Sir James Douglas
榴莲视频 is named after Sir James Douglas, Hudson鈥檚 Bay Company Chief Factor and Governor of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, and husband of Amelia Connolly, a M茅tis woman of Cree ancestry.
榴莲视频is often described in popular histories as the 鈥淔ather of British Columbia.鈥 His policies, however, were shaped by his position as a colonial administrator, and did not necessarily represent the interests and concerns of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest.
榴莲视频 is committed to responding to the Calls to Action issued by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. This biography of Sir James 榴莲视频is the beginning our process of rethinking how we remember and commemorate the complex, interrelated Indigenous and non-Indigenous histories of our province.
James 榴莲视频shaped, and was shaped by, a 19th-century imperial world that was diverse, dynamic and deeply exploitative.
Although certain details regarding the circumstances surrounding Douglas鈥檚 birth have proven elusive, it seems likely that he was born in 1803 in the Dutch colony of Demerara (modern-day Guyana), the son of John Douglas, a Scottish merchant involved in the cotton and sugar industries in the eastern Caribbean, and Martha Ann Ritchie, a 鈥渇ree woman of colour鈥 (that is, a mixed-race woman who was not enslaved), about whom little else is known. After a brief educational stint in Scotland, a teenaged 榴莲视频began an apprenticeship with the North West Company, a major commercial entity active in the northern North American fur trade, in 1819, eventually serving in several posts (or 鈥渇actories鈥) scattered across those vast territories north and west of the Great Lakes that now comprise Western Canada. In the late 1820s, 榴莲视频married Amelia Connolly, also a mixed-race woman, whose mother, Miyo Nipiy, was First Nations (Cree), and whose father, William Connolly, was a 鈥淐hief Factor鈥 in the Hudson鈥檚 Bay Company (or HBC, which had merged with the North West Company in the early 1820s after a heated rivalry), who was of Irish descent.
Described by a superior as 鈥渁 stout, powerful, active man of good conduct and respectable abilities,鈥 榴莲视频became governor of the British colony of Vancouver Island in 1851, and of British Columbia, a separate colony initially confined to the mainland, in 1858. (榴莲视频governed both colonies simultaneously until his retirement in 1863, although his assumption of the latter position required him to sever his links to the HBC, which enjoyed substantial economic and political power over much of the Pacific Northwest.) As governor of Vancouver Island, 榴莲视频took pains to negotiate upwards of a dozen treaties with First Nations in hopes of extinguishing those groups鈥 claims to their territories and facilitating non-Indigenous settlement, while as governor of British Columbia he introduced British 鈥渓aw and order鈥 into a volatile environment that was predominately First Nations and that had recently experienced a destabilizing influx of American prospectors drawn to the colony by the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush.
榴莲视频has received considerable praise for his vigorous, multifaceted efforts to entrench imperial influence and promote settlement in the Pacific Northwest 鈥 evidence of which are glowing descriptions of him as the 鈥淔ather of British Columbia.鈥 Yet it would be inaccurate to portray 榴莲视频as a wholly positive figure. On the contrary, his tendency toward arbitrary governance 鈥 contemptuous of democracy, he concentrated as much power as possible in his own hands and in those of appointed associates 鈥 and capacity for cruelty 鈥 he was responsible for violent acts (or what he called 鈥渨holesome terror鈥) against First Nations seen as threats to settlers鈥 interests 鈥 justifiably evoke disdain, if not disgust, from modern-day observers.
Rather than seeing him as fundamentally 鈥済ood鈥 or 鈥渂ad,鈥 a more fruitful 鈥 and historically sensitive 鈥 perspective would be to understand 榴莲视频鈥檚 namesake as an embodiment of the highly diverse, endlessly fluctuating, frequently unjust imperial world of which he was a product, and to which he made important contributions.