Colony of British Columbia (1858–1866)

The explorations of James Cook and George Vancouver, and the concessions of Spain in 1794 established British claims over the coastal area north of California. Similar claims were established inland via the explorations of John Finlay, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser, Samuel Black, and David Thompson, and by the subsequent establishment of fur trading posts by the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). However, until 1858 the region which now constitutes the mainland of the Province of British Columbia was an unorganised area of British North America comprising two fur trading districts: New Caledonia, north of the Thompson River drainage; and the Columbia District, located south of the Thompson and throughout the basin of the Columbia River. With the signing of the Treaty of Washington in 1846, which established the US border along the 49th parallel, the HBC moved the headquarters of its western operations from Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River (present day Vancouver, Washington) to the newly established Fort Victoria, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. Vancouver Island and the surrounding Gulf Islands in the Strait of Georgia were organized as a crown colony in 1849. Meanwhile, the mainland continued to function under the de facto administration of the HBC, whose chief executive, James Douglas, was also governor of Vancouver Island. The non-Indigenous mainland population during this time never exceeded about 150 at Fort Victoria, mostly HBC employees and their families. ==Governorship of James Douglas==

By 1857, Americans and British were beginning to respond to rumors of gold in the Thompson River area. Almost overnight, some ten to twenty thousand men moved into the region around present-day Yale, British Columbia, sparking the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. Governor Douglas - who had no legal authority over New Caledonia – stationed a gunboat at the entrance of the Fraser River to exert such authority by collecting licences from prospectors attempting to make their way upstream. To normalize its jurisdiction, and undercut any HBC claims to the resource wealth of the mainland, the district was converted to a Crown colony on 2 August 1858 by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and given the name British Columbia. Douglas was offered the governorship of the new colony by the British colonial secretary, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, provided that he sever his employment with the Hudson's Bay Company, which Douglas agreed to do, and received a knighthood. Immigration into the new colony obliged Douglas to act quickly to define regulations and create infrastructure. Magistrates and constables were hired, mining regulations drawn up, and town sites surveyed at Yale, Hope and Fort Langley to discourage squatting on crown land. In addition, roads were constructed into the areas of greatest mining exploration around Lillooet and Lytton. The colony, however, was not immediately granted a representative colonial assembly because of uncertainty as to whether the gold rush would yield a stable, settled population. Douglas, who had conflicted with the assembly on Vancouver Island, was relieved. in the Fraser Canyon, c. 1867 The rush indeed was short lived, and the exodus of miners, speculators, and merchants was already underway by the time the Royal Engineers had laid out the colony's new capital at New Westminster. Prospecting continued, however, and additional finds farther inland in the Cariboo region in 1860 signalled an impending second gold rush. Provisioning was already proving to be an acute problem, and with more distant finds it became clear that wagon trains would have to replace pack horses, necessitating new infrastructure. Throughout his tenure in British Columbia, Douglas feuded with Richard Clement Moody, the first Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, and Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for British Columbia, Moody's jurisdiction overlapped with that of Douglas, his offices of Chief Commissioner and Lieutenant-Governor being of 'higher prestige [but] lesser authority' than Douglas. Douglas negotiated several treaties with the natives present on Vancouver Island on behalf of the Crown, establishing reserves. These treaties continue to this day. The vast majority of First Nations traditional territory was absorbed into the new colony of British Columbia, without treaty. ==Foundation by Richard Clement Moody==

Selection When news of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush reached London, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Secretary of State for the Colonies, requested that the War Office recommend a field officer who was "a man of good judgment possessing a knowledge of mankind" to lead a corps of 150 (later increased to 172) Royal Engineers who had been selected for their "superior discipline and intelligence". The War Office chose Moody. Lord Lytton, who described Moody as his "distinguished friend", accepted their nomination as a consequence of Moody's military record, his success as Governor of the Falkland Islands, and the distinguished record of his father, Colonel Thomas Moody, at the Colonial Office. and "found a second England on the shores of the Pacific". to such success that he was subsequently granted command of the regiment across the entirety of China. Richard Clement Moody, his wife Mary, and their four children left England for British Columbia in October 1858 and arrived in December with the 172 Royal Engineers of the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment, and Moody's secretary, the freemason Robert Burnaby (after whom he subsequently named Burnaby Lake). Moody was sworn in as the first lieutenant-governor of British Columbia and appointed Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for British Columbia. at a site of dense forest of Douglas pine He established Port Moody, which was subsequently named after him, at the end of the trail that connected New Westminster with Burrard Inlet, to defend New Westminster from potential attack from the United States. The British designated multiple tracts as government reserves. The Pre-emption Act did not specify conditions for the distribution of the land, and, consequently, large areas were bought by speculators. However, Lord Lytton, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, 'forgot the practicalities of paying for clearing and developing the site and the town' and the effort of Moody's Engineers was continually impeded by insufficient funds, which, together with the continuous opposition of Governor Douglas, whom Sir Thomas Frederick Elliot (1808 - 1880) described as 'like any other fraud', 'made it impossible for [Moody's] design to be fulfilled'. Throughout his tenure in British Columbia, Moody feuded with Sir James Douglas, Governor of Vancouver Island, whose jurisdiction overlapped with his own. Moody's offices of Chief Commissioner and Lieutenant-Governor were of 'higher prestige [and] lesser authority' than that of Douglas, despite Moody's superior social position in the judgment of the Royal Engineers and of the British Government which had selected Moody to 'out manoeuvre the old Hudson's Bay Factor [Governor Douglas]'. Moody had been selected by Lord Lytton for his qualities of the archetypal 'English gentleman and British Officer', and because his family was 'eminently respectable'. He was the son of Colonel Thomas Moody and Martha Clement, who were socially superior members of the planter class of the West Indies, including Demerara and The Guianas, in which Douglas's father and the same's brothers owned less land and from which Douglas's 'a half-breed' mother originated. Governor Douglas's ethnicity was 'an affront to Victorian society'. Mary Moody, who was a member of the Hawks industrial dynasty and of the armigerous Boyd merchant banking family, wrote, on 4 August 1859, 'it is not pleasant to serve under a Hudson's Bay Factor', and that the 'Governor and Richard can never get on'. John Robson, who was the editor of the British Columbian, wanted Richard Clement Moody's office to include that of Governor of British Columbia, and to thereby make obsolete Douglas. Robert Edgar Cail, Don W. Thomson, Ishiguro, and Scott commended Moody for his contribution, and Scott accused Ormsby of being 'adamant in her dislike of Colonel Moody' despite the majority of evidence. Almost all other biographies of Moody, including those of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Royal Engineers, and the British Columbia Historical Association commend Moody's achievements in British Columbia. The Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment was disbanded in July 1863. The Moody family (which now consisted of Moody, and his wife, and seven legitimate children) Moody left his library behind in New Westminster, to become the public library of New Westminster. Numerous developments occurred in and around Moody Park, including Century House, which was opened by Princess Margaret on 23 July 1958. In 1984, on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of New Westminster, a monument of Richard Clement Moody, at the entrance of the park, was unveiled by Mayor Tom Baker. For Moody's achievements in the Falkland Islands and in British Columbia, British diplomat David Tatham CMG, who served as Governor of the Falkland Islands, described Moody as an 'Empire builder'. ==Governorship of Frederick Seymour==

Douglas's successor was Frederick Seymour, who came to the colony with twenty years of colonial experience in Van Diemen's Land, the British West Indies, and British Honduras. The creation of an assembly and Seymour's appointment in April 1864 signalled a new era for the colony, now out of the shadow of Vancouver Island and free of a governor suspicious of sharing power with elected representatives. Douglas's wagon road project was still underway, presenting huge engineering challenges, as it made its way up the narrow Fraser Canyon. Successive loans authorised by Seymour's predecessor, largely for the purpose of completing the road, had put the colony £200,000 in debt; and the Chilcotin War of 1864 cost an additional £18,000 to suppress. Seymour himself made the difficult journey through the Great Canyon of the Homathko and Rainbow Range as a show of force and participation in the hunt for Klatsassin, the Tsilhqot'in war leader, but the armed expedition reached a denouement when Klatsassin surrendered on terms of amnesty in times of war, only to be tried and hanged for murder, as Seymour had not endorsed the terms. On Seymour's return overland, he made a tour of the Cariboo minefields, and along the Fraser Canyon, which made him increasingly convinced of the colony's future prosperity. On returning to the capital, however, fiscal reality set in as it became clear that British Columbia's indebtedness was getting worse. Even as the colonial administration took drastic measures to augment revenues and improve the road system to attract prospectors and settlers, the economic situation grew increasingly dire, and agitation grew for an amalgamation of the two colonies. Seymour opposed this proposal, but with pressure from various quarters of the colonial government, he eventually relented, recommending that British Columbia be the dominant partner, and (unsuccessfully) that the capital be located at New Westminster. The two colonies were united by an Act of the British Parliament, and proclaimed on 6 August 1866 (see Colony of British Columbia (1866-1871)). ==Governors==

• Sir James Douglas, 1858–1864 • Frederick Seymour, 1864–1866 Colonial Assembly Members 1863–1864 • Arthur Nonus Birch, Colonial Secretary and Presiding Member • Henry Pering Pellew Crease, Attorney General • Wymond Ogilvy Hamley, Collector of Customs • Chartres Brew, Magistrate. New Westminster • Peter O'Reilly, Magistrate Cariboo East • E.H. Sanders, Magistrate, Yale • Henry Maynard Ball, Magistrate, Lytton • Philip Henry Nind, Magistrate, Douglas • Joshua Homer, New Westminster District • Robert Thompson Smith, Yale and Lytton District • Henry Holbrook, Douglas and Lillooet District • James Orr, Cariboo East District • Walter Shaw Black, Cariboo West District Members 1864–1865 • Arthur Nonus Birch, Colonial Secretary and Presiding Member • Henry Pering Pellew Crease, Attorney General • Charles William Franks, Treasurer • Wymond Ogilvy Hamley, Collector of Customs • Chartres Brew, Magistrate. New Westminster • Peter O'Reilly, Magistrate Cariboo • Henry Maynard Ball, Magistrate, Lytton • Andrew Charles Elliott, Magistrate, Lillooet • John Carmichael Haynes, Magistrate, Osoyoos and Kootenay • Joshua Homer, New Westminster District • Clement Francis Cornwall, Hope, Yale and Lytton District • Henry Holbrook, Douglas and Lillooet District • George Anthony Walkem, Cariboo East and Quesnel Forks District • Walter Moberly, Cariboo West and Quesnelmouth District Members 1866 • Henry Maynard Ball, Acting Colonial Secretary and Presiding Member • Henry Pering Pellew Crease, Attorney General • Charles William Franks, Treasurer • Joseph Trutch Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works and Surveyor General • Wymond Ogilvy Hamley, Collector of Customs • Chartres Brew, Magistrate. New Westminster • Peter O'Reilly, Magistrate Kootenay • Andrew Charles Elliott, Magistrate, Lillooet • John Carmichael Haynes, Magistrate, Osoyoos and Kootenay • Joshua Homer, New Westminster District • Clement Francis Cornwall, Hope, Yale and Lytton District • Henry Holbrook, Douglas and Lillooet District • George Anthony Walkem, Cariboo East and Quesnel Forks District • Robert Smith, Cariboo West and Quesnelmouth District ==Supreme Court==

In 1858 the British Government sent over Matthew Baillie Begbie as Chief Justice for the colony. Although trained at Lincoln's Inn he had never practised law, but soon published a Rules of Court and a timetable of sittings. He held the post, under consecutive administrative regimes, until his death in 1894. ==See also==