JAMES DOUGLAS, governor of

both Vancouver’s Island and
the newly created mainland col-
Ony of British Columbia, picked
up the new paper that had just.
appeared in Victoria. It was
Called the British Colonist and

this first issue was dated De- v4

Cember 11, 1858. * aye

As he read, his face became
taut with anger. This was more
than a rival to the Victoria
Gazette, until now the colony’s
Only newspaper; it was a chal-
lenge to his whole colonial poli-
£y. In trenchant style and with
frequent personal reference, the
editor and publisher, Amor De
Cosmos, denounced the policies
of the Hudson’s Bay Company
and attacked the autocratic rule
Of Governor Douglas himself, no
longer the company’s chief fac-
tor but indisputably still the
CoMmpany’s man.

Beyond the cedar palisades of
Fort Victoria, Douglas could see
lew buildings, the sprawling
tents and cabins of the men who
had invaded the company’s do-
Main, following the lure of gold
from Galifornia to the Cariboo
and changing the sleepy trading
Post into a lusty young city.

Out of long experience the men
Who decided the policies of the

Udson’s’ Bay Company and
Shaped the destiny of a wilder-
Ness empire had known this must
Come, as it had already come in
the Canadas. ‘Through Douglas,
for 14 years their chief factor
8t Fort Victoria, they had striv-
fn to delay its coming. ‘But
Now that, it had come they were
determined to dominate it, to
eate a new monopoly from the
Y that was being destroyed.

The first threat to the com-
Bay's absolute sway, challeng-
Only by the American traders,
4d come in 1849.
ect year, alarmed by Ameri-
“n expansion in the West, \the
ce government sent Rich-
‘Blanshard out to be the first
S0vernor of the new colony of

®Ncouver’s Island, Douglas re-
] a

AMOR DE COSMOS

‘fused to provide him with a resi-

dence, denied him even the 100
acres given to an ordinary set-
tler and charged him 300 per-
eent above London prices for
everything he bought at the
company’s store. ’

At the end of two years,
thwarted’ by Douglas at every
turn and unable to get a sympa-
thetic hearing from his own gov-
ernment, Blanshard resigned.
Apprehensive over the impending
departure of the one man who
had supported their opposition
to the company, the colonists
sent a petition to the company
voicing their fear at being leit
to “‘so tyrannical a rule.”

Skilfully the company had
adapted its policy to the changes
being forced upon it by events.

In 1851, Douglas became gov-
ernor of Vancouver's Island, at
the same time retaining his posi-
tion as chief factor, To the ac-
tual powers of the company he

added the legal powers of col-
onial government as vested in
a council of three appointed by
Blanshard. Two of the council-
lors, Douglas himself and John
Tod, were company employees
and only one, James Cooper, an
opponent of the company’s poli-
cies,

‘Settlement was discouraged by
the fact that the company had
reserved for itself all land with-
in 10 miles of Fort Victoria.
Colonists had to take land, at
£1 an acre, beyond the com-
pany’s limits,
fort which was at once their
protection and their only source
of supply.

The second threat to the com-
pany’s continued rule had come
in 1856 when Lord Taunton,
secretary of state for the col-
onies, had informed Douglas
that the smallness of the popu-
lation no jlonger justified his
ruling with the advice of a hand-
picked council alone. In a ges-
ture intended to appease the
discontented colonists, he had
instructed Douglas to convene a
representative assembly.

The Fraser -- river of history

J#RoucH the centuries the mighty Fras

Tier at Yale unknown travellers carved th
@m the earliest form of Runic writing. The highly
Borges to trade with the Indians of the coast. Simon
"S mouth in 1808. And fifty years later the gold
Navigation, overland to the Cariboo.
mked the Indians’ trails to carve the historic Cariboo Highway,
the modern Cariboo Highway at Yele.)

Ploneering,

(Below,

er River has served as a highway. On cliffs high above the
zir inscriptions which scientists have tentatively identified as Og-
-ultured Thompson Indians traversed its cliffs and
Fraser was the first white man. to descend the river to

seekers made ‘their way from Yale, the head of
In the years immediately following, 1859-63, the Royal Engineers
one of the greatest feats of Canadian

away from the:

Columbia’s
forgotten |
democrat

By HAL GRIFFIN

Douglas bent the order to the
company’s ends. His council de-
cided that ownership of £300
worth of freehold property
should qualify a candidate for
the assembly and that owner-
ship of 20 acres of land should
qualify an €lector. Absentee
‘owners were empowered to vote
through agents,

Douglas declared himself as
being ‘“‘utterly averse to a uni-
versa] franchise,’’ and the coun-
cil’s ruling, in effect, denied the
franchise to the majority of
company employees and the coal
miners at Nanaimo. Only. in
Victoria, where five candidates
contested three seats, was there
any semblance of a free election,
candidates in other electoral
districts being little better than
company nominees. When the
assembly, the first west of Upper
Canada, met on August 12, 1856,
it was scarcely more than an
extension of the old company-
dominated council. But a prin-
ciple had nonetheless been est-
ablished.

With quiet satisfaction the
burly 53-year old governor re-
ported to Lord Tauton that “the
affair passed off quietly and did
not appear to excite much in-
terest among the Jower orders.”

e

This assembly, dominated by
Douglas, who zealously exercised
his governor’s right to pass on
all its measures, was still in of-
fice when a young man, born
William Alexander Smith and
calling himself Amor De Cosmos,
landed in Victoria late in 1858.

One-of the thousands drawn
to the colony by tales of the
gold to be found in the Cariboo,
De Cosmos had _ been living
among the miners in the Cali-
fornia goldfields, earning a liv-
ing by photographing miners on
their claims. There, in a tur-
bulent atmosphere, he had learn-
ed to understand and respect

the democratic strivings of men

who had come from every coun-
try, some fleeing oppression,
some seeking adventure, and all
jealous of their rights. To the
ideals imparted by his boyhood
idolizing of Joseph Howe, the
Nova Scotia reform leader, was
now added the leavening of his
own experiences.

Born in Windsor, Nova. Scotia,
on May 19, 1825, and reared in
the reform tradition, he may
have envisaged himself as ful-
filling in- British Columbia the
role played by .Howe through
his paper, the NoOvascotian, and
by William Lyon Mackenzie
through his Colonia] Advocate.

Within a few days of his land-
ing in Victoria, De Cosmos
launched the British Colonist
which, from its first issue, be-
came a popular tribune for the
grievances and demands of those
whom Douglas contemptuously
referred to as the “lower
orders,”’

Concluded on next page

Pages from
De Cosmos’
| Newspapers

On discrimination

OVERNOR Douglas “is again
“ behind the age in which he
lives. He has issued a proclama-
tion, affording facilities for the
naturalization of foreigners, but
with an illiberality, worthy of a
bigot, he has excluded members
of the Jewish profession from
it. ... We had hoped the age of
religious persecution had passed
away or that, at least in a new
country, a part of Her Majesty’s
domains where perhaps, above
all others a tolerant and con-
ciliatory policy ought to be ob-
served, a spirit and conduct of

liberality. would have actuated |
the representative of Her Maj- |
esty’s government. . .. Let us re-

member how. ‘unfortunate it is

for this, a young colony of Eng-

land, ‘to have the stain of relig-

ious bigotry and _ persecution
fastened upon it.

—British Colonist,

May 28, 1859.

On the Paris Commune

F any rational conclusion at all

can be drawn from the Paris
revolution, it is that the prin-
ciple of the revolutionists will
sooner or later succeed; and that
France, in spite of Legitimists,
Orleanists and Bonapartists will
in all probability become the
first permanent and well-order-
ed republic among the great na-
tionalities of Europe.

Bad as the conduct of the Par-
isians may appear today, yet
they are really educating all
Europe up to the higher notions
of the true principles of human
government. The anarchy will
be suppressed, but the principles
of*the anarchists will live and
make converts in every nation
in Europe, The world will yet
have much to thank the French
revolutionists for, though it may
now generally condemn them.

—Victoria Standard,
April 19, 1871.

HE news from Paris indicates
that the Versaillists are mak-
ing steady advances on the Par-
isian Communists.
... The reaction is setting in too
strong, and the probabilities are
that the Republic of September
1870 will disappear like that of

February ’°48 — only to be re-
vived at some more auspicious
period. Revolutions don’t go

backwards. nowadays. Hence the

future will benefit by the ter-

rible struggle Paris and France
are now passing through.

—Victoria Standard,

May 2, 1871.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JUNE 27, 1952 — PAGE 9