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Now Britain’s demand for an apology and restoration of the
seized property Was in fact a demand for recognition of British
trading rights in the North Pacific.

Spain, confident In its alliance with France, refused the
British demand. But France was quickening with revolution
aod tho ugh soon it must defend that revolution against’ British
reaction, it was not prepared for war over a Pacific outpost
remote from French interests, Spain was compelled to retreat
and in March, 1791, Captain George Vancouver was sent
to Nootka to accept the Spanish surrender.

_ Eight years later, by the Nootka Convention of 1799,
which also Fecognized Russia's claim to Alaska, Spain aban-
doned all its interests in the North Pacific.

Russian expansion in the North Pacific, which began
with the voyages of Commander Vitus Bering and Captain
Alexis Chirikov in 1741 and was consolidated by a century
and a quarter of occupation of Alaska, left a more enduring
imprint on North America. ‘At its height Russian influence
reached tenuously down the Pacific coast to California, and
Russia, under a ukase issued by Tsar Alexander I, claimed
all fur-hunting and fishing rights in the North Pacific, for-
bidding foreign ships to come within 100 miles of the coast

south to 51. degrees — roughly the northern tip of Van-
couver Island.

But, as Spain reluctantly conceded earlier, Russia ulti-
mately could not sustain its ambitions for a North Pacific
empire against the rival pressures of Britain, striving to se-
cure a Pacific coastline, and the United States, rapidly ex-
panding into the wilderness the Hudson’s Bay Company had
long regarded as its own, .

Both by sea and overland from the east, British-Canadian
and American interests pressed their rivalry. Vancouver s
circummavigation of the island that now bears his name,
during which he explored Burrard Inlet but failed to dis-
covet the Fraser River, was matched by the American Cap-
tain Robert Gray’s discovery of the Columbia River by sea.
At the same time, in 1793, Alexander Mackenzie reached
the Pacific overland at Bella Coola. Lewis and Clark’s expedi-
tion down the Columbia to the sea in 1805 to establish for
the US. the rights of Gray’s discovery had its counterpart
in Simon Fraser’s journey down the Fraser in 1808 to streng-
then British claims to the Pacific coast.

‘Over the nearly three-quarters of a century between
the Nootka Convention of 1799, the purchase of Alaska by
the U.S. in 1867 by which Russia surrendered its North Ameri-
can rights, and British Columbia’s entry into Confederation
in 1871, this conflict shaped the present political boundaries
of the North American Pacific coast.

The shadow of this conflict lay heavily across British
Columbia at its very beginning as a colony. Beneath it the
colony grew to become'a province of Canada. And as Canada
asserted its independence and assumed the conflict so the
shadow of U.S. domination lengthened until now it falls
upon the farthermost Arctic island.

The threat of U.S. expansion. shaped the formation of
the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, It
determined the sites of their first cities, Victoria and New
Westminster. The capital of British Columbia was moved from
Fort Langley to New Westminster in order to place the nat-
ural barrier of the river between it and the border although
as Captain John Palliser wrote in his report to the British
government, “the site of the town is very disadvantageous,
on account of the size and denseness of the timber, causing
the clearing of it to become a matter of enormous expense ... +
In the years 1866-1871, the threat of U.S. expansion was a
decisive factor in the entry of British Coulbmia into Con-
fedeation. And, in one form and another, it has continued
to influence the development of the province.

As a result of this conflict, Oregon Territory was lost
to the future Canadian nation in 1846 when the US. Con-
gress. echoing the expansionist slogan of “54 40° or fight
with which Democratic President James K. Polk had swept
the election. of 1844, abrogated the agreement for joint
US.-British occupation of Oregon, Now, a century later,
we are feeling the full consequences of the political line
drawn across the Columbia River, which Britons and Cana-
dians largely explored, when Britain accepted the 49th paral-
lel as the international boundary.

The Alaska Panhandle, which bars the northern half of
British Columbia from its natural coastline and denies the
Yukon Territory direct access to the Pacific, is likewise the
product of this conflict. The Panhandle had its origin in the

This plaque at Bella Coola commemorates Alexander
Mackenzie’s historic journey to the Pacific in 1793.

efforts of the Russian American Company to restrict com’
petition from the Hudson’s Bay Company. The only import-
ance of the mainland strip to the Russian American Company
was that it prevented the Hudson’s Bay Company from

establishing posts there in direct competition with Russian
posts on the offshore islands. But when the U.S. purchased
Alaska from Russa in 1867 to “set a watchful Yankee on
each side of John Bull in his far-western Canadian posses-
sions,” as U.S. Senator Charles Sumner boasted, it perpetu-
ated the geographic distortion.

Ironically, the British-American conflict which impelled
the British government in 1858 to end the Hudson’s Bay
Company's monopoly on Vancouver Island and the British
Columbia mainland also contributed to loss of the Panhandle.
In 1839 the Russian American Company leased the Pan-
handle to the Hudson’s Bay Company for 10 years and in
1849 it extended the lease for another nine years, But the
Hudson’s Bay Company failed to renew the lease when it
realized that its trading monopoly was ending,

The final betrayal of Canada’s claim to the Panhandle was
carried through by the British government in 1903 amid
a storm of Canadian protest. In the international commis
sion set up to arbitrate the Alaskan Boundary Dispute,
which had been brought to a head by the discovery of gold
on the Klondike, the British commissioner, Lord Alverstone,
signed the majority award favoring the American interperta-
tion brought down by the three American commissioners.
President Theodore Roosevelt had arrogantly threatened that
the U.S. would impose its own boundaries if the commission

‘did not uphold American claims. To serve its own imperial

interests, the British government sacrificed Canadian rights.
The two Canadian commissioners, Loui A. Jette and Allan
B. Aylesworth, took the unprecedented action of refusing to
sign the majority award and writing their own minority
protest. But the majority award fixed the boundaries where
the U.S. government from the outset had determined they
should be set.

Now, as Amor De Cosmos, the outstanding leader of
British Columbia's struggle for responsible government fore-
saw in 1870 when he proposed the purchase of Alaska to
the B.C. legislature, the Panhandle warps the entire economic
development of northern British Columbia.

(NEXT WEEK: THE FIRST STRUGGLES)

They need.
your help

nee over a year ago in
Franco Spain, a boycott of
public transport in Barcelona
hit the world’s headlines, as
indeed it would, showing that
the Spanish people are still
prepared to act in defense of
their rights.

During the boycott, many
people were arrested ahd, after
being tortured by the police,
handed over to the Special
Military Tribunal, which, in
Spain, tries political prisoners.

But the weight of interna-
tional opinion and the solidar-
ity of the Spanish people ev-
entually forced their provis-

‘ional release.

Now, once again, they are
appealing for the support of
international opinion, for they
have been rearrested and soon
will appear before the Special
Military Tribunal to answer
charges for their part in the

transport boycott of January,
1957.

The prosecution is demand-
ing “20 years and a day” im-
prisonment for Emiliano Fab-
regas, and eight years for Juan
Keyer, both of them members
of the central committee of the
United Socialist party of Cata-
lonia, and shorter sentences
for the other accused.

Fabregas is accused of hav-
ing been found in possession
of the proofs of a weekly pub-
lication called Unitat, which
he intended to publish, and
that the groups “which he or-
ganized successfully printed
and distributed leaflets inside
and around factories in favor
of the boycott of public trans-

port.”

The case against Keyer is
that he organized the propa-
ganda campaign of the Textile
Committee, which distributed
“thousands ef subversive leaf-
lets and numerous copies of
Mundo Obrero, Treball and
other publications.”

Forty-one others face simi-
lar charges for having mimeo-
graphed or distributed leaflets
calling on workers to support
the campaign against high. liv-
ing costs.

#& wide protest movement is
spreading throughout Spain,
calling for the transfer of pro-
ceedings to the civil courts.

This campaign has gathered
even greater force during the
last few weeks, because the
military tribunals in: Barce-
lona have been preparing two
other political trials, one of
a group of liberal intellectuals,
the other of a group of work-
ers.

MARCH 28, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 9