The British Columbia Terms of Union is an Order in Council of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. It forms part of the Constitution of Canada. [1]
British Columbia then joined the four-year-old Confederation and became the sixth province of Canada on July 20, 1871. The confederation agreement was based on terms of union negotiated in the Canadian capital of Ottawa between the Colony of British Columbia (on the west coast of North America, bordering the Pacific Ocean) and the new Dominion of Canada, extending its territory and reach continent-wide, coast to coast. The Terms of Union agreement document consists of 14 articles.
For British Columbia, financial concerns were at the top of the list in negotiating union with Canada. The Dominion assumed BC's debts and liabilities, provided BC with a generous subsidy and an annual per capita grant, based on an inflated population figure. Canada also agreed to pay salaries of supreme court and county court judges, and pensions of previous colonial civil servants whose positions might be affected by the union with the Dominion of Canada. Other articles dealt with parliamentary representation, postal services, customs tariffs, interprovincial trade, lighthouses and facilities such as a quarantine medical station and a criminal penitentiary. The terms promised a trans-continental railway and a first-class graving dock for ship repair of a port on the Pacific Ocean coast at Esquimalt. [2] [3]
The Terms of Union also addressed Indian land policy in a manner that would effectively perpetuate BC's pre-Confederation practices, through "a policy as liberal as that hitherto pursued by the British Columbia Government shall be continued by the Dominion Government after the Union". Post union, Canada would learn that the policies of British Columbia with regard to lands and Indigenous peoples were not at all "liberal". [2] [3] This foundational ambiguity related to the Indian Land Question, settlement and occupation of unceded lands, is a defining characteristic of BC in Confederation and has ongoing implications for society and economy.
British Columbia is the westernmost province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, forests, lakes, mountains, inland deserts and grassy plains. British Columbia borders the province of Alberta to the east; the territories of Yukon and Northwest Territories to the north; the U.S. states of Washington, Idaho and Montana to the south, and Alaska to the northwest. With an estimated population of over 5.6 million as of 2024, it is Canada's third-most populous province. The capital of British Columbia is Victoria, while the province's largest city is Vancouver. Vancouver and its suburbs together make up the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada, with the 2021 census recording 2.6 million people in Metro Vancouver. British Columbia is Canada's third-largest province in terms of total area, after Quebec and Ontario.
Vancouver Island is an island in the northeastern Pacific Ocean and part of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The island is 456 km (283 mi) in length, 100 km (62 mi) in width at its widest point, and 32,100 km2 (12,400 sq mi) in total area, while 31,285 km2 (12,079 sq mi) are of land. The island is the largest by area and the most populous along the west coasts of the Americas.
Canadian Confederation was the process by which three British North American provinces—the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick—were united into one federation, called the Dominion of Canada, on July 1, 1867. This process occurred in accordance with the rising tide of Canadian nationalism that was then beginning to swell within these provinces and others. Upon Confederation, Canada consisted of four provinces: Ontario and Quebec, which had been split out from the Province of Canada, and the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The province of Prince Edward Island, which had hosted the first meeting to consider Confederation, the Charlottetown Conference, did not join Confederation until 1873. Over the years since Confederation, Canada has seen numerous territorial changes and expansions, resulting in the current number of ten provinces and three territories.
British North America comprised the colonial territories of the British Empire in North America from 1783 onwards. English colonisation of North America began in the 16th century in Newfoundland, then further south at Roanoke and Jamestown, Virginia, and more substantially with the founding of the Thirteen Colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America.
The Gilbert and Ellice Islands in the Pacific Ocean were part of the British Empire from 1892 to 1976. They were a protectorate from 1892 to 12 January 1916, and then a colony until 1 January 1976, and were administered as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT) until they became independent. The history of GEIC was mainly characterized by phosphate mining on Ocean Island. In October 1975, these islands were divided by force of law into two separate colonies, and they became independent nations shortly thereafter: the Ellice Islands became Tuvalu in 1978, and the Gilbert Islands with Banaba became part of Kiribati in 1979.
Events from the year 1871 in Canada.
The history of British Columbia covers the period from the arrival of Paleo-Indians thousands of years ago to the present day. Prior to European colonization, the lands encompassing present-day British Columbia were inhabited for millennia by a number of First Nations.
In Canada, an Indian reserve or First Nations reserve is defined by the Indian Act as a "tract of land, the legal title to which is vested in Her Majesty, that has been set apart by Her Majesty for the use and benefit of a band." Reserves are areas set aside for First Nations, one of the major groupings of Indigenous peoples in Canada, after a contract with the Canadian state, and are not to be confused with Indigenous peoples' claims to ancestral lands under Aboriginal title.
The 1st Canadian Parliament was in session from November 6, 1867, until July 8, 1872. The membership was set by the 1867 federal election from August 7 to September 20, 1867. It was prorogued prior to the 1872 election.
Sir Joseph William Trutch, was an English-born Canadian civil engineer, land surveyor, and politician who served as first Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia.
The Numbered Treaties are a series of eleven treaties signed between the First Nations, one of three groups of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and the reigning monarch of Canada from 1871 to 1921. These agreements were created to allow the Government of Canada to pursue settlement and resource extraction in the affected regions, which includes the entirety of modern-day Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, as well as parts of modern-day British Columbia, Ontario, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon. These treaties expanded the Dominion of Canada with large tracts of land in exchange for promises made to the indigenous people of the area. These terms were dependent on individual negotiations and so specific terms differed with each treaty.
Hugh Nelson was a Canadian parliamentarian and the fourth Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia.
The Colony of British Columbia was a British Crown Colony that resulted from the 1866 merger of two British colonies, the Colony of Vancouver Island and the mainland Colony of British Columbia. The united colony existed until its incorporation into Canadian Confederation in 1871 as the Province of British Columbia.
Post-Confederation Canada (1867–1914) is history of Canada from the formation of the Dominion to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Canada had a population of 3.5 million, residing in the large expanse from Cape Breton to just beyond the Great Lakes, usually within a hundred miles or so of the Canada–United States border. One in three Canadians was French, and about 100,000 were aboriginal. It was a rural country composed of small farms. With a population of 115,000, Montreal was the largest city, followed by Toronto and Quebec at about 60,000. Pigs roamed the muddy streets of Ottawa, the small new national capital.
John Sebastian Helmcken was a British Columbia physician who played a prominent role in bringing the province into Canadian Confederation. He was also the founding president of the British Columbia Medical Association.
Canadian Aboriginal law is the body of law of Canada that concerns a variety of issues related to Indigenous peoples in Canada. Canadian Aboriginal Law is different from Canadian Indigenous law: In Canada, Indigenous Law refers to the legal traditions, customs, and practices of Indigenous peoples and groups. Aboriginal peoples as a collective noun is a specific term of art used in legal documents, including the Constitution Act, 1982, and includes First Nations, Inuit and Métis people. Canadian Aboriginal law provides certain constitutionally recognized rights to land and traditional practices. Canadian Aboriginal Law enforces and interprets certain treaties between the Crown and Indigenous people, and manages much of their interaction. A major area of Aboriginal law involves the duty to consult and accommodate.
The natural resources acts were a series of Acts passed by the Parliament of Canada and the provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan in 1930 to transfer control over crown lands and natural resources within these provinces from the Government of Canada to the provincial governments. Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan had not been given control over their natural resources when they entered Confederation, unlike the other Canadian provinces. British Columbia had surrendered certain portions of its natural resources and Crown lands to the federal government, the Railway Belt and the Peace River Block, when it entered Confederation in 1871, as part of the agreement for the building of the transcontinental railway.
Western Canada, also referred to as the Western provinces, Canadian West or the Western provinces of Canada, and commonly known within Canada as the West, is a Canadian region that includes the four western provinces just north of the Canada–United States border namely British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The people of the region are often referred to as "Western Canadians" or "Westerners", and though diverse from province to province are largely seen as being collectively distinct from other Canadians along cultural, linguistic, socioeconomic, geographic and political lines. They account for approximately 32% of Canada's total population.
The Ma’amtagila First Nation (also styled Maamtagila), formerly known as Mahteelthpe or Matilpi, are an Indigenous nation and part of the Kwakwaka'wakw peoples. Their territory is located in the Queen Charlotte Strait-Johnstone Strait area in the Discovery Islands between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland in Canada.
Section 146 of the Constitution Act, 1867 is a provision of the Constitution of Canada authorising the expansion of Canada by admitting British Columbia, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Rupert's Land, and the North-Western Territory into Canada.