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ITE: |
EN YEARS ago, a Pacific Tyib-

- Une Wri
4 Amor pa looking for the grave of
Ogg © Cosmos in Victoria’s

S Bay
ding the Cemetery had difficulty in

2 Which eected grass grown plot
: mt ay a commemorative
Bel © grave

Belategh, © as since been res :
Combi eS its contribution to Batch
58 ang wig ennial celebrations in
Commun; a hint of concern that

Cos Sts Were trying to “claim”
aed the ,.° Victoria Colonist reno-
itor ja, POt in which its founding
ME to 5. wled. But little has been
Raines to sr, ve full measure of his
® to br; 2 € man who led the strug-
Ration “Sh Columbia into Con-

fs his retirement from

Undarieg op ayed in establishing the

© Pacig ee Ca i

c nadian state on

‘ateg , east Was already being ob-

ea a if first of a succession of
ally ‘tnments ushered _ in,

Sion Bh, by the economic ex-
ig And w en posible by Confedera-
M his errr’ died, on July 4, 1897
= peuitical opponent,

: 0 Ty, Who ha
ited Stat of British he othe
we Canad €cause he saw no future
Wits, 99 State, was constrained

oo few p,
me } 2a 4 score of: men at the
Ming from Reel of a dozen men
a the praya,, Wooden sidewalks
aye? asker voYatd some 20 or 30
e - Owered. This was the
te, ® Whom 40 oe to Amor De
’ intta ee, Section Es po .
fought pocted a hero, a soa
€mancipation, im-
and welfare of the

hi € came to ]
= a close,
Was Of the a orth American gold
: ae to the Klondike,
The and Pe omc pulse of
Man bolifornia, had lured a
n William Alexander

fap j

Ny earl; Inds

r or .

Broce eT. a Cae Scotia, 26

ay g ‘ave his job in a Hali-
: ae ali
kin rang to ne 1851 and make his

Ba © gold-fields. There,

a
lat nged pot O8tapher, he had his
te to Ret of the California
mers, De Cosmos—Lover
Soi 0
8 vant Besture
Phil » yet one ex-

i ‘ng h ;
Blslati Seat in nee a his first elec-
Counci). ancouver Island

aa Name to

i Dlacg ie is re Be remembered

; : aoe ed to a second-
Sort Was ; y, it is because
Nutra Of >in Helmcken’s words,

i
@q py: Clalist” :
i WwW
Th Bees times, hose ideas far

rite ieee Tush, to the Fraser
0 * Coty bie usht De Cosmos
: aScon in 1858. H
"ef, pean Who had tee
Sie 2 Situa jonttion of Joseph Howe
N: .1 to rekind i
' Politics. slag

SAGE
nde, ly haq arlier the Hudson’s Bay

e
rant a Compelled to sur-
the whole of Van-

and b
’ Ut t
Was bot, OUSh James Doug-

la Pany thes
nd,” and Chief fact
ae 20 or for the
Atil jgse "or of Vancouver

> It continued to hold

82, the part Amor De’

sway, retarding settlement and ignor-
ing the grievance of the colonists.

With the discovery of gold, thou-
sands of men poured into the wildner-
ness of British Columbia, pushing the
frontiers back, rearing settlements, cre-
ating the beginnings of new lumber and
coal industries.

With them too, came: new ideas, con-
cepts of freedom and self-government
that brought them into direct conflict
with Douglas, who relinquished his post
as chief factor of the Company only to
become the no-less autocratic governor
of both Vancouver Island and British
Columbia, determined not to yield any
part of his powers to the “lower or-
ders.”

In Amor De Cosmos and the British
Colonist he founded at Victoria in 1858,
the new colonists found their most con-
sistent spokesman.

Dubbing Douglas, his handpicked ex-
ecutive council and supporting office
holders the Family Company Compact,
De Cosmos kept the regime under con-
stant attack. Exasperated, Douglas
sought in 1859 to silence the paper by
ordering De Cosmos to post a £1,000
bond or cease publication. He proved
only the strength of De Cosmos’ sup-
port, for the bond was posted by popu-
lar subscription.

Defeated twice by trickery when he
stood, in 1859 and 1861, for election to
the council, De Cosmos expounded his
political program in a leaflet announc-
ing formation of a Reform League en-
closed with the British Colonist of May
24, 1861.

He called for a liberal franchise act,
proper and impartial registration of
voters and an elective council and con-
sequent responsible government, de-
claring:

“In short, the League will endeavor
to obtain a reform of all existing abus-
es and to procure for the inhabitants

by
HAL GRIFFIN

Journalist, author and poet

of the Colony such an amount of ra-
tional freedom as they have never
enjoyed in it, but to which all British
subjects are entitled, and to which for-
eigners also ought to enjoy ina British
Colony.”

The reformers won their first electo-
ral victory in 1863 when De Cosmos
and some of his supporters, campaign-
ing for union of the two colonies, were
returned. Within three years, follow-
ing Douglas’ departure from office in
1864, and De Cosmos’ victory in a by-
election fought on the issue of union in
1865, the two colonies were united.

The greater struggle was still to
come. Douglas, while striving to hold
the colonies for Britain, had strained
the loyalties of the colonists to the
limit by denying responsible govern-
ment.

Now the colonists were divided by
contending forces. :

To the south, the forces of Manifest
Destiny were talking of annexing Brit-
ish Columbia to the Union and closing
the Pacific coast to Britain, and they
had strong sympathy among the mer-
chants of Victoria, which had been a

free port until 1866.

AMOR DE COSMOS

To the east, the Canadas and the
colonies of the Atlantic seaboard were
still striving to resolve their differenc-
es and create a new state in North
America. But the east was remote and
access to its markets uncertain. And
Britain, upon which the colony depend-
ed, at times seemed almost indifferent.

Against the clamor of those oye
for annexation to the U.S. and the fom-
placency of the colonial clique, De Cos-
mos infused the popular movement
with his own vision of one country
stretching from sea to sea.

In March 1867, the legislative coun-
cil unanimously adopted his resolution
calling for immediate admission of Bri-
tish Columbia into Confederation on
fair and equitable terms. The British
North American delegates in London
demurred. The colony must wait until
the Hudson’s Bay Company’s territo-
ries had been acquired.

Undeterred, the Confederationists
took their case back to the people. In
a series of public meetings they de-
monstrated that, in the words of a reso-
lution passed at a Victoria rally in Jan-
uary 1868, public opinion was “over-
whelmingly in favor of Confederation.”
The only opposition came from Sa
small party in favor of annexation to
the UnitedgStates” and another small
party to ich “nearly all the office
holders of this colony are allied.”

In Victoria, hoWever, the forces op-
‘posing Confederation now had as their
spokesman the Colonist, no longer
owned by De Cosmos, which filled its
editorial columns with such _ pro-
annexationist statements as:

“The people, disgusted, disheartened
and all but ruined, are loud in the ex-
pression of a preference for the Stars
and Stripes.”

At this critical point, the Confedera-
tion League was formed in May 1868.
Its strongest support came from the
miners of the Cariboo, where a school
teacher from Ontario, John McLaren,
editor of the Cariboo Sentinel at Bar-
kerville, was its secretary.

‘Their big pro-Confederation rally at
Barkerville on July 1, 1868 was the
prelude to the representative conven-
tion held at Yale on September 14 at
which 26 delegates, De Cosmos among
them, declared that “.. . the govern-
ment does not exist by the free and
just consent of the governed and is,
therefore, a despotism,” and ‘‘whether
admission into the Dominion of Can-

ada shall occur or not, representative
institutions and responsible govern-
ment should be inaugurated forthwith
in British Columbia.”

In Victoria, the colonial party and
the annexationists had also been busy.
They contrived to defeat De Cosmos in
his Victoria seat at the next election
and to push a resolution through the
new council, dominated by govern-
ment appointed members, asserting
that entry into Confederation was ‘“‘un-
desirable, even if practicable.”

It was their last victory. From Otta-
wa, Sir John A. Macdonald wrote to
the British government, advising it to
replace Governor Frederick Seymour in
British olumbia and stating:

“Now that the Hudson’s Bay Compa-
ny has succumbed, and ii is to their
interes? to make things pleasaut with

the Canadian government. they will, I

have no doubt, instruct their people to
change their anti-Confederate tone. We
shall then have to fight only the Yan-
kee adventurers and the annexation
party proper, which there will be no
difficulty in doing if we have a good
man at the helm.”

The annexationists made one final
appeal to the United States, in the
form of a petition to President Grant,
but the course toward entry into Con-
federation was set.

With the entry of the colony into
Confederation on July 1, 1871, De Cos-
mos could well recall his speech in the
assembly three years earlier.

“From the time I first mastered the
institutes of physical and_ political
geography,” he said, “I could see Van-
couver Island on the Pacific from my
home on the Atlantic, and I could see
a time when the British possession,
from the United States boundary to the
Arctic Ocean, and extending from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, instead of the
United States owning Alaska, it would
have been British today .. .”

De Cosmos was to win new politica!
honors; to be elected both to the new
legislative assembly at Victoria and the
House‘of Commons at Ottawa, and to
become the second premier oi British
Columbia.

So long as the terms of Confedera
tion remained unfulfilled, the coalition
that fought for Confederation held un-
easily together. Completion of the rail-
road opened the way to new fortunes
in lands and lumber, coal and metals,
shattering the old political alignments
and discarding the old leaders

With the rise of a labor and socialist
movement, Sir James Douglas, the au-
tocrat who opposed responsible gov-
ernment, waS a more acceptable
“father of British Columbia” than
Amor De Cosmos, the radical who teld
the legislative council on Merch 10
1870:

“A little blood letting, however, does
no harm occasionally. I would not ob-
ject to a little revolution now and again
in British Columbia after Confedera-
tion, if we were treated unfairly, for I
am one of those who believe that poli-
tical hatreds attest the vitality of a
state.”

Or Amor De Cosmos, the visionary
who defended the Paris Commune in
his Victoria Standard, writing on May
23, 1871:

“|. The names of Rouge, Red Re-
publican, Communist scare men, not
only in France but abroad. But the day
will come when the principles of the
ill-fated rebellion of Paris will be ex-
tolled to the skies.”

June 30, 1,967—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 5

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