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British Columbia is Canada's most westerly province, and is a mountainous area whose population is mainly clustered in its southwestern corner. BC is Canada’s third-largest province after Québec and Ontario, making up 10 per cent of Canada’s land surface.
The colony of British Columbia was founded in 1858 in response to the Fraser River Gold Rush. (See also The Fraser River Gold Rush and the Founding of British Columbia.) The colony established representative government in 1864 and merged with the colony of Vancouver Island in 1866. In May 1868, Amor De Cosmos formed the Confederation League to bring responsible government to BC and to join Confederation. In September 1868, the Confederation League passed 37 resolutions outlining the terms for a union with the Dominion of Canada. The terms were passed by both the BC assembly and the federal Parliament in 1871. The colony joined Canada as the country’s sixth province on 20 July 1871. The threat of American annexation, embodied by the Alaska purchase of 1867, and the promise of a railway linking BC to the rest of Canada, were decisive factors.
The year 1858 is the single most important year in British Columbia’s history. It was on 2 August of that year that an imperial act established the mainland colony of BC under the authority of Governor James Douglas. Beginning that spring, the Fraser River Gold Rush unleashed a chain of events that culminated a dozen years later in British Columbia joining the new Canadian Confederation (see British Columbia and Confederation). Without 1858, it is very possible there would have been no British Columbia, but rather an American state. Without 1858, Canada today might not extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
From the perspective of Britain with its vast empire, the area that is now British Columbia counted for little. It was too far away and of too little value to interest the mother country. The future British Columbia’s settler population had stagnated at under 1,000. The Oregon Treaty with the United States in 1846 gave the future province to Britain, but apart from declaring Vancouver Island a colony in 1849 and handing it over to the fur-trading Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) to administer, nothing much ensued.
British Columbia is divided by two of Canada’s seven physiographic regions. These regions are the Cordillera and the Interior Plains. The vast majority of the province is in the Cordillera region, while the northeast corner is part of the Interior Plains.
The Cordillera is part of a mountain system that extends the length of the western third of North and South America. The Cordillera mountain system covers most of British Columbia. It consists of two main mountain ranges. These ranges are the Coast Mountains in the west and the Rocky Mountains in the east. Other significant mountain ranges in British Columbia’s Cordillera region are the Columbia Mountains and the Cassiar-Omineca Mountains. Both ranges are west of the Rocky Mountains. The Columbia Mountains are in the province’s south-east corner while the Cassiar-Omineca Mountains are in the north.
The coniferous trees of coastal British Columbia are the tallest and broadest trees in Canada. Douglas fir, western cedar, balsam fir, hemlock and Sitka spruce grow very well in the mild, wet climate. They are the basis for the province’s forestry industry. Similar trees, plus lodgepole pine, ponderosa pine and aspen, grow on the middle slopes of the interior mountains and plateaus. In contrast, the Coast Mountains and the lower river valleys across the southern third of the province have a drier climate. The drier climate creates grassland in these regions.
The earlier part of the province's history was marred by racism, particularly the anti-Asiatic riots of 1907 and the Komagata Maru incident of 1914. Stirred up by politicians of all parties, fears were rampant that British Columbia's future as a "white province" was threatened. The population of Japanese and Chinese was less than 40,000 in 1921, but their concentration in the Lower Mainland and southern Vancouver Island, combined with the restricted forms of employment available to them, made them conspicuous.
ABORIGINAL HISTORY
The coasts and interior valleys of British Columbia were first occupied sometime after the last Ice Age. Occupation of some sites in BC has been confirmed by carbon dating at about 6,000–8,000 years ago. The people of the Northwest Coast lived in autonomous villages of 200 to 1,000 people and had access to a particularly bountiful environment that provided abundant shellfish, salmon and even whales. Groups living along the coast used a variety of fishing tools and techniques, and used forest resources to build large and sophisticated plank houses. The coastal people concentrated along the lower reaches of the major salmon rivers. These groups developed an elaborate culture typified by totem poles and the potlatch (see Tagish; Tsimshian; Haida; Tlingit; Kwakiutl; Nootka; and Native People: Northwest Coast). The interior inhabitants, such as the Carrier, Interior Salish and Kootenay were generally nomadic and depended on hunting. Those groups living in the Subarctic region of the interior generally fished and hunted moose and caribou, while those living in the southern interior had a milder climate. The availability of salmon made it possible for the groups living in the southern interior to winter in small villages.
From 1860 to 1890 Victoria, the capital, was the main administrative and commercial settlement, and the supply centre for interior and coastal resource development. Vancouver, on Burrard Inlet north of the mouth of the Fraser River, was selected as the site for the western terminal of the CPR in 1886. Vancouver soon replaced Victoria as the commercial centre and became the main port for both coastal and interior products to move to world markets.
The Spanish had established a trading post at Nootka Sound and seized British ships there, and in 1789 Spain and Britain had a dispute over the ownership of West Coast North America. This Nootka Sound Controversy was settled by the Nootka Conventions of 1790–94, which did not determine ownership, but gave equal trading rights to both countries. (Ed Note : See Utrecht Court Decision (1788 : England vs Spain)
British claims were strengthened after 1792 when ships under George Vancouver carried out a careful three-year mapping of the coast from Oregon to Alaska. Vancouver named many of the bays, inlets and coastal landform features. In this period of worldwide European colonialism, there was no concern among European governments and businessmen that this area was already occupied by Aboriginal peoples.
In 1793 the first European report about the interior of BC was made by the North West Company fur trader Alexander Mackenzie. He entered the region from the east via the Peace and Upper Fraser rivers, and explored westward across the Chilcotin Plateau and through the Coast Mountains to the long inlet at Bella Coola.
Two other members of the North West Company, Simon Fraser and David Thompson, explored other parts of the interior early in the 19th century. They established the first permanent European settlements in the province, which were fur trade posts supplied from Montréal. In 1808 Fraser reached the mouth of the river which now bears his name, and in 1811Thompson found the mouth of the Columbia River after exploring the river routes of southeastern BC.
For about 50 years, while eastern North America was being occupied and settled by European agricultural people and dotted with commercial cities, the mountainous western part of the continent remained little-known territory on the fringes of fur-trade empires controlled from eastern cities.
During the first half of the 19th century the British-owned Hudson’s Bay Company controlled the western fur trade, including the area of present-day Washington and Oregon. In the 1830s American settlers began to move into the southern part of this region, and refused to recognize the authority of the British company.
Conflicting territorial claims were settled in the 1846 Oregon Treaty, which established the southern boundary of BC along the 49th parallel, with the exception of Vancouver Island. In anticipation of this result the HBC had moved its headquarters to newly-established Fort Victoria in 1843.
In 1849 the British government granted Vancouver Island to the HBC for colonization, and in 1851 James Douglas, an official of the company, became governor of the new colony. In 1856 Douglas established a legislative assembly for Vancouver Island. At mid-century the only non-Aboriginal settlements within the boundaries of present-day British Columbia were fur trade posts on the coast, such as Victoria, Nanaimo and Fort Langley, and in the interior, such as Kamloops, Fort (later Prince) George and Fort St. James.
This relatively quiet period of history ended in 1858 when gold was discovered in the sand bars along the Lower Fraser River. The ensuing gold rushes brought thousands of fortune hunters from many parts of the world, but mainly from the California goldfields. Many fortune hunters came by boat from San Francisco, crowding into inadequate facilities in Victoria to buy supplies and receive permits.
Prospecting took place upstream along the banks and bars of the Fraser River during 1858. The town of Yale was established as a trans-shipping centre at the south end of Fraser Canyon, and as the eastern end of water transport from the Fraser River mouth. Gold seekers walked the tributaries of the Fraser River and major gold finds were made east of Quesnel.
The boomtown of Barkerville arose at the western edge of the Cariboo Mountains as the chief service town for the Cariboo goldfields. At its peak in the early 1860s Barkerville likely held a fluctuating population of about 10,000, making it the largest settlement in western Canada at that time.
In order to establish government and maintain law and order around the goldfields, the British established a separate mainland colony of British Columbia in 1858 under the authority of James Douglas, who also remained the governor of Vancouver Island. The new settlement of New Westminster, located slightly inland on the north bank of the Fraser River delta, was proclaimed capital of the new colony in 1859 and controlled river traffic entering the Fraser River en route to the interior. In the early 1860s the amazing feat of building the Cariboo Road along the walls of the Fraser Canyon was accomplished in order to move supplies to interior settlements.
In 1866, with gold production declining and people leaving, the British government united the two colonies to reduce administrative costs. New Westminster was the capital of the combined colony for two years before protests from the older capital, Victoria, resulted in the seat of government being moved there in 1868. The resulting physical separation of the capital from the majority of the people and economic activity on the mainland later led to communication problems for the region, and many government services and offices had to be duplicated on the mainland.
After 1867 the British colony on the West Coast debated whether it should join the new Confederation of eastern provinces known as Canada. In 1871 the 12,000 non-Aboriginal residents of BC agreed to enter the Dominion of Canada on the condition that the federal government build a transcontinental railway to link it with the eastern provinces. The federal government agreed, but the new province waited, rather impatiently at times, for 15 years before the Canadian Pacific Railway reached the southwest coast. (See also British Columbia and Confederation.)
The union with Canada was an unhappy one at first. The new province ran heavily into debt; the cost of governing a large mountainous area with few people was very high, and revenues from resource users were low. More than one-third of the province's white residents lived in or near Victoria. Even by 1881 the white population of 24,000 was less than the estimated 25,000 Aboriginal peoples.
The hoped-for expansion of trade with East Asia did not develop immediately with the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885. However, the railway did bring people to the port of Vancouver and by 1901 that city had surpassed Victoria in population. Vancouver's population of almost 27,010 in 1901 had been reached within 15 years, whereas after 58 years of occupation Victoria had only 23,688 people.
Around the turn of the 20th century entrepreneurs came to British Columbia to exploit the province's vast resources. A salmon-cannery industry was established along the coast. There were sawmills all around the shores of Georgia Strait and particularly along eastern Vancouver Island, and the first pulp and paper mill was completed at Powell River in 1912.
The major expansion of the forest industry came, however, after the First World War when the Panama Canal opened and gave access to markets around the north Atlantic region. Since access to capital and natural resources for export was more important than ownership of farmland, BC attracted a different type of settler from those who settled on the land on the Prairies and across eastern Canada.
In interior BC in the 1890s the major resource development and settlement centred on the mining activity in the Kootenay region of the southeast. Prospectors, mainly from mining camps in western Montana and Idaho, moved northward along the valleys and discovered gold and base metals in the area west of Kootenay Lake. Mining camps sprung up in the Slocan Valley, at Rossland, near Grand Forks and elsewhere. Nelson became the main service, supply and administrative centre, with a population of about 4,500 in 1911.
Railways extended northward into the interior from the US, and the CPR built a line westward through the Crowsnest Pass in 1899 to bring coal from Fernie to smelters in the mining centres. By about 1914, however, many of the mines had closed and some towns were abandoned, although other mines opened in later years. The extension of the Kettle Valley branch of the CPR to the coast during the First World War came after the peak of mining activity in the Kootenay region.
Agriculture brought settlers to the south-central interior. At the time of the early 1860s Cariboo Gold Rush ranching was established in the grassland valleys and rolling basins across the southern interior plateau. Irrigation was developed west of Kamloops and in the northern Okanagan Valley early in the 20th century. Irrigation for orchards that spread south from Vernon aided settlement projects for returning soldiers after the First World War (see Veterans’ Land Act).
The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway west from Edmonton through the Upper Fraser, Bulkley and Skeena valleys was built in 1907–14 and was intended to give Canada a second gateway through the mountains to the Pacific coast. After the railway was built Prince George became a minor sawmill centre, with rail access eastward to the growing housing market in the Prairie provinces. However, the port and rail terminal at Prince Rupert never developed the anticipated volume of traffic, partly because there was little need for incoming freight. Despite its hopes, the small town remained mainly a fisheries centre.
International political upheaval during 1930–45 and the resulting loss of world markets led to a serious economic decline in BC’s resource-based activities. After about 1950, however, the improved transportation system did much to integrate the interior resource economies and settlements with coastal collection, processing and management centres.
Representative government is a political system in which an elected assembly governs. Members of the assembly act as the people's representatives in government. Canada's provinces and territories obtained representative government in different ways and at different times.
Colonial Government
Colonies settled by Britain have a long tradition of representative government. These colonies accepted that they should only be governed and taxed either by the British Parliament or a colonial elected assembly. In colonies conquered by Britain from other nations, the British Crown might legislate as it pleased; however, once colonies were promised or granted an assembly, that privilege could be taken away only by the Parliament in London.
Atlantic Canada
Colonies in what is now Canada were granted assemblies in a number of different ways, and every assembly had different powers. Nova Scotia was the first British North American colony to be granted representative government — its assembly opened on 2 October 1758. Prince Edward Island would see its first elected assembly open in 1773, four years after separating from Nova Scotia. In 1784, following the influx of Loyalists, New Brunswick was separated from Nova Scotia and given representative institutions of its own. In 1832, after considerable debate in Britain, the governor of the colony of Newfoundland was instructed to summon an assembly.
Ontario and Québec
In Ontario and Québec, today's representative institutions rest on statutes. The colony of New France, after being conquered by the British in 1763, was promised representative government. However, when the British Parliament passed the Québec Act of 1774, the colony came under the rule of a governor and an unelected council. A second British statute, the Constitutional Act of 1791, split the colony into Upper and Lower Canada, each with an elected representative assembly. A third statute, the Act of Union of 1840 (proclaimed in 1841), reunited the two Canadas and established their parliament. A fourth statute, the British North America Act of 1867, created Québec and Ontario and laid the foundation of their present provincial assemblies.
Western Canada
The British colony of Vancouver Island had an assembly from 1856 to 1858. However, British Columbia's modern legislative system evolved from a different representative assembly, granted to the newly-formed colony of British Columbia in 1866.
Representative government arrived later in the Prairie provinces and the northern territories. In 1870 the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa created Manitoba out of former Hudson's Bay Company lands, granting it a representative assembly. When the validity of the Manitoba Act was questioned, the British Parliament the following year empowered Ottawa to create provinces out of the same lands. The old North-West Territories (then centered in what is now Alberta and Saskatchewan) received a fully elective assembly in 1886 by federal statute (see North-West Territories Act). Not until 1905 were the separate provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan created within Confederation, each with their own elected assemblies.
Parliament established the Yukon Territory in 1898 and made its territorial council fully elective in 1908. The Northwest Territories council, created in 1905, became partly elective in 1951 and fully elective in 1974. Nunavut received its own elected assembly when that territory was created out of the eastern half of the Northwest Territories in 1999. If history is a guide, these territorial councils are the forerunners of provincial assemblies. The conversion of representative into responsible government occurred over varying periods of time as circumstances permitted or dictated in a particular province.
(See also Provincial Government, Territorial Government, Nunavut and Confederation, Northwest Territories and Confederation, Yukon and Confederation, British Columbia and Confederation, Alberta and Confederation, Saskatchewan and Confederation, Manitoba and Confederation.)
REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
Representative government is a political system in which an elected assembly governs. Members of the assembly act as the people's representatives in government. Canada's provinces and territories obtained representative government in different ways and at different times.
Colonial Government
Colonies settled by Britain have a long tradition of representative government. These colonies accepted that they should only be governed and taxed either by the British Parliament or a colonial elected assembly. In colonies conquered by Britain from other nations, the British Crown might legislate as it pleased; however, once colonies were promised or granted an assembly, that privilege could be taken away only by the Parliament in London.
Atlantic Canada
Colonies in what is now Canada were granted assemblies in a number of different ways, and every assembly had different powers. Nova Scotia was the first British North American colony to be granted representative government — its assembly opened on 2 October 1758. Prince Edward Island would see its first elected assembly open in 1773, four years after separating from Nova Scotia. In 1784, following the influx of Loyalists, New Brunswick was separated from Nova Scotia and given representative institutions of its own. In 1832, after considerable debate in Britain, the governor of the colony of Newfoundland was instructed to summon an assembly.
Ontario and Québec
In Ontario and Québec, today's representative institutions rest on statutes. The colony of New France, after being conquered by the British in 1763, was promised representative government. However, when the British Parliament passed the Québec Act of 1774, the colony came under the rule of a governor and an unelected council. A second British statute, the Constitutional Act of 1791, split the colony into Upper and Lower Canada, each with an elected representative assembly. A third statute, the Act of Union of 1840 (proclaimed in 1841), reunited the two Canadas and established their parliament. A fourth statute, the British North America Act of 1867, created Québec and Ontario and laid the foundation of their present provincial assemblies.
Western Canada
In 1843 the Hudson's
Bay Company sent James Douglas to
Vancouver Island to select a site for a fort, and a small settlement at the
southern tip developed around Fort
Victoria. The Treaty of Washington (1846; see Oregon
Treaty) established the Island as British territory; it was made a British
crown colony in 1849. Vancouver Island united with the mainland BC colony in
1866, and the united colony entered the Dominion of Canada as the province of
British Columbia in 1871.
The British colony of Vancouver Island had an assembly from 1856 to 1858. However, British Columbia's modern legislative system evolved from a different representative assembly, granted to the newly-formed colony of British Columbia in 1866.
Representative government arrived later in the Prairie provinces and the northern territories.
In 1870 the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa created Manitoba out of former Hudson's Bay Company lands, granting it a representative assembly. When the validity of the Manitoba Act was questioned, the British Parliament the following year empowered Ottawa to create provinces out of the same lands. The old North-West Territories (then centered in what is now Alberta and Saskatchewan) received a fully elective assembly in 1886 by federal statute (see North-West Territories Act).
Not until 1905 were the separate provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan created within Confederation, each with their own elected assemblies.
