Barkley Adventure Station – Fishing Blog

British Columbia A Brief History

British Columbia’s coat of arms bears the motto "Splendor sine Occasu",
which means "Splendour without Diminishment".

Size

British Columbia’s
948,600 square kilometres of splendour include spectacular mountain ranges, majestic
fiords, arid plateaus, fertile river valleys, dense rain forests, 6,500 islands
and 7,022 kilometres of rugged coastline.

Industries

Among British Columbia’s most important
industries are forestry, mining, fishing and agriculture. People from many cultures
have participated in the building of this province. Thousands more choose it
as their home each year.

People

For more than a century, this province and its resources
have attracted hardy adventurers, shrewd entrepreneurs and pioneers in every
field of endeavour. For generations before that, the tribal groups of British
Columbia’s native people lived close to the earth, carving a self-sufficient,
richly complex culture from forest, stone and sea.

Today, the people of B.C. are
as varied as its terrain. Some of us were born here; others chose to come from
homelands around the world.

The first explorers and fur traders to arrive on the
west coast of what is now British Columbia came from Spain, England, Russia,
America, France and Scotland. Some arrived in sailing ships; some – like explorers
Simon Fraser, Alexander Mackenzie and David Thompson – came in great canoes crewed
by French-Canadian voyageurs. Some reaped profits from resources and moved on;
others stayed.

Forts

As chains of fur forts established by men of the North West and
Hudson’s Bay companies opened up the west, frontier marriages joined Indian women
with Scottish and English traders and French voyageurs. Then, in l827, trader
James McMillan and his British, Scottish, French and Iroquois crew brought Canada’s
first Oriental immigrants – the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islanders – to
British Columbia’s Fraser Valley. The ‘Kanakas", as they
were called, worked beside expert French-Canadian axemen, clearing
land and hewing timbers for Fort Langley. They, too, married into native families.

As
colonies grew around the forts on the mainland and Vancouver Island, industrious
and enterprising traders and settlers found ways to be self-sufficient and self-supporting.
By the 1850’s, B.C.’s fishing, mining, agriculture and lumbering industries had
already begun. Fish caught by native fishermen were preserved, packed and shipped
to overseas markets from Fort Langley; coal was mined on Vancouver Island; lumber
was cut at the first sawmill in Victoria; and crops and dairy produce from Hudson’s
Bay Company farms at Colwood, Craigflower and Langley supplied both local and
overseas markets.

Soon settlers from the east were attracted to the developing
western frontier. By l857, French and French-Canadian missionaries,
farmers, miners and merchants formed the largest ethnic group settled in the
inland areas of the province.

Gold Rush

Then gold was discovered on the Fraser River. Over
20,000 newcomers poured across the border. Almost overnight, British Columbia’s
multicultural landscape changed dramatically.

This heavy influx of high-spirited
gold-seekers from the United States led Britain to assert its claim formally
to the Pacific mainland north of the 49th Parallel by declaring the territory
a Crown Colony. On December l9, l858, James Douglas was sworn in at Fort Langley
as Governor of ‘British Columbia’.

The Gold Rush attracted not only miners and
prospectors, but also men who could provide supplies and services. German, Austrian,
Swiss, Italian and Scandinavian entrepreneurs were among those who headed north.
Cattle ranches were established in the Cariboo and the Okanagan and Similkameen
Valleys to serve the needs of the mining communities. The first fruit trees in
the Okanagan were planted by an Austrian rancher and an Oblate priest from Bohemia,
Brother Pandosy, who founded the first permanent non-native settlement in the
valley in l859.

The Chinese came in great numbers. At the peak of the Gold Rush,
there were 5,000 Chinese in Barkerville alone. When the Rush was over, they moved
to other B.C. centres, like Victoria, where communities were already established.

Black people
from the San Francisco area were drawn to the Crown Colony of Vancouver Island,
where rural land sold for 20 shillings an acre and town lots for $50.00. After
nine months, black settlers could vote, be jurors and be protected by the law
- rights denied to them at that time in the state of California. Some opened
businesses in Victoria; others settled on farms on nearby Saltspring Island.

Jewish
immigrants arrived from the U.S. and western Europe to establish a small but
thriving community in Victoria. In l863, they built a synagogue that is still
in use today.

German merchants and business people and families settled in Victoria, too,
and later in Vancouver, where a community had begun to grow around Hastings Mills.

Canadian Railway

As the Canadian Pacific Railway moved west in the l880’s, American contractor Andrew
Onderdonk brought l5,700 Chinese to B.C. to work as labourers. The railway also
employed Scandinavian, Frenchmen, Irishmen, Ukrainians, Lebanese, Poles and others
from eastern Europe. Many of these men were prairie farmers needing cash for
provisions.

Some of the Irish railway workers – skilled tradesmen known
around the world as ‘navvies’ – stayed to settle in B.C. Other Irishmen established
British Columbia’s famous O’Keefe and Coldstream ranches. The Vernons of Coldstream
gave their name to the town.

In the late nineteenth century, Scandinavians settled
in several rural areas of B.C.; the Norwegians and Swedes on Fraser Valley
farms near Matsqui and the Danes on the Cape Scott peninsula
at Holberg. Others became fishermen off the B.C. coast. The Finns who
worked on the C.P.R. moved on to the coal mines of Nanaimo and Wellington and
to Sointula, on Malcolm Island in Queen Charlotte Sound, where they founded their
own settlement.

Hungarians and Japanese came to work the fertile farmlands along
the Fraser River. Some Japanese became market gardeners; others became fishermen.

Immigrants
from India – mainly Sikhs – found work in the logging, lumber, dairy and fruit
farming industries. Doukhobors moved en masse from Saskatchewan to farms in the
Slocan and Kettle Valleys. In July l909, the Fraser River Lumber Company recruited
French-Canadian lumbermen, who established a settlement at Maillardville. Some
later moved to Port Alberni.
Croatians came, often via the U.S., to work in construction,
fishing and mining industries. Mennonites arrived from Manitoba
and the eastern U.S. in the l920’s and from Alberta and Saskatchewan in the ’30’s
and early ’40’s. They settled on farms around Yarrow, on Sumas Prairie, and at
Aldergrove, Clearbrook and Abbotsford. Hungarians and Ukrainians also
migrated from the prairies to B.C. farms and cities after the Depression.

Since
World War II, people from Holland, Greece, Portugal, Latvia, Estonia, Italy,
India, Latin America, and other countries have come in great numbers, contributing
their skills to a variety of commercial and professional enterprises.

Recently,
in response to political upheavals in their homelands, Hungarians, Czechs, Ugandans,
Vietnamese and Poles have sought freedom in Canada. Now they are settled beside
other British Columbians in communities large and small, all across our province.

Today,
all of us reap the rewards of our multicultural history. B.C.’s First People,
our native Indians, established our earliest traditions of conservation and wise
use of resources; the first non-native founders of this province brought us British
law, administration, education and social structure; and the many thousands of
us who came as immigrants from every part of the world put our own cultural,
religious, political, educational, social and commerical marks on our communities.
We brought our strength as individuals and our skills as tradespeople, professionals,
homemakers and parents.

We continue to search for new and better ways to live
and work together; we strive for a society in which all British Columbians can
lead satisfying and productive lives. Each of us has an important contribution
to make.