How a man of mixed race helped create British Columbia

Posted in Articles, Biography, Canada, History, United States on 2017-03-01 02:12Z by Steven

How a man of mixed race helped create British Columbia

The Vancouver Courier
2017-02-14

Martha Perkins, Editor-in-Chief


Sir James Douglas, who became governor of Vancouver Island in 1851, was born in Guyana to a Creole mother and Scottish father.

To celebrate Black History Month we profile the Hudson Bay Company’s Sir James Douglas

In 1803 in what was then British Guyana, James Douglas was born. His father was a Scottish merchant and his mother was what they called “free coloured” — a Creole woman of mixed African and European heritage.

Unlike his younger sister, who was as dark skinned as their mother, Douglas appeared to be Caucasian. But his later actions, including marrying a woman of Cree ancestry, have led amateur historian (and former Vancouver mayor) Sam Sullivan to believe that when Douglas built Fort Victoria, his aim was to create an inclusive society where everyone had an opportunity to thrive…

Read the entire article here.

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James Douglas: Father of British Columbia

Posted in Biography, Books, Canada, History, Monographs on 2013-03-13 06:07Z by Steven

James Douglas: Father of British Columbia

Dundurn Press
October 2009
240 pages
5.5 in x 8.5 in
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-55488-409-4
eBook ISBN: 978-1-77070-564-7

Julia H. Ferguson

James Douglas’s story is one of high adventure in pre-Confederation Canada. It weaves through the heart of Canadian and Pacific Northwest history when British Columbia was a wild land, Vancouver didn’t exist, and Victoria was a muddy village. Part black and illegitimate, Douglas was born in British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1803 to a Scottish plantation owner and a mixed-race woman. After schooling in Scotland, the fifteen-year-old Douglas sailed to Canada in 1819 to join the fur trade. With roads non-existent, he travelled thousands of miles each year, using the rivers and lakes as his highways. He paddled canoes, drove dogsleds, and snowshoed to his destinations. Douglas became a hard-nosed fur trader, married a part-Cree wife, and nearly provoked a war between Britain and the United States over the San Juan Islands on the West Coast. When he was in his prime, he established Victoria and secured the western region of British North America from the Russian Empire and the expansionist Americans. Eventually, Douglas became the controversial governor of the Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia and oversaw the frenzied Fraser and Cariboo gold rushes.

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