British Columbia

C

Government and Politics

British Columbia has a parliamentary form of government. The formal chief executive of British Columbia is the lieutenant-governor, who is appointed by the Canadian governor-general in council for five years and who represents the Crown. Executive powers actually rest with the premier, who is a member of the legislature and usually the leader of the majority party. The premier appoints about 20 ministers to the executive council (Cabinet) from among the members of the party. The ministers operate and formulate policy for the departments of the provincial government. British Columbia has a unicameral legislature, called the Legislative Assembly. It has 79 members elected for a maximum of five years. At a federal level, British Columbia is represented by 36 members in the House of Commons and by 6 senators, appointed by the governor-general.

IV

History

A

Early White Settlers

The Danish navigator Vitus Bering approached what is now British Columbia in 1741. In 1774, the coast was noted on charts by the Spanish explorer Juan Pérez. British trading with the Native Americans of the northern coast followed the visit of the British mariner and explorer Captain James Cook to Nootka in 1778. Much of the subsequent mapping of the coastal indentations and islands of the region was done by two expeditions, one British and the other Spanish; they did not know of the other's presence in the area until they met in the Strait of Georgia in 1792. The British were commanded by a naval officer, George Vancouver. The two parties explored the Pacific coast from Puget Sound northwards through the Strait of Georgia and then sailed together for Nootka Sound to discuss ownership of the newly mapped coast. In 1795, under the Nootka Convention (1790), Spain withdrew from the area.

At about the same time, explorations of the interior regions were also in progress. In 1793 the British explorer Sir Alexander Mackenzie, who was in the service of the fur-trading North West Company, ascended the Peace and Parsnip rivers from Lake Athabasca in search of an overland route to the Pacific. Other fur traders from the interior followed, and the first fur-trading fort, Fort McLeod, was built in 1805 to the north of present-day Prince George. From this interior fur-trading region the American-born trader and explorer Simon Fraser completed the exploration of the swift Fraser River, arriving at its mouth in July 1808. At about the same time, the Canadian surveyor and explorer David Thompson mapped the rivers of the Kootenay region, and in 1812 he explored the Columbia River to its mouth. During this period the mainland was known as New Caledonia.

For several decades thereafter the area was the domain of the Hudson's Bay Company, a fur-trading enterprise. Fort Langley, the first coastal trading post of the company, was built in 1827 near the mouth of the Fraser River, and the West Coast headquarters, Fort Victoria, was erected in 1843. When the Oregon Treaty of 1846 established the 49th parallel as the boundary between British and United States territory, Victoria became the centre of British interests. In order to protect the territory, Great Britain proclaimed Vancouver Island a Crown Colony in 1849, naming Victoria the capital. The first governor, Richard Blanshard, had little authority over the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company. The British government acknowledged this fact in 1851 by naming the chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, James Douglas, governor of the colony. In the same year the Queen Charlotte Islands were made a dependency of the Vancouver Island colony.

B

The Gold Rush

In 1858 gold was discovered in the central Fraser River and Cariboo Mountains regions, and the rush to the area began, with miners flocking northwards from San Francisco. As a result, the British Colonial Office created a new Crown Colony on the mainland, that of British Columbia. After the easy-to-find alluvial gold was exhausted, the excitement of the search subsided, and the gold-seeking population of the interior drifted out of the colony or migrated to the coast. In order to control the northward movement of the gold miners, the territory of Stikine was added to British Columbia in 1862. In 1866 the mainland and island colonies were merged into a single entity, with New Westminster as capital; in 1868, however, the capital was re-established in the older settlement of Victoria.

C

Confederation

When British Columbia joined the Confederation in 1871, the new Dominion of Canada became a transcontinental nation. One of the conditions of union was a promise to connect the province to central Canada by railway. Finally, in 1886, the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed and the first trains reached the west coast. The location of the western terminal became the city of Vancouver, Canada's gateway to Asia.

By 1921 Vancouver had become Canada's third-largest metropolitan area. Economic expansion began after World War I with additional railway connections, the development of steamship lines, and an influx of foreign capital. The eastern ports of the United States and Canada were opened to the products of British Columbia via the Panama Canal. Trade also developed with the Orient.

British Columbia's economy was based largely on the exploitation of natural resources through mining, logging, and fisheries, which produced a range of goods for the export trade. This economy was dominated by large-scale enterprises employing numerous labourers, a situation that gave rise to serious class tensions, militant trade unions, and a socialist movement.

The class tensions were further exacerbated by the arrival of Asian immigrants, who came first in the gold rush of the 1860s. Their numbers were later swelled with the arrival of labourers hired by the railways. After 1890 the Chinese were joined by Japanese newcomers who soon became important in the fishing industry. Pressured by the white labour force and by anti-Asian riots, the provincial governments moved to restrict immigration and then successfully lobbied the federal government to act, eventually cutting off entry by passing legislation such as the Chinese Immigration Act (1923). The significant Asian population that remained in the province continued to be the target of white hostility. During World War II, the federal government interned Japanese-Canadians and appropriated their property (more than 40 years later the Canadian government apologized for this action). The provincial franchise was not extended to Chinese and Japanese citizens until 1949.

D

The 20th Century and Beyond

The overall character of British Columbia's economy has changed little since the 1920s. About 70 per cent of the population lived in the south-western corner but, with irrigation, agriculture developed in the Okanagan Valley and elsewhere. The Columbia River Treaty with the United States in 1961 and a 1963 agreement with Ottawa opened up development of the Columbia River and Peace River projects. Hydroelectric power is now exported to the state of Washington. Since 1970 new money has come from Japan and Hong Kong for the exploitation of natural resources. As a result, the population of British Columbia grew from about 818,000 in 1941 to 1,629,000 only 20 years later, to more than 3.2 million in 1991.

The political pattern in the province has been characterized by long periods of business-minded government and short periods of left-wing rule. In 1933, during the Great Depression, the Liberal Party leader T. Dufferin Pattulo came to power. His regime was replaced in 1941 by a Liberal-Conservative coalition formed to meet the threat of the powerful socialist opposition of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). When this coalition deteriorated, William A. C. Bennett led a new free enterprise grouping, the Social Credit Party, to power in 1952. For the next 20 years the party, under his leadership, retained power with its anti-Socialist position and predictions of continued prosperity. In 1972 the New Democratic Party (NDP), successor to the CCF, won office and launched a series of economic and social reforms. This move to the left was reversed in 1975 when a revitalized Social Credit Party, led by William R. Bennett, was swept back into power. Bennett worked to make the province a haven for free enterprise and to restrict social programmes. He resigned as premier in 1986 and was succeeded by William Vander Zalm. Vander Zalm's government was constantly troubled by charges of mismanagement, scandals, and defections, and he resigned in 1991. In the subsequent election the NDP, led by Michael Harcourt, again won control of the government.

In December 1999 Canada’s House of Commons voted in favour of a treaty between the government of Canada, the province of British Columbia, and the Nisga'a, a group of indigenous people living in British Columbia. The treaty grants the Nisga’a unprecedented powers of self-government and is likely to serve as a model for future treaties between Canada and its indigenous peoples. Under the treaty, the Nisga’a, numbering about 5,000 people, gain title to about 2,000 sq km (800 sq mi) of land along the Nass River in north-western British Columbia, including the rights to forest and mineral resources, as well as to portions of the fisheries in the area. The Nisga’a also gained the right to levy taxes, pass laws, and establish a police force and courts of law. In return, the Nisga’a agreed, with some exceptions, to consider the treaty to be the final settlement of their rights. For the Nisga’a, the treaty marked the end of a 112-year process.