Talk:United Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia

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[edit] United Colonies name

I've been putting off creating an article for each of the colonies - which IMO should be the way this is configured; the United Colonies were never called that during their own period, and IMO that term surfaced only in recent times. I'd put off creating the articles before because I didn't have it clear which was the Crown Colony and which was the Colony; I think it was VI that was the Crown Colony and I meant to look up the legal distinction between the two as far as the name-difference goes. The Crown Colony of Vancouver Island should have its own article 1849-1866, and the Colony of British Columbia should have a split article 1858-66 and 1866-71 (i.e. one article two sections).

As the "United Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia" was never an official name it's highly dubious it should be used as the title for a page. More later; haven't had my coffee yet....Skookum1 18:40, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Skookum1, for your input. Upon reflection, I agree that the Colony of British Columbia should have its own separate entry. If you create the article, I will amend this one accordingly. I do think that this article should remain, since the two colonies functioned as one administrative unit from 1866-71. Hence, while it may not have been an official title, it was a functional one and the affairs of the colonies were handelled as one. Fishhead64 22:01, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

But 1866-1871 was ONE colony, not two. The affairs of the mainland colony were handled from Victoria 1858-1866 but according to different procedural and constitutional parameters; and those were different than post-1866. Vancouver Island should definitely be its own colony page; maybe the BC page could be both 1858-66 and 1866-1871 because the names were at least the same.Skookum1 23:25, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I must disagree with you on this point. Please note that the colonies were legally united by an Act of the British Parliament on August 6, 1866, hence creating an entirely new entity. I don't know what this legal entity was popularly called during its lifetime, but I suppose some research would uncover the wording of the specific Act (see the entry for Frederick Seymour in the Canadian Dictionary of Biography Online). Hence the need for a separate article. The affairs of the two colonies certainly overlapped between 1858-66, but they had separate administrations, and were legally two separate entities, hence my suggestion that an article on the Colony of British Columbia be created that will cover the years 1858-66. However, again, after 1866, British Columbia and Vancouver Island ceased to exist as distinct colonial units. To conflate the united colonies post-1866 with the Colony of British Columbia pre-1866 would be, imho, misleading from a legal and functional standpoint. Fishhead64 23:46, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

This is why I thought there should be three articles......and AFAIK the legal name 1866-1871 was simply British Columbia. The problem, then, is how to distinguish 1858-66 from 1866-71; it could be that the latter was a "Crown Colony" vs the plain old "Colony" of the former. Currently all these are boiled down with the various BC lists such that the L-Gs page has Seymour and Douglas listed there, which of course they shouldn't be. There was an L-G in colonial BC, I think, but only from 1866 onwards; that aside it's also worth commenting that the list of "Governors" in fr.wikipedia.org lists those for the Columbia District (the fur district based on Ft Vancouver) as if they were Governors of a political entity rather than a corporate one. Nomenclature's a sticky business and I know there are Wiki parameters of some kind to use here; which I'll have to study before commenting further I guess.Skookum1 23:53, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

You are correct, I looked up the 1871 Act of Union and that was the name of the colony. As I said upthread, perhaps you or I could create an article on the Colony of British Columbia, and I will amend this one accordingly. Deal? :) Fishhead64 00:01, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

OK; kind of requires I get my ass in gear with finishing the McGowan's War article and getting about the Fraser Canyon War and Douglas Trail articles, too, which are all tied together and which I've been putting off for a LONG time; also the REs in their BC manifestation (there's already an RE page but much wider in context than their relatively obscure service in BC). Maybe the title of THIS page could be "United Colony of ...." ?? Depends on what you find in the way of names used; I have Morton's book on early politics so maybe there's a useful term in there; I'll re-read those chapters later tonight.00:10, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Working Text

I'm not sure whether this should be here or in a sandbox page, but this is posted here towards deconstructing it and revising it:

The Colony of Vancouver Island had been created in 1849 to bolster British claims to the whole island and the adjacent Gulf Islands, and to provide a North Pacific port at Fort Victoria.

reworked: The Crown Colony [or Colony?] of Vancouver Island was created in 1849 to secure the British claim to the island and the adjacent Gulf Islands in the wake of the Oregon Treaty of 1846, by which Britain had surrendered the mainland south of the 49th Parallel and the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the United States. The location of Victoria had been chosen in 1843 to prevent an American-claimed partition of Vancouver Island at the 49th Parallel, and in 1849 because of its strategic advantages (because of the many excellent harbours near the site and coal deposits farther up-island). Located near Victoria were also ideal for the expanding Royal Navy presence in the Pacific which would also be the guarantor of the new colony from an American filibuster.

Notes on changes: had been/was = passive vs. active. Bolster or secure...or manifest or ?? "Secure" seemed best. Added mention of the Oregon Treaty and the surrender of the Columbia District to give context to the act of securement, i.e. the Colony was created so that the area was not an unincorporated possession, as was now the Mainland ('til '58). Ideally this paragraph should mention that it was a relocation of Company regional HQ from Ft Vancouver to Ft Victoria too, but this paragraph is alreayd at eight lines when it was originally two....didn't want to spell out Esquimalt Harbour and Sooke Basin but could; the RN was just new on the scene and the terms to use here are "anchorage/harbour/harbourage" rather than "port", which implies a hinterland to export things from; in reality between Esquimalt, Nanaimo and Fort Rupert the Royal Navy's main interest here was coal and spar-timbers; this was a strategic naval base and resupply depot, not a port. Worth remembering about the expanding British naval presence in the Pacific that this was the era of the Opium Wars, the Australian Gold Rush and (a few short years later) the Crimean War. I used the term "filibuster" in its archaic sense and no doubt it should be changed; in this era it meant something like a mercenary - a freebooter hired to expedite a political/military campaign, usually on behalf of American interests or American annexationist drives (as with Texas and California), or specifically US adventurist regiments in Central America; a term Douglas and Begbie used in that mode; not sure what to call it now; "agitationists"?Skookum1 16:37, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

2nd parag reworked: By the mid-1850s, the colony's non-First Nations population was between 500 and 1000, most of these concentrated around Victoria but some also at the coaling stations at present-day Nanaimo and at Fort Rupert, on far nothern Vancouver Island. The mainland area of present-day British Columbia, Canada was an unorganized territory under British sovereignty until 1858 and, other than HBC employees, is not known to have any significant number of settlers until then. The mainland was under the defacto administration of the Hudson's Bay Company, and its regional chief executive, James Douglas, who also happened to be Governor of Vancouver Island. The mainland was informally given the name New Caledonia, after the fur-trading district which covered the central and northern Interior west of the Rockies, although the boundary between the New Caledonia and Columbia Fur Districts was nominally the Thompson River.

Notes on changes: added bit about Nanaimo and Fort Rupert. cdn spelling of organized. There may have been some settlers and others; e.g. Frank Gott of Lillooet, b.1850 in that place, was the son of a Captain Gott and a St'at'imc woman (Capt Gott's origins are unknown), so there must have been pre-gold rush non-HBC presence in the mainland; probably overland from the US/California but not otherwise recorded in any local histories. Defined the New Caledonia proper vs the accustomed use of it for the mainland as happened to emerge.

3rd parag reworked: All this changed with the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858-59, when the non-aboriginal population of the mainland swelled from only about 150 Hudson's Bay Company employees to an estimated 30,000 prospectors, speculators, land agents, merchants and hangers-on. The British colonial office acted swiftly, and the Colony of British Columbia was proclaimed on August 2, 1858.

Notes on changes: 58-59, not 57-58; non-aboriginal population was HBC staff only, as their families were native/halfbreed. Pop. estimate is over 30,000, not c.20,000. The rest of this I'm going to have to consider the wording so as to keep it brief: the Colonial Office did NOT act swiftly, and only grudgingly heeded Douglas' unilateral (and unauthorized) declaration of a colony on the mainland, which was hastily convened to thwart American annexationist filibustering in the goldfields, which were not possible to militarily secure due to their location. Douglas' declaration on Aug 2, 1858 was only retroactively endorsed/approved by the Colonial Office (see Hauka's book Ned McGowan's War).Skookum1 19:53, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

PS if the Colonial Office had acted "swiftly", they would have declared a colony or colonies immediately in the wake of the Oregon Treaty, and also ignored HBC/Douglas' efforts to discourage settlement.Skookum1 19:59, 21 May 2006 (UTC)