Sir Joseph William Trutch, KCMG (18 January 1826 – 4 March 1904) was an English-born Canadian civil engineer, land surveyor, and politician who served as first Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia.

Trutch's early childhood was spent partly in Jamaica, although his family returned to England in 1831,[2] where he later attended Mount Radford School in Exeter.

Beginning in the 1860s, Trutch became involved in colonial politics, serving as the Chief Commissioner of Land and Works, and became a well-known resident of Victoria.

(26 September 1871, BC Papers Connected with the Indian Land, p. 101) In 1867 Trutch refused to recognize the legitimacy of the reserves established by the former governor, James Douglas, and had them re-surveyed, reducing their size by 91%.

[4] His memorandum of 1870 denied the existence of aboriginal title, setting the stage for the colonial assembly to prohibit aboriginal people from pre-empting unoccupied, unsurveyed, or unreserved land without special permission; this decision effectively established a 10-acre (40,000 m2) maximum and denied natives the right to acquire lands held by non-natives (A Sto:lo-Coast Salish Historical Atlas, page 164).

These policies have had lasting repercussions in modern British Columbia politics with respect to the ongoing process of resolving native land claims.

Following his tenure as lieutenant governor, Trutch was appointed a "Dominion agent for British Columbia", and helped to oversee the construction of the CPR in the province.