SEVEN SHILLINGS A YEAR COLONY: FORT VICTORIA AND VANCOUVER ISLAND, 1843-58
The long-time Hudson s Bay man would become the most important figure in the history of the Colony of Vancouver Island
Today s Douglas Street in downtown Victoria
Today s Fairfield, once home to the Douglas estate and farm
Douglas and his crew arrived at Clover Point in March 1843
This steel mooring ring on today s Inner Harbor is a fragment of Fort Victoria
Roderick Finlayson became the chief factor at Fort Victoria upon the death of Charles Ross in 1844
A hiker on the west face of Mount Finlayson today
Lieutenant Henry Warre drew this testament to his 1845 For Victoria visit
The artist Paul Kane (circa 1850)
A selfportrait of Kane drawn in 1850
Kane s controversial Return of A War Party (1847
Kane s Medicine Mask Dance pictured the Songhees of Cadboro Bay
Fort Victoria became the capital of the Crown Colony of Vancouver Island in 1849
Royal Grant Of 1849 The Hudson s Bay Company was given total control of Vancouver Island for seven shillings a year for the advancement of colonization and encouragement of trade and commerce. The company was entrusted with the responsibility to establish a settlement of British colonists on the island by 1854. The grant could be revoked at the end of five years if this condition had not been satisfactorily fulfilled.
1849 Colonization Of Vancouver s Island Prospectus Land would cost one pound an acre. No land sale would be for less than twenty acres. Colonists must pay their own way out to the island from Britain. Purchasers of one hundred acres of more must take out with them five single men, or three married couples, for every hundred acres. In December 1849, Douglas was authorized to extinguish on behalf of the Crown the proprietary rights of aboriginal people of the island.
The colonization plan was based upon the ideas of the social theorist Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796-1862)
Systemic Flaws In The Wakefield Model As Applied To Vancouver Island The Londoners ignored the reality of economic conditions on the west coast of North America. They were unaware of the colony s limited agricultural potential and of the scarcity of European labor there. They systematically downplayed the extent to which much of Vancouver Island was already settled by First Nations. They showed an ignorance of Oregon s generous land laws which caused such a drain on colonial immigration. Gentlemen of substance seemed to have little interest in traveling to a remote corner of North America to clear farms amid the dense forests.
Edward Genny Fanshawe, Victoria Settlement, 1851
Surveyor Joseph Despard Pemberton arrived in the colony in 1851
Craigflower Manor, built in 1853, was the residence for the bailiff of Craigflower Farm
1855 Settler Census Town of Victoria 232 Victoria District 176 Esquimalt District 154 Sooke and Metchosin Districts 20 San Juan Island 29 Nanaimo 151 Fort Rupert 12 Totals 774
The 1858 family holdings of the wealthiest Victoria families
Sooke s Muir and Company was Vancouver Island s first steam sawmill
The Norman Morison served as the HBC s main immigrant ship
Victoria doctor John Sebastian Helmcken pictured in 1854
Helmcken House survives in Victoria today
John Sebastian Helmcken pictured in 1917
The third edition of Victoria s Christ Church dates to 1929
Modeste Demers became Catholic Bishop of Vancouver Island in 1852
Victoria s Craigflower School was built in 1854
Richard Blanshard s short 1850 term as Vancouver Island governor was not a happy one
The Sooke home of Captain Walter Colquhoun Grant
The broom of Vancouver Island is a legacy of Grant s sojourn here
Douglas openly challenged Blanshard for power and became governor in 1851 upon the latter s resignation
Tavern-keeper James Yates was one of those who organized political opposition to Douglas
The intersection of Douglas and Yates Streets today
The Colony of Vancouver Island s first Legislative Assembly (1856): Back Row J. W. McKay, J.D. Pemberton, J. Porter (clerk); Front Row T. Skinner, Dr. J.S. Helmcken, J. Yates
Fort Victoria s Bachelor Hall is on the left
The ruins of Fort Rupert s chimney pictured at the turn of the millennium
A statue of Ki-et-sa-kun (Coal Tyee), in today s Nanaimo. He brought the stone that burns to Fort Victoria in 1851
By 1855, Nanaimo had 42 houses and a settler population of 150
Adam Grant Horne pictured with his wife in 1855. That year he witnessed the aftermath of a Haida raid on the Qualicum River. He would later be the HBC agent at Comox.
Horne Lake is named in his honour
This building at 1520 Blanshard Street in Victoria indirectly attests to the importance of the Royal Navy in the early history of the town. It is located at the intersection of Blanshard and Cormorant Streets, between Fisgard and Pandora. All three of the latter streets were named after early British warships.
The H.M.S. Constance portrayed in 1846
Courtenay Museum staff examine the private journal of the captain of the Constance, George William Conway Courtenay
An early photograph of the Crimea Huts at Esquimalt
The Fisgard Lighthouse was erected in 1860
The HMS Zealous at the Esquimalt naval base in 1864
The HMS Plumper on the right at Esquimalt in the late 1850s
Miner s Bay at Mayne Island is linked both to Plumper s surveying and the Gold Rush of 1858
Gowlland Harbor is on Quadra Island
Browning Inlet is an arm of Quatsino Sound
Bedwell Harbor on South Pender Island
Mount Moriarity is southwest of Parksville
Officers of the HMS Plumper with Mrs. Richards (c. 1859): Sitting: Sub-lieutenant E. P. Bedwell, 2 nd Master Daniel Pender, 1 st Lieutenant William Moriarity Standing: Dr. David Lyall, Paymaster W.H.J. Brown, Captain G. H. Richards, 2 nd Lieutenant R.C. Mayne
George Richards would become an admiral after his return to Britain
North and South Pender Islands
Haida Gwaii s Tasu Sound would provide a dry run of sorts in 1852 for the later Gold Rush
The grave of James Douglas in Victoria s Ross Bay Cemetery
Victoria and Vancouver Island would be transformed by the events of 1858