Fur trader John Meares arrived in 1786 and set up a single-building trading post near the native village of Yuquot (Friendly Cove), at the entrance to Nootka Sound in 1788.

Commandant Esteban José Martínez built a fort at Friendly Cove on Vancouver Island in 1789 and seized some British ships, claiming sovereignty.

Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra but their lengthy negotiations failed to produce a decision on the competing claims of ownership.

The fort was located at the Songhees settlement of Camosack (Camosun), 200 metres northwest of the present-day Empress Hotel on Victoria's Inner Harbour.

Douglas also assisted the British government in establishing a naval base at present-day Esquimalt to check Russian and American expansionism.

Douglas's efforts at encouraging settlement were hampered by colonial officials in London, who gave preference to settlers who would bring out labourers with them to work the landholdings.

The result was that emigration was slow, and the landless labourers frequently fled the colony either to obtain free land grants in the United States, or work the newly discovered goldfields of California.

A secondary result was the replication of the British class system, with the attendant resistance to non-parochial education, land reform, and representative government.

However, as time went on, the franchise was gradually extended, and the assembly began to assert demands for more control over colonial affairs and criticised Douglas's inherent conflict of interest.

Almost overnight, some ten to twenty thousand men moved into the interior of New Caledonia (mainland British Columbia), and Victoria was transformed into a tent-city of prospectors, merchants, land-agents, and speculators.

To exert its legal authority, and undercut any HBC claims to the resource wealth of the mainland, the district was converted to a Crown colony on 2 August 1858, and given the name British Columbia.

The remainder of Douglas's term as Vancouver Island governor (until 1864) was marked by increased expansion of the economy and settlement, and greater agitation for both union of the two colonies and for the introduction of fully responsible government.

The company had leased the island from Britain during 1849–1859 and still exerted a great deal of influence because the previous Governor, James Douglas was the executive officer of HBC.

Nonetheless, he continued to fail in his efforts to persuade the assembly to introduce the vote of a civil list, as well as enforcing various measures to protect the rights and well-being of the increasingly pressured aboriginal population.

Despite his sympathy for the plight of neighbouring Indian peoples, Kennedy authorised naval bombardment of the Ahousahts of Clayoquot Sound in 1864 in reprisal for the murder of the crew of a trading vessel.

[14] With the colony's budget collapsing by 1865, and the assembly unwilling and unable to introduce proposals for raising revenue, Kennedy was barely able to keep the administration afloat.

[18] By 1867, Canadian Confederation was accomplished by the British North America Act, and the united colonies joined Canada on 20 July 1871.