History of British Columbia
While there is a theory and some evidence that Sir Francis Drake may have explored the British Columbia Coast in 1579,[5][6] it is conventionally claimed that it was Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra who completed the first documented voyage, which took place in 1775.
After illnesses, storms, and other troubles had affected the expedition, de Heceta returned to Nueva Galicia, while Quadra kept on a northward course, ultimately reaching 59° North in what today is Sitka, Alaska.
[citation needed] Three years later, in 1778, the British Royal Navy captain James Cook arrived in the region, searching for the Northwest Passage and landed at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island, where he and his crew traded with the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nation.
The Gulf Islands and Strait of Juan de Fuca are the access point to Puget Sound as well as a fallback position in preparation for the "worst-case" scenario settlement of the dispute, in the face of manifest destiny.
In 1844, the United States Democratic Party asserted that the US had a legitimate claim to the entire Columbia District or Oregon Country, but President James Polk was prepared to draw the border along the 49th parallel, the longstanding US proposal.
He started the process of expanding the economic base of the new colony by signing 14 treaties between 1850–1854 to purchase land for settlement and industrial development (coal deposits were known by the HWBC in the vicinities of Nanaimo and Fort Rupert).
Douglas, fearing challenges to the claim of British sovereignty in the region in the face of an influx of some 20,000 Americans, stationed a gunboat at the mouth of the Fraser in order to obtain licence fees from those seeking to head upstream.
With the resolution of the Oregon Boundary Dispute, British interests, primarily the HBC, lost the governance of all territory between the 49th Parallel and the Columbia River, where there had been a sudden influx of American settlers 8 years previous.
[22] He was also struck by the majestic beauty of the site, writing in his letter to Blackwood, "The entrance to the Frazer is very striking—Extending miles to the right & left are low marsh lands (apparently of very rich qualities) & yet fr the Background of Superb Mountains-- Swiss in outline, dark in woods, grandly towering into the clouds there is a sublimity that deeply impresses you.
[27] Throughout his tenure in British Columbia, Richard Clement Moody was engaged in a bitter feud with Sir James Douglas, Governor of Vancouver Island, whose jurisdiction overlapped with his own.
[28] Mary Moody, the descendant of the Hawks industrial dynasty and the Boyd merchant banking family,[29] 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".
By the time of this gold rush, the character of the colony was changing, as a more stable population of British colonists settled in the region, establishing businesses, opening sawmills, and engaging in fishing and agriculture.
With this increased stability, objections to the colony's absentee governor and the lack of responsible government began to be vocalized, led by the influential editor of the New Westminster British Columbian and future provincial premier, John Robson.
Suppose that the colonists met together and came to the conclusion that every natural motive of contiguity, the similarity of interests, and facility of administration induced them to think it more convenient to slip into the Union than into the Dominion.
That said, annexationists argued that the colony would never be able to negotiate with the United States a free trade agreement similar to the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, and that annexation would end the disadvantage of the American tariff.
The bill was unsuccessful, as was Senator Alexander Ramsey of Minnesota's 1867 proposal that the United States, as part of another reciprocity treaty with Canada, offer $6 million to the Hudson's Bay Company for the territory west of the 90th longitude.
[44]: 196–198 Two American military officers, who travelled throughout British Columbia for two months while arranging for the supply of occupation troops in Alaska, wrote a detailed report to Washington in November 1867 of their belief that a majority of residents supported annexation.
While there is no reason to believe that they accurately represented the majority opinion, many colonists viewed Washington and London as equal competitors for British Columbia's loyalty depending on who offered more incentives, while Ottawa was more foreign and less familiar.
[43][44]: 214 Musgrave proposed an attractive plan for joining Canada, with the Dominion assuming the colony's debt and building a new Canadian transcontinental railway that would eliminate the reliance on the American railroad.
[49][50][42] Both the depressed economic situation – arising from the collapse of the gold rushes – and a desire for the establishment of truly responsible and representative government, led to enormous domestic pressure for British Columbia to join the Canadian Confederation, which had been proclaimed in 1867.
The Confederation League, spearheaded by three future premiers of the province — Amor De Cosmos, Robert Beaven, and John Robson — took a leading role in pushing the Colony of British Columbia towards this goal.
The product of the consolidation of the burgeoning mill-towns of Granville and Hastings Mill – located near the mouth of the Fraser on Burrard Inlet in the later 1860s – Vancouver was incorporated in 1886 following its selection as the railhead for the Canadian Pacific Railway.
[citation needed] Indian emigrants also began sailing to British Columbia in the following years and would help develop the provincial logging industry, founding mill towns such as Paldi on Vancouver Island.
Perhaps the most famous incident of anti-Indian racism in BC was in 1914 when the Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver Harbour with 376 Punjabi Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus aboard, of whom only 20 were allowed entry.
When the case was lost, HMCS Rainbow, a Royal Canadian Navy cruiser, escorted the Komagata Maru out to sea while thousands of Caucasians cheered from the seawall of Stanley Park.
[59] However, by 1921, the failures of prohibition were so apparent—a thriving black market, arbitrary (often class- and race-based) enforcement and punishment, rampant corruption—that alcohol was established as a commodity subject to government regulation and taxation as it is today.
Compounding the already dire local economic situation, tens of thousands of men from colder parts of Canada moved into Vancouver, creating huge hobo jungles around False Creek and the Burrard Inlet rail yards.
Increasingly desperate times led to intense political efforts, an occupation of the main post office at Granville and Hastings, which was violently put down by the police, and an effective imposition of martial law on the docks for almost three years due to the Battle of Ballantyne Pier.
[82] On 4 May 2011, Solicitor-General Shirley Bond of Christy Clark's first government introduced the concept of "administrative forfeiture", under which a civil court is no longer required to judge amercements of property worth less than $75,000.
Some early settlers assumed, based on the catastrophic population crash of First Nations peoples linked to smallpox and racist ideas, that 'Indians' were a dying race, which led to a lack of action to deal with what was then termed the "Indian land question".
