HEN tthe story of

British Columbia
_ comes to be written,”
88 it will, not from tHe’
standpoint of those who
Seized its wealth but those
who produced it, the names.
of Yale and Hope will loom
large in its telling. In these
two little Fraser Valley towns,
Jumping off points along the
ld Cariboo trail, the province
had its industrial beginnings and
the struggle for representative
Sovernment found its first ex-
Pression. And this year and
next they are celebrating their
centenary—the founding of Fort
Hope in 1847 and Fort Yale
in 1848,

oi his Letters from America,
2 eh Brooke remarked of
anada, “It is an empty land
= : there are no ghosts here.”
ut Yale is full of ghosts.

ake are the shadowy fig-
as of those unknown explor-
3 who travelled down the
ae Canyon centuries before
ai aaa and left on a
Biystay 100 feet above the river
éthn, gus inscriptions which
Ologists who have examined
oS raty. as Ogam, the ear-
orm of Runic writing.

auras are the more tangible
at S of the last century when
of pe was a city of thousands
oc pone with hotels and board-
ne parce for the miners flock-
aa the Cariboo, stables for
Shope and oxen, blacksmiths’
mills and one of the first flour
in the province.

oe tourist camps have re-
sal hotels’ long since torn
7] highw and forgotten along a
need that still follows the
Engine, Toad built by the Royal
neighbo. Unlike Hope, its
is th r down the river, which
© thriving center for some

" People, Yale has dwindled to
Py little Village of three
ur hundred population

0
Croo 2
\ Bien In the elbow of the

a slee

ad and the highway to.
A in existence now that
hausteg -8Tavel bars are ex-
a and the sternwheelers
_ at come up the Fraser.
tivey ty dying orchards on the
akelets, nks, the few weathered
eSeanea a of buildings that have
moe he wrecker’s bar, alone
of its colorful past.

i
Oa are some who remem
Place Mae Yale was still a
steamer «7° importance and the
ad of Tan to Emory’s Bar, the
er a5 navigation on the Fras-
ae on distance down river.
Woman eco is an old Indian
Om I found painstak-

ing] :
inittin Washing wool for later
oS . Into sweaters in a house

he little white church.
Were - I first came here there
Tivey» Cf people along the
Shrugees © said. “Now... she
ing, an her shoulders, observ-
ferar doesn’t make much dif-
ence to’ us.”
I .
Mentioned the Native Bro-
and asked her if the
there belonged to it.
Some = brightened. “Yes,
Where °,” she replied. “Back
’ Ple bey Come from all the peo-
Brother® to it. We hope the
Tor yan Sod will do something

oO

FES

jer
°
°
Rp

er e

See Neath het ee

The
Th

e. Th

yeti

hu

ay eal] yin ul
IN RITBE

heverseennelt

rere

Yale has completed a cycle,
from a jumping off point for
the gold rush to a_ stopping
off point for tourists, and
without industry or agriculture
to sustain it the future can nev-
er be as bright as the past.
The Native Indian people, as
they have elsewhere, have suf-
fered most, for the gold rush
that opened the mainland of
British Columbia to develop-
ment stripped the river bars
of the gold they used for trad-
ing and looked on as their own.
No one, then or now, has sug-
gested that they have a right
to compensation.

“The younger ones work in
the logging camps,” the old
woman said. “We fish, make
blankets and sweaters, do odd

jobs. Our children go to board-
and

ing school at Kamloops
Mission.”
“The essential difference is

that they are organizing now
to demand equality of educa-
tion (only 24 Indians attended

high school last year) as a
means of obtaining the other

equalities they seek without
surrendering privileges that are
theirs by right.

nu
me
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i
Remnant

Britain’s plan in India
N estimation of the new status . Page 10

big Alberta oil steal
€ farmers hold the bag
© anti-vivisectionists again
lence feature by Dyson Carter

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TTT VU UAL TU

OW much of ‘the story is.

told when the centenary is
celebrated next summer depends
upon the participation of the
Native Brotherhood and_ the
IWA, which has a large mem-
bership in the camps around
Hope and sends a representative
to the organizing committee.

Henry Johnson, who -was
born on the homestead at Haig,
across the Fraser River from
Hope, where his father located
in the nineties, has an idea that
the committee in charge of the
celebration should re-create an
Indian village as it was when
the first Europeans came _ to
retrieve Indian art and culture
from the museum and place its
achievement before the thous-
ands of people the celebration
is expected to attract.

“Naturally, we don’t want any-
thing that will savor of de-
grading or exploiting the In-
dians,” he told me. “But there’s
a lot in Indian art that should
be revived and encouraged be-
fore it is forgotten.”

Johnson, who is the driving
force behind the committee, also
has an idea of staging an his-
torical play, somewhat along
the lines of the Theater Under
the Stars, if he can get the
assistance of the more progres-
sive-minded artists in Vancou-
ver. The story that play should
portray is one of the first strug-
gle of the people of British Co-
lumbia for their democratic
rights.

TS men who flocked to New
Caledonia in 1858, making

their way up river to Yale aud

thence overland to the Cariboo,
were strongly imbued with a
sense of their own rights. They

‘came from the United States

with a vigorous heritage of
their own revolution. They came
from England, Scotland and

Treland with their living tradi-
tions of liberty. They came tco,
from the countries of Europe
resenting anything that smack-
ed of the oppression they had
fled.

Some were adventurers, seek-
ing only to find along the Fra-
ser River the easy fortune they
had failed to find in California
and when the gold rush ended
they’ were gone. The others re-
mained to build a country.

They found an empire of na-
tural wealth, which men like
James Dunsmuir were presently
to usurp for themselves, peo-
pled only by a few whites, for
the most part company offi-
cials, and Indians. They found
the Hudson’s Bay Company in
absolute control, a law unto it-
self, ruling over a vast area
end jealously guarding its inter-
ests. Its one purpose was to
exploit the wealth for the bene-
fit of its distant shareholders
and to exclude from the terri-
tory all whose intrusion constit-
ed a threat to its continued
rule.

The influx of thousands of
miners~ challenged that rule and
signified the end of an era. For
half a century, beginning with
the establishment of Fort Mce-

_Leod by Simon Fraser in 1808,

the company had_ successfully
maintained its monopoly. It
could and did discourage settle-
ment. But it could not hold
back the tide of development
that swept in with the gold
rush.

Victoria in 1858 became a city
of 20,000 people. Fort. Langley
and Yale counted their tran-
sient populations by the thous-
ands. Barkerville, in the sixties,
was a city of 55,000, second
only to San Francisco.

The Hudson’s Bay Company
had fought for ten years to hoid
back the gathering democratic

&

by HAL GRIFFIN. ——

‘ernment that obtained

sent'ment for representative zgnv-
strong
reintorcement from the men
trought into the new colonies
by the gold rush.

In 1849 Richard Blanshard was
appointed governor of Vancocu-
ver Island, not with any inten-
tion of giving the colony more
representative government but
in order to tie it more closely to
the British crown. The Oregon
koundary dispute of 1846 had
a'armed the British government
and Earl Grey, then secretary
of state for the colonies, him-
self asked: “What would the
company do to avert this dan-
ger from a tide of democracy
rol‘ing north?”

James Douglas, chief factor
for the Hudson's Bay Company
at Victoria, had his own ideas
for dealing with “this danger
from a tide of democracy”
which, within the colony, had
come principally from the coal
miners at Fort Rupert, on the
northeast of Vancouver Island,
and . independent settlers. He
wanted no _ interference, even
from the British government. If
there had to be a governor, he
preferred to hold the ‘reins of

office for himself.

EN Blanshard reached

Victoria in March 1850 he
found that no preparations had
been made for his coming and
he had to make his headquart-
ers aboard the HMS Driver
which had brought him to the
colony, so that “for some time
thereafter the government head-
quarters were migratory.”

The Hudson’s Bay Company
officials tried to ignore him
and where this could not be
done, to discourage him.

He had been promised 1000
acres of land before he left

(Continued on page 12)