Chapter 4: The Colonial Office in Action (1864–67)

Britain’s governance of its two remote colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia had never been easy. Indicative on a practical level was, Douglas explained in 1863, the twists and turns that letters intended for the Colonial Office in faraway London took to get to their destination:

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Our Mails are carried between this and San Francisco by American Vessels; and from thence there are no less than four different ways letters may be forwarded, viz. By express across the Rocky Mountains, by the ordinary Mail across the Rocky Mountains, by Steamer to Panama and from thence by Steamer to New York, or by Steamer to Southampton.¹

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From Southampton on the English coast, letters travelled northeast a further 130 kilometres or 80 miles to get to the Colonial Office in London. Neither was travel between the two colonies and the mother country straightforward, being at the time seven weeks each way in duration.²

From one to two governors

James Douglas’s dismissal as governor in 1864 made these limitations more visible. Whereas Douglas had through his self-confidence, ease with the terrain, and a bit of bullying kept any of the players, with the pithy exception of Major Moody, from overacting their parts, his successors—Arthur Kennedy as governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island, and Frederick Seymour as governor of the Colony of British Columbia—were outsiders, unfamiliar with the country, its inhabitants, and its politics. They were, almost as a matter of course, intended to do the Colonial Office’s bidding and viewed their posts as stepping stones in their careers rather than as ends in themselves, as the governorship had been for Douglas. Thomas Elliot, the Harrow-educated head of the Colonial Office’s North American Department, believed their appointments bode well and remarked in November 1864: “Now that we have two trained Governors in these Colonies accustomed to a sense of responsibility, we receive accounts which make one imagine that Sir J. Douglas has earned his honors rather cheaply.”³ The reality turned out to be quite different, with neither governor fully able to manage what were in essence unmanageable situations.

The Colonial Office’s seeming comfort with its two Pacific Northwest possessions was to some extent illusory. They were not bounding ahead, nor were they falling behind; they just were. It is impossible to know whether the two colonies would have survived to be joined in a single colony in 1866 and as the Canadian province of British Columbia in 1871, as opposed to becoming one or more American states, had it not been for Douglas’s familiarity with their land bases and Indigenous populations consequent on his earlier fur trade postings, his commitment to all things British, and his and the Colonial Office’s tenacity and perseverance. With his departure, the two colonies were cast on their own resources.

Governing Vancouver Island

Just as gold miners preferred Victoria over New Westminster, so did the course of events, making Vancouver Island’s governance, it might seem, relatively straightforward. As Douglas explained in the spring of 1863, Victoria “being more built up and settled offers greater inducement to Miners as a resort than New Westminster.”⁴ A minute by Thomas Elliot characterized the mainland capital as “an uninviting and inferior place on the river,” whereas “nature has formed Victoria to be the Commercial Capital of the whole of the British Territory in that part of the World.”⁵

Arthur Kennedy, the Colonial Office’s appointee to govern Vancouver Island, brought with him, on his arrival in March 1864, a wealth of experience. Joining the Colonial Office at the beginning of the 1850s, after almost a quarter of a century in the military, his Vancouver Island appointment followed his governorships of Sierra Leone and Western Australia.⁶ Indicative of Kennedy’s high reputation, Parliamentary Under-Secretary Chichester Fortescue considered the new posting a waste of his talents, observing how “in view of the insignificance of the population and revenue (7500, and £35,000) of Vancouver I^d, I have some misgiving as to the necessity of sending them one of our best Governors.”⁷

However much Vancouver Island might have been privileged from the Colonial Office’s perspective to have Kennedy as governor, he and it did not, for all of his interest in Indigenous peoples’ welfare as he perceived it, get on well during his two and a half years in charge. Unlike James Douglas, who took Vancouver Island as it was, his successor was not best pleased on reading shortly after his arrival the annual Blue Book of Vancouver Island compiled by his predecessor. Kennedy was dismayed by virtually everything in it from “expensive and defective postal and other communication” to “loose assertion and surmise” respecting the colony’s resources.⁸

Kennedy’s disquiet over the 1863 Blue Book makes a subsequent volume elaborating his governorship a potentially perceptive guide to the state of Vancouver Island. To Kennedy’s dismay it was still the case by the mid-1860s that just “one town in the Colony (Victoria), has yet been incorporated…and there is but one other place in the Colony, (Nanaimo), deserving the name of a town and that containing more than 800 inhabitants who are almost exclusively coal miners and labouring people.”⁹ Not only that, but “the agricultural resources of the Colony may be said to be almost wholly undeveloped…The agricultural land though limited in extent is amazingly fertile and sufficient in extent for ten times the present population.”¹⁰

Kennedy considered that “the British population of the island, women and children included, cannot much, if at all, exceed 3000,” as compared to “the European, Negro, and Chinese together numbering about 8000 and the Aboriginal Indians about 10,000.” From his perspective, much as it had been for Douglas, “the great want in this as in all other new countries is a fixed population, and this can scarcely be expected till the excitement attendant upon the first discovery of gold has subsided, and communication with the Mother Country is facilitated and cheapened.”¹¹

Kennedy counted, as of 1865, “85 retail Licences for public houses granted in the City of Victoria alone in addition to 23 wholesale licences,” along with there being outside of Victoria “41 licensed retail public houses making a total of 149 licences to sell drink,” which “cannot fail to produce disastrous social results.”¹² The explanation lay at least in part in Victoria seeking to appeal to gold miners, especially during the winter months when mining operations for the most part shut down.

Kennedy gave sparse attention to Vancouver Island’s governance apart from its being “composed of five ex officio [underlining in original] and three non-official Members nominated by the Crown,” along with fifteen members elected by constituencies. Kennedy noted that, out of 890 voters—eligible to vote by virtue of being British and having taken up land on Vancouver Island—“nearly all those are resident in Victoria.” Voters elsewhere were sparse, numbering fifty-eight between Esquimalt and Metchosin, twenty-four between Saltspring and Chemainus, eighteen in Nanaimo, and forty-one elsewhere for a total of 141.¹³ Not included in the Blue Book was Kennedy’s inability to effect the control he would have liked to have over Vancouver Island’s governance. He acknowledged to the Colonial Office in May 1865, when he put the total “number of registered voters at the last general election” at 1,051, how the non-voting “American element possesses and exercises great influence over the press and voters who are connected with them in trade.”¹⁴

A year later Kennedy considered that “the circumstances of the Colony…do not call for much comment” apart from the non-Indigenous population falling from eight thousand to six thousand.¹⁵ As explained by British Columbia historian Margaret Ormsby, it had been a year earlier, in the spring of 1865, “when the usual rush of miners from San Francisco failed to materialize that there were doubts about the colony’s prospects.”¹⁶

Vancouver Island in disarray

Governor Kennedy’s letters to the Colonial Office attracted cryptic minutes. In the view of the experienced Arthur Blackwood on reading them: “The Assembly is composed of half Yankees; Canadians, & Hudson’s Bay C^o servants. The pure British element is very small.”¹⁷ To Thomas Elliot, “‘Responsible Gov^t’ in a little Community like Vancouver [Island] would be a mockery and a scramble, it seems to me.”¹⁸

Not everyone agreed. Kennedy’s December 30, 1865, letter in the Colonial Office files marked “Confidential” reported on a proposal by the respected Speaker of the Vancouver Island Legislative Assembly, John Sebastian Helmcken, to allow aliens, being non-citizens, to vote, about which Kennedy had taken a firm stand in opposition:

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At another time, and in other localities any disparagement of sound and proper nationality might be left unnoticed, but in a community such as that of Vancouver Island, where there is at present a large American element, the language attributed to Dr. Helmcken is not only to be lamented but mischievous.”¹⁹

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Nor was the proposal well received by William Edward Forster, parliamentary under-secretary of state for the colonies, who minuted, seconded by the secretary of state for the colonies, Edward Cardwell: “Dr Helmcken’s propⁿis that aliens should vote without nationalizing themselves as British Subjects. I do not think this ought to be allowed.”²⁰

Kennedy’s correspondence testifies to his being alternately exasperated and incensed by the Legislative Assembly’s attitude and actions, which were alien to his way of being, as he described at length in a confidential dispatch of January 24, 1866, to the Colonial Office:

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I think the time has arrived when the existing form of Government should be reconsidered and amended if Vancouver Island is to be permanently retained as a British Colony.

Two years of experience has convinced me that the House of Assembly as at present constituted is not capable of using constitutional power in a respectable manner…Their avowed object is to drive matters to extremity…[which if carried out] the large American element and influence here would render Government on constitutional or British principles no longer possible…The majority in the present Assembly is mainly composed of reckless adventurers with small stake in the Colony and in too many instances wanting in personal respectability…

I regard this as a most hazardous experiment. The working classes here are attracted from distant places—strangers are continually pouring in—moral and social restraints are few and feeble, and the temptations held out by 85 licensed public houses in Victoria alone, saloons, brothels and gambling houses (some of them combining all three characteristics) far exceed those usually found elsewhere…

The whole foundation of a sound and prosperous Colony has yet to be laid and I see no prospect of its being done by an irresponsible Assembly strongly imbued with republican and American sympathies…

The latest effort in the way of raising Revenue consisted in the imposition of import duties upon cabbage, carrots, potatoes, beef, mutton and pork while spirits, wine, beer, tobacco, and all other luxuries are left free.²¹

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From Kennedy’s perspective, Vancouver Island was not only running wild, but close to falling into American hands, not unexpectedly, given, he added in a follow-up letter, “the majority of the inhabitants being foreigners.”²²

Governing British Columbia

British Columbia’s governor, Frederick Seymour, had a similar background to his Vancouver Island counterpart, having been assistant colonial secretary of Tasmania followed by five Caribbean postings.²³ Responding from Belize on the northeast coast of Central America to the invitation to take charge of British Columbia, he enthused how “the prospects of a change from the swamps of Honduras to a fine country is inexpressibly attractive to me, and I trust, in the bracing air of North America to prove myself worthy of Your Grace’s confidence and kindness.”²⁴ Along with governing experience, Seymour brought with him a knowledge of current events, subscribing to newspapers in “England, California, and the Colonies,” including The Times and The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, both published in London.²⁵

Not unexpectedly then, among the tasks Seymour took seriously was non-Indigenous children’s literacy. In November 1864 he described how the “schools supported mainly at the Public expense in this Colony, are supplied at present with American School Books of rather an objectionable kind,” given “the United States are lauded at the expense of England.” Seymour requested as “a favour on the Colony if you would direct the Agents General to send out a well assorted collection of school books for about one hundred children” that “should, to secure universal confidence, not be in any way of a sectarian character.”²⁶

Attention to Indigenous peoples

Welcomed on his arrival in New Westminster in the spring of 1864 by “arches and other decorations,” Frederick Seymour was within the month caught up in the fallout from, so he described in the first of many letters on the subject, “the massacre of 14 out of a party of 17 Europeans by the Indians at Bute Inlet in this Colony.”²⁷ As detailed in his correspondence accessible online, the event known variously as the Tsilhqot’in uprising, Chilcotin war, and Bute Inlet massacre matters in its own right and is not followed here.²⁸

High among Seymour’s concerns was to keep faith with Douglas’s reputation as “a great Chief…for upwards to forty years.” Seymour thereupon invited “Catholic priests and others to bring in all the Indians who are willing to come to New Westminster and meet me on the Queen’s birthday” on May 24, 1864. A remarkable 3,500 arrived by canoe, being formed by the priests into a welcoming procession for Seymour.²⁹

At the event fifty-five “Indian Friends,” Seymour’s term, strategically presented the governor with a petition identifying each of them by name and location. The petition explained how “we know the good heart of the Queen for the Indians” and asked the governor “please to protect our land, that it will not be too small for us.”³⁰ Seymour assured them how “you shall not be disturbed on your reserves” for “as you say there is plenty of Land here for both White men and Indians…I am a stranger here and don’t yet know your language, but I am as good a friend to you in my heart as my predecessor.”³¹ The size of the reserves would begin to be reduced within the year.

More immediately, Seymour requested from the Colonial Office “one hundred canes with silver gilt tops of an inexpensive kind, also one hundred small and cheap English flags suitable to Canoes about 20 or 30 feet long” for the next May’s gathering so as “to introduce into this Colony the practice which had worked very successfully in Honduras, of presenting a Staff of Office to the Chief of each friendly tribe.”³² He would continue to do so, reporting three years later:

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Our Indian population is prosperous & contented. I have had gatherings of the natives for several consecutive years on the Queen’s birthday. This year I did not issue any invitations yet upwards of 4,000 attended to congratulate me on my return to the Colony [from time in Europe]. Some of the Chiefs from the Upper Fraser travelled nearly a thousand miles, to New Westminster & back for the occasion.³³

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Effecting British Columbia’s governance

Frederick Seymour had, in addition to the usual responsibilities as governor of British Columbia, to oversee the completion of James Douglas’s prized wagon road from New Westminster to the Cariboo, which was “kept up by tolls.”³⁴ An ordinance had been passed at the first meeting of the British Columbia Legislative Council in 1864 authorizing a loan of £100,000, including “the immediate expenditure of £48,000 in the completion of the Cariboo Road,” so as to make accessible what was later described as “the only known mining Region and the main support of the Colony.”³⁵

Seymour also authorized additional road construction and visited the Cariboo later in the year, to be overwhelmed by warm greetings from both miners and Indigenous peoples “as the representative of the Imperial Government.” Seymour was so impressed he began his letter to the Colonial Office describing the trip with an apology for its being an “unavoidably egotistical despatch.”³⁶

Much like its Vancouver Island counterpart, British Columbia’s 1865 Blue Book gives us a sense, as was intended, of what mattered from the perspective of whoever was in charge. Because Seymour was then on leave in Europe to get married, the Blue Book was prepared by Arthur Birch, who had been a clerk in the Colonial Office before accompanying Seymour to British Columbia as the colony’s incoming colonial secretary. Almost certainly for that reason the annual report reflects a professionalism not always found in Blue Books, with its incisive portrait of the mainland colony and, by inference, of Vancouver Island.

The Blue Book acknowledged American influence, describing how, consequent on British Columbia’s isolation from the mother country and proximity to the United States, “American Coinage is in universal circulation and Commercial transactions are conducted in Dollars and Cents,” with an ordinance “passed to enable the Public Account to be kept in the Decimal system.” In like manner, “an American company had been contracted to construct a telegraph line.”³⁷

Birch was aware of Vancouver Island living off British Columbia, as it had been doing, and diplomatic in explaining how “the free Port system of Vancouver Island has enabled the Merchants to live more cheaply in Victoria than on the Mainland and Victoria has thus become the depot where goods destined for the British Columbia Market have been detained, only to be reshipped in small quantities as occasion required.” In respect to imports and exports, “Vancouver Island…has acted as a Toll gate to British Columbia.”³⁸

British Columbia’s exports were assessed. The Blue Book enthused about how “the extensive Pine Forests bordering the Coast are capable of producing an almost inexhaustible supply of the finest lumber and Spars.” It described how “three Steam Sawmills have been erected at New Westminster and Burrard Inlet and are capable of turning out 180,000 feet of lumber per diem” dispatched to “the Markets of Mexico, South America, the Sandwich [Hawaiian] Islands and Australia.” As for coastal fisheries basic to Indigenous peoples’ ways of life, “salmon abound in every river in the Colony; some 1500 barrels were exported to the Sandwich Islands in 1865.”³⁹

Social services were limited. Public schools had been established by inhabitants at New Westminster, Yale, and Douglas, to which the government contributed support, with $1.00 a month required per child from the parent or guardian. The Blue Book took pride in “the small amount of crime among the heterogeneous community by which this Colony is peopled.” Only two criminal cases had been brought before the Supreme Court in 1865.⁴⁰

In respect to monitoring Indigenous peoples, the Blue Book explained how the fine for the sale or gifting of intoxicating liquor to them was increased in 1866 to £100 on first offence, and to twelve months’ prison with hard labour without the option of a fine for a second offence. A heavy penalty had been levied for violating Indigenous graves by removing articles deposited there, which were usually items “most cherished by the deceased,” including guns, canoes, blankets, and carved images. There was “a penalty of £100 with or without imprisonment for six months for rifling Indians Graves, and…a second offence liable to 12 Months imprisonment.” Deer, elk, and species of grouse were prohibited from sale during the breeding season. In sum, “the large Indian population are peaceable orderly and contented and among all classes poverty can scarcely be said to exist.”⁴¹

As for British Columbia’s non-Indigenous population, land laws had been consolidated to promote permanent settlement, provide for pastoral leases and timber cutting, and make free or partially free grants to promote immigration.⁴² Agriculture commanded special attention not just in the Fraser Valley, where non-Indigenous farming dated back to the fur trade, but generally. “The large and fertile tracts bordering the lower Fraser are gradually being brought under cultivation,” and the rest of the mainland colony was awash with potential:

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It is however beyond the Cascade range of Mountains commencing at Lytton…that the Settlements are more extensive; there the Country opens out and the vast and almost impenetrable Forest of Pine disappears. Large benches of table-land covered with a luxurious growth of bunch-Grass border the Banks of Fraser and Thompson River and extend back to the dividing ranges. It has been proved by the experience of 1865 that by a system of irrigation (rendered necessary by the Small amount of rain that falls) this land will produce extraordinary crops of all descriptions. The root crops are not to be surpassed in any part of the world, and the Cereals, both as regards the quantity and quality of the Crops, can compete with any that are grown in the Mother Country.⁴³

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Not only that, but agricultural options were expanding.

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Prior to 1865 little attention had been paid to the raising of Wheat in consequence of the want of Grist Mills throughout the upper portions of the Country but during the past year four were erected inducing the Settler to enter more extensively into this branch of Agriculture, and the Upper Country now produces most of the Flour consumed by the Inhabitants…

The portions of the Country adapted for pasture are extensive and the grass known as Bunch-Grass most luxuriant and nutritive. In the early days of the Colony bands of Cattle driven in from the neighbouring American territories supplied the Market, but the settler has found by experience that British Columbia as a Stock raising Country is unrivalled and a large importation of Cattle during 1864 and 1865, has consequently ensued.⁴⁴

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For all of the information that had been gathered together, the Blue Book’s description of the British Columbia population in 1865 was able to go only so far:

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It has been found impossible to take any correct census of the Population…Miners as a class have no fixed abode. During the Mining season they are to be found scattered over an area of 400 Miles throughout the Gold bearing range of Mountains. As Winter sets in many of those who have made sufficient money to leave the Colony do so by the many routes open to them and spend their money in Portland or San Francisco. The settled White population during 1865 did not in my opinion exceed 6,000. The Chinese may be estimated at 3,000, the Indians at 35,000. To this may be added a migratory population during summer months of an additional 3,000 Miners.⁴⁵

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British Columbia’s 1865 Blue Book impressed the Colonial Office. As minuted by Thomas Elliot, whose service went back to 1825 as a junior clerk:

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This is one of the most satisfactory reports we have rec^d from B.C., & is devoid of the inflated coloring the Reports were tinged with in the time of Sir J. Douglas. The discovery of the agricultural capabilities of the valleys of the Frazer & the Thomson Rivers is of inestimable value…The printed report…seems to me a very excellent performance for a Colony 8 years old.⁴⁶

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Colonial Office dissatisfaction

However well, or not so well, the two distant colonies were doing, dissatisfaction was in the air. Having contemplated as far back as 1863, with James Douglas’s departure in view, joining the two colonies for ease of governance, the Duke of Newcastle, who had held the post of secretary of state for the colonies from 1853 to 1854 and again since 1859, had initially been cautious. He described why in an internal memo:

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The jealousies—I might almost say, hatreds—between the two have become so great and such opposition of interests have been allowed to grow up that I believe it would be almost as hopeless to attempt to amalgamate the two as it would be to rejoin the Confederate [southern slave-holding] with the Federal States [of the United States] and the act of forcing them into a union would probably retard the time for a willing and hearty junction on grounds of mutual interests, [meaning] the complete fusion is at present impossible.⁴⁷

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And writing to Douglas in June 1863 respecting the mainland colony in particular:

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I should have wished to establish there the same representative Institutions which already exist in Vancouver Island; and it is not without reluctance that I have come to the conclusion that this is at present impossible…The fixed population of British Columbia is not yet large enough to form a sufficient and sound basis of Representation, while the migratory element far exceeds the fixed, and the Indian far out numbers both together.

Gold is the only produce of the Colony, extracted in a great measure by an annual influx of Foreigners—Of Landed proprietors there are next to none—Of tradesmen not very many, and these are occupied in their own pursuits at a distance from the centre of Government and from each other. Under these circumstances I see no mode of establishing a purely representative Legislature which would not be open to one of two objections. Either it must place the Government of the Colony under the exclusive control of a small circle of persons naturally occupied with their own local, personal or class interests, or it must confide a large amount of political power to immigrant, or rather transient Foreigners, who have no permanent interest in the prosperity of the Colony.⁴⁸

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The state of affairs as set forth by Newcastle testified to Douglas’s capacity to hold together, or rather keep from disentangling, the bits and pieces of non-Indigenous settlement spread out across British Columbia. The good news, as we know now, is that the future province did not collapse on his departure from governance; the bad news that apart from squabbling, nothing much happened for some time, at least from the top down, despite the usual hopeful minutes being added within the Colonial Office to spur things on in its desired direction.

Evening out the relationship between the two colonies

The Colonial Office’s desire to unite the two colonies on Douglas’s departure as governor had become the fodder of gossip by the time his two successors took office in 1864—so much so, both governors rallied against the possibility, which had the potential to stultify their careers.

Within two months of arriving in April 1864, British Columbia governor Frederick Seymour summarily informed the Colonial Office that his colony’s newly established Legislative Council was “against union upon any terms” due to its being “simply impossible, in my opinion, to govern satisfactorily the district of Cariboo from Vancouver Island.”⁴⁹ To make his case Seymour compiled a capsule history of British Columbia’s financial support for the governance of Vancouver Island:

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Unquestionably under the rule of my Predecessor Victoria became the principal English Port on this Coast and New Westminster commenced a retrograde course early in its history. It could hardly have been otherwise. The Governor and other Public Officers drew their full salaries from British Columbia and resided in Vancouver Island. Victoria escaped all indirect taxation while heavy duties were collected on all articles consumed on the Main land…

While waiting for the Steamers [to and from San Francisco], the Miners spent their money in Victoria and thus billiard rooms and drinking Saloons arose, and the place acquired sufficient importance to depopulate New Westminster without attaining any solid foundation or considerable prosperity for itself…I had not seen even in the West Indies so melancholy a picture of disappointed hopes as New Westminster presented on my arrival…Westminster appeared, to use the Miner’s expression, “played out.”⁵⁰

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The situation was similarly fraught on Vancouver Island. Its governor, Arthur Kennedy, was at wit’s end, writing on May 4, 1865, respecting the refusal of its fifteen-member Legislative Assembly to approve the Civil List—government officials’ salaries—on the grounds that they “are too high.” As explained by Arthur Kennedy’s biographer, Robert L. Smith:

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The Vancouver Island Assembly, which had grown accustomed to Douglas’ practice of paying the bulk of his salary and the salaries of other officials who served both colonies from British Columbia revenues, was now prepared to withhold even the temporary payment of Kennedy’s salary as a means of protesting the Colonial Office’s expensive and politically ominous appointment of separate governors.⁵¹

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The appointment of two governors meant Vancouver Island’s largely free ride at the mainland’s expense was over.

Kennedy put the non-Indigenous population of Vancouver Island at “about 6000 souls of whom about 2000 are British male subjects—the remainder made up of Americans, Germans, French, Italians and Chinese,” among whom, he added as an aside, “I am paying a Chinaman [underlining in original] for cooking my dinners, alone £120 per annum.” From this diverse group, Americans were in Kennedy’s view the most admirable: “The American element in the population possesses and exercises great influence over the press and voters who are connected with them in trade.” To which Arthur Blackwood noted, “I am not sure that the American element may not be the best at first. They bring great energy & go a headism—they are excellent pioneers, & it has never been shown that they are not as good & orderly inhabitants as any of the broken down subjects of the Queen who take refuge in our Colonies.”⁵²

Thomas Elliot in the Colonial Office pulled no punches in responding to Kennedy’s letter: “This petty body at Vancouver [Island] is exceptionally obstinate and unmanageable, and is among the worst specimens of a Colonial Assembly. The idea of Responsible Government of such a place would be preposterous. It is a little community of 6000 Souls.”⁵³

The genie was out of the bottle, so to speak. There had been a winner and a loser, in which process Douglas was complicit, and Seymour, on finding out, was determined that the uneven relationship in Vancouver Island’s favour should not be allowed to continue. In March 1865, after Kennedy reported to the Colonial Office on resolutions adopted by the Vancouver Island Legislative Assembly and by the Victoria Chamber of Commerce to “unit[e] British Columbia and Vancouver Island under one Governor, one Legislature, and equal Laws,”⁵⁴ it took Seymour a matter of days to protest as to how Kennedy was thereby seeking to “procure annexation” of British Columbia, with Vancouver Island once again looking out for itself at British Columbia’s expense.⁵⁵

Seymour’s reflections while on leave

Seymour slowly came around to the view that a union of the two colonies was necessary, but only if he were named governor of the new single colony. This change dovetailed neatly with Seymour going on leave in July 1865 in order to get married in Britain. His doing so would transform the almost frantic rhetoric as to which governor outshone the other into a one-man show. Seymour would win hands down by ingratiating himself with the Colonial Office while he was in London.⁵⁶ His doing so would position him as the desired governor of the two colonies on their being joined together.⁵⁷

Having time to reflect in England, Seymour related to the Colonial Office the next February how, from his perspective, Vancouver Island had benefited from Douglas’s arrangement at British Columbia’s expense:

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The Government of British Columbia was carried on from the capital of another colony. The Governor and principal public officers drew full pay from the main land, and lived on the island. The people of Victoria profited by the expenditure of the proceeds of taxation levied on another community, & were at the same time, by the freedom of the port, relieved from the payment of the heavy import duties which fell on those who made of British Columbia their home.⁵⁸

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It was to Vancouver Island’s benefit that things continued as they had been.

More recently, however, the situation had reversed itself. “Victoria is not flourishing,” wrote Seymour, but now “British Columbia is so.” As for the reason:

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The discoveries of gold on the Lower Fraser first attracted to British Territory a large portion of the unattached population of Western America. The immigrants came from Oregon or California by sea. Their detention at the first place of landing created Victoria. The bars on the Fraser were gradually worked out. Now they are abandoned to the labours of Chinamen. But year by year the summer immigrants pushed further into the interior, still by the valley of the great river. Finally Cariboo was discovered and its prodigious wealth attracted large numbers of miners who were fed and supplied from Victoria. Driven from their work by the severe climate of the winter, the “Caribooites” spent some time & much money in that town & added to the profits of the merchants who had monopolized their markets during the working season. There were no large settlements in British Columbia. It was only a colony in name…

Here was the real cause of the ill feeling between the two colonies. The settlers on the Fraser [River] paid gold miners duties on all they consumed while the people of the island profited by the success of the diggings & paid no import duties. Everything was done to foster Victoria…Imperial interests were assumed to be involved in the welfare of Victoria, & people affected to believe that great destinies were in store for the town…Meanwhile every man on the main land knew that the town was kept alive by the British Columbian mines. They petitioned for separation and they got it. Now,…the proceeds of their taxation are spent among them. Trade is beginning to establish itself on the Fraser…

Cariboo was the great customer for Victoria, but Cariboo with its prodigious wealth has been found out to be “poor man’s diggings.” Not competent therefore to support a very large population. The mines are of limited extent. The gold is deep and is expensive to extract. The number of spring immigrants began early to fall off and in 1865 was smaller than usual…Victoria continued to do the principal business of these mines, but the population to feed was comparatively small and Victoria suffered.

So did British Columbia to a certain extent. Road side houses on the Cariboo line became bankrupt as traffic decreased by diminished immigration and accelerated travelling. The general condition of the colony was however prosperous. The customs receipts at New Westminster were, by the last account which has reached me, £15,000 in excess of the corresponding period of 1864. I learn that the British Columbia capital “is making great progress. Houses and wharves, clearing and fencing going on everywhere this autumn,” and the most hopeful sign of all is beginning to shew itself; a disposition on the part of the miners to purchase land in New Westminster or its neighbourhood, and commence the systematic colonization of the Lower Fraser. These benefits in no way assist Victoria nor can it appreciate the improvement in the general condition of Cariboo which now induces many miners to winter there instead of squandering their money in Vancouver Island or San Francisco.

To the merchants of Victoria the depression they felt in 1865 appeared to extend over British Columbia, but he could only see the valley of the Fraser while a vaster view lay open before the eyes of the Government of New Westminster…From the sea to the Rocky Mountains, on both sides of the boundary line the country swarmed with eager prospectors…The revolver and bowie knife are laid aside and perfect tranquillity prevails.⁵⁹

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Seymour’s perceptive narrative of a course of events differentially benefiting the two colonies continued apace. Whereas Vancouver Island was stagnant, British Columbia was bounding ahead:

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Every Surveyor and every Engineer in the Colony was in Government employ last year. Every discharged Sapper possessing anything like adequate knowledge was likewise induced to enter our service. A good trail for pack animals has been opened from the Fraser to the Kootenay…A sleigh road had been opened from the seat of Government to Yale running for upwards of a hundred miles through the dense forest of the lower Fraser…Upwards of twenty thousand pounds have been expended in the completion on the high road into Cariboo allowing machinery, at last, to be introduced into Williams Creek…A good road now connects New Westminster with the sea at Burrard Inlet…A light ship, public libraries, new school buildings testify to the energy of the Government…For the telegraphic communication & the new line of steamers the Government can only claim the credit of the earnest efforts it has made to second the enterprise of our republican neighbours.⁶⁰

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Appointed governor of the mainland colony of British Columbia in 1864, Frederick Seymour was named governor of the merged colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island in 1866. He was photographed visiting the Heron mining claim in the Cariboo near Barkerville the following year. Seymour is at far right. Image F-08565 courtesy of the Royal BC Museum.

The British Columbia mainland was, in effect, fast becoming the entity it remains into the present day.

Seymour concluded his lengthy letter to Edward Cardwell with his support for the union of the two colonies, but with a warning that the residents of the mainland colony did not agree.

"

Your predecessor [the Duke of Newcastle], listening to the voice of the protesting colonists, effected the separation [signified by there being two separate governors] so joyously received in British Columbia. I say confidently that that colony has not altered its views. It has had the one great wish gratified and dreads all change…I am for many reasons anxious that the desire for union should exist in British Columbia. It does not.

"

In contrast, Seymour told the secretary of state for the colonies, “so great is the anxiety for union existing in Victoria…that the conditions are left entirely for you to determine,” while “Nanaimo, the second town, I believe, faintly wishes for amalgamation of the two colonies, but the people are prosperous, contented, and the best feeling exists between them and the colonists of the mainland.⁶¹

“A lunatic House of Assembly, and a bankrupt Government”

Less than two weeks later, on March 1, 1866, Arthur Kennedy wrote a letter respecting the Vancouver Island Legislative Assembly’s abolition of numerous taxes and import duties, complemented by “the contraction of two loans of $100,000 (£20,681) and £50,000 ($242,00)” to be added to a recent loan of £4000 ($19,400).⁶² The letter, on its arrival in the Colonial Office in early April, pushed Elliot and Blackwood to new levels of exasperation:

"

These despatches disclose a sad state of things at Vancouver Island—A lunatic House of Assembly, and a bankrupt Government…Unfortunately in Vancouver Island the power of initiating money votes is not reserved to the Governor—so the Assembly run wild. AB^d and TFE⁶³

There is but one remark which I have to make, & that is that the members of the V.C.I. Assembly are eminently unfit for their places. AB^d64

"

James Douglas’s watching brief

Even as those currently in charge were looking for solutions, so was their predecessor. In September 1866 James Douglas, who had kept a watching brief from Victoria, detailed to the Earl of Carnarvon, who was now the secretary of state for the colonies, his long-held view of the two colonies in relation to each other:

"

No art can ever make New Westminster, what Victoria now is—a resort for Ocean going ships. Were Victoria destroyed New Westminster would not profit by the loss, on the contrary, it would be to her, the greatest possible calamity. Its effect would be to throw the trade of the coast into the American Ports in the Straits of De Fuca, and British Columbia would become, commercially, a dependency of the United States.⁶⁵

"

The Colonial Office was not convinced. Minutes on Douglas’s letter pinpointed its view of his legacy, Blackwood doing so in respect to Vancouver Island:

"

V.C.I. was an insignificant place before the discovery of Gold in B.C. Victoria then naturally became the rendezvous for the Miners. Store shops & so called Merchants established themselves there. They got rich, speculated largely, & relied upon the free trade & the everlasting continuance of the gold fields in B.C. But miners were migratory, & these have been for a time seduced by Oregon & California by the reports of other gold miners. They returned, however, to B.C. which must, like all gold producing Countries be fluctuating in its prosperity. Except for the Royal Engineers who were sent there it has cost this Country nothing…

I do not dispute the fact stated by Sir J.D. [Douglas] that Victoria is in a bad way…due solely to over trading, smuggling, dependence on the success of B.C. as a gold Colony and to the incubus of an Assembly which by its legislation or perhaps want of proper Legislation has frustrated every attempt on the part of an able, an honest & a patient Governor to direct its course into channels wh^h w^d be beneficial to the Community.⁶⁶

"

Blackwood noted Kennedy’s confidential dispatch of January 24, 1866, respecting Vancouver Island in which he had described how the majority of the Assembly was composed of “reckless adventurers with a small stake in the Colony,” some “notoriously insolvent.”⁶⁷

A very knowledgeable Frederic Rogers, Baron Blachford, the permanent under-secretary for the colonies, pointed to Douglas’s history of entitlement:

"

Sir J.D. unfortunately is the man in the whole world whose personal authority is least valuable on this question. He (Governor) acquired a large property in V.C.I. and is accused I do not say whether justly or not of having so carried on the Gov^t of the two Colonies, as to give value to property in V.C.I. Certain it is—as he complains himself—that since B.C. has had an independent Governor the value of property in V.C.I. has been destroyed. Very likely from the causes enumerated by Mr Blackwood—but very likely in part also from successful attempts made by the B. Columbian merchants to retain the custom of B.C. miners who used to spend their money in Victoria—or by buying imports from Victoria.⁶⁸

"

Vancouver Island’s assumption of superiority over British Columbia, as effected under Douglas’s governorship, had finally run its course.

Uniting the two colonies

Unbeknownst to Douglas, the fate of the two colonies had already been decided. In the time it took Arthur Kennedy’s March 1, 1866, letter respecting the sad state of affairs on Vancouver Island to make the rounds of the Colonial Office, the parliamentary under-secretary, William Forster, was able to formulate an action plan to unite the two colonies, as he minuted May 3 on Kennedy’s letter:

"

Mr Blackwood tells me that without special instructions the Governor would not summon a new assembly before Oct this year at the soonest.

This gives time for us to pass our Union Bill. I think, considering the past conduct of the Assembly & the probability that next year will start both colonies on a new course, it would be well to suggest by a Confidential Despatch to the Governor to take no more steps toward summoning a new Parl^t until the fate of our Union Bill be decided.⁶⁹

"

The Colonial Office had in effect been working to implement a union of the two colonies, even as current and former governors were propounding their views on the matter.

Victoria residents also made their voices heard. At the beginning of December 1865, Kennedy had forwarded to the Colonial Office a petition against the union “from certain Merchants, Traders and others resident in Victoria” numbering eighty-eight British subjects, thirty-three Americans, twenty-one Germans, eight French, and seven unknown for a total of 157 persons. Kennedy’s covering letter threw some of their claims back onto the petitioners, blaming the “great commercial depression” described in the petition on “a system of reckless credit, competition, and overtrading” on “the Cariboo market,” on the merchant petitioners not taking into account “the cost of carriage” to the Cariboo, and on the supply having “far exceeded the demand,” leaving “Victorian merchants without payment for the goods they supplied.”⁷⁰

On December 12, 1865, Kennedy sent to the Colonial Office resolutions passed by the Vancouver Island Legislative Assembly concerning which the exhausted Blackwood’s minute not unexpectedly began: “This half Yankee Assembly now expresses…”⁷¹ The petitions and memorials kept coming, leading Kennedy to editorialize the next June how “the Members of the Assembly so far as my experience of that Body has extended, have not evinced any sense of responsibility to their constituents, to each other, or to their Sovereign.”⁷²

Blackwood minuted in response how “this despatch is an abundant proof, had any more proof been necessary, of the urgent need of suppressing this mockery of representative Institutions.”⁷³ In a minute of the same day, Rogers, the permanent under-secretary, expressed confusion that after Vancouver Island had, in the course of negotiations respecting a union, reluctantly given up its representative assembly and Victoria’s status as a free port “in consideration of being united with B.C.,” it now seemed to have changed its mind.

"

Now the Assembly has passed Resolutions virtually negating this understanding—& have asked the Gov. to telegraph them in time to stop the Parliamentary action based on the previous understanding. This the Gov^r has refused to do (rightly enough I dare say) & the Resolutions reach us too late to stop the Act of Parl^t—but not too late to stop the Proclamation of the Union issuable under it.⁷⁴

"

The British Parliament had, for its part, rushed the Union Bill through to receive royal assent on August 6, 1866. What had been mooted prior to Douglas leaving office in 1864 now came to fruition with the two colonies joined as the United Colony of British Columbia, whereupon, as spelled out in the legislation, “the Form of Government existing in Vancouver Island as a separate Colony shall cease” in favour of that of British Columbia extending “to and over Vancouver Island.”⁷⁵ And in spite of the Vancouver Island petition, the bill was proclaimed on November 19, 1866, by Governor Frederick Seymour.⁷⁶

As for Arthur Kennedy, his two and a half years in charge of what Blackwood and Elliot termed “a lunatic House of Assembly” had not been a happy time.⁷⁷ All was not lost, however, for he was rewarded on his return to London with a knighthood and would subsequently govern Hong Kong, and Queensland in Australia.⁷⁸

Deciding on a capital

The now united colony had to have a capital, and locating it was no easy matter. James Douglas had, in expanding his turf from the governorship of Vancouver Island to that of the mainland, and on its coming into being as the colony of British Columbia consequent on the 1858 gold rush, continued to make his home in Victoria. The principal mainland settlement of New Westminster remained in the shadows, although it gained some prominence due to the nearby headquarters of the Royal Engineers prior to their departure in 1863.

Seymour’s earlier governorship of British Columbia made him sympathetic to New Westminster, being “the most respectable, manly and enterprising little community with which I have ever been acquainted,” getting its due as the capital of the united colony.⁷⁹ Not so fast. As explained by Seymour in the summer of 1867:

"

I have met with the unscrupulous hostility of the Victoria politicians. It was not to be allowed that British Columbia would stand alone and be independent…The inhabitants of the Island commercially levied a toll on everything consumed on the mainland and evaded all indirect taxation. British Columbia was practically a dependency of Victoria, its gold fields, fishing and hunting ground. If the mines proved rich, Victoria prospered…[and] by the assistance of the Government, Church, Navy, Banks and a great commercial Company was raised to a place of considerable importance. But its prosperity was artificial, to a certain extent, and had no solid foundation.⁸⁰

"

From a non-Indigenous perspective Victoria had had charge of Vancouver Island from the time it came into being as a Hudson’s Bay Company entity and then as a British colony under the aegis of the Colonial Office based in London. Its non-Indigenous residents took for granted Victoria would be the capital of the united colony. Thanks in good part to James Douglas’s manoeuvrings, governance, commerce, and organized religion were all based there and Victoria residents assumed they would continue to be so. When the energetic George Hills arrived as bishop, to establish the Church of England in the future British Columbia, he was based in Victoria, testifying to that community’s pre-eminence in things spiritual as well as worldly.⁸¹

Victoria now harnessed all its efforts, including petitions to the Colonial Office and deft manoeuvring by the experienced Dr. Helmcken, to get its way so that in the end, as Frederic Rogers put it realistically in a Colonial Office minute, “it will be soon necessary to make Victoria the Capital of the Colony,” with Seymour “preparing the way to yield with decorum.”⁸² So Seymour did, having been given leave by parliamentary under-secretary Charles Adderley that, “if he wishes, he may quote authority from home in favour of Victoria.”⁸³ Seymour was still agonizing over the choice three months later, concluding reluctantly in December 1867 that if “we consider the question merely as how to please immediately the greater number of persons the selection of Victoria as a capital would be the most advisable.”⁸⁴ And so Victoria has continued to be into the present day.

Governor Seymour thought that New Westminster would make an excellent capital for the merged colonies. However, by 1867, when this photo was taken, it had lost out to Victoria. Image A-03084 courtesy of the Royal BC Museum.

1 Douglas to Newcastle, No. 28, Financial, July 20, 1863, CO 305: 20.

2 See W. Driscoll Gosset, returning Royal Engineer, to Fortescue, July 27, 1863, CO 60:17.

3 Minute by TFE [Elliot], November 21, 1864, on Kennedy to Edward Cardwell, secretary of state for the colonies, No. 80, Miscellaneous, October 1, 1864, CO 305:23.

4 Douglas to Newcastle, No. 19, April 10, 1863, CO 60:15.

5 Minute by TFE [Elliot], June 3, 1863, on Douglas to Newcastle, No. 19, April 10, 1863, CO 60:15.

6 For more information see Robert L. Smith, “Sir Arthur Edward Kennedy,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 11, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/kennedy_arthur_edward_11E.html, and Smith’s “The Kennedy Interlude,” BC Studies 47 (August 1980): 66–78.

7 Minute by CF [Fortescue], April 1, 1864, on Douglas to Newcastle, No. 3, Legislative, February 12, 1864, CO 305:32.

8 Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 40, Separate, July 7, 1864, CO 305:22.

9 Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 14, Financial, March 1, 1866, CO 305:28.

10 Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 73, Separate, August 24, 1865, CO 305:26.

11 Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 73, Separate, August 24, 1865, CO 305:26.

12 Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 73, Separate, August 24, 1865, CO 305:26.

13 Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 73, Separate, August 24, 1865, CO 305:26.

14 Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 27, Miscellaneous, May 4, 1865, CO 305:25.

15 Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 55, Separate, August 3, 1866, CO 305:29.

16 Margaret Ormsby, “Frederick Seymour,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 9, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/seymour_frederick_9E.html.

17 Minute by AB^d [Blackwood], February 14, 1866, on Kennedy to Cardwell, Confidential, December 16, 1865, CO 305:26.

18 Minute by TFE [Elliot], February 14, 1866, on Kennedy to Cardwell, Confidential, December 16, 1865, CO 305:26.

19 Kennedy to Cardwell, Confidential, December 30, 1865, CO 305:26.

20 Minute by WEF [William Edward Forster], March 12, 1866, and EC [Cardwell], March 13, 1866, on Kennedy to Cardwell, Confidential, December 30, 1865, CO 305:26.

21 Kennedy to Cardwell, Confidential, January 24, 1866, CO 305:28.

22 Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 24, Financial, March 26, 1866, CO 305:28.

23 For more information, see Ormsby, “Frederick Seymour.”

24 Seymour to Newcastle, September 14, 1863, CO 60:17.

25 Seymour to Cardwell, No. 33, March 24, 1865, CO 60:21.

26 Seymour to Cardwell, No. 73, November 28, 1864, CO 60:19.

27 Seymour to Newcastle, No. 1, April 26, 1864, and No. 7, May 20, 1864, CO 60:18.

28 For Colonial Office correspondence, see https://bcgenesis.uvic.ca/; for a couple of accessible printed sources, Edward Sleigh Hewlett, “The Chilcotin Uprising of 1864,” BC Studies 19 (Autumn 1974): 50–72; and Judith Williams, High Slack: Waddington’s Gold Road and the Bute Inlet Massacre of 1864 (Vancouver: New Star, 1996).

29 Seymour to Cardwell, No. 30, August 31, 1864, CO 60:19.

30 “Assembled Indian Chiefs” to Seymour, in Seymour to Cardwell, No. 30, August 31, 1864, CO 60:19.

31 Seymour’s response to “Indian Friends” in Seymour to Cardwell, No. 30, August 31, 1864, CO 60:19. For the larger context see Megan Harvey, “Story Peoples: Stó:lō-State Relations and Indigenous Literacies in British Columbia, 1864–1874,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association/Revue de la Société historique du Canada 24, 1 (2013): 51–88.

32 Seymour to Cardwell, No. 46, September 23, 1864, CO 60:19.

33 Seymour to Richard Grenville, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, secretary of state for the colonies, Private, June 26, 1867, CO 60:28.

34 Seymour to Newcastle, No. 1, April 26, 1864, and No. 6, May 19, 1864, both CO 60:18.

35 Arthur Birch, acting governor of British Columbia, to Cardwell, No. 50, July 9, 1866, CO 60:25. Also Newcastle to Douglas, No. 14, March 12, 1863, NAC 34; Douglas to Newcastle, No. 43, September 3, 1862, CO 60:13, enclosing the act for the new loan, and No. 30, Financial, May 14, 1863, CO 60:15, following up.

36 Seymour to Cardwell, No. 38, September 9, 1864, CO 60:19.

37 Birch to Earl Carnarvon, secretary of state for the colonies, No. 72, October 31, 1866, CO 60:25.

38 Birch to Carnarvon, No. 72, October 31, 1866, CO 60:25.

39 Birch to Carnarvon, No. 72, October 31, 1866, CO 60:25.

40 Birch to Carnarvon, No. 72, October 31, 1866, CO 60:25.

41 Birch to Carnarvon, No. 72, October 31, 1866, CO 60:25.

42 Birch to Carnarvon, No. 72, October 31, 1866, CO 60:25.

43 Birch to Carnarvon, No. 72, October 31, 1866, CO 60:25.

44 Birch to Carnarvon, No. 72, October 31, 1866, CO 60:25.

45 Birch to Carnarvon, No. 72, October 31, 1866, CO 60:25.

46 Minute initialed by AB^d [Blackwood], February 26, 1867; TFE [Elliot], February 25, 1867; CBA [Charles Bowyer Adderley], February 27, 1867; and C [Carnarvon], February 18, 1867, on Birch to Carnarvon, No. 72, October 31, 1866, CO 60:25.

47 Newcastle, “British Columbia and Vancouvers Island,” memorandum, March 27, 1863, enclosed in Arthur Helps, Whitehall, to Fortescue, June 12, 1863, CO 60:17; also Newcastle to Douglas, Separate, June 15, 1863, CO 398:2.

48 Newcastle to Douglas, Separate, June 15, 1863, CO 398:2.

49 Seymour to Newcastle, No. 9, June 1, 1864, CO 60:18.

50 Seymour to Cardwell, No. 30, March 21, 1865, CO 60:21; also No. 14, Separate, March 21, 1865, CO 305:25.

51 Smith, “The Kennedy Interlude, 1864–66,” BC Studies 47 (Autumn 1980): 70; also Smith, “Sir Arthur Edward Kennedy.”

52 Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 27, Miscellaneous, May 4, 1865, CO 305:25; marginal note by Arthur Blackwood, no date.

53 Minute by TFE [Elliot], July 7, 1865, on Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 27, Miscellaneous, May 4, 1865, CO 305:25.

54 Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 16, Separate, March 21, 1865, CO 305:25.

55 Seymour to Cardwell, Separate, March 29, 1865, CO 60:21.

56 Cardwell to Seymour, No. 36, July 1, 1865, NAC RG7:G8C/12, 155; and Private, July 1, 1865, CO 398:2.

57 See the list in Ormsby, “Frederick Seymour.”

58 Seymour to Cardwell, February 17, 1866, CO 60:26.

59 Seymour to Cardwell, February 17, 1866, CO 60:26.

60 Seymour to Cardwell, February 17, 1866, CO 60:26.

61 Seymour to Cardwell, February 17, 1866, CO 60:26.

62 Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 14, Financial, March 1, 1866, CO 305:28; on the follow-up, same to same, No. 45, Financial, June 26, 1866, CO 305:28; No. 50, Financial, July 12, 1866, CO 305:29; No. 61, August 8, 1866, CO 305:29.

63 Minute by AB^d [Blackwood], April 12, 1866, and TFE [Elliot], April 12, 1866, on Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 14, Financial, March 1, 1866, CO 305:28.

64 Minute by AB^d [Blackwood], April 16, 1866, on Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 14, Financial, March 1, 1866, CO 305:28.

65 Douglas to Carnarvon, September 14, 1866, CO 305:30.

66 Minute by AB^d [Blackwood], October 31, 1866, on Douglas to Carnarvon, September 14, 1866, CO 305:30.

67 Kennedy to Cardwell, Confidential, January 24, 1866, CO 305:28.

68 Minute by FR [Rogers], November 1, 1866, on Douglas to Carnarvon, September 14, 1866, CO 305:30.

69 Minute by WEF [Forster], May 3, 1866, on Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 14, Financial, March 1, 1866, CO 305:28.

70 Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 92, Separate, December 1, 1865, CO 305:26.

71 Minute by AB^d [Blackwood], February 12, 1866, on Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 97, Separate, December 16, 1865, CO 305:26; also Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 10, Financial, February 13, 1866, CO 305:28.

72 Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 48, Separate, June 26, 1866, CO 305:28.

73 Minute by AB^d [Blackwood], August 8, 1866, on Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 48, Separate, June 26, 1866, CO 305:28.

74 Minute by FR [Rogers], August 10, 1866, on Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 48, Separate, June 26, 1866, CO 305:28.

75 “Act for the Union of Vancouver Island with the Colony of British Columbia,” August 6, 1866, 401–2, online at archives.leg.bc.ca, item 741793246 (Appendix 3 in “Journals, Colonial Legislatures VI and BC 1851 to 1871, Volume I, Councils, 1851 to 1866”).

76 Ormsby, “Frederick Seymour.”

77 Minute by AB^d [Blackwood], April 12, 1866, and by TFE [Elliot], April 12, 1866, on Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 14, Financial, March 1, 1866, CO 305:28. For a detailed account of the Legislative Assembly’s proceedings from Kennedy’s perspective, see Kennedy to Cardwell, No. 60, Financial, August 8, 1866, CO 305:29; No. 61, CO 305:29; No. 69, Financial, September 3, 1866, CO 305:29; No. 71, Separate, September 4, 1866, CO 305:29; No. 73, Financial, September 8, 1866, CO 305:29.

78 Smith, “Sir Arthur Edward Kennedy.”

79 Seymour to Buckingham, No. 87, July 13, 1867, CO 60:28.

80 Seymour to Buckingham, No. 87, July 13, 1867, CO 60:28.

81 See Jean Friesen, “George Hills,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 12, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/hills_george_12E.html; Roberta L. Bagshaw, No Better Land: The 1860 Diaries of Anglican Colonial Bishop George Hills (Victoria, BC: Sono Nis Press, 1996); and “The Journal of George Hills,” 1861–92, typescript in Ecclesiastical Province of British Columbia Archives.

82 Minute by FR [Rogers], September 16, 1867, on Seymour to Buckingham, No. 87, July 13, 1867, CO 60:28.

83 Minute by CBA [Adderley], September 17, 1867, on Seymour to Buckingham, No. 87, July 13, 1867, CO 60:28.

84 Seymour to Buckingham, No. 161, December 10, 1867, CO 60:29.