Amor De Cosmos was a Canadian journalist, publisher and politician. He served as the second premier of British Columbia.
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.
Andrew Charles Elliott was a British Columbian politician and jurist.
Robert Beaven, son of James Beaven, was a British Columbia politician and businessman. Beaven moved to British Columbia from Toronto, where he had been educated at Upper Canada College, because of the gold rush. He entered business in Victoria, which was then the capital of the Colony of Vancouver Island. After the colony's union with British Columbia, Beaven became involved with politics as secretary of Amor De Cosmos' Confederation League which advocated that the colony enter Canadian Confederation.
John Robson was a Canadian journalist and politician, who served as the ninth premier of British Columbia.
New Caledonia was a fur-trading district of the Hudson's Bay Company that comprised the territory of the north-central portions of present-day British Columbia, Canada. Though not a British colony, New Caledonia was part of the British claim to North America. Its administrative centre was Fort St. James. The rest of what is now mainland British Columbia was called the Columbia Department by the British, and the Oregon Country by the Americans. Even before the partition of the Columbia Department by the Oregon Treaty in 1846, New Caledonia was often used to describe anywhere on the mainland not in the Columbia Department, such as Fort Langley in the Fraser Valley.
Sir James Douglas was a Canadian fur trader and politician who became the first Governor of the Colony of British Columbia. He is often credited as "The Father of British Columbia". He was instrumental to the resettlement of 35 African Americans fleeing a life of racial persecution in San Francisco who arrived in the province aboard the steamship Commodore in what later became known as the Pioneer Committee. In 1863, Douglas was knighted by Queen Victoria for his services to the Crown.
Fort Victoria began as a fur trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company and was the headquarters of HBC operations in the Columbia District, a large fur trading area now part of the province of British Columbia, Canada and the U.S. state of Washington. Construction of Fort Victoria in 1843 highlighted the beginning of a permanent British settlement now known as Victoria, the capital city of British Columbia. The fort itself was demolished in November 1864 as the town continued to grow as a commercial centre serving the local area as well as trading with California, Washington Territory, the United Kingdom, and others.
Joseph Despard Pemberton was a surveyor for the Hudson's Bay Company, Surveyor General for the Colony of Vancouver Island, a pre-Confederation politician, a businessman and a farmer. He was born in 1821 in Dublin, Ireland and died in 1893 in Oak Bay, British Columbia. Joseph Pemberton laid out Victoria's town site, southern Vancouver Island and townsites along the Fraser River. He married Teresa Jane Grautoff and they are the parents of Canadian painter Sophie Pemberton. The town of Pemberton was named after him.
The Colony of Vancouver Island, officially known as the Island of Vancouver and its Dependencies, was a Crown colony of British North America from 1849 to 1866, after which it was united with the mainland to form the Colony of British Columbia. The united colony joined Canadian Confederation, thus becoming part of Canada, in 1871. The colony comprised Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands of the Strait of Georgia.
The Colony of British Columbia was a British Crown Colony that resulted from the amalgamation of two former colonies, the Colony of Vancouver Island and the mainland Colony of British Columbia. The two former colonies were united in 1866, and the united colony existed until its incorporation into Canadian Confederation in 1871.
The Colony of British Columbia was a crown colony in British North America from 1858 until 1866 that was founded by Richard Clement Moody, who was selected to 'found a second England on the shores of the Pacific', who was Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for British Columbia and the first Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia. Prior to the arrival of Moody's Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment, the Colony's supreme authority was its Governor James Douglas, who was the Governor of the neighbouring colony of Vancouver Island.
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.
The Legislative Council of British Columbia was an advisory body created in 1867 to the governor of the "new" Colony of British Columbia, which had been created from the merger of the old Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. The new colony, like its predecessors, did not have responsible government, and while its debates and resolutions carried considerable weight, executive power remained in the hands of the governor, who at the time of the council's founding was Frederick Seymour.
Sir Henry Pering Pellew Crease was a British-Canadian lawyer, judge, and politician, influential in the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. He was the first Attorney General of the united Colony of British Columbia, and sat on the Supreme Court of that province for 26 years.
The Douglas Treaties, also known as the Vancouver Island Treaties or the Fort Victoria Treaties, were a series of treaties signed between certain indigenous groups on Vancouver Island and the Colony of Vancouver Island.
Joseph William McKay (Mackay) (31 January 1829 – 17 December 1900) was a fur trader, businessman, politician and explorer who had a long career in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada.
A total of 13 members were elected to the Second House of Assembly of Vancouver Island, which sat from March 1, 1860 to February 27, 1863. The members were elected over a number of weeks in January with each constituency holding its election on a different day.
The Legislative Council of British Columbia held its first election in 1866. BC was a colony formed by the union of the colony of Vancouver Island and the colony of British Columbia.
David Cameron was a jurist, merchant, and manager operating across the British Empire. He was unsuccessful as a cloth merchant in Scotland and as a sugar plantation manager in Demerara, Guianas. He became a Hudson's Bay Company clerk in Nanaimo, British Columbia and then a judge in the Colony of Vancouver Island. In 1853, Cameron became the first Chief Justice of Vancouver Island, a position which he held until 1858. He served as a justice until his retirement in 1865.
