;
bi
:

"© The Old Fort at Nanaimo, built by the Hudson's Bay Com-
pany to protect the first coal mines on Wenthuysen Inlet (now
Nanaimo Bay) and completed in 1853.
Indian chief who told the company about the outcroppings, had
his musket repaired “without charge’ and. received as presents a
bottle of rum and a second hand beaver hat.

“Coal Tyee,” the

A FULL century ago, in

1852, the first coal pit was
opened at Wenthuysen Inlet
(the name given by the Span-
ish explorers to Nanaimo
Bay) to found a fortune for
the Dunsmuir family — and
the proudest working class
tradition in British Columbia.
In those one hundred years,
five generations of Nanaimo
¢oal miners, through strike
struggles and political bat-
tles, have created a new Cana-
dian tradition from the mili-
tant trade union heritage of
the first English miners.

"As the story goes, an In-
dian chief paddled his canoe
from Wenthuysen Inlet to
Fort Victoria in the fall of
1850 to get his musket repair-
ed by the blacksmith at the
Hudson’s Bay Company’s
post. Watching the black-
smith put coal on his fire, the
chief asked him where he got

the ‘‘black stones.’ The
blacksmith replied that they
were brought across the sea
in a big ‘ship.

‘The chief laughed. If the

white men were as clever as
they pretended to be, he said,
they would not bring the
black stones across the sea
where there were plenty of
them here. The blacksmith
took the Indian chief to a
company official, J. W. Mc-
Kay, who promised him that
his musket would be repaired
“without charge” if he would
bring a canoe load of coal to
the fort.

It was nine months before

One hundred years of coal at Nanaimo

the Indian chief returned —
but he brought with him the
coal he had promised. Com-
pany officials examined it
eagerly, for they were al-
ready mining coal at Fort Ru-
pert (now Alert Bay) and
were looking for new sources.
They found it to be a good
quality of bituminous coal
and, from the Indian’s de-
scription,..far more plentiful
than the outcroppings at Fort
Rupert.

James Douglas, the Hudson’s
Bay Company’s chief factor,
sent J. D. Pemberton, his
chief surveyor, to Wenthuy-
sen Inlet to investigate the
coal deposits and when he re-
turned to report enthusiastic-
ally on the coal outcroppings
he had found at the water’s
edge, McKay was sent im-
mediately to take possession
of the coal lands in the name
of the Hudson’s Bay Com-

pany,

The Indian, who became
known as “Coal Tyee” and
was a familiar figure around
Nanaimo until his death in
1881, had his musket repair-
ed ‘without charge’ and re-
ceived an occasional present
from the company, such as a
high beaver hat formerly
worn by Governor Douglas!
This for a coal field, which at
the time Nanaimo celebrated
its diamond jubilee in 1934,
had produced one hundred
miltion tons of coal, accord-
ing to William Bennett in his
book, Builders of British Col-
umbia.

Two French Canadian axe-
men, Leon Labine and Jean
Batiste Fortier, built a bastion
for the Hudson’s Bay Com-
pany (known as the Old Fort,

- coal at Fort Rupert.

it is still standing in the
town) and the _ settlement
was officially called Coalville
Town.

The first pit was opened in
1852 and arrangements were
made to bring a group of
coal miners out from England
ander contract. From the time
of their landing at the settle-
men on November 27, 1854, -
after .a six months voyage
around Cape Horn aboard the
barque, Princess Royal, the
city of Nanaimo dates its be-
ginnings, From that time
too, the miners date their
struggles against the bitter
exploitation, first of the Hud-
son’s Bay Company and then
‘of the Dunsmuir concern —a
story that is told in Tom Mc-
Ewen’s Hei Wrote For Us: The
Story of Bill Bennett, Pioneer
Socialist Journalist (Tribune
Publishing Company, $1).
eo ;

Before the discovery of coal
at Nanaimo; the Hudson’s
Bay Company was mining
There
five Scottish miners conduct-
ed what was probably the first
strike in British Columbia.
Brought over to dig coal, they
rebelled when they found
they were expected to look
for it.

In September, 1849, they
started a slowdown strike
and when one of them—all
were named Muir and related
—was accused of being 4a
trouble-maker they downed
tools. Four of them were
jailed, two in solitary confine-
ment, but they held out for
their demands and eventually
won their freedom.

ntl

British Columbia’s forgotten democrat

Continued from page 9

The influence of the earlier
Reformers was reflected in his
pointed description of Governor
Douglas, his government and
the Hudson’s Bay Company as
the Family-Company Compact.
He directed his first attacks at
the company’s claim to the town-
site of Victoria. Earlier in the
year, setting its policies to the
times, the company had sold
Vancouver’s Island (as it was
ealled until union with British
Columbia in 1866) to the British
government for £57,500. But its
retention of the fort property
at Victoria, a large number of
town (lots and thousands of acres
beyond the city was bitterly as-
sailed by settlers.

Chafing under the constant at-
tacks of the British Colonist,
Douglas sought for a means of
silencing De Cosmos. The Vic-
toria Gazette, published by three
Californians, held scant popular
appeal both because it supported
Douglas and because feeling
against the United States over
the San Juan boundary dispute
was running high in the colony,
Cynically, Douglas used the
Gazette to label De Cosmos a
“whitewashed American,” in-
sinuating that the Colonist’s pub-
lisher must have been a natur-
ized citizen in order to get his
name changed from Smith to De
Cosmos by act of the California
legislature. “It is a malignant,
envious, black-hearted lie,’’ De
Cosmos retorted.

The Colonist continued to get.

the best of the exchange and

_ Services.

Douglas tried to suppress it. He
ordered De Cosmos to post a
£1,000 bond or cease publication.
But so great was the popular
resentment against Douglas that
the paper’s supporters rushed to
put up the bond and De Cosmos
triumphantly resumed publica-
tion.

e

In the 1859 election, however,
De Cosmos fell a victim to what
he called Douglas’ ‘‘wily dip-
lomacy.”” De Cosmos ran as a
candidate in Victoria, coming
out strongly in the Colonist
against those who wanted to
segregate Negroes at church
There was no color
line in heaven, he held, and
there should be none on earth.

When George Carey, attorney
general and one of his oppon-
ents, made the extraordinary
ruling that a group of Negroes

recently arrived from Califor-
nia were not citizens of the U.S.
or any other country and must
therefore be assumed to be Brit-
ish citizens entitled to vote, De
Cosmos made no objection. He
felt sure he would have the
Negroes’ support. But Carey’s
ruling had not been dictated by
altruistic considerations. What-
ever means he used, bribery or
intimidation, when the poll was
held, by open vote, each of the
Negroes in turn declared for De

' Cosmos’ opponents.

Again, in the 1860 election,
De Cosmos was defeated by
trickery. He contested the elec-
tion as “Smith called De Cos-

mos,’ but one of his supporters
unthinkingly voted. for “De Cos-
mos” and on that technicality
his election was ruled out.

In the following election Or
1863, not all of Douglas’ con-
niving could prevent De Cosmos
from being elected, and two
years later he strengthened his
position by resigning his seat
over the issue of union with
British Columbia and challeng-
ing C. B. Young, his chief op-
ponent, to test their Views at
the polls. His opponents, in
their determined campaign to
defeat him, bought out the Even-
ing Express, which favored De
Cosmos, amalgamated it with
the Vancouver Times, and in-
duced the editor of the Chronicle,
a man named McMillan, to quit
his post for a $3,000 considera-
tion and make way for an editor
who would support their views.
Despite all this, De Cosmos was
re-elected.

After union of the two col-
onies in 1866, De Cosmos carried
forward the fight, in the legis-
lature and outside it, through
the Confederation League,
among the people, ‘towards the
entry of British Columbia into
Confederation, towards the mak-
ing of a nation, crowning his
own career as premier of British
Columbia and the first member
of parliament for Victoria.

.

Amor De Cosmos was not one
of the Fathers of Confederation,
but no man better deserves the
title. '

Historians have tried to make
an imposing figure of James
Douglas, the autocrat, the anti-
democratic company man con-
cerned above all with preserv-
ing the privileges and wealth of
the Hudson’s Bay Company and
the corrupt ‘“‘first families.’

The same _ historians have
sought to detract from the truly
great stature of Amor De Cos-
mos -as a democratic figure.
Pointing to what, they consider
his inconsistencies and arguing
that he lacked the qualities of
a true tribune of the people,
they have belittled his accom-

plishments, left his vision of an

independent ‘Canada buried in
old newspaper files. They have
made much of his romanticism,
especially his change of name.
(De Cosmos’ own explanation
was that every other man in
California seemed to be named
Smith and he chose Amor De

Cosmos—Lover of the World—.
-4S a‘name that expressed his

Philosophy and one that no
other man would have.)

De Cosmos expressed his
times but with a vision that ex-
ceeded them. He dared not op-
pose the prevailing sentiment,
for exclusion of Chinese from
B.C., but he dared to speak up

for the Negroes, to oppose -slav-:

ery, to denounce Douglas for
discriminating against Jews.

He could speak of the Paris
Commune in the Victoria Stand-
ard (May 31, 1871):

“. ,. The nantes of Rouge, Red
Republican, Communist, scare

men, not only in France but
abroad. But the day will come
when the principles of the i
fated rebellion of Paris will be
extolled to the skies.”

And in his last speech in the
House of Commons, on April
21, 1882, 44 years before th@
Sitatute of Westminster — #
speech for which he was derided
in Victoria as “the nation’
maker’? —- he spoke out for 2%
independent Canada:

“I am one of those who be-
lieve that this country should
have the right to negotiate it
. commercial treaties. I go a steP
farther, I believe this counttY
should have the right to nego
tiate every treaty . . . I see 1°
reason why the people of Cat
ada should not look forward © —
Canada becoming a_sovereis™
and independent, state. .

“The right hon, gentlemal™
stated that he was born a British
subject and hoped to die on@ |
Sir, I was born a British coloD-
ist but I do not wish to die ®
tadpole British colonist. I 4°
not wish to die without having
all the rights, privileges and im
munities of the citizen of 4
nation.”’

Brave words, those, and they
would be no more popular today
in Ottawa, but for a differeDl
reason, than when they were
made,

They may well be remembered
by the people of British Colum
bia this Canada Day and on July
4, the 55th anniversary of D®
Cosmos’ death.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JUNE 27, 1952 — PAGE 10