of wood every three or four days.22 But although he would not admit it, the ugly little tramp with her high protective sides, her single black funnel and her sidewheels, proved her worth by skilfully negotiating narrow chan­ nels, establishing on her first cruise the truth of Indian reports of coal deposits at the northern end of Vancouver Island, and greatly impressing the natives, who thought that “ she could do 69

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any thing but speak; and the white man must have been assisted in the work by the Great Spirit” .23 In addition to issuing instructions to the captain of the Beaver, McLoughlin directed the work of the six large vessels which the Company employed in the coastal trade in 1836. Already there were indications that his competitive trading policies were successful and that not for long would his traders stand helplessly by, as they had at the close of the season of 1835, watching an American sea captain debase prices by selling “a swivil gun for a beaver; a ship’s cooking Camboose [stove] half worn for 2; a Metal Scabbard Sabre for 1; a 30 gall: cask of Molasses pure for 3 beaver; a 30 gall: cask of rice for 5; a 100 lb. Cask of fine bread for 3; an 18 gall: cask of Malaga wine for 3; an 18 gall: cask of brandy for 3 . . .” and paying four dollars and four yards of fine calico each for a number of beaver peltries.24 The combination of permanent coastal trading-centres and good shipping was increasing the flow of returns, and each year the Company’s supply ships re­ turned to England with larger cargoes of furs. Outwitting American traders, as McLoughlin could appreci­ ate, provided the men engaged in the coastal trade with plenty of diversion during the summer months; the winter occupations of the two or three “ gentlemen” and the half-dozen French Canadians and half-breeds stationed permanently at the north­ ern posts were less absorbing. During these months, their duties were light, and almost nothing happened to give any day par­ ticular interest. The climate was dismal; day after day, the fog drifted in; for weeks on end torrential rain fell from leaden skies, and when the sun broke through, the only recreation was strolling on the rocky beach or on the trails cut through the deep forest. Young W illiam Fraser Tolmie, graduate in medi­ cine from Glasgow University, did his best to keep his spirits up by reading and re-reading the little stock of books on hand at Fort McLoughlin, but after a year of the life, he noted in his diary: “ Since coming here what most frequently has been a matter of cogitation, is the dullness of this place & of life in the ‘Pays Sauvage’ in general” .25 To these lonely men, longing for news, former associates wrote long letters. McLoughlin also wrote to them; but at Fort 70

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Vancouver, he was more than busy with his correspondence with higher officials and with other subordinates. For in addi­ tion to supervising the coastal trade, he kept careful watch over the multifarious activities in the immense Columbia Department and over the affairs of N ew Caledonia. This district, for purposes of administration, finance and supply, had been attached to the Columbia Department, and McLoughlin shared with its Chief Factor responsibility for the efficient functioning of its transport system. Simpson’s predic­ tion that the trade could not be too greatly expanded turned out to be true. For many years it returned profits of £10,000, but with each passing year the Indians brought in fewer beaver. The most noticeable decline was at Fort Kamloops, where as early as 1827, Archibald McDonald reported that “ a person can walk for days together without seeing the smallest quad­ ruped, the little brown squirrel excepted” ,26 and in 1844 John Tod lamented, “There appears to be no longer any prospect of either profit or pleasure here.”27 But as a divisional point on the great interior brigade route, this post, as Simpson had noted, was worth retaining, and its importance as a stock-raising centre became yearly more evident. The brigade route blazed in the spring of 1826 through the Okanagan Valley to Fort Kamloops and north to Alexandria was still in use, no shorter route having been discovered from the northern seacoast. Fort Alexandria, its most northerly trans­ fer point, was the paradise of New Caledonia. The post was situated in lightly wooded, rolling country where there was shooting and fishing and where good crops of grain and vege­ tables could be grown if the frosts did not come too early. Here, to reduce dependence on Fort Colvile, Peter Skene Ogden built the first flour-mill in British Columbia. Farther north, at Fort George, at the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser Rivers, there were cattle, but the grain crops were poor and the hope that “Pancakes and hot rolls were . . . to be the order of the day: Babine salmon and dog’s flesh were to be sent— ‘to Coventry’ ” ,28 failed to materialize. Conditions at Fort McLeod remained almost unchanged: “A more dreary situation can scarcely be imagined”, wrote one furtrader, “ surrounded by towering mountains that almost exclude 71

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the light of day, and snow storms not seldom occurring, so vio­ lent and long continued as to bury the establishment.” 29 John Tod, left to languish here for nine years through incurring Governor Simpson’s displeasure, lost facility in the use of his own language, and returned to York Factory speaking “a lin­ guistic ‘stew’, made of bits of Scotch, French and Indian dialects, thickened with what seemed to be English.” 30 Everywhere in New Caledonia, except at Fort Alexandria, there was “ the same miserable solitude” and little to do but read and re-read the few books and the occasional English periodical that came to hand. But sometimes life was brightened, as it was in 1833 at Fort St. James, when Chief Factor Peter W arren Dease, soon to become famous for Arctic exploration, wintered there and arranged “musical Soirees” . During that winter there was also chess, backgammon, whist and spinning of yarns about “ dog racing, canoe sailing, and Vamour; sometimes politics; now and then an animated discussion on theology, but without bitterness . . . ” ,31 as well as a feast given by the great chief of the Carriers, Kwah, at which the main dishes were roasted bear, beaver and marmot; berries mixed with rancid salmon oil; and fish roe that had been buried underground a twelvemonth. Peter Skene Ogden, veteran of the five great Snake River trapping expeditions and inaugurator of the coastal trade, came to reside at Fort St. James in 1833 on his promotion to Chief Factor in charge of New Caledonia. This man, whose reliability was unquestioned, had earned the right to lighter duty. His long and harrowing years in the fur trade had sobered him, although he still enjoyed playing practical jokes. Tw enty years earlier, as a young Nor’Wester, he had been known as “the humorous, honest, eccentric, law-defying Peter Ogden, the terror of Indians, and the delight of all gay fellows” ;32 now he was “ a vigilant guardian of his corporation’s interests” .33 Each year Ogden led the brigade to Fort Vancouver. From Stuart Lake, he travelled with the canoes to Fort George on the upper Fraser, picked up the furs, and proceeded down the Fraser River to Fort Alexandria. There his pack-horses, each carrying two “ pieces” of 84 pounds, started out for Fort Kam­ loops, sometimes accompanying and sometimes following the 72

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brigade from that district to Fort Okanogan. A t Fort Okanogan there was a general rendezvous of the New Caledonia, Thomp­ son River and Fort Colvile brigades; then, under the charge of a senior officer who knew the dangerous rapids, the united brigade made the hazardous boat run to Fort Vancouver, arriv­ ing about June 15. A fter spending a month collecting supplies, Ogden began the twenty-day return trip by boat to Fort Okanogan. From there the Fort Kamloops and the New Caledonia outfits started over­ land, every horse of the 200 or 300 in the train “ in his full beauty of form and color, and all so tractable” .34 A t Fort A lex­ andria, supplies were packaged for each northern post, and Ogden’s canoe brigade started the twenty-day trip north to Fort St. James. From there, the “ goods in” were distributed by “large and small canoes, Horses, Dog Sleds and M en’s Backs” .35 In spite of all his efforts, Ogden could not make his posts selfsupporting, and each year he packed in provisions and urged attention to the fishery. But if diversification failed in New Caledonia, the same was not true at Fort Langley. There, from the moment of his arrival, Archibald McDonald had realized the value of the salmon fishery and had seen the possibilities of developing an export trade. Fish were so abundant that they could be obtained from the Indians for “ Vermilion, Rings and other Trifles” 36 and the cooper brought from England found ample resources for manufacturing barrel-staves. But salt had to be imported, and it took much experimentation to find a method of preservation which assured that the fish arrived in foreign markets in good condition. Shipments to England were disappointingly unsuccessful; but salted salmon carried well as far as the Sandwich Islands, and there a growing market developed. The value of its fishery, both for provisioning the Company’s posts and expanding its export trade, saved Fort Langley. More suitable sites for a coastal depot on Whidbey Island and on Lulu Island were considered, but to preserve the salmon trade, Dr. McLoughlin urged the retention of Langley. The Company’s desire for a Pacific depot that would be more accessible to sea-going ships also threatened the abandonment of M cLoughlin’s beloved Fort Vancouver. To him, there could 73

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be no location more suitable for “ the grand mart” and as base for the interior trade, and no situation more beautiful. His pride was often echoed by visitors, particularly by those who arrived in the spring. On the edge of the “ noble woods” , they found masses of tall lupins and camas lilies, and in the farm gardens “ young apples . . . in rich blossom & extensive beds sowed with culinary vegetables . . . laid out in nice order” .87 But to Governor Simpson, Fort Vancouver was objectionable on account of the dangers of the Columbia bar; and to Directors of the Company, reports of outbreaks of intermittent fever in­ dicated that the site was unhealthy. In the summer of 1837, Captain W . H. McNeill, acting on instructions, examined the coast and the islands inside the Strait of Juan de Fuca for a new site. His report on Victoria harbour impressed James Douglas: “ I am persuaded that no part of this sterile & Rock bound Coast w ill be found better adapted for the site of the proposed Depot or to combine, in a higher degree, the desired requisites, of a secure harbour accessible to shipping at every season, of good pasture, and, to a certain extent, of improvable tillage lands” .38 Fort Adelaide was the name first chosen by the Governor and Committee for the proposed depot, but con­ struction was apparently delayed until after consultation with Dr. McLoughlin. Summoned to London to give a fuller report on the difficulties experienced with the Russians on the Stikine River, McLoughlin left Fort Vancouver in March, 1838, turning over to Douglas, soon to be promoted to Chief Factor, responsibility for the man­ agement of Fort Vancouver, and of the lower Columbia estab­ lishments and the coastal trade. For too long, both for the Company’s sake and his own, M c­ Loughlin had been out of touch with its officers. The East India Company had already lost its privileges in the China trade, and both in England and in Lower Canada feeling was mounting against the other great monopoly. Before antagonism became too apparent, the Hudson’s Bay Company pressed the British government to extend its licence of exclusive trade in the “ In­ dian Territory” for another period of twenty-one years. Simp­ son’s report contrasting “ the happiness that was every where felt” with the “drunkenness, murder and general demoraliza­ 74

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tion which had formerly existed” ,39 helped it to achieve its purpose. In his relations with retired Company servants who wanted to turn to farming, and with American trappers, hunters and settlers, McLoughlin had already displayed a humanitarianism difficult to reconcile with the philosophy of the Company. Simp­ son had come to the conclusion that he “would be a Radical in any Country under any Government and under any circum­ stances” .40 Visitors to Fort Vancouver were struck by the fact that he was “ an able politician”, craving information about “the political intelligence of Europe”,41 and expressing an interest in popular government. Meeting his old friend John Tod at Norway House in the course of his journey to Montreal, McLoughlin “talked incessantly all the while on the late events of Canada” , and made no secret of the fact that “he was stren­ uous in support of that arch rebel Peppeneau & his party” .42 Such a sentiment would hardly find favour with the authori­ tarian and autocratic Simpson, whose support of the Crown at the time of “ the troubles” helped him to earn the knighthood which he received in 1841. McLoughlin, with his lively interest in current affairs, un­ doubtedly noted during his brief stay in New York en route to London the effects of the Panic of 1837, which had not yet sub­ sided. In 1838, American newspapers were reporting farm prices depressed and western land values low, and, echoing the clamour of the restless frontiersmen, they were agitating for free land grants in Oregon, already considered by many nation­ alists to be American territory. For some years now, returning American missionaries and journalists had been publicizing the Eden of the West, and a Missourian, Senator Linn, had already introduced into Congress a bill to organize Oregon as an Ameri­ can territory. In London and in Paris, McLoughlin could find another por­ tent: the trend in men’s fashions was changing. The beaver felt hat, popular with members of polite society since the days of Charles II, was yielding favour to the Florentine silk topper. If the fashion caught on, the Company of Adventurers Trading into Hudson’s Bay would find their sales of beaver skins consid­ erably diminished. 75

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The business which brought McLoughlin to London was soon resolved. Negotiations at St. Petersburg had already been con­ ducted at a high level; in the spring of 1839 they were brought to a successful conclusion at a private meeting in Hamburg between Governor Simpson and Baron Ferdinand W rangell of the Russian-American Company. W hen the English company dropped its claim for indemnity in the Dryad affair, the Russian American Company consented to lease its coastal strip south of Mount Fairweather and to transfer its post at the mouth of the Stikine River to the Hudson’s Bay Company. For its part, the Hudson’s Bay Company undertook to provide the Russian posts with supplies of food, thus ending their dependence on Ameri­ can sources and on their California post. Now the two great monopolies would work hand in hand; at last the Americans would be driven from the North West Coast. But the price of victory on the seacoast was the expansion of farming and the introduction of settlement inland. To fill its Russian contract, the Hudson’s Bay Company, modifying an earlier suggestion of Dr. McLoughlin, established a subsidiary organization, the Puget’s Sound Agricultural Company, to un­ dertake large-scale farming operations at Fort Nisqually and in the nearby Cowlitz Valley. Old fur-traders saw the writing on the wall; the problems of the “ Mutton company” and of retired Company servants brought in from Red River to found a colony north of the Columbia and to engage in farming, evoked none of their sympathy. “ Do not . . . m y friend suppose that I am myself Smitten with this colonization mania of ours” , wrote Archibald McDonald. “ That a large population may in course of time Spring up over that country I do not at all doubt, but with one eye one can see the motley crew of which it must necessarily be composed: it w ill be of every cast and hue into which the naturalist has subdivided the three primary branches that first peopled mother earth” .43 Plunging into a welter of business arrangements on his return in October, 1839, “ the old Doctor” , whose equanimity was now easily upset and temper quickly aroused, tackled them with less order and energy than Simpson, who was bent on efficiency, expected. Late in the year, McLoughlin took a brief look at Victoria harbour, but dismissed it as unsuitable as a site 76

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for a depot. In the spring of 1840, he sent Douglas north to take over the Stikine post and to build Fort Taku in Alaska. In December, he sent him to California to trade and to buy live­ stock. From this trip, Douglas returned to advise purchase of property for a mercantile establishment at Yerba Buena in the port of San Francisco, and the Chief Factor, interested in developing a trade in hides and tallow, although he knew that Simpson was on his w ay to Fort Vancouver and could soon be consulted in the matter, took the fateful step of completing the purchase. “ W ith a dashing train of Knights and squires of various dignus” ,44 Sir George, as he had recently become, arrived at Fort Vancouver on August 25. There Douglas received him, “ Mr. McLaughlin, the gentleman in charge” , as Simpson put it, “being absent at Puget Sound” .45 The Governor rested only a week; then he was off to inspect the new Company farms in the Olympic Peninsula and the northern coastal posts. The Beaver picked him up at Fort Nisqually. As he sailed across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, he found the scenery delightful, and noted that the southern tip of Vancouver Island was “well adapted for colonization; for in addition to a tolerable soil and a moderate climate, it possesses excellent harbours and abund­ ance of timber. It w ill doubtless become, in time, the most valuable section of the whole coast above California” .46 His brief stay in the north confirmed his expectations: the Americans had been driven from the coastal trade, and retrench­ ment was possible. Abruptly, and without consulting McLough­ lin, he reversed the policy which the Chief Factor had developed over a period of fifteen years. A ll the northern posts except a supply depot at Fort Simpson were to be closed: the Beaver would do their work. On this, his last inspection trip to the Columbia Department, Sir George was on a journey round the world, and had little time to spare. “ I m ay remark that he at least forms an excep­ tion from the general rule ‘that great bodies move slow’ ” , commented John Tod.47 But before he started across Siberia, Simpson wanted to see his whole Pacific empire, stretching from Alaska in the north to the ports of San Francisco and Honolulu in the south. In other parts of his dominions his problems were 77

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harassing: the opposition of Quebec merchants to any extension of the term of the Company’s trading rights was arousing a Canadian protest, and as the rebellions of 1837 had indicated, Canadians were only too anxious to reject entrenched economic or political privilege. The presence of free-traders in the Red River valley was also an increasing embarrassment and warn­ ing that American enterprise would not be contained by polit­ ical boundaries. On the Pacific slope, the problems were unique and even more complex. Twice before, companies operating on what was almost a continental scale had attempted to unite the land and the marine trade. Astor’s effort had been doomed to failure by the inade­ quate equipment of his Pacific base with personnel, supplies and trading goods. The North West Company had been brought close to disaster by extravagance, competition inland, lack of coastal bases and inability to trade directly with Canton. It was too soon for Simpson to tell if he had made the wrong decisions in adopting policies of stringent economy and reduction of per­ sonnel, of expanded capital investment in shipping and in coastal establishments, and of diversification of operations. Was it possible that the Hudson’s Bay Company had relied too heavily on the Foreign Office for support of its economic posi­ tion in the zone between 54°4o' and 42°, and that it had not made a sufficiently great effort to maintain for itself a position of strength in the Columbia basin? Now that American settlers, “the swarm of American adventurers and vagarants” ,48 as Archi­ bald McDonald disparagingly called them, were establishing themselves in the Willamette V alley and south of W alla W alla, would Oregon, as Simpson feared California was likely to, become another Texas? If the new British colony in the Cowlitz Valley, north of the Columbia, was not strong enough to main­ tain a British claim to the ports of Puget Sound, would it be wise to strengthen the foothold north of the Strait of Juan de Fuca? W ith time at a premium, it was more than irritating to “His Excellency” , Govemor-in-Chief of all the Hudson’s Bay Terri­ tories in North America, that following his inspection of the settlement in the Willamette Valley, he should have been detained three weeks in crossing the Columbia bar. He exper­ ienced further annoyance in California, where the authorities 78

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proved to be far less willing to permit free entry of goods into their ports than Douglas had led McLoughlin to believe. By the time Sir George reached Honolulu to visit the Company’s agency and to hold his final consultations with McLoughlin, who had accompanied him to the Hawaiian Islands, he was in no mood for argument. Dr. M cLoughlin’s unwillingness to accept his decision to close the northern seacoast establishments Simpson found exas­ perating; the endless denials of mismanagement of coastal and shipping policies, tiresome; the attempt to justify the reckless expenditure of money for property in California, reprehensible. Then, a few months later, occurred the tragedy which made their reconciliation impossible. In April, 1842, John McLoughlin, junior, a reckless and unreliable young man who, because of adjustments in staff made by Simpson, had been left in charge of Fort Stikine, was murdered. The Governor returned from Honolulu just in time to send the first report of his death to the Chief Factor: M cLoughlin’s son had fallen “in a drunken fray, by the hand of one of his own men” ; Simpson himself had apprehended the suspected murderer and turned him over to the Russian author­ ities; in his opinion the verdict could only be “ Justifiable Homicide” .49 The old Doctor never forgave Simpson this callousness. Worse, to the Company itself he transferred a growing resentment soon to develop into almost an antipathy. He was wounded by the London Committee’s criticism of his extension of credits to impoverished American settlers and by probes into the purpose and nature of his investments at Oregon City. His attention occupied by fast-moving events: the migration of Red River settlers to the Cowlitz Valley; the visit of Commodore Charles Wilkes and his squadron of five American ships; the arrival of new “Labourers in the Vineyard” , including “ another swarm of Jesuites, now as thick as blackberries” ;50 the appearance of more American settlers, considered by Archibald McDonald to be “ Senator Linn’s military colonists” , he was unable to fore­ stall the establishment of an American provisional government south of the Columbia. His son-in-law’s suicide in 1845 at Yerba Buena, which, defiantly, McLoughlin had refused to close, he 79

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attributed to the Company’s niggardly support of the California post. In addition to all these personal griefs and disappointments, the “ Great White-Headed Eagle” had been required to carry out instructions for which he had no liking. The northern posts which he had established had now to be dismantled, and the new southern depot built. In the summer of 1842, Chief Factor James Douglas, McLoughlin’s assistant at Fort Vancouver, had chosen the port of Camosack on the southern tip of Vancouver Island for the new post. “ The place itself appears a perfect ‘Eden’, in the midst of the dreary wilderness of the North west coast” , wrote Douglas, “ and so different is its general aspect, from the wooded, rugged regions around, that one might be pardoned for supposing it had dropped from the clouds into its present position” .51 On March 13, 1843, he arrived in the Beaver off Clover Point to select the precise site. A few weeks later, the Council of the Northern Department decided to name what was intended to be a large new depot in honour of Queen Victoria. Under the pressure of conflicting national interests, Fort Langley, a lower Fraser valley outpost, and Victoria, an island seaport, had, quite suddenly, acquired strategic and commercial importance. Only twenty-two years before, when the Hudson’s Bay Company had absorbed the property and personnel of the North West Company, New Caledonia, the fur-trading district lying north of Fort Alexandria, had been its richest territory west of the mountains, and the solution of N ew Caledonia’s transport problem had been the Company’s most immediate concern in the Far West. W ithin a decade, this district had become subordinate to the Columbia Department, a huge terri­ tory comprising the present states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and parts of Montana, Utah and southern British Colum­ bia. In this area, the Company for long maintained its hold by monopolizing the sale of European goods to the Indians, provid­ ing the only market for their furs, and making the Snake, and to a lesser extent, the Sacramento Valley, fur deserts. Yet despite its experience and ingenuity, the great Bay com­ pany had been unable to prevent extension of the American economic frontier. American hunters, trappers and settlers 80

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knew that their government had inherited Spanish claims in the Pacific Northwest, and that the British government had recog­ nized their right to trade west of the mountains. So they had moved into the fur preserve. The Hudson’s Bay Company first found itself losing its “ freemen” to the employ of fur-traders from St. Louis, and then assisting starving American squatters by extension of credit and purchase of crops. Finally, it was unable to discourage the fervour and enthusiasm of American missionaries, come to found in Oregon a New Jerusalem. By the early 40’s, wagon-loads of immigrants from Iowa and Mis­ souri were moving slowly over the long trail to the Columbia. From the North West Company, the Hudson’s Bay Company had inherited a partly navigable, partly overland, transporta­ tion route to the northern interior; an oceanic supply route; and a maritime trade centred in northern islands and deep inlets. To protect all of these, it had reduced competition on the seacoast to the minimum. To maintain them all profitably, it had diversified its operations. But the emphasis in this diversi­ fication had been on agriculture. Throughout the whole period, the eyes of the Bay men had remained fixed on London, their traditional mart. Trans-Pacific trade to Canton had not been established; and neither the Cali­ fornia nor the Hawaiian market had been greatly expanded. A ll the time, American pedlars had been busy shuttling from Pacific port to Pacific port, laying the foundations for steppingstones to the Orient and preparing to open a new and undevel­ oped market in Japan. Now whole areas were denuded of beaver and marten, and London could no longer pay the old prices. Chief Factors and Chief Traders noticed the difference when they received thenshare of the annual dividends. Times were changing, as one discerning Chief Factor noted in a letter to a friend: “ Something must be wrong in the state of Denmark, or else the Fur Trade is d-m -d fallen never to rise again & to mend the matter it would appear that master Jonathan is likely to have a fine Slice from us, if they get the line of 49 our Columbia is dished, what then w ill become of all the great doings of late years on that side the Mountains” .62

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1

o t h e e n d of his life, James Douglas’s best memories were of his young manhood spent in the fur trade. In those years he had known danger, privation and want, but he had loved the glamour and the romance. A t moments he had experienced physical and spiritual exaltation. One of these occasions he recalled as an old man, when in 1869, on the anniversary of the date fixed for the departure of the annual express from Fort Vancouver to York Factory, he wrote: “A day highly suggestive of the past, of fresh scenes, of peril­ ous travel of fatigues, excitement and of adventures by moun­ tain and flood; the retrospect is full of charms; images of the morning breezes, the bright sky, the glowing sunrise, the rush­ ing waters, the roaring cataract— the dark forest, the flowery plains, the impressive mountains in their pure white covering of snow, rise before me, at this moment, as vividly as ever and old as I am, m y heart bounds at the bare recollection of scenes

T

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I loved so well . . . I can recall nothing more delightful than our bivouac on a clear moonlight M ay night, near the Punch Bowls— the highest point of the Jasper Pass. The atmosphere was bright, sharp and bracing, the sun set in gorgeous splen­ dour, bringing out the towering peaks and fantastic pin[n]acles dressed in purest white, into bold relief. Our camp was laid and our fire built, on the firm hard snow which was about 20 feet deep. As the daylight faded away, and the shades of night gathered over the Pass, a milder light shot up from behind the nearest Peak, with gradu[a]lly encreasing brilliancy until at last the full orbed moon rose in silent majesty from the mass of mountains shedding a mild radiance over the whole valley beneath” .1 The train of events starting in 1843 brought Douglas new experiences and much distinction, but probably never again did he respond to life with such joyous spontaneity. In the spring of 1843, James Douglas was approaching his fortieth birthday. For twenty-four years he had been in the fur trade, and all that time he had been the conscientious ser­ vant of his employers. W hen other Chief Factors, discouraged about the future of the fur trade, began to resign “ with the utmost haste”— “ guided, no doubt,” said John Tod, “ by the same instinct that teaches rats to leave a falling house”— 2 Douglas remained loyal to the Hudson’s Bay Company. In this period of reorganization and readjustment of opera­ tions in the Columbia Department, the Company had need of his services. Long ago, the “ firmness of mind and . . . sound judgement” of this “ stout powerful active man of good conduct and respectable abilities” 3 had attracted Simpson’s attention; his record for assiduous effort and effective management had now been established. His industry, his integrity, and “ the sobriety of [his] conduct” ,4 as well as his training under Dr. McLoughlin, fitted him for greater responsibility. During the next few years, when so much was at stake, Douglas, never one to talk about his origins or his private affairs, kept his own counsel, and put on the mask of detachment and reserve which he wore until his death. From the moment of his selection of the site of Fort Victoria, Douglas’s fate was to be linked with the development of Van­ couver Island. On his w ay north to Fort Taku and Fort 84

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McLoughlin in March, 1843, he left behind him a small force to start construction of Fort Victoria. By June 1, he was hack with the men and the stores from the northern posts. Under his supervision, the work proceeded quickly. The men had only a few primitive tools: saws, chisels and Canadian axes, but Doug­ las had constructed Fort Connolly on Bear Lake with no better equipment, and he considered that they were adequately sup­ plied. It was a summer of perfect weather; hardly a drop of rain fell between June and November; after the gloom of the northern posts, Vancouver Island must have seemed, as Sir George Simpson remarked, “ a very Elysium in point of climate & scenery” .6 By October, the workmen had enclosed a quadrangle, 330 feet by 300, with eighteen-foot-high cedar pickets; and in addition to building an octangular bastion of three storeys, mounted with “Blunderbusses, muskets &c” 6 they had constructed two dwell­ ing-houses and a large storehouse. The buildings were so well advanced that Douglas left to return to Fort Vancouver. Work continued on a main hall and an officers’ house, and a few of the men began to fashion crude ploughs and harrows out of oak, using iron hoops from provision casks to edge the moulds. The Beaver brought horses and wild Spanish cattle from Fort Nisqually, and horse traces were made from “old rope got from the coasting vessels” .7 In December, five acres of land were seeded to wheat. To mark the first Christmas D ay at Fort Victoria, there was “ a splendid dinner . . . which went off with great eclat” ,8 and rockets were fired from the Cadboro, which, with the Beaver, was in the harbour. From Fort Langley, James M urray Yale grumbled that the new depot interfered with his trade, but Chief Trader Charles Ross, in charge of Fort Victoria, was worried that fur-trade pros­ pects on Vancouver Island were not brighter. In the first year of operations, he reported to Sir George Simpson, only 400 beaver and land-otter skins had been collected.9 Sir George was not particularly concerned: the presence of a great number of American whalers on the coast that season seemed to presage the opening of a new provisioning trade, and he considered the post well located for the fishing industry and for the Sitka trade. But when Douglas returned to the Columbia, he discovered,

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to his consternation, that dramatic events had taken place in Oregon during his absence. Desiring the protection of their own laws, American settlers in the Willamette Valley had organized a provisional government at Champoeg on M ay 2, and at a later meeting in July, had adopted Organic Laws and Articles and framed land laws. In the autumn, “The Great Immigration” brought 875 new settlers. “You will hear of the rush of emigra­ tion from the U.S. to Oregon, upwards of 700 persons, including women and children, arrived here last autumn with their waggons, horses and cattle” , Douglas wrote to his friend, Chief Factor Charles Ross. “A much greater number is expected this year, so that the country w ill soon be overrun with— people of a class, hostile to British interests. W hat is our Government about? when w ill the boundary be settled, it must be soon, if we wish to keep the Columbia” .10 In 1844, the engulfing tide of 1,400 new settlers and the northward extension of the provis­ ional government’s authority created an alarming situation for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Both McLoughlin and Douglas were convinced that only by making concessions could the Company carry on normal opera­ tions until the sovereignty of the area was defined. Hoping that co-operation might put an end to charges that the Company was inciting Indians to hostile actions against American farmers and that it was collecting gouging profits at its stores, they decided to recognize the jurisdiction of the provisional government and to permit it to collect taxes on the Company’s business with local settlers. From Lachine, Governor Sir George Simpson anxiously watched developments in Oregon. He had returned from his trip round the world convinced that the British government would yield to the American demand for a port on Puget Sound, and for the sake of peace, permit the Boundary Line to be con­ tinued to the Pacific Ocean along the 49th parallel. The letters that he and others received from the Columbia posts were full of misgiving: “ In the Snake Country” , declared John Tod, “there are a band of real tatterdimalions who, on the first intimation of hostilities, will undoubtedly pour down with the speed of blood hounds on Vancouver, which, from its defenceless state would not but fall an easy prey to their Rifles” .11 On 86

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January 1, 1845, Simpson took the precaution of ordering McLoughlin to keep on hand at Fort Vancouver only the goods necessary to meet immediate needs and advised him to have the furs collected at Fort Victoria and the ships sail from there to England. On visits to London, Simpson had done what he could to enlist the support of the British government. Some success seemed to have been achieved when in the summer of 1844 a gunboat of the Royal N avy, the Modeste, appeared in northern waters. But when her crew visited Fort Vancouver, they came more in search of diversion and pleasure than of service. The following summer, a more powerful boat, the America, fifty guns, anchored at Port Discovery, but it was soon apparent that her commander, a brother of the Earl of Aberdeen, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, intended to avoid exertion. Captain the Hon. John Gordon, after being on half-pay for twenty-six years, had obtained his present appointment through influence. Turning over the main work of investigation to a member of his staff— Lieutenant W illiam Peel, son of Sir Robert Peel, the British Prime Minister— Gordon remained on board his ship, until, seeking entertainment, he decided to visit Fort Victoria. Roderick Finlayson, now in charge of the post, went to con­ siderable pains to be agreeable. Through the oak-shaded up­ lands, he took his guest riding and hunting. On one of these excursions, they sighted deer in the vicinity of Cedar Hill. When the deer disappeared into a thicket, Captain Gordon “ got much disappointed” , and to Finlayson’s casual words of praise of the “ open, fine country, with the native grass up to the horses’ knees” through which they were riding, retorted that “he would not give one of the barren hills of Scotland for all he saw round him” .12 Still less enthusiasm was manifested when Gordon was told that Pacific Coast salmon would not rise to take the fly. His pique was expressed to Douglas, who had had to travel all the w ay from Fort Vancouver to meet him. “He does not think the country worth five straws” , Douglas reported to Simpson, “ and is surprised that Government should take any trouble about it. . . . He did not appear at all friendly to the Hudsons Bay Company, and told me plainly that we could not expect to hold the entire country” .13 Later, Gordon must have 87

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changed his mind about the value of Vancouver Island, for Peel, who travelled post-haste to London, reported to the Admiralty and to the M inistry that it was his captain’s opinion and his own that if the 49th parallel were agreed upon as the boundary, the southern extremity of Vancouver Island, possessing a fine harbour and commanding the navigation of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, should be retained. Immediately after receiving this report, the Foreign Office started work on the draft treaty to be submitted to the American President and Senate. A t Simpson’s urging, a confidential military survey had also been carried out by Lieutenant M. Vavasour of the Royal Engin­ eers and Lieutenant H. J. W arre of the Infantry, who were still at Fort Vancouver when Lieutenant Peel arrived there. Only Peter Skene Ogden, who had accompanied them from Red River, knew their purpose. Their report was not encouraging: Fort Victoria, they considered, had been chosen for its agricultural advantages, and it was poorly adapted both for shipping and for defence; the influx of American settlers into Oregon could he attributed largely to Dr. M cLoughlin’s mistaken policies. This criticism came as a severe blow to the ageing Chief Factor. He was all the more bitter, hearing it, as he did, just after he had learned that the Council of the Northern Depart­ ment, believing the extensive operations west of the mountains could no longer be satisfactorily supervised by a single officer, had decided to terminate his Superintendency of the Columbia Department. For one year, he would serve as a member of a three-man Board of Management; then his place would be taken by another. McLoughlin was absorbed in a spirited defence of his policies, when his composure was shattered by the news from California concerning his son-in-law’s death. A few months later, he was instructed to turn over direction of affairs to James Douglas, Peter Skene Ogden and John Work. McLoughlin had already decided to resign. The Company dated his retirement from January 1, 1846, and provided him with a generous allowance. Some six months after Dr. McLoughlin’s retirement, the British and American governments reached a decision about the location of the western section of the International Boundary Line. 88

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In preparing the terms of the draft treaty to submit to Washington, the British government had been almost uninflu­ enced by the position, power and interest of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The proposed extension of the conventional Boundary Line along the 49th parallel had been determined largely by political considerations: by fear of war with the United States at a time when relations with France were strained, by strait­ ened finances, and by the threat that the repeal of the Corn Laws would bring down the cabinet before the matter was settled. There had been a spirited denial of the right of the United States, as inheritor of Spanish claims, to demand the cession of territory as far north as 540 40', but as justification for the British claim to title in the Columbia basin, neither the acts of taking possession on the part of Vancouver, Broughton and Thompson, nor the trading activities in the area of the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company, had been strongly urged. Economic consideration had entered into the settlement: in effect, Simpson’s removal to Fort Victoria of the main Pacific shipping depot had destroyed the impression pre­ vailing in London that the Columbia River was “the St. Law ­ rence of the W est” . By the Oregon Boundary Treaty, signed on June 15, 1846, British diplomacy salvaged only the territory north of the 49th parallel and the whole of Vancouver Island; the American claim to the region extending from the 49th parallel southward to Mexican possessions was recognized. The extension of Am eri­ can sovereignty to 54° 40' had, however, been prevented, and a promise had been obtained that the Hudson’s Bay Company could retain its property south of the Boundary Line and freely navigate the Columbia River. In London, senior officers of the Company were not com­ pletely persuaded that even with British title established, the area west of the mountains and north of the 49th parallel would be safe from penetration by American squatters. The terms of the compromise exceeded the greatest hopes of James Douglas, who had feared a complete surrender of the Company’s rights. To Sir George Simpson, the boundary settle­ ment meant only a postponement of the Company’s inevitable retirement from the Columbia River. For a while the great

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monopoly might not be too seriously inconvenienced by private trading, but the period of peaceful co-existence with American free-traders in the Columbia basin would probably be short. Furs were still available there and for a few years the posts might bring in satisfactory returns, but preparations should be made for a retreat to the Fraser River, and Simpson gratefully accepted the offer made by Alexander Caulfield Anderson, stationed at Fort Alexandria, to search for a new route for the New Caledonia brigade. Since Simpson’s epic voyage down the Fraser River it had not been further investigated. On Peter Skene Ogden’s suggestion, Anderson decided to look for a route on the western side. Start­ ing from Fort Kamloops in M ay, 1846, he followed the line of the later wagon-road to Cache Creek and continued until he reached the Fraser River at the Upper Fountain. Crossing the river at Lillooet, he proceeded on foot and by canoe along the Anderson-Seton chain of lakes to Harrison River, and descended the Fraser River to Fort Langley. This route, Anderson decided, necessitated too many and too lengthy portages. On his return trip, he examined the eastern side of the river. Starting up the Coquihalla River, he climbed the steep inclines of the Cascade Mountains, continued almost to the Similkameen River, and brandling off at the Tulameen, crossed the rolling hills to Kamloops. This w ay was feasible, but because of the elevation of its summits, was only free from snow during the summer months. In the hope that a route along the Fraser River could still be found, Douglas ordered Anderson to make another search for communication between Fort Kamloops and Fort Langley. In this exploratory trip, Anderson travelled in 1847 by w ay of the Thompson River to Lytton, crossed the Cascades on foot and followed the Fraser River to Spuzzum. He had now discovered the main overland routes from the Thompson River to the lower Fraser. Not one of the three could compare for ease of travel with the brigade trail through the Okanagan Valley; only necessity would justify making use of any of them. In the company of “Little Yale” , Douglas examined Ander­ son’s third route in the summer of 1847. The lower canyon of the Fraser River which had caused Simon Fraser so much diffi­ 90

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culty seemed an almost insurmountable obstacle to safe trans­ port: “ It is impossible to conceive any thing more formidable or imposing, than is to be found in that dangerous defile which cannot for a moment be thought of as a practicable water Com­ munication for the transport of valuable property.” 14 But the Americans had started to levy customs duties on imports and he feared that the furs brought down by the old Okanagan brigade trail from N ew Caledonia might be taxed. To avoid going through American territory was imperative; with the expedients of a ferry across the Fraser River at Spuzzum and a trail between Yale and Spuzzum, it might be possible to follow Anderson’s route instead of using the Columbia River. A small depot to take the place of Fort Okanogan would also have to be built at Yale. Before these steps were taken, the massacre at the Methodist Mission near W alla W alla and the spreading Indian warfare closed the Columbia basin to peaceful trade. In 1847, the last fur caravan passed down the old brigade trail along the hillsides above the glistening waters of Great Okanagan Lake. The most accessible route from the south to the northern interior was then closed, and no more would furtraders, Roman Catholic missionaries or distinguished visitors like the botanist David Douglas, follow the blaze through the pine-studded hills where the bunch-grass grew so luxuriantly. In June, 1848, the brigades from New Caledonia, Fort Kam­ loops and Fort Colvile all scrambled over the Cascade Moun­ tains to Yale. M any of the 400 horses were unbroken and the trail was so difficult that some lost their footing and with their packets of furs slid into the Fraser River. Discouraged, Douglas decided that Anderson’s trail by w ay of the Coquihalla River would have to be substituted and a new depot, Fort Hope, constructed. In 1849, the barely passable Hope Trail was used for the first time. W ith the lower Fraser River thus opened as a commercial highway, Fort Langley at last took on the func­ tion for which it had been established. To supply the inland posts with provisions, farming opera­ tions at Langley were now expanded. Under the direction of energetic James M urray Yale, 240 acres of land had already been brought under cultivation, the herd of dairy cattle in­ creased, the salmon industry expanded and experiments carried 9i

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out to cure oolichans and to manufacture isinglass from the float bladders of sturgeon. A fiercely independent man, “ Little Y ale” managed his affairs without the benefit of too much advice. W hen Douglas and John Work offered him help after the disastrous fire which in 1840 destroyed the second Fort Langley, Yale “had only two requests to make, that they would supply me with six good Axes, and be off out of our w ay as quick as possible” .15 Already he had taken steps to make Fort Langley, now located on a ridge closer to the alluvial lands than the original post, one of the largest and best equipped of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s forts, but natural disaster, fire, flood and storm plagued him. The Fraser flooded its banks in 1845 and prevented him from astonishing “ the World with our large crops and ship loads of salted salmon” ;16 rain in August ruined his crops; and bitter cold in the winter of 1847 did further dam­ age. Now, however, his post had taken on new significance and the market for produce would offset the sharp decline in returns of furs. Similar expansion of agricultural operations was also starting at Fort Victoria. During the summer of 1846, there was a great demand for provisions to supply the ships of the Royal N avy which had arrived to protect British subjects and to make surveys of the harbours. The frigate Fisgard, Captain J. A. Duntze, spent the whole summer in coastal waters; the brig Pandora, Lieutenant James Wood, commenced the hydrographic survey of Victoria and Esquimalt harbours; and the Royal N avy’s attachment for Esquimalt harbour began when Captain G. W. C. Courtenay took in the frigate Constance. The presence of these and other ships almost caused a shortage of food. A flourishing business was already being done with American whalers and with Russian ships and posts, although farming operations were still being conducted in a fairly primitive fashion. Grain was threshed by driving horses round a ring in the bam, and flour was manufactured by a hand steel mill. To conserve a labour force of only fifty men, Indians had been trained to milk the cows and to guide the bullock-drawn imple­ ments. Each year, however, more land was ploughed, and each year the crops flourished. The more rapid expansion of farming operations which started in 1846 continued without interrup­

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tion until the California Gold Rush in 1849, when miners came all the w ay from San Francisco to buy supplies at Fort Victoria, and making a display of their wealth, encouraged desertion from the post. Farming, trading and shipping operations at Fort Vancouver were also deranged that year— much more than they had been during the Cayuse W ar, the terrible Indian disturbance in the Columbia valley in 1848. “The tales told of the wondrous stores of wealth discovered in this new El Dorado have captivated all minds and disgusted them with the moderate rewards of com­ mon place industry”, Ogden and Douglas reported to London.17 Almost all the French-Canadian employees took their leave, and Douglas could keep the ships afloat only by employing Sandwich Islanders. To make matters worse, supplies for the Columbia for 1849 were lost when the Vancouver, after landing part of her cargo at Victoria, was wrecked on the Columbia bar. “In fact we are threatened with a total dissolution of the whole system” , Douglas wrote to Donald Ross, “ and there is no remedy for the disease. W e must remodel and construct the system anew, and do business like other people, pay high and sell high.” 18 On orders from England, Douglas commenced the removal of the depot from Fort Vancouver in M ay, 1849. “ Travelling by the Cowlitz Portage,” he wrote to Ross, “ m y staff was composed of one Sandwich Islander with an invalid sailor who instead of helping me, required to be waited on. W ith that numerous and respectable train I had to guard our collected treasures of the preceding winter and spring say 636 lb of Gold dust, and 20 packs of Otters, worth altogether about £30,000, a noble prize for a gang of thieves.” 19 The following October, in spite of his gloomy predictions, he shipped from Fort Vancouver “ the rich­ est freight which ever left these shores. Its value may be roughly estimated at £70,000 Sterling, in furs Gold dust and Bills” .20 By the end of the year, Fort Victoria had succeeded Fort Vancouver as western headquarters, shipping depot and pro­ visioning centre. In March, 1850, Douglas issued instructions for the eastern express to test the Hope Trail, “there being so many hinderances by the Columbia, that it is highly desirable to have another string to our bow. . . .”21 93

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In the spring of 1850, he decided to purchase fanning land on Vancouver Island: “ I would rather pay a pound an acre for land with a secure title and numerous other advantages than have a farm [in Oregon] for nothing with 10 years torturing suspense” , he wrote to Anderson.22 Under Roderick Finlayson’s management, Fort Victoria dur­ ing Douglas’s absence on the Columbia had been enlarged to include two bastions furnished with cannons, all nine-pounders, and eight large buildings. W ithin the stockade, more houses were under construction in 1849. Old fur-traders who had been used to a life of trapping and Indian trading in the wilderness, Douglas found, had settled down to the more tranquil occupa­ tion of farming. For pleasure, now, they hunted deer and elk in the natural parklands surrounding the Fort, and for variety in diet, they traded with the Indians for salmon and berries. Forgetting that they once had railed against having to keep pigs at their trading-posts, they took pride in the fine herds of cattle on the Uplands and the North Dairy farms. The pattern of organization and of social distinctions pre­ vailing at Fort Vancouver had been introduced. Officers dined in their own Mess H all; the junior officers retired after the toast to the Queen; and the senior officers spent the evening smoking their pipes and chatting in Bachelor’s Hall. After he took up residence at the Fort, Douglas presided at dinner. In the absence of the chaplain, who declined to dine in the Mess Hall, he said grace. He saw that the ritual of polite dining was observed: the hoard was covered with immacu­ late linen and bore a burden of gleaming silver and shining crystal decanters. From a lower position at the table, he ap­ peared “tall, stout, broad-shouldered, muscular, with a grave bronzed face, but kindly withal” .23 His manner formal and aloof, he led the men in conversation, discussing scientific, mili­ tary and political affairs. When, on one occasion, the resident surgeon introduced a note of levity by making a pun on the Company’s motto, “Pro Pelle Cutem”, a frosty rebuke put an end to the merriment. For Amelia Douglas, the shy, auburn-haired, half-breed daughter of Chief Factor W illiam Connolly, whom Douglas had married in New Caledonia “ after the custom of the country” 94

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in 1828, and by Church of England rites performed by the Hud­ son’s Bay Company’s chaplain at Fort Vancouver in 1837, life at her new residence was little changed. W ith her sickly infant and her four other children, she remained in her own quarters off the Mess Hall, and as she had done at Fort Vancouver, busied herself with domestic duties, venturing out only to visit the sick and to offer help to the distressed. She had little companionship, for the chaplain’s wife, the other woman who was accommodated at the Fort, was “uppish” , “ the great woman — the great complaining— and the great schoolmistress” .24 That first winter at Fort Victoria, Mrs. Douglas must have seen little of her husband, for he was exceedingly busy. In October, Eden Colvile, who had recently been appointed Associate Governor of Rupert’s Land, arrived by w ay of New Caledonia and the new Hope Trail on a tour of inspection. Colvile required Douglas’s company on his visits to Fort V an­ couver and the Puget Sound farms, and to the northern end of Vancouver Island. Here the Company was building Fort Rupert as a centre to mine the coal it had contracted to sell to the new Pacific M ail Steamship Company, an American line planning to carry mail between Panama and the Oregon Coast. Douglas was aw ay on one of these trips when his youngest child died. The two men had much business to discuss. The unprece­ dented demand for materials and for food in California created new opportunity for the Company if only its shipping, lumber­ ing and agricultural operations could be expanded and the crippling labour shortage overcome. There were long discus­ sions about wage levels, about the transfer of men from other posts to Fort Victoria, and about the policy to be followed in connection with the sale of the Company’s property south of the Boundary Line. Not until February 13, 1850, did Colvile take his departure, and it was probably only then that Douglas could turn his attention to another pressing matter: the construction of a residence for the first Governor of Vancouver Island. W ork on the cottage was only started, when on March 9, H.M.S. Driver was sighted off Ogden Point. Two days later, a young man, thirty-two years of age, “ tall, thin . . . with a pale intellectual countenance” ,25 landed under a salute of seventeen guns, and accompanied by a single body servant, made his way 95

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across the snow-covered ground to the Fort. There, in the presence of naval officers in full uniform and the little company of Hudson’s Bay Company officers and servants and a few Brit­ ish residents, Richard Blanshard read the proclamation and the commission which instituted British government in the Pacific Northwest. Douglas had been informed of the reasons for founding the Colony of Vancouver Island; indeed, he had expected to become its first Governor. But all the decisions had been made in Lon­ don, by officers of the Company far removed from Vancouver Island, and by government officials who had been forced to re­ late their policy to domestic needs, imperial interests and estab­ lished colonial precedents. The Oregon Boundary Treaty had driven home to officers of the Company the deficiencies in their policies of administering dependent settlements, and the ink was hardly dry on it before Sir George Simpson suggested to the Governor and Committee the introduction in the District of Assiniboia of a form of gov­ ernment more to the liking of the settlers. A few months later Sir John Henry Pelly, Governor of the Company, approached the Colonial Office with a plan for organizing the regular form of colonial government in territories to the north and west of Rupert’s Land. Pelly was particularly concerned about the Hudson’s Bay Company’s position in the region west of the mountains, where the Company had no chartered rights and only a guarantee of trading rights until the year 1859. W ith the loss of the Columbia River, the protection of this area had also acquired new importance in the eyes of govern­ ment officials, but Cobdenites and others were likely to find fault with any alliance with a great monopoly. However, Earl Grey, Secretary of State for the Colonies in Lord John Russell’s cabinet, permitted the Hudson’s Bay Company to initiate nego­ tiations after he had obtained a legal opinion upholding its right to receive territory in a region where it had only trading privileges. James Stephen, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, abhorred projects for privately sponsored colonization; for almost two years he delayed the grant of V an­ couver Island, the only area which the government would consider turning over to the Company.

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A man of different outlook, Earl Grey had early in his career been converted to Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s theories of eco­ nomic planning for the colonies, and although he later found much to criticize in Wakefield’s schemes for establishing col­ onies in the Antipodes, he retained many of the ideas basic to his philosophy. Keeping in mind the proximity of Vancouver Island to American settlement and the potential danger of the area’s absorption into the American Republic, and considering the financial position of the Hudson’s Bay Company sufficiently sound to support a colony, he had already conceived a plan to use the Company as a colonizing agent for the Crown. Other claims also had to be considered. The one most insist­ ently pursued came from James Edward Fitzgerald, who had a plan to establish a joint stock company to found a colony based on coal-mining operations on Vancouver Island. In the end, the Colonial Office’s mistaken impression that the Hudson’s Bay Company had established a favourable record in administering the Red River settlement; the Company’s posses­ sion of exclusive trading rights west of the mountains; its ability to raise capital, a matter of no little consequence in a year of revolution; the retirement of James Stephen; and pos­ sibly a kindly predisposition towards the Company on Earl G rey’s part, favoured its application. No better guarantee had presented itself that a British foothold would be maintained on the Pacific; and the need for a British foothold on an island with harbours suitable for naval stations, had acquired new signifi­ cance with Mexico’s cession of California and other territory to the United States in the spring of 1848. The terms of the Royal Grant, made by Letters Patent under the Great Seal on January 13, 1849, reflected the mood of the times. In the British Isles, the “ hungry forties” had not yet run their course; and although, with the repeal of the Corn Laws, food could be imported cheaply, all the problems which had arisen with the Irish famine had not yet been solved. The government’s watchword was economy. Since transportation of felons was now discredited as a method of easing domestic ten­ sion, new means had to be found to reduce unemployment. No break would be made with established colonial policy, and in recent experiments in New Zealand and Australia, private or­ 97

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ganizations had been allowed to introduce colonists into new areas on the understanding that the Colonial Office retained absolute control while being spared financial responsibility. In line with these considerations, and in spite of the opposi­ tion to the Grant expressed forcefully in the House of Com­ mons by Gladstone and in the House of Lords by the Earl of Lincoln, later Duke of Newcastle, it was decided that the Hud­ son’s Bay Company could secure proprietary rights to V an­ couver Island in return for a nominal annual rent of seven shillings. Promising to establish “a settlement or settlements of resident colonists, emigrants from Our United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, or from other Our Dominions”,28 the Company also agreed to defray civil and military costs from the sale of land and other natural resources. If no settlement were effected at the end of a five-year period, the Island might revert to the Crown, and at the expiration of the Royal Licence of exclusive trade on M ay 30, 1859, the Crown might repurchase the Island, provided it reimbursed the Company for its expendi­ tures and for its establishments and property. Earl Grey had expressed his willingness to have the Company select a Governor for the Colony. Until they became aware of “ the jealousy of some parties, and the interested motives of others” ,27 the Governor and Committee had intended to appoint James Douglas; then, to avert criticism, they chose instead Richard Blanshard, a barrister who had travelled to the West Indies, British Honduras and India, whose main qualifications were “ great intelligence and respectability” .28 Blanshard was not robust, and he had had no previous service in colonial ad­ ministration. But so anxious was he to obtain experience which might lead to a career, he accepted the office on the understand­ ing that at first there would be no salary. After originally sug­ gesting that he be paid £150 or £200 annually from the pro­ ceeds of land sales, Pelly decided to withhold payment until the money could be provided by taxation and by royalties on coal. Unaware that the land grant of 1,000 acres which the Company would provide was attached to his public office, that he would have almost no duties to perform, and that he could not hope to break into a closely-knit social group, this unhappy young man ventured out to a little fur-trading settlement on a rain-

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driven coast where his tic douloureux was likely to be exacer­ bated. There, without salary, without headquarters, without law officers, without an army, without police and without a gaol, Queen Victoria’s representative was expected to introduce the pattern of government existing in all British colonies. Lacking a private residence, Blanshard remained on board the Driver for almost the first month of his term; on her de­ parture, he was given a room in the Fort where he remained until autumn. During those months he learned that the author­ ity of the Honourable Company ranked high above his and that the officers of the Company had methods of disciplining Com­ pany servants and Indians which were very different from his own. In the Colony of Vancouver Island, all the real power was concentrated in the hands of James Douglas. In addition to his position as Chief Factor and as senior officer of the Board of Management, Douglas acted as the Company’s Agent for the sale of lands, minerals and timber, and as Agent of the Puget’s Sound Agricultural Company. W ith the exception of twentysix-year-old Captain W alter Colquhoun Grant, as yet the only colonist, and Grant’s eight men, everyone on Vancouver Island was an employee of a great monopolistic trading company. By habit and by custom, everyone respected the decisions of the Chief Factor. To superimpose the institutions of self-govern­ ment on a society organized as a hierarchy would be a mighty task. The Colony with but a single colonist must have seemed to Blanshard to have anything but a bright future. Even the single colonist, although a delightful companion and a man of wit and charm, did not offer too great promise as a successful settler. A man skilled in persuasion, Captain Grant, late of the Scots Greys, had succeeded in making most of his arrangements with the Hudson’s Bay Company four months before it received the formal grant of Vancouver Island. As a purchaser of land, he was required to fulfil the obligation to bring out settlers. Despite his short training at Sandhurst and his lack of practical experience in the occupation, the Company had appointed him to the position of Surveyor, promising him a salary. Eden 99

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Colvile, who met Grant, probably at Fort Victoria, decided that his “ flightiness amounts almost to lunacy” ,29 and Pelly must surely have had some suspicion of this sort. Special concession had to be made in the terms of landholding, Grant’s uncle had to guarantee passage money for his settlers, and the sailing date of the supply ship had to be postponed to suit the convenience of his men. Grant himself missed the sailing. Travelling by w ay of Panama and California, he ran out of funds, drew on the Governor and Committee for £100, borrowed the passage money from California to Fort Vancouver from Peter Skene Ogden, and left some of his instruments at Panama, others at San Francisco and the remainder at Fort Vancouver. Yet when he finally did start his surveys of the Fur Trade Reserve, Doug­ las had unusual patience with his ineptitude. Grant’s men, who had waited two months for his arrival, turned into a “ set of grumbling lawyers” .80 By April, 1850, he had dismissed half of them for incompetence, and in September the rest deserted him. From his impressions of the attitude of Grant’s workmen, Colvile concluded that the Company would be wise if in future it did not insist that labourers be brought out: “ They w ill not stop except at high rates of wages, are unacquainted with the use of the axe, & grumble incessantly . . he informed Pelly; “ the best class of settlers are men with families of stout sons, who w ill have an interest in the work, & who w ill all labour with their own hands” .81 Holding much the same opinion, Douglas had suggested in 1848 that free grants of 200 to 300 acres be given to families desiring to settle on Vancouver Island. But both Grey and Pelly were steeped in the Wakefield ideas. “ The settlers required for Vancouver Island are men of small property, who cannot live upon it in this country”,82 Pelly told Douglas. Wakefield’s thesis that land must be high priced and that the best type of colonist was the man with sufficient capital to hire labour was expounded by the Secretary of the Hudson’s Bay Company: “ The object of every sound system of coloniza­ tion should be, not to re-organize Society on a new basis, which is simply absurd, but to transfer to the new country whatever is most valuable, and most approved in the institutions of the old, so that Society may, as far as possible consist of the same 100

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classes, united together by the same ties, and have the same relative duties to perform in the one country as in the other. “ The Committee believes that some of the worst evils that afflict the Colonies have arisen from the admission of persons of all descriptions, no regard being had to the character, means, or views of the immigrants. They have therefore established such conditions for the disposal of lands as they trust w ill have the effect of introducing a just proportion of labour and capital, and also of preventing the ingress of squatters, paupers, and land speculators. The principle of selection, without the invidi­ ousness of its direct application, is thus indirectly adopted.”83 To give effect to these ideas of selective and systematic coloni­ zation, the Company’s regulations fixed the price of land at £1 an acre, the price in some of the Australian colonies, and required every purchaser of twenty acres, the minimum size of a holding, to take out five single men or three married couples for each one hundred acres purchased. Earl Grey had approved the price and, it was later claimed, had insisted that the price could not be lower. Both the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Colonial Office intended that Vancouver Island, in addition to serving as a bulwark against American land-grabbers, should be a colony of British landholders who would hold high the social and ethical standards of mid-Victorian England and who could be counted on to despise the crasser values of “ the irregu­ lar squatters” who flocked to new lands in search of material benefit. Blanshard let it be known, while he was still living at the Fort, that he considered the Wakefield system “ a mere theory, sure to fail in practice” .34 From the first he watched the Hud­ son’s Bay Company, the Colony’s sponsoring agent, and its local representative, Chief Factor James Douglas, with a w ary eye. The Company retained one-tenth of the revenue from land, mineral and timber sales; nine-tenths was to be appropriated for such public purposes as road-building, education and support of the Church. The Company considered that it already owned the land occupied by the fur trade before the signing of the Oregon Boundary Treaty. Douglas at first assumed the size of this holding to be twenty square miles, but finally the Reserve was fixed at 3,084 acres, or less than six square miles. It was located 101

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on the waterfront of the present town-site of Victoria, and on three farms occupying the nearest good agricultural land; one south of James Bay, another near Cadboro Bay and the third about three miles north of the Fort. L ite the coterie of malcontents in the Colony, Blanshard re­ fused to recognize any distinction between the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Puget’s Sound Agricultural Company which had transferred part of its operations from the Cowlitz Valley and acquired a large Reserve on Vancouver Island. This joint stock company, whose shareholders were some of the senior officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company in England, and some of the Chief Factors and Chief Traders in the territories, along with a few clerks, had, however, a distinct colonization pro­ gramme. Each of the four farms it acquired was placed under the supervision of a “gentleman bailiff” who put up security, received a small salary and shared whatever profits his farm earned. Each bailiff received free housing and free food. The Puget’s Sound Agricultural Company paid his labourers £ 17 a year with their keep, and promised them at the end of five years’ faithful service, holdings of twenty or more acres, valued at £ 1 an acre. As conceived, the plan was to produce a local squire­ archy and a class of small landholders. If Blanshard complained about the power and position of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the Colony, the bailiffs’ inefficient management of the Puget’s Sound Agricultural Company’s farms soon caused Douglas much distress. Viewfield Farm, Con­ stance Cove Farm, Craigflower Farm and Colwood Farm with their comfortable English country houses, good barns and thatched ricks, were virtually country estates. Here the bailiffs were to introduce the outlook, the pleasures and the customs of the English gentry and, with complete indifference to profit­ making, live a life of comparative ease. Only one of the Company’s bailiffs, Thomas Skinner, was to make a success of his farm. Kenneth McKenzie, the general supervisor of farming operations, was to find it almost impos­ sible to get any of them to curb their expenditures and to keep proper accounts. “ Balls & parties every now & then for farmers in a new country w ill not do” , he declared.35 He considered one of the bailiffs to be “ a very stupid ignorant man and not one 102

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at all adapted to have charge of a farm ” ,86 and he had to lay down the law to the irrepressible Langford: “ Building new Barns for every additional few acres that may he brought into cultivation w ill not do. It is profits we want at as little outlay as possible” .37 The older Scotch fur-trading stock had to make many adjust­ ments before it could absorb into its community the type of English and Scottish settler who came out to the Puget’s Sound Company’s farms. Even James Douglas, who in his boyhood had probably known something of life on the sugar plantations in British Guiana, found the customs and the habits which pre­ vailed at Colwood, for example, quite foreign to his experience. But the younger generation at the Fort found much to admire and to emulate in the new pattern of social life. A t Colwood Farm, a distant cousin of Governor Blanshard, Captain Edward Edwards Langford, who had sold his commis­ sion in the 73rd Regiment to enter the service of the Puget’s Sound Agricultural Company as bailiff, lived the life of an Eng­ lish country gentleman. A few years after arriving in the Colony on the Tory in the spring of 1851, he constructed a fine country house, surrounded by eleven buildings for his farm­ hands. His wife brought her piano to the Colony, and at least one fur-trader’s son stood entranced as he listened to her music coming through the open window. Langford entertained lav­ ishly: his five daughters attracted the attentions of naval officers and of the “ young lions” of the Colony. The cost of his functions — socials, picnics, riding-parties— he charged to the Hudson’s Bay Company. In the year 1853, he drew a sum almost eight times his annual salary; officers of the Company in London were shocked when they discovered the size of his accounts: “ £137 for Flour— £80.9.3 for Salt Pork— 1606 Lbs of Sugar— 257 lbs of Tea— 70 Gallons of Brandy, Rum & Whiskey, and Wine, and £474.12.1 Cash” .38 They decided to give him notice of dis­ missal; under this threat Langford mended his ways, but his employers were not impressed with his efforts: “ W e are glad of this improvement, but a straightforward honesty should have induced him long ago to use his best exertions to make his farm profitable, instead of lavishly spending the capital of the Company in luxuries for himself and fam ily” .39 103

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W orry over the incompetence of the bailiffs added to the strain of Douglas’s duties, and his impatience with Blanshard and his friends was increased by his annoyance with the Com­ pany’s chaplain, who developed an absorbing passion for farming. The chaplain, Rev. Robert John Staines, shortly after arriving in the Colony on March 17, 1849, had acquired a farm of fortysix acres near Mount Tolmie. To this he added, by a small down payment to the Hudson’s Bay Company, a holding of nearly 400 acres at Metchosin. He built two dwelling-houses and a storehouse, employed four persons, imported breeding stock and had “a very good show of fine bred pigs” .40 The Com­ pany paid Staines well for his services as chaplain and school­ master, making him an allowance for his manservant, and Douglas expected him to attend to his duties. The chaplain was “ a man full of frills” ;41 arriving at the Fort, he and his wife “ looked around wonderingly at the bare walls of the building & expressed deep surprise” .42 Like Governor Blanshard, Staines voiced his disapproval when he discovered that his residence and his school-house were not ready for occu­ pation. Douglas excused the delay on the ground of acute labour shortage; as soon as he could he put up the school-house, but it was not until 1853 that the foundation stone of the first church was laid, and not until 1856 that the church was opened for services. As teacher, Staines proved to be a man “of uncertain temper” and a strict disciplinarian. To one fur-trader’s son, Sunday at the Staines’s school was “ a day of terror” . Attendance was re­ quired at morning prayers and church services; hours of mem­ orizing the Collects were followed by afternoon service, tea, evening prayers, dispensation of a sweet, and dismissal to a bed of “ hard boards, an Indian mat, a Hudson’s Bay blanket” 43 in the garret over Bachelor’s Hall. Mrs. Staines, a more com­ petent teacher than her husband, was respected for the training that she gave the girls, but, like her husband, she held herself apart from the fur-trading families. Women of mixed blood must have felt uncomfortable in her presence. Probably it was her superior attitude that led old John Work, desiring to give his Josette and his daughters a greater feeling of security, to 104

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have the Rev. Mr. Staines perform his marriage ceremony a week or two before one of his daughters married Dr. Tolmie and another married Roderick Finlayson. In outlook, background and manner, Governor Blanshard had much in common with Langford and Staines; a sense of grievance against James Douglas and the Company supplied another bond. Unlike Langford and Staines, who drew a regu­ lar salary, Blanshard, the Governor, remained unpaid. No means of raising local revenue existed; eighty Company servants had arrived during his first month in office, but land had been sold to only a handful of settlers. By the time that his residence was finally completed, Blanshard had learned that Douglas would not give him title to the land grant which went with his office. He had also discovered that he was being ruined by the high cost of living, since the tariff charged on his purchases at the Company store was at the level of California prices and 300 per cent higher than the cost price. In November 1850, only eight months after his arrival, Blanshard requested his recall, his health having “ completely given w ay” , and his private fortune being “utterly insufficient for the mere cost of living here, so high have prices been run up by the Hudson’s Bay Company” .44 Vancouver Island, Peter Skene Ogden commented a short time later, could “now boast of a Gov[ernor] six months in the year in his bed and ten Colonists” .45 In October, Captain Grant left for the Sandwich Islands, and the ranks of his men were fast thinning. Feeling that there was no hope of setting up a government which in any sense could be deemed independent of the influence of the senior officers of the Company, Blanshard delayed implementing his instructions to appoint a Council. W hile he waited for release from his duties, a petition was circulated among fifteen persons, claiming to be “ the whole body of independent settlers”, who had got wind of the fact that Douglas was to be his successor. To their entreaties that a Council be set up, Blanshard complied by taking that step on August 27. He appointed Douglas to be senior member, John Tod, now the owner of a farm, and Captain James Cooper, a former ship’s captain in the Company’s employ who had emigrated with his workmen from England, to be the additional members. 105

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A t the time of his departure early in September, 1851, Blanshard was persona non grata to the Hudson’s Bay Company. A t the Colonial Office, he had earned a reputation for petulance and irritability. Y et he had been the victim of unusual circum­ stances; and he deserved thanks for his careful scrutiny of the Company’s accounts— of its payments to extinguish Indian title and of its expenditures on lands and buildings for public pur­ poses— outlays for which the Company would have to be re­ imbursed in the future. He had also attempted to settle a miners’ dispute at Fort Bupert by legal action; and, with the aid of the Royal N avy, he had initiated military steps to punish the Newitty Indians for murder. To receive a reprimand for taking action to protect an isolated settlement, and to be told by Earl Grey that he must pay his own expenses for his expedition, must have seemed poor return for his service. To be required to pay his passage home from San Francisco was added insult, constituting notice that the Colonial Office had no inclination to appoint him to another post. In M ay, 1851, Douglas was appointed Governor of Vancouver Island; late in October his commission arrived. Little desiring the position, he complained that his duties were already onerous, and that he had almost no clerical assistance. The Com­ pany offered him a salary, and promised to do what it could to provide him with help. Only ten years earlier, Douglas had accompanied Simpson north to Alaska. Since then, the character of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s operations west of the mountains had vastly changed: in N ew Caledonia and now in Yukon, the fur trade was still being carried on, but in the south, fanning, salmoncuring, lumbering and shipping had almost replaced trapping and trading. In addition, the Company had taken a step com­ pletely at variance with its past: on Vancouver Island, it had become the sponsor of a British colony. The first critical phase of that Colony’s development was ended. Men in whom the Chief Factor, now Governor, had confidence, old officers of the Company like Tod, Yale, Finlayson and McNeill, were buying land and would in the course of time create a new class of landed proprietors. New shiploads of servant-settlers were on their w ay to replace the miners and 106

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farm labourers from Kent and Dorset who had slipped away to the gold-fields of California and to Oregon where free grants of 640 acres of land were available. The services of Captain Grant had been dispensed with; an experienced Surveyor, Joseph Despard Pemberton, with the help of a well qualified assistant, B. W . Pearse, had started to lay out town-sites beside Fort V ic­ toria and on Esquimalt Harbour. The Company would soon have the plans it so badly needed to promote the sale of lands. A Legislative Council had been set up. On Vancouver Island, though not on the Mainland, the transition from fur trade to land settlement was taking place. Slowly and imperceptibly, the English settlers and the visiting naval officers had made an impact on the life of the old furtraders who were attached to Fort Victoria and had changed the tone of their simpler society. Just as the ladies of the Fort had learned in no time the dance steps they saw at RearAdmiral Fairfax Moresby’s “ at home” on board his flagship, the Portland, so they quickly acquired the graces, the manner and the speech of a politer society. Men who had danced reels, per­ haps once a year to the tune of the fiddle at the exclusively male celebrations on New Y ear’s D ay at fur-trading posts, ad­ justed to the new ways. The children at the Fort School were more indulged: Mrs. Douglas invited them to picnics at the North Dairy farm, and now and then John Tod persuaded Mr. Staines to allow them to spend a whole day at his country house. They learned new games: in place of bare-fisted boxing matches with Indian boys, they were taught to play cricket and rounders. There were many outward signs of inner adjustments, but none more symbolic than the flower garden inside the log pickets, where the native lady’s slipper and the moccasin flower had been replaced by mignonette, stock, hollyhock and w all­ flower, all sweetly reminiscent of “home” . The Fort was becom­ ing a “little England” , even though a single trail led from it to arbutus- and oak-lined Beacon Hill and an Indian encampment lay directly across the harbour from it. The country, said Dr. Helmcken, was soon “ as civilized as any respectable village in England, with the few very few upper ten leading . . . ‘what we were in England or Scotland’ was burnished and made the most of ! ! ! ” 46 107

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None of these changes occurred on the Mainland. And even on Vancouver Island, under the surface sameness, there re­ mained fundamental differences. These would become known through political expression. The foundation of faction had been laid, and with whatever measure of success Chief Factor James Douglas had adopted the deportment and speech of a representative of Her Majesty, he was to learn that there were settlers who did not consider him fitted for his new role. But if not beloved by all the newcomers, Douglas was re­ spected by his old associates. His lords in Fenchurch Street had confidence in him, and they had persuaded the Colonial Office to give him his chance to prove his worth as administrator in the most remote and least populated colony in the British Empire.

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travelling from E n g la n d to V a n c o u v e r Island in the Hudson’s Bay Company supply ships found the long voyage of six months almost interminable. On the journey almost every kind of weather was encountered: gales and high seas in the Bay of Biscay; trade winds and calms in the tropics; snow, hail, thunder and lightning in the vicinity of Cape Horn; in the Pacific, sometimes heavy seas and storms, but often, from the Mexican coast northward, monotonously good weather and gentle winds. Some passengers never arrived at their destina­ tion: a voyage was seldom completed without an outbreak of smallpox or a death from scarlet fever or from measles, and the rigours of the trip were too great for the strength of very young children or of aged men. The supplies of fresh food and water taken on at Cape Verde were exhausted long before a ship reached Vancouver Island, and for months the passengers lived on cheese and biscuits full of weevils. As the weeks lengthened, everyone, growing tired of the dreadful emptiness of the landm m ig r a n t s

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scape, longed to reach shore. On the last stage of the voyage, the craving for the privacy of a house and for the satisfaction of a filling meal of fresh meat, fresh vegetables and fresh butter became almost unbearable. The colonists who landed at Fort Victoria in the first few years were doomed to disappointment: both private accommo­ dation and food were in short supply on Vancouver Island. In letters to London, Chief Factor James Douglas had described the drain made on his labour supply by the California Gold Rush and had urged that emigration be retarded until such time as he could find mechanics to build houses and farm-hands to cultivate land and to tend herds of cattle. But the Hudson’s Bay Company, convinced that the shortage of man-power could only be over­ come by sending out servant-settlers immediately, hired Dorset­ shire farmers and solicited colonists by inserting advertisements in English newspapers. The first shipload of immigrants was small: only Grant’s eight men and ten Company servants, miners and labourers. They arrived on the Harpooner in June, 1849. Then the passen­ ger lists became longer: the Norman Morison brought 80 im­ migrants in March, 1850; the Tory about 140 in M ay, 1851. In October, 1851, on her second voyage, the Norman Morison landed some 35 persons, and in January, 1853, she brought 53 workmen and their families, in addition to the bailiffs, Kenneth McKenzie and Thomas J. Skinner, their families, two land stewards, and a schoolmaster. Most of the settlers came with prized possessions: Grant had sets of fine harness which he would never have the opportunity to use; Dr. J. S. Helmcken had “lots of seed and Canaries” ;1 Captain Langford brought his mastiff dog and a goat, and Mrs. Langford had a wardrobe containing fashionable crinolines and bonnets. Captain James Cooper, who had been on the Coast before, was more practical: he brought, in sections, an iron schooner which he intended to put together for use in trading to the Sandwich Islands and San Francisco. Scarcely anyone remembered to bring such everyday necessities as needles and thread; these would have to be purchased at the Hudson’s Bay Company store and at a tariff higher than that paid by the Company’s employees. 112

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The biggest problem was housing. W hen the Langfords ar­ rived, Douglas offered them a log cabin at Esquimalt; when they declined this, a small one near the Fort was turned over to them until they were ready to build their house at Colwood. Governor Blanshard considered this accommodation completely unsuitable for a man who had owned an estate of 200 acres in Sussex, and whose family of five daughters and a son was about to be increased by the birth of another child. Gallantly, Blan­ shard offered the Governor’s residence for Mrs. Langford’s con­ finement, and it was there that George Langford, probably the first native white child, was bom. When the McKenzie family arrived, they had to crowd into an unpartitioned loft in the Fort along with their own workmen. For the Skinners, Indians hurriedly swept out with fir boughs a shack on Kanaka Road. In this miserable cabin, with blankets dividing the livingquarters of the fam ily from those of their three servants, a daughter was born to Mrs. Skinner one month after her arrival in the Colony. A t first, the life at the stockaded post must have seemed strange, even barbarous, to the wives of the new colonists. A t Fort Victoria, they saw Haidas arriving in handsome canoes from the Queen Charlotte Islands to trade and to work, and were told frightening stories about the fierce Cowichans who lived on the other side of the dark forest. Every night, a watch was kept at the Fort to provide protection against Indian marauders. Just outside the gates lived the Sandwich Islanders, employees of the Company, over whom the officers kept a discipline so strict that they occasionally resorted to flogging. In this environment, where supplies of food were so short that hurried calls for beef and for mutton had often to be made on Fort Nisqually, the London fashions worn by Mrs. Langford m ay have appeared incongruous, but her example helped to maintain the morale of other Englishwomen. Acutely class conscious, most of the wives of the settlers brought with them an inherent prejudice against trade and com­ mercialism. This attitude, combined with disappointment that so little provision had been made for their comfort, led to querulous fault-finding with the man who served in the dual role of Governor and Chief Factor. To attack James Douglas 113

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as the incarnation of monopolistic and despotic power afforded some compensation for discomfort and disillusionment. Both men and women enjoyed the sport, and few would admit, even with reluctance, that in actual fact he was engaged in unre­ mitting labour to organize the government, develop new indus­ tries and improve social conditions. W hile Douglas applied his talents to these important matters, he maintained the habit of years in giving conscientious atten­ tion to the affairs of his employers. He had assumed, when the Hudson’s Bay Company received the grant of Vancouver Island, that it was genuinely interested in promoting colonization. It must have become increasingly clear to him, however, that Colvile and Simpson intended the Colony to serve only as a protective bulwark for the fur preserve on the Mainland.2 Even before he was aware of the real purpose of the Com­ pany’s officers, Douglas concentrated most of his attention on expanding trade. Diming his visit to Vancouver Island in 1849, Eden Colvile found the Chief Factor busy with plans to develop the lumber export trade. In 1848 a sawmill had been built on Millstream, and shipments to the San Francisco market started in 1849. Little of the m ill’s output seems to have been kept for domestic purposes, for even Dr. Helmcken, preparing in 1852 a home for his bride, Cecilia, daughter of the Governor, had the greatest difficulty in obtaining lumber and cedar shakes for his house. If more could have been done by the Chief Factor of the Hud­ son’s Bay Company to provide suitable housing for new settlers, the Governor of the Colony lost no time in establishing a com­ mon school system for the children of the colonists. Elementary schools were needed, Douglas wrote to the Governor and Com­ mittee, to provide “a proper moral and religious training” and to prevent children from “ growing up in ignorance and the utter neglect of all their duties to God and to Society” . For each of two schools “ intended for the children of the labouring and poorer classes” , he asked the Company to find “a middleaged married couple . . . of strictly religious principles and un­ blemished character capable of giving a good sound English education and nothing more” .8 By persuading the Company to pay the salary of the schoolmaster and the parents to pay an 114

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annual fee, he succeeded in opening a boys’ day school at Vic­ toria and a girls’ day school at Colwood Farm in 1852. By borrowing money from the Trust Fund into which the Hudson’s Bay Company put the proceeds of sales from Colonial lands, the Legislative Council erected a school building on the School Re­ serve in 1853, and made plans for another school to be built at Craigflower Farm. In the same year, after children of miners at Nanaimo were discovered by Douglas to be “ growing up in ignorance of their duties as Christians and as men” ,4 a school was opened at the mines. Delays took place in constructing the Craigflower school-house, and it was not until March, 1855, that the oldest school building still standing in British Columbia was opened. For over a year, Governor Douglas searched for a source of revenue to provide funds for these schools and for roads. Apart from the Hudson’s Bay Company’s purchase of 6,200 acres at the Nanaimo coal-fields, sales of land in the Colony were still too limited to return any large amount of revenue. As yet, the residents on the Island were chiefly servants of the Company who received wages of £17 a year along with their food and lodging, and were under contract to work for the Company for a period of five years. The best solution of his problem seemed to lie in levying import duties. Although this step would in­ crease the cost of supplying the Mainland posts as well as Fort Victoria, the Directors of the Company supported the sugges­ tion. But the Colonial Office was adamant in refusing the re­ quest: no taxes, it declared, could be imposed until a Legislative Assembly had been set up. Apart from this legal obstacle, the proposal was thought ill-advised, since the cost of living was already too high on Vancouver Island; a fact to which RearAdmiral Fairfax Moresby, who had complained bitterly about the cost of provisioning warships at Fort Victoria, would be only too w illing to bear testimony. In his report to the Admiralty, Moresby, who in 1851 had talked to Blanshard, Langford and discontented employees of the Company, attributed the high level of prices to the restric­ tive practices of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Rather lightly, Douglas brushed the criticism aside: the rum supplied from the stores at Fort Victoria to the N avy was of superior strength and 115

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quality, he wrote, and he had “made it a point to charge nothing over 100 per cent on the net prime cost . . .” .B In London, the Directors vigorously denied the charge of monopolistic control: trade was as free as in any other British colony, they asserted; the settlers had the right to import goods in the Company’s ships; if the prices were high on Vancouver Island, it was because of the fine quality of goods kept in the Company’s stores and the cost of importing supplies from the Sandwich Islands. No one would admit that the Chief Factor had an inflexible rule that “ No one was allowed to trade on his own account” ,8 or that some of the Company’s servants were severely reprimanded for dealing with the Indians. Undoubtedly, the charges of restraint of trade were given some colour by Douglas’s rigid refusal to permit any trade with the Indians of the Mainland. In 1852 he put an end to a profit­ able new private enterprise when he stopped both Captain Cooper and a man named Webster (“ a crafty American Adven­ turer”, he called him ),7 from trading for cranberries to ship to San Francisco. The Company’s licence of exclusive trade on the Mainland, he told Captain Cooper, applied to more than trade in furs. Private capital was, however, invested in a number of enter­ prises on Vancouver Island. Probably most of it went into the lumber trade. Douglas himself, with other Company employees, made plans to launch a private sawmilling venture. Their effort turned out to be “ a most signal failure” .8 In 1850, Captain Grant built a sawmill at Sooke near a stand of fine timber; during the next few years, he spent little time in the Colony. When he took his final leave in 1853, his property was acquired by the M uir family, who at the end of their contract at the Fort Rupert mines had started in 1852 to export piles from Sooke to California. Lumbering operations at Sooke were further expanded by Captain Cooper. Before leaving England, he had endeavoured to obtain support from English capitalists for a sawmilling com­ pany, but it was not until he met Thomas Blinkhorn on board the Tory that he obtained financial assistance. After the two men arrived on Vancouver Island, they selected land at Metchosin, about seven miles from Fort Victoria, and as soon as they 116

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had assembled the little iron schooner Alice, Cooper commenced to ship piles, spars and squared timber to San Francisco. His success attracted the attention of others, and at least one San Francisco house placed an agent on the Island to purchase sup­ plies of lumber. Before long, Cooper, “ a fine looking florid stout able man, but of an irascible grumbling disposition” ,9 expanded his operations to include the liquor trade which another former Company em­ ployee, James Yates, “ a powerful cantankerous being” ,10 was finding so lucrative. Chief Factor Douglas had already aroused Cooper’s hostility by placing an impediment in the w ay of his trading on the Mainland; Governor Douglas now created a bitter opponent in the ranks of the Council when he instructed it to license liquor vendors. Douglas had two purposes in mind: the raising of revenue and social reform. On both scores, he felt the need of immediate action. The Hudson’s B ay Company had advanced funds for the construction of public buildings, but he considered that schools and road construction were proper charges on local levies rather than on the Trust Fund. Drunkenness on the Com­ pany farms was disrupting the working schedules, and he feared that the Indians would become depraved if they obtained spir­ ituous liquors and that they might create a great danger to both person and property. The liquor licence was fiercely opposed by “ the whole body of publicans and other blood suckers . . . preying upon the vitals of the Colony” ,11 but Cooper particularly resented a ruling of the Council forbidding any of its members to be a retail dealer in liquor.12 The revenue bill came before the Council on March 29, 1853. A ll morning and all afternoon the members, Tod, Finlayson and Cooper, debated the measure. No decision was reached. Doug­ las adjourned the meeting for dinner at the Mess Hall. Still Captain Cooper remained obdurate. W hen dinner was finished, Madeira, pipes and tobacco were brought in, and smoking delib­ erately, the Governor engaged his guests in quiet conversation. “ Now” , Dr. Helmcken recounts in his reminiscences, “ these things are very consoling and insidious in effect so Capt Cooper, who liked a glass of good wine (and in those days the wine was of the very best) took more than one, and then altho the room 117

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was smoky, he began to see more clearly the subject was not without some reason and so his determination weakened a little . . . ,” 13 Finally, he gave his consent. But in yielding to the Governor’s pleasure, he aroused the ire of Yates and of the habitues of Yates’s tavern. As they levelled “rancorous remarks” at him, Cooper “ran about the village shouting no taxation with­ out representation beware of the first take— the rights of the colonists have been trampled in the dust— down with the HBCo — down with tyranny or there w ill soon be more taxes— down with the Governor” , and, adds Dr. Helmcken, “down he (the Captain) went sprawling” .14 Douglas had had his victory: the Hudson’s Bay Company took out a wholesale licence and Yates took out a retail licence. Overnight, the Council found itself with funds. The number of taverns was cut from three to one and conditions improved under a system of control. The government had discovered a steady source of revenue, for as a servant-settler wrote, “it would almost take a line of packet ships, running regular between here, and San Francisco to supply this Island with grog, so great a thirst prevails among its inhabitants” .15 Striking as it did at private profit and at personal indulgence, the revenue bill was highly unpopular with a very vocal group of malcontents. Their complaints were taken up by those who denounced the Hudson’s Bay Company for its actions as trustee of colonial revenues and for the high price it charged for land. The five years allotted to the Company to establish its reputa­ tion as a sponsor of a British colony were about to expire. In the hope that they could persuade the British government to revoke the Royal Grant, they decided to join battle with the Governor. A new bill to license timber-cutting on public lands and to levy a timber duty brought the agitation to a head: like other British colonists before them, the independent settlers rallied their strength to protest that Englishmen carried their privileges across the seas, and as colonists, retained the traditional right to grant, or withhold consent to, taxation. Douglas was convinced that the colonists were more con­ cerned about economic advantage than political principle. The basis of the movement, he declared, was the desire for the intro­ duction of a system of free land grants. This demand he now 118

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opposed: purchasers of land, he felt, had every right to expect to have their equity protected, and too many persons had already paid the full purchase price for their properties to justify a change in policy that would enable men like Cooper and Staines, who had withheld payment from the Company, to obtain free grants. The Rev. R. J. Staines, who “would have made a very good Parish Law yer instead of a parish priest” ,16 thought otherwise. Political agitation was taking more and more of the chaplain’s time. Douglas had reported to the Governor and Committee that he was neglecting his duties, and that the fur-trading families who maintained the school at the Fort were much dis­ pleased with the schoolmaster’s “ disagreeable manner, and un­ yielding temper” .17 His own opinion was that the parson was “ a fomenter of mischief and . . . a preacher of sedition” .18 Before Blanshard’s departure, Staines had signed the petition protesting Douglas’s appointment as Governor. Douglas also attributed to him an anonymous letter which the Colonial Office received in 1852 complaining of oppressive conditions under the new administration. In 1853, Staines induced Tod, Tolmie and Finlayson, old friends and associates of tire Chief Factor, to sign a second petition which was circulated throughout the Colony. His efforts reached new proportions in December when the Legislative Council, accepting Douglas’s recommendation, ap­ pointed the Governor’s own brother-in-law, David Cameron, to the position of Judge of the new Supreme Court of Civil Justice. The setting up of this court, and die appointment of Cameron, which led to the later charge that the Colony was run by the “ Family-Company-Compact” , stemmed from the incompetence of the magistrates who had been appointed earlier in the year. When it had become necessary to organize a Court of Petty Sessions, Douglas had recommended the appointment of Lang­ ford, Skinner, McKenzie and Blinkhom as magistrates. They were, he thought, the only persons with any sort of qualification for the office, and in order to acquire their service, he waived the usual property qualifications. Only a few months later, de­ cisions were handed down in their courts which indicated that good social background in itself was insufficient preparation for their duties. The most flagrant denial of justice involved a judg-

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ment awarded to Webster by Skinner against the Muir family. Cameron had newly arrived in the Colony, and although the Governor had faith in his firmness and integrity, his past record was not too promising. After an unsuccessful career in business as a cloth merchant in Scotland and as manager of a sugar plantation in Demerara, he had obtained through Colvile a posi­ tion as clerk at the Company’s Nanaimo coal-fields. Cameron’s appointment, following by a few months the addi­ tion of John Work, an old Hudson’s Bay Company man, to the Council, was all that Staines, Langford and Skinner needed to convince them that Douglas drew no distinction between his duty as Governor and his position as Chief Factor of the Hud­ son’s Bay Company. A t the meeting of the Legislative Council, Cooper had approved the selection of Cameron; now he threw in his lot with the parson and the squire. Early in February, 1854, Staines drafted a petition to be laid at the foot of the Throne, and prepared a protest to be placed before the Duke of Newcastle, the Colonial Secretary, claiming that Cameron had an “ improperly close family connexion with the Governor” , that he was not a lawyer by profession and that he had “ ex­ hibited notorious and gross partiality, acrimony, malice and indecorum” in his official capacity.19 The chaplain, who had been given notice on February 1 that his services as schoolmaster were to end in June, was only too willing to carry the petitions to London. In addition to other “wrongs” , his pride had recently been wounded by his arrest following a dispute with a neighbour about the possession of some pigs. And although his good name had been cleared and his property restored, he little appreciated the reprimand which he had received for using his influence with Magistrate Skinner in the early stages of the dispute. Vacating his appointment, he started out from Sooke to sail for San Francisco in a lumber ship. The boat got no farther than Cape Flattery. There she foun­ dered, and he was drowned. After Staines’s death, Cooper, Langford, Skinner and Yates took over the leadership of the movement. In April, they had copies of the petitions forwarded to London. The complaints were drawn to the attention of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, but the British government was too much 120

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concerned with preparations for the Crimean W ar to examine them. W ith some satisfaction, Douglas reported to the officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company that the protest met with the fate that he had expected: he had simply been asked for explana­ tions. His selection of his brother-in-law as Judge he defended so capably that the Colonial Office eventually confirmed the appointment. By the end of 1854, the building of the Sooke high road had commenced, and as its construction provided some employment and satisfied the demand of the Sooke settlers for communication with Victoria, the agitation began to die out. The pressure exerted by the colonists, however, had probably expedited a change in the lands policy of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Since 1852, the Directors of the Company had been considering a modification in the terms of sale: in March, 1856, they drafted a plan of instalment purchase for persons wishing to increase their holdings and for those “ whose eligibility can be established” .20 In the autumn of 1856, payment by four annual instalments was instituted; land sales increased almost immediately, and in October, 1857, Douglas reported that the new system was “becoming every day more popular, as it is better understood by the lower classes, who at first did not appear fully to appreciate its advantages” .21 A fter the Island reverted to the Crown in 1859, the system of instalment pur­ chase was further modified: then all that was required was the payment of one shilling at the time of purchase, another at the end of the first month, and the remainder of the purchase price in six-shilling payments. Diming the spring and summer of 1855, the Colonial Office, to some extent reflecting the hostility of Gladstone and other members in Lord Aberdeen’s cabinet to the Hudson’s Bay Com­ pany, reminded the Company’s officers that the Crown had the power to revoke the Royal Grant. Douglas was little concerned: such a step, he said, “would not involve the sacrifice of a single substantial privilege, while it would relieve the concern from an infinite deal of trouble and much actual expense” .22 In the end, the Colonial Office, aware that the nature of the Company’s operations would be fully examined before the licence of exclu­ sive trade was considered in 1859 for renewal, and recognizing the service that had been performed in keeping the Indians in 121

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hand and in affording protection against American penetration, decided to continue the arrangement in effect. But since the law officers of the Crown had now declared that the Governor and Council lacked the power to legislate, the Colonial Secretary decided that an Assembly would have to be set up. To author­ ize this step would amount to an admission that a settlement had been created by the Hudson’s Bay Company and such an admission would waive the Crown’s legal right to resolve the Grant, but the letter of the law would have to be complied with. Governor Douglas received the instructions sent to him on February 28, 1856, with some dismay: he possessed, he said, only “a very slender knowledge of legislation” ; he was “with­ out legal advice, or intelligent assistance of any kind” ; and the Crown had restricted the franchise to freeholders of twenty acres or more, thus depriving the town-dwellers, “ a class more numerous than the former”, of the vote.23 Privately, he prob­ ably felt, as colonial officers in London did, that “the establish­ ment of [the] representative system under the circumstances of the Island wd be little better than a parody” .24 However, he lost no time in taking the necessary steps to organize an Assem­ bly, and showed no inclination to have the Assembly, once it was set up, dissolve itself in favour of a partially-elected Legis­ lative Council, as his instructions permitted. On June 9, the Council, accepting his advice that the English practice should be observed as far as possible, established owner­ ship of £300 freehold property as qualification for membership in the Assembly and organized four electoral districts. A ll the candidates in the first election would have been disqualified if the property qualifications had been set higher, and as it was, in the districts outside Victoria, the elections were mere nomina­ tions. The franchise was restricted to just over forty propertyholders. The seven representatives chosen: John Muir, Sooke; Dr. J. S. Helmcken and Thomas J. Skinner, Esquimalt; J. D. Pemberton, James Yates, E. E. Langford, Victoria; and Dr. John F. Kennedy, Nanaimo, were, or had all been, in the employ of the Hudson’s Bay Company or of its subsidiary, the Puget’s Sound Agricultural Company, but three of them, Yates, Skinner and Langford, were inveterate enemies of the Governor. The first House of Assembly to meet on British soil west of 122

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the Great Lakes opened on August 12, 1856. W ith dignity and with eloquence, the Governor instructed the members in their duties. Then, calling on Chief Justice Cameron to administer the oath of allegiance and to examine the qualifications of mem­ bers, he instructed the House to elect a Speaker. W ith despatch, the House elected as Speaker, Dr. J. S. Helmcken, physician to the Hudson’s Bay Company and son-in-law to the Governor. Then trouble developed. Captain Langford could not produce evidence of qualification. The Speaker with the help of a com­ mittee examined the Captain’s eligibility for office, and finally deciding that his election was null and void, called a new elec­ tion in Victoria District. In place of Langford, the electors chose J. W . M cKay, a Company officer. Not until November 13 did the House get down to business. The loss of time was inconsequential, Douglas reported to the officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company; in fact, it had served a useful purpose in disabusing the minds of members of “many false notions which were commonly entertained here concern­ ing the acts of the Hudson’s Bay Company, as well as the powers and jurisdiction of the House of Assembly . . .” . His own relations with the House were friendly, but he regretted that “ it is a difficult matter to manage a Legislative Assembly, where the Executive Power, is without patronage, and has no rewards to bestow on its friends and supporters” .25 In December, the Colony was temporarily rid of one of the most active of Douglas’s critics: a few months after the death of Thomas Blinkhorn, Captain Cooper sold his household effects and prepared to visit England. The vacancy in the Council was allowed to re­ main. When, in the autumn of 1858, John Tod resigned his seat, Douglas appointed in his place a newcomer, Donald Fraser, a British journalist, and in July, 1859, he added Chief Justice Cameron to the membership. Whatever their private connection with the Hudson’s Bay Company, the elected representatives, as the Governor soon dis­ covered, were extremely independent in their views. Lacking the power to borrow, and controlling only the revenues obtained from liquor licences, they continually sought information about the moneys paid into the Trust Fund. The most searching ques­ tions put to the Governor had to do with the revenues obtained 123

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by the Company from the sales of land and with the royalties it paid on coal production at Nanaimo. In 1857, the Assembly refused to comply with the Governor’s request that it grant a supply bill of £1,400 for postal service and road construction on the ground that these were legitimate charges on the Trust Fund, that the revenue from liquor licences was insufficient to meet the Governor’s request and that it would be unconstitu­ tional to levy taxes until the House was more truly represen­ tative.20 The Assembly then attempted to extend the franchise to small property-holders and to tenants in the town of Victoria, but the Council withheld its consent to the bill until the eve of the House’s dissolution in the autumn of 1859. Not the least jealous of the legislature’s rights was the Speaker, Dr. J. S. Helmcken. He took even his minor duties seriously. More than a little responsibility rested on him: he set up committees, obtained legal advice, and saw that Bachelor’s Hall, where the sittings were usually held, was warm and com­ fortable. Since, under the terms of the Charter, the Hudson’s Bay Company was required to bear the civil and military expenses of the Colony, he supported the refusal of members of the Assem­ bly to impose customs duties and other taxes. However intimate his connection with the Company and the Governor, he con­ ducted himself in a fashion becoming to a servant of the people. As Governor, Douglas did not challenge the prerogative of the House. He was disappointed that he could not get the Assembly to agree to the levying of customs duties, a measure desired hy the Company, but he did not exert undue pressure. Neither the Assembly nor the Council was his instrument. By inclination, he was not averse to a broad interpretation of his powers, and he might well have been encouraged to experiment on the model of the constitutions of tropical British colonies, copies of which the Colonial Office sent him. But he respected the institution of representative government and forwarded to Canada the Assem­ bly’s request for information about the working of the parlia­ mentary system in that province. Men like Langford who nursed grudges, however, and a visitor, Amor De Cosmos, who dropped in to one of the last meetings of the first Assembly, could not be persuaded that he did not desire to concentrate power in his own hands. 124

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W hile the miniature Colony was taking the first steps in parliamentary government, the whole of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s operations in North America came under the care­ ful scrutiny of a Select Committee set up by the British House of Commons in February, 1857. In its detailed and thorough investigation, little attention was directed towards the Colony of Vancouver Island. Evidence was presented by its first Governor, Richard Blanshard, by the Council Member, Captain Cooper, and by a member of the British House of Commons, Charles Fitzwilliam, who had visited Vancouver Island in 1853. Fitzwilliam, who felt he had been the victim of official incivility at Fort Victoria, and who had been annoyed by his failure to obtain medical attention on Helmcken’s wedding night, had already been instrumental in bringing the independent settlers’ complaints to the attention of the government. A t the hearings, all the old charges of the Company’s monopoly and of its abuse of the settlers were aired, and the reports of the Company’s rule were far from reassuring. The Hudson’s Bay Company had already indicated that it was prepared to relinquish the Royal Grant if it were reimbursed for the cost of its establishments and the expenses of colonization. When the Select Committee recom­ mended that the tenure should be terminated when the licence to trade expired in 1859, and that Canada should be allowed to acquire the Red River and Saskatchewan Valleys (the other centres of settlement within the Company’s domains) it was perfectly evident that Vancouver Island would become a Crown Colony. The Governor would then be accountable only to the Colonial Office and the Crown, and the privileges enjoyed by the Hudson’s Bay Company would be abolished. The political wrangles that had flourished at the southern end of Vancouver Island in the little community containing perhaps no more than 400 adult persons, had little affected its social life. No matter how difficult his personal relations with individual colonists, Governor Douglas— as class conscious as any bailiff on the Company’s farms— did not permit his own feelings to interfere with the Governor’s social obligations or with the associations made by his children with the gay younger set in the Colony. W lien the Governor entertained at the Fort for the officers of Her M ajesty’s ships, his guest list included everyone 125

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but the “riff-raff” , and no one declined his invitation. His pres­ ence added lustre to the dinners and balls which he and his fam ily attended on board naval vessels. Always, the Governor conducted himself in a regal manner, and on all formal occa­ sions, even when a public examination was held at Craigflower school, a salute was fired. To keep up proper appearances, he ordered from England fine uniforms for himself and the latest fashions for his wife and daughters. Miss Agnes, the Governor’s daughter, was enrolled at the Young Ladies’ Academy conducted at Colwood Farm by Miss Langford, sister of the Captain; and Miss Agnes joined in all the riding-parties organized for the entertainment of visiting midshipmen by the pretty Langford daughters. Annually, the whole community, including the riff-raff, celebrated Victoria D ay with races on Beacon Hill, and in 1855 the population gathered in a great picnic at Esquimalt to celebrate the fourth birthday of the Governor’s son. Political divisions which drove a wedge between Fort Victoria and the country districts of Metchosin and Sooke, where the independent settlers resided, were offset by the observance of these social amenities. To give the Colony at least the appear­ ance of social solidarity, Douglas encouraged the officers and clerks of the Hudson’s Bay Company to hold theatrical plays and balls at Fort Victoria. But, in fact, the country settlers had much more in common with the naval officers who visited Esquimalt than with the Company’s officers and servants. When a ship anchored at Esquimalt there was much formal and informal entertainment at country homes. As for the employees of the Puget’s Sound Agricultural Com­ pany’s farms, they were among the most severe of Douglas’s critics. Receiving wages so much lower than those paid in American settlements on the other side of Puget Sound, they felt exploited, and the fairly rigid class structure in the Colony cut them off from most of the social life of the gentry. But friendships with naval ratings broke the tedium of work and unplanned entertainment— as on the occasion when “ One of Neptune’s sons, belonging to the ‘Trincomalee’, got himself hurt by falling from a tree, after drinking a bottle of Grog on the top of it”27— added to their amusements. To provide for 126

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their own entertainment and pleasure, the servant-settlers at Craigflower organized a scientific institute in 1854. Almost weekly they gathered to hear one of their number lecture on theology, natural history, geography or history. Christmas Day at Craigflower was marked with “Fiddling, dancing, singing, eating, and drinking” , and New Year’s D ay was “ celebrated in a glorious Bacchanalian manner” .28 A horseback ride through the forest, even in January, was no obstacle to their attendance at public performances, when a theatre was opened at Victoria in 1857. A t Nanaimo, where the Hudson’s Bay Company had opened coal-fields in 1852, the community of Staffordshire miners who had arrived on the Princess Royal in November, 1854, was used to more simple pleasures and fewer comforts than the residents of Victoria town and district. Political protest did not arise here as early as in the older settlements, and when it was given expression, its origin lay in the working conditions in the mines. A t Colvile, as Douglas at first called the new settlement, Guy Fawkes D ay was occasion for a great celebration, but apart from the outburst of jollity on this occasion, the community desired to centre its activities in the church. The need for defence against hostile Indians constituted a great binding force for the communities of Nanaimo, Victoria and Sooke. W hite settlers on Vancouver Island, numbering with their children no more than 1,000 persons, were sur­ rounded by an Indian population of nearly 30,000. The Hud­ son’s Bay Company maintained its reputation for excellent relations with the native tribes by speedy punishment of any outrage. To hunt a Cowichan murderer in 1853, Douglas or­ ganized among Company servants the Victoria Voltigeurs, a small group of volunteer militiamen, enlisted the services of the Royal N avy, and for the trial, empanelled a jury on board the Beaver. The same year he had the bastion built at Nanaimo, and in 1856, when the arrival of northern Indians in great numbers caused consternation at Fort Victoria, he advised the Council to use public funds to organize a company of thirty Voltigeurs. W ith each passing year, the activity in the ports became greater. For the coastal trade, which was still yielding high 127

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returns, the Hudson’s Bay Company sent out the screw steamer Otter, 144 tons, in 1853 and the Labouchere, a marvel for its time with its two 180-horsepower engines and huge side paddlewheels, in 1859. The Company maintained a fleet of barques, brigs and schooners for the export trade to the Sandwich Islands and San Francisco, for the transportation of immigrants and for the fur trade. Frequently, British schooners called at Sooke to load lumber, and occasionally American and German ships called there for the same purpose. A weekly mail service which American boats established between Victoria and Olympia and Bellingham Bay in 1854 was suspended after shipping disasters, and then, as formerly, the colonists relied on the courtesy of the Hudson’s Bay Company to carry the mails from the Am eri­ can shore. Over-zealous American customs officers in the Puget Sound ports often caused the Hudson’s Bay Company, which still had posts on American soil, much embarrassment by their interpre­ tation and application of American revenue laws. The high level of American customs duties increased the cost of goods imported from San Francisco, and seriously affected export sales of lumber, coal and fish on that market; and everyone on Vancouver Island was bitterly disappointed when the negotiators of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 did not see fit to include the Colony in the arrangements for freer trade between the United States and the British North American provinces. Douglas’s action in giving material support to Governor Isaac I. Stevens during a moment of crisis in the bitter Indian wars in Washington Territory was popular in Vancouver Island, where everyone dreaded the thought of Indian attack on settle­ ments, but no one, as the Civil W ar approached, took much in­ terest in the greater danger to the American Union. The Brit­ ish colonists, insular in their outlook, were too much concerned with their own affairs to be interested in national or interna­ tional problems. There had been a flurry of excitement at Victoria and in London in 1852 when American miners had arrived to hunt gold on the Queen Charlotte Islands. The Royal N avy was alerted to send a ship to protect British sovereignty in the area and Douglas was provided with a commission as Lieutenant-Governor so that he could assert the rights of the 128

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Crown. No gold rush materialized, but from that time on, Douglas, remembering what had happened in Oregon, watched carefully for signs of American encroachment on British soil. From 1854, his attention was fixed on San Juan Island, some twenty miles away from Victoria harbour, where he feared an attempt to establish an American territorial claim. Probably the most exciting moment in the Colony’s history had occurred when news reached Vancouver Island in June, 1854, of the British declaration of war on Russia. When, several months before the outbreak of the Crimean W ar, Douglas had been asked to report on the defences of the Colony, he had drafted a plan to raise an irregular force of 500 whites and Indians; but the members of the Legislative Council, nervous of arming the Indians, and feeling that the Colony could not offer effective resistance in the case of an attack, decided, after agreeing to arm and man the Otter, to throw the major re­ sponsibility on the Imperial government. The tension relaxed when news was received that the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Russian-American Company had entered into an agree­ ment to respect the neutrality of each other’s possessions and ships during the hostilities. During the Crimean W ar, Esquimalt, now the centre of a good farming district, served as a supply base for the Pacific Squadron, and at the request of Rear-Admiral H. W . Bruce, the Commander-in-Chief of the Station, three hospital buildings for possible use after an attack on Russian settlements in Kamchat­ ka, were erected in 1855 on Constance Cove Farm. Both Doug­ las and Bruce recommended the harbour as a permanent base, but ten years passed before Esquimalt became a shore establish­ ment. Long before then, Kenneth McKenzie was doing a profit­ able business in supplying naval ships with hard-tack, and many a close friendship had been made between the settlers and the officers and ratings on the Pacific Station. Usually, all the intelligence that was to have a major effect on the Colony and its affairs arrived in official despatches from Downing Street or in private despatches from Hudson’s Bay House. The most important news of all, however, originated near at hand and was casually mentioned one night in 1857, when at dinner in the Mess Hall, Douglas produced a few grains 129

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of scale gold which he said had come from the North Thomp­ son. He alone of the assembled company seemed impressed with the significance of the find: he attached, he said “ great importance to it and thought it meant a great change and busy time” .29 Before the year was out, in his capacity as Chief Factor, he had warned the men in charge of the Hudson’s Bay Company posts on the Mainland that a rush was impending and that it was necessary “to secure the trade in our own hands” .30 In March, 1858, the floating population left Victoria for Thompson River, and before the end of the following month Douglas, with the merchants of Victoria, was rejoicing in the increase of wealth and business which the arrival of 450 miners from San Francisco on the Commodore had brought to the little town. By the end of 1858, Fort Victoria was an anachronism; already, the Victoria Gazette, the Colony’s first newspaper, was demanding its removal to make w ay for new stores and ware­ houses. The north-eastern bastion, standing at what was now the corner of View and Government Streets, was demolished in i860; the remainder of the Fort disappeared in 1864. For the opening of the second session of the Assembly on March 3, i860, the new Court House, situated in the centre of the cluster of public buildings erected in 1859 on an “airy, spacious and convenient”31 site on the south side of Victoria harbour, was ready. The handsome new buildings, the “ Birdcages” , as they became known, with their pagoda-like roofs, their balconies and their brickwork, “ fancifully painted in various shades of red” ,32 testified, like the new 8oo-foot bridge built across James Bay to connect them with Government Street, to the new prosperity of the Colony. In the elections of January, i860, only Dr. Helmcken, of the seven members of the first House, had been returned to office. Among the thirteen members in the new House, Captain Cooper, who had returned from England, was the single familiar figure. His friend Langford had caused a great stir in the Colony by withdrawing his candidature after his charges of mistreatment by the Hudson’s Bay Company and by Governor Douglas had been ridiculed in an election squib, which everyone felt must have been written by some high government official. Langford’s 130

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libel suit against the printer of this placard, which resulted in his being fined and imprisoned for contempt of court, and other difficulties, including his dismissal by his employers, led to his departure from the Colony in June, 1861. Amor De Cosmos, now editor of the British Colonist, sent this “honest, straight­ forward, high-spirited Englishman” off with an accolade. Lang­ ford, he said, was a “ supporter of time-honoured usages as con­ trasted with the policy of a feudal corporation” .33 Yates had already left the Colony, and with the departure of the two “reformers” , Governor Douglas must have hoped for less criticism of his official actions. But among the new colonists were men who had already engaged in struggles against the executive power in other British colonies and others who were ready to lend a willing ear to local gossip about the Governor’s supposedly autocratic attitude. Even after Douglas had severed his connection with the Hudson’s Bay Company, they searched for signs of favouritism and discounted his difficulties in arrang­ ing a settlement with the Hudson’s Bay Company for its ex­ penditures. The complicated negotiations in connection with this settlement delayed the reconveyance of Vancouver Island to the Crown until 1867. As Governor of Vancouver Island during the period of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s control, James Douglas had seen the staple industries of coal-mining, lumbering and fishing estab­ lished and a farming community emerge. Neither Downing Street nor Hudson’s Bay House had understood all his problems or been too generous with encouragement and assistance. Some­ times it had been impossible for him, holding the four offices of Governor of the Colony, Chief Factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Agent of the Puget’s Sound Agricultural Company and Land Agent of the Hudson’s Bay Company, to resolve the conflicts among the interests he represented. But no one, with honesty, could deny his effort. And no one, with justice, could gainsay his achievement. Unconsciously and indirectly he had paid tribute to his own work, when in referring to the Colony of Vancouver Island in his opening address to the first House of Assembly in 1856, he had declared: “ Self-supporting and defraying all the expenses of its own Government, it presents a striking contrast to every other

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Colony in the British Empire, and like the native pines of its storm-beaten promontories, it has acquired a slow but hardy growth.”34

13a

The Gold Colony

Chapter 6

the nine years that the diminutive Colony of Vancouver Island served the Hudson’s Bay Company as pro­ tective shield for its coastal and continental fur trade, private traders had almost no opportunity to approach the shores of British possessions in the North Pacific. On Vancouver Island, a few Americans squatted near the inlets, but American ships on their w ay north to do business with the Russian settlements met with every discouragement when they attempted to trade with the Indians. To ward off competition, the Beaver continued to make regular cruises along the seacoast long after the Haidas and other northern Indians had developed a preference for selling their furs at Fort Victoria, for them the great emporium. In the spring of 1858, when the gold-miners arrived, the old coastal vessel was absent on one of these missions. Even closer watch was maintained over the river approach to Fort Langley, the terminus of the Hope brigade trail. No u r in g

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American, or for that matter, no British boat was permitted to enter the Fraser River for the purpose of trading, and no foreigner was allowed to fish within three miles of the shore. In the Interior, the servants of the Company carried on their traditional duties without interference, and although the bundles of furs transported by pack-train from New Caledonia to Fort Langley were lighter than in the past, the supply ships returned to London each year with cargoes of beaver, mink and marten that were still valuable. The Hudson’s Bay Company made use of its position in the Colony of Vancouver Island to advance its own interests, but at the same time, Vancouver Island under its auspices pro­ vided an effective counterpoise to American power on the Pacific slope. The surging tide of American settlers which had extended the sway of the Republic to California and Oregon was stopped at the International Boundary. Not for a moment did Governor Douglas weaken in his determination to hold for Great Britain and for the powerful British trading corporation which he represented the great empty land west of the Rocky Mountains which, as yet, was “ tenanted only by wild beasts and still wilder savages with here and there a hunter” .1 If Americans would have welcomed an opportunity to learn more about the resources of Vancouver Island and the M ain­ land, Englishmen, until 1858, expressed little interest in either the Colony on the seaboard or the adjoining continent. Steam and iron were now bringing the Pacific community more sharp­ ly into focus, but it was the commerce of Singapore and of Hong Kong and the gold of the Antipodes that had vital significance; the development of trans-Pacific trade awaited the construction of railways across the North American continent. A few British merchants and manufacturers recalled James Edward Fitz­ gerald’s prediction that the Strait of Juan de Fuca would one day become the funnel through which the Oriental trade would be poured into the New World, and a few dreamers pestered the Colonial Office with schemes for building railroads across British North America; but everyone knew that the territory west of the Great Lakes would have to be settled and developed before such ventures would be profitable. After the Royal Geographical Society applied the spur in 136

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1857, the Colonial Office decided to send an exploratory expedi­ tion to British North America. In the same year, the Canadian government, beginning to envision Canada’s manifest destiny to spread across the continent, commissioned an expedition to investigate the area west of Lake Superior. Monopoly still reigned in this region, and if Sir George Simpson continued to have his way, the Canadian farmer and the Canadian trader would be as unwelcome in the fur preserve as American inter­ lopers had always been. But the Canadian government could no longer afford to countenance the drain of British population southward to the American mid-west, and British officials were no longer apathetic to the cause of free trade. W ith Americans poised for expansion at a mid-continental position, the Canadian government sent its men forth to ex­ amine the route between the Great Lakes and the Assiniboine Valley, to explore the plains and to report on the climate and soil. The leader of the British party, Captain John Palliser, wras given specific instructions to examine the agricultural possibili­ ties of the territory between the Canadian Shield and the Rocky Mountains and to determine whether any practicable pass for a railway existed through the Rocky Mountains between Atha­ basca Pass and the 49th parallel. At last it seemed as if the Colonial Office might substitute vigorous action for its previous lethargy. A t the time when these expeditions were sent out, even the well-informed Englishman regarded the British territory lying between the Rocky Mountains and the seacoast as a land remote, mysterious and romantic— a fur-trader’s paradise, but little more. In his testimony before the Select Committee, Captain James Cooper had made enthusiastic reference to fine stands of timber on Vancouver Island and on the lower Mainland and had described the waters of the Fraser River and the Strait of Georgia as teeming with salmon. W ith these resources he was well acquainted, and he vouched for their potentialities. By hearsay, he also knew of the Thompson Valley, located some­ where in the Interior, where the climate was mild and the scenery picturesque, and where gold had been found. He was unable to describe the exact relationship of this area to Fort Col vile, the scene of an earlier gold discovery; neither he nor 137

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anyone else in London in 1857 had exact information about the quantity or the value of the precious metal which was reported to have been found on British soil. The only established fact known to the Colonial Office when the bill was introduced to organize a second British colony on the Pacific seaboard was that 1,400 ounces of gold had been found on or near the Fraser River. This information had been supplied by Governor Douglas. For some years before the northward thrust of the American mining frontier brought the mineral resources lying within the British territory to public notice, the Hudson’s Bay Company had been quietly collecting gold-dust from Indians and from its French-Canadian employees. In 1852, iron spoons and other primitive tools were provided for the Thompson River Indians who had commenced to mine;2 but until 1856, the amount the Company procured was small, and it was only then that most of its officers learned to recognize gold in its natural state. In the autumn of 1855, at a time when business was quiet in the Willamette Valley and in the Puget Sound ports, news leaked out that gold had been discovered near Fort Col vile at the mouth of the Pend d’Oreille River “ where it leaps with a bound of about ten feet into the Columbia” .3 A rush started. In April, 1856, Governor Douglas informed the Colonial Office that Angus McDonald, the clerk in charge of the post, had reported that men who had gone farther north to the Upper Columbia were earning from £2 to £8 a day. In July, 1857, Douglas notified the authorities that the lure of gold had carried the miners to Thompson River. Their effort, he said, had been rewarded, but there was still great uncertainty about the value of their find; Her M ajesty’s government would be well advised, however, to appoint an officer to maintain law and order. During the autumn, increasing numbers of miners from Washington and Oregon appeared at Thompson River. Some of them made their w ay to the forks of the river. On the Fraser, both below and above the junction, they found gold. The rumour of the discovery of a new mining-field reached California in the spring of 1858. The excitement in the Puget Sound area became so intense in March that the mills shut down, soldiers deserted their posts and sailors abandoned their ships. A similar 138

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fever developed in California when, on April 3, confirmation of the report was brought from Puget Sound by one of the Pacific M ail Steamship Company’s steamers. Miners who lacked the capital that was now required for hydraulic mining opera­ tions, or who were discouraged by their lack of success at the diggings, flocked to San Francisco to take ship for the Puget Sound ports and Victoria. Others started to trek overland. M any had no idea that they would have to enter British territory to reach the new gold-fields. Some knew that a route by w ay of the old Okanagan brigade trail offered easy access to Thompson River, hut since the interior of Washington was aflame with Indian warfare, they decided to use the alternate Fraser River route. The new towns of Port Townsend, Whatcom (Belling­ ham), and Semiahmoo on Puget Sound became a point of de­ parture for the interior; boats left from Port Townsend for Fraser River and crude trails were cut from Bellingham Bay through dense forests in the direction of Fort Langley and Fort Hope. By far the greater number of Californians elected to go by w ay of Victoria. The Commodore, a wooden side-wheel Ameri­ can steamer, brought the first shipload. The townspeople were just leaving church to return to their white-washed cottages when she entered Victoria harbour on Sunday morning, April 25, 1858. From their position on the hillside, they could see that her decks were crowded: with surprise and fascination they watched her approach the landing-place, make fast, and then disembark a stream of men, most of them wearing red flannel shirts and carrying packs containing blankets, miners’ washpans, spades and firearms. The moment that Governor Douglas had both anticipated and dreaded had arrived: the first large “ anti-British element” had arrived in the Colony. Of the 450 men in the party, only sixty were British subjects. The same number were native-born Americans; thirty-five comprised an advance party of negroes seeking refuge from persecution in California; and the rest were chiefly Germans, Frenchmen and Italians. Most of them were armed with bowie knives and revolvers. Douglas had been warned that these ad­ venturers were “the very dregs” of society. On the contrary, he found them well behaved, and he immediately reported to 139

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London that there was “no dearth of capital or intelligence among them” .4 For the sake of the prosperity that their presence would bring to the merchants and the farmers of Vancouver Island, he was prepared to welcome the fifty or more men who wished to remain in Victoria. But any threat to British sovereignty or any encroachment on the rights of the Hudson’s Bay Company, he intended to repel. In Victoria, the miners sought only food and temporary ac­ commodation, for they were impatient to reach the diggings. As it happened, the Otter was absent at Fort Langley, and no seaworthy boat was available to take them to the Mainland. They decided to essay the crossing of the Strait of Georgia by canoe, boat and raft. Storm-tossed, blown off course, and chilled by drenching rain, they eventually arrived, if they were lucky, at the river’s mouth. Here the dangers increased. In the eddies and currents of the Fraser Biver, their canoes capsized; snags and floating trees rammed their boats. Scores of men drowned in that “ impetuous stream” , but the survivors, Douglas wrote, “ nothing daunted by the spectacle of ruin, and buoyed up by the hope of amassing wealth”, pressed onwards “ toward the coveted goal of their most ardent wishes.”6 Past Fort Langley, and on to Fort Hope, they continued. On a sand-bar about a mile south of Fort Hope they found gold. From this point to Fort Yale, they searched each and every bar. Over thirty yielded good returns: sometimes, as at H ill’s Bar, as much as $50 in a single day. The news travelled quickly, and soon more miners from Oregon, Washington, M in­ nesota and Utah were on their way. Between M ay 15 and June 1, 10,000 men started up the Fraser Biver, and before the year was out, the figure was swelled to nearly 25,000. Every day during the spring of 1858, Victoria became more crowded. Sensing unprecedented opportunity, American steam­ ship companies advertised the discovery of a new El Dorado and found a bonanza in reducing the fare from San Francisco to Victoria from $75 to $30 and filling their ships to three times the normal capacity. Every boat arriving at Victoria brought, in addition to miners, merchants and people of standing. In their train came “ an indescribable array of Polish Jews, Italian fishermen, French cooks, jobbers, speculators of every kind, land 140

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agents, auctioneers, hangers on at auctions, bummers, bank­ rupts and brokers of every description” .6 By M ay, the hotels, few in number, were crowded. Shanties and an encampment of tents had already begun to rise among the stamps on the hillsides. Once or twice, the villagers had moments of uneasiness, but the N avy was within call and usually the new Police Commissioner, Augustus F. Pemberton, had only to go among the miners to restore order. The whole appearance of Victoria was changing rapidly. To the population had been added men of substance who had brought capital for investment. W ithin six weeks, 225 buildings, nearly 200 of them stores, 59 owned by jobbers or importers, were constructed. Land values rose: the Hudson’s Bay Com­ pany, which owned the water frontage and all the good building sites near the harbour, raised the price of town lots from $50 and $75 to $1,500 and $3,000 and even higher.7 The Colonial government, handicapped by the old regulations which forbade selling land in parcels of less than twenty acres, did less well; but its sales increased fivefold, and it disposed of land in out­ lying Saanich and Cowichan. Under the eyes of Governor Douglas, Victoria was being transformed from a quiet English village into a busy commercial centre which was an outpost of San Francisco. The large mer­ cantile house established by two California negroes, Peter Lester and Mifflin Gibbs, which provided the first serious competition for the Hudson’s Bay Company’s store, was soon but one of hundreds of American firms which moved their stocks from San Francisco to Victoria. A n American company founded a news­ paper, the Victoria Gazette-, Wells, Fargo and Company and other express companies opened offices; American steamships soon called regularly to pick up passengers for the Puget Sound ports or for the Fraser River. As northern trade became more significant, the San Fran­ cisco Prices Current, putting behind it the memory of the reces­ sion of 1857, acclaimed a new era: “This [San Francisco] must long be the great entrepot of trade between ‘the rest of the world’ and the new mines” , it gloated.8 When exports to V an­ couver Island which had amounted only to $29,448 in 1857 rose to $808,954 in the single month of July, 1858, this hope seemed 141

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close to fulfilment. But by August, the market was flooded and in September, cargoes were being returned undelivered. Oregon farmers, who had benefited from the demand for flour, fresh meat and lumber in California during the Gold Rush, were equally optimistic in the spring of 1858. Their plan was to establish a supply centre in the Thompson V alley by re­ opening the Columbia River-Okanagan V alley route. Probably 8,000 miners followed this natural highway from the south and by the end of the year American cattlemen from the Willamette V alley had established a strong economic bond between the inland mines and their own communities. In Washington Territory, aggressive merchants and specu­ lators looked to the Puget Sound ports to fulfil for the Fraser mines the function that Sacramento had filled for the Sacra­ mento, Feather and American Rivers. Some of the eager Yankees wanted more than this: they hoped for the expansion of American boundaries. W ith uninhibited enthusiasm, they broadcast their intentions: Soon our banner will be streaming, Soon the eagle will be screaming, And the lion— see it cowers, Hurrah, boys, the river’s ours.9 On Vancouver Island, farmers in the new districts of Saanich and Cowichan, as in the older ones of Metchosin and Sooke, were determined to keep the Victoria market and the supply trade of the mines for themselves. But at the same time, they did business at the smart new iron-fronted American stores on W harf Street. Welcoming the change in their fortunes which an expanded market for agricultural produce had brought, the “ old settlers” overlooked the rowdiness of foreign miners and the exuberance of American merchants, and rejoiced in the competition that was now provided for the Hudson’s Bay Com­ pany. Everyone, new resident and old, desired to break the fetters which had shackled economic enterprise; finallv, on M ay 30, 1859, the Hudson’s Bay Company lost its special position in the Colony. Still better news was to come: in January, i860, the Governor, by proclaiming Victoria a free port, put it on the same footing as Hong Kong. 142

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For some of the colonists, however, the past was too close to be easily forgotten. Encouraged hy receiving a sympathetic hearing from those Americans who had retained from the days of the Oregon controversy an antagonism towards the great Bay Company, they regaled “ Oregonians” with stories of past in­ justices. But while the Oregonians appreciated to the full every disparaging remark they heard about Governor Douglas, the Californians were generally impressed with the character of his administration, and the whole American community was more interested in removing the restrictions on the Fraser River trade than in supporting any political movement within the Colony. It was the young Englishmen, public school and university men, who entered into the political hfe of the Colony. They had come in search of professional employment in a new colony and they were deeply interested in its future. Such movements as the Land Reform League which was instrumental in having the price of land reduced in 1861 from twenty shillings to four shillings twopence were strengthened by their support. W ith the appearance of well-trained professional men, class lines on Vancouver Island became even more sharply defined, and Victoria soon came to be known as a town of three estates — “ nobs, snobs and flunkies” .10 W hile two of the “nobs” , Arthur T. Bushby and Charles Good, sought the hands of two of the Douglas daughters in marriage, others adopted a patronizing attitude towards the Governor and his family. More than one w ry comment was passed about the governor's foibles: “When the prayer for the Governor and Council is made in [Church?] old Square-toes looks as if his health was being drunk at dinner, and doubting whether or not to rise and return thanks” ,11 wrote one of these lofty young men. The army and navy officers serving with the Boundary Commission entered into the gay social life at the Puget’s Sound Company’s farms, and in the course of attending balls, private theatricals and picnics, ab­ sorbed some of the snobbishness of the “ old settlers” . “ In the evening we all went to a ball given by the officers of the Plumper” , one of them recorded in his diary in August, 1858; “we met all the young ladies of Vancouver [Island], they only number about 30 & are not very great beauties, however, I en­ joyed myself very much, not having had a dance for such a 143

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time” . Then, with more picturesqueness than accuracy, he added, “ Most of the young ladies are half breeds & have quite as many of the propensities of the savage as of the civilized being. Two of the Miss Douglas’ the governor’s daughters . . . had just had some hoops sent out to them & it was most amusing to see their attempts to appear at ease in their new costume” .12 Sensitivity to snubs affected the point of view of more than one newcomer to Vancouver Island. Amor De Cosmos, a trans­ planted Nova Scotia journalist, who settled in Victoria after a peripatetic career as photographer in the California gold-fields, soon became conscious of the fact that he stood outside the Fort, the great Company. Socially, he had little in common with the colonials or with the pattern of life they adopted, but for political reasons, the “old settlers” sought his editorial favours, and for private reasons he listened attentively to their grievances. A profound egotist, he aspired to the political mantle of Joseph Howe. The first of a long line of political leaders to arrive in Vancouver Island from the Maritime Provinces, he strove, like his successors, to introduce more sophisticated political concepts and to mould the political institutions to the pattern of a more mature community. De Cosmos had become a resident in the Colony in June, at a time when even the Council and the Assembly were disturbed about the Governor’s policy of closing the Fraser River to foreign trade. That policy was modified after a few months, but convinced that the Colony was run by a “Family-CompanyCompact”, and that Skinner, Yates and Langford were virtually the only “ independent” members of the Assembly, De Cosmos deliberately distorted the intention of all the Governor’s subse­ quent actions. In the first editorial in his newspaper, the British Colonist, the “ lover of the world” , who had been born plain W illiam Alexander Smith, attacked the “w ily diplomacy” of a Governor who put private interest before public need.13 A week later, he damned Douglas for allowing the offices of the Colony to be filled with “toadyism, consanguinity, and incompetency, compounded with white-washed Englishmen and renegade Yankees” .14 De Cosmos was far from being well briefed on all the admin­ istrative and other problems which had arisen during the gold *4 4

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excitement. In fact, only Douglas knew all that had occurred during months of inconceivably hard work and responsibility. The Fraser River Gold Rush had been one of the most sudden in history, and singlehanded he had been forced to cope with a new and dangerous situation which, as he saw it, threatened the security of the British foothold and the favoured position of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Fear of the influx of foreigners had led to the setting up of the Colony of Vancouver Island; that little colony was no longer capable of holding immigration in check. On the Mainland the situation changed from day to day; his letters describing the filling up of the country took at least two months to reach London, and by the time he obtained instructions, they were likely to be out-dated. To the first news of profitable mining operations on Thomp­ son River, Douglas’s initial reaction had been one of pleased sur­ prise that the fortunes of the Hudson’s Bay Company were about to be improved at a time when the Company’s expendi­ tures on Vancouver Island were high and the fur returns were falling. If gold were found in sufficient quantity it might pro­ vide the Company with a second staple; in addition to having intrinsic value, it was light and easy to transport. Supplying the mining areas with provisions and tools would also yield profits. Influenced by Sir George Simpson’s order to Chief Factor Dugald McTavish that the Hudson’s Bay Company must thoroughly occupy the field and that access should be granted only to British subjects, his first impulse was to follow the Com­ pany’s old policy of underselling its rivals. But Douglas was also an Imperial officer, and he had more than the Company’s interests in mind when he warned the Colonial Office that there was danger in the free admittance of Americans who would always have “ a hankering in their minds after annexation to the United States” .15 As immigration in­ creased, he became concerned about the danger of Indian war­ fare spreading into the Interior from Washington Territory and alarmed about the greater hazard of disrespect for Imperial rights. Appeals to London for guidance as to what measures he should take to control the entrance of foreigners brought no response. From his long residence in the territory west of the mountains, *45

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Douglas knew the danger of alien economic penetration, and from his long experience with the Hudson’s Bay Company he had learned the wisdom of economic planning. To him, it was as important to direct the economic life of the gold-fields towards British channels as it was to maintain law and order. His plan, therefore, was to make Victoria, rather than San Francisco, or the Puget Sound ports, or Portland, the metropolis of the mining-fields; to direct trade to British firms and to build up British imports; and to open the Fraser River, rather than the Columbia River route, as the avenue of trade and traffic. A t the height of the Gold Rush, he was faced with the problem of averting hunger and starvation by permitting sufficient im ­ portation of food, without at the same time developing eco­ nomic dependence on the United States. Confronted with an avalanche of miners, he used his own ingenuity to devise measures which, as he wrote to London, were intended to “ at once assert the rights of the Crown, protect the interests of the Hudsons Bay Company, and . . . draw the whole trade of the Gold District through Fraser’s River to this Colony, which w ill procure its supplies directly from the mother country” .18 In addition to offsetting American economic penetration, Douglas was determined to do everything in his power to pre­ vent the country from being occupied by foreigners. A licensing system, he believed, would control their entrance and at the same time enforce respect for British authority and provide revenue to preserve peace and maintain order. W hen in April, 1856, he first made this suggestion to the Colonial Office, Henry Labouchere, Colonial Secretary in Palmerston’s ministry, re­ plied that in the absence of any machinery of government on the Mainland, he did not consider the suggestion practicable. Proffering no advice, he implied that he would rely on Douglas’s discretion to take whatever measures might be necessary to win respect for British law. A t the end of 185 7, when a large-scale immigration impended, Douglas was still left to his own devices. Five years before, at the time of the Queen Charlotte Islands gold flurry, Douglas, as Governor of Vancouver Island, had viewed with alarm the entrance of American nationals into British territory. He had been convinced in 1852 that an interest in mining was a cloak for the deeper American purpose of 146

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annexing the islands to the United States. These fears he had relayed to London, and the British government had taken his anxiety seriously: his powers were broadened at that time by issuing him a commission as Lieutenant-Governor of the Queen Charlotte Islands. Sir John Pakington, then Colonial Secretary, also sent instructions: he was to vest the ownership of all mines in the Crown and to issue mining licences, using as a model the system in force in New South Wales. As the only British authority in the neighbourhood of Fraser River, Douglas decided in December, 1857, that the time had come to take action for the Mainland. His decision was com­ pletely in character: throughout his life, he considered that the man who won for himself confidence and respect was “ the bold, resolute, strong, self reliant man, who fights his own way, through every obstacle” .17 Possibly his own private ambition to win renown in the Colonial Service also urged him on. In any case, believing that he had been encouraged to use dis­ cretionary power, and considering that the mining proclamation which he had issued for the Queen Charlotte Islands in March, 1853, had established a precedent, he issued an ordinance on December 28 which declared that all mines of gold in the Fraser and the Thompson districts belonged to the Crown. A second proclamation, issued the following day, announced that a system of mining licences would be instituted on February 1, 1858. In January, 1858, the fee for the licence, which was to be obtained at Victoria, was increased to twenty-one shillings (five dollars) a month. The December proclamations reached the Colonial Office on March 2, 1858. On reading them, Herman Merivale, the Under­ secretary, thought that Douglas deserved “much credit for act­ ing— as he has always done— with promptitude & intelligence in the line pointed out to him by the home government, and making light of difficulties instead of creating them, in a position by no means clear & with very little assistance of any kind” .18 Since a similar licensing system had been used to achieve con­ trol of the mining population and to provide taxation in Cali­ fornia and Australia, there was nothing unusual about the plan. More than anything else, the Colonial Office was pleased at this time that he had seized the initiative. 147

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But Douglas’s frank admission that he lacked political author­ ity on the Mainland immediately raised the question of the validity of his regulations. In the opinion of Merivale, until they were adopted by the Crown, as he thought they should be, they would lack force. He also felt that action must now be taken to establish some sort of authority to maintain British rights. For six months, the policy to be adopted for the Mainland had been desultorily discussed at the Colonial Office, but no decision had been reached. Labouchere’s duties as Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee investigating the Hudson’s Bay Company were absorbing; and after the report was received, he was preoccupied with the problem of achieving conformity with the government’s policy of encouraging free trade and colonization. The exclusive trading rights which the Hudson’s Bay Company had obtained in the Indian Territory in 1838 would lapse, unless they were renewed, on M ay 30, 1859; in the interval, the Colonial Secretary did not want to incur ex­ pense for the Imperial government in any part of that region. He had agreed to provide military protection for the Red River settlement, whose security seemed threatened by the establish­ ment of an American military post at Pembina, but he was opposed to giving indirect financial assistance to a Company which he thought was impeding settlement on the Pacific seaboard. In January, 1858, Labouchere opened negotiations for the reconveyance of Vancouver Island to the Crown, and at the same time, launched an attack on the Company by laying down stringent conditions which it would have to accept if it wished to have its trading licence renewed. A month later, the ministry fell, and he left office. Lord Stanley, Colonial Secretary in Lord Derby’s administra­ tion, thereupon inherited the responsibility of deciding the Im­ perial government’s policy. A t first, Stanley contemplated taking immediate action to create a Crown Colony on the Mainland: then, fearing that the Hudson’s Bay Company might demand compensation for surrendering its trading rights west of the mountains, he dropped the plan. Finally, he decided to pro­ vide Douglas with a temporary commission as Lieutenant148

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Governor so that he might have “ a semblance of authority” .19 The warrant was prepared, hut on its submission to the law officers, legal obstacles to granting it were discovered. A t the end of M ay, 1858, the Colonial Office learned that the gold region was more extensive than earlier reports had indicated, and that immigration was likely to assume new pro­ portions. American miners were entering the area without bothering to take out mining licences and there was danger of trouble with the Indians. Douglas wrote that he was considering making use of a detachment of marines and seamen from H.M.S. Satellite to enforce the collection of licence fees. He concluded his despatch by remarking that there were only two practicable routes to the mines and that “ those could be guarded at little expense, and the Country rendered as secure from foreign intrusion as the fabled garden of Hesperides” .20 W hile this letter was being circulated through the Colonial Office, Lord Stanley resigned his post to undertake the impor­ tant duty of seeing through parliament the Government of India bill, a measure designed to remove from what had once been a great monopolistic trading corporation, its governing powers in India. Since the Indian M utiny of the previous year, the East India Company had been in grave disfavour; now its property was to be transferred to the Crown. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, who at the beginning of his career had spent a short time in Washington, succeeded to the position of Secretary of State for the Colonies. The projects now being aired for transcontinental railway construction in British North America appealed to his imagination and he was prepared to take even stronger measures than Labouchere to curb the power of the Hudson’s Bay Company. In dealing with Douglas, the new Colonial Secretary could not forget that the Governor of Vancouver Island was also the Company’s senior official in the Far West. His bias against the Company was soon projected towards the Chief Factor, and under Lytton’s influence, the Colonial Office began to see the problem of administration which had been raised by the gold excitement in a new light. In a minute written on M ay 31, Merivale had expressed sympathy for the plight of the Governor of Vancouver Island, who, though unarmed with legal authority

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for the Mainland, was doing his best to maintain British sov­ ereignty under conditions which might almost he described as foreign occupation; but by June 19, he was reading into the con­ cluding sentence of Douglas’s despatch “ a plan for keeping the gold for the HBCo’s people as far as possible” .21 The gold excitement offered Lytton the excuse for cancelling the trading rights of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the territory west of the Rocky Mountains. He decided to constitute a new British colony, not because of his faith in the value of the new mineral resources or fear of American expansion, but because the moment was propitious to open the area to free trade. He would have been more than a little surprised to learn that Chief Factor Douglas had already decided to announce to the Direc­ tors of the Hudson’s Bay Company his considered opinion that the Gold Rush had spelled the doom of monopoly. By the end of his first three weeks in office, Lytton was pre­ pared to introduce into parliament a bill which would put a vast area which he called “ New Caledonia” directly under the Crown’s jurisdiction. The bill was read for the first time on July 1, 1858; a w'eek later, at the second reading, the Colonial Secretary explained that a temporary plan of government had been drawn up to establish law and order “ amidst a motley in­ undation of immigrant diggers, of whose antecedents we are wholly ignorant, and of whom perhaps few, if any, have any intention to become resident colonists and British subjects” .22 Making reference to Captain Cooper’s evidence before the Select Committee and to a letter which Cooper had written to him, he praised the resources of the Thompson district and of the lower Fraser Valley. As compared with the 150,000 ounces of golddust produced in California during the first eight months of its Gold Rush, “the largest amount ascertained or conjectured from Fraser’s River since 1856” was not more than 1,000 ounces, but the territory had, he said, “ a magnificent situation on the ripening grandeur of British North America” . Labouchere, who was willing to invest Imperial funds if the area was to be opened to trade, supported the bill and paid trib­ ute to Douglas’s “ good sense, ability, and sagacity” . The very suggestion that Governor Douglas’s powers might be extended aroused the apprehension of Charles Fitzwilliam: he charged 150

T H E TO W N OF H OPE IN 1 8 7 2 .

From a photograph by D. Withrow.

T H E F IR S T P A R L IA M E N T B U IL D IN G S ---- “ T H E BIRDCAGES” I N

From a photograph by Noah Shakespeare.

1876

T H E C IT Y O F Y ALE D U R IN G RAILW AY C O N S T R U C T IO N DAYS, l

From a sketch by W. G. Finder.

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that while Douglas was Governor of Vancouver Island, the Hud­ son’s Bay Company had used its baleful influence to drive pri­ vate traders out of its territories, and to support his claim, made indirect reference to the obstacles which Cooper had encoun­ tered six years previously when he had attempted to trade with the Indians of the Mainland for cranberries. For his own part, Fitzwilliam added, “ he knew a little of Governor Douglas, and he should say he was a very incompetent man for the post. He had never been accustomed to deal with white men; all his deal­ ings were with Indians, and his idea of law was that might was right” . The bill was almost through the committee stage before Glad­ stone raised objection to the arbitrary type of government pro­ vided for the new colony for a period of five years. Under the provisions of the bill, while the Crown could set up, whenever it was convenient, a legislature consisting of a governor and a council or of a council and an assembly, until either of these steps was taken, the governor was given full and absolute power to make provision for the administration of justice and, subject to review by parliament, the right to establish laws and ordin­ ances. Although Gladstone’s dislike of this feature of the bill was shared by others, the plan of government remained un­ altered, since there was general agreement with the Duke of Newcastle’s view that representative institutions “were only applicable to colonists of the English race” . In order to avoid confusion with a French colony, the name of the colony was changed, before the act received royal assent on August 2, from New Caledonia to British Columbia, a choice made by Queen Victoria, which the Duke of Newcastle con­ sidered neither “very felicitous” nor “very original” . The boundaries, as defined in the act, were to stretch from the sum­ mit of the Bocky Mountains on the east to the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Georgia on the west, and from the Finlay branch of Peace River and the Nass River on the north to the Interna­ tional Boundary on the south. The territory of the Queen Char­ lotte Islands, another gold-bearing region, was to be included within the boundaries of British Columbia, but Vancouver Island was to remain a separate colony until its incorporation was re­ quested by a joint address passed by both houses of its legislature.

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It was late in September before Douglas, who had been absent for almost a month on the Mainland, heard of parliament’s action. The six most critical months of the Gold Rush had then passed, and during that period, because of the slowness of the mails and the indecision of the British authorities, he had re­ ceived no instructions and no advice. He had consequently taken the complete management of affairs into his own hands and had made all the necessary decisions about mining regula­ tions, policing, road-building and trade. In these months, he had come to the conclusion that immigra­ tion could not be stopped. His point of view with regard to the feasibility of continuing the monopoly of the Hudson’s Bay Company had also changed. He was still anxious to guard the Company’s privileges of trade and transportation “with the most scrupulous care” , but at the conclusion of his first visit to the gold-fields he had informed the Directors that he thought it better “to make a virtue of necessity, and to surrender with a good grace, a right which is no longer tenable for a full and sufficient compensation to be paid annually out of the revenue of the country, and on condition of being secured in the posses­ sion of the different Trading Posts with their several Farms and Gardens now occupied by the Company’s servants” .23 But before inspecting the mines, he had made one last effort to carry out his duty to protect the trading rights of the Com­ pany and to secure British rights of navigation on the Fraser. On M ay 8, he had issued a proclamation which prohibited American boats from entering the Fraser River with spirits, arms and ammunition and which threatened the confiscation of any goods imported without a licence from the Hudson’s Bay Company and a sufferance from the customs officer at Victoria. A t the same time, he had applied to Captain James C. Prevost to station a force from H.M.S. Satellite at the river’s mouth. Although some goods were confiscated here and at Fort Langley, the policy of closing the river to non-Company trade was soon changed. In July, traders were permitted to do business on the Mainland on condition that they take out a monthly licence, and in August, a tariff of 10 per cent ad valorem (which did not be­ come legal until the following December) was substituted for the original licence obtained from the Hudson’s Bay Company. 152

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By September, the trade of the river was open to Americans. In Washington Territory, the freeing of trade was attributed to the pressure which Isaac I. Stevens, one of the Territory’s delegates in Congress, had induced Lewis Cass, the Secretary of State, to exert on the British ambassador. The M ay proclamation, which appeared to Lytton to contain positive proof that Douglas was concerned only with protecting the Company’s interests, reached the Colonial Office in mid-July while the British Columbia Act was still under discussion in parliament. Accompanying it was a plan for an arrangement for one year with an American line, the Pacific M ail Steamship Company, which, as it turned out, the company did not accept. Under the projected plan, the American company was to pro­ vide steamers to navigate the Fraser River as far as Yale, but the boats were to carry the goods of the Hudson’s Bay Company only, all passengers were to take out mining licences, and the Hudson’s Bay Company was to receive two dollars “headmoney” for each passenger carried. Lytton’s reaction to the proclamation and to the proposed contract was spontaneous and violent: immediately he disallowed all the arrangements. Only a fortnight earlier, on the very day when he had intro­ duced the bill to organize the Colony of British Columbia, the new Colonial Secretary had addressed his first despatch to Doug­ las. Public order would be established in the gold district, he informed him, and the British government was opposed to any policy of excluding Americans from the area. On the same day, he sent a confidential despatch containing information that marines were to be provided by the Admiralty to help maintain order and cautioning him against using them for the objects of the Efudson’s Bay Company “in whose service you have so long been engaged” .24 The disallowance of the M ay proclamation constituted the only serious reprimand which Douglas was to receive from the Imperial authorities during his whole term of office. The Hud­ son’s Bay Company, Lytton pointed out sharply, had no right or privilege whatever other than the right of exclusive trade with the Indians. To exclude anyone from the territory, to prevent the importation of goods or to make governmental regulations “ subservient to the revenues or interests of the Company” ,25 153

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was contrary to law. The Governor of Vancouver Island had no legal status on the Mainland. The rebuke was somewhat softened by a confidential despatch written the same day stating that a bill was before parliament to organize government in New Caledonia, and that, on condi­ tion that Douglas was prepared to sever his connection with the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Crown desired to make use of his services as Governor. The offer was made with the knowledge of Henry Hulse Berens, the new Governor of the Company. In order to have a more perfect understanding of the terms, Lytton penned another confidential despatch on July 31. He now re­ quired Douglas to dispose of any interest in the Puget’s Sound Agricultural Company and intimated that should he refuse to meet this condition, an appointment in some other colonial sphere might be offered to him. This letter caused some anxiety in the Colonial Office, where it was felt that Douglas might w illingly accept an alternative appointment. Before replying to Lytton’s offer, Douglas wrote to defend the provisions of the M ay proclamation, which, he pointed out, were now almost entirely abrogated. Pie noted that Lytton had de­ clared that the rights of trade made over to the Hudson’s Bay Company were limited to the trade with the Indian tribes but “ w e” , he stated, “ have always hitherto given a more extended application to those rights, believing from the circumstance of the country, being inhabited by Indians alone, and from its not being open for settlement to white men, that the intention of Parliament in granting the License, was to make over the whole trade of the country to the Hudson’s Bay Company” .20 A few days later, he accepted Lytton’s conditions for the governor­ ship, but asked for a larger salary. In the end, Lytton offered to pay the sum of £1,800 for his dual office out of the parliamen­ tary grant and to allow an increase in this amount out of local funds when the revenues of the colonies warranted such payment. A week after Douglas had written of his intention to accept the new appointment, the rebuke which had been administered was still rankling. On October 11, he sent Lytton another strongly worded defence of his action. He had been forced by “ a stem necessity” , he stated, “ either to take the initiative and t5 4

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to give a direction to the masses, or to submit to their dicta­ tion” .27 He had understood that his commission as the Governor of Vancouver Island was broad enough to apply to all cases affecting public interest, and since the influx of the miners had created an urgent need of revenue, he had considered it only proper that they should bear the cost of expenditures. As Arthur Blackwood at the Colonial Office later remarked, Doug­ las was “ a grand hand at a despatch” ,28 and his closely reasoned argument probably persuaded Lytton that he had been guilty of no evil intention, and that indeed, his services during such a critical period merited recognition. In December, Lytton wrote a gracious note stating that Her M ajesty had conferred on Douglas, in recognition of his successful administration of the government of Vancouver Island, the distinction of a Compan­ ion of the Order of the Bath. In actual fact, before waiting for any refutation of his charges or even for the formal acceptance of his offer, Lytton on Septem­ ber 2 had sent Douglas his commission as Governor of British Columbia. A t the same time he had instructed him in a separ­ ate despatch to proclaim, with the least possible delay, the revocation of the grant of 1838 in so far as it applied to the new colony. Thirty-seven years had now passed since James Douglas had first joined the Hudson’s Bay Company: the better part of his lifetime had been spent in the service of this powerful commer­ cial organization. But he had entered the fur trade as a Nor’Wester; in 1821 he had learned to serve a new master and he could do so again. “ Obedience”, he had once written, “ is the very first and most important of our duties” ;29 his complete allegiance would now be transferred to the Crown. It would be all the easier for him to transfer his loyalty, for his ties with the Hudson’s Bay Company were no longer what they had once been: old friends like Dr. McLoughlin and Peter Skene Ogden were dead; so was his former superior, Andrew Colvile. Sir George Simpson, testifying before the Select Committee, had shown unmistakable signs of advancing age: his years with the Company would be numbered. N ew men like Douglas’s own son-in-law, Alexander Grant Dallas, who was soon to succeed Douglas as Head of the Western Department, and then Simpson

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as Governor of Rupert’s Land, were rising to power. Dallas had never served in the field, and he was intimate with London bankers, financiers and promoters who were seeking opportun­ ities to invest capital in railway systems. Even the philosophy of the Hudson’s Bay Company was changing with the times, and its senior officials were now questioning the value of possessing a formal grant of monopolistic trading rights in the Northwest. Yet, as he prepared to leave its service, Douglas must have felt sincere regret at breaking a bond which had lasted for so long; and he undoubtedly sympathized with the view of Edward Ellice Sr. that the British government had used the Company for its own purpose of stabilizing its position on the North West Coast, and then— when the discovery of gold opened a prospect of remunerative returns— had wrenched away its privileges. W ith some justification, Lytton looked upon the new colony as his own creation; in setting up the machinery of its govern­ ment, he took a deep personal pride. Although he had stated in parliament that it would not be fair to the “ grand principle of free institutions to risk at once the experiment of self-govern­ ment among settlers so wild, so miscellaneous, perhaps so transitory, and in a form of society so crude” ,30 he instructed Douglas to shape his policy towards the establishment of repre­ sentative institutions and to develop a sense of identity between the immigrants and the government. He studied all the inform­ ation available on the administration of the Australian gold­ fields and based many of his recommendations on the experience of colonial officers during that Gold Rush. He saw that it would be useful to have a detachment of Royal Engineers in British Columbia who could plan a communication system, survey town-sites and supply military protection. He also saw the need for a judge who would introduce a system of courts and enforce respect for British law. And from the applications which he received, he recommended to Douglas a group of capable young men, most of them known to the Parliamentary Under-Secre­ tary, Chichester Samuel Fortescue, to serve as minor officials. By March, 1859, Lytton had completed a civil list of £5,300 and selected the officers for the major posts: James Douglas, Governor; Matthew Baillie Begbie, Judge; Chartres Brew, In­ spector of Police; Captain James Cooper, Harbour Master; 156

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Wymond 0 . Hamley, Collector of Customs; Captain W . Driscoll Gosset, R.E., Treasurer; W . A. G. Young, Colonial Secretary, and George H. Cary, Attorney General. In some instances in­ fluence had played a part in these appointments, but above everything else, Lytton had been anxious to avoid selecting offi­ cials who were connected with the Hudson’s Bay Company. Some of the selections were certainly not ones that Douglas would have made; and some of the officials would have preferred to serve under a governor who was not, as they considered Douglas, “an old fur-trader” . As far as Douglas was concerned, the appointment which must have pleased him least was that of Captain Cooper, his former political opponent, who still owed a large debt at the Company’s store at Victoria and who had not yet paid for his land. But Cooper triumphantly carried back to Vancouver Island a letter from Merivale stating that “ although you left Vancouver Island in circumstances of some embarrass­ ment, no discreditable conduct has been proved against you in respect of those circumstances” .31 The Governor considered Cooper’s office of Harbour Master at Esquimalt to be a sinecure, and he soon had reason to complain that its holder had allied himself “with the clique who abuse and vilify the government, through the columns of a newspaper which is called the ‘British Colonist’ ” , for which newspaper, Cooper was “ actually one of the sureties” .32 The first mining season was almost ended before any of these officials arrived at Victoria. For Douglas, every day since April, 1858, had been filled with activity: his correspondence with the Colonial Office, as he said, had been carried on in the midst of “ varied cares and anxieties” . For months he was chained to his desk, and only twice did he feel justified in stealing time away from his office to inspect the gold-fields. But both trips were necessary, for many disturbing rumours had reached Victoria concerning conditions at the mines, and he needed first-hand information in order to plan constructively. From the tour which he made of the mining-fields early in the summer, he obtained the impression that gold had succeeded furs as the new staple and that it would no longer be possible to maintain the Hudson’s Bay Company’s position on the Main­ land. “ Fort Y ale” , he noted in his journal, “a great site for a

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town, yields large sums of Money, probably a million before 6 months are over” .33 To maintain peace, he appointed both English and Indian magistrates; to ensure the collection of licence fees, he selected local revenue officers; and a little later, he inaugurated the office of gold commissioner. He returned to Victoria convinced that the problem of trans­ portation and supply would have to be tackled immediately. To provide facilities for the miners and to prevent trade taking the direction of the Columbia River, he modified the offer which the Pacific M ail Steamship Company had declined and extended it to other steamship companies. They found the terms acceptable, and two side-wheel steamers which had been used on the Sacra­ mento River immediately applied for sufferances. On June 6, one of these, the Surprise, made the first steamboat ascent from Fort Langley to Fort Hope. Refore the season ended, she made fifteen return trips from Victoria, sometimes carrying a capacity load of 500 passengers. After expending the greatest effort to fight the current, the little Sea Bird also reached Fort Hope in June, but her return voyage ended in disaster. Far more suited than either of these for navigating the river was the Umatilla, a stern-wheeler from the Columbia River, which on July 21. successfully reached Yale, the head of navigation. In her five-hour struggle against the stream from Fort Hope to Fort Yale, the miners urged her on with shouts of joy and the firing of guns and pistols. A t Fort Yale, she received an enthus­ iastic reception, and then, after her captain had entertained “ a number of the principal inhabitants” at a banquet, commenced her first down trip. Like “ a streak of chain lightning” , she returned to Fort Hope in fifty-one minutes.34 Almost before Douglas knew it, an American monopoly of transportation on the Fraser River was substituted for the Hudson’s Ray Company’s control. Although more sufferances were issued to American boats, he put both the Beaver and the Otter on the run in order to provide sufficient competition to force down freight and passenger rates. On July 25, the Umatilla left Fort Langley with eighty pass­ engers and a special correspondent of the Victoria Gazette for a trial run of Harrison River and Harrison Lake. Granular gold had now been found near the Forks (soon to be renamed 158

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Lytton) and a few miners were using the overland route by Seton and Anderson Lakes to the upper Fraser which A . C. Anderson had discovered in 1846. After the Umatilla estab­ lished the navigability of this waterway, Douglas laid plans for opening an access route by w ay of the chain of lakes to Lillooet. When the steamer retraced her route in August, she carried 260 men who had entered into a contract with him to build the Harrison-Lillooet Road. This, the first highway project in British Columbia, was launched for the dual purpose of solving the problem of com­ munication and easing the burden of unemployment. The waters of the Fraser River had already started to rise in the spring freshet while Douglas was at Fort Yale in early June, but at that time the miners were still working their rockers. The scale gold was almost at the surface; no excavation was deeper than two feet. Throughout June and July, however, and into August, high water put an end to work on the bars; with disgust, 3,900 miners returned to San Francisco in August to denounce “ the Fraser River Humbug” . On their w ay home­ ward, they swarmed into Victoria, alarming tire inhabitants by their unruly behaviour. On the night of July 31, Douglas was forced to call on the men of the Boundary Commission to pro­ vide assistance in putting down a riot. They arrived on H.M.S. Plumper, a man-of-war then engaged in a survey of the coast. “ It was very exciting when we came in sight of the town & the order was given to load & the ship’s guns run out & cleared for action”, one of the officers wrote; “we had to disembark in boats & if there had been any resistance there would have been very few of us not knocked over. Luckily however we found that after rescuing a prisoner & knocking over the sheriff the mob had dispersed. . . .” 35 To withdraw a restless element from the Colony and at the same time to improve internal communications on the Main­ land, Douglas laid his plans for constructing a road, “ though passable, in the first instance, only for pack horses” ,38 through the mountain barrier north of Fort Yale. On hearing of his in­ tention, 500 miners came forward to volunteer their services. The project became a co-operative venture: each of the miners deposited $25 with the Governor as security of good conduct

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and agreed to work without pay. Douglas promised to supply transportation and food, and to repay the deposit in the form of provisions delivered at Victoria prices at the commencement of the road. On August 5, the first party left Victoria under the command of A. C. Anderson, and the work of cutting the trail commenced on August 9. Two days later, the miners approached Anderson with the request that the southern terminus of the road be named in his honour, but he “ declared that if any compliment were meant, no gentleman was better entitled to it than His Excellency, the Governor; and he named the place Port Douglas, which was responded to by three hearty cheers for Governor Douglas, and three more for himself” .37 M any things went wrong after this, and it was not until the middle of October that most of the trail was completed; at best, it provided but difficult travel for mule trains. And poor as it was, the cost of providing transportation and supplying food for the workmen had amounted to £14,000. Douglas’s second visit to the mines was as productive of action as his first. W hen news reached Victoria of an outbreak of serious trouble above Yale, where the Indians were attempting to expel the miners from the diggings, the Governor immediate­ ly requisitioned marines and sappers from the Boundary Com­ mission and started out in their company on August 30. By the time he reached Fort Hope, order had been restored by the miners themselves, who had organized themselves into military units, taken some punitive action, and then entered into treaties with the Indians. But it struck Douglas that he “had never before seen a crowd of more ruffianly looking men” . W hen he addressed them, however, “they were profuse in acclamations, and did, at m y command, give three cheers for the Queen, but evidently with a bad grace. There is a strong American feeling among them, and they w ill require constant watching, until the English element preponderates in the Country” .38 There were a few California desperadoes in the area, and Douglas decided not only to show them that he represented British authority, but that criminal acts would be punished. To bring a murderer to trial, he set up a temporary court at Fort Hope. George Pearkes, the Crown Solicitor of Vancouver Island, presided over it, American miners gave testimony, and 160

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in the absence of a gaol, the murderer was sentenced to trans­ portation. Douglas then organized a police force, appointed special constables to be stationed at Yale and also set up there a temporary court for trying offences. The miners themselves spoke of the necessity of the appointment of additional magis­ trates, and he was much gratified to learn that “ the general feeling is in favor of English rule on Fraser’s River, the people having a degree of confidence in the sterling uprightness and integrity of Englishmen which they do not entertain for their own countrymen” .39 The receding waters, Douglas learned, had deposited gold of greater quantity and finer quality than that found earlier in the season. As he walked to Fort Yale, he could see that the type of mining operation was already changing: sluices were replacing rockers, and in some places the flumes and ditches were three miles long. About 9,000 men were making good wages, and the names of the bars— Fifty-Four-Forty, Union, Santa Clara, American, Puget Sound, Yankee Doodle, Sacra­ mento, Texas, Ohio— clearly indicated the origin of the men working them. On the occasion of his first visit to Fort Yale, he had yielded to the miners’ desire to have the size of mining claims adjusted; now he made it clear that control of mining regulations be­ longed to the authorities, although the requests of local mining boards would receive attention from the Gold Commissioners. He decided, however, to satisfy another demand. From the very first, Douglas had seen the necessity of pro­ hibiting squatting on Crown Lands. Land, he knew, could be an important source of revenue. In June, he had warned the miners at Yale against illegal occupation, but on his return to Victoria, he had urged the Colonial Office to adopt a plan for opening the country to settlement. W ith winter approaching, it was desirable that shelter be provided; he therefore gave direc­ tions for the laying out of the towns of Fort Hope and Fort Yale and announced that the miners might occupy town lots in re­ turn for a monthly payment which could be applied towards the purchase price. The same concession was made for Port Douglas later in the year. For Langley, he had more ambitious plans. 161

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A t Yale, Douglas learned that the miners had contributed their labour to improve the old brigade trail to Spuzzum and Boston Bar in order to make the new dry diggings above Yale accessible. This project was one which the Governor already had in mind, and he now offered his assistance for the improve­ ment of a good mule trail. From this second visit, Douglas returned to Victoria knowing that a great public works programme would have to be launched. There was no question now that the country was incredibly rich in gold; the Imperial authorities, he thought, could well afford to be generous and at the very least they should contribute £200,000 to the development of the country. But Lytton had no such intention. The new Colony of British Columbia, he told Douglas, was more richly endowed by nature than most new colonies: after a minimum initial investment by the British government, it would have to make its own way. In November, Douglas returned to the Mainland for his third visit. This was to be a very special occasion, for its purpose was his inauguration as Governor of British Columbia. No official authority would come into existence until the proclamation announcing the parliamentary act was read. But in advance of the creation of legal power, the Governor of Vancouver Island had launched a public works programme, planned town-sites and introduced law and order. “ Divers of Her M ajesty’s Subjects and others [had] resorted to and settled on certain wild and unoccupied Territories on the North-west Coast of North America” ;40 their essential needs had already been satisfied and their actions had been controlled. In the bleak, grey cold of a November day, James Douglas left Victoria to assume his new office. Accompanying him were Rear-Admiral R. L. Baynes, Commander of Her M ajesty’s naval forces on the Pacific Station; David Cameron, Chief Justice of Vancouver Island; Matthew Baillie Begbie, Judge-elect of Brit­ ish Columbia, just landed at Victoria; Captain R. M. Parsons and Captain J. M. Grant, both commanding small advance parties of Royal Engineers. The party sailed on the Satellite for Point Roberts; there, on November 18, they transferred to the Otter, which was joined by the sturdy old Beaver at the mouth of the Fraser. A t Old Fort Langley (Derby), the Otter disem­ 162

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barked most of Parsons’s men; the rest of the party proceeded some two and a half miles to “new” Fort Langley on the Beaver. The following day, November 19, the Governor’s party, ac­ companied by his suite and received by a guard of honour sup­ plied by Captain Grant, disembarked in heavy rain on the wet, loamy bank, moved slowly towards the Fort, and under a salute of eighteen guns from the Beaver, watched the Union Jack broken out over the main entrance of the Fort. In the main building of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s establishment, Gov­ ernor Douglas read to the assembled crowd of one hundred persons Judge Begbie’s commission and then administered the oath of office. The new Judge, duly sworn in, proceeded to read Her M ajesty’s commission appointing James Douglas as Gover­ nor of British Columbia. The new Governor then read a proclamation which he had drawn up on November 3 to revoke the Hudson’s Bay Company’s licence of exclusive trade on the Mainland. Three further proclamations followed: one, an­ nouncing the act for the government of British Columbia; another, indemnifying Douglas and his officers for all acts committed prior to the formal establishment of government; and a third, extending English civil and criminal law to British Columbia. These ceremonies concluded, the Gold Colony came into existence. The next day, under a salute of seventeen guns from the battlements, James Douglas, no longer Chief Factor of the Hud­ son’s Bay Company, but now Governor of two of Her M ajesty’s colonies, left the palisades. The great Company which for so long had controlled the destiny of New Caledonia was in re­ treat, and some months later, when he addressed his last letter to Sir George Simpson, it was of Imperial, rather than Company interests that he wrote: “M any changes have taken place in this Country since I had last the pleasure of travelling with you on the Coast; and works of a perfectly stupendous character have been executed. Discoveries of Gold Districts are being made every week, and no doubt, ere long, w ill add greatly to the Bullion returns of England” .41

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Chapter

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individual effort and with little invest­ ment of capital, miners during 1858 recovered scale gold to the value of over $500,000 from the sand-bars of the Fraser River. Most of the treasure was obtained in the autumn by a relatively small number of men who, in spite of the general feeling of disappointment over the size of the flaky particles, had refused to join the summer exodus to California. By November, the more fortunate of these men had made their stake, and shipping their gold-dust by the express operated by Billy Ballou, the “wild French w aif”, they began to leave the diggings in order to spend the winter in more civilized surroundings. The Enterprise, an American stem-wheeler which carried the last shipload down­ stream in mid-December, delayed her departure from Fort Yale almost too long: after leaving Fort Hope, she was caught fast in the ice for three days, and then, working herself free, she continued cautiously, retrieving from the forest-clad banks as she proceeded, the passengers who had abandoned her.

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Some of the men on board planned to pass the winter months in Victoria and to return in the spring to try their luck on the ledges north of the Big Canyon, where the discovery of nuggets had aroused their hopes that the mother lode, the source of all wealth, might be found. Navigation of the lower Fraser River made this area somewhat more accessible than it had been at the beginning of the season: from Victoria steamers now plied the waters to Port Douglas, 165 miles distant, and to Fort Yale, 130 miles away. But since there was still no form of public land trans­ portation from either terminus, each miner would have to pack in his own supplies and mining tools from the head of navigation. Something was to be said for choosing the Harrison-Lillooet route to the Interior, for although it was far from being well trodden, it was comparatively short and in considerably better condition than the new pathway from Fort Yale to Boston Bar which, Judge Begbie declared, snow and rain rendered “ utterly impassable for any animal, except a man, a goat, or a dog” .1 Whichever trail a miner selected, travel would be difficult, and once arrived in the Interior, unless he had the good fortune to obtain supplies of fresh vegetables and meat from one of the posts of the Hudson’s Bay Company, he would have to depend upon packers who charged $360 a ton to haul goods from Douglas to Lytton, a distance of 100 miles. W ith the first fall of snow, these packers took their mules off the road, and then provisions could be ob­ tained only from Indians, who continued all winter long to carry loads weighing 100 pounds through the deep snow. Rather than climb the mountain trails to Lytton or Lillooet, face the uncertainty of profitable endeavour, and expose them­ selves to the inclement weather, volatile Californians preferred to return to San Francisco and to push on from there in the spring to the new Colorado mining-fields. A more adventure­ some and, in a sense, a more stable group remained behind to pass the winter in dingy hotels and lodging-houses in Victoria. The capital of Vancouver Island, these miners found, was no longer the crowded tent-city of the spring. A few brick and stone buildings on the waterfront gave it an air of prosperity. But this impression was belied by the tawdry appearance of the business section to the rear of the fine edifices. On the back streets, the hotels, stores and houses constructed during the summer from 166

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cheap lumber imported from the American mills on Puget Sound intermingled to form an unattractive array. Some projected over the line of the street; others were set back; some faced the street; others turned gabled ends toward it. Certain sections of the town had been taken over by particular national groups. Most of the Jewish merchants, auctioneers and tailors had opened shops on Johnson Street. Not far from their district was “little Canton”— the Chinese quarter with its laun­ dries and its tenements. The Sandwich Islanders, both the new immigrants and the former servants of the Hudson’s Bay Com­ pany, occupied Kanaka Row, Humboldt Street. On the hillsides fringing the city, Englishmen of the new professional class maintained an appearance of seedy gentility in the shared ac­ commodation of “a little hut of two or three rooms made of boards, with a little lean-to for the cooking, without garden, fence or privacy” .2 The West Indian and the American Negroes, “ a very quiet people, a little given perhaps to over familiarity . . . very fond of dignity . . . and addicted to an imposing costume, in the w ay of black coats, gold studs and watch chains” ,8 de­ clined the opportunity for voluntary segregation, and, enjoying the paternal interest of Governor Douglas and the sympathetic support of the Rev. Edward Cridge, settled wherever they desired and only too w illingly exercised the privilege of renting pews in the city’s most fashionable church. In spite of improvements made by the chain-gang, the main thoroughfares were in little better condition than the muddy trail over which Mrs. Staines had picked her w ay so carefully when she landed at Fort Victoria. Horses, cows and pigs roamed at pleasure; and very boggy streets bore placards which “in­ formed the public that no bottom was obtainable” .4 Through the mud padded Songhee Indians, indolently hawking clams and salmon, grouse and duck, venison and berries. Chinese, wearing pig-tails and dressed in their national costume, jog-trotted through the mire as they balanced on their shoulders the long poles to which they tied their bundles of tea, fresh vegetables and laundry. Late at night, more than one drunken miner stumbled into a gutter. Everyone complained about the menace to health from the open drains which bordered the side-walks, but since municipal 167

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government was not yet organized, there were no public funds to purchase pipes. W ater for domestic purposes was in short supply, but now that horse-drawn carts peddled it from door to door, householders no longer had to make daily trips to the spring owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Especially in the shack-bordered ravines, sanitation left every room for improve­ ment. New arrivals in Vancouver Island, particularly the Wesleyan Methodist missionaries, criticized the squalor which prevailed among the Songhees who still lived across the harbour, but the residents of Victoria had become accustomed to the growing depravity and demoralization of the Indians. Little more than idle comment was passed when, on numerous occasions, the body of an Indian woman was discovered floating on the waters of the Inner Harbour. Great numbers of the Songhees had been converted to Christianity by Father Jean-Baptiste Bolduc, who had accompanied James Douglas on his second trip to Vancouver Island in 1843, and by Father Lempfrit, an Oblate priest, who had laboured among them for three years after the founding of the Colony, but the work had long been discontinued and the Gold Rush now provided a great stimulus for Christian en­ deavour among the Indians as well as among the miners. As new missionaries appeared on the North West Coast, Victoria became a city of churches. Although the clergy were a great stabilizing force, the effectiveness of their work was sometimes reduced by denominational rivalries. Particularly was this so in the Colony of Vancouver Island, where a controversy developed over the position of the Church of England. W hen the Rev. Edward Cridge, successor to Staines, retained the glebe of 100 acres with which the Hudson’s Bay Company had endowed its chaplain, the Rev. Modeste Demers, the Roman Catholic Bishop, for long the only religious leader in the Colony other than the chaplain of the Hudson’s Bay Company, made no com­ plaint. Instead, he continued his own work and welcomed to Victoria the four nuns whom, through his persuasion, the Mother House of the Sisters of St. Ann at Lachine had sent to open a school. It was a Protestant missionary who raised an outcry when Governor Douglas went before the Assembly of Vancouver Island to ask for an appropriation for Cridge’s salary; the 168

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Colonial Office, on the abrogation of the Hudson’s Bay Com­ pany’s Grant, having declined to make the regular colonial ecclesiastical appointment. For a year the controversy raged, with De Cosmos joining in the fray to accuse the Governor of attempting to foist a state church on the Colony. In the end, the glebe was reduced to less than 30 acres, and the Anglican clergy had to rely, as did the other denominations, on donations and pew rents. To the miners, this lively issue was without much interest. A few of them were church-goers, but as a group they had no great reputation for piety. Their attendance, as every mis­ sionary complained, was far more regular at saloons and at dance-halls. Some of them, however, did enter into the social life of Victoria. The more refined of their number were invited to the homes of British colonists who did “things properly, put on airs and graces” , lived more expensively and made “ a little splurge” ,6 but the extension of these invitations was usually confined to Englishmen of good family and reputation who had come to the New World in search of adventure. Respectable Californians were entertained in the middle-class homes of American shop-keepers, German-Jewish land agents and merchants, and professionally-trained Frenchmen. These upright and stable men had established roots in Vancouver Island and they were now making the social advances which would event­ ually win for them leadership in municipal affairs. Clinging to their own traditions, careful in their religious observances, inter­ ested in music and the theatre, they gave the town a cosmopolitan and cultural air which it had previously lacked. Under their influence, business which had been in the doldrums with the population shrinking from 20,000 to 3,000 and unable to absorb the glut of imported goods, became more stable. And these solid townspeople, who were soon to become naturalized British sub­ jects, performed philanthropic work which offset the influence of the saloon and the gambling den. In the Mainland Colony the 3,000 miners who wintered in the area between Fort Langley and Fort Yale had none of the diversions which their friends in Victoria enjoyed. Parties of miners who had underestimated the possibility of a severe

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change in weather continued to operate their rockers until bitter gales swept down the trough in the Cascade Mountains and a sudden drop in temperature caused the river to freeze. Then, belatedly, they sought shelter among the black shadows of giant cedars and spruce. In hastily-constructed, snow-banked, win­ dowless cabins, ventilated by chilling draughts of cold air seep­ ing in through moss-chinked walls and warmed by roaring fires built in sheet-iron stoves, they passed the long cold months. For weeks they remained indoors, passing the time by sleeping. W hen bright sunshine enticed them outdoors, they built bonfires at the river’s edge for the sake of exercise and activity. Colonel Moody, visiting the diggings in January, 1859, became enamoured of the beauty of the Tyrolean setting, find­ ing it enhanced by the cheerful fires and the blue smoke rising to curl among over-hanging, snow-weighted boughs. But most of the miners felt imprisoned by the mountain walls and on the dark days they became depressed. Then, for diversion, they turned their wooden bunks into gambling tables, and occasion­ ally, supplied by American traders with illicit liquor, they indulged in drunken orgies which culminated in riots. Out of sheer boredom, they also engaged in arguments about the justice of the actions of local magistrates, and deficient in judgment, they made no attempt to interfere when Ned McGowan, a notorious California outlaw, took advantage of a quarrel between two magistrates to transfer authority from their hands to his band of desperadoes. But such incidents were the exception rather than the rule, for on the whole, they were an ebullient, good-natured and well-behaved group. They were a heterogeneous collection of men, these miners: “ ENGLISH M EN (stanch Royalists) Americans (Republicans) Frenchmen, very numerous, Germans in abundance, Italians, several Hungarians, Poles, Danes, Swedes, Spaniards, Mexicans, & Chinese” .6 Adventurers and wanderers, they had been uprooted from communities where normal restraints had checked their natural instincts, and lured by gold to the wilderness, they revelled in extreme individualism. The mirage of the pay-streak was reality for them and the excitement of the moment their stimulus. It was the purpose and intention of Governor Douglas to 170

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impress each of these migrants with the majesty of the law and the sanctity of private property, to substitute firm control for anarchy and the Queen’s authority for lawlessness. To perform his work, he had two m ighty weapons in his armoury: great force of character and extensive political influence. But much of his success would also depend on the personal integrity of the officials chosen by the Colonial Office for the new Colony of British Columbia. In Matthew Baillie Begbie, selected for the position of Judge, Douglas immediately recognized qualities like his own: a reverent respect for the Crown, a stern sense of duty and an ardent desire to build a second England on the shores of the Pacific. A Cambridge graduate of considerable intellectual attainment, a man with a natural hauteur, an accomplished teller of anecdotes, and something of a musician, Begbie had the distinction of mind and manner so much admired by Douglas. He shared with the Governor a passionate love for the new country, for the mountains and the sombre forests, the undulat­ ing grass lands of the Interior, and the gentle uplands, the oak thickets and the rocky headlands of southern Vancouver Island. For the welfare of the native Indian, each had a sensitive regard; for the American character and the American political tradition, neither had great respect. In planning a system of courts for the Colony of British Columbia, Judge Begbie used as a model the system which Chief Justice Cameron, singlehanded, had devised for Vancouver Island. No slavish admirer of textbooks and manuals, Begbie, as judge, was often unconventional and sometimes inconsistent. During his first year in the Gold Colony, he permitted American lawyers to appear in court to defend American miners, but he refused until 1863 to admit to the bar lawyers trained in British colonies. In the absence of lawyers, he was often obliged to act as cross-examining counsel. Frequently, presiding at the assizes, he found himself enraged by the failure of juries to bring in the right verdict. “ Go, and sin no more” , he dismissed a prisoner who had been found “not guilty” .7 On one occasion when the verdict returned was manslaughter instead of murder, he addressed the prisoner: “You deserve to be hanged! Had the jury performed their duty I might now have the painful satis171

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faction of condemning you to death, and you, gentlemen of the jury, you are a pack of Dalles horse thieves, and permit me to say, it would give me great pleasure to see you hanged, each and every one of you, for declaring a murderer guilty only of manslaughter” .8 On his long and lonely circuits, he became a familiar figure to the miners, who regarded him as the personi­ fication of the principles of British justice. As Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works and LieutenantGovernor of British Columbia, the Colonial Office chose Colonel Moody, commander of the detachment of 165 Royal Engineers sent to British Columbia. He was a man of a different stamp. A member of a military fam ily and former Governor of the Falkland Islands, Bichard Clement Moody had learned to be affable and adroit during a lifetime spent in garrison towns. The Colonial Office learned too late that he had also acquired expensive tastes in the course of his European travels and that he had developed a fine disregard for caution in making out his accounts. Before Moody’s departure from England, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton was careful to instruct him in the nature of his duties and to explain his relationship to the Governor. From one of his travelling companions, Captain Cooper, the Colonel probably learned something of the personal idiosyncrasies of Governor Douglas; from the other, Captain Gosset, former SurveyorGeneral of Ceylon, and now on the retired list of the Royal Engineers, probably much about the scale suitable for planning new works in a virgin country. Two days after arriving at Victoria, Moody wrote to confide in one of the officials of the Colonial Office that he had “ entirely disarmed [Douglas] of all jealousy and neutralized any little mischievous attempts to introduce a wedge between us” .9 In the opinion of Arthur Blackwood, who entirely mistrusted Moody’s judgment and who had found him to be “ always in a hurry & frequently wrong” ,10 inexact, and habitually miscalculating and mismanaging, this was a letter to be preserved “ as it makes abundant promises of subordination to the Governor— which it w ill be well to remember in case of conflicts hereafter” .11 W ith great enthusiasm, Colonel Moody entered into the duties of his office. He paid little attention when Douglas warned him 172

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that the financial position of the new Colony was precarious, since the Imperial government would bear only the cost of military expenditures and of the Governor’s salary. Already, the Colonel had pictured in his own mind the conversion of forested hillsides to garrison towns which he would ennoble with reproductions of the public squares and the fine architec­ ture of European capitals. The magnitude and the impractic­ ability of his plans for the town-sites of the Gold Colony soon exasperated Douglas, who offended him by the terse comment that “people are not generally disposed to perch their houses on bleak mountains or inaccessible cliffs, simply because they happen to be good military positions” .12 Too ambitious in his plans, over-confident concerning the resources of the Colony, incapable of Douglas’s grasp of minute details, longing to acquire landed estates, Colonel Moody eventually sacrificed the Governor’s regard. A t the beginning, Douglas had been more than satisfied with his performance. A t Fort Yale in January, 1859, Moody with the help of Begbie and the support of Royal Engineers, marines and blue-jackets, had restored order with despatch and beneficial effect. This augured well for the future, Douglas thought, and he decided to call both Moody and Begbie into informal consulta­ tion and to delay the setting up of a representative council until such time as the Colony of British Columbia had a larger and more stable population. For a while, the meetings of the three men took on the character of sessions of an Executive Council; later, during absences of Begbie from Victoria, Douglas found it convenient not to consult Moody. A ll the major policies for the Gold Colony were then determined by the Governor himself and announced in the form of proclamations. Moody’s first official action may well have laid the foundation of the estrangement. Lytton had ordered him to consult with Douglas to select a site for a maritime town, probably at the mouth of the Fraser River, and, if necessary, one for an inland capital. Before leaving England, Moody had decided, after studying maps, that for reasons of military security the capital of British Columbia should be established on the north bank of the Fraser River. On his arrival at Victoria, Douglas, who had had Captain G. H. Richards of the Plumper examine the mouth of 173

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the river, recommended for the seaport town a location just above Annacis Island, near the HB Tree. But when, early in January, 1859, Moody set out to examine the Fraser River, it is probable that Douglas, along with every­ one else in the two colonies, assumed that the capital city would be established at Derby (Old Fort L an gley). There the Governor, the previous autumn, had forestalled the speculators who had made preparations to sell building lots: he had declared all lands vested in the Crown, completed a government survey, and instructed J. D. Pemberton, the Colonial Surveyor, to conduct at Victoria a public auction of building sites. This, the first sale of town lots in British Columbia, was surprisingly successful in yielding revenue. Victoria merchants, government officials, Amor De Cosmos and other prominent colonists purchased property, and the government obtained over $66,000 from the sale. The town, located on land adjoining the Hudson’s Bay Company’s claim at Fort Langley, included a government reserve on which Douglas planned to build a court-house, a gaol, a church and a parsonage, and on which he already had barracks for the Royal Engineers under construction. Because of its proximity to the American frontier, Moody considered Derby unsuitable as the capital of British Columbia. This opinion was strengthened after a visit to the American town of Semiahmoo, the centre of smuggling activity. Instead of Derby, he recommended a location on a hill on the north side of the river, about twenty miles from the sand-heads— probably the same spot which Douglas had recommended for the seaport. This position, he wrote, “had great facilities for communication by water, as well as by future great trunk railways into the interior” and it could be easily defended.13 A n entrenched camp with a series of open works could be built on rising ground on the opposite bank of the river, the left flank protected by fortifications on a hill near Pitt River, access from the rear rendered hazardous by placing a work on the future Stanley Park, and a frontal attack prevented by constructing a camp on high ground running from east to west. As a military man, he was enthusiastic about his discovery: “ In ‘war costume’ how different!” he wrote to Blackwood; “ woods felled points out­ wards— Marshes inundated— muzzles of a few guns staring you 174

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in the face just where you thought yourself most secure. . . .” 14 Douglas, who had been required by the Colonial Office to weigh Moody’s advice, accepted the decision without demur and on February 14, 1859, issued a proclamation declaring his inten­ tion to have a capital laid out on the hillside. Until June 2, however, he delayed announcing the location of the port of entry. Then, giving up hope of encouraging the development of Derby as a commercial centre, he proclaimed Queensborough, as the new town was commonly called, to be the sole port of entry for British Columbia, and established rates for tonnage, pilotage, and harbour dues as well as for customs duties. A further proclamation on July 20 announced the Queen’s selection of the name “ New Westminster” to replace “ Queensborough”, which Lytton considered “ not only prosaic [but] the quin­ tessence of vulgarity” .15 Investors in the Langley lots, particularly Amor De Cosmos, who accused the Governor of “double dealing and uncertainty” , were far from happy about the selection of New Westminster as the capital of the new Colony. De Cosmos hinted that old ties with the Hudson’s Bay Company and a desire to increase the value of its holdings had influenced Douglas’s decision to lay out a town-site at Derby, and that he had done everything to create the impression that it would be the capital. This criticism did not die down even after purchasers were allowed to surrender their Derby lots and have their money transferred towards payments of lots at New Westminster. Including the Langley transfers, the public auction of town lots at the new site on June 1 and 2 yielded over $89,000. By the end of the year, almost everyone who had acquired this land was dissatisfied. For months, Moody had been work­ ing on his plans for the squares and terraces which would adorn the capital city. “Hurried designs in so grave a matter as the grades for a Capital of a Country, cannot be too strongly depre­ cated” , he informed Douglas in December.17 “ I would suggest to you that the Colony itself must first become great and flourishing before we can undertake works on a scale of magnifi­ cence” , Douglas replied, “ and that a Town just laid out and not yet dissociated from the primeval forest cannot be dealt with as a great City that has existed for Centuries” .18 175

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The site was covered with magnificent fir, cedar, hemlock and spruce, some of the trees 250 feet high and 27 feet in circum­ ference, as well as with ash, elm, birch, apple, cherry, maple and elder. “W hat a grand old Park this whole hill would make!” wrote Colonel Moody, while reluctantly admitting that the woods were “most vexatious to a surveyor and the first dwellers in a town” and the “ thickets are the closest and thorniest I ever came across” .19 The cost of clearing the site probably averaged three dollars a stump. W hen the Rev. John Sheepshanks, tem­ porary chaplain to the troops, arrived in mid-summer, he saw “ mighty trees . . . lying about in confusion, as though a giant with one sweep of his mighty arm had mown them down” .20 For the Royal Engineers, who were busy building their own camp at Sapperton, a mile away, and improving the HarrisonLillooet trail— and it was whispered, also engaged in “ forming expensive fancy walks through picturesque ravines” 21— the surveying and the clearing were far more than they could accomplish. Civilian surveyors, including Edgar Dewdney, recently arrived from England, and W alter Moberly, a Cana­ dian, were employed, and Royal Marines who had been sent from China to bolster the military defences of the Colony were put to work wood-cutting, an occupation which the Colonial Office considered would give the Admiralty little cause for jubilation. By the end of 1859, the cost of surveys amounted to more than $15,000. Merchants were distressed that the main streets were not yet laid out. In Victoria, people said that the site had “too little soil, and too much climate” to grow into a settle­ ment,22 and the opinion of Pemberton, the Colonial Surveyor, was that the impregnability of the town might be unquestion­ able “but if unfortunately this quality renders it inaccessible to the merchantmen of the Pacific, and to the trade of Puget Sound, what object could an enemy have in attacking it?”23 On July 16, i860, Douglas yielded to the popular demand and incorporated the city of N ew Westminster. The municipal council then undertook the responsibility for carrying out improvements. From its very foundation, New Westminster spelled trouble for the Governor. The immense labour involved in clearing the site necessitated the withdrawal of the services of a large number 176

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ofth e Royal Engineers from road-building in British Columbia, to him the essential work. Continuous political agitation under­ mined his popularity, not so much with the miners, by whom he was greatly respected, but with the Colonial Office. He had constant trouble with Colonel Moody over his requisitions and the greatest difficulty in eliciting an accounting of expenditures from Moody’s friend, Captain Gosset, who, in addition to being Treasurer of the Colony, had charge of the commissariat for the corps. The Governor’s problems increased in 1862 when the Colonial Office made the Colony pay half the cost of maintaining the Royal Engineers. By 1863, in spite of the invaluable service which the detachment had performed in surveying and improv­ ing roads on the Mainland, they had become to him a “ costly ornament” ; they were to British Columbia, he wrote, “ what the old man of the sea was to Sinbad, with this aggravation that H M Government helped to fasten the burden on the Colony and I have no power to relieve it” .24 But more than anything else, it was the hostility of New Westminster towards Victoria, and the mercenary attitude of Mainland merchants which disturbed him. He had adjusted to the changes which the Gold Rush had induced in Victoria, although he never ceased to regret that “ business is now the sole occupation of all classes, and social meetings are now rarely heard of and Country rides are something beyond the aim of even the most ambitious pleasure hunters” ;25 from the first, the avid ambition of the New Westminster business men repelled him. Their demand for a government subsidy for direct steam­ boat connection with San Francisco— to put them on a more equal footing with the Victoria merchants— was not likely to find favour with Douglas when the leadership of the movement was assumed by Captain Cooper (who had moved to the Royal City after profitably disposing of his land at Esquimalt) and by John Robson, the fiery editor of the British Columbian, who eulogized Moody’s work, while flaying Douglas and Begbie in his columns. New Westminster, a city named by the Queen and laid out by the Royal Engineers, had a political heritage that was Cana­ dian. M any of its merchants, day labourers and speculators had come from Upper Canada and from Nova Scotia, where they 177

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had been brought up on farms or in country manses or in the small-town homes of doctors, lawyers and journalists. Despising class privilege, they instinctively disliked the greater sophistica­ tion of the English element in Victoria and they resented the fact that their Governor and most of their officers resided in the rival colony. They demanded an opportunity for economic advancement and they saw that this could best be gained by acquiring land and government representation. They saw no justice in a policy which permitted a smaller, less populous colony, with fewer resources, to be furnished with the political institutions which they were denied. For this state of affairs they blamed not the Imperial authorities, but the Governor. Even before the city was incorporated, the residents of New Westminster had circulated a petition requesting Douglas to recommend the creation of an assembly. W hen the Governor forwarded the memorial to the Colonial Office, he expressed his opinion that the Colony still did not have a sufficiently large British element to justify taking this step. In the next few years he received four more memorials containing the same demand: three of these were set aside for further study by the Duke of Newcastle, Colonial Secretary in Palmerston’s ministry, who neglected to acknowledge their receipt. In 1862, when the Cariboo excitement had attracted a considerable number of British colonists and agricultural settlements were beginning to emerge in the Interior, Douglas recommended that when the Act organizing the government of British Columbia expired, a small chamber of fifteen members, one-third nominated by the Crown and the remaining two-thirds elected by the people, be set up to meet the needs and demands of the colonists. Instead of accepting his advice, the Duke of Newcastle sought the opinion of Captain Gosset, who was in England at the time, and adopted for British Columbia the plan of a council in which two-thirds of the members were nominated, as they were in the colony of Ceylon. Some of the desires of the N ew Westminster merchants coincided with Douglas’s own. Like them, he felt that land in the Gold Colony should be made available for settlement on easy terms. In 1859, he opened country lands to sale by public auction, fixing the upset price at ten shillings an acre, and re178

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quiring payment of only half the purchase price at the time of the sale and the remainder in two years’ time. To further encourage settlement, and, he hoped, to prevent speculation, he issued a pre-emption proclamation in January, i860, which made land as readily available as in the neighbouring American territory. British subjects, and aliens who took an oath of allegiance, were permitted, in advance of a government survey, to pre-empt 160 acres of land on condition that they occupied and improved it. To stimulate religious endeavour, he made free grants to four denominations, and he soon made it clear that neither he nor the Colonial Office intended British Columbia to have an established church. The development of N ew Westminster, however, was retarded by his action in making Victoria a free port. This fact, combined with the customs duties which penalized the Fraser River trade, and the difficulties of navigating the river, made Victoria the depot for all deep-sea ships. As commerce flowed towards it, the Island city developed into the banking, commercial and ship­ building centre of both colonies, and New Westminster failed to become either a major seaport or a great commercial centre. Even after the building of the assay office and the mint, it was little more than a stopping-place for river boats, for on the Mainland the centres for transhipment were at Yale and Douglas, the commencement of the overland trails. Because of carrying and handling charges on imports, the cost of living in the Royal City was higher than in Victoria, where prices were already 100 per cent above those in England. Customs duties imposed a further burden. But they also pro­ vided revenue for road-building, and the supplying of the needs of the miners was always Douglas’s first consideration. In 1859, with the duties so efficiently collected by Wymond 0 . Hamley, he was able to abolish the high monthly fee of 21 shillings for miners’ licences and to substitute a lower yearly fee of $5. To finance the construction of roads to the Interior, in January, i860, he enforced a special duty of 12 shillings a ton on all wares, goods and merchandise transported from New Westminster to any place in British Columbia; and later in the year he made similar levies on goods leaving Douglas, Yale and Hope. The British Columbian railed against these exactions, 179

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claiming that they placed a further impediment on trade and gave a natural advantage to the Columbia River-Okanagan V al­ ley route to the mines, which Washington and Oregon traders were using more and more for the supply trade. The business stagnation of i860 was blamed on this growing inland trade. To satisfy New Westminster merchants, Douglas promulgated the Southern Boundary Act in December, i860, applying heavy customs duties on all goods and animals entering British terri­ tory through the southern interior. W illiam George Cox, the Gold Commissioner stationed at Rock Creek, who was charged with enforcing the provisions of this act, found it almost im­ possible to patrol the open plain extending from Boundary Creek west to Okanagan Valley. But he had considerable ingenuity, and without seeking authority, or drawing the Governor’s attention to his action, he stationed constables south of the Boundary Line to capture smugglers. W ith Cox, as with the other Gold Commissioners who were the Governor’s principal means of keeping peace and order in the gold-fields, Douglas had a happier relationship than with some of the officials chosen by Lytton. In the Gold Fields Act of August 31, 1859, he had carefully outlined their duties. In framing the mining legislation incorporated into this act, he had worked largely from the New Zealand code, which in turn had been influenced by Australian practice. But the office of Gold Commissioner was largely his own creation, and nothing like it existed during the American mining rushes. Each Gold Com­ missioner, as a Stipendiary Magistrate, carried out the judicial duties of a Justice of the Peace and was charged with the responsibility for settling all mining and civil disputes involving sums less than $200. The Gold Commissioner collected the miners’ licences, registered all mining claims and supervised the work of local mining boards. He was also assistant commissioner of lands, collector of revenue, Indian agent and coroner. In his appointments for this office, Douglas made his selection from among the young men who arrived in Victoria carrying letters of introduction from Lytton and testimonials from influential persons. He chose a colourful group, most of them Anglo-Irish, some of them men of the “ Dublin Castle” class, who had connections with the Irish gentry. These Irishmen, John 180

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Boles Gaggin, A. C. Elliott, Thomas Elwyn, Peter O’Reilly, John Carmichael Haynes, and Cox, all carried out their duties with a flourish. Much of their success could be attributed to their sense of humour, their understanding of human character and their willingness to settle disputes by somewhat unorthodox methods. Cox once reached a decision by having rival claimants run a race from the court-house to the claim each felt was his own; on another occasion he demonstrated to two Chinese disputants his dislike of liars by smashing a plate with a shillelagh. He was able to defend his own honour with his fists, a course he once took when an American refused to recognize his position and authority as Revenue Officer. O’Reilly is said to have kept peace in the Kootenay by announcing on his arrival there: “ Now, boys, there must be no shooting, for if there is shooting there w ill surely be hanging” .26 Another Irishman, Chartres Brew, Chief Gold Commissioner, proved his versatility by temporarily filling more than one office. Brew’s ambitious plans for a police force of 150 men, and Douglas’s intention of bringing properly equipped members of the Irish Constabulary to British Colum­ bia, came to nothing when it was discovered that the Colony could not bear the expense. Brew was given only a handful of constables— usually not more than fifteen— and like the other magistrates, he found himself serving at his station as his own policeman. The character and quality of the Englishmen who completed this group of Gold Commissioners, Edward H. Sand­ ers, Henry M. Ball and Philip H. Nind, bore equal testimony to Douglas’s ability to choose the right men for a difficult and responsible position. As “ judges”, the Gold Commissioners were not above all reproach, and Begbie often had to annul the decisions of Cox, but they were a group of men peculiarly well adapted to frontier service and he appreciated their worth and their good influence on the miners. Begbie and all the Gold Commissioners were excellent horse­ men, and it is well that they were, for each year Begbie’s circuits grew longer as mining operations spread into new and more inaccessible parts of the country. In 1858, the centre of activity had been in the area between Fort Hope and Fort Yale; in 1859, the old bars were practically abandoned to the patient Chinese as the other miners moved north to the district above Lytton. 181

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As soon as river navigation commenced in 1859, the miners who had spent the winter in Victoria started out for Bridge River where rich deposits of coarse gold, not requiring quick­ silver for its separation, had been discovered. A thin line of men, carrying heavy packs, had already begun to crawl north from Yale along the dangerous trails to Boston Bar, Lytton, Lillooet, Pavilion, the Fountain and on to Alexandria. Before the summer ended, 1,000 men were working in the area between Alexandria and Fort George. One party, including Peter Curran Dunlevy and his friends, learned at Chilcotin from an Indian of the existence of gold in the territory east of Lac La Hache. By June they were panning gold on Horsefly River, and when another party arrived twelve hours later, a rush started. About the same time, Benjamin McDonald began to wash gravel on the Quesnel River. The advance towards Cariboo had commenced. During i860, the gold-seekers proceeded eastward from Quesnel River to the spurs of the Rocky Mountains surrounding Quesnel and Cariboo Lakes. W hen “ Doc” Keithley and George W eaver made the first important strike at Keithley Creek, miners stampeded to stake claims. The gravel proved to be unusually rich. As soon as this news reached the outside world, traders, packers, tavern-keepers, barbers and masseurs flocked in to create a town as lively as any California mining camp. On other streams flowing down the face of Bald Mountain— Harvey, Cunningham, Snowshoe and Grouse-—rich strikes were also made, but none so valuable as at Antler, the real doorway to Cariboo, which John Rose, “ Black” McDonald, “ Doc” Keithley and George W eaver discovered that winter. For about a year, Antler flourished as Keithley had done, the whiskey shops and the gambling halls doing a roaring business. A ll summer the returns were good, and when the winter of 1861 drew near, the miners packed their gold on mules and started the long 550-mile march overland to Yale and civilization. From Yale, 2,000 of them continued to Victoria, again a tent-city, and there, with their earnings, they indulged in whatever pleasures gold would buy. They were now encouraged to believe that the farther into the Interior they pushed, the heavier and larger would be the

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imggcts. But the cost of their operations, they knew, would also increase. Some of the best strikes were made on bluffs above the high-water mark; for these dry diggings, water had to be carried by flume, often for a distance of five miles. In the Cariboo country, the best gold was found deep in the ground, and could only be reached by sinking shafts 40 or 50 feet to bed-rock. These expensive works required capital and, after i860, miners formed partnerships. From that time, day labourers were em­ ployed to fell trees and construct flumes, to build shafts, water­ wheels, pumps and hoisting-gear. B y 1862 the industry had become capitalized and poverty was driving hundreds of miners into road-building, farming and trading. The cost of supplying the mining communities became an increasingly grave problem with the advance into Cariboo. In i860, the charge for transporting one ton of goods from Victoria to Alexandria was $825. By that time a roadway to replace the trail built in 1858 between Douglas and Lillooet had been surveyed by Lieutenant H. S. Palmer of the Royal Engineers and communication between the lakes on the route had been improved by a combined force of troops, Royal Marines and civilians. But after an inspection trip, it became quite evident to Douglas that further improvement was necessary so that wagon trains could be substituted for pack-trains. Since the force of Royal Engineers had been unable to “make any percept­ ible impression upon the rugged mountain passes which lead into the interior” ,27 he decided to employ civilian labour. When the Imperial government refused assistance in raising a loan for this work, he placed a tax of £1 on all pack-animals leaving Douglas and Yale. The miners protested so vigorously that he repealed his proclamation and visiting Yale and Hope managed to win their consent to light tonnage duties which would repay the bonds he proposed to issue. W ith funds raised in this man­ ner, he financed the construction of a road to Lytton, improved the trail to Boston Bar and opened a road to Similkameen, where men of the Boundary Commission had discovered gold. By the end of i860 the Royal Engineers had improved the navigation of the Harrison River, built 28 miles of a 12-foot-wide wagon road from Douglas, and excavated a mountain near Yale for the trail to Spuzzum which was being constructed by civilian contractors.

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To prevent the profits from shipping, insuring and assaying gold from falling into the hands of Californians, Douglas esta­ blished an assay office at New Westminster in i860. But most of the miners had become accustomed to selling to American banking agents who shipped gold to San Francisco, and while the Assay Office added to New Westminster’s prestige, it did not return the profit he expected. During 1861, he also inaugurated a Gold Escort. It made three excursions from Cariboo to points on the Upper Fraser in great style, but the miners ceased to make use of its services when the government could not guarantee safe delivery. The strikes at Antler Creek and at Rock Creek in the Boundary country were well publicized in England by the articles which Donald Fraser, former member of the Council of Vancouver Island, contributed to The Times. As news of addi­ tional discoveries reached Fraser, the tone of his writing became more excited. During the winter of 1860, about the time when mining was commencing at Antler, Ned Stout and W illiam (“Dutch Bill” ) Dietz crossed Bald Mountain from Keithley Creek and discovered gold in the canyon of Williams Creek. The nuggets were larger and of a different colour from any discovered previously, and a migration from Quesnel River, Keithley and Antler started. On their way, miners found new gold-bearing creeks, Lightning, flowing into Swift River, and Lowhee, debouching into Jack of Clubs Lake. But the gold of Williams Creek, both in quantity and in value, exceeded any other. This was the great creek of Cariboo, the creek that in 1862 attracted adventurers from Europe, the British Isles, the Atlantic seaboard and Canada. Most of the activity in 1861 at Williams Creek was in the shallow diggings above Richfield Canyon where the old creek bed was fairly near the surface. Here pay-dirt was found in blue clay at a depth of 8 to 12 feet; on the Jourdan and Abbott claim, the shaft was sunk deeper and reached a gravel bed which was still richer. A t the Cunningham claim, four partners recovered 675 ounces in one day, and three months’ labour returned a net profit of $10,000 for each man. A t the Steele claim, 409 ounces were obtained in a single day. These results, combined with Dick W illoughby’s success at Lightning Creek, 184

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where he and his partners in less than two months recovered 3,037 ounces of gold, worth about $50,000, convinced Douglas that the building of a better system of communications was necessary in order to exploit the resources of Cariboo more fully. The gold returns were now well over the $4,500,000 mark, and the colony’s revenues from customs duties, tolls, miners’ licences and the sale of lands were increasing with each month. The time had come when the Colony could well afford to borrow money. He applied to the Bank of British Columbia for a loan of £50,000. A t the time when Douglas launched his great plan to build the Cariboo Road, the Colony had two good wagon roads— the Douglas Road, which the Royal Engineers had widened and improved and along which there were now stopping-houses, and the Dewdney Road, converted and partially relocated by Captain J. M. Grant, assisted by sappers and civilians, from the trail which Edgar Dewdney and Walter Moberly had opened in i860 from Hope to Similkameen. The purpose of both roads was to make the whole economy of the Colony converge on the Fraser River. If this could be done and the Americans prevented from securing possession of San Juan Island guarding the sea approach to New Westminster, Governor Douglas believed that the trade of the Gold Colony could eventually be completely directed into British channels. The Great North Road would not only relieve the plight of the Cariboo miners who were paying famine prices for provisions, it would also make the Fraser River, in spite of all the obstacles, the great commercial and arterial highw ay of British Columbia. Once this end was achieved, the great trunk road might be continued across the continent to link British Columbia with the Canadian provinces. The threat of American economic domination west of the mountains would then be terminated. For a moment towards the end of 1861, Douglas toyed with a plan to use military pressure to eliminate American compe­ tition. He had been anxious to settle the score with the Americans two years earlier when the military commander of the Oregon Department had ordered troops to occupy San Juan Island on the pretext that American squatters needed protection. A t that time Rear-Admiral R. L. Baynes had restrained the Governor

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and the island had been put under joint military occupation until its sovereignty could be determined. As soon as the news of the Trent incident reached Victoria, Douglas, who had been con­ cerned from the commencement of the American Civil W ar about the presence of the large number of Americans in Victoria, wrote to Newcastle advocating that the small naval force in the North Pacific, as well as the detachment of Royal Engineers in British Columbia and the Royal Marine Infantry then stationed on San Juan Island, a total force of 200 men, should, with the assistance of local auxiliaries, assume the offensive and take possession of Puget Sound: “ by that means effectually prevent­ ing the departure of any hostile armament against the British Colonies and at one blow cutting off the enemy’s supplies by sea, destroying his foreign trade, and entirely crippling his resources, before any organization of the inhabitants into M ili­ tary bodies can have effect” . W ith the additional help of “ one or two Regiments of Queen’s Troops” , he thought that it would be possible to “ push overland from Puget Sound and establish advanced posts on the Columbia River, maintaining it as a permanent frontier. . . . W ith Puget Sound, and the line of the Columbia River in our hands, we should hold the only navigable outlets of the country— command its trade, and soon compel it to submit to Her M ajesty’s Rule” .28 To his disappointment, he was ordered to respect the strictest neutrality in his relations with the Union and Confederate governments. During the spring of 1862, 4,000 miners pushed up the Douglas Road and the Fraser River trail to Cariboo and 1,000 travelled the old brigade route through the Okanagan V alley to Alexandria. Most of them were on their w ay to Williams Creek. A t Stout’s Gulch, Ned Stout had found near the surface waterworn gold, and, in deep diggings, the bright yellow gold which made the vicinity so famous. Around Billy Barker’s shaft below Richfield Canyon, miners were excavating holes and tunnels and erecting water-wheels, twenty feet in diameter, to work pumps. The hillsides were becoming denuded of trees and an ugly little village, perched high on logs, was beginning to take shape. In actual fact, three towns strung for five miles along Williams Creek were emerging: Richfield above the Canyon, Barkerville below the Canyon and Camerontown, where in December “ Cari186

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boo” Cameron struck gravel so rich that twelve one-gallon kegs yielded $155. Two other towns were close by— Van W inkle and Lightning. As yet, none of the five had an appearance of permanency, but during the winter when it was found possible to continue operations in the deep diggings, log cabins were improved by adding fireplaces, and in some instances, windows. Judge Begbie noted that the miners who had taken up residence in the shanties along the gulches and the creeks were of a different type: it appeared to him, he wrote, judging from the men whom he had met in Cariboo, “ as though every good family of the east and of Great Britain had sent the best son they possessed for the development of the gold mines of Cariboo” .29 A ll through 1862, work was vigorously prosecuted on the Great North Boad. Douglas had issued his orders before he had been sure that he could obtain permission from the Colonial Office to float another loan of £50,000. There was some argument before he received this permission, and his hope of obtaining support for a loan of £100,000 was dashed. This time, instead of doing business with a local financial house, the Colonial Office required him to raise money through the Colonial Agents General. So intent was he on achieving his objective that he discounted the significance of a growing chilliness, considerably intensified since the arrival of Captain Gosset on sick leave in England, which was creeping into the Duke of Newcastle’s despatches. In M ay, 1862, Douglas ordered Captain Grant to commence work with 53 sappers on the first and perhaps the most difficult stretch of the Cariboo Road. The great wagon road was to be 400 miles long and 18 feet in width. The Royal Engineers were to build a six-mile section from Yale towards Boston Bar and nine miles from Cook’s Ferry (Spence’s Bridge) along the Thompson River. In these two stretches, solid rock walls would have to be blasted and cribbing constructed. The greater part of the remainder of the road was let out on contract to civilians who were rewarded with cash or bonds or the right to collect tolls. In the early autumn the Governor inspected the season’s work. He was impressed with what had been accomplished: “ In smoothness & solidity [the roads] surpass expectation— Jackass mountain. ‘The Cleft’. The Great Slides. The Rocky Bridges 187

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and other passes of ominous fame, so notorious in the history of the country— have lost their terrors. They now exist only in name being rendered alike safe and pleasant by the broad and graceful windings of the Queen’s H ighway” .30 To his delight, he could report that at last the cost of provisioning the mines was being reduced and better still, that immigrants were turning their attention to tillage and stock-raising. Throughout 1862, his despatches continued to ring with confidence in the future of the country. Every sign pointed to the abundance of mineral resources— gold had been discovered near Okanagan Lake and in the Shuswap country, as well as in the far north on Stikine River and on the Peace River. Each week, ship-loads of miners were leaving Victoria for Stikine. Informed of this fact, the Imperial authorities decided to organ­ ize a new territory extending northward from the boundaries of Rritish Columbia to the 62nd parallel and to put it under his supervision. By the end of the year, Cariboo alone had produced gold to the value of $2,656,903. Prospects were still brighter in 1863. By the official returns, Cariboo yielded $3,913,563, but in actuality no one knew how much gold had been taken out of the ground. Some miners put the figure at $6,000,000 and others claimed that this sum repre­ sented only a fraction of the total output. To provide security, the government revived the Gold Escort, but the branches of Victoria banks which had opened at Williams Creek declined to patronize it, and once again the experiment proved too costly and had to be abandoned. A t the diggings, some miners made fortunes, but others who had staked adjoining claims had indifferent success. For those who were disappointed, there was ample oppor­ tunity to earn good wages at road construction. Joseph W . Trutch needed workmen to construct the section of the Cariboo Road which he had contracted to build between Chapman’s Bar and Boston Bar, and for his spectacular project of spanning the Fraser River with a suspension bridge at Alexandra near Spuzzum; Moberly and Oppenheimer were exerting a great effort to complete the road between Lytton and Spence’s Bridge; and Gustavus Blin W right, perhaps the greatest of the roadbuilders, was carrying out in record time the construction of the 188

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road between Clinton and Alexandria. By the following spring, not only wagon trains but also the four-horse stage-coaches which Francis J. Barnard had introduced to replace his pony express, were able to proceed from Yale to Soda Creek, where a steamer now supplied transportation to Quesnel. From Quesnel, Captain Grant and a band of Royal Engineers, in order to make the fabulous gold-mines of Barkerville more accessible, had cut a trail 63 miles long by w ay of Cottonwood River. It had been a year of spectacular achievement, and at the end of it, the Colony of British Columbia had a great inland highway, acquired at the price of a bonded debt of only £112,780, as well as permanent agricultural settlements. The strides taken to transform the wilderness were not fully appreciated in England. However colourful his despatches, Douglas was unable to impress the Duke of Newcastle with the geographical and physical features which obstructed communi­ cation between the seaboard and the Interior. The cost of his project had been moderate and for the most part met out of current revenue, but the Colonial Secretary became more and more irritable about the expenditure of funds. Both the W ar Office, which paid the regimental costs of the Royal Engineers, and the Lords of the Treasury, who handled the small parlia­ mentary grant appropriated for the Colony, were badgering him. In the spring of 1863 he peremptorily demanded that Douglas forward without further delay a sum of £6,900, the cost of silver coin shipped to the Colony in 1861, as well as an ad­ vance of £152 which had been provided for the establishment of the assay office. He also discontinued paying the Governor’s salary from the parliamentary grant, demanded that the Colony bear half the cost of maintaining the Royal Engineers, and questioned the validity of charging to the Imperial government the cost of building a road from New Westminster to Burrard Inlet. Douglas protested that at his moment of necessity, the Colonial Office was increasing his difficulties and that Colonel Moody had ordered the construction of the road as a military necessity. For his own part, he wrote, he was aware that he could have managed his finances so that he would have had a surplus of funds on hand. “ But I am also aware that such a state of things could only have been brought about by a course of in-

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action, that although relieving me of a load of anxiety and harassing uncertainty, would have brought the progress of the Colony to a stand still;— would have depopulated the country, would have given the people cause to cry out in bitterness against their rulers, and in fine would have created such a mass of evil that would I conceive when brought about by me, have caused H.M. Govt, justly to have regarded me unfit for the responsible position in which they have been pleased to place me” . W ith justifiable wrath, he added, “If I have not sufficiently explained the unprecedented circumstances of the Colony,— the distance of the gold fields from the Port of Entry, the impracticable character of the country, the famine prices of provisions at the mines, checking industry, killing enterprise retarding immigra­ tion & if I have not represented in fully strong terms, the im­ perative necessity for the salvation of the country at any course [for cost?] to [open] communication to the Mines, then indeed I have signally failed in m y endeavour” .31 The protest had little effect. The Lords of the Treasury were becoming increasingly impatient with the Governor’s habit of issuing drafts on London, and at the Colonial Office some doubt had arisen concerning his right in having the Colony of V an­ couver Island increase his salary by a special grant. Both Lytton and Newcastle had been extremely vague, not only about the size of his salary as dual governor, but also about the means of raising the whole amount. It now came as something of a shock to Newcastle to discover that over the years Douglas had increased it from £1,800 to £3,800. He had never disguised the fact, and an examination of colonial accounts would have reveal­ ed it, but a feeling existed in London that he had been culpable in not drawing special attention to the increase. To make matters worse, representations concerning the character of his administration were being made to the Colonial Office by a number of persons who for the most part were per­ sonally antagonistic to him. Captain Langford had revived his old complaint against Chief Justice Cameron, was demanding the dismissal of the Governor’s brother-in-law and was insinuat­ ing that Douglas permitted officials to interfere in politics. Captain Gosset, with whom he had had many a difference of opinon about financial problems and whom he had found “value190

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less” as a financial officer, “ defective in judgement” and “politically faithless and unprincipled” ,82 had obtained entree into official circles and was spreading suspicion concerning Douglas’s ability. Leonard McClure, a journalist, was making representation on behalf of certain discontented elements on Vancouver Island. And a Canadian politician, Malcolm Came­ ron, personally known to the Duke of Newcastle, had carried to London from N ew Westminster a petition demanding Douglas’s dismissal as Governor of British Columbia and the setting up of a representative system of government. Only to the agitation of “the New Westminster radicals” did Douglas pay any particular attention. He offered as explanation for their displeasure the fact that he “had not yielded obedience to their sovereign will by cultivating the Canadian, in preference to the sound sterling English element in the Colony. A mass of other nonsense of the same kind has also appeared, in the columns of their organ, to which I paid not the slightest attention, as I most thoroughly dispise the whole of that contemptible clique.” 38 The vendetta waged by Robson worried him no more than had the attacks of De Cosmos. The effect on the Imperial government of all these protests was cumulative. Although at the time of his appointment as Governor of British Columbia in 1858 Douglas had received assurance from Lytton that he would serve the usual term of six full years, Newcastle took advantage of the opportunity present­ ed by the reorganization of the government of the Colony, made necessary by the expiration of the Act of 1858, to suggest that his retirement might coincide with, or follow closely on, the introduction of a partially-elected council. T he matter was handled so delicately that the suggestion was quite acceptable to Douglas, who, for reasons of private fam ily worries and his personal financial interests, was himself about to propose his retirement at the end of 1863. In June, the Colonial Secretary informed him of the decision which he had reached a few months earlier to separate the administrations of the two colonies on the Pacific seaboard, since “ it would be almost as hopeless to attempt to amalgamate the two as it would be to rejoin the Confederate with the Federal States” .84 For the Colony of Vancouver Island, the Colonial Secretary

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prepared a civil list of £5,800, including a salary of £3,000 for a Governor and one of £800 for a Chief Justice, the amount in this instance to he increased when a lawyer was appointed to the position. For British Columbia, the civil list was to be £8,700. The Governor would be paid a salary of £3,000 and furnished with a residence. The irony of the situation must have been apparent to Douglas, whose measures had created the revenues which made these payments possible, and who, for only two of the five years during which he had filled the post of governor of two colonies, had received a salary of £3,800. Throughout that time he had supplied and maintained his official residence. In July, the Duke of Newcastle announced that the services of the Royal Engineers were to be dispensed with. If their services had been required for military purposes for a further period, he would have required the Colony of British Columbia to bear the full expense, but from Douglas’s despatches he had formed the opinion that they were no longer needed. The Governor had protested the decision to make British Columbia pay half the cost of their maintenance: “ The services of the troops are I admit,” he wrote, “ most useful to the Colony; but as the portion of those services devoted to civilian pursuits, really amounts to no more than the service of 80 men for 5 months hi the year, I conceive they will be dearly purchased at the cost of £11,000 per annum” .35 B y October, the preparations were completed for the with­ drawal of all the officers. Most of the non-commissioned officers and all of the sappers with the exception of fifteen had decided to take their discharge in British Columbia and to exercise the privilege of establishing themselves in the Colony with a free land grant. In New Westminster, where Moody had been popu­ lar, and where John Robson and others hoped that he would be offered the position of governor, the departure of the officers was cause for dismay. Moody, as Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works, John Robson wrote, had been but indifferently appreci­ ated “owing to ignorance of the real position he occupied under the Governor, and the miserable chicanery which has been practised in order to divert all the unpopularity of the admini­ stration of our affairs from the really responsible party and to fasten it, with crushing weight, upon [his] head” .36 192

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Douglas readily admitted that the Royal Engineers had per­ formed great service in surveying and laying out the town-sites of New Westminster, Lytton, Lillooet, Clinton, Quesnel and Richfield. They had also made a contribution in building the wagon road from Douglas to Pemberton Lake, the Hope Moun­ tain Trail, two sections of the Cariboo Road and the North Road from New Westminster to Burrard Inlet. They had made a reconnaissance of the country in the neighbourhood of Sumas and Chilliwack and a traverse of the southern shorelines of Burrard Inlet, and in the Interior, the survey of the route from Bentinck Arm to Alexandria and Williams Creek was but one of the important examinations which they had conducted. Their troops had assisted with the Gold Escort; their architects had designed churches; their printers had founded the government printing office and published the British Columbia Gazette; and other members of the detachment had designed the coat of arms for the Colony and the first British Columbia stamp. But off­ setting these contributions were endless expenditures accumu­ lated by Colonel Moody, many of them, Douglas complained, “peculiar to the R.E. & of no benefit to the Colony” .37 On November 11, 1863, Colonel Moody embarked at New Westminster on the Enterprise to sail down the Fraser River and thence home to England. For years he retained the extensive estate of 2,500 acres lying between Lake Burnaby and the Fraser River and the holdings which he had acquired on the Pitt and Coquitlam Rivers, but he never achieved his ambition to return to enjoy country life in British Columbia. A t the time of Moody’s departure, Governor Douglas had completed most of his constructive work in the Colony. A ll that remained was to make arrangements to call into being the Legislative Council, provided for in the new act passed on July 28, 1863, which also incorporated the Stickeen Territories as far north as the 60th parallel into the Colony of British Colum­ bia. He now set to work to divide British Columbia into five electoral districts. Five members of the Council were duly elected, and four Crown officials and four magistrates were appointed. On January 22, 1864, the first session of the Council of British Columbia opened in the barracks at Sapperton vacated by the Royal Engineers. In his speech, the Governor reviewed the

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policies he had adopted and recommended consideration ol financial assistance for a telegraph line to connect British Columbia to Lake Superior. He then returned to Victoria to complete his term of office as Governor of Vancouver Island. News had been received there that the Queen had honoured him with a knighthood and that he had been elevated to the rank of Knight Commander of the Bath. The inhabitants of Vancouver Island had already for­ warded to the Colonial Office a memorial praising his adminis­ tration, and now even the British Colonist joined in whole­ hearted approval of the Crown’s tribute. On March 10, 1864, the people of Victoria tendered a magnificent banquet in the Victoria Theatre in his honour. Four days later, Sir James and Lady Douglas travelled to New Westminster to take up official residence while awaiting the arrival of the new Governor of British Columbia. On April 8, Sir James was honoured by the inhabitants, who also entertained him at a banquet. Now that he was retiring, his work, in retrospect, appeared imaginative and bold. Surrounded on British soil by overwhelm­ ing numbers of foreigners, he had firm ly planted British in­ stitutions in their midst and engendered respect for British authority. By substituting the Fraser River for the Columbia as the main artery of commerce, he had prevented the southward drain of the resources of the Gold Colony. He had succeeded so well in strengthening the economic bond with England that now the volume of British imports approached the figure for American goods. In his land policies and in his mineral legis­ lation, he had favoured none, and had laid down principles which would endure for years. But above all, he had solved the problem of communication by building the Cariboo Road. Only one really black mark could be chalked up against his administration. This was his failure to introduce a representative element into the government of the Gold Colony. In this con­ nection, he had made a political mistake, for his policies were sufficiently sound to bear examination and the miners were his friends and admirers. The opportunity for retaining power in his own hands had been presented by the provisions of the act for the government of British Columbia, and if the Colonial 194

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Office had given the richest gold-bearing region in the British Empire anything more than indifferent attention, it would have advised the Queen to set up an elected council or assembly. Perhaps financial necessity had encouraged the Governor to keep power centralized, perhaps a gnawing suspicion that he had favoured the gold region and Victoria at the expense of New Westminster. As he prepared to step back into private life, Sir James ac­ cepted the illuminated address signed by 900 residents of the Mainland Colony in the spirit in which it was tendered: This is surely the voice and the heart of British Columbia— here are no specious phrases, no hollow or venal compliments. This speaks out broadly, and honestly, and manfully. It assures me that my administration has been useful; that 1 have done my duty faithfully; that I have used the power of my Sovereign for good and not for evil; that I have wronged no man, oppressed no man; but that 1 have, with upright rule, meted out equal-handed justice to all men; and that you are grateful.36 The citizens of New Westminster applauded, knowing that on two British colonies he had left the imprint of his character and his works. British Columbia, now regarded by Canadian leaders as “the brightest jewel in Queen Victoria’s crown” , pre­ pared to welcome in his place a constitutional governor.

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his last months in office, Sir James Douglas enjoyed a popularity on Vancouver Island which he had never before experienced: knowing full well that he would soon discard his uniform, the colonists permitted themselves the luxury of a feeling of pride in the knighthood which a member of their own community had earned and expressed interest in his plans for a grand tour of Europe. For the first time since leaving Scotland a half century before, Sir James would be returning to the land of his ancestors: anticipating the excitement of his first ride in a railway train and of his first voyage in a steam-powered ocean liner, the townspeople of Victoria extended to him their good wishes for a safe journey and for a joyful reunion with his daughter Jane, the wife of Alexander Grant Dallas, and his schoolboy son, James. Wealth, more than birth, now commanded respect in Victoria, and the fact that he was the largest landholder on Vancouver u r in g

D

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Island had increased Douglas’s prestige. The story concerning his illegitimate birth which had had wide currency in the early days of the Colony aroused tittle interest on the part of the new settlers, and although the Southerners who made up such a large part of the American element in Victoria were always ready to erect a colour bar, there was now little repetition of the canard that his mother had been a mulatto.1 A kindlier attitude also prevailed towards Lady Douglas who, either for reasons of sensitivity about her part-Indian background or because of delicate health, had declined so often to accept invitations to social gatherings that she had failed to become the popular figure on Vancouver Island that Mrs. Moody was in British Columbia. Acts of private charity performed by the Governor’s wife were now recalled and almost every young British settler expressed his grateful thanks for the hospitality of her dinner table and the pleasure of an evening spent in her fam ily circle. As the date for the arrival of the two new governors drew close, former opponents of Sir James began to sing praises of his administration. “ I doubt if we shall ever have a better chief” , the young official who had once called the Governor “old Squaretoes” confided to a friend. In his opinion, Douglas was now “ a good old fellow” .2 A t the public banquet in Victoria, plaudits fell smoothly from the tips of old enemies. To one man present, the flattery seemed fulsome. He could well imagine Sir James detecting a note of insincerity, and while maintaining an air of serene composure, reflecting: A year ago, my friends you know, You did not exactly stand just so; You libelled me here, you slandered me there, Like a harrier pack upon the track Of a breathless, bleeding hare; You gave me no rest, but did your best M y limbs to gash and tear.3 On the Mainland, the editor of the British Columbian, with more consistency if less magnanimity, speeded Douglas’s depar­ ture. John Bobson eagerly awaited news of the arrival of Captain Arthur Edward Kennedy, the Governor of Vancouver Island, and when it finally came, his leading editorial heralded the be­ ginning of a new era for the Island Colony: “The doors of the 198

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various Departments are unceremoniously thrown open upon their creaking, rusty hinges, and the foul air, redolent of H.B. peltry and salmon, is dispelled by the genial breeze from the sea; the must and cobwebs of antiquated incompetency are all swept away, and active, open and benign legislation assumes the place of feckless and effete buffoonery” .4 W ith the dignity with which he had always borne slights and slanders, Sir James ignored the outburst. By now, it had become second nature for the colonists of British Columbia to reject whatever the Vancouver Islanders accepted. A t N ew Westminster, hostility towards the Island Colony, its people and its government, had become ingrained. Informed of the intensity of this antagonism and of the local demand for separate administrative systems, the Duke of Newcastle had abandoned his original plan for a regional political union. But since parliament demanded the reduction of Imperial expenditures, he decided to make each colony res­ ponsible for its own civil list. If this responsibility were ac­ knowledged in a permanent act, he promised to transfer control of the Crown Lands to the local legislatures. During the winter of 1863, the Assembly of Vancouver Is­ land remained in almost continuous session to consider its plan of action. The revenue obtained in 1863 from the sale of colonial lands had been unusually high because it included the last instalment of the payment at the original purchase price of £1 an acre, but even so, it fell short of the total sum required to meet the elaborate schedule of salaries, and while the deficiency could be made up from the real-estate tax, the liquor and trad­ ing licences and the harbour dues, little money would be left for public works. Finally, almost on the eve of Governor Kennedy’s arrival in March, 1864, the members decided to show respect for their new chief officer by voting a sum of $2,000 for a public reception in his honour; but to make evident their reluctance to assume too great financial responsibility, particu­ larly at a time when the Hudson’s Bay Company’s title to land was in dispute, they refused to grant money for Kennedy’s salary or to make an appropriation for his official residence. By virtue of Governor Douglas’s powers in the Mainland

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Colony, a similar impasse was avoided. For British Columbia, Douglas settled the matter by issuing an ordinance making provision for the payment of official salaries before he set up the Legislative Council. The consequence was that the citizens of New Westminster, pleased that at last they would have a resident governor, and confident that customs duties, miners’ licences, road tolls, harbour dues and land sales would provide ample revenue to offset increased expenditures, prepared to greet Frederick Seymour, former Lieutenant-Governor of British Honduras, with an enthusiasm that was undiluted by a begrudging admission of their financial responsibility. Instead of a wasteful expenditure of money on an elaborate reception for Governor Seymour, Judge Begbie’s committee decided that the ceremony of inauguration should be simple. A spontaneous public demonstration of welcome would indi­ cate, as nothing else could, approval of the Imperial govern­ ment’s action in sending to the Colony a man who was regarded locally as a special commissioner charged with the duty of investigating the real character of the populace and determining its readiness to receive a more liberal form of government. On April 20, 1864, all the citizens of New Westminster were on hand to welcome the arrival of “ our first Governor” . H.M.S. Forward was six or seven miles down the Fraser River when the booming report of her guns was first heard; as she approached J. A. R. Homer’s sawmill, there was a great rush of people towards the waterfront. W hen the gunboat drew close to the dock, Captain James Cooper, Harbour Master, put off in his boat to board the naval vessel and “ the City Band struck up an appropriate air” .8 The new Governor, a frail, slight man, com­ pletely bald, appeared on deck. Behind him followed the Colonial Secretary, Arthur N. Birch, “ a tallish, lean, flexiblelimbed youth, good-looking, well-mannered and immaculately British” ,6 whom the Colonial Office had temporarily released from his duties as junior clerk; a private secretary; and three servants. Seymour had neither the magnificent figure nor the impres­ sive dignity of the former Governor and his “few commonplace 200

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remarks” in response to the address presented by Robert Dick­ enson, President of the Municipal Council, were the very antithesis of his predecessor’s eloquence. Yet no one expressed disappointment: on the contrary, a tremor of excited anticipa­ tion spread through the crowd. The new Governor was known to be well connected at home; instead of being a very Victorian “ papa” like Sir James, he was a bachelor, who was fond, it was said, of easy living and card-playing. Although he was still a young man, he had held posts in several tropical colonies where he had earned a reputation for his generosity and his kindliness. He had none of the aloofness of Sir James, and encouraged by this, the people of New Westminster received him with spirited goodwill. The Municipal Council immediately declared the following day, the occasion of his inauguration, a public holi­ day. Encouraged by the new air of optimism, merchants grasped at opportunity. “ A New Outfit for the Reception of Governor Seymour, at H alf Price!! Great Sale of Bankrupt Stock (For Twelve Days Only) Commencing To-Day” , advertised one financially embarrassed store-keeper.7 The “imperial stump-field”8 wore her gayest dress for Gover­ nor Seymour’s inauguration. Two fir arches had been set up on Columbia Street and bunting and evergreens were used to swathe the ugly, sprawling Treasury Building which contained the Land Registry Office, the Assay Office, the M int and the General Post Office. The Colonial Hotel and the saloons had also been decorated, but little embellishment was required to enhance the appearance of “ several buildings of brick and stone that would do no discredit to a city twenty times its size” .® In the Governor’s eyes, the town with its 200 or 300 inhabi­ tants probably presented a very different picture from the description given him in England by Colonel Moody. Although the Royal Engineers and Royal Marines had carved a clearing out of the dank, sunless forest of moss-covered Douglas firs and lichen-draped cedars, it was still true, as it had been five years earlier when the Rev. John Sheepshanks had caught his first sight of the “ forest city” , that “ at the end of any vista nothing but sky and water and the eternal and interminable timber, with glimpses of the snow-clad summits of the Cascade Range” 10 201

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could be seen. In its short lifetime the town had acquired a few substantial business establishments and several houses built of California redwood, designed with the steeply pitched Gothicstyle roofs favoured by the Royal Engineers, but Seymour found most of the best houses untenanted and the largest hotel bearing a “ to let” sign. The settlement presented a “ melancholy . . . picture of disappointed hopes . . . decay appeared on all sides [and] the stumps and logs of the fallen trees blocked up most of the streets” . Borrowing the miner’s expression, he described the town as “ played out” .11 But on the day of his inauguration, he decided that the com­ munity was viable. He was impressed by the cohesion of all the elements in the population and by the friendliness of the citizens. From Government House (Colonel Moody’s former residence at Sapperton), the Hyack Fire Brigade, dressed in their smart uniforms of red shirt, black pants and black caps, and the Volunteer Rifles, equipped with arms abandoned by the Royal Engineers, escorted him to the Treasury Building. There Judge Begbie administered the oath of office. The minis­ ters and missionaries of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, the minister and office bearers of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church and the members of St. Andrew’s Society presented addresses of welcome. He learned that the town contained a hospital which was maintained by private subscription, that it had a common school and that the only “house of correction” for the Colony was located there. As soon as possible, Governor Seymour made it his business to examine the public buildings in his new capital. The CourtHouse, he discovered, consisted of one small room in a wooden building which had a canvas ceiling. The gaol, “ a miserable wooden rookery” ,12 located in the centre of the business district, which had recently been improved by the addition of ten new cells and a chapel, was clean and well managed. Its inmates included murderers, horse-stealers, debtors and felons, but no woman had yet been imprisoned there, although “ Drunken squaws have for their own protection and the Public Decency been locked up until sobered” .19 Later, it also served as insane asylum; the insane, according to the Grand Jury, being detained in cells which were “ entirely too small, illy ventilated, unheated, 202

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and an offensive effluvia arising from beneath them” .14 The Royal Columbian Hospital, a wooden one-storey building, had acquired furniture and bedding supplies from the camp of the Royal Engineers and boasted a large and valuable bath with pipes and fittings inherited from Colonel Moody. The public school, a small building erected near a bog, had “ as its only means of ingress and egress an Indian rancherie, redolent of salmon and associated with all the usual accompaniment of filth and vermin” . On the other hand, there were some fine churches. Holy Trinity, built for the Church of England, had been designed in an early Gothic style by Captain A. R. Lempriere of the Royal Engineers. The Oblates of M ary Immacu­ late had founded St. Peter’s for white settlers and, on the edge of the forest, the mission church of St. Charles. The churches and the meeting-places of the Wesleyan Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists and the Society of Friends were simple wooden buildings. In sum, the capital city had little of the magnificence and grandeur which Colonel Moody had envisioned and it lacked the gay air of the sunscorched tropical villages which the Governor knew so well. Seymour decided that he could do something to improve appearances and to raise morale. Extensive improvements, he announced, would be made to Government House in order to provide it with “ a spacious and handsome ballroom, capable of accommodating with ease two hundred dancers . . . supper rooms, elegantly and substantially furnished apartments”,15 and the chain-gang would be used to beautify the grounds. The work was completed by autumn, and on the eve of the Prince of W ales’s birthday, Governor Seymour entertained at his first ball. His reception was hailed by the British Columbian as the most brilliant social event which had yet taken place west of the Rocky Mountains, even outshining the wedding reception of one of Douglas’s daughters. Dancing continued until midnight; then “ viands of the most recherche character were provided in prodigal abundance, and displayed in the most elegant manner. A fter supper Terpsichore resumed her sway. . . .” 18 As provincial capital, New Westminster no longer needed to take a back seat to Victoria. The presence of the new govem203

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ment officials added “ tone” to the society and although this tight little knot of friends had much in common with their love of amateur theatricals, music, literature, card-playing, tennis and cricket, they mixed freely with the Canadians who made a habit of assembling in the general stores to devour crackers and argue about politics. Every merchant could expect to be invited, sooner or later, for an evening of ecarte and piquet at Government House, and when the Governor journeyed to V ic­ toria to enjoy an evening of theatre— perhaps a play performed by the Keans— the magistrates and other minor officials accom­ panied him. W ithin a matter of months, the compatibility of Governor Seymour and the “ New Westminsterites” was perfectly evi­ dent. It was well known that he had made use of his private funds to pay for his lavish entertainments. He was generous in supporting community projects: both the library and the hospi­ tal received gifts of books and English periodicals. He saw that the school was moved to a better location and he had a far more liberal attitude than his Colonial Secretary, Birch, on the mat­ ter of public support for education. The welfare of the Indians concerned him deeply and he was intensely interested in the achievements of Father Fouquet, O.M.I., at St. M ary’s Mission and of the lay preacher, W illiam Duncan, at Metlakatla. But more than anything else, his popularity stemmed from the energetic measures which he inaugurated within a fortnight of his arrival in the Colony to quell a serious Indian disturbance in the Interior. News of the massacre of a road party at Bute Inlet reached Victoria on M ay 11; instead of requisitioning one of the naval vessels at Esquimalt to transmit the message to N ew Westmin­ ster, Governor Kennedy made use of the regular mail steamer, and two days were lost before Seymour received the intelli­ gence. It arrived late at night; before morning, he despatched an application to the senior naval officer for assistance, as well as instructions to W illiam George Cox, Gold Commis­ sioner in the Cariboo, to organize a force, and orders to Chartres Brew, Chief Inspector of Police, to have men in readi­ ness. H.M.S. Forward, Lieutenant the Hon. Horace Douglas Lascelles, commanding, arrived at New Westminster on Sunday, 204

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M ay 15, and before evening sailed with Brew’s force of volun­ teers, composed in part of former members of the corps of Royal Engineers. Kennedy’s seeming indifference to British Columbia’s fate and Gilford’s reluctance to supply naval sup­ port aroused Seymour’s indignation. To the Duke of Newcastle, he sent a vigorous protest: “This large and important Province which now costs the Imperial Government absolutely nothing for its maintenance and does not absorb a fraction of H.M. Land Forces, has claims, I conceive, at the still early stage of its existence, to receive a share of the Naval protection the Mother Country affords to other less exposed possessions” .17 Indirectly, Seymour traced the origins of the Indian trouble to Victoria’s interest in discovering a new and short route lead­ ing from the seacoast to the Interior which would give her com­ plete commercial supremacy over the gold-fields. Before build­ ing the Cariboo Road, Douglas had sponsored exploration of a possible route: in 1858, he sent J. W . M cKay, a trusted officer of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the discoverer of the Nanaimo coal-fields, to examine the country between Lillooet Lake and Howe Sound. And in 1859 he used the services of Major W illiam Downie of California fame to investigate trails from Jervis Inlet. Downie carried out further exploratory work in 1861, but neither he nor the many private parties which were engaged in similar work succeeded in finding a practic­ able route. In 1863, when Lieutenant H. S. Palmer surveyed the track from Bentinck Arm which Alexander Mackenzie had followed in his journey to the Pacific, he found it unsuitable for a wagon road. In spite of these reports, Alfred Waddington, a Victoria mer­ chant and later Inspector of Schools in the Colony of Vancouver Island, was undiscouraged. This optimist, whom Chartres Brew described as “one of the most sanguine imaginative men I have ever met; prompt to delude himself on any matter of which he makes a hobby” ,18 succeeded in obtaining financial support in Victoria and secured a charter to construct a road from the head of Bute Inlet to the mouth of Quesnel River. Waddington’s enthusiasm was little dampened by the difficulties of con­ structing a pack-trail with 79 “ zigzags” on the sheer precipices of Mount Waddington; for two seasons he persisted with the 205

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work, and encouraged by his reports, Victoria speculators pur­ chased lots at the town-site which one of the Royal Engineers laid out for him a few miles from the mouth of the Homathco River. Then, in April, 1864, Indians murdered the ferryman stationed 30 miles up the river; later, work crews and a packtrain were attacked. The trouble spread first in the direction of Bute Inlet; then, when the Indians reversed their course to return across the Cascade Mountains, a full-scale insurrection seemed imminent. No one knew how to account for the uprising which had taken the lives of nineteen workmen. Waddington blamed the white man’s introduction of smallpox; others, including the artist Frederick Whymper, attached to his party, attributed it more directly to his action in supplying the Chilcotins with arms while keeping them so short of food that they “ disputed with their wretched cayota dogs anything we threw out of the house in the shape of bones, bacon rind, tea leaves and other such like luxuries” .18 Judge Begbie later concluded that concern over Indian title to land was a more important factor than either plunder or revenge. A t the height of the danger, and while Chartres Brew was attempting to penetrate inland in pursuit of the culprits by following Waddington’s trail, Seymour invited the Fraser River Indians to join him at New Westminster for the celebra­ tion of the Queen’s Birthday. He had been in the Colony only a month, but in that time, he had formed the opinion that the retirement of Sir James Douglas, their “ Great Chief” , must have led to “many lamentations over their deserted condition” .20 The celebration was a huge success; the Indians travelled great distances down the river to take part in it and for about a week 3,500 of them remained encamped on the outskirts of the town. W hen they finally departed, their canoes were laden with goods which they had purchased in the shops and they gave farewell cheers as they passed Government House. In preparation their return in a year’s time, Seymour ordered from England 100 canes with silver gilt tops engraved with the Crown and 100 small cheap flags. The Indians had hardly left when the news that Brew had failed to reach the Interior and that he was returning for rein­ 206

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forcements reached New Westminster. Kennedy’s offer of assis­ tance was immediately and somewhat curtly declined: the New Westminster Volunteer Rifle Corps and the Hyack Fire Brigade, “ two bodies, I believe, of admirable efficiency” ,21 wrote Seymour, had pressed their services upon him and he had been almost deluged by additional offers. For his own part, he had decided to accompany the new expedition. H.M.S. Sutlej carried the troops to Bentinck Arm and from there they made their w ay overland 250 miles to Puntze Lake, where they effected a junction with the forces led by Cox from Alexandria. From the base at Puntze Lake, Cox was sent to­ wards Bute Inlet in pursuit of the murderers and most of the volunteers were sent on other missions. As one of the ten men left to hold the little log fortress during their absence, Seymour found the experience exhilarating. Eventually, when Alexis, one of the most powerful chiefs of the Chilcotin tribe, was induced to present himself, the Governor persuaded him to assist in the hunt for the murderers. Shortly afterwards, some of the leaders of the insurrection surrendered to Cox, and by a promise of an amnesty which he extended without authority, Cox prevailed upon others to give themselves up. W hen the Indians were brought to trial at Quesnel in September, five were found guilty of murder and sentenced to hang. By prompt action, effective measures and a fair trial of the accused, Seymour had averted the danger of an Indian war. He was generous in attributing his success to the co-operation of Brew, Cox and Begbie, but he expressed particular admiration of Brew’s efficiency: “ I shall always look back with satisfaction to the time when I had the honor to serve under him as one of the New Westminster Volunteers” .22 The respectful and friendly welcome received from the Interior Indians who had attended the celebration of the Queen’s Birthday at New Westminster pleased him, and with some pride he wrote to London: “ I am now as well known as m y predecessor in the valley of the Fraser & Thompson. No white man better in the Bella coola & Chilcotin country” .23 The following spring, the grateful government of British Columbia, although it had incurred a heavy debt of $80,000 which the Imperial government refused to share, expressed its 207

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appreciation by unanimously accepting an ordinance increasing Seymour’s salary by £1,000. Brew and Cox were presented with silver tea services, imported from San Francisco at a cost of $2,000. Brew would undoubtedly have preferred a good horse or an increase in wages so that he could keep a servant, and Cox’s menage— he much preferred the Indian woman who lived with him to the wife he had left behind in Ireland— was hardly the place for such elegance. On emerging from the Chilcotin country Seymour decided to visit the gold-fields. Preoccupied with his heavy duties, Douglas had found no opportunity to inspect them and Seymour thought it advisable to present himself, as the new Governor, to the miners. His journey from Alexandria to Quesnel and on to Richfield was a triumphal progress; everywhere he was received with royal salutes, addresses and public dinners. A t the Aurora claim he was let down the shaft, invited to wash a pan of gold and urged to accept the proceeds. The miners at Williams Creek entertained him at the new French Hotel: “The dinner which must have cost an enormous sum, when ordinary champagne sells at 50/- a bottle was excellent” , he reported. “ The hosts though indulging in every latitude of costume, were perfectly well bred. I was glad to find that m y presence was no restraint upon the hilarity of the evening” .24 Richfield, Barkerville and Camerontown, the three communi­ ties on the Creek, were at the height of their prosperity. Along the narrow street connecting them, tents had been replaced by houses of whip-sawn lumber. Built in a style that was “neither Doric, Ionic, nor Corinthian, but decidedly Columbian” ,25 the dwellings were perched high on logs to avoid the danger from flash floods from the tree-stripped mountain side. Sidewalks, erected at various elevations, were intended to provide escape from the mud of the street which was “ a complete puddle from June to January” .26 Interspersed among the dwelling-houses were saloons which supplied meals and liquor and which con­ tained card rooms and dance-halls, branches of Macdonald’s Bank and the Bank of British Columbia, a library, a hospital, laundries and blacksmith and butcher shops. Few women were to be seen, for the German Hurdy girls had not yet appeared and the English girls who had arrived on the “ bride-ships” in 1862 208

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and 1863 had found mates soon after landing at Victoria. The tragic death of “ Cariboo” Cameron’s wife was enough to dis­ courage any man who had intended to have his own wife follow him to the diggings. The population of the mining communities of Cariboo was impossible to estimate— some figures ranged as high as 10,000 or 16,000— but officials doubted whether the total population of British Columbia was much in excess of the Vancouver Island figure of 7,500. Certainly, the Cariboo towns appeared crowded and bustling with activity and the hillsides were dotted with prospectors’ cabins, but, by comparison with the vast emptiness of the remainder of the Colony, the density of population on Williams Creek was easily magnified. Almost every visitor commented on the relative increase in the number of Canadians and Britishers in the mining population, noted that the influence of Americans, especially the Southerners, was declining and remarked on the scarcity of “ Celestials” . Seymour probably met few of the impoverished young men who, instead of visiting the saloons for their meals, lived frugally on “ Cariboo turkey” (bacon) and “ Cariboo strawberries” (beans). Yet he could confirm the truth of the statement contained in one of Sawney’s letters that “ a’thing sells at a lang price” .27 And perhaps he saw enough to be able to appre­ ciate the picture drawn of the prospector’s shanty by the Cariboo bard: See yonder shanty on the hill, ’Tis but an humble biggin’, Some ten by six within the wa’s— Your head may touch the riggin’— The door stands open to the south, The fire, outside the door; The logs are chinket close wi’ fog— And nocht but mud the floor— A knife an’ fork, a pewter plate, A n ’ cup o’ the same metal, A teaspoon an’ a sugar bowl, A frying pan an’ kettle; 209

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The bakin’ board hangs on the wa’, Its purposes are twa-fold— For mixing bread wi’ yeast or dough Or panning oot the braw gold! A log or twa in place o’ stools, A bed withoot a bangin’, Are feckly a’ the furnishin’s This little house belongin’; The laird and tenant o’ this sty, I canna name it finer, Lives free an’ easy as a lord, Tho’ but an “ honest miner’’.2* The Governor returned to N ew Westminster by w ay of the Cariboo Road. His journey was far more comfortable than the one made only a few months before by Viscount Milton and Dr. Cheadle, but like them, he was accommodated at stoppinghouses run by Frenchmen, impressed by the size of the large cattle ranches in the lower Cariboo and in the Thompson Valley, amazed at the rattlesnake grade of the road on Pavilion Moun­ tain and astonished by the number of stages, expresses and ox- and mule-teams on the road. Like those two first transcon­ tinental tourists, he m ay have caught sight of one of the camels which had been imported earlier for use on the Douglas Road, and which, when the experiment failed, had been turned out to graze. Back at the capital, he exuded enthusiasm for the potentialities of British Columbia. During his absence, reports of rich new diggings at W ild Horse Creek flowing into Kootenay River about 50 miles north of the International Boundary had been received; as soon as possible, he sent Birch to investigate the district. W hen Birch returned with a favourable report, he decided that the Dewdney Trail would have to be extended in order to pre­ vent the trade from flowing south to the American towns on the Columbia. He also intended to complete Douglas’s programme by replacing the trail from Quesnel to Barkerville with a wagon road and linking Hope and Yale by road. The financing of these projects would pose a difficult problem: over £50,000 of the debt incurred by Douglas in building the Cariboo Road had not 210

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been repaid; a further loan of £100,000 had been raised since Seymour’s arrival in the Colony; the Imperial government was pressing for the payment of the sum of £10,000, the cost, it claimed, of buildings erected in the Colony by the Royal Engi­ neers; and expenses in connection with the suppression of the Chilcotin uprising amounted to £17,000. But the work could hardly wait. The Governor placed his plans before a new Legislative Council which met in December, 1864. The Colonial Office was not too happy about the fact that the Council set up by Douglas had been dissolved by Seymour before the completion of its term and new popular members had been elected: there was a distinction, it pointed out, between a Crown Council and a repre­ sentative assembly, and in a Crown Colony the Governor could only change the membership of the Council by dismissing members and nominating new ones; the legal authority of the new councillors was seriously questioned. To this criticism, Seymour retorted that he considered it important to bring the Colony’s political institutions more in line with those in the eastern provinces and his action had so satisfied the people that their previous demand for a completely representative system of government was no longer heard. Later, when the Colonial Secretary reviewed the work of the session, he was impressed by the volume of legislation presented by the Governor and approved by the Council. To offset increasing governmental expenditures, the Council increased customs duties to an average of 12% per cent and en­ forced an export duty on gold. To safeguard the Kootenay gold district from American competition, it established three new ports of entry at Osoyoos, Fort Shepherd and St. Joseph’s Prairie (Cranbrook). To induce the direct importation of goods from San Francisco to New Westminster and to divert trade from the free port of Victoria, it decided to estimate duties on the price of goods at the port of embarkation. Funds were provided for a bridge across the Thompson River; for a lightship and buoys to mark what Seymour referred to as “the deep, placid & undevious entrance to the Fraser” ;29 for the improvement of the streets of New Westminster; and for the assistance of the Collins Telegraph Line, a company founded by an American which was planning 211

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to complete telegraphic communication between North America and Europe by erecting a line through British Columbia and Siberia to connect with the Russian system. A certain urgency was given to the whole body of this legislation by the effects of the economic recession, signs of which first appeared in the autumn of 1864. The failure in November of Macdonald’s Bank, a private institution which had over $100,000 of its own notes in circula­ tion and which did a large business in Cariboo, contributed to the financial embarrassment of free miners who were already finding it difficult to raise funds for the heavy capital expendi­ tures which placer-mining now required. The days of the rocker and the sluice were past and Cariboo was no longer “poor man’s diggings” . Only the large companies could afford to build the flumes, water-wheels, windlasses, shafts, ditches and tunnels which the successful operation of the deep diggings demanded. In 1865, the usual spring rush from San Francisco failed to materialize. A ll that season, the warehouses in Victoria were jammed with imported goods, the merchants pinched by over­ extended credit, the express companies left with empty coaches, and prosperous little communities in the interior like Clinton in Cut-Off V alley at the junction of the Lytton and Lillooet roads, affected by loss of business. “ Skedaddlers” slipped out of Victoria and took refuge in the United States, and in British Columbia, the laws relating to bankruptcy and imprisonment for debt had to be revised. The discovery of new diggings at Big Bend on the Columbia River in the course of the year only created new problems for the Colony of British Columbia. The mining population in the Kootenays, composed almost entirely of Americans who had abandoned Boise, was extremely mobile. As soon as the shallow diggings at W ild Horse Creek were exhausted, the men flocked northward along the Columbia River to Big Bend. The Governor felt obliged to provide any new area with transportation facili­ ties: a policy which, in this instance, involved him in the building of a road from Cache Creek along the Thompson River to Savona on Kamloops Lake, and in the provision of steam navigation on both Kamloops Lake and Shuswap Lake. Before these plans were completely formulated, Governor 21a

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Seymour returned to England for his marriage. A t the time of his departure, in September, 1865, there was every indication that the colonial revenues for the year would yield only about half of the estimated expenditure of $1,342,000. Estimates for 1866 would be still higher if the Big Bend market was to be saved for New Westminster from the Portland business men who had announced that they intended to make a bid for the trade by placing steamers on the Columbia River. The disap­ pointing feature of the whole situation was that gold production in the Colony was still high although revenues were falling. The truth of the matter was that the miners, for whom most of the debt had been contracted, were not bearing their full share of taxation. Their evasion of payment forced the government to consider abandoning its attempt to collect the export duty on gold and reverting to the miners’ licences as a source of revenue. If the economic situation in British Columbia was distressing, the Colony at least had political peace. Vancouver Island, on the other hand, was labouring under difficulties both political and economic, difficulties which seemed to be almost insoluble. To many of the colonists, these were of Governor Kennedy’s making. Arthur Edward Kennedy, “ an Irish gentleman of a good type” ,30 who preferred a man to be “ decidedly wrong than undecidedly right” ,31 was locked in a battle with the House of Assembly which was far more desperate than his earlier struggle with his council in the colony of Western Australia. A retired army officer, who had served with the Irish Board of Works during the Famine and as Governor of Gambia, Sierra Leone and Western Australia, Kennedy had proved himself an able and honest administrator and a fearless opponent of his enemies. “In Captain Kennedy” , wrote one of his admirers on Vancouver Island, “were suitably combined those Tropical and Irish exper­ iences and elements, so much valued by the Home Government in administering the commercial and mining colonies on the Pacific seaboard. A handsomer man, or a more courtly or friendly, seldom could be encountered, yet, it was not easy for me, his inoffensive personal friend, waiting the announcement of dinner, to rid myself entirely from a suspicion that I was in the guardroom, and that I deserved it” .82 213

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In his earlier posts, Kennedy had had no experience with an elected house and never before had he encountered men like Helmcken, De Cosmos and Dr. Tolmie, who held advanced views concerning the legislative powers of a representative assembly. The complete separation of the executive and legislative branches of the government was the particular object of their attack: he had hardly set foot on the Island before they demanded the creation of a ministerial council. The sharing of power with “ very unscrupulous men” 33 was contrary to Kennedy’s inclina­ tion, and the refusal of the Assembly to assume responsibility for the civil list provided him with the excuse to control disburse­ ments from the land fund. The obstructionism of the Assembly, the inordinately long sessions, lasting on one occasion for 310 days, the modification of taxation measures to suit private interests and the passing of money votes which the Governor had not recommended, led in the end to political deadlock. “ Public agitation [had] been matured into a science” 34 in Victoria, and the longer Kennedy remained in the Colony, the more he became confirmed in his early opinion that there were hut two classes on Vancouver Island: “ those who are convicts and those who ought to he convicts” .35 He considered the resources of the Colony, if properly administered, ample to meet its needs. In Western Australia he had carried out an imaginative programme of economic regeneration and he believed that a similar programme on Vancouver Island would win the support of the surly colonists. In 1864, he commenced an exploratory survey of the Colony’s resources: this brought to light the existence of gold at Goldstream and at Leechtown, a discovery which immediately stimu­ lated business at Victoria and attracted immigrants. But the public remained unimpressed by the benefits, for its attention was focused on his action in issuing warrants, as he had been instructed to do by the Colonial Office, for the payment of his own salary and the salary of the Attorney General, and by his purchase of Cary Castle as his official residence. The unpopular­ ity of these measures— $40,000 of public moneys was expended on Cary Castle and its improvements— was intensified by the imposition of an income tax on all salaries of £150 and over. To Governor Kennedy, Vancouver Island consisted of far more 214

N E W W E S T M IN S T E R AS G O V ERNOR S E Y M O U R F IR S T SAW I T ,

1864.

R. Maynard Photograph

A N O T E O N EARLY P H O T O G R A P H Y I N B R IT IS H C O L U M B IA

A ll the early photographers used the wet plate or collodion process, invented in England in 1851, and introduced in Victoria by George R. Fardon in 1858. T he “ wet plater" supplied him self with an enormous camera, a stout tripod, a dark room tent, dozens of heavy glass plates, a chest of chemicals, and a barrel of distilled water. Equipped in this fashion, Frederick Dally, an Englishman who emigrated to British Columbia in 1862,accompanied Governor Seym our’s party to Cariboo in 1867. T he following year, D ally returned to open a studio in Barkerville. Later he removed to Victoria, where he ad­ vertised his ability to take views “ with the greatest care and in the best style of Photographic Art, and warranted to give satisfaction". To take his outdoor photographs, D ally picked a good site, set up his camera on a tripod, and erected his tent nearby. In the tent, he coated a glass plate with collodion to which potassium iodide had been added; allowed the plate to dry; then dipped it in silver nitrate; placed it in a light-tight holder; went out, and put it in the camera. T he exposure had to be made while the plate was still wet and the plate had to be developed and fixed at once. Richard Maynard, another Englishman, came to British Columbia to mine gold in 1859. In 1861, he was joined in Victoria by his wife, who had studied photography and brought with her a stock of plates and cameras to open a studio. Eventually Maynard turned from mining to photography, and became as famous as D ally for his scenic photo­ graphs.

T H E DAVIS W H E E L A N D F L U M E .

Williams Creek, Cariboo, probably 1867 or 1868. F. D ally Photograph

T H E FIT Z G E R A L D M C C L E E R Y F A R M -H O U S E .

The first substantial building within the boundaries of the present City of Vancouver, it was built in 1862 and demolished in 1957■ Leonard Frank Photograph C O L O N IA L O F F IC IA L S AT REST.

Governor Seymour and his party, including Judge Matthew Baillie Begbie, Colonial Secretary Arthur N. Birch and Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works Joseph W. Trutch, in the Cariboo at the time of the Grouse Creek War, 1868F. D ally Photograph

-SsLU • v

B U IL D E R S O F B R IT IS H C O L U M B IA .

Road-builders and Canadian Pacific Railway construction workers photographed at a Boston Bar stopping-house in the early ’eighties. R. Maynard. Photograph

L IL L O O E T I N T II E 'E IG H T IE S .

s h ip s o f t h e r o y a l n a v y

R. Maynard Photograph

at Esquimalt in the ’sixties.

CARIBOO F R E IG H T W AGONS L E A V IN G ASHCROFT.

probably late ’eighties or early ’nineties. S. J.Thom pson Photograph

T H E F U N E R A L O F SIR JA M E S DOUGLAS,

R. Maynard Photograph

August, l 877 -

T H E C A N A D IA N P A C IF IC RA ILW A Y O F F IC E , V IC T O R IA ,

at the time of Lord Dufferin’s visit, August, 1876.

C H IN E S E A R C H AT N A N A IM O ,

erected, in honour of Lord Lome's visit, 1884.

iiii u u u m CmShVi

M l THE R O Y M rA Ml IY

T4

BURRARD IN L E T IN 1 8 7 2 .

R. Maynard Photograph

C L E A R I N G T H E S IT E O F V A N C O U V E R , 1 8 8 6 .

R. Maynard Photograph

M A R IT IM E U N IO N

than the city of Victoria which had always dominated its political life. In particular, the welfare of the mining com­ munity of Nanaimo, which now had a population of some 800 persons, interested him. In the opinion of Dr. Cheadle, Nanaimo, “ the future Newcastle of the Pacific” , had coal resources sufficient to supply a merchant fleet trading with India, China, and Japan. In 1864, an English company, the Vancouver Island Coal Mining Company, in which Fitzwilliam, the uncle of Cheadle’s travelling companion, Viscount Milton, was a shareholder, purchased the Hudson’s Bay Company’s coal-fields, and in the same year another English company, the Harewood Coal M ining Company, founded through the efforts of Lieutenant-Commander the Hon. Horace Douglas Lascelles, R.N., commanding H.M.S. Forward on the Pacific Station, commenced operations under the direction of its resident mana­ ger, Robert Dunsmuir, a former employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Kennedy had exceptionally warm friendships with naval officers who visited Esquimalt; their representations concerning the excellence of the harbour and the merits of Nanaimo coal helped to win for Vancouver Island the establishment in 1865 of Esquimalt as the North Pacific naval base. Nanaimo, which had never known great prosperity while it depended on the San Francisco market in which its coal competed with the output of the Bellingham mines, was now somewhat better off. But it still suffered from inadequate representation in the Assembly and from the refusal of the Victoria members to sup­ port its demands for a fair share of the moneys appropriated for public works. In 1865, funds were voted for a road to the new agricultural settlement in the Comox valley, the chief source of Nanaimo’s food supply, but in an economy drive during the following year, the Assembly allotted the town only $800 for public services. No provision whatever was made for the ad­ ministration of justice or for police protection. To Governor Kennedy, this action was as irresponsible as the Assembly’s disallowance of the salary of the Inspector of Police and the reduction of the total police force of the whole Colony to an inspector, a sergeant and five constables, at a time when Victoria alone with its “ mixed population” of nearly 6,000 persons had 215

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“ 85 licensed drinking houses many of which are in addition brothels and gambling houses” .36 If the Assembly was unresponsive to Nanaimo’s needs, it showed unusual consideration in 1865 for the interests of the agricultural communities. The farmers’ demands for a protec­ tive tariff became insistent at the very moment when the Assembly, urgently requiring revenue, decided to modify the Colony’s free-trade policy and collect customs duties. Victoria immediately lost the advantage which it had previously enjoyed as a magnet for capital investment and its position as metropolis of the gold-fields was seriously challenged by New Westminster. To alleviate distress in the Colony, the Assembly was prepared by February, 1866, to abolish the real-estate tax and the salaries tax and to reduce the trading and liquor licences, the chief sources of revenue under its control. It was a “ curious coinci­ dence” , Governor Kennedy commented, that on the day when the resolution was passed to abolish the real-estate tax, seven members of the Assembly who voted for the abrogation of the tax were collectively in arrears for it by the amount of $8g2.37 A few weeks later, in an attempt to prevent the government from redeeming property sold for taxes, Leonard McClure, now editor of the British Colonist, carried out with Amor De Cosmos a twenty-three-hour filibuster in the House. During the eight months that the Assembly remained in session from November, 1865, until July, 1866, it carried on such a relentless struggle with the capable but tactless Governor to establish its control of finances, that no constructive measure was passed. Item by item, the members refused supply; salaries were reduced and offices consolidated. The responsibility for repaying the Imperial government for its expenditure on light­ houses was shirked and Governor Douglas’s programme for improving Victoria harbour abandoned. Although the govern­ ment was already in heavy debt to the Bank of British Columbia and had floated a loan of £40,000, it ordered the Governor to contract two further loans of $100,000 and £50,000. On M ay 31, 1866, the Bank of British Columbia, giving notice that the over­ draft stood at nearly $80,000, refused further accommodation. When efforts to float the new loans failed, the Assembly reduced the Governor’s salary to $2,000 and passed a motion of non­ 216

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confidence. Resolutely, he had refused to make a return of expenditures from Crown Lands during 1864 and 1865 or to yield to the demand of a public meeting called by the M ayor of Victoria that the Governor should recognize the right of the House to initiate money bills. Although Kennedy deluged the Colonial Office with reports on the constitutional issues and the details of his difficulties, he received neither support nor guidance. Edward Cardwell, who had succeeded to the post of Colonial Secretary on the death of the Duke of Newcastle in the spring of 1864, considered it only a matter of time before the Colony of Vancouver Island, of its own free will, would seek to merge its identity with the Colony of British Columbia, and he saw no reason for rescuing the hapless Governor from the morass in which he was floundering. As early as February, 1864, the Assembly admitted that union with the Mainland Colony would serve an economic purpose. But it wanted union on its own terms: federation, the retention of the representative system, freedom of decision in fiscal mat­ ters and the location of the capital at Victoria. Gradually, as the economic depression deepened, the members abandoned the idea of the federation of Vancouver Island and British Columbia in favour of legislative union of the two colonies. Then, De Cosmos, who was in the thick of the fight with the Governor, took the plunge. Dropping for the time being the cause of responsible government, he introduced resolutions in the House of Assembly in January, 1865, for the immediate and unconditional union of Vancouver Island with British Columbia. His abandonment of the cause of the free port created more excitement among the commercial interests in his Victoria constituency than the suspension of a political principle to which he was devoted. To test support for union at any price, both he and McClure, the other representative for Victoria, resigned their seats and stood for re-election. W hen they triumphed at the polls, the Colonial Secretary, who was under pressure from parliament to reduce expenditures, knew that a union of the two western maritime colonies was a certainty. As Seymour had written, “ separated it seems difficult for one Colony to flourish without inflicting some injury on the other” .38 In London, Seymour found that the “ C.O., Treasury, F.O., 217

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Admiralty are very anxious for a union of the two colonies” .86 Union, in fact, was the only alternative to their complete aban­ donment. Alone of the British possessions in North America, they had been left almost unprotected during the last two years of the American Civil W ar. Rear-Admiral the Hon. Joseph Denman had advised the Admiralty that the great expenditure involved in their defence hardly justified their retention: “ I consider it would be greatly for the interest of England to divest herself of these possessions by any means consistent with honor and with justice to the English Settlers” , he wrote.40 The expression of such a view was grist to the m ill of the “ Little Englanders” . But the interest of the British public in the Pacific seaboard had been aroused by the publication of Milton and Cheadle’s North West Passage by Land, by Edward W . W atkin’s plans for the extension of the Grand Trunk Railway and by the exploration which Dr. John Rae was carrying out under the sponsorship of the reorganized Hudson’s Bay Company for a transcontinental telegraph line. W hatever the opinion of mem­ bers of parliament and however strong their desire for retrench­ ment, both the Mid-West and the Far West had acquired significance in the public mind. In arriving at his decision, Cardwell did not lack for gratuitous advice. Sir James Douglas seized the occasion of a dinner invi­ tation to press him to make no change in the existing system. “The London Committee for W atching the Affairs of British Columbia”, consisting of Gilbert Malcolm Sproat, who had represented a London firm in Victoria, Donald Fraser and Alexander Grant Dallas, joined forces to fight the suggestion that the smaller colony be absorbed by British Columbia. “You have no idea how active & untruthful the Victoria men are in England & how entirely the Bank is on their side” , Seymour reported to his Attorney General, H. P. P. Crease.41 By February l , 1866, Seymour knew that the main lines of policy had been determined and that his own recommendations had been accepted. The idea of a federal union had been rejected in favour of the incorporation of the Colony of Vancouver Island into the Colony of British Columbia. “W e shall be in a position to dictate our own terms” , Seymour gleefully reported to Crease. A fortnight later, while in Paris, he set forth his views fully in a 218

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lengthy despatch to Cardwell. W hen the London Committee was shown this document, Sproat was so indignant that he suggested that Seymour had been spending his time in the great city “ strangling the parrot” 42 (drinking absinthe). Starting from the invalid premise that British Columbia was now prosperous, a condition unknown when it had been a colony “in name” only and “ there was a gold mine at one end of a line of road; a seaport town (under a different Government) at the opposite terminus” ,43 Seymour argued that its people were now so contented that through their Legislative Council they had rejected union. But, at the same time, in order to strengthen British authority, British influence and British power in the Pacific, it would be advantageous to have one civil authority. To effect the merger of the colonies, he suggested that the con­ sent of the Legislative Council of British Columbia be obtained, that the union of Vancouver Island and British Columbia be carried out by a proclamation issued by the Governor of British Columbia and that the laws of the Mainland be extended over the Island. Since the populace of British Columbia was not yet ready for representative institutions, he proposed for the new government a system modelled on its Legislative Council, but with a larger infusion of a popular element. Practically all his suggestions were taken, and the bill to unite the two colonies which the Derby administration rushed through parliament without debate at the end of the session of 1866 was a victory for British Columbia: its institutions and its revenue laws were to be superimposed on those of Vancouver Island. In Victoria, Sir James Douglas, who had returned from Europe, was distressed at the outcome of Seymour’s talks. Sir James refrained from commenting on the plan of governmental machinery, but he was so alarmed about the probable economic future of Vancouver Island under British Columbia’s fiscal system that he wrote to the Colonial Office to urge that Victoria again be proclaimed a free port. No attention was paid to his advice. On November 19, 1866, when union was proclaimed, he made a private entry in his daughter’s diary: “ The Ships of war fired a salute on the occasion— A funeral procession, with minute guns would have been more appropriate to the sad melancholy event” .44 219

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Others, with less foresight, were at first m ainly concerned about the choice of a governor. Most of the Vancouver Islanders were anxious to rid themselves of Governor Kennedy “who is disliked in his official capacity & his fam ily in their domestic capacity, in about the same ratio” .45 “ I only hope ‘old Deport­ ment’ won’t get the two Colonies . . .” ,46 wrote one colonist. There was no chance that he would, for Seymour had made the proper impression in London and it had been decided that he was the appropriate man for the appointment. Kennedy, who was recalled, took his leave before Seymour’s return. “ The Governor’s fam ily departed in a shower of tears” , wrote an official; “ ’t was most affecting— entre nous, only an Irish family could have got up such a scene. One would have thought they had been beloved & revered all the time” .47 W ithin months, Seymour was as unpopular on Vancouver Island as Kennedy had ever been: “ If he only knew the general opinion he would blush” , declared Dr. Helmcken.48 On his return to British Columbia with his bride, Seymour discovered that the prosperity which he had so blithely claimed for British Columbia was nowhere evident. The government had been excellently administered during his absence by Birch, but what O’Reilly called “ a sad change” had taken place in the Kootenay mining-fields and revenues had fallen off. Cariboo had also started its decline: “ You w ill see by the papers all the brags about Gold by men who don’t know what the Creek [W illiams] used to be”, wrote Judge Begbie; “ the Creek alto­ gether now does not turn out in a week more than half of what many an individual claim has turned out in its day . . . I don’t think there can be more than 1000, Chinamen & all [at work] ” .49 Big Bend, where the gold had proved to be “ pockety” , was now known as “ the Big Bilk” : only two creeks, Gold and M c­ Culloch, had produced gold in paying quantities during 1866. Their production did not exceed $250,000 and the traders who had packed in supplies with great effort and exertion were on the verge of bankruptcy. The new town of Seymour, laid out at government expense on the shore of Shuswap Lake, was languishing, and the Hudson’s Bay Company’s steamer Marten which provided transportation between Seymour and Savona was carrying little freight. In addition, the laying of the Atlantic 22 0

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cable caused the Collins Telegraph Line to abandon its own project. The line, which had reached New Westminster in April, 1865, in time to carry the message concerning President Lincoln’s death, had already been extended to Quesnel and on to Fort Stager at the confluence of the Kispyox and Skeena Rivers. Then, almost without notice, the Chinese and Indian employees were thrown out of work and 500 skilled engineers, surveyors and other professional men left the country. A t the date of union, the Colony of British Columbia had a debt of $1,002,983 and the Colony of Vancouver Island, one of $293,698. The need for economy was so obvious that Governor Seymour offered to forgo $3,000 of his salary for the coming year. In view of the fact that his full salary was $20,000, plus the per­ quisites referred to as his “coffee allowance” by Sproat, the saving did not appear to be great. Some of the officials followed his lead, but while their gesture was appreciated, the colonists expected more stringent sacrifices. Their demand for a drastic reduction in the number of offices caused embarrassment to a kind-hearted man who disliked discharging anyone from his service. As economic conditions worsened, the location of the future capital of the united Colony became a matter of vital concern to both New Westminster and Victoria. Prosperity as well as prestige seemed at stake, for business in Victoria had been stimulated by the spending of government officers during Governor Douglas’s regime. Instead of exercising his personal right of decision in the matter of selecting a site, as the Colonial Office was prepared to have him do, Seymour decided to put the matter before the Legislative Council. He convened the session in January, 1867. Then he permitted two months to elapse in consideration of financial and other matters before inviting the members to express their opinion on this very contentious issue. The new Executive Council contained five official members, all of whom were former officers of the Colony of British Columbia. In the Legislative Council, five of the nine magis­ trates who formed the link between the executive and the legis­ lature were Gold Commissioners and the sixth was a large land­ holder in British Columbia. Among the nine popularly elected members, Vancouver Island had only four representatives. The 221

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Mainland appeared to be very much in control of the govern­ ment, and if Seymour, as the delegates from Vancouver Island unjustly expected, chose to exercise his influence with the official members and the British Columbia magistrates, the interests of Victoria would obtain short shrift during the Council’s deliberations. His ten years of experience as Speaker of the House of Assembly now stood Dr. Helmcken in good stead. During that period he had developed into an able parliamentarian, as Kennedy had discovered to his cost. The reforms which he had sponsored, particularly one to extend the franchise to aliens, had shocked the Governor and had helped to create the opinion held by officials in the Colonial Office that the old Assembly of Vancouver Island had contained a very small “ pure British element” .80 Ignoring a suggestion diplomatically presented by Seymour that N ew Westminster might be selected as capital of the united Colony, Helmcken, at the prompting of Sir James Douglas, introduced a motion favouring the choice of Victoria. A fter a debate lasting for nine and a half hours, the Council accepted the motion by a vote of 13 to 8. Before accepting the decision, Seymour requested from the Colonial Secretary an expression of opinion as to whether Douglas’s proclamation of 1859 had established Moody’s site as the permanent capital of British Columbia. This action appeared to confirm his well-known predilection for New Westminster (“ in m y opinion the most respectable, manly and enterprising little community with which I have ever been acquainted” ) 61 and increased his unpopularity in Victoria. His indecision, which arose chiefly from a respect for the law and his genuine desire not to force his own choice upon the people, was attri­ buted to other causes. Some of his critics declared that the early success of his administration in British Columbia had been due to the assistance rendered by Birch, his “ dry nurse” , and now that the Colonial Secretary had been withdrawn, the Governor was fumbling. Some of the officials hinted that his physique, which had been impaired by his residence in the tropics, was being further weakened by intemperance. Whatever the cause, he acted with much less assurance and self-confidence than previously. In Victoria, where Seymour declared there was “ a half alien, 222

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restless population, ill at ease with itself” ,52 the capital contro­ versy aroused on the part of the merchants more concern than the American purchase of Alaska, and even pushed into the background their interest in the creation of the new Canadian federation. Throughout the summer and autumn of 1864, the British Colonist had reported fully on the developments which were taking place at Charlottetown and at Quebec and as the talks progressed the newspaper did what it could to assimilate the aims of the colonists on the Pacific seaboard to the broader Canadian objectives. It was still engaged in this campaign in 1867, but it saved some of its space to hurl invective at the Fraser River, a “ stream of liquid mud”, and at New Westmin­ ster, “a pimple on the face of creation” . In the Royal City both the Governor and the editor of the British Columbian were quoted as having referred to Victoria as being located “ on a frogpond” . Victoria and N ew Westminster, neither of which had yet failed to celebrate the Queen’s Rirthday, permitted July i, 1867, to pass without particular notice: only in Yale and at Barkerville, now the most populous centre on Williams Creek, was the first Dominion D ay marked with rejoicing. That evening there was a grand public dinner at Yale, and at Barkerville the Hurdy girls, dressed in their red waists and printed cotton skirts, had no difficulty in promoting the sale of champagne in the mirrored saloons. Amor De Cosmos was well aware of what was happening in the world outside. More than anyone else, he had been respons­ ible for the loss of Vancouver Island’s representative Assembly and for the failure to carry to completion in the Colony which had now disappeared, the campaign for responsible government. His immediate object in 1865, the union of the seaboard colonies, had failed to result in any improvement in economic conditions, and now, as one of the elected members of the Legislative Council, he found himself on a political stage which was far too small for his ambitions. But, apart from his personal vanity, De Cosmos was aware that the future of British Columbia hung in the balance. A n y political movement, as he well knew, could gain strength in the feverish atmosphere of Victoria. More than one of its completely disheartened business men had begun to advocate 223

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withdrawal of the Colony from the British connection and political union with the United States. Such a statement had emerged from a disorderly public meeting held under the chair­ manship of Leonard McClure in September, 1866. To counteract its influence, De Cosmos in March, 1867, introduced a resolution in the Legislative Council requesting that provision be made in the terms of the British North America Act, then under dis­ cussion in parliament, for the ultimate admission of British Columbia into the Canadian federation. Anticipating this action by a week, Seymour despatched a telegram to London on March 11, 1867. No reply was received. On September 24 he sent a second telegram. The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, the new Colonial Secretary, finally replied on November 19 to the effect that whatever advantage might accrue to British Columbia in the course of time from union, consideration of the question would have to wait until the intervening territory, still under the control of the Hudson’s Bay Company, had been incorporated into the new Dominion. Meanwhile, De Cosmos spent the summer months in eastern Canada where he addressed gatherings on the desirability of admitting the Pacific Colony into the new federation. On his return, he criticized Seymour for making no direct approach to the Canadian government, and permitted the impression to grow that the Governor had deliberately delayed communicating the Council’s pleasure to the Imperial government. After calling a public meeting in Victoria in January, 1868, he succeeded in having a group of ardent Confederationists draw up tentative terms for admission. The movement gained impetus in March when the Governor General, Lord Monck, somewhat too opti­ mistic in his expectation that the North West Territories would soon be transferred to the Dominion, informed the Colonial Secretary that the Canadian government was prepared to submit a proposal for British Columbia’s entry at the first session of the new federal parliament. A few weeks later, Governor Seymour opened the second session of the Legislative Council of the united Colony of British Columbia. Referring to the resolution of the previous year favouring union with Canada, he described it as “ the expression of a disheartened community, longing for change of any kind”53 224

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and in defining his own official attitude towards Confederation, used the precise words employed by the Colonial Secretary in his despatch of November 19. On the economic horizon, the clouds were blacker than ever. A n Imperial guarantee for a new loan had been refused, and although official salaries had been reduced by more than $88,000, nearly one-third of the revenue had to be set aside to pay the interest on the enormous debt. “Were we free from debts our finances would be in most flourishing condition”, Seymour naively reported to the Colonial Office. “ I am not answerable for the debt . . . I have never appointed any one higher than a constable and have no hope of doing so during m y incumbency of office” .54 Douglas’s building of competing roads to Cariboo now seemed to him to be the height of folly and he blamed other of the Colony’s financial difficulties on his predecessor’s extravagance. The officials, as they soon showed in their vote on the civil list, were in no mood for further reduction of their pay. The first thing to be done was to end the controversy over the colonial capital. When the matter came to a vote on April 2, the Council reaffirmed its choice of Victoria. To the surprise of the protagonists of the Island city’s claims, the Governor, who was known to be bitterly disappointed at the decision, had failed to give any direction or instruction to the official members. But his dismissal of Cox and of Captain W illiam Hales Franklyn, the magistrate for Nanaimo, within the next few months revealed something of his disappointment and of his displeasure at the manner in which such an important question had been settled. Franklyn, a former captain of a P. & O. steamer, who had come to the Colony after being discharged from service for throwing one of his passengers into irons, had intended to make a strong statement in favour of N ew Westminster, which his constituency much preferred as provincial capital to Victoria, Nanaimo’s “ cruel step-mother” . But on the day of the debate, the “ British Lion” found “ Noah’s A rk” cold, and his frequent visits to the “ attachment” for refreshment, resulted in his being “ a little shaky” when the time came for him to read his carefully prepared speech. Thrice, as Cox, who was sitting next to him, 225

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reshuffled his papers, he read his introductory paragraph com­ paring the future of New Westminster on the Fraser to the present prosperity of Calcutta on the Hoogley. Then, during an instant when he laid his spectacles on the table, Cox pressed the glasses from their frames; replacing his spectacles, the Lion “ could not see the Hoogley or anything else” .55 Amidst high hilarity Helmcken moved a recess of half an hour and when the House reassembled, rose to object to Franklyn making a second speech. The objection upheld, the question was put to the vote. The people of New Westminster were far from being amused at these antics, and the choice of M ay 24, a day of annual rejoicing in the Royal City, for the issuing of the proclamation announc­ ing the removal on the following day of the capital, seemed to them to be a bit of refined cruelty. In a much more sober atmosphere, the Council debated confederation with Canada. De Cosmos urged the immediate preparation of an address to the Queen requesting approval of British Columbia’s desire for admission, but Helmcken and the nine nominated members opposed taking any action. In dissolv­ ing the Council, Seymour indicated his approval of the decision. De Cosmos now bent his efforts to winning popular support for the cause. Early in M ay, he succeeded in having a Confeder­ ation League formed in Victoria, and within the next few weeks this organization enlisted support in New Westminster, Yale, Lytton, Clinton and Barkerville. The first concerted move on the part of the whole Colony came at the Yale Convention which assembled on September 14. The twenty-six delegates included three elected members of the legislature, De Cosmos, Robson and Barnard. Under their leadership, the convention accepted reso­ lutions favouring immediate union with Canada, the institution of responsible government, the reduction of the civil establish­ ment and the halving of the Governor’s salary. A small executive committee was appointed to call further conventions and to communicate with the Imperial, the Canadian and the local government. Two days later, Barkerville, probably the strongest centre of Confederationist sentiment, went up in flames. The fire, which started early in the afternoon in Barry and Adler’s saloon, wiped out the whole settlement in less than an hour and a half. It was 226

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3 staggering blow: property to the value of $690,000 and goods valued at $700,000 were destroyed. A few weeks later came another shock: fire consumed a large part of the business section on Government Street, Victoria. The second disaster came on the morning of the election for a new Legislative Council. Much hinged on the outcome of the day’s vote, for although De Cosmos was fighting on a platform of reform and retrenchment, his opponent was Dr. Helmcken, a sharp critic of the “Yale Conspiracy” , who was strongly opposed to precipitate union with Canada. Running as De Cosmos’s mate was Dr. I. W . Powell, a personal friend of Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, who had thrown his full support to the movement for union with Canada. For the first time, all the discriminatory bars in the franchise in Victoria and Esquimalt had been removed, and the whole populace, apart from Indians and Chinese, was free to vote. The excitement of the morning’s fire kept many away from the polls, but during the afternoon crowds turned up to register oral votes. By evening there was no doubt about the decision: Victoria had returned a complete slate of anti-confederationists. On the Mainland, however, every district but Kootenay had returned a man pledged to union. The strength of this element in the Legislative Council was increased by Seymour’s appoint­ ing to it Henry Holbrook, M ayor of N ew Westminster, and George A. Walkem, a Canadian barrister who practised law in Cariboo. The issue of union with Canada stood in danger of becoming confused with sectional rivalry. As the new resident of “Bleak House” , Seymour found himself tolerated but hardly accepted by the people of Victoria. His friendly courtesy and his ready generosity won him some friends, but the citizens criticized his expenditure of public moneys on the improvement of the cricket pitch at Cary Castle and con­ cerned themselves but little with the fact that his salary was eleven months in arrears and the Bank of British Columbia was charging him 18 per cent on his overdrawn account. His increas­ ing physical incapacity caused so much anxiety in the spring of 1869 that a petition was circulated requesting the appointment of Sir James Douglas as Administrator should Seymour’s retire­ ment become necessary. 227

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John Robson charged that both the Governor and the British Columbia officials had scurried across the G ulf of Georgia with indecent haste as soon as the decision was reached about the capital; but most of the officials were unhappy about their trans­ fer to Victoria. There, they had been put to new expense in providing homes for their families, and the value of their invest­ ments in New Westminster property had declined with the removal of the capital. Union with Canada, which might involve loss of office as well, was far from being a popular course with them. “ I suppose there is little doubt we shall have Confedera­ tion sooner or later” , O’Reilly wrote to Crease, “but it appears to me that our only chance is to work together, & battle against it until a satisfactory provision is made for us” .56 W hen the Council met in December, 1868, the Governor’s message indicated that as soon as the North West Territories were transferred to Canada he would support confederation, and promised constitutional reform. But a straight vote of the officials defeated Helmcken’s motion to make the Legislative Council two-thirds elective and to admit non-official members to the Executive Council. The magisterial members then obstructed Helmcken’s attempt to put Crown salaries directly under the control of the Council. The influence of the officials was also felt in the passage of a resolution postponing, for the present, con­ sideration of union with Canada. Sir John A . Macdonald, who was closely watching developments on the Pacific seaboard, was disappointed: “ The government officials, the Hudson’s Bay agents and the Yankee adventurers have conspired together to defeat confederation and have been for the time successful” , he wrote to the Governor of Newfoundland.57 The British Colonist could hardly restrain its wrath: the offi­ cials occupied their position merely for the sake of appearances, it stated, and like a chignon on a lady’s head, were more for ornament than use. W hat was needed was a Governor who was not steered or driven like a velocipede. From Ottawa, Macdonald wrote to Dr. R. W . W . Carrall in Cariboo to urge him and the Mainland generally to “ keep the Union fire alight until it burns over the whole Colony” .58 It was quite clear, the Prime Minister advised the Governor General, that no time should be lost in putting the screws on Vancouver 228

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Island, “ and the first thing to be done will be to recall Governor Seymour if his time is not out” .59 Concurrently, Macdonald wrote to Anthony Musgrave, whose term as Governor of New­ foundland was nearly ended, stating that Seymour should be recalled “ as being perfectly unfit for his present position, under present circumstances. From all I hear he never was fit for it” .60 In M ay, 1869, Governor Seymour escaped from the wrangles and the tense political atmosphere of Victoria. From the days of the Chilcotin insurrection he had prided himself on his power as conciliator in Indian disputes. New troubles, which he traced to the activities of “ whiskey sellers” on the North West Coast, had broken out at Metlakatla and on the Queen Charlotte Islands; he was determined to restore peace. His officials were inclined to feel that he made himself much too busy with the attention he gave to Indian affairs; during the preceding years, they had objected to his taking frequent leave of the capital to visit the northern coast. He exaggerated his success in dealing both with the Indians and with the miners, they thought, and they con­ sidered that his intervention in 1867 in the “ Grouse Creek W ar”, the only serious trouble in the mining district, had been marked by no great skill. But the fact remained that the Governor had always shown more ability in settling Indian squabbles than disputes within his own official family. The present occasion was no exception. W hen H.M.S. Sparrowhawk called at Nass River, he presided at a “wa-wa” between the Tsimpsean and rival chiefs and adjusted their differences. By June 5, he was at Skidegate; three days later, he was taken ill with dysentery. Nevertheless, he ordered the ship to proceed to Bella Coola, where he intended to deal with yet more Indian trouble. There, on June 10, 1869, he died. Four days later the Sparrowhawk arrived at Victoria with his body. The Colony gave him a magnificent funeral. Yards of black crape, black velvet, glazed calico and black ribbon were ordered from the leading merchants to drape St. John’s and Christ Church at Victoria and the room and chapel at Esquimalt. For the mourners, eau de cologne and black kid gloves were pro­ vided. Sir James Douglas, with whom Seymour had always been on friendly terms, acted as one of the pall-bearers. W ith full 229

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military honours, the interment took place on the gently sloping hill of the little naval cemetery at Esquimalt. On June 17, the day after the funeral, a cable announced that Anthony Musgrave, former Governor of Newfoundland, had been appointed to the governorship of British Columbia. Just as eagerly as they had awaited the arrival of Frederick Seymour, the colonists looked forward to the appearance of a new governor and the opening of another new era. “ Confidence seems to be returning” ,61 Seymour had reported to the Colonial Office in the summer of 1868, and for a few months, economic conditions had, in fact, improved. Barkerville had arisen from the ashes; the colonial debt had been reduced by £51,000 and new mining-fields had been discovered in Omineca. But British Columbia had not recovered her former prosperity and outside assistance was still needed. “A little favour on the part of the Mother Country towards this Colony would not I think have been thrown aw ay” , Seymour had stated. As yet, however, the new Gladstone ministry had shown no disposition to provide financial aid. Meanwhile, Victoria’s rival, San Francisco, was forging ahead; joined by rail with the Mississippi, she had an assured future. In contrast, in the capital of British Columbia, there were vacant houses and empty warehouses, and if the reports coining from London were true, Waddington was mak­ ing small progress in his attempt to interest English capitalists in his Pacific railway project. The Canadian element in the Colony of British Columbia was becoming impatient: although Governor Seymour had increased the strength of the popular element in the Legislative Council beyond the limit the Colonial Office considered safe, as yet neither completely representative nor responsible government existed. A ll the official posts were filled by Englishmen. The time had come to abolish sinecures; to reduce the political power of a Crown Colony clique which had consolidated its position through marriage and friendship; and to create opportunity for new aspirants to office. “England has given us nothing but a flag” , declared Dr. Helmcken.62 The new Canada would surely provide more than this.

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over colonial governors had given Bri­ tish Columbians a heady sense of power. Flamboyant editorials in an exuberantly free press had become their sustenance; truculent opposition to constituted authority their habit; and appeals to London their formula for change. A n y new governor hoping to give direction to their political inclinations would find himself compelled to proceed cautiously in order to win their confidence. Circumstance and native ability contributed to Governor Anthony Musgrave’s success in carrying out his mission. Musgrave’s acceptance by the English officials had been pre­ pared by Governor Seymour himself. Musgrave, Seymour told Attorney General Crease, had proved himself “ a very smart man” during his service as Seymour’s private secretary in Antigua,1 and Seymour continued to speak highly of the intelligence of the man chosen to be his successor— although he did let it be

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known that he considered Musgrave unmannerly in writing, before being officially appointed, to enquire about the quality and value of the furniture in the Government House which he soon expected to occupy. After a few months’ association with Musgrave, Crease formed his own opinion. “The Govr. talks a good deal hut he’s pretty sharp” , he reported to Birch.2 The Col­ onial Secretary was similarly impressed: “ I like Mr. Musgrave immensely” , he wrote to the Duke of Buckingham; “ I never wish to serve with a better man & I think he is as much liked as it is possible for British Columbians to like any Governor” .8 A British colonist by birth (a “ Creole” , Crease called him ), Musgrave was considered to he “ not such good ‘form’ ” as Seymour,4 but the fact that he had spent his childhood in the West Indies and seen service there commended him to those officials, and there were many, who had tropical associations. Friendly ties with the Crown Colony clique were further strengthened when one of his two sisters was married in Decem­ ber, 1870, to John Trutch, brother of the Commissioner of Lands and Works. W ith the Canadian colonists, Musgrave was popular from the first. He paid tribute to Canadian skill, they thought, when in November, 1869, after he had fractured his leg in a riding accident, he called to his bedside Dr. Powell, Canadian by birth and by training. The Governor’s slow recovery from the acci­ dent— he was bed-ridden for months and left a cripple for life— was the cause of much concern. “You w ill be grieved to hear the Govr. has been laid up again with his leg” , Mrs. Crease wrote to her husband in July, 1870. “ I was told it was very bad, but is doing better again now. Poor man! I feel so sorry he has such confidence in that Canadian doctor” .8 The Americans were pleased by the Governor’s choice in 1870 of an American woman, a connection of wealthy Cyrus Field, as his bride. Other colonists were happy to have at Government House a chatelaine who had a North American background: there was something peculiarly satisfying to British Columbians, themselves largely a mixture of British and American stock, in a marriage alliance between “the tail of the British Lion” and the “ tip of the wing of the American Eagle” .6 British Columbians, Musgrave knew, had an exaggerated 234

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notion of their own coercive power. In the past it had not been difficult for Downing Street to submit to their demands, for these demands had often coincided with the intentions of the Imperial authorities. Such had been the case in 1866 when the Vancouver Islanders, seeking a solution for sectional discord and desiring the return of buoyant prosperity, had pressed for the union of the seaboard colonies. This “ concession” had been feasible largely because London had long desired the union of these two colonies. As early as 1858, Lytton had regarded their consoli­ dation as the best method of “ keeping them apart” from the United States, and in 1864, the Duke of Newcastle had advocated regional maritime union, on both the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, as a necessary intermediate step to the general federation of the British colonies in North America. The Atlantic provinces had rejected the idea, but British Columbia had put forth its own scheme for regional union and, by so doing, had made its contri­ bution to the devolution of the second British Empire. More significant than the colonists realized were the external forces which were drawing them into the Canadian orbit. For them, the transfer of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s rights on Vancouver Island had had little more than local implication. But a colony with complete control of its Crown Lands could better negotiate with the other British North American prov­ inces, and there was more than mere coincidence in the fact that the Imperial government succeeded in bringing to a successful conclusion negotiations which had dragged on for years, at almost the very moment in 1867 when the British North Amer­ ica Act, containing provision for the Colony’s eventual entry into the new Dominion, was receiving the assent of parliament. The shifting balance of power in the Pacific— the stealthy advance of Russia along the Am ur River in China, the expansion of American trade with Japan, the extension of French dominion over the valuable islands in the South Pacific and finally, the American purchase of Alaska in 1867— served to enhance the value of a colony which fronted on the Pacific Ocean. The expansion of American power to Alaska, so long forestalled by the Hudson’s Bay Company, was followed by increased Ameri­ can pressure on San Juan Island and by “Right, Proper and Desirable” demands for the “ re-annexation” of the whole of 235

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British Columbia to the United States. A t Washington, Anglophobes and expansionists availed themselves of the excuse of “indirect losses” to urge that the Colony be included in the compensation they demanded from Great Britain for the depre­ dations of the Alabama during the American Civil War. Isolated, undefended, almost bankrupt, British Columbia might be; but both in London and in Ottawa, opinion was growing that for its strategic position, if for nothing else, it was worth retaining as a British possession. The future of the Colony was a matter of utmost concern to English capitalists who had invested money in the timber lands of Alberni Canal and Burrard Inlet, in the coal-fields of Nanaimo and the Queen Charlotte Islands, in merchandising businesses and commission agencies in Victoria and in the bonds of the colonial government. A. R. Roche, a heavy investor in a number of enterprises in British Columbia, had long been an advocate of North American Union. As he watched from London the “ grasping propensities” of the United States, he urged his friends in the Colony to sustain a demand for the construction of a naval dry-dock at Esquimalt and a railway to span British North America, two projects necessary to reinforce the bond with the United Kingdom. A t his invitation, eight colonists, including Sir James Douglas, became members of the Royal Colonial Insti­ tute in 1869. Subscribing to the efforts of the Institute to offset the current vogue for anti-colonialism in England, this little group, most of them government officials, worked to maintain enthusiasm for an Imperial connection which would be firm though of necessity elastic. A t the time when Musgrave was sent to British Columbia, the British government was deeply perturbed by the growing power of Prussia in Europe and the strained relations between England and the United States. The suggestion of the Colonial Office that Canada might assume the financial and military responsibility for British Columbia was not unwelcome at Ottawa, where the national ambitions of the new government, and of the business interests which supported it, extended to the outer limits of the continent. But two obstacles stood in the path of Canada’s expansion to the Pacific: the position of the Hudson’s Bay Company in Rupert’s Land and the seeming indifference of 236

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the colonists in British Columbia. The Hudson’s Bay Company, however, was prepared, in return for compensation, to transfer its rights to Canada. It was Musgrave’s responsibility to win the consent of the colonists to union with a country 3,000 miles distant, a country with which there had been no community of interest since the days of the North West Company. As the Colonist (now edited by Robson) saw the situation in British Columbia, the people might be divided into four types: the modest and reasoning confederationists; the red-hot un­ reasoning confederationists; the reasoning and honest anticonfederationists; and the unreasoning and unreasonable anticonfederationists. To determine the accuracy of this observation and to inform himself of the Colony’s economic resources— knowledge which he would need in order to formulate terms for negotiation with Canada— Governor Musgrave commenced an arduous tour of the Colony within a fortnight of his arrival at Victoria. The Governor reached the Mainland on September 8. The next day he drove nine miles over the Douglas Road, most of it corduroy, to the town-site of Hastings, which had been marked out among charred stumps on the foreshore of Burrard Inlet. A t Hastings he embarked in the government yacht to journey three miles down the Inlet to “ Stamp’s M ill” (Hastings M ill), where he was shown over the plant. Then, after stopping briefly at Gastown, made famous by “ Gassy Jack” , the voluble, Falstaffian host of the Deighton Hotel, the Governor re-embarked for Jeremiah Rogers’s spar and logging camp at Jerry’s Cove (Jericho). Crossing to the North Shore, he next examined a new mill which “ Sue” Moody had erected alongside his earlier, and now almost outmoded, plant. The activity centred in Burrard Inlet, previously considered suitable only as a naval reserve or, during the winter, as a useful back door to the port of New Westminster, was a revelation to him. The assault on the gigantic trees of the virgin forest had commenced; on both shores, ox-teams were engaged in dragging logs down skid-roads to the waterfront; Moody’s new sawmill was run by steam; and at Hastings and Moodyville barques were loading heavy cargoes of spars and sawn lumber for mar­ kets in Australia, San Francisco and South America, and lighter 237

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ones for Mexico, China, England and the Hawaiian Islands. There was every reason to be optimistic about the future of Burrard Inlet: it contained an excellent harbour, it had tre­ mendous timber resources, and it was regarded by speculators as a Pacific port with a greater future than either Victoria or New Westminster. Plans were being made to lay out a townsite there, to be called Granville. Returning to New Westminster, the Governor learned some­ thing about farming operations on the “Delta” and in the lower Fraser Valley. Since 1867 there had been a marked increase in the number of sappers, cattle-drivers, freighters and teamsters, and of men formerly employed on the Collins telegraph line, who had turned to farming. There were now nearly 300 farms of 1,200 or more cultivated acres in the lower Fraser V alley; and although the market for produce at New Westminster was sadly depressed by the loss of population consequent on the removal of the capital to Victoria, the owners found it possible to supple­ ment their income by manufacturing cedar shakes and by trading or selling the salmon they caught in the river. They had even ex­ perimented with preserving salmon in hermetically sealed cans. Farming communities were still widely separated. On the North Arm of the Fraser, a settlement was developing on Sea Island and on the mainland opposite, where the McCleery brothers had constructed the first house to be built within the borders of the present city of Vancouver. On the South Arm, the two Ladner brothers had established a farm. North of New Westminster, former “ bull-punchers” had taken up land on Nicomen Island, at Hatzic Prairie, and in the other environs of St. M ary’s Mission. On the south bank of the river, the Hudson’s Bay Company had received a Crown Grant for 2,200 acres of land at Langley. Retired servants of the Company— black­ smiths, shepherds and coopers— were now independent settlers around Langley Prairie, and half-breed sons of former Hawaiian employees had farms at Kanaka Creek. Farther north, the Chilliwack-Sumas area was becoming famous for its herds of dairy cattle and for the quality of the butter and cheese it pro­ duced for the Cariboo market. In the area between Harrisonmouth and Hope, Captain Louis Agassiz, late of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, had a handsome property. 238

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It was evident that the transient population had disappeared. Only about 8,500 people remained in the whole of British Columbia, but these were people with the courage to face econo­ mic reverses; people with the energy to hew down the forests, clear the land and harvest the wealth of the seas; people who needed capital and labour, and transportation facilities. A t Yale, the Governor took the stage to Cariboo. His drive through the wild and rocky gorge of the Fraser River was excit­ ing proof that skilful engineers could conquer the barrier of the mountains. The Cariboo Road was so soundly constructed that the six-horse team was able to proceed at a gallop on the cribbing-supported shelf which protruded from the solid rock wall over the edge of the Canyon. Almost as impressive as the road itself was the manner in which the stage-driver handled his team. Steve T ingley used leaders which had never before been in harness; by a mere flick of his whip he guided the two wild horses. The wheelers and the swing-team seemed to have almost instinctive knowledge of their duties and responsibilities: on the dangerous incline up Jackass Mountain they kept up a steady pace and on the down grade Tingley seldom had to apply his brakes. The express had right of w ay on the Cariboo Road: at its approach mule-teams dragged wagons laden with three tons of goods to the exact verge of precipices and stood immobile as it went thundering by. Not for a moment was its speed slackened. No time was lost in changing horses; at stations eighteen miles apart, fresh horses, their hooves blackened and their harness polished, stood ready to be backed into position on either side of the stage-pole; within minutes the traces and the reins were adjusted, and the coach was on its w ay again. But however well stage-coaches and wagons served the needs of the mining community, the growing diversification of the economy of British Columbia was making this system of trans­ portation obsolescent. Farmers in the Fraser V alley and the Interior were beginning to look forward to the coming of the railroad, for their products, wheat and beef, were bulkier and heavier than gold to transport, and the freight charges on them were exorbitant. The lush, verdant growth of the Fraser V alley had been left 239

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miles behind by the time Governor Musgrave reached Lytton. Now the benches were covered with olive-green sage brush and faded tawny bunch-grass with here and there a red-barked ponderosa pine, clumps of carmine sumac and spun-gold aspens. This was stock-raising country, and from here to Soda Creek the road was lined with prosperous ranches built, many by Am eri­ cans, from the profits of trading at the mines. A t some of the road-houses, Musgrave found ranchers who had sufficient means to employ Indian and Chinese labour and enough leisure to enjoy sports. A t Ashcroft Manor, Clement Francis Cornwall and his brother Henry, “ a tall regular FirstTrinity man” ,7 had introduced foxhounds for coyote-hunting. To participate in a meet, Gold Commissioners Peter O’Reilly and John Carmichael Haynes sometimes contrived to ride miles out of their w ay; for a similar purpose, Captain Charles Frederick Houghton, late of the 20th Regiment of Foot, and his two Irish friends, Charles and Forbes George Vernon, travelled several hundred miles from the Coldstream Ranch in the Okanagan Valley. To his disappointment, Musgrave saw nothing of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s stock ranch at Kamloops or of the new cattle ranches which had grown up around the Oblate mission at L ’Anse au Sable and in other parts of the Okanagan Valley. From Cache Creek, he proceeded directly to Cariboo, and by the time he had finished inspecting the mines, he felt it unwise to prolong his absence from Victoria. A t Barkerville, he ended his journey. From the appearance of the town, it was difficult to gauge the true state of the mining industry. W ith its new buildings— the Theatre Royal, where performances were given by troupes of actors from San Fran­ cisco, the library, the restaurants and the saloons— Barkerville had an air of prosperity and gaiety. The reports concerning the wealth of the mines were conflicting: some said that Lightning • Creek was just coming into its own; others that they were planning to move off to Germansen or other creeks in Omineca; and still others that Cariboo was finished and that the Peace River country would be the El Dorado of the future. A ll along the way, the Governor’s welcome had been warm, but Barkerville gave him his most enthusiastic reception. The 240

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town was en fete. Evergreen arches spanned the streets; the firemen had constructed an arch from ladders and buckets, and the Chinese had festooned another with fire-crackers. Banners lettered “ Union Forever” and “Success to the Dominion” proclaimed the political sentiments of the citizens. Musgrave had made it a point to meet all classes of people, and he returned to Victoria with a variety of impressions. He had come across British officials and ranchers who, even under the exigencies of frontier life, maintained the customs and the standards of their upper-middle-class and country-gentry back­ ground. Sound investment in land, occasional help from “home” , or guaranteed income from office provided them with economic security. They had brought with them well stocked libraries; they had kept up their subscriptions to The Times; and they contributed scientific articles on anthropology and other subjects to learned periodicals. Politically, they remained the Queen’s most loyal subjects, and although they had warm friendships with prosperous Canadian merchants and expressmen, they still used the expression “ North American Chinamen” to refer to penurious Canadians, who had not yet overcome the habit of counting small change in a land where business transactions were made in gold-dust and the “ bit” was the smallest coin in circulation. From this British element Douglas and Seymour had recruited the personnel for the Civil Service. The narrow basis of their selection was deeply resented by Canadian lawyers, doctors and other professional men. These men, along with Canadian farmers, merchants, traders and wage-earners, had brought from the old colonial environment a bitter dislike of social slighting and of economic discrimination. W hat the Canadians desired above everything else was a more equitable distribution of political power. Following the lead of De Cosmos and Robson, they denounced the iniquities of the local administration and demanded the establishment of self-government. Only by union with Canada, they thought, would liberal institutions be intro­ duced, protection against American absorption guaranteed, and economic opportunity provided. The Scots and Irish who, like the Canadians, had been at the mercy of English bankers in Victoria and of an English finance 241

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company which advanced money at rates of 12 and 18 per cent, tended to support the movement for union. A ll that held them back from enthusiastic endorsation of the cause was the fear that political change might bring into power at Victoria individual Canadians for whom they had little personal respect and politi­ cians who might put the interests of Vancouver Island ahead of those of the Mainland. After sorting out his impressions, Musgrave concluded that it was “ by no means clear” that the majority of the community favoured union except on “ terms which are not likely to be possible, or with a view to political arrangements for which this country is by no means ripe. . . . The more prominent Agitators for Confederation are a small knot of Canadians who hope that it may be possible to make fuller representative institutions and Responsible Government part of the new arrangements, and that they may so place themselves in positions of influence and emolument” . Immigrants from Canada, he reported to London, had “not contrived to impress their fellow Colonists with a prejudice in their favour” .8 Aw aiting his attention on his return to Victoria was an important despatch which he was instructed to publish. It contained the official view of Gladstone’s new Liberal ministry. Now that the terms for the incorporation of the North West Territories into the Dominion of Canada had been finally agreed upon, wrote Earl Granville, Her M ajesty’s government con­ sidered that political and economic interests, including the provision of internal transit, could best he advanced through union with Canada. Joined to the Canadian provinces, “the San Francisco of British North America” would achieve a greater commercial and political position than would be attainable “ by the Capital of the isolated Colony of British Columbia” . Mus­ grave was authorized, either in communication with the Gov­ ernor General of Canada or otherwise, to take such steps as he “ properly and constitutionally” could to promote favourable consideration of the subject.9 Subsequently, he was warned not to bring a formal proposal before the Legislative Council until he was assured of its acceptance. Granville’s despatch appeared in the Government Gazette on October 30, 1869. Even before reading it, Attorney General 242

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Crease, for one, felt disheartened. The attitude of the Mother Country could only be described as callous. “ I believe England is sick of her Colonies”, he wrote, “ and to be a Colonist whatever your position & character when at Home— is to lose Caste the moment you become a bona fide settler” .10 Now, to his friend Roche, he denounced the Imperial government for betraying its trust: “ The Gladstone Bright school think nothing but of Trade & dollars. Honor & prestige & national repute are mere Counters in their hands to play at dollars with. The stakes the Church, the Nation and the vast girdle of her Colonies. In their eyes to be a Colonist although with all the advantages of the best educa­ tion and training England can afford is to be a Political Pariah . . . go home for a month and 9 people out of 10 don’t know whereabouts on the Map B.C. is! After 12 years correspondence friends and relatives address me— nay the Colonial Office itself address me wrongly — Can’t even spell the name of the Colony!” 11 But in spite of his disillusionment, he decided, like his friend Begbie, to remain in what the Judge called “ a land of Siwashes” .12 Other permanent Civil Servants arrived at a different decision. Some had already applied for transfer to other colonies; now others sent in requests for removal to Trinidad or Sierra Leone or Bermuda or Jamaica. Gold Commissioner Nind decided to emigrate to Australia. The thought of the severing of the Imperial tie distressed also the active and retired Hudson’s Bay Company officers for whom London had always been the centre of the universe. To Dr. Helmcken, Granville’s despatch smacked of dictation and he found it difficult to think of Canada assuming the new role of “Mother Country” . Immigration and trade were the only things which could save the Colony, he felt, and he considered it impossible for Canada, which had only a small population and which had failed to secure the renewal of the reciprocity arrangement with the United States, to satisfy either need. A small number of German and Jewish merchants in Victoria whose business connections were with San Francisco interpreted the threat of severance from England as evidence of gross lack of interest on the part of Great Britain in the welfare of her colonies. Tw o of their number, men who had never applied for 243

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naturalization, now prepared a petition which they addressed to President Grant of the United States. Their purpose in requesting annexation to the United States, Crease reported, was “to poke up the British Lion to exertion for the Colony” .13 Musgrave attached little importance to a petition which was signed by only 43 foreigners. “ I do not believe that a single British subject signed the Petition,” he wrote to Granville. “ The frequent notices of this matter in the American Papers have been a fruitful source of pleasantry in the Colony” .14 The peti­ tion was indeed, Crease said, treated as a joke until notice of it was taken by the American Senate and by the people in the neighbouring American territory, when a serious nuisance was made of it. A later letter which accompanied a supplementary list of 61 signatures indicated an intention more serious than frivolous. It enraged the colonists. More than anything else, the indignation aroused by the annexation petition redounded to the favour of Musgrave’s cause and strengthened his hand. For even the most reluctant official, union with Canada was more attractive as a proposition than annexation to the American Republic. The Governor’s own personal relations with the officials had become more cordial after he had pledged his word to recommend pensions for those individuals who might he forced into retirement. From state­ ments in the press repudiating the sentiments of the annexa­ tionists, he concluded that the populace, as well as the officials, had now accepted the abstract principle of union with Canada. A ll that remained to be done was to obtain agreement on the basis of the negotiations. Following the procedure laid down by the Duke of Newcastle for the Atlantic provinces five years earlier, Musgrave invited the Executive Council to work with him in drafting a scheme to lay before the legislature. Using permission granted to Seymour to appoint two unofficial mem­ bers to the Executive Council, he selected Dr. Carrall, a Mainland supporter of Confederation, and Dr. Helmcken, who, although he had been elected on an anti-Confederation ticket, was “ perhaps the oldest and most influential among the members of the legislature of Vancouver’s Island” .15 “A large and expectant concourse” filled the gallery and the lobby of the Birdcages on February 16, 1870. In the Governor’s 244

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absence— his untoward accident prevented his presence— the Colonial Secretary read his message.16 Basing his remarks on his observations during his recent tour, His Excellency referred confidently to the future economic prospects of the Colony. He announced that the Supreme Courts of the two sections of the United Colony would be amalgamated, a measure much desired, and asked for a grant of money to cover the cost of female immi­ gration, a popular suggestion with those who complained about the shortage of English governesses and of domestic servants. He left to the end of his speech his request for an expression of opinion on the principle of Confederation. The verdict, he promised, would rest with the community, which would express its w ill in the selection of a specially elected council in which the nominated members would be in a minority. But the spectators had hoped for more than this. They had expected the immediate introduction of self-government, and a frigid silence greeted the statement that responsible government would not do in a com­ munity so young and so constituted. “ It was thumbs down on Confederation last session because Simon said ‘Thumbs down’ ” , Robson had commented in 1868, “ but if Simon says ‘Thumbs U p’, up the official thumbs w ill go” .17 This appeared to be the case when on March 9, 1870, Attorney General Crease and Commissioner of Lands and Works Trutch— both of whom had up to this time been unenthusiastic about Confederation— introduced the resolution for union. As the debate lengthened into the third day, it became clear that the decision for or against union would rest upon the accept­ ability of the terms proposed by the Executive Council. On the whole, these were amazingly favourable, so favourable, indeed, that Dr. Helmcken was branded as an annexationist when he ventured to urge caution in uniting with a nation which had neither the numbers nor the capital requisite to rescue British Columbia from its difficulties. Two particular inducements were offered: the wiping out of the debt and the prospect of the expenditure of federal moneys on a public works programme. “ If a Railway could be promised” , Musgrave wrote to Gran­ ville, “ scarcely any other question would be allowed to be a difficulty” .18 The Governor’s absence contributed to the feeling of the legis­ 245

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lators that the decision rested with them alone. Filled with a sense of their own power, without a dissenting vote, they ac­ cepted the draft terms. In selecting the delegation to go to Ottawa, Musgrave took into careful account the personality, the standing and the sectional affiliation of each delegate. Dr. Carrall. steady and sober, represented the Canadian investors who had liberated the Cariboo gold-fields from American domination and who were now seeking new opportunities for investing their capital; Trutch, assured and polished, was spokesman for the commercial and transportation interests of the lower Mainland who hoped to be able to attract the necessary capital and labour to develop local lumbering, manufacturing and shipping industries; Dr. Helmcken, philosophical and politically experienced, was the agent for Victoria, an Island city founded by British capital and still bound to London by the ties of British investment, an Island city with a continuing interest in transoceanic commerce and the naval protection which that commerce required. Left behind, although both were suggested by Helmcken to take his own place, were those two dogmatic political reformers whose rancour and whose occasional irresponsible actions and political inconsistencies had made them unpopular. De Cosmos, a man who resented being a “ subordinate Englishman” , a “tad­ pole” British colonist, had declared his object to be the creation of a “ nationality, a sovereign independent nationality” .19 But his vision was clouded by his personal ambition and by his private desire to make Victoria supreme over other parts of Brit­ ish Columbia. Robson, the friend of the people, the champion of the causes of non-sectarian education, free lands and respons­ ible government, was the foe of privilege. But his liberalism was intermixed with prejudice and he could be irritatingly rigid, as he was already beginning to be on the Oriental question. As negotiators, Carrall, Trutch and Helmcken had the flexibility which De Cosmos and Robson lacked. The only other possible choice was Crease, but Crease had just been elevated to the bench. Travelling by Union Pacific through the Sierras, Helmcken for the first time felt hopeful about the possibility of successfully piercing the Rocky Mountains by steel. Years before, Captain Palliser, visiting Victoria, had said that no feasible route existed 246

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through the southern mountain passes, and the schemes of the St. Paul business men to build a railroad from Minnesota to the Cariboo gold-fields had proved chimerical. As keenly as any other member of the legislature, Helmcken felt that without a railway there could be no Confederation. The railway was necessary to annihilate distance, to provide employment during its construction and to supply the transportation needs of the expanding economy. But until he reached Ottawa and heard the plans of the federal cabinet, he remained unconvinced that the project was practicable. In Ottawa, the delegates were surprised by the warmth of their reception. The Prime Minister was ill, but Sir George Cartier, who acted in his absence, and the other cabinet minis­ ters, particularly T illey and Sir Francis Hincks, Minister of Customs, were more than friendly. Representing British Colum­ bia, “Trutch was everything and everybody” .20 There was no difficulty in reaching agreement on British Columbia’s right to make its own decision on responsible government. The province was to have its $1,045,000 debt wiped out and was to receive subsidies and other grants to give it the financial stability which had always been lacking. The federal government would exert its influence to have the Imperial authorities continue to main­ tain the naval station and it would itself guarantee a loan for a dry-dock at Esquimalt. The negotiations had commenced on June 3, at a time when an expeditionary force was on its w ay to Fort G arry to suppress the metis uprising. In the Council chamber the feeling existed that a railw ay to Red River was necessary for both political and military reasons, that it would not be too difficult to extend the line to British Columbia, and that a railw ay was as necessary to consolidate the Canadian position on the Pacific coast as the Intercolonial had been to consolidate the Canadian position on the Atlantic coast. Carrall had come armed with a map showing Waddington’s proposed route to Bute Inlet and Trutch spoke confidently of the ease by which a line might follow the course of the Thompson and Fraser Rivers to tide-water. Quite volun­ tarily, the Canadian representatives improved on British Colum­ bia’s request for a coach road from Fort Garry, the commence­ ment of a railway within three years, and the expenditure each 247

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year of $1,000,000 on construction on the British Columbia section of the line. The plan for a coach road was dropped; instead, within two years the Dominion would commence a railw ay which it would complete within ten years. To assist with this project, British Columbia would be asked to grant “ in trust” a twenty-mile belt on each side of the proposed line; but for this land it would receive $100,000 per annum in perpetuity. The amazing success of their delegates (who in reality were representatives of the administration rather than of the people) convinced the seaboard colonists that without their consent Confederation in the west would never he driven through to com­ pletion. W ithout British Columbia, there could he no Canada on the Pacific; the thought of this filled them with inordinate self-satisfaction. A t the same time, the offer of immediate construction of a railway left most of them incredulous. Musgrave was hardly less so. The amended terms, he wrote Crease, were substantially better— “ even Helmcken says”— than those requested. “And the Railway, Credat Judaeus! is guaranteed without a reserva­ tion! Sir George Cartier says they will do that, or ‘burst’ ” .21 In England, Colonel Moody, meeting Trutch, who had continued to London to consult with the Colonial Office, was struck by his jauntiness: “How jolly Trutch is looking” , Moody reported to Crease; “the world and he get on famously together” .22 By late summer, the Imperial authorities had amended the British Columbia Government Act to permit an increase in the proportionate number of elected members of the Legislative Council. In the November elections, supporters of Confederation were returned in every constituency. On “Expectation D ay” , January 5, 1871, Musgrave appeared in person to read to the fifteen members of the new Council a message outlining the amended terms of union and promising the introduction of completely representative government after union. On January 18, the terms themselves were brought down by Trutch, who declared that they must be accepted without modification. After the briefest debate, the Council accepted them unanimously. Work then started on drafting a constitu­ tion bill which would provide for a legislature to be modelled on that of Ontario. 248

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The press, and particularly the Colonist, had been largely responsible for Musgrave’s yielding in the matter of political reform. Unlike Seymour, who had looked forward to ending “the novel experiment of an almost despotic Government over an Anglo-Saxon community” ,23 Musgrave had little liking for the demands of the “ responsible government party” . His mis­ giving was shared by Crease, who also felt that the community was politically immature. “ The new 1,500,000 population Constitution now in preparation drags its slow length along” , Crease reported to Trutch in February, 1871, “ an elephant to drag a dog cart— a Sin against reason and the good of the Country” .24 Judge Begbie, completely disillusioned by recent events, advised his friend Crease to “Put no confidence in Princes much less in Ministers in Responsible Governments” .25 But under the circumstances it was impossible to deny complete political equality to men who were about to become Canadian citizens. As soon as the vote was taken in the Legislative Council, Trutch went east to be present in Ottawa during the debate on the Address to the Queen. In the capital, he found among the Liberal members of the House of Commons unqualified opposi­ tion to the generous offer which had been made to British Columbia. Even in the Conservative party, the representatives from Ontario were aghast to think that responsible officials would suggest that Canadian taxpayers should be obligated to pay the fantastic cost of building a railway through an uncharted wilderness of rocks, waste lands and mountains. On the day before the vote on the Address was taken, Cartier, who was leader of the House during the Prime Minister’s absence as a member of the British High Commission in Washington, sum­ moned Trutch to a Conservative caucus. There, in order to prevent some Ontario members from amending the railway clause to read “ within ten years if the financial ability of the Dominion w ill permit” , an amendment which might well bring down the government, Trutch gave his assurance that British Columbia was not likely to insist on Canada’s ruination, and its own, by demanding a literal fulfilment of the “ bargain” . “ But for the pluck and determination of the ‘lightning striker' [Cartier]” , Trutch later informed Helmcken, “ they would have 249

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given in, the measure would have been defeated and the Govt, broken up. W e must all remember in B.C. that to Sir George Cartier and his followers in Lower Canada we owe the position we are now in— and especially the Canadian Pacific Rway” .26 The House of Commons accepted the address to the Queen on April 1; four days later, after Cartier had given assurance that the railway would be constructed and worked by private enter­ prise, with the government contributing a land and a money subsidy, the Senate gave its consent. On April 10, at a public banquet in Ottawa, Trutch reiterated his pledge. A little more than a month later, on M ay 16, the Imperial government issued the necessary order-in-council to admit British Columbia as a Canadian province and fixed July 20 as the date for its entry into the Dominion. Trutch’s speech had caused no little excitement in British Columbia. “There’s a great row brewing here” , said Crease, who felt that the “ ’Cute Canadians” had set a trap for his old friend.27 Privately, Trutch wrote to Helmcken to request that he and Carrall associate themselves with his statement. But Helmcken, although he was gratified to hear that $250,000 had been appropriated to survey the mountain passes and that most of the members of the government felt that the terminus of the road should be “ to the West of San Juan Island.’’, refused to commit himself. In British Columbia, more than one colonist was a reluctant new Canadian. “Dear old Victoria will be sadly different in many respects” ,28 lamented one official. “ W e are a conquered country & the Canucks take possession tomorrow” .29 To Trutch, Crease confessed, “ It w ill be a sad break up among old friends. I cant bear sometimes to think of it” .30 To another correspond­ ent, he admitted, “ It is very awkward as a Dominion officer having to apply to Canada for orders. It seems further than Home used to be but the prospect of a Rway. sometime before the Greek Calends makes rough places smooth” .31 W ithin two years, it was indeed apparent that Confederation had brought changes. Moody, meeting Dallas in England, learned from him that “ society in B.C. is greatly changed for the worse” .32 Senator W . J. Macdonald, whose association with the Colony went back to 1851, commiserated with Crease: 250

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“M any changes have taken place certainly and a good many of the old landmarks removed by death— and many of the social distinctions removed by the revolution in political affairs. The present administration must be very distasteful to you and all your former associates, as you remark not one of them that you would care to have for a friend, or to ask to your house.” 33 But for the crowds of Canadians who had gathered on the streets of Victoria at midnight on July 19, 1871, to hear the bells rung and the guns fired, and see the Roman candles lighted, the arrival of the first corps of railway surveyors in August, 1871, had promised the enlargement of professional, commercial and political opportunity. In selecting a lieutenant-governor for the new province, the Prime Minister’s chief concern was to single out a man who was not a favourite with either the British or the Canadian faction. His choice was Joseph W . Trutch, who had resided in the Colony since 1858, earned a reputation for his engineering work on the Cariboo Road, served as the Colony’s negotiator both in Ottawa and in London, and given his pledge that the province would be reasonable in not demanding the literal fulfilment of the railway promise. Trutch would have preferred employment in his pro­ fessional capacity, but for Macdonald there were several advan­ tages in having him in the post of lieutenant-governor: he had some influence with local politicians and he might prevent them from being too wayward and headstrong, and he could be offered political tutoring since he did not understand the working of cabinet government. The choice of a local man was popular, even with De Cosmos. On July 25, 1871, Musgrave, who had proved to be, as Macdonald had predicted, “ a strong man at the helm” , left Victoria on the Sparrowhawk. The last colonial governor and the first lieutenant-governor met briefly for consultation in San Francisco. Musgrave was on his w ay to be invested in London with the order of St. Michael and St. George; Trutch was return­ ing to Victoria to inaugurate the new system of government for British Columbia. The first provincial election was held in the autumn. From among the twenty-five elected members, Trutch chose as the first premier John Foster McCreight. Macdonald had hoped to 25i

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have Helmcken selected, but the doctor complained that his medical practice had been neglected for his political activities and he insisted that he had always been a much overrated man. McCreight, a British barrister, was not on too friendly terms with the leaders of the old colonial oligarchy and he might help to unite British and Canadian opinion. He was known to be “a nervous fidgetty queer tempered man” ,34 but he was better versed in the law than any other man in the Colony, and all the other members of the legislature, said Trutch, were “ queer kittlecattle— a wild team to handle. . . ,” 35 The great work of the first session was to introduce legislation to provide for the smooth working of the new provincial govern­ ment. In all, ninety acts were passed. The secret ballot was in­ troduced, the franchise extended to all but Indians and Chinese, a consolidated revenue fund established and rules made for interpreting the statutes. In the expansive mood caused by the wiping out of the colonial debt, the members abolished the tolls on the Cariboo Boad and adopted the Canadian tariff. Trutch, like two of his three cabinet ministers, had opposed the introduction of responsible government, but he followed care­ fully the instructions which he received from Prime Minister Macdonald. During this first session, when the LieutenantGovernor attended all cabinet meetings, there was more than a suspicion that he desired to dominate the cabinet, but he soon learned the limits of his authority. Gilbert Malcolm Sproat declared that this “round-bodied man of average stature, illhinged about the knees, compact head with scanty fell of light brown hair, shrewd, grey eyes, and a plain manner, curiously streaked with a pompousness that was not haughty . . . in office . . . was a notable somebody, courteous, painstaking, prompt, and he kept very good wine” .38 As premier, McCreight proved to be a disappointment: he was “Bad tempered and queer . . . by fits & turns extremely credulous & extremely suspicious . . . excessively obstinate in the wrong places . . . close and reserved in his daily life . . . utterly ignorant of politics” .87 Throughout the province there was much criticism of De Cosmos, who, instead of assisting in the launching of the new system for which he had so long agitated, had departed a few 252

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days after the beginning of the session to take the federal seat to which he had been elected. The feeling existed that he was bitterly disappointed in not being selected as the first premier. On their arrival at Ottawa, all the Members of Parliament and of the Senate from the Far West announced their intention to support the Conservative government. Without giving this assurance to the electors, Trutch wrote to Prime Minister Mac­ donald, none of them would have been successful at the polls.38 Since the defection of De Cosmos was not beyond the realm of possibility, the Lieutenant-Governor made a point of giving him personal instructions to support the government. De Cosmos was difficult to work with because of his “ intolerably over­ weening self-conceit” , Crease warned his new friend, Hector L. Langevin, Minister of Public Works, hut he had ability and one could probably count on his co-operation because of his desire to “take a hand” in the British Columbia section of the railway.39 During the debate on the Canadian Pacific Railway Act, De Cosmos, who held property in Victoria and who was becom­ ing increasingly nervous of the Mainland’s desire to have the terminus placed at Burrard Inlet, tried to elicit from Macdonald, as he had already tried unsuccessfully to elicit from Musgrave, a promise that the terminus would be on Vancouver Island; but he did not press the point, and Macdonald, rather to his own surprise, found him “ very amiable” .40 Henry Nathan, another of the British Columbia representatives, took his instructions from his “ dearest doctor” , Helmcken, who was equally anxious to secure the terminus for Vancouver Island.41 Macdonald was swamped with appeals from his eager western supporters; almost everyone in British Columbia seemed to expect favours. He had only post offices, customs and excise offices to give, the Prime Minister protested, and he had to take into account the claims of those who were already performing their duties efficiently. But he sent Langevin to the province to handle patronage “ and other cognate matters” .42 There were bitter complaints when the Prime Minister filled offices in British Columbia with faithful supporters from other provinces. The addition to the bench of J. H. Gray of New Brunswick, one of the Fathers of Confederation, who had been disappointed in his hope of becoming Speaker of the House of Commons, caused 253

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Members of Parliament: Amor De Cosmos, Henry Nathan, Hugh Nelson, Robert Wallace, J. Spencer Thompson, Captain Charles F. Houghton. Senators: Dr. R. W. W. Carrall, Clement F. Cornwall, W. J. Macdonald. pr o m

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Begbie to fume: “ A 3rd judge is as unnecessary as a twenty-first wheel to a coach” .43 George A . Walkem, who had ambitions of his own, was more direct: “Downing Street earned for itself the most bitter animosity, simply because merit in this quondam colony was overlooked & some empty-headed favourite wanted a place” .44 And he added the warning: “ A n opposition member from this Province could give you a great deal of annoy­ ance. . . ,45 But as yet no one, not even De Cosmos, whom Judge G ray found to be “ A Grit in every pulsation of his heart”,46 wanted to be identified with anything but the beneficent Con­ servative party. A ll six of British Columbia’s Members of Parlia­ ment stood firm ly at the side of the Prime Minister during the crisis in 1873 over the “ Pacific Scandal” . For the Members’ wives, these first winters in Ottawa were full of interest and excitement. In the first place, there had been the train journey: “ The motion of the train is not distressing, there is more oscillation than vibration, and the seats are com­ fortable” , they reported to their less experienced friends. But Ottawa itself was a disappointment: it had “ no beauty of scenery such as [they] had expected to see” and they “missed the hills so much here, it all seems so flat” . Even the easterners did not live up to expectations: “ I never in m y life saw such a collection of downright ugly & awkward looking men” , wrote Mrs. Dewdney. A t the balls, gloves and shoes were not as immaculate as they should be, and it was really “ better to look on . . . than join in” . But it was rather a comfort to find a Member’s wife who was “ quite an English Lady” , and there were “ several nice shops in the style of the London House” . Some of the British Columbia Members were not behaving too well: Dr. Carrall had tactlessly declared that “ all Ottawa men are intensely stupid” and another western Member had “ distinguished himself” by attending a party “ accompanied by a huge pair of wooden glove stretchers & a brandy bottle in his great coat pocket” .47 In reply, letters from Victoria reported that great changes had taken place in political life since Englishmen had given up their birthright. Self-government had turned out to be government by faction; no party system had been introduced, and back­ bencher as well as cabinet minister felt free to switch his alleg­ iance from McCreight to De Cosmos or to Robson or Walkem. 255

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A shockingly low tone pervaded politics; old Sir James Douglas kept perfectly quiet but he must notice that the Canadians who were managing things were unduly interested in the spoils of office. Now that San Juan Island had been awarded by the Emperor of Germany to the Americans, everyone on Vancouver Island was determined, for reasons of security, prestige and commercial benefit, to have the railway terminus at Esquimalt. It was some reassurance that Sir John A. Macdonald had named Esquimalt the terminus by order-in-council and strengthened its claim by ordering a location line to he run for some distance the very day before the expiration, on July 20, 1873, of the time limit set for the commencement of construction. Whatever the Mainlanders said about the Fraser River route being superior to the Bute Inlet one, everyone on Vancouver Island knew that this was not fact, and that the only sensible thing would be to bridge Seymour Narrows and continue the line to Victoria’s front door. A t least one thing seemed to he settled: Sandford Fleming, the engineer in charge of construction, had made up his mind about the Yellowhead Pass, through which, in emulation of the hardy Canadians who had taken part in the great Overland Expedition to Cariboo ten years earlier, he had travelled on foot. This pass, said Fleming, had a sufficiently easy grade for it to he adopted for the railway route. The great thing now was to guard against giving any excuse to the Ottawa government to “waffle” on its pledge to complete the work in ten years. By 1874 British Columbians were taking stock of what Confed­ eration had meant for them. Officials, including the magistrates who had been appointed to judgeships and others who had won high political office, had undoubtedly benefited, but the deficits had reappeared in the public accounts; the great public works programme had provided employment for surveyors, but not for armies of workmen; the farmers were somewhat more pros­ perous, but only one new industry, salmon canning, had been established; standards in political life had been lowered and sectional rivalry had revived with the dispute over the relative merits of Burrard Inlet and Esquimalt as the terminus of the railway. The people were already beginning to regret that they had listened so patiently to a governor who had talked a lot and been “ pretty sharp” and who had demonstrated skill in winning 256

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the support of the officials and knowledge of strategy in securing the acceptance of terms which, on the surface, had appeared so favourable. The tone of the editorials was becoming angry again: if the government at Ottawa did not comply with its obligations, said the journalists, the natural thing for British Columbia would be to appeal to Westminster for redress of grievances. More than mountains separated Canada and British Colum­ bia. The community, particularly at the southern end of Vancouver Island, where there was the greatest concentration of population, had never been a typical North American frontier settlement. Here, in this “ second England on the shores of the Pacific” , life was not a desperate struggle against a harsh physi­ cal environment. The circumstances of early settlement, an agent of the federal government was soon to report, had given to Vancouver Island “ a population of peculiar intelligence” ; a population with enough leisure, because of the bountiful supply of Indian and Chinese labour, to show its zeal for public affairs.48 British Columbia was in, but not of, Canada.49 Union, as Dr. Helmcken had pointed out during the Confederation Debate, had not been based on sentiment; and union could not perman­ ently exist unless it served the material advantage of the people.

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Chapter 10

o u c a n commence the construction of the line six weeks after I get back to British Columbia” , W alter Moberly told Sir John A. Macdonald in the spring of 1871. “ Of course, I don’t know how many millions you have, but it is going to cost you money to get through those canyons” .1 The Prime Minister, who remembered Trutch’s promise that British Columbia would not insist on the literal fulfilment of the railway clause in the Terms of Union, was not unduly worried; and true to his word, Moberly started his explorations on the Mainland the very day that the province entered Confederation. W ith the surveys off to a good start, British Columbia expected immediate benefit: within ten years, the whistle of the locomotive should awaken the echoes of the forest, converting the wilderness of yesterday into the thrifty county of tomorrow.2 Then elapsed the two years set out in the Terms of Union for the commencement of construction; the battle against topography

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was still not won, and the gesture at Esquimalt was a token, but nothing more, of performance to come. As yet, in 1873, no blame was attached to any man. Certainly the engineers had expended every effort to explore the mountain passes. In the Selkirk Range, Moberly had fought his w ay through thickets of devil’s club to prove his theory that a practicable route existed from Burrard Inlet up the Fraser River and the Thompson River through Eagle Pass to the Prairies. Through impenetrable forests of “ dry, barkless trunks, and trunks moist and green with moss; bare trunks and trunks with branches— prostrate, reclining, horizontal, propped up at different angles; timbers of every size, in every stage of growth and decay, in every possible position, entangled in every possible combination” ,3 Roderick McLennan’s axemen had opened a trail along the North Thompson River to Albreda Lake and Yellowhead Pass. Over almost perpendicular rocky bluffs, along the precipices edging Black Canyon, and through the green timbers, bell-mares had led trains of supplies to the Rocky Mountains, where, at the foot of glaciers and snow­ capped peaks, surveyors ran their lines. In April, 1872, Sandford Fleming was able to announce that Yellowhead Pass would be adopted for the route through the Rocky Mountains. But how to reach tide-water from that position, no one had yet decided. Still ahead, in 1874, although nearly $500,000 had already been spent on surveys in British Columbia, was exploratory work that would be hazardous, discouragingly slow— and expensive. The search for a route between Yellowhead Pass and Bute Inlet was still in process, and at Waddington Harbour, Marcus Smith was still seeking means to penetrate the rocky wall which rose in “ gloomy grandeur” from the sea. Meanwhile, the population of British Columbia, for whom the railway, the physical bond, had come to symbolize Confederation itself, was becoming restive. The investigation of routes by way of Chilcotin Plains to Bute Inlet, by Peace River and Giscombe Portage to North Bentinck Arm , by Lillooet to Howe Sound, and by the Thompson and Fraser canyons to Burrard Inlet was bound to delay the preparation of the engineers’ reports. By 1874 it was clear to even the most optimistic pre-emptor that the preliminary work for the railway was still incomplete and that further time must necessarily elapse before actual construction 260

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could commence. About 2,000 immigrants had entered the province since 1871 seeking new opportunity; their patience strained, their hopes deferred, they now added their voices to the chorus of complaints. The resignation of the Conservative ministry in the autumn of 1873, after charges of corruption and bribery in connection with the awarding of the railway contract, was the signal for protest to Ottawa. In British Columbia, Sir John A. Macdonald was still regarded as the special patron of the province and his solicitude for British Columbia’s welfare was not expected to be shared by Alexander Mackenzie, his successor as Prime Minister. As leader of the Liberal party, Mackenzie had made it clear during the election campaign that he considered the “ bargain” with British Columbia — “the insane act of the administration here” -— as “ a bargain made to be broken” .4 To Alexander Mackenzie, the mountains in the West were very real. He had kept for himself the office of Public Works when al­ lotting the posts in his cabinet, and as he received report after re­ port from engineers describing canoe trips down raging torrents, portages over rough terrain and fatiguing marches overland, the obstacles which confronted him seemed overwhelming. Unlike the earlier Alexander Mackenzie, he had never caught the vision of a great overland route which would carry Canadian enterprise beyond the shores of the Pacific to the crowded lands of the Orient; he saw the Canadian Pacific Railway only in its narrower Cana­ dian setting, spanning the gap between one community of some 3,000,000 persons and another, distant and isolated, of 10,000. To him, British Columbia, a veritable sea of high and seemingly impassable mountains, was a land of superlative difficulties. His relations with provincial politicians were soon to leave him with the impression that British Columbians were a race apart, skilled in dissembling and adept at refusing to make plain state­ ments of fact and candid declarations of policy. Lack of principle and disregard for the interests of the taxpayers of Ontario and the rest of Canada, he thought, had first been indicated when in 1870 the delegates from the colony had pressed the Conservative min­ istry to adopt the stratagem of crediting the province-to-be with a fictitious population of 60,000 so as to increase its subsidy pay­ ments and enlarge its representation in the House of Commons. 261

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The prodigality of these people was already becoming legend: they were wasteful of their bountiful resources and they care­ lessly discarded their tools and abandoned their holdings to embark on some fresh adventure. His only correspondent in British Columbia, John Robson, lived in New Westminster, a town that was only “ a quarter built” on hillsides scarred by bare, blackened poles which had once been handsome cedars. He had no mental picture of Victoria, with its crooked English lanes, its prim gardens, its tidy white cottages covered with masses of creepers, and its general air of serenity and composure. Echoes of the great religious controversy between Tractarian Bishop George Hills and latitudinarian Dean Edward Cridge, which, after an ecclesiastical trial and a civil case, was to cause schism in the diocese, reached his ears, and he knew of the great miners’ strike at Nanaimo in 1877 when the owners used their influence with the government to have the militia called out. Such incidents confirmed his impression that the little community on the western shores was turbulent and unruly. The railway so recklessly promised in 1871 to meet the “ demands” of these exuberant provincials involved, he con­ sidered, an outrageous expenditure for a new and struggling nation. The whole North American continent was still shaken by the effects of the Panic of 1873, and under these conditions, no private company would face the hazards of undertaking its con­ struction. It would have to become a government work. The pledge which the Liberals had exacted from Parliament when the Address to the Queen was before the House in 1871, he intended to respect: to finance the construction of the road, there would be no increase in taxation. To avoid national bankruptcy and ruin, Mackenzie decided in 1874 that government contractors would have to construct the line with water stretches alternating with bands of steel. Since he was a man of integrity, he considered it necessary to inform British Columbia of this fact and to negotiate with the province for an extension of the time limit for construction. It came as something of a surprise to discover that Trutch’s pledge had been forgotten in British Columbia and that the Terms of Union were now endowed with the character of a contractual agreement. In Victoria, the citizens had for months been expecting the 263

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announcement that construction would begin on the Island sec­ tion of the railway line. The time was lengthening, however, and still no word came from Ottawa. Meanwhile, the effects of the Great Depression were becoming more intense, the value of capital investments was falling, and despite the fact that Esquimalt had been named the terminus, all the federal money for surveys was still being poured into the Mainland. In the spring of 1874, the tempers of business men and of property-holders became so short that an explosion of popular wrath occurred. Through the action of their own legislature, the people thought, the province’s “ treaty” rights had been impaired. A t the opening of the session in Victoria, Premier De Cosmos, who had succeeded McCreight in December, 1872, had requested changes in the Terms of Union in order to capitalize two guar­ antees which he had obtained, one in Ottawa, the other in London, for the building of the Esquimalt dry-dock. On February 7,1874, in protest against his action, a crowd of 800 persons, including Senator Macdonald and Dr. Helmcken, issued from a public meeting, formed ranks and streamed across James Bay bridge, chanting as they went W e’ll hang De Cosmos on a sour apple tree W e’ll hang De Cosmos on a sour apple tree As we go marching on. The Speaker was driven from the chair; the premier was forced to take refuge in the Speaker’s room; and a Terms of Union Preservation League was created on the spot. Two days later, the legislature passed a resolution stating that no change could be made in the railway clause without a reference to the electorate. The decision now reached by De Cosmos to withdraw from provincial politics was greeted with relief. In the opinion of Edgar Dewdney, there was not in the whole Dominion “ a man more double-dealing and deceitful”,5 and George A. Walkem, the Attorney General, was pleased to see removed from the local scene a man who, he said, had “ all the eccentricities of a comet without any of its brilliance” .6 Senator Macdonald expressed the hope that this, “ dogmatic dog— and egotistical egotist” would not carry on “his old and offensive freaks” 7 in Ottawa, where he retained his seat. 263

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Walkem, the new premier, represented in the House of Assembly the Cariboo district where he had lived since the early days of the Gold Rush and where for five long years he had waited for Judge Begbie to grant him permission to practise law. As a Canadian, he had supported the Confederation cause in 1870, but his real reason for lending his support, his critics said, was his desire for professional advancement. He could best be described, thought Crease, as a fence-sitter or a weathercock. As Walkem saw it, with representation in the House of Assembly almost equally divided between the Mainland and Vancouver Island (the Mainland had 13 members, the Island 12,) it would be the better part of political discretion to ally with those interests in Victoria which demanded “the terms, the whole terms and nothing but the terms” . Apart from political consid­ erations, this alliance was not too unnatural. Economic ties between Victoria and Cariboo had always been strong, and now they both shared a common interest in the selection of the Bute Inlet route for the railway. The substitution of the Fraser V alley route, the preference of Moberly, would involve real hardship for both districts: if the line followed Thompson River, it would be too distant from Cariboo to be of immediate advantage; if the terminus were placed at New Westminster, or at some point on Burrard Inlet, there might be no “ Vancouver Island section” of the main line. To strengthen his support in the Assembly, the premier adopted Victoria’s stand that the Island railway was a section of the Canadian Pacific Railway, that the whole work must be completed by 1881, and that a protest should be sent to Ottawa denouncing, in the name of the infringement of the Terms of Union, the delay which had already taken place in commencing the work. The protest arrived at the very moment when Mackenzie had made up his mind to send James D. Edgar, the former whip of the Liberal party, to British Columbia, instructing him to nego­ tiate a relaxation of the Terms of Union by offering conditions which were only slightly more favourable than those carried by Trutch and his associates to Ottawa in 1870. In place of the immediate construction of the railway, British Columbia might now expect the building of a wagon road and a telegraph line, the energetic prosecution of the railway surveys, and the expenditure 264

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of $1,500,000 on railway construction on the Mainland when the surveys were completed. If these conditions proved unsatisfactory to the provincial authorities, the immediate construction of a railway from Esquimalt to Nanaimo could be promised. For two months, from March 9 until M ay 18, 1874, Edgar conducted conversations with Walkem. In the first week of April, he made his overture, including in it the Esquimalt and Nanaimo railway. This, Lord Dufferin said later, was as flagrant a bribe to the people of Victoria as Macdonald’s promise in 1873 of the railway terminus at Esquimalt, and it should never have been offered. “ I would observe that I never saw a community more politically excited and tempest torn than Victoria” ,8 Seymour had written on one occasion, and Musgrave had found “ some of the people here very crotchety, greedy and difficult to manage” .0 Edgar, however, thought the interest of the community in public affairs approached the zeal in “the minor States of ancient Greece and Italy”,10 and, not knowing that his offer of the Island railway line had aroused the latent sectional rivalry, decided that the people were ready for a settlement. But on the Mainland, it was felt that the Edgar terms would give Vancouver Island an immediate advantage, while on V an­ couver Island the fear prevailed that the Island railway was intended to be a local work, separate and apart from the main line. Walkem withheld his decision until opinion had time to form, and then suddenly and without warning called into ques­ tion Edgar’s authority to act as agent of the federal authorities. This action struck Edgar as so extraordinary that he took “ um­ brage” at the treatment he had received, withdrew his proposals, and left for Toronto. “Edgar’s mission has partially failed here” , Crease reported to H. L. Langevin, “but he has learnt all our weak inter provincial points,— the grasping character of the Victoria school, the scat­ tered forces of the Mainland, the low political barometer . . . the personal character of the B.C. local party Govt, facetiously called ‘responsible’, the Mortal (truly mortal) jealousy & suicidal fear the Helmcken Crowd entertain of their killed rival New Westr. — Victoria property holders all of them. . . . Edgar has so thrown himself into the sectional Victoria views enunciated by Helmcken 265

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who himself has never been further than New Westr.— so totally despises the Mainland— which he has scarcely set foot on— that he has failed to recognize what is a great political truth here; and for the last three years a growing one viz1, that the Mainland Members, who are the majority in the House,— are every year feeling their feet more and more— and their local power as such Majority. “ Helmcken who was raging furiously for the Terms the whole Terms & nothing but the Terms, now goes about saying ‘The Railway is “ bust” up— we can only now pick up the pieces. Better pick up the pieces’. I was present at his first interview with E d gar.. . . Tolmie referred to the part I had taken in making the Terms as Attorney General for so many years— when up jumped Helmcken (who you know had been the bitterest opponent of Confederation until smoothed over) & shrieked in a piping kind of treble— 7 ’m the little rebel!— You’ve got to treat with me— 7 ’m British Columbia. 7 made the Terms— & no one else. Crease it’s true wrote them out, but 7 ’m the man!” 11 W alkem ’s ruse had consolidated his strength on Vancouver Island, but at Ottawa, his prestige was not increased. “ Mr. Walkem” , Lord Dufferin reported to his friend Lord Carnarvon, “is not I imagine a person of any great consideration. He is a Law yer in a small village, and the son of a clerk in the Dominion Militia Department, so that in one’s intercourse with him, one has to be on one’s guard against the intellectual frailties engend­ ered by his professional antecedents” .12 The Governor General, however, had underestimated the premier’s political astuteness. From the old Crown Colony days, Walkem recalled occasions when Downing Street had come to the assistance of aggrieved persons; the pressure which had been brought by the Imperial authorities to have British Columbia join Canada was also fresh in his memory; and he believed that it would do no harm to remind the Imperial government that British Columbia was a Canadian province by virtue of what was really a tripartite agreement. W ith Edgar gone less than a month, he went before the legislature to request the preparation of a memorial which he, as special agent and delegate, would present in London. A t Yale and at New Westminster, opposition was expressed to this decision, but the premier was personally 266

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committed to support the ambitions of Victoria, and it was diffi­ cult for him to hold in check the separatist tendencies which were emerging in the southern end of Vancouver Island. Before W alkem’s plans were fully laid, Gilbert Malcolm Sproat, the Agent-General of British Columbia, called in London on Lord Carnarvon, Disraeli’s Colonial Secretary. Sproat knew that Carnarvon had piloted the British Columbia Act through the House of Lords in 1858 and introduced the British North America Act into Parliament in 1867, and that he had such a genuine interest in Canadian affairs that he would be distressed by the thought of any threat to Canadian unity. After listening to Sproat, and then studying a memorandum prepared by him, the Colonial Secretary telegraphed to Ottawa on July 17, 1874, offer­ ing to arbitrate the dispute between the Dominion and the province. Lord Carnarvon’s suggestion of mediation, coupled with his later condition that any decision he reached must be accepted without “ any question or demur”, was highly unacceptable to the Prime Minister, who thought it implied that British Columbia had a just grievance. No one in Ottawa expected W alkem’s min­ istry to last long, for Edgar had obtained the distinct impression that the people were likely to be more reasonable than their leader, and no change could be made in the Terms of Union without their consent. In September, Nathan reported to Helmcken that he had made a direct approach to the Prime Minister to urge the necessity for a new treaty, only to be told that no negotiations were being conducted with England, nor could they be, since “England could not force Canada to spend money” .13 British Columbia itself did not accept Lord Carnarvon’s offer until August 3, 1874, some weeks after Walkem had failed to reopen negotiations during his visit to Ottawa. Only a few weeks after Nathan’s interview, Mackenzie reversed his first decision to reject arbitration and decided instead to accept as a basis of settlement terms drawn up by Lord Car­ narvon. By these, in return for the extension of the time limit to December 31, 1890, British Columbia would obtain the immed­ iate building of the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway; the active prosecution of surveys on the Mainland; and the promise of a minimum annual expenditure of $2,000,000 on railway works 267

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within the province on the completion of the surveys. To this decision Edward Blake, the strongest member of the Liberal party, and a lawyer with “the Celtic craving for logical sym­ metry” ,14 violently objected. A pertinacious opponent of concession to British Columbia, Blake had resigned from the cabinet on the eve of Edgar’s mission, and subsequently, in the course of his famous “Aurora speech”, had made the firm state­ ment that the Edgar terms went “ to the extreme verge” of what could be offered;15 rather than go further, he would be willing to have British Columbia secede. To avoid the complete aliena­ tion of a man whose ability was so highly respected that the Liberal party might prefer to have him as its leader, the Prime Minister again reconsidered his decision, and in December made the Carnarvon Terms conditional on the carrying out of the works without any increase in taxation. He had now put himself in the equivocal position of having pledged his government to increased expenditure, and then denied it the means of raising revenue. Although British Columbia publicly, and the Governor Gen­ eral privately, later hurled recriminations at Mackenzie for his ambiguous action, the immediate reaction of those who had par­ ticipated in the earlier negotiations was one of relief. “ I suppose that on the whole— the w ay the new terms have come out— your personal interests w ill not suffer” , Edgar wrote to Helmcken; “the drydock & Esquimalt & Nanaimo railway cannot injure you. I shall be delighted to hear that they benefit you largely” .10 But the expectations of Edgar and Helmcken— and of all the eager speculators in Victoria— were soon dashed. W ith the dual pur­ pose of indicating that the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway was compensation for extending the time limit and that the line could not be considered an integral part of the transcontinental line, Mackenzie had special legislation introduced into Parliament in March, 1875, to provide for its construction. In the House of Commons, Blake, with complete consistency, denounced the expenditure of public moneys for this purpose, but the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway bill passed the House safely, only to go down to defeat in the Senate. A deep schism had developed in the Liberal party, and unless Blake could be persuaded to re-enter the cabinet, the life of the government itself would be endangered. British Columbia was left in “ a moribund condition” by the 268

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defeat of the bill, Trutch reported to Macdonald; “unless a change of policy be adopted towards us this community w ill become so alienated from its loyalty to Canada as to be a source of weakness to the Dominion” .17 If Blake’s policy should come to prevail, “ Canada m ay say goodbye to B.C. and that means— as I see it— goodbye to Confederation and British Connection” .18 “ Secession is the next card intended to be played”,19 John Robson warned Mackenzie. The Prime Minister now put the restoration of party unity above everything else. Blake was induced to accept the cabinet position of Minister of Justice, and Mackenzie met his condition that the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway must be considered merely as a local work and that taxation could not be raised in order to build it. W hat was to be the final overture to British Columbia, from which there could be no appeal to the Colonial Secretary, was set forth in an order-in-council drafted by Blake on September 20,1875. In lieu of the Island railway, the govern­ ment offered a cash bonus of $750,000. The bonus was compen­ sation for delay in building the Canadian Pacific Railway, but whether this compensation was offered for delay which had already taken place, or whether it was for delay which might take place— “ a contemplated indefinite postponement” of con­ struction— it was impossible from the wording of the minute to say. If the province accepted the money, would the building of the railw ay link with Lake Superior be indefinitely postponed? Intentionally, or unintentionally, the minute was delayed in Ottawa and not sent to Victoria until November 10, 1875. It arrived at a most awkward moment: the Walkem government, which had recently been returned to office by the slight majority of two members, was in desperate straits. It had embarked on a reckless public works programme, and now its credit was ex­ hausted at the Bank of British Columbia; it could not borrow money in London; and its only means of financing was by bor­ rowing on its debt allowance. The government’s financial pre­ dicament increased the premier’s belligerency: the legislature, on his advice, rejected the new proposition on January 10, 1876, and at the same time, accepted without a dissenting vote a petition to the Queen outlining all the grievances of the province and threatening secession from the Dominion. 269

B R IT IS H C O L U M B IA I N A P E T U n c l e A l e c k : Don’t frown so, my dear, you’ ll have your railway by and by. M iss B. C o l u m b ia : I want it now. You promised l should have it, and if t

don’t, I’ll complain to Ma. from

Canadian Illustrated News, Se p t e m b e r 9, 1876.

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A fortnight later, Walkem was driven from office. His sup­ porters, fearing that use might be made in Ottawa of his practice of borrowing large sums of money from the Dominion at the very time when his government was denouncing Canada as a defaulter on its railway obligations, had deserted him. “ I see that you were right in your judgment of the Walkem government” , Langevin wrote to Crease in February, 1876; “they have fallen because they did not ascertain the feelings of the people and I might say because the first Minister had not been true to his friends” .20 Almost half of the ten years allotted in the Terms of Union for the construction of the Pacific railway had now elapsed. Economic conditions on the whole North American continent were little improved, and on the London market it was still difficult to bor­ row money. The Mackenzie government had to practise the most stringent economy. Some progress had been made by the private companies which had entered into contracts with the government and received its subsidies, but Mackenzie’s policy of building the railway as a government enterprise had not been eminently successful. A few stretches of the road had been completed on the Prairies: W innipeg and Pembina had been linked; 122 miles between Lake Superior and Red River were under construction; and tenders had been called for another 123 miles. It was hoped that a fair profile of the railway route from Lake Superior to the Pacific might be ready at the end of 1876, when the final reports of the Bute Inlet route would be at hand. If all went well, a commencement on construction might be made in British Colum­ bia in the spring of 1877. As yet, no announcement had been made of the route to be followed west of the Rocky Mountains. This question, above all others, had significance in Victoria, where the jobbing and real estate interests still hoped for the adoption of the Bute Inlet route, the bridging of Seymour Narrows and the extension of the main line to Esquimalt. So far, most of the money expended on the Mainland surveys had gone to swell the fortunes of farmers, salmon canners and lumbermen resident on the Mainland, and Victoria had not been able to recover the position of purveyor to the Mainland camps which during the Gold Rush she had so successfully held over her rival, New Westminster. Prosperity 271

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was still a long w ay off for the capital city; unless Esquimalt became the terminus of the main line, it might never return. The announcement in 1876 that Lord Dufferin intended to pay the first vice-regal visit to the province caused spirits to rise. The presence of the Governor General, it was expected, would enrich Victoria’s social life and afford the populace an opportunity to explain the injustice of the federal government’s policy. It was to be regretted, many felt, that Trutch would not be on hand to receive the Queen’s representative; his term of office completed, Trutch had been succeeded by Albert N. Richards, brother of the Chief Justice of the new Supreme Court of Canada. Lieutenant-Governor Richards, the choice of the Liberals, was far from being popular in a province which swung its full politi­ cal support to the federal Conservative party. The legislature treated him with less than common courtesy. “ His personal appearance and his manner are bad” , Lord Dufferin was soon to report to Lord Carnarvon, “ and he has just been long enough in the colony where he came two or three years ago to practice as a Barrister— to lose the prestige which he might have retained had he come as a stranger. His appointment is bitterly resented as a social insult, and he himself is denounced as a carpet bagger. One of the most difficult things I had to do during m y stay in Victoria was to provide for proper precedence and attention being accorded to him at the social gatherings we attended together” .21 In place of Walkem, the province had as premier A. C. Elliott, a veteran of the days of ’58 and a former Gold Commissioner. “A Dublin lawyer of respectable, but I should say of no more than respectable ability, a perfect gentleman, moderate and anx­ ious to go as far as he dare in composing the dispute with Canada” , Lord Dufferin found him; but, added the Governor General, “ as he is member for Victoria he cannot afford to be behind his opponents in fighting for Victorian interests” .22 Since Elliott’s colleagues were “men of the same social stamp” , Dufferin felt that this might be an administration with which it would be possible to deal. Some improvement in relations was obviously necessary, for British Columbia, if one could judge from reports reaching Ottawa, seemed ready to break up Confederation. Because of the struggle for power in the Liberal party and the emergence of a 272

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controversy concerning the constitutional rights of Imperial offi­ cers to intervene in a domestic dispute, the British Columbia matter had become more difficult of settlement and was attracting wide attention. Other provinces must not be encouraged to feel that they could follow suit, and the Governor General must understand that he had no ambassadorial function. Lord Dufferin’s visit, from the moment that H.M.S. Amethyst appeared in Esquimalt harbour on August 16, 1876, was a tre­ mendous success. Instead of armed rebellion, he found a carnival spirit. No one in British Columbia knew exactly in what role he appeared, but everyone was prepared to show respect and loyalty to the Queen’s representative. After being received at the dock by Sir James Douglas, the Governor General drove through the streets of Victoria, where “ people of all classes” demonstrated their enthusiasm for the British connection. In the crowd, elderly Hudson’s Bay Company officers were pushed and jostled by cur­ ious Chinese, by “ coloured folk” , and by uniformed children from the private schools. It was a gay scene: there were “ arches, flags, evergreens, carriages, riders, ribbons, bands, soldiers, brilliant green archers, flowers, a beautiful collection of gaily ornamented canoes, an address, a little difference of opinion about a motto under which his Excellency refused to drive, a few groans for Mackenzie . . .” .23 Three Chinese arches, in pagoda style, and almost a score of others had been erected across the streets. “English Laws are Just”, proclaimed one of the Chinese arches; “United without Union”, “ Confederation without Confedera­ tion” , “ Railroad the Bond of Union”, declared some of the others. “ Carnarvon Terms or Separation” , threatened the “rebel arch” erected on Fort Street. For ten days, Victoria was treated to a gay round of social activities: the “ gigantic” Chief Justice, Sir Matthew Begbie (he had been knighted in 1874), came to dine at Government House and later serenaded his hosts; prominent Chinese merchants pre­ sented themselves at a drawing-room held at the Birdcages; all the “ best” citizens were invited to a ball, a tea and a garden party at Government House. During “one of the prettiest regattas pos­ sible” at the Gorge, Haida and Songhee Indians appeared in eighteen large canoes, and in honour of His Excellency, “ stamped, and howled in the most extraordinary fashion” . The 273

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Chinese cook who was to accompany the Governor General on his travels in the province had his child-bride, adorned in a blue brocaded tunic, black satin petticoat and “ tiny embroidered shoes” , appear for presentation. Every day deputations bearing petitions called at Cary Castle, hut one petition from the people of Victoria outlining grievances and threatening secession, Lord Dufferin declined to accept. From Victoria, the Governor General proceeded to Nanaimo, where he inspected the coal-mines. Under a salute from the guns of the bastion, he then departed by ship for Bute Inlet, the Queen Charlotte Islands, Metlakatla and Fort Simpson. A t Metlakatla he visited the famous Indian village where the missionaries W illiam Duncan and Archdeacon W . H. Collison had achieved such astonishing results, and at Fort Simpson, he learned of the efforts of the Rev. Thomas Crosby, the Methodist missionary. He was impressed by “ curious poles with strange, goggle-eyed crests in them” which he saw in the front of the houses of Indian chiefs at Fort Simpson, and later at Skidegate, he examined “ a long row of low [Indian] houses” , before which stood high poles, “ curiously carved, some with animals on the top, some with beads or hats, supposed to be the crest of the owners of the hut” . After examining harbours which might serve as a possible railway terminus at Bute Inlet, Dean Channel and Gardner Inlet, Dufferin sailed for Burrard Inlet, arriving on September 14. There he inspected the sawmills. A t Hastings M ill, an enorm­ ous log was hauled from the water to be sawed in his presence and, farther up the Inlet, two axemen, standing on a spring­ board inserted into the trunk of a tree 12 feet above the ground, felled for him “ a lord of the forest”, 250 feet high and 6 feet in diameter. He returned to Granville “ through the floating wooden dangers which carpet the sea” to journey over the corduroy road to New Westminster. There he was greeted by an arch declaring “ Per Vias Rectas— By the Fraser V alley” . As volunteers dressed in smart blue uniforms and commanded by a gentleman in an old red coat and a pair of epaulettes stood smartly at attention, “different varieties of the white man” presented addresses and four Indian chiefs paid their respects. On his journey to the Interior, the Governor General learned at 274

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Yale of the desire of the inhabitants for the coming of the iron horse, and dined in splendour at the Oppenheimers. Then, riding in Steve T ingley’s new four-horse thorobrace coach, he marvelled at the engineering skill which had built the Cariboo Road; caught a fleeting glimpse of Indians fishing for salmon “with a sort of coal scoop net” from rickety platforms extending over the turbu­ lent waters of the Canyon; and after passing Boston Bar, which was now “played out” , Indian “keekwillie” houses, and the Rev. John B. Good’s Indian mission at Lytton, finally arrived at “ Cornwall’s” . From there, he proceeded by coach to Savona, where he took the steamer to Kamloops. On the return journey to New Westminster, Countess Dufferin aroused Tingley’s admira­ tion for her courage by occupying the “foretop” of the coach on the dangerous ride through tbe Canyon. Before leaving the Mainland, the Governor General enter­ tained at a ball at New Westminster. Twenty members of the chain-gang, under the charge of two wardens armed with re­ volvers and double-barrelled guns, carried out most of the preparations, plucking chicken, polishing floors and arranging flowers. Sailors from the Amethyst volunteered their services to erect a canvas corridor outside the ballroom, line it with flags and hang it with coloured lanterns, and “ put the softest of sofas and chairs to tempt chaperons out of the dancing room”, but most of their efforts went unnoticed, for “ good honest, downright danc­ ing was the order of the night, and it went steadily on till three” . The Governor General returned to Esquimalt on September 19. There he performed the ceremony of driving the first pile of the coffer dam of the dry-dock. The following day, he arrived in Victoria to carry out his last duty. In a magnificent speech, lasting two and a half hours, he praised the resources of the province, explained, and even justified, the federal government’s railway policy, and concluded with a plea for patience. Not a single hint had been given that in any w ay he sympa­ thized with British Columbia’s cause, but Lord Dufferin had been impressed by the resources of the province and he consid­ ered the rebellious attitude of the government a threat to the nationhood of the new Dominion. From Nanaimo, he sent an urgent plea to Mackenzie to allow the controversy to be adjusted in London by representatives of the two governments under 275

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Lord Carnarvon’s auspices, and in a later letter from Toronto he pressed Mackenzie to offer new terms before public opinion “ at home” took alarm “at an incident which would seem to threaten the integrity of the Dominion and which might as a consequence throw an important Province into the arms of the United States” .24 Hastily, Mackenzie instructed a member of his cabinet who was about to leave for London to get in touch with Lord Carnarvon and insist that there could be neither arbitration of the dispute nor new terms. The money compensation, he said, was “ general compensation” to satisfy all the complaints of the recalcitrant province. This was the first direct reference to the fact that the cash bonus was to cover “ future delays” , and Lord Dufferin, who already felt that Mackenzie and Blake were “very loose fish”,28 now seriously questioned the honourable intentions of his ministers. From his tour, the Governor General had returned to Ottawa with deep personal convictions. British Columbia’s “ phrensied sense, however unreasonable of injury and wrong”26 was de­ rived from the desire to have money spent in the province and have the matter of the terminus settled. Only in Victoria, where “most of the residents . . . are born Britishers, [and] proud of their descent, and like all middle class Englishmen, have a vul­ gar contempt for everything that is not English” ,27 was there serious discontent. “ The brute expenditure of construction money” 28 on the Esquimalt and Nanaimo railway would satisfy their craving, but he was inclined to agree with the people of New Westminster that a line connecting a little town of g,ooo people and a village of 1,000 would be a useless and extravagant expenditure of money. The suggestion that the Strait of Georgia be bridged seemed to him absolutely impracticable, and in order to place the terminus at Bute Inlet, eight miles of rock tunnel­ ling would be required. None of the other fjords appeared to be any more suitable. The thing to do would be to survey the Fraser Valley properly and construct a light narrow-gauge line from Yale to Kamloops Lake so that access might be provided to the only good agricultural land in the province and the Interior cattlemen given an outlet to the southern towns. On November 16, Mackenzie conferred with Lord Dufferin at Rideau Hall concerning a statement of policy which Lord Car276

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narvon had requested. The two men parted in anger and in complete disagreement about the treatment to be meted out to the western province. Two days later, in a second interview attended by Blake, the Governor General received a lecture on the limitations of his constitutional powers, and himself angrily denounced the intentions of his ministers. The following day, by letter, he warned Blake and Mackenzie against using a “ dis­ ingenuous quibble” to extricate the government from its diffi­ culties. But this proved to be the last assertion of his advisory powers: in a few days he yielded to the principle that he himself must accept the advice of his ministers. The idea of a conference was dropped and he agreed to tear up his official report. A ll that he had been able to obtain from Mackenzie was a promise that the Fraser River route would be more carefully examined. Before the year was out, Lord Carnarvon was also to subscribe to the views of the Canadian ministers. In December, in his long-delayed reply to the petition sent him the previous January, he informed the government of British Columbia that the language used in its memorial was severe and exaggerated, that the surveys had been carried on with the greatest organization and despatch, and that the selection of the terminus required careful examination and investigation. W ithin a matter of days after sending this despatch, the Colonial Secretary resigned his post in protest over his government’s Near Eastern policy, and during the remainder of his term of office as Governor General, Lord Dufferin was afforded no further opportunity to suggest a compromise with British Columbia. Because of the ascendancy of Blake in the Liberal party, V ic­ toria had lost its one chance to become a great Pacific depot, strong enough, if it had easy access to the Nanaimo coal-fields, to challenge the position and power of San Francisco itself. It already had a dry-dock under construction and for a moment during the Russian war scare of 1877 it had lived in hope that the Imperial government would assume what was becoming an in­ creasingly heavy financial burden. Mackenzie’s announcement in December, 1877, that the Fraser River route would be adopted for the railway and his later action in M ay, 1878, in rescinding the order-in-council naming Esquimalt as the terminus, seemed to blight the whole future of Vancouver Island. No longer was 2 77

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there hope that it would become the spring-board of Canada’s commercial advance in the world of the Pacific. In M ay, 1878, Victoria concentrated its full effort on the overthrow of the moderate Elliott government and on the return to office of a leader who would “ fight Ottawa” . A t the first session of the third legislature, Premier Walkem acknowledged his obligation to Victoria for its support, by in­ troducing on August 9, 1878, a resolution to present a second memorial to the Queen. This time, the vote (14 to 9) was less unanimous than in 1876, but the words were stronger. Unless railw ay construction commenced by M ay, 1879, British Colum­ bia would start to collect customs and excise duties and with­ draw from the union. Forwarded at the time of the federal election, the petition was mislaid in Ottawa and did not reach Downing Street until March, 1879. A month later, De Cosmos moved in the House of Commons for an act to provide for the peaceful separation of British Columbia from the Dominion of Canada. “How very disgracefully little W — has been behav­ ing” , Senator Macdonald wrote to Crease; “our poor Province is groaning and bleeding at the indignities and dishonor cast upon her by her representatives at home and abroad. W here is the remedy: the best people have lost their grasp of public affairs, the franchise has been abused, the scum of society has coordinate, if not more power than the Mainstay and backbone of the Country, and that plastic irresponsible element is worked upon by scheming and unscrupulous demagogues, to suit their own ends” .29 “ No assertion either of W alkem’s or of de Cosmos’ can be at all trusted” ,30 Lord Dufferin had once warned Mackenzie. Probably Sir John A. Macdonald, whose cry of a new “ National Policy” to restore prosperity had swept his party back into power in the summer of 1878, felt likewise. Sir John was now the senior member for Victoria city in the House of Commons, for Victoria, seeing its great opportunity to have the Esquimalt terminus restored, had offered him a seat after his surprising defeat in his old constituency of Kingston. The new member for Victoria, however, had no intention of being stampeded; by making the first approach to British Columbia, Mackenzie had earned only odium and defiance. W ith elaborate caution, Mac278

ROSSLAND D U R IN G T H E GREAT M I N I N G BOOM O F T H E ’N IN E T IE S .

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SYM BOL O F M C B R ID E P R O S P E R IT Y : 5 .5

. Sicamous on Okanagan Lake.

l a y i n g t h e t r a c k o p the Pacific Great Eastern Railway, near Alexandria.

E D W A RD IA N G R A N D EU R .

Hatley Park, residence designed by Samuel Maclure for James Dunsmuir in 1908, now “ Royal Roads” , a Canadian Tri-Services College.

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VICTO RIA O N T H E EVE OF T H E GREAT W AR.

I.O.D.E. Garden Party, Rockland Avenue, July, 1914

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V A N C O U V E R O N T H E E V E O F T H E GREAT W AR.

The Rejected British Subjects— Sikhs on Board the Komagata M am, July, 1914. Leonard Frank Photograph

ROYAL V ISIT .

Their Royal Highnesses, the Prince of Wales and Prince George in Vancouver, August, 1927. Leonard. Frank Photograph

W A IT IN G F O R M O N E Y F R O M OTTAW A.

Occupation of the Vancouver Post Office by Unemployed, Single Men, May and June, 193&-

O F F TO T H E W AR.

Departure of the British Columbia Regiment (T he Duke of Connaught’s Own Rifles) from New Westminster, October, 1940. Claud. Dettloff Photograph

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T H E C H A N G IN G W E S T -E N D .

Vancouver, 1957. Graham Warrington Photograph

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B R IT IS H C O L U M B IA O F T H E F U T U R E .

Annacis Island, 1957. Graham Warrington Photograph

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donald chose carefully the language in which to reply to the embarrassingly effusive letters of congratulation and the fawn­ ing requests for aid and support which he received from Walkem. One crumb of hope he proffered: late in 1878 he re­ stored Esquimalt as the terminus. This news was so well re­ ceived by the provincial government that the Colonial Office decided that there was no point in replying to the second petition to the Queen. But hardly had Macdonald revived Victoria’s hopes than he reaffirmed the selection of the Fraser River route. Lately, there had been some suggestion of rerouting the railw ay line to Port Simpson, which was closer to Asia than Burrard Inlet, hut the massing of Russian naval strength at Vladivostok and the ap­ pearance of a Russian squadron in San Francisco Bay during the scare of 1878 had emphasized the need of having a route which could he more easily defended. Now that the Northern Pacific Railway was building from St. Paul to Puget Sound, there was also new danger of American economic penetration if it ex­ tended its line to and beyond the border. Major-General R. C. Moody of the Royal Engineers had sent the government a strongly-worded statement advocating, for strategic reasons, the choice of the Fraser River route. In 1879 Macdonald told the Imperial Defence Committee that the choice of a southerly route had been determined by all these considerations. A t Yale on M ay 14, 1880, almost nine years after the province had entered Confederation, a blast of dynamite finally marked the beginning of railway construction. Only 128 miles from Emory’s Bar to Savona had been let out on contract, but Andrew Onderdonk had unlimited backing from an American syndicate and a reputation for pushing ahead with great engineering projects. As the dust settled, all the onlookers cheered the event which marked the beginning of a new era. On Vancouver Island, where the news had been received by telegraph from De Cosmos in Ottawa that the Island section would be the first to be started, the people turned angrily on both Walkem and De Cosmos. The premier’s importunities to Macdonald for political support became increasingly plaintive. “ Old Tomorrow” , however, knew how to make an ally of time, and he refused to yield one jot. Instead, his own tone became 279

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T H E H E A T H E N C H I N E E I N B R IT IS H C O L U M B IA H e a t h e n C h i n e e : “ W h y you send me offee?” A m or D e C osmos ( T h e L o v e o f th e W o r ld or th e L o v e r o f M a n k in d ) :

“ Because you can’t or won’t ‘assimilate’ with us” . H e a t h e n C h i n e e : “ What is datee?” A m or D e C osm o s : “ Y o u w o n ’ t d r in k w h is k e y , a n d ta lk p o litic s a n d vo te lik e u s” . pro m

Canadian Illustrated News, Ap r i l 26, 1879.

In 1879 Am or D e Cosmos supported in the House of Commons a petition signed by 1,500 residents of British Columbia requesting the prohibition of Chinese labour in railway work.

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sharper; if badgered, he indicated, he would reconsider his de­ cision and stop all construction. W ith more seriousness than flippancy, he expressed the wish that he had half a battery of artillery to turn on the “ bumptious islanders” .31 “ To keep Walkem in good humor” ,32 Macdonald appointed him to do some legal work. This show of confidence did little to improve relations between the two governments and by June, 1880, when an acrimonious dispute had developed over compen­ sation for unarable lands in the railway belt, the Dominion was threatening to withhold subsidy payments and the Premier was again assailing Confederation. “ That little man is playing a somewhat too deep game now”, commented Crease, “ but he is a gambler by nature and choice.. . .” 33 W ith the commencement of railway construction, new life had been injected into the Mainland. The activity at Yale sur­ passed the best days of 1858; its “ busy east end” was crowded with blacksmith shops and stables; new hotels and saloons which had “an extensive run” made their appearance; the landings were piled with freight; the commissary was filled to the rafters with supplies of food. The Hudson’s Bay Company opened a store; Italians, fruit-stands; and Chinese, restaurants. The local newspaper, and others, carried advertisements for carpenters, labourers, cooks, stewards and drillers. The demand for labour, particularly when the manufacture of explosives began, could not be supplied locally, and after bringing from San Francisco “ clerks out of employment, broken-down bartenders and others of that ilk”, Onderdonk imported from China in the spring of 1881 two shiploads of coolies, each of 1,000 men. Kept below decks with the hatches closed because of bad weather, they de­ veloped scurvy, and by the time they landed, fully one-tenth of their number were dying. The Government Agent at Yale could hardly keep up with the arrangements for burial, and as panic developed among the populace, he had a hard time persuading the inhabitants of the town that there was no danger of a small­ pox epidemic. W ith the province drifting more and more to­ wards a policy of a “white” British Columbia, Walkem was no happier about the importation of Chinese labour than he was about the new prosperity which had come to the Mainland. By midsummer, 1880, he was in Ottawa, pressing the old de­ 281

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mand for “ the Island section” of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Prime Minister was hardly courteous to him, but he did agree to send Sir Charles Tupper, Minister of Railways, to the province. By the time of Tupper’s visit, Macdonald had almost succeeded in completing arrangements for the contract with “the syndicate” . The contract, Walkem was told, made no reference to the Island line: it provided only for the construction within ten years of a road from Lake Nipissing to Burrard Inlet and the completion within five years of most of the British Columbia section. After some hesitation, Walkem appointed De Cosmos as special agent of the province at Ottawa, where he was to press for the inclusion of the Vancouver Island link in the contract of the syndicate. In December, Walkem himself was back in Ottawa. This time, he received such short shrift that he decided to introduce in the spring session of the legislature a resolution for still an­ other petition to the Queen. This memorial, the third, drawn up in March, 1881, demanded the complete fulfilment of the Car­ narvon Terms, and contained a new complaint. Instead of starting at the seaboard, construction had commenced “in the interior” of the province. The inclusion of this reference won the support of the New Westminster members for the remon­ strance. The huge majority (20 to 4) for the petition aroused fears in London that this time the province really did intend to secede, and this impression was fortified by the selection for its presentation of Amor De Cosmos, already known there to be a formidable opponent of any cause he chose to attack. In the Ottawa and London of 1881, the British Columbia matter acquired a significance which it had not previously had. Dufferin and Carnarvon had seen the dispute as localized, con­ fined to the borders of Canada. The Marquis of Lome, the new Governor General, and Lord Kimberley, now Colonial Secretary, both of whom were worried by a threat to the Suez communica­ tions, saw it as endangering the life-line of empire. To Lome, in particular, British Columbia with its naval base, its coal­ fields and its dry-dock, was a vital link in the all-red route to the Orient. It would never do to permit Brother Jonathan, whose railway tentacles were spreading northward, to find an excuse in mutiny to seize it. During the summer of 1881, while both Macdonald and De Cosmos were in London, Lom e continued to 282

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urge on the Colonial Secretary the necessity of finding the means to appease a province so strategically located. Macdonald, argued the Governor General, could afford to make concessions: he had fewer financial problems than had Mackenzie, for the return of prosperity had been coincident with the Conservative victory in 1878, and although he had promised the Canadian Pacific Railway Company a money sub­ sidy of $25,000,000, a land grant of 25,000,000 acres and the gift of the railway works constructed by the Mackenzie govern­ ment, which were valued at some $38,000,000, his commitment was known and it was not too heavy. The Prime Minister, he was aware, was distracted by regional disloyalties in other parts of the Dominion, but his attitude towards the British Columbia difficulty was far too casual and far too complacent. In London, Kimberley found De Cosmos “ a fearfully tedious man” ,34 who talked unreasonably at times; but in the end the Colonial Secretary decided that “ the spoilt child of Confedera­ tion” 35 was entitled to expect from the Dominion government the provision of a light railway line from Esquimalt to Nanaimo, the extension of the Mainland section of the road to Port Moody, and the payment of the reasonable money compensation of $750,000 already offered for the violation of the time limit clause in the Terms of Union. The third appeal to Downing Street had brought amazingly good results. In Victoria, there was nothing but disappointment. A light railway line was not what was needed; only the extension of the main transcontinental line would meet the needs of V an­ couver Island. George Stephen, the director of the syndicate, ■ had evolved for his company the most ambitious plans to change the route to the north shore of Lake Superior and adopt a more southerly railway pass through the Rocky Mountains; if the Prime Minister put forth the effort, Stephen could surely be per­ suaded to extend the line in the farthest west. To satisfy local opinion, Macdonald did make an attempt to arouse his interest, but after an inspection of the proposed Island route by an agent of the Company, the Prime Minister was informed in February, 1882, that no additional obligation would be assumed. As for British Columbia, Macdonald had almost come to the end of his patience. In every way, the government seemed de­ 283

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termined to be obstructive. Trutch, the agent of the Dominion government, who had been appointed in 1880 to supervise the transfer of the railway lands to federal authority, arrange for compensation for bad lands in the railway belt and carry out certain duties in connection with construction, was receiving treatment which recalled that given Edgar in 1874. For months the premier refused to see him or to communicate with him, claiming that negotiations could only be carried on directly with Ottawa. The legislature had re-enacted laws which had been dis­ allowed and it persistently refused to respect federal wishes both in connection with Chinese immigration, so essential if an ade­ quate labour force was to be recruited for railway work, and in the matter of the Cariboo wagon-road tolls which, reimposed in the years of depression, were now seriously increasing the cost of railway construction. The Indian reserve policy of the pro­ vincial government was a disgrace and as compared with the policy which had been adopted in the North West, completely unenlightened. Legislation had recently been introduced which seemed to be aimed at establishing provincial control over County Court judges. Fortunately, public opinion in the province seemed to be turning against the administration. The Colonist had condemned the premier for his habit of “ dangling small things” before the people and had accused him of intending to “ deceive and hum­ bug” them.36 So strong a protest had been caused by the inept handling of the financing of the dry-dock and by slow progress on the work, that a select committee had been established. The revelation by the commissioners in March, 1882, that the gov­ ernment had made in its estimates for the work no provision for the purchase of cement costing $250,000, so discredited the pre­ mier that only the sustaining vote of the Speaker saved his administration. For some time there had been reports that Walkem was going to retire, but these had been denied on the floor of the House. An opportunity for his graceful withdrawal from politics was now provided by Macdonald, who had accepted without com­ ment the assurances that the premier, too, could say “ these hands are clean” and that he had dissociated himself from “the rabid Carnarvon men” .37 In M ay, 1882, the Prime Minister an­ 284

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nounced the elevation of his former opponent to the Bench of the Supreme Court. The premier gratefully acknowledged this indication of favour, but not without confiding his worries over the political fate of the province: “There is no man that I know personally popular enough to unite the adverse elements of Mainland & Island under his leadership after I leave. This is not said from conceit. It is true because I know nearly every man & woman throughout the P ro vin ce ] . . . . I am a faint copy of yourself in this respect”.38 In July, 1882, provincial elections returned a weak govern­ ment under the leadership of Robert Beaven. It soon gave Mac­ donald cause to gloat. To accommodate the ambitions of Robert Dunsmuir, the province’s first capitalist, who had made a tenta­ tive overture to construct the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway line, the legislature cancelled the act of 1875 which had trans­ ferred the Island railway lines to the Dominion. The principle that the Island line had been a federal or a quasi-federal re­ sponsibility was now destroyed, said John Robson, and this was the construction that Macdonald himself placed on “the insane action” of the legislature.39 His problems were solving themselves nicely. The defeat of De Cosmos in the federal election of 1882 gave him further cause for jubilation. The province’s two most intransigent leaders were now out of the way. The new government he could afford to ignore. But the Governor General had had enough of Macdonald’s policy of procrastination. The British Columbia difficulty had dragged on too long; he himself would visit the province, being careful, of course, to give his progress an aura of constitutional rectitude. In the most diplomatic and judicious fashion possible he might be able to drop a hint here and there which would ad­ vance the solution of the controversy. The provincial capital had thoroughly enjoyed the first vice­ regal visit. It awaited with eager anticipation the coming oppor­ tunity to demonstrate to the Queen’s own daughter its loyal and patriotic sentiment. This time, in contrast to 1876, the street decorations could be elaborate and expensive, for although no one cared to admit it, the great activity on the Mainland had been a spur to business. In preparation for the festive day, September 20, 1882, the 285

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merchants, the householders and the civic authorities entered into a tense competition to demonstrate the fact that Victoria was au courant with the Gothic revival. Hideous monstrosities made their appearance: the arch at Point Ellice bridge, “in­ tended to typify the city gates” , was supplied with towers sur­ mounted by parapets. But its circular pediment bore the slogan “ Loyal Hearts and English Homes” . “A massive and imposing castellated structure” was erected by the City Council, and Fort Street boasted a pseudo-Tudor arch with two hexagonal towers and parapets, as well as a centre arch surmounted by an em­ battled gable— all this in imitation stone. “ Victoria Welcomes Queen Victoria’s Daughter” stated one of its placards; “ Union is Strength” declared the other. “ The Orient Greets the Occident” announced the Chinese arch in the form of a lofty Chinese tem­ ple. From the balconies of their shops, furriers draped bear­ skins with “Welcome” lettered in rawhide, and a show-window in David Spencer’s shop displayed “ a circular headed screen surmounted by a crown in scarlet and blue and fringed with evergreens” .40 The new Lieutenant-Governor, Clement F. Cornwall, was “to the manner born” and he fulfilled his role with distinction. Again, as in 1876, there was a garden party at Cary Castle and a drawing-room at James Bay. The gardens had never looked better, and in “ Queen’s weather” the view of the Olympics and Mount Baker was breathtakingly beautiful. But Victoria had other things to display. It was as modern as any eastern city, for the first Brush electric lights had been installed, and if they stood up to the stiff autumn breezes, they would permanently replace the old gas streetlamps. For some time now that “ curious little transmitter of the human voice” had been in operation at the Colonist office and it was no longer a matter of note that “persons speaking through the instrument in the railway office were distinctly heard by persons standing in this office with the instrument to their ear. W histling and singing were also heard— the notes being distinct and clear” .41 The town had a very cosmopolitan air and there were a few new factories, particularly cigar factories, and a soap factory near the harbour which, it had to be admitted, gave off offensive odours. 286

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A t first it was thought that the vice-regal party would only stay a fortnight, but as day after day went by, the visit length­ ened into three months. His Excellency kept busy all the time and absented himself from the capital to visit the Interior as far inland as the Okanagan Valley. Princess Louise remained in Victoria, where the people soon became used to seeing her stroll­ ing down Government Street, or examining needlework at a church bazaar, or even buying cakes in a bake-shop. On one occasion, it was said, she was gruffly ordered from behind the counter by a baker who “ nearly died of shame” when he dis­ covered to whom he had been so rude.42 If the baker suffered discomfiture, Begbie, holding court at Kamloops, found that “the various excitements” caused by His Excellency’s visit interfered with business. “ Of all days in the year”, he complained to Crease, “the Govr. Genl. makes his appearance just as I have charged a jury in a criminal case— as clear as possible. The ju ry think so too— but express a wish to retire. I direct them, as they wish it, to be locked up: & hurried down, just in time to step on board as the gang plank is lowered: attend the reception address &c.— H.E. asks me to lunch, when I am informed the ju ry have agreed. H.E. very good naturedly permits me to go & discharge the jury: when I find that the ignorant boor who had them in charge had let them out: they had hardly retired when they agreed, & ordered him to let them go. The whole of the first day therefore was lost” .43 But, even so, the Marquis of Lom e “ earned golden opinions” at Kamloops. Impressed as he was by the beautiful country of the Interior, the Governor General was more interested in what he had seen from the Cariboo Road. The old road was now the supply route for construction workers who were blasting away the mountain spurs of granite rock in the Canyon. Over 7,000 men were engaged in boring 15 tunnels, one of them 1,600 feet long. Some­ times workers had to be suspended by ropes down the perpen­ dicular face of a cliff in order to blast a foothold. A continuous string of heavy freight wagons, drawn by teams of six and eight horses, or mules, or oxen, carried supplies forward to the advance camps. The tolls charged on this tonnage had become so heavy that Onderdonk had had a stem-wheeler, the Skuzzy, construct­ ed to navigate the waters above the Canyon. The formidable 287

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project of taking her through H ell’s Gate had been safelyaccomplished. A steam winch, 15 men at the capstan, a force of 150 Chinese pulling a line, and her own engines, had been required to get her over China Riffle; but the impossible had been done. To reduce construction costs still further, nitro­ glycerine and giant cartridge works, now manufacturing explos­ ives at the rate of 12,000 pounds a day, had been established. A t Yale, the residents were still talking about the excursion train which on July 4, 1881, had been run four miles down the track to Emory’s Bar, back to Yale, and through Number 1 and Num­ ber 2 tunnels, to celebrate the landing of the first locomotive. Lom e had seen enough to guess at the other construction problems that would be encountered in the mountains to the east and enough to persuade him that they would be surmounted as ingeniously as the great feat of blasting lateral lines through the gorges, canyons and plunging cataracts of the lower Fraser River. Onderdonk, in addition to new contracts which had been awarded him, had purchased the contracts of others. Under the supervision of Marcus Smith, work had been started on the stretch between Port Moody and Emory’s Bar. W ith Henry J. Cambie in charge of construction from Emory’s Bar to Boston Bar and George A . Keefer from Boston Bar to Lytton, it would be only a matter of time before new excursion trips celebrated progress on the line. Before too long, the Governor General hoped that the difficult project of constructing grasshopper trestles and laying tracks across the Cherry Creek bluffs would be completed and that trips could be made as far east as Kamloops. Carefully folded in Lom e’s pocket was a telegram from Mon­ treal just received from W illiam C. Van Horne, vice-president of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It contained great news: “The route through the Rocky Mountains is by the Kicking Horse Pass. This has been adopted, and Major Rogers reports having found the looked for pass through the Selkirk Range; thus mak­ ing the connection with Kamloops by shortest possible line. The grades for twenty miles on either side of the summit, though heavy, are easier than any of the American lines. No tunnel necessary. Hope to be within two hundred and fifty miles of Kamloops by this time next year. Expect to have the whole line 288

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from Montreal to the Pacific Ocean open by ist January, 1887” .44 The public banquet to be tendered the Governor Gen­ eral on his return to Victoria would be a fitting occasion to announce this encouraging information. The reaction of his Victoria audience to the news was hardly what he expected. Would it be possible, Premier Beaven queried, for Vancouver Island to be created a separate kingdom with Princess Louise as its Queen? The deep-seated antagonism be­ tween Island and Mainland was driven home to Princess Louise’s husband, who now realized that the final settlement with British Columbia would certainly need to include special concessions for Vancouver Island. Quietly, working through Trutch, the Governor General set to work to discover the conditions which would have to be met in order to induce Dunsmuir to undertake the construction of the Island railway. Although Dunsmuir was said to fear the possible intervention of the Northern Pacific on Vancouver Island, he laid down terms which were almost unacceptable. In addition to the coal­ fields, he wanted the land included in the Indian reserves at Nanaimo, Esquimalt and Victoria, as well as a money subsidy and other concessions which included freedom of taxation for the railw ay lands. It would take a grant of at least 1,900,000 acres to satisfy him. The consent of both the provincial and the federal governments would have to be obtained before his conditions could be met, and unless the federal government gave further aid to the provincial government by purchasing the Esquimalt dry-dock, which was still incomplete and still drain­ ing the funds in the treasury, little progress was likely to be made with negotiations. Lom e returned to Ottawa to press for an agreement with British Columbia which would guarantee it a railway line on Vancouver Island as well as relief from the burden of building the dry-dock. But Macdonald, he found, had his own claim against the province. So much land had been alienated in the railway belt and so much was rocky and infertile, that a block of 3,500,000 acres of agricultural land in the Peace River would have to be transferred to the federal government to fulfil the agreement for the land subsidy. A ll through 1883, his last year in Canada, Lome waited im­ 289

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patiently to hear that the final details of the settlement between the two governments had been worked out. He experienced one frustration after another. In January, 1883, a “ peace party” under W illiam Smithe had come into office in Victoria, and al­ though it had passed the necessary legislation for the Dunsmuir railway, it had made the inexcusable blunder of including in the preamble to the act a statement reiterating the claim that the Island railway had been included in the Terms of Union. In re­ taliation, Macdonald permitted the session to expire without doing any more than including in the estimates the sum of $750,000 to be paid to Dunsmuir as a money subsidy and $250,000 to complete the dry-dock. But in the summer, Sir Alexander Campbell, Minister of Justice, visited the province, and before Lom e left Ottawa in the early autumn, he had the satisfaction of knowing that the basis of agreement and the end of “the inter­ minable Island railw ay” controversy were in sight. The differences were at last composed in 1884. Campbell had made a provisional contract with Robert and James Dunsmuir and John Bryden of Nanaimo for the construction of the Island railway, and later at San Francisco had obtained the signatures of the other contractors, Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford and Charles Crocker, of the Southern Pacific Railway. The provincial government acted to convey to the fed­ eral government the Mainland and Island railway belts, and in addition, the Peace River block. By the Settlement Act of March 28, 1884, and the Dominion Lands Act which complemented it, the federal government transferred the Island lands to the Duns­ muir company, contributed $750,000 toward the cost of con­ structing the Esquimalt-Nanaimo line and agreed to take over the graving dock in return for re-imbursement of present cost and a payment of $250,000. The following year was the most peaceful since British Columbia had entered the union, and evidence of the new harmony was shown in the willingness of the federal government to have Chinese immigration limited. In August, 1885, Victoria prepared to welcome the new Gov­ ernor General, the Marquis of Lansdowne. This time, the Gov­ ernor General was coming, not by w ay of San Francisco as had Dufferin and Lome, but by what he called the “ all-Canadian route” . By Canadian Pacific Railway, he was able to travel as 290

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far as 18 miles east of Revelstoke. From there he rode on horse­ back for 47 miles to reach a train from the west which was waiting to carry him to Port Moody. After a 13-days’ visit to Victoria, Nanaimo and New Westminster, Lansdowne started his return journey. During that interval, the gap between the two sections of the line had been reduced to 28 miles. It would take almost no effort now to finish the work. Plans were already being made in Montreal for despatching the first train to the Pacific. In the first week in November, Engine 148, with cars “Tepedia” and “ Saskatchewan” , started the long haul across the continent. Officials and directors of the Company were aboard. By the time they reached Moberly’s Eagle Pass, only one rail remained to be laid on the track. On November 7, 1885, at Craigellachie, in the heart of the Gold Range, Donald A. Smith drove home the last iron spike. “A ll that I have got to say” , de­ clared W illiam Van Horne, “ is that the work was well done in every w ay” . The words British, the West instead of South, the Nation, The all-Canadian route— these terms were singing Fresher than ever while the grating tones Under the stress of argument had faded Within the shroud of their monotony.45 It was too soon for anyone to forget that in 1876 and on later occasions, “The lady’s face [had been] flushed” ,46 but British Columbia now seemed to have recovered her composure. “ The Canadian Pacific Railway is now completed and with its accom­ plishment a new era in politics as in so many other respects has opened in the Province” , Joseph W . Trutch wrote to Sir John A. Macdonald. “The railway w ill at once Canadianize the Prov­ ince” .47 Perhaps the real transition from Crown Colony to province had occurred in 1876, when it was made clear to Vancouver Island that this, the original British colony on the North West Coast, had been absorbed by British Columbia in a w ay that no one in Victoria would admit in 1866. Ottawa and London, by refusing to recognize the pretensions of Vancouver Island, had 291

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indicated that in their eyes at least, it must he integrated into the Mainland. The qualifications placed by the Liberal ministry on the Carnarvon Terms had doomed Victoria’s hope of becom­ ing the great Pacific terminus of the national railway. On his return to office in 1878, Sir John A. Macdonald had proved him­ self no more willing than Mackenzie to champion the special claims of Vancouver Island. For a while he had tried to mollify Walkem and De Cosmos, but they had had too many whims, and he had finally concluded that they were too introverted to ad­ vance his cause of an expanding Canadian nationality. No more than Mackenzie could he permit British Columbia, an integral part of Canada, to act as if it were dealing with a foreign govern­ ment. The outlet on the Pacific he needed; but he was sure, particularly after 1882 when heavy immigration into the prov­ ince began, that this would be secured for him by new settlers who had long ago discarded the habit of considering themselves privileged colonials. These were the people who would liberate the Mainland from the political and economic domination of Vancouver Island. “Today a whole Province is in tears. The flags droop sadly . . .” .48 W ith these words, the Colonist had introduced its announcement on August 4, 1877, of the death of Sir James Douglas. The death of the great Governor had coincided almost exactly with the defeat of all the ambitions which he had con­ ceived for the colony of Vancouver Island. The past belonged to his beloved Vancouver Island; the future, to the Mainland.

The Great Potlatch

Chapter 11

, July 4, 1886, was a gala day at Port Moody. To welcome the arrival of the first passenger train from Mont­ real, excursion boats brought one thousand people from New Westminster, Nanaimo and Victoria. For those on board the Yosemite, which left Victoria very early in the morning, the day was especially full of interest: many of them had never seen the Gulf Islands or the Mainland before. The ladies promenaded the deck in costumes specially imported from London; the V ic­ toria Brass Band “ discoursed at intervals some of their choice musical selections” ; members of an Italian Opera Company “were generous in their musical effusions, and some [passengers] were found so captivated as to engage in tripping the light fan­ tastic, notwithstanding the day they were celebrating” .1 The train arrived at Port Moody exactly one minute past noon. Premier Smithe extended to the Canadian Pacific Railway the felicitations of the provincial government, and Henry Abbott, unday

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general superintendent of the Western Division, announced the immediate inauguration of service to the East. The absence among the passengers of Sir John A. Macdonald, who had been detained in Ottawa, somewhat marred the celebration, hut with a mood of exuberance and expectancy prevailing, it was easy to forget disappointment. As western railway terminus, Port Moody had forged ahead of Granville during the past six years and it now looked forward to great expansion as a port commanding the coastal trade from Panama to Alaska. But the directors of the Canadian Pacific Railway had other plans. Their first intention was to make “The Queen’s H ighway” a great commercial route to the Orient; and for this project they needed a deep-sea port with better ac­ commodation for ocean vessels. Van Horne had already con­ ducted negotiations with the provincial government to permit the Company to extend the track a distance of twelve miles to Coal Harbour, adjacent to the Granville town-site; this fact was well known at Port Moody, but no one there believed as yet that “ Vancouver” , as Van Horne called his proposed new terminus, would supplant the original site. The decision of the Railway Company to move the terminus was more than satisfactory to men like John Robson and Dr. Powell, who had long held land at Granville. The Oppenheimer brothers, David and Isaac, who had recently formed a syndicate to purchase some of the holdings of the Hastings Sawmill Com­ pany and who were now engaged in slashing timber between Carrall Street and Gore Avenue, were equally pleased. Hardly less so were the “ Three Greenhorn Englishmen”— John Morton, Samuel Brighouse and W illiam Hailstone— who still held the 550-acre pre-emption which they had taken up in 1862 between the two government reserves set aside by Colonel Moody. Not one of these property-holders found fault with the Smithe gov­ ernment for presenting to the Company a quite unnecessary subsidy of 6,000 acres of land at Coal Harbour; in fact, they all applauded the action of the legislature, and as a demonstration of their own good will, each private owner donated to the Com­ pany one-third of his own lots. The incorporation of the new city of Vancouver by special charter, dated April 6, 1886, signalled the coming decline of 296

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Port Moody. The wrath of speculators— and of Victoria mer­ chants— flared into open defiance. In an attempt to force the Canadian Pacific Railway Company to make the statutory ter­ minus the actual end of steel, Port Moody interests resorted to the courts; and with the intention of strangling business in an upstart community which had stolen the name of their Island, Victoria merchants threatened with a boycott all eastern traders who contemplated appointing agents in Vancouver. But neither the animosity of Port Moody nor the rivalry of Victoria could check the growth of the new city— within weeks of its incorpora­ tion, Vancouver had 800 business establishments and a popula­ tion of 2,000. Then, on a quiet Sunday afternoon in June, exactly 94 years after Captain George Vancouver’s visit to Burrard Inlet, the city named in his honour was destroyed by fire. As a breeze fresh­ ened into a gale, flames spreading eastward from land-clearing operations near English Bay roared through tinder-dry slashings towards the little settlement. Forty minutes later, there re­ mained of the new-born city of Vancouver only two sawmills, a hotel and a shack in the centre of town, and a few cottages on the shores of False Creek. That night, the survivors of the Great Fire— the men, women and children who had found refuge in wells and on rafts and ferry boats in the Inlet— slept in the de­ serted plant of Spratt’s oil refinery, or in Hastings M ill, or at the Moodyville sawmill. The disaster instilled an iron determination into every in­ habitant. W ith the first rays of light on Monday morning, workmen began to reconstruct the city. By Wednesday evening, a three-storey hotel was open for business, and within a month, fourteen new hotels and hundreds of new stores were erected. “ I never saw such enterprise amidst so much desolation” , re­ ported a visiting journalist.2 Even during these tense weeks, when the air was still thick with smoke and hot with flames, the fundamental cause for worry and concern in Vancouver was the continued delay in extending the track to Coal Harbour. W ith a persistence born of desperation, Port Moody investors had taken legal action to block the grant of the right-of-way, and although the Supreme Court of British Columbia had rejected their claim, they stub297

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bornly clung to their rights, and carried an appeal to the Su­ preme Court of Canada. A t the head office of the Company in Montreal, the lifting of the legal injunction was awaited with impatience. The delivery in Montreal and New York of the first Canadian shipment of tea from Yokohama had sustained a contention of George Stephen. He had held that his Company could shatter the transcontinental freight record and also establish such fast service between the Orient and Liverpool as to divert trade from the all-water route through the Suez Canal to Europe. The Canadian Pacific had seven sailing ships ready to enter the China tea trade, and the only hindrance to the development of a successful new enter­ prise was the lack of a commodious deep-sea port on Burrard Inlet. Before the removal of the injunction, Van Horne began to lay track and to construct the Vancouver railway wharf; as soon as it was lifted, the work was speeded. Finally, he found it possible to arrange that the first passenger train arrive in the “ City of Imperial Destiny” on M ay 23, 1887, eve of the celebra­ tion of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. The whole citizenry gathered on the railway wharf to greet the train. To emphasize the contribution being made by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company to the cause of national and Imperial unity, officials saw to it that Engine 374 was smothered with garlands and slogans. Not to be outdone, Vancouver had made its own preparations: the streets were resplendent with fir arches displaying appropriate mottoes and honouring great works brought to completion. W ith three cheers and a tiger, the great crowd expressed to the Canadian Pacific Railway an ap­ preciation that was all the more heartfelt for knowing that the Abyssinia, the first passenger ship from the Orient, was already on her w ay across the Pacific Ocean. On M ay 24, there was rejoicing and thanksgiving throughout all parts of Queen Victoria’s Empire; and in Vancouver a very special feeling of jubilation, a sense of the fulfilment of historic destiny. For the arrival of the first train had presaged the re­ opening of the North West Passage to Cathay. A few weeks later, on June 14, the Abyssinia berthed at the Vancouver dock. She was a small ship— only 3,000 tons— but two other vessels formerly owned by the Cunard Line, the 298

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Parthia and the Batavia, had also been chartered to ply the route. Her time from Yokohama was extraordinarily good— just 13 days, 14 hours. Every one of her 22 cabins was filled with first-class passengers, and in addition to tea (which reached Montreal 27 days after shipment from Japan) she carried the first trans-Pacific mail and the pioneer shipment of silk. Her sis­ ter ships were capable of equalling her sailing record, and all three ships were so well appointed that the first royal patron, the brother of the King of Siam, returning from the celebrations in London, booked his passage in the Parthia. Before the summer ended, the future of the trans-Pacific passenger and freight service was assured. By the end of 1887, the population of the “ Terminal City” had grown to 5,000. Every boat and every train arriving at Vancouver brought distinguished visitors— and what was more important, new settlers. From every direction they came. From Yale and other de­ serted construction camps drifted engineers, carpenters and common labourers. From Manitoba arrived young Englishmen, many of them graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, who had been “busted” on prairie farms; from Winnipeg, lawyers, abandoning a collapsing boom for a new community replete with litigants; from Toronto, Hamilton and London, Ontario, journalists who were attracted by the wealth of fresh “ stories” ; from Brockville, shrewd real estate men and brokers; from Mon­ treal, officials of the Canadian Pacific Kailway; from the Ottawa V alley and New Brunswick, lumbermen and loggers deserting timber limits that were becoming depleted; from the Maritimes and New England, fishermen and cannerymen; from Philadel­ phia, ambitious young business men, who guessed that rich profits were to be made from the China tea trade and the Hawaiian sugar trade; from San Francisco, capitalists who were willing to finance sawmilling and other ventures; and before very long, from St. Paul, lumber magnates. From Ireland came young men grown impatient with the Irish nationalist agitation; from England, upper-class families, contemplating a new life on western ranches; from Wales and Cornwall, unemployed miners; from Germany, bankers, investment dealers and brewers; from Italy, unskilled workmen; and from Hong Kong, boatload after 299

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boatload of Chinese coolies. A ll these newcomers— with the ex­ ception of the Chinese, as the riots of January, 1887, indicated— could be absorbed into the society of the newest and fastest growing city in Canada— a city which had sprung to life with all the trappings of the industrialist-capitalist system. Editors of the great English newspaper chains, realizing that the interest of their readers in the Empire had been awakened by news of the first Colonial Conference, soon sent correspond­ ents to report on the newly-completed Canadian transportation system, the burgeoning Pacific trade and the rise of the new sea­ board metropolis. The tone of all their accounts was exhilarating. Vancouver, they wrote, was “the seaport of the twentieth century! the Constantinople of the West!”3 The noise of the blasting of tree trunks and the din of hammering continued without interruption night and day, and every week more of the forest and of the undergrowth of salal and brambles disap­ peared. A t the Lion’s Gate there was emerging “ a city of long streets, big blocks, handsome churches, and elegant villas” .4 This was a city of contrasts: ocean liners made fast at one end of Granville Street, and at the other end a bridge led across False Creek to the forest. M any of the granite and brick buildings had “real architectural merit and individuality” ,5 but “one lot would have a grand grey granite building in the primitive Romanesque style, costing 100,000 dollars; and the next a wretched little wooden shanty, or a bit of the original bush, with tall mountain ferns and mountain ashes and dogwoods . . . higher up, as you topped the hill to go over to the False Creek there were stumps of trees in plenty— trees that had been a couple of hundred feet high in their day” . The extraordinary thing was that “ in the midst of all this wildness” , the city was “ so absolutely modern; no one would think of putting up a house without a telephone and electric light” .0 W ithin two years of its founding, Vancouver had 36 miles of graded streets and miles of wooden paving; waterworks and sewerage; warehouses, foundries and factories; and the wharves, round-houses, office buildings and four-storey hotel built by the Canadian Pacific Railway. Its population was 8,000. There were two daily newspapers, a glee and madrigal society, and an amateur dramatic society. In 1889, a great natural park was 300

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encircled with driveways, a company was incorporated to pro­ vide tramway connection with New Westminster, and plans were drawn up for an opera house. The zest, self-assertiveness, enterprise and versatility of the citizens had already become noteworthy. Most of the commercial life in these first years centred in the port. From Vancouver, the boats of the Canadian Pacific Navi­ gation Company, founded by Fraser River steamboat interests, sailed daily for Victoria and at least weekly for the logging camps on Discovery Passage, Johnstone Strait and Bute Inlet. Wholesale grocers despatched supplies by boat for the sockeyesalmon canneries on the Fraser and Skeena Rivers; passengers and freight were carried north to Port Simpson and the Queen Charlotte Islands; and the keenest rivalry developed with American companies for the trade of the Puget Sound ports. But more significant than the local trade was the expanding export market for lumber. Huge shipments of Douglas fir, red, yellow and white pine, cedar, hemlock, spruce and larch left almost daily for Peru, Chile, Australia, China and Great Britain. In the trans-Pacific trade, Vancouver had seized the initiative from Seattle, its senior by some twenty years, and even chal­ lenged the position of San Francisco. The sight of the first of the “flying Empresses” rounding Brockton Point in 1891 gladdened every heart. For the next fourteen years, the Empresses— the India, the China and the Japan— were never late in arriving or in departing. Under the terms of the Canadian Pacific’s agreement with the Postmaster General of Great Britain, they carried the Imperial mails from Hong Kong, and by arrangement with the Admiralty, they con­ stituted an auxiliary naval reserve in the Pacific Ocean. W ith their white hulls, yellow funnels, long clipper stems and over­ hanging counters, they appeared to every school child as majes­ tic yachts, and to greet their arrival, teachers were often per­ suaded to lead their classes down to “ The Bluff” overlooking the dock. No one objected to this diversion, for almost every father in town was also on hand to welcome passengers or check the cargo. In the waiting crowd, it was an easy matter to spot the realestate men and other promoters. “ The bare fact of a man’s

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coming to Vancouver by train was almost sufficient introduc­ tion” , declared an Australian reporter; “ inside of an hour every real-estate man in the place would know him and his business in Vancouver, and probably whether he had any fam ily or a hereditary disease. There was always grand excitement when a steamer came in from China or Japan. . . . The real-estate men dreamt of winging a first class globe-trotter, and the whole population expected something to turn up, though it usually was only silk and tea, which were shot into trucks as promptly as all the labour in the place could shoot them, sealed up, and sent tearing across to Montreal and New York as fast as engines could haul” .7 Victoria was denied a share in this silk and tea trade, but the Empresses called at the Outer Wharves there to complete their cargoes with flour and wheat. For Victoria had drawn in the direction of its rolling-mills much of the wheat produced in the Delta, lower Fraser V alley and the northern end of the Okana­ gan Valley. The Inner Harbour had also become the outfitting centre for schooners from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, as well as from American Pacific Coast ports, which arrived in the spring to chase pelagic seals northward to the rookeries on the Aleutian Islands. In order to participate in this highly profitable, though perilous, new fur hunt, Vancouver Island with the aid of American capital (thereby “making a catspaw of the British flag”8) was building its own fleet of sixty-five vessels. The Esquimalt dry-dock, which was now completed, provided constant employment for shipwrights; and the rein­ forcement of the naval base guaranteed prosperity for ship chandlers and merchants, and— because of the naval balls— for dressmakers. Victoria, which had small corner lots in the business district for sale at prices as high as $15,000 and shops full of imported wares, was no whit more indifferent than Vancouver to the value of the tourist’s dollar. Before the unsuspecting visitor, it dangled so enticingly the lures of gentility, politeness and en­ tertainment that more than one travelling Britisher who thank­ fully escaped the scurry and bustle of downtown Vancouver, landed from the Princess Louise, only to be “hooked” by a V an­ couver Island host, who called himself a British Columbian, 302

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rather than a Canadian. Almost every visitor found the climate and scenery of Victoria seductive, and there was no denying the quiet pleasure to be derived from picnics at the Gorge, horse­ racing on Beacon Hill, tennis parties in Sir Matthew Begbie’s gardens, concerts presented by the Arion Club, fishing trips to Cowichan Lake, and dinners at the Union Club, “ always full of bronzed and bearded naval officers, and ranchers from the main­ land, taking a holiday” .9 M any a visitor who found Victoria otherwise little different from a typical English provincial town was attracted by the bizarre and exotic note contributed by Chinatown. Was it true, ran the enquiries, that the chief joss-house was unequalled in San Francisco? Were there opium dens? Could an evening be set aside to visit the Chinese theatre? And a shopping expedition arranged to see displays of water pipes, porcelain figurines and “unsavoury Celestial savouries, such as squashed ducks” ?10 The wealthier residents of Victoria, who employed Chinese houseboys, Chinese gardeners and Chinese laundrymen, were inclined to share the romantic view of their guests. Not so the legislators at James Bay. Conscious of the voting strength of the Victoria working-men and the Nanaimo coal-miners, members of the legislature studied more carefully the growing number of petitions which complained that “ John Chinaman” was guilty of spreading disease and filth, and that he was the victim of “ the pernicious practices of gambling and opium” .11 Victoria and Van­ couver were flooded with unemployed Chinese railway workers, and although the Chinese Benevolent Society, organized in 1884, did what it could to care for indigents, the serenity of the capital had been threatened for a while by the organization of Tongs “ composed of highbinders or vagabonds coming from different cities with intent to extort money from the gambling dens and houses of ill fame and to endanger the safety of the public” .12 When the $50 head tax, imposed in 1885, did little to check im­ migration from Hong Kong, the whole province began to throb with rumours concerning the Chinese peril, and the pressure for limitation of numbers and for restriction of employment became insistent. A n opportunity to discuss this troublesome problem with the Prime Minister might have arisen during the visit of Sir John 303

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A. Macdonald in July, 1886; but Sir John, it was felt, had earned the right to a holiday, and to make evident their desire to culti­ vate the most cordial relations with the federal government, members of the provincial cabinet paraded their best manners and postponed discussion of business to a later occasion. Sir John and Lady Macdonald, who had had an exciting journey through the Kicking Horse Pass and the canyons of the Thompson and the Fraser on the “ buffer bar” of their train, enjoyed for a peaceful fortnight the red-plush elegance of the Driard House. During that time, Robert Dunsmuir rushed to completion his work on the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway, and by August 13, all was in readiness at Shawnigan Lake for the Prime Minister to drive the last spike. W ith the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway completed ahead of schedule, the provin­ cial government put behind it the earlier myopic concentration on provincial grievances. The legislature was now composed largely of acquisitive merchants, lawyers, industrialists and landed proprietors who had prospered during the days of railway construction, taken up residence in Victoria and then closed ranks. A single glance would reveal that all the major figures, and particularly the premiers, knew that they had an assured social position. John Robson appeared “ always immaculately dressed, his moustache being well brushed aside over his mouth” . “ If by chance” Theodore Davie “ should lift his hat, a most prominent forehead topped his full-grown black beard which was fairly close-clipped. As he walks along you will notice his knees are bent inwards” . J. H. Turner made a fine impression: “ a distinguished gentle­ man with a swift and snappy walk, head erect and body wellpoised” .13 Politically, these leaders lacked the vitality of men of an earlier generation, and far from being innovators, they clung tenaciously to the system of personal alignments which formed the basis of the province’s non-party tradition. Although in federal elections they all voted with the Conservative party, within provincial limits they declined identification with the Canadian political parties. To be a Liberal in the Victoria of the nineties was to court social as well as political ostracism. “ All the young men who come here find that conservatism is ‘fashion304

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able’ and so they vote” , complained a Liberal in 1896. “This social power only exists because ever since Confederation it has been backed up by political power. Young men find that to be known as a Liberal means, largely, social exclusion, and thus they have not the force of character to fight” .14 The wealth of the governing group, derived chiefly from in­ vestment in land, transportation systems, mines, lumbering, salmon canneries and flour-mills, had been accumulated quite suddenly, and as everyone was frank in admitting, only because the railway and the steamboat had provided access to additional markets. Ample evidence that transportation must continue to hold the vital role in the economic development of the province was to be seen in the incidence of the new prosperity. Overnight, with the coming of steel, towns on the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway had sprung into existence. Golden and Farwell (Revelstoke) were now reaching out by steamboat for the trade of the Kootenay; Ashcroft had succeeded Yale as the depot for Cariboo; Kamloops had been transformed into the commercial hub of the Thompson Valley; and on the lower Mainland, Haney had risen to compete with New Westminster for the trade of the western Fraser valley. Impressed by these changes, and particularly by the sudden emergence of Vancou­ ver, the legislators were prepared to accord favour and protection to those companies and to those individuals who would risk capital in building new railway and steamship lines. The respect and consideration shown to the transportation interests sometimes left the people wondering just where political power in British Columbia did rest. There was a saying in Vancouver that “ The C.P.R.’s the Government here” ;15 and in the district stretching from Ashcroft to Barkerville, one heard the same thing about the B.C. Express Company. In Kamloops and Revelstoke, the government was said to be John A . Mara, the sponsor of a number of transportation enterprises. On Vancouver Island, it was considered to be Robert Dunsmuir. Dunsmuir was the most controversial figure in the province. He had come to Fort Rupert to work for the Hudson’s Bay Com­ pany in 1851; now he was the sole owner of the Wellington mine, which he had discovered near Departure Bay in 1869; and he was just about to open the Comox field. A local Andrew 305

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Carnegie, he had created an industrial empire from his coal­ fields and iron works, the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway and his fleet of steamers and sailing-vessels. Each year his fortune grew— the building of turreted Craigdarroch Castle was proof of that— and each year his employees complained about the lack of safety precautions in his mines, the use of the militia to break the Wellington strikes and the employment of Chinese labourers who accepted low wages for long hours of work. In Nanaimo, his repeated statement that the best friend of the working-man was the capitalist-employer lacked the ring of conviction. Dunsmuir was but one of the pioneers whose accumulation of wealth aroused protest on the part of those who ascribed to the accidents of time and place the unequal distribution of the new riches. Dissatisfaction with the concentration of capital in a few hands, the sharper definition of class lines and the indifference of the legislators to social reform accelerated labour organization. By 1886, the Workingmen’s Protective Association, which had been founded in Victoria in 1879, was strong enough to present candidates in Victoria and Nanaimo in the provincial election. Although Labour was still not well enough organized or suf­ ficiently clear in its objectives to secure their election, it did succeed in making Chinese exclusion and “landlordism” the two chief issues in the campaign. To the disappointment of his own working-men, Dunsmuir, who had entered the lists in Nanaimo, was elected to the House; and to their greater consternation, he became President of the Council in the spring of 1887 when A. E. B. Davie reconstituted the ministry following the death of Smithe. Dejected by Dunsmuir’s political success, but not defeated by it, the Nanaimo miners now organized the Miners’ and MineLabourers’ Protective Association to fight for the eight-hour day, union recognition, the arbitration of industrial disputes, the limitation of Chinese immigration and other benefits. Taking a bolder stand, the union in 1890 adopted the single-tax ideas of Henry George and included in its programme a demand that all land held by corporations and speculators he taxed to its full rental value. W ith the utmost satisfaction, the M .M .L.P.A. suc­ ceeded in electing three candidates, the first Labour representa­ tives, to the House of Assembly. 306

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A t the time of Labour’s first protest, speculation in public lands was at its height. Under the prevailing provincial regula­ tions, it was not difficult for the man with a little capital and much ingenuity to turn a small investment into a fortune. Some of the great landed families who emerged in the period between 1888 and 1891 had started to acquire their holdings before 1884, when it was still possible to obtain pre-emptions of 320 acres east of the Cascades and 160 acres west of the moun­ tains at the price of $1 an acre, and to lease pastoral land and hay land at an annual rental ranging from three to six cents an acre. The price of Crown Land was increased to $2.50 an acre in 1884, but the new prosperity made possible the expansion of the great cattle ranches in the lower Cariboo, and in the Okanagan, Similkameen and Nicola Valleys. The terms for purchasing and leasing timber lands were of comparable generosity. Until 1888, timber leases could be ac­ quired at an annual rental ranging from one to ten cents an acre and the payment of a royalty of 20 to 25 cents per thousand feet. A t the rate of one cent an acre, the owners of the Moody Sawmill, who included Hugh Nelson, now Lieutenant-Governor of the province, leased 17 square miles of coastal timber at the head of Burrard Inlet; the Hastings Sawmill, some 18,500 acres in the same vicinity; and R. P. Rithet, 15,000 acres on Vancou­ ver Island.10 The new timber legislation in 1888, which increased the rental to five cents an acre, fixed the royalty at 50 cents per thousand feet and limited future leases to a term of 30 years, still afforded, as the Minnesota and Wisconsin lumbermen soon discovered, ample opportunity for profitable endeavour. In a small community like British Columbia, where business men and large property-holders sat in the House and where every prominent business man was known to the legislators, it was difficult for a premier, who himself had extensive invest­ ments, to refuse requests made by his friends and political associates. The Smithe government had established a precedent in using public lands, a seemingly inexhaustible asset, to bonus the construction of wagon roads and railways and to pay the costs of reclamation schemes. The succeeding administrations dispensed subsidies of land, mineral and timber rights with bold and munificent gestures.

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Premier Robson took violent exception to this cartoon and to the accompany­ ing statement: “ T he Napoleonic Van Horne seems to have set his heart on taking possession of the entire mining region in the ‘Sea of Mountains’, and several great slices of territory have already been reserved in connection with the projected railway to the Kootenay district, which is, of course, controlled by the Canadian Pacific” . FROM Grip, FEBRUARY 13 , 1892.

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Alm ost anyone of any standing in the community could ob­ tain a railw ay charter and the valuable rights that accompanied it. The process was the essence of simplicity: all an applicant had to do was insert on a printed form the names of the directors of his company, the location of the termini and of the registered office; obtain the sponsorship by a private member for a railway bill and by a cabinet minister for a subsidy act. By following these steps, two Victoria merchants, acting in conjunction with two Members of Parliament and a Senator, secured in 1889 the princely grant of 14,000,000 acres to build a railway from Yellowhead Pass to Nanaimo.17 The project never got under way. Neither did most of the other 210 schemes which won legislative approval before 1913.18 But in the meantime, much of the arable land in the province was withdrawn from settlement. No one at Victoria, until John Robson became premier in 1889, hesitated to subsidize American companies. But Robson’s abiding fear of American annexation— a fear which the Am eri­ can seizure of three Canadian sealing schooners in 1886 and the obvious American interest in the Kootenay mines did nothing to allay— redounded to the favour of local industrialists and the Canadian Pacific Railway. Robson now lived in Victoria; he had wealth derived from investments in land; he associated privately and publicly with the business leaders; he had broken with the Liberal party; and his party in the legislature was composite in character. When his government in 1890 subsidized four lines by a general act conferring mineral rights as well as land, the merchants of Nel­ son raised an outcry over the granting to the Canadian Pacific Railway of valuable silver properties in the “Slocan Reserve” . A t the next session of the legislature, “Honest John” was more cautious; his land grants were less generous; he investigated more carefully the financial standing of the men who applied for subsidies; and he made no grant whatsoever to the Canadian Pacific Railway. But newspaper editors, convinced that he was the benefactor of the “ big interests” , attacked him as viciously as he had once attacked Governor Douglas. His pride wounded, he wrote with asperity to the editor of Grip: “The C.P.R. had no more to do with the Slocan reservation than the man in the moon. The reservation was made for the purpose of heading off

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Prem ier Robson prodding the land speculator. FROM Grip, SEPTEMBER 6, i8 g o .

BRITISH COLUMBIA

SETTLEM EN T 1871 Each dot indicates the establishment of a settlement as defined by the inauguration of a school district.

• Before 1871

□ □ 1

Compiled By: Provincial Archives. Department o f Education, Victoria.

Essentially settled Explored but essentially unsettled 1

Unexplored

Copyright British Columbia Natural Resources Conference, 1956.

BRITISH COLUMBIA

SETTLEM EN T 1871-1910 Each dot indicates the establishment of a settlement as defined by the inauguration of a school district.

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a land-grabbing conspiracy gotten up in Nelson, composed chiefly of saloon-keepers and sports. . . .” 19 There was truth in this assertion, but the collapse of some of the local railway schemes made it possible for the Canadian Pacific Railway to acquire in the next few years three of the lines in the Kootenay which he had subsidized with 750,000 acres. Nettled by criticism and submissive to pressure applied by the “ Independents” in the legislature— some of whom had joined his “ well-drilled battalions”20— Robson tackled the problem of landlordism. Ry 1892, he had removed practically all the major weaknesses in the Land and Mineral Acts: coal and water re­ sources were vested in the Crown; minerals were excepted from railway charters; a limit of 640 acres was placed on purchases of surveyed Crown Land; and timber lands were defined and a limit placed on their sale. For the first time, the reckless expro­ priation of natural resources was checked. To one reform, however, Robson refused his consent. In re­ distributing seats in the legislature, he declined to give V an­ couver adequate representation. For this intransigence he paid a high price. His comprehensive programme as the province’s first Minister of Education was to be brought to completion by the founding of a provincial university. The necessary act was obtained in 1890, Dr. Powell selected as Chancellor and a Senate elected, but the revival of hostility between the Mainland and the Island over the redistribution question led to a quarrel over the location of the University which left the act dormant. Robson had one more policy which he wished to put into effect before he retired, as he hoped, to the office of lieutenantgovernor. In the early summer of 1892, he travelled to London to consult with the Imperial authorities concerning a coloniza­ tion scheme for Scottish crofters who were to be brought to British Columbia to develop the deep-sea fisheries. In London, he met with a slight accident: the jamming of a finger in a cab door. The blood poisoning which followed brought to a sudden conclusion the life of the colourful “ boss axeman of British Columbia” , the single reformer in a dreary fifteen-year period of provincial politics. The whole generation to which Robson belonged was fast disappearing: within the space of five years, death removed

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Chief Justice Begbie, Robert Dunsmuir, Amor De Cosmos and Roderick Finlayson. Younger men, but men who also had a long association with the province, were to fill their places on the bench, in politics and in commerce. As in the colonial period, all the important offices were held by a clique. New arrivals in the province, particularly Mainlanders with more advanced political concepts, longed to challenge the favoured position of these Vancouver Islanders, hut they lacked cabinet representation and influence. In 1893, the new Theodore Davie ministry permanently “ anchored” the capital on Vancouver Island by commencing the construction of the “ marble palace” , the magnificent new government buildings. Three years later, when the Mainland swung its full political support to Laurier’s Liberal party, its action implied as much as anything else im­ patience with an outmoded provincial tradition. A t the time of the letting of the contract for the new Parlia­ ment Buildings, there was a furore over their cost— less than $1,000,000— but the province was still prosperous. On every side there were encouraging signs: the Miowera, the first ship of the new Canadian-Australasian line, had inaugurated regular passenger and freight service from “ down under” ; great deposits of silver and gold-copper ores had been discovered in the West Kootenay and the Boundary country; lead and zinc had been found in the Slocan; the Silver King Mining Company, with a capitalization of $2,000,000, had been incorporated to start opera­ tions on Toad Mountain near Nelson; the Nelson and Fort Shep­ pard Railway, which would deliver ores to American smelters, was under construction; and the province’s timber displays had attracted much favourable comment at the Chicago World Fair. But before 1893 ended, a financial crisis in the United States caused a drying up of capital investments. The first indication of recession came in Vancouver with the announcement of the Vancouver Electric Railway and Light Company, which had just put six new Brill cars on its inter-urban line, that service on the Powell Street and Fairview lines would have to be discontinued. Then followed the cancellation of orders for lumber and canned salmon; the stopping of construction work; the foreclosure of mortgages on “mansions” on Richards Street and Georgia Street (“blue-blood alley” , some people were beginning to call 312

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i t ) ; and the fall in real estate values. W ith dramatic sudden­ ness, the Vancouver boom had collapsed. The Hudson’s Bay Company store and most of the wholesale grocers weathered the storm; but the smaller stores on Cordova Street, which dealt in high boots and oilskins and other supplies for fishermen; or in boom chains, jackscrews, peavies, saws and the other needs of loggers; or in the flashy toggery which fisher­ men and loggers bought to wear during their holidays in the city, were forced into bankruptcy. That winter, attendance fell sharply at the fine new $200,000 opera house, where Sarah Bernhardt had appeared so recently; and all over the city, vacant houses bore testimony to the num­ ber of citizens who had left for the neighbouring state of W ash­ ington. By spring, there was such starvation and misery that the churches were forced to organize soup kitchens. Every day the unemployed sought sanctuary and warmth in the readingrooms of the public library in the new Y.M .C.A. building on Hastings Street, and every day the bar-rooms of “ Skid Road” , W ater Street, were crowded with hand-loggers, men who had previously made a profitable living working for themselves in the northern coastal forests, but who had now been forced to seek employment with some lumber company. In M ay, 1894, when the snow, after the most severe winter weather on record, finally melted, disaster was added to misery as the waters of the Fraser River rose to such an alarming height that they endangered the safety of the Alexandra Suspension Bridge and, by washing out the track in the Fraser Canyon, severed train connection with the East for forty-one days. In the Fraser Valley, the Great Flood ruined farms, drowned stock, swept away buildings and forced refugees to crowd into Van­ couver. That year, no crops could be planted on Chilliwack, Sumas and Matsqui prairies, for the receding waters had de­ posited salt-laden silt. And for months, the air of the Fraser Valley was heavy with the stench of rotting salmon. The hard times continued for five years. Out of them came the great business consolidations which were to become a feature of the economic life of the province. Into the control of large companies passed huge, reeking cannery sheds erected by fishing companies which had started business on a shoestring; by 1901, 313

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capital was so much consolidated in the fishing industry that six large firms produced 42 per cent of the catch.21 The same thing happened in the lumber industry. And by no means the least significant of the amalgamations and reorganizations were those which resulted in the emergence of the British Columbia Electric Railway Company, with control of the tramway and electric light systems of Vancouver, North Vancouver and Victoria. The appearance of the first Labour party in 1894 reflected the restlessness prevailing among the working-men during these difficult times. The Nationalist Party, however, which com­ menced with high hope and fairly well-defined principles, soon sacrificed its distinctive philosophy in order to join forces with the opposition in the legislature.22 The only consistent and effective criticism of the advantages obtained by “ boodlers” , who benefited from the dominant position of business interests in the government, came from the newspapers. A t Victoria, the Davie ministry which remained in office until 1895, when Davie succeeded Begbie as Chief Justice of the Su­ preme Court, fought the depression by chartering more railway lines. This government was more indulgent towards American subsidy-hunters than Robson had been, with the consequence that James J. H ill of the Great Northern Railway was able to extend his network into the most strategic areas of the province. The succeeding administration of J. H. Turner continued the same policy and added to it an advertising campaign which was intended to attract to the province farmers with capital. Bro­ chures, prepared by the government, so enchantingly described the delights of farming in Interior valleys where jade-green and Prussian blue lakes were stocked with trout, that retired busi­ ness men and farmers, as well as younger sons of noble English families, took note. Inspired by the enthusiastic words of Lord Aberdeen, the Governor General, settlers had already begun to purchase fruit ranches at Kelowna and at Vernon, in the neigh­ bourhood of the extensive properties which he had acquired in 1891. W hen the Canadian Pacific Railway added its own en­ dorsement of the beautiful Okanagan Valley, and advertised in glowing terms the excellent train and luxurious steamboat service which it provided there, the stream of immigration assumed new proportions.

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For a province so vulnerable to external economic influences, the programme of the Turner government could hardly be con­ sidered dynamic. Vancouver, which so badly needed economic aid and a new injection of confidence, was denied the assistance which would have permitted it to hold its own with Seattle. When, in 1896, British and American capital began pouring into the silver-ore and gold and copper-ore mines of West Kootenay, the “Terminal city” was still too stunned to seek a share in the trade of the northward extension of the “ Inland Empire” . Something of the wealth of this new mineral field had been known since 1882 when the Blue Bell silver-lead mine was dis­ covered on the Riondel peninsula, but as the Nelson Miner com­ plained, “ Though we piped to the world, the world would not dance to our music” .23 Part of the reason was that there was excitement elsewhere: silver-lead and zinc had been discovered in Slocan, coal in East Kootenay, copper near Phoenix and lode gold at Camp McKinney, Fairview and Hedley. A t first, only American prospectors from Montana, Idaho, Colorado and Washington showed interest in West Kootenay; then, in 1895, a sharp rise in the price of silver brought mining experts from all parts of the world. The boom started in 1896. Almost immediately, the town of Nelson, laid out by Gilbert Malcolm Sproat in 1887, which for a while had been “ short of frills, boiled shirts, parsons, lawyers and prohibition orators” but plentifully supplied with “mule skinners, packers, trail blazers, remittance men and producers, with a slight trace of tenderfeet” ,24 took on an urban and permanent character, as a British syndicate, headed by Sir Joseph Trutch (as he now was), poured capital into the Silver King mine. W ithin three years, the area was as famous as the Rand. And by 1898, the American capital which had opened most of the mines and built the first smelters was being replaced by British and Canadian capital. The rush to Red Mountain, where before long the Le Roi, W ar Eagle and Centre Star mines were opened and the town of Rossland laid out, and the rush to the Slocan, had something of the character of the rushes to the placer mines of Cariboo, Omineca and Cassiar. In its first years, Rossland had as colourful a floating population of Americans, “ Cousin Jacks” (Comishm en), Irish, Croats and Scandinavians as ever graced the camps 3 15

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of Idaho and Colorado. For these flamboyant and roistering prospectors, claim-jumpers and stock-manipulators, Sourdough A lley provided every kind of entertainment: prize fights in theatres; keno tables in gaming-houses; boa-feathered dance-hall girls; bars; and orchestras and bands which played round the clock. But it soon became apparent that Kootenay had nothing to offer the free miners: the day of pick and shovel, of pan and rocker was gone forever.26 For lode-mining required hammer and steel, drill and powder, mill and smelter; and only for ab­ sentee capitalists and their employees— geologists, mining en­ gineers, machine-operators and clock-punching wage-earners— was Kootenay the land of opportunity. As large-scale invest­ ment in expensive machinery and permanent plants increased, Rossland, like Nelson, became an urban community. The preponderant American population, while subscribing, like all members of British Columbia mining communities, to the respect for British law, retained former interests. The mili­ tant socialism of the Western Federation of Miners made its appearance; the current controversy in the United States over “ free silver” was a live issue; Bryan’s oratory in the election of 18g6 caused passionate torrents of approval— and sometimes, on the part of those who feared that a victory for bi-metallism would lead to the opening of low-grade silver-ore mines— tor­ rents of disavowal. Laurier’s campaign in 1896 caused hardly a ripple of interest at Rossland; and only old-timers in the YaleCariboo constituency saw any significance in Hewitt Bostock’s victory over John A. Mara. During the Kootenay excitement, the provincial government seemed to be interested in encouraging the building of any and every railway line except one from Kootenay over the Hope Mountains to the seaboard. Entry into the mines was therefore denied Vancouver merchants and brokers, for the Dewdney Trail was now in disuse and while access was possible from Revelstoke and Golden, transportation costs by this route were heavy. Meanwhile, “Fritz” Heinze, a copper magnate from Butte, was permitted to advance his plans to provide a smelter for Rossland ore at Trail Creek; and Daniel C. Corbin, president of the Spokane Falls and Northern Railroad, and owner of the Nelson and Fort Sheppard Railroad, was allowed to join Ross316

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land and Trail by track, commence the shipment of ore to the Trail smelter and direct commerce towards Spokane. Not to he outdone, James J. Hill, who had more than a little influence with the Turner government, elaborated plans to divert the wealth of the Kootenay and Boundary towards Tacoma. The Galt interests at Lethbridge, who had ambitions to annex the coal deposits of East Kootenay, hoped for similar favours. Spurred on by this competition, the Canadian Pacific Railway commenced private negotiations to acquire the smelter, railroad and railw ay charters of Heinze, and then, after almost endless delays, persuaded the provincial and federal governments to grant land and mineral subsidies for the extension of a line west­ ward from Lethbridge through Crow’s Nest Pass to Kootenay Lake. Some of the trade of Kootenay was now directed towards Calgary and Winnipeg. In spite of this disappointment, and in spite of further worry caused by the inauguration, after a visit paid by H ill to Japan, of regular trans-Pacific service from Japan to Seattle by the Nip­ pon Yusen Kaisha line, business men in Vancouver in 1897 and 1898 had a more expectant and confident air. The kaleidoscopic changes taking place in the province were almost incredible: before 1897 ended, Nelson, Rossland and Grand Forks became cities by complying with the provisions of the “ Speedy Incor­ poration of Towns A ct” ; and there was further talk about big “deals” in Kootenay: a British syndicate in which Lord Dufferin was interested was said to be willing to buy Le Roi for $4,000,000. Every day, crowds of investors and speculators crowded brokers’ offices to hear the latest reports and to learn the latest quotations on Le Roi, Josie, Ironmask and W ar Eagle at Ross­ land; on North Star and Sullivan in East Kootenay; on Payne and Slocan Star in the Slocan; on Granby at Phoenix; and on Nickel Plate near Hedley. Great things were expected both from Bridge River in the Cascade Mountains where lode gold had been discovered, and from Britannia Beach, the scene of a copper find. But the most exciting news of all came from the North, where, according to rumour, gold to equal the fabulous wealth of Cari­ boo had been found in frozen gravel in the Klondike and Atlin districts. Victoria, with its long experience of gold rushes, was quicker than Vancouver to sense opportunity: its merchants 317

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laid in stocks of clothing, canned salmon and other foodstuffs, tents, parkas and sleds, and the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company, remembering the rush to the Cassiar mines in the V o’s, announced a schedule of sailings through the Inland Passage to Skagway. By the time the bearded Cheechakoes and the Stetson-hatted women arrived at the capital, everything was in readiness. W ith the appearance of the first red-coated North West Mounted Police, a mining madness seized Vancouver citizens: supplies of staples were rounded up; dogs broken into harness; and keels for stem-wheelers and other boats laid in the False Creek shipyards. In 1898, every hotel and lodging-house was crowded to capacity; tents were pitched on every vacant water­ front lot; the merchants were prepared to offer free advice on correct Northern wearing-apparel; and stranger sights than ever before were to be seen on “ Skid Road” . Everyone from tea merchant to huckster prospered: smart new equipages made their appearance on the city streets; contracts were let for new mansions in the West End and for new business blocks in the heart of the city; and the newspapers increased their circula­ tion beyond belief. Although outpaced by Seattle and Victoria in the contest for the northern trade, Vancouver had started its climb back to prosperity. The upsurge of confidence on the part of business men was reflected in the provincial election of 1898. After three years in office, the Turner government, the government of special interests— of railway industrialists, coal-barons, wholesalers and importers, and lumber and salmon-canning capitalists— failed to win the support which for so long had been given to the “ Smithe Dynasty” . The results of the election were far from conclusive: of the 38 seats in the House, the Tumerites had won only 17; elections to fill two seats in Cassiar were still to be held; and 29 election protests had been filed. But on the Mainland, which had just been granted representation of 24 seats, a demand went up for the immediate dismissal of a government which was considered extravagant at a time of financial embarrassment (the public debt was over $8,000,000), reckless in alienating public lands, and possibly guilty of malfeasance.

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On August 8, the Lieutenant-Governor, Thomas R. Mclnnes, complied with popular demand. “For” , he explained to Turner, “as I would not feel justified in granting you another dissolution and appeal to the electorate, and as after a careful study of the situation I am convinced that you could not command a majority in the Assembly, I shall not put the Province to the delay, or to the expense, of a special Session of the Legislature, merely for the purpose of formally demonstrating what has been already sufficiently demonstrated to me by the General Elections” .26 Turner was more than indignant. The election was not yet completed, he insisted, and there was no evidence to support McInnes’s contention that “ the considered judgment of the country” was adverse to his administration. Certain negotiations were under w ay to strengthen the ministry, and these had been in­ stituted on the advice of the Lieutenant-Governor’s own son, who, as private secretary to his father, had written to explain w hy the Lieutenant-Governor was withholding his consent to certain orders-in-council. In a personal call on the premier, T. R. E. Mclnnes, claimed Turner, “went on to say that there was a method by which I could secure a strong Government, that owing to the fact that some parties who had taken a very active part against the Government in the late elections, being some­ what nervous now about the real position of affairs in the Prov­ ince, particularly with respect to the preponderance of Mainland influence and the consequent danger of the rights of the Island being neglected, they, or he, had arrived at the opinion that it would be well to back me up by support from some of the Mem­ bers who had been elected to support the Opposition; and he desired to let me know that his brother, W . W . B. Mclnnes, M.P., could carry out an arrangement of that kind” . W . W . B. Mclnnes was prepared to resign his seat in the Commons and enter local politics, and if given a seat in the Cabinet, “was quite sure he could bring over two of the present Opposition Island Members to m y support in addition to his own” . Instead of waiting for the completion of these negotiations, however, or allowing the premier the constitutional right to meet the legis­ lature, the Lieutenant-Governor had turned to Robert Beaven, “ a defeated candidate in the general election not yet concluded” , and invited him to form a ministry. “The course you propose” ,

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declared Turner, “ is without precedent in constitutional Govern­ ment” .27 These dramatic developments endowed politics with an excite­ ment which they had not had since the Walkem days. When Beaven acknowledged after four days his inability to form a ministry, Mclnnes turned to Charles A. Semlin, a cattle-rancher from Cache Creek, the leader of the Opposition in the last house. Semlin now had only eight supporters, and opposed to him were other factions, one led by Joseph Martin and the other by Francis L. Carter-Cotton. Both were men of stronger character than Semlin. “ Joe” Martin, a newcomer to the province, was brilliant but egocentric, headstrong and brusque. His earlier ministerial career in Manitoba had brought him notoriety for his stand on the separate schools issue and had resulted in his virtual exile from the graces of the Liberal party. Carter-Cotton, an Englishman, an able newspaper editor in Vancouver, was steady, deliberate and thorough, and a staunch supporter of the Conservative party. Neither had adopted a party label in the election, but both were thought to be anxious to introduce party lines into provincial politics. Only one thing was clear from the election: the people had repudiated government by entrenched interest. W hat they de­ sired to substitute was not apparent and whether they were ready or not to have party lines introduced, no one could tell. Semlin preferred to think that they were not. In constituting his ministry, he chose Martin for Attorney General and CarterCotton for Finance Minister. In this way, he hoped to overcome the threat of political disintegration and the complete suspension of public business. Before long, however, the smouldering enmity between Martin and Cotton turned into open hostility. Martin entered into his duties with gusto. But the measures which he so confidently presented during the session of 1899 as reforms aroused widespread criticism. A n eight-hour law for mine workers found favour with the working-men at Rossland, but so antagonized the mine owners that to avoid subscribing to it they closed the smelters. A n Alien Exclusion Act, designed to exclude Chinese, prevented all foreigners from owning placer­ mining claims, and brought such strenuous protests from Ameri­ cans in A tlin that Washington made representation to Ottawa 320

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and the federal government took steps to disallow it. In a burst of temper at a Rossland banquet, where civic officials and mining magnates brought undue pressure to bear on him to provide funds for a court house, Martin informed the assembled com­ pany that he would not be “ silenced by hobos in evening dresses” .28 During the recess, he violated the custom of cabinet solidarity, accused his own government of gross inefficiency, neglect and underhanded practices, and broke with Cotton. After a meeting of caucus in July, Semlin, whose patience had been exhausted, requested his resignation. Although the premier was able to reconstitute his ministry, he was informed by the Lieutenant-Governor that he must meet the legislature by the end of October or appeal to the electorate. Semlin stood his ground; refused; and was upheld by the Secre­ tary of State, who informed Mclnnes that “your Ministers are the proper judges of the time to summon the Assembly— keep­ ing, of course, within the year’s limit” .29 The session of 1900 was lively. Under the vigorous assault of Martin, the government, sometimes with a majority of one, sometimes by the casting vote of the Speaker, crawled along until, on February 23, it was defeated by a vote of one on its new redistribution bill. After obtaining the consent of the Lieutenant-Governor to a few days’ reprieve during which he would try to form a coalition, Semlin attempted to win the sup­ port of some members of the opposition. Then suddenly, on February 27, the Lieutenant-Governor, charging him with in­ efficiency and extravagance, demanded his resignation. That afternoon, after a long and bitter debate, the House condemned M clnnes’s action by a vote of 22 to 15. Mclnnes was now in a dilemma: he could hardly recall Turner; no one else could command a majority; and in his opinion the only person who could form a government was Martin, who was “ best able to meet the necessity of the situation, create decisive issues and establish final order. . . ,” 30 On Febru­ ary 28, Mclnnes called upon him. The response of the House was unambiguous: by a vote of 28 to 1, it carried a resolution of non-confidence “ in the third member for Vancouver” who had received this invitation. The vote was hardly taken before Mclnnes arrived to pro321

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rogue the House. Then, even for the British Columbia legisla­ ture, which had witnessed stormy scenes before, there followed an incident without precedent. As the Lieutenant-Governor entered the chamber, every member, with the exception of Martin and the Speaker, to the accompaniment of cheers from spectators in the gallery, followed James Dunsmuir into the corridors. Mclnnes lost his composure; then, regaining it, amid groans and hisses from the gallery, read his speech to empty benches. When he had taken an undignified departure, the members returned to be welcomed by cheers which “echoed be­ yond the bridge, to be heard and wondered at in the city, and rising in the nearer streets even above the roar of the fire­ cracker fusilade accentuating British Columbia’s joy at Lady­ smith’s relief” .31 Throughout the province, respect for all con­ stituted authority had suffered a sad eclipse. W ith energy and some ingenuity, Martin set to work to con­ struct a cabinet. W hat he produced was a motley collection: for Minister of Finance, a clerk in a general store (who was later replaced); for Provincial Secretary, “ an untutored farmer of Agassiz” ; for Commissioner of Lands and Works, James Stuart Yates, son of the member of the first Legislative Assembly for Vancouver Island; for Minister of Mines, Smith Curtis, his own former law partner, who had sat in the Manitoba legisla­ ture. The premier also attempted to obtain the support of the relatively new Provincial Liberal Association, an affiliation which would be necessary in order to introduce party lines in the province. But the Association, considering him persona non grata to Laurier, refused. A direct approach to Laurier brought the sharp rebuke that Martin had been remiss in not dismissing the House, and the order that he must appeal to the people without delay.32 A t the end of three months in office— during which he had not met the legislature— “ Fighting Joe” went to the country. W ith consummate skill, he had constructed a vigorous pro­ gramme for reform and for new public works, including a gov­ ernment-owned railway from the seacoast through the southern Interior of the province to the Kootenay mines. The opposition was strong: Senator W illiam Templeman of Victoria predicted that Martin would fail unless he sought an alliance with the

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faction led by James Dunsmuir or with the one led by Turner.33 In the opinion of Bostock, there were at least five competing groups— the “ straight Conservatives” , the Turner party, the Cot­ ton party, the Independent Liberals, the Independent Conserva­ tives, and Labour.34 The most startling development was the emergence of the United Socialist Labour Party with a far more radical philosophy and comprehensive programme than any Labour movement had previously put forward. The “ one-man party” fought a brilliant campaign— the first exciting one since 1871. But when the results were counted Martin had only 13 supporters. The Semlin faction had made an even poorer showing: only 6 were elected, and Semlin him­ self had not been able to win nomination in Yale. The Conserva­ tives had been strengthened by the fact that the Labour candi­ dates had reduced the vote of Martin’s supporters. M clnnes’s fate was tied to M artin’s. A t a meeting in V an­ couver on June 18, the majority of the members-elect, feeling that the Lieutenant-Governor on two occasions had exceeded his prerogative, accepted a resolution presented by R. G. Tatlow and Richard McBride requesting his dismissal. The LieutenantGovernor, a former Liberal Senator, considered that he had been condemned by a “ Conservative” convention. From the point of view of Mclnnes, the people had sustained his dismissal of Semlin.35 His difficulties, he wrote, had been compounded by the fact that “ there has not been, to m y know­ ledge, a Governor in Canada who has had such an utterly amorphous and self-seeking pack of politicians from which to seek a stable government as myself” . To Sir W ilfrid Laurier, he explained that “ the trouble is that at present we have about as many leaders, or would-be leaders, as followers. I need not go over the names of those in the old House who considered themselves pre-eminently qualified to become premier— it would include about one third of them” . The only one, he thought, who could unite the factions opposed to Martin— “ an unorganized rabble”— was James Dunsmuir.30 Instead of yielding to Mclnnes’s request that the legislature judge the wisdom of his action, Laurier, who was under some pressure from E. G. Prior, one of the British Columbia repre­ sentatives in the House of Commons, decided to intervene. On 323

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June 20, in reply to a telegram from Dunsmuir, he informed Dunsmuir that Mclnnes was dismissed and that his place would he filled by Sir H enry Joly de Lotbiniere, a man well informed on constitutional matters who had no connection with any of the bitter and antagonistic groups in British Columbia. W hen both the Victoria and the Vancouver Liberal Associations protested against the dismissal, the Prime Minister replied that the case was above the purview of mere party politics: “W e must have constitutional government in all parts of the Dom inion.. . . The ordinary methods of responsible government ought not to be departed from” .37 The outcome of the impasse was not above criticism. In the interest of attending to public business, which had been com­ pletely neglected for over a year, twenty-five members of the legislature had agreed to support for twelve months a repre­ sentative of an old Vancouver Island fam ily who, directly and indirectly, had political ties with the Smithe Dynasty. James Dunsmuir, charged Senator Templeman, really had no politics and “no party predilection, excepting for the party that w ill do most for him” . He would be the creature of every strong man at his elbow and easily swayed by T ory influence.38 Yet a breathing-space in the contest was necessary. The search for a strong man and for a man with a philosophy of government adequate for an expanding economy and an increasingly class-divided society, had failed. Underlying the war on the old system of political alignments based on tenuous personal pledges, was a determination to resist “ corporate ag­ gression” . More and more people were coming to believe that this could best be done by groups having the discipline that only party affiliation could give. The changes which had taken place in the fifteen years since the arrival of the first passenger train were startling. The prov­ ince now had almost 178,000 people. It had a great international seaport, the greatest mineral production of any province in Canada, a network of railways, hydro-electric plants, and great fishing and lumbering industries. But the benefits were un­ equally divided; the population was restless; and the Labour movement had obtained a momentum which would soon be re­ vealed in the outbreak of crippling strikes. The population was

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more predominantly British than ever before, but it was in­ filtrated by other strains, and the “ anti-Mongolian” demands being put forth by organized labour were reaching a peak of intensity. Disasters like the Fraser River flood, the collapse of the Point Ellice bridge in Victoria in 1896, and the destruction by fire of the whole business section of New Westminster in 1898 could unite the people; but in the ordinary workaday world, they were divided in their interests, their economic aims and their political ambitions. In other parts of the Dominion, Canadians wondered whether the province on the seaboard had any intention of adopting Canadian institutions and political values. As an old and embittered man, Gilbert Malcolm Sproat had a few comments to make to British Columbians in the last year of the old century: “ Most of your so-called ‘up to date’ men here, towards the close of this century, are in the category of political bats— yes, demme, Sir! ‘bats’. There is not, in some respects, any essential difference between the ‘then’ to which I refer— the ante piddling-premier period— and the ‘now’ that is more or less known to you. W e then had Mr. Facing-both-ways, the dog-visaged demagogue, the fluent fool and the arrogant ass, just as we now have those types, and always w ill have them. W hat I want to impress on thy subdued intelligence is that, until lately, the evil influence of these pests (who unfortunately have real power) was largely counteracted by the strength of the men at the head of affairs, and by the tactful firmness of the district officers of the old school. Now, alack! we have piddling premiers, a civil service queerly recruited or with its heart taken out, and, in consequence, those dangerous libertines above referred to— all the more dangerous because some of them are honest— are brought face to face with the business men and investors, on whom the existence, or, at any rate, the industrial progress of the country depends” .39

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“The Peoples Dick ”

T he City of Certainty

Chapter 12

A SAFE INVESTMENT NO MORE "IFS "