From 1972 to the Present

It was not only politics that kept BC out of skew with the rest of Canada. A provincial economy based on natural resources, much as it had been since the first intrusions of outsiders, ensured an erratic pattern of economic growth. Shifts in world prices and in world demand rebounded as sharply as ever on provincial coffers. Vancouver continued to garner most of the benefits, although the provincial capital of Victoria and regional service centres of Kelowna, Nanaimo and Prince George all acquired their own much smaller hinterlands. It was increasingly evident that natural resources, whether lumber, fish or minerals, were finite. Moreover, attitudes toward exploiting these resources were shifting dramatically. The provincial government was repeatedly pressed into managing, protecting and conserving resources ore actively. Particularly during Harcourt's tenure as premier, protection of the environment over the long term began to take precedence over immediate financial gain. Tourism and the growth of the service sector moderated the situation to some extent.

Demographics also remained distinctive. Some newcomers had been permitted into Canada in the aftermath of World War II, but it was only in 1967 that a new federal policy once again encouraged immigration. Immigration, migration from elsewhere in Canada, and natural increase combined to put BC at the forefront of growth. By 1971 the province's population surpassed 2 million, having more than doubled since the end of the war. Over the next 2 decades it continued to grow, reaching almost 3.3 million by 1991. Unlike everywhere else in Canada, BC was still a province most of whose residents had been born elsewhere. It remained a land of newcomers who in adapting also refashioned the status quo. British Columbians who were Asian by descent once again became a sizable component of the province's population. The proportion born in Asia, which had fallen to 1% by 1961, approached 8% by 1991. Growing numbers of people from Hong Kong and elsewhere, many bringing with them considerable wealth and sophistication, erased forever the image of the Chinese as menial labourers. Their influence was particularly felt in the Lower Mainland, where most of them settled. As other British Columbians grew more tolerant, there were more opportunities for equality in all aspects of provincial life. In 1988 David Lam, a Chinese immigrant, was named the province's lieutenant governor, and British Columbians of Chinese and South Asian descent were elected to public office both provincially and federally. No group of British Columbians occupied a more contradictory position than did aboriginal peoples. Social activism from the 1960s onwards contributed to a new dynamic, growing numbers. By 1991 almost 120,000 British Columbians, just under 4% of the population, so described themselves. Land claims, more than any other issue, rallied aboriginal peoples. The lack of treaties in all but small parts of the province could no longer be ignored. Shortly before Social Credit lost power, the provincial government declared its willingness to negotiate in partnership with the federal government. The process of doing so proved to be enormously complex. The Supreme Court decision handed down in the Delgamuukw case at the end of 1997 and the signing of a draft treaty with the Nisga'a the next summer began, finally, to indicate the direction negotiations would take.

At the end of the 20th century BC remained as enigmatic a place as it had ever been. Provincial politics still depended more on personality and on populist coalitions than on loyalty to parties emulating their federal counterparts. Busts still followed booms as the province continued to rely on resource exploitation as the base of its economy. Not just politics and economics, but progressive approaches to issues of racial equality, continued to set the province apart even though newcomers of the past century and a half had not yet learned to live comfortably with BC's first peoples. Vancouver and the Lower Mainland dominated social and economic life much as they had throughout the century. Yet even the glitz of Vancouver, which is ever imagining itself a city-state on a world stage, could not disguise the province's increasingly fragile economic base. BC remained an exciting, if at times exasperating, place in which to live and work.