Growth of a Resource Economy

The CPR energized the province's economy, whose base in natural resources was consistent with the National Policy. Lumbering continued apace. Coal mining grew on Vancouver Island and gold mining still went on across the Interior. Hard rock mining expanded into the Kootenay. Smelters proliferated, notably at Trail in the west Kootenay. A new industrial process permitting very thin, uniform sheets of metal to be rolled out made possible the canning of salmon, a very abundant resource that had not yet been much exploited. Soon seasonal canneries, largely financed by external investment, dotted the coast. Salmon from BC became a staple of many British households. The paucity of arable land meant that agriculture never acquired the hold it exercised elsewhere in Canada, where at least half of all employed males were working in agriculture. In BC the proportion was less than 1 in 5. Another effect of the railway was population growth. The line encouraged migration from within Canada, with which the province now for the first time had a direct link. The number of BC residents born elsewhere in Canada mushroomed from 3,500 in 1881 to 20,000 by 1891. The Chinese who had helped to construct the new line were not, as promised, provided transportation back home. Many put down roots where last employed, others made their way to the Chinatowns that were growing up in Victoria, Vancouver, and other communities. The number of residents born in Asia approached 10,000 by 1891 and doubled by the end of the century. The province's population rose from about 50,000 in 1881 to 100,000 a decade later and almost 180,000 by 1901.

BC's growth as a settler society altered provincial politics. The number of eligible voters rose sharply from about 3,000 in the mid-1870s to 44,000 in the 1900 election. Provincial life was more impersonal, making it less acceptable to be governed by small cliques and by premiers whose prestige rested on personal contacts who tended to reward their friends in order to stay in power. By the end of the century, ministries fell so quickly that potential investors were being scared away. The introduction of party labels, such as existed elsewhere in Canada, began to be discussed. One of the enthusiasts was young Richard McBride, a lawyer born in New Westminster. McBride was elected an MLA in 1898 and became premier in 1903 under the banner of the Conservative Party. When his opponents banded together as Liberals, also in emulation of federal practice, political parties became a fact of life in BC. Previous premiers had held office at most 3 or 4 years before being replaced by the next clique; McBride broke the pattern by remaining in charge for 12 years. He inherited a large provincial debt and considerable doubt as to the province's future course. Many British Columbians, including McBride and the Conservatives, considered that the ordinary business of government could not be carried on under the terms of union with Canada. The province's size, difficult terrain and scattered population made for exceptionally high routine costs of administration. A lack of manufacturing obliged BC to buy goods from central Canada at highly protected prices, whereas the province's chief products--minerals, fish, timber--had to be sold in world markets in direct competition with all other nations. McBride sought "better terms" with the federal government. The compromise that was reached provided a short-term annual subsidy in exchange for the provincial government raising taxes and reducing expenses in an attempt to balance the provincial budget. The apparent ease with which the quest for "better terms" resolved itself was deceptive, for BC was entering another of its periodic boom periods. Across Canada and beyond, economies were expanding. Growing world demand for BC commodities obscured the fundamental issue of the province's status in Confederation. McBride soon became caught up in the new spiral of growth. Keen to open up more of the province to resource exploitation, he encouraged rail construction and financially supported the Canadian Northern and Pacific Great Eastern lines. As well, the federal government subsidized a second transcontinental line, the Grand Trunk Pacific, which opened up the prairies and then the BC central Interior to agricultural settlement. Prince Rupert got its beginnings as the western terminus of this new line.

Complementing the provincial government's encouragement of rail construction was its promotion of external investment. The capital that could be generated within BC was extremely limited, so expansion came primarily through outside impetus, as had already occurred with salmon canning and mining. Two Ontarian entrepreneurs, William Mackenzie and Donald Mann, were particularly active, not only in rail construction but also in coal and lumbering. Both Britons and Canadians engaged in land speculation, in which parcels oftentimes located near the new rail lines were divided into small plots and sold to newcomers. Irrigation transformed the interior Okanagan Valley from ranching to small-scale fruit growing. British pounds entering BC tended to be unobtrusive, many taking the form of portfolio investment in government-guaranteed bonds underwriting new physical infrastructure or public utilities. American dollars expanded the copper industry in the Kootenay and Boundary regions and financed a large pulp and paper mill on the South Coast at Powell River. American investment also caused lumbering to grow phenomenally, in part because the allocation of timber leases on Crown land long remained unregulated. By the time a provincial Royal Commission finally raised the alarm in 1910, about 80% of forest land owned by the Crown had been leased, mostly to large syndicates. Boom conditions were fuelled by population growth. As part of the National Policy, the Dominion government in 1896 launched an immigration campaign intended to attract the agricultural settlers needed to produce raw materials and purchase manufactures. BC also benefited. Britons in particular found the province attractive, in part because of its earlier colonial status. The number of British-born grew from just 6,000 in 1881 to 116,000 by 1911. BC's population more than doubled in the first decade of the 20th century to almost 400,000, and swelled to half a million by the beginning of World War I, which effectively curtailed large-scale immigration into Canada until mid-century. BC, alone among the Canadian provinces, continued to attract immigrants from Asia because of physical proximity. Sikhs from India often arrived with lumbering experience and tended toward that occupation, just as Japanese were most likely to become fishers or small-scale farmers. The number of British Columbians born in Asia approached 30,000 by World War I. In sharp contrast, numbers of aboriginal men, women and children declined to a nadir of 20,000 by 1911. The racism that confined aboriginal peoples to reserves and their children to segregated schools affected all newcomers who were perceived to be non-white. Provincial disenfranchisement was extended in 1895 to the Japanese and in 1907 to East Indians. The number of Japanese able to enter Canada--in practice, BC--was restricted by a "gentleman's agreement" between the two countries. Chinese immigration was initially controlled through a head tax on new arrivals and then, in 1923, legally prohibited by the federal government. The Komagata Maru incident in 1914 symbolized the commitment of politically and economically dominant groups to a "white" BC.

The benefits of growth were increasingly filtered through Vancouver, which acted as service centre to an ever-expanding hinterland, one that eventually encompassed almost the entire province. By 1911 almost half the population lived in the Lower Mainland region extending from Vancouver through the Fraser Valley. Wherever British Columbians resided across the vast province, the tremendous expansion of capitalism during the early 20th century had an enormous impact on their lives. Changing patterns of residence and employment heightened, and made more visible, inequities in conditions of work and quality of life. Agitation for reform extended from the workplace into the home. The nature of resource exploitation threw men together in work that was often tedious, dirty and hard, and at the same time poorly paid. As early as 1877 coal miners went on strike on Vancouver Island after the mine owner, Robert Dunsmuir, cut their wages by a third. The ruthlessness with which the men were forced back to work, with the co-operation of the provincial government, set a pattern for employer-employee relations in BC. While some workers sought change through the ballot box, direct action held greater appeal. Membership in trade unions reached over 22,000, or 12% of the non-agricultural labour force, by 1911. During these years more strikes broke out in BC than in any other province. Activism was not confined to men or to the workplace. The movement for social reform was a largely female, white, middle-class enterprise in which women's traditional role within the home was extended outward to the community. Their authority to do so was sanctioned by the Protestant churches, which increasingly felt under an obligation to improve this world as well as prepare their adherents for the next one. Two of the issues that most agitated social reformers, in BC and more generally, were temperance and women's suffrage. The first branch of the Women's Christian Temperance Union began in Victoria in 1882 and the first suffrage association was formed in 1910. Sensing the winds of change, the opposition Liberals backed female suffrage 2 years later.