Last night, I went to bed knowing that Donald Trump managed to win re-election. This morning, I woke up, and all I could think was: this is why James Douglas hated democracy. Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners CONTEST: Win Tickets to Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week 2024 Two lucky readers will get two tickets to All My Relations — Indigenous Couture Night on Nov.
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Gov. James Douglas, the father of British Columbia, was a light-skinned Black man sent to Vancouver Island to establish a British colonial settlement. In 1851, when he assumed the governorship, there were less than 1,000 white people who called the territory home.
Seven years later, he was instrumental in the migration of 800 Black people, all but banned from California, to the Island. They arrived in search of freedom from the racial animosity they faced in America and the promise of a better life, and equal political and economic rights as British subjects. They fled America, in other words, in search of the American dream.
The dream didn’t last long. Later that same year, the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush brought 30,000 pioneers, mostly white Americans, to Douglas’s hometown, the new El Dorado, completely remaking the settlement while working to undermine British jurisdiction in the region, and Douglas’.
