The Colony of British Columbia was a crown colony in British North America from 1858 until 1866 that was founded by Richard Clement Moody,Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Volume 90, Issue 1887, 1887, pp. 453-455, OBITUARY. MAJOR-GENERAL RICHARD CLEMENT MOODY, R.E., 1813-1887. who was selected to 'found a second England on the shores of the Pacific'. Moody was Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for British Columbia and the first Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia.
Prior to Moody's arrival, the colony's highest authority was James Douglas, governor of the neighbouring colony of Vancouver Island.
This first colony of British Columbia did not originally include the Colony of Vancouver Island, or the regions north of the Nass and Finlay rivers or east of the Rocky Mountains, or any of the coastal islands, but it did include the Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands, and was enlarged in 1863 in the north and northeast up to the 60th parallel and the 120th meridian by the (26 & 27 Vict. c. 83). In 1866, the colony was effectively merged with the Colony of Vancouver Island to create the new Colony of British Columbia (1866–1871).
Background
The explorations of James Cook and George Vancouver, and the concessions of Spain in 1794 established British claims over the coastal area north of California. Similar claims were established inland via the explorations of John Finlay, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser, Samuel Black, and David Thompson, and by the subsequent establishment of fur trading posts by the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). However, until 1858 the region which now constitutes the mainland of the Province of British Columbia was an unorganised area of British North America comprising two fur trading districts: New Caledonia, north of the Thompson River drainage; and the Columbia District, located south of the Thompson and throughout the basin of the Columbia River.
With the signing of the Treaty of Washington in 1846, which established the U.S. border along the 49th parallel, the HBC moved the headquarters of its western operations from Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River (present day Vancouver, Washington) to the newly established Fort Victoria, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. Vancouver Island and the surrounding Gulf Islands in the Strait of Georgia were organized as a crown colony in 1849. Meanwhile, the mainland continued to function under the de facto administration of the HBC, whose chief executive, James Douglas, was also governor of Vancouver Island. The non-Indigenous mainland population during this time never exceeded about 150 at Fort Victoria, mostly HBC employees and their families.
Governorship of James Douglas By 1857, Americans and British were beginning to respond to rumors of gold in the Thompson River area. Almost overnight, some ten to twenty thousand men moved into the region around present-day Yale, British Columbia, sparking the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. Governor Douglas - who had no legal authority over New Caledonia – stationed a gunboat at the entrance of the Fraser River to exert such authority by collecting licences from prospectors attempting to make their way upstream. To normalize its jurisdiction, and undercut any HBC claims to the resource wealth of the mainland, the district was converted to a Crown colony on 2 August 1858 by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and given the name British Columbia. Douglas was offered the governorship of the new colony by the British colonial secretary, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, provided that he sever his employment with the Hudson's Bay Company, which Douglas agreed to do, and received a knighthood.
Immigration into the new colony obliged Douglas to act quickly to define regulations and create infrastructure. Magistrates and constables were hired, mining regulations drawn up, and town sites surveyed at Yale, Hope and Fort Langley to discourage squatting on crown land. In addition, roads were constructed into the areas of greatest mining exploration around Lillooet and Lytton. The colony, however, was not immediately granted a representative colonial assembly because of uncertainty as to whether the gold rush would yield a stable, settled population. Douglas, who had conflicted with the assembly on Vancouver Island, was relieved.
The rush indeed was short lived, and the exodus of miners, speculators, and merchants was already underway by the time the Royal Engineers had laid out the colony's new capital at New Westminster. Prospecting continued, however, and additional finds farther inland in the Cariboo region in 1860 signalled an impending second gold rush. Provisioning was already proving to be an acute problem, and with more distant finds it became clear that wagon trains would have to replace pack horses, necessitating new infrastructure.
Douglas negotiated several treaties with the natives present on Vancouver Island on behalf of the Crown, establishing reserves. These treaties continue to this day. The vast majority of First Nations traditional territory was absorbed into the new colony of British Columbia, without treaty.
Foundation by Richard Clement Moody
Selection When news of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush reached London, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Secretary of State for the Colonies, requested that the War Office recommend a field officer who was "a man of good judgment possessing a knowledge of mankind" to lead a corps of 150 (later increased to 172) Royal Engineers who had been selected for their "superior discipline and intelligence". The War Office chose Moody. Lord Lytton, who described Moody as his "distinguished friend", accepted their nomination as a consequence of Moody's military record, his success as Governor of the Falkland Islands, and the distinguished record of his father, Colonel Thomas Moody, at the Colonial Office. Moody was charged to establish British order and to transform the new Colony of British Columbia into the British Empire's "bulwark in the farthest west"Donald J. Hauka, McGowan's War, Vancouver: 2003, New Star Books, p.146 and "found a second England on the shores of the Pacific". Lytton desired to send to the colony "representatives of the best of British culture, not just a police force", men who possessed "courtesy, high breeding and urbane knowledge of the world" such as Moody, whom the government considered to be the archetypal "English gentleman and British Officer" to command the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment. Moody's brother, Colonel Hampden Clement Blamire Moody, had already served with the Royal Engineers in British North America (mainly at Fort Garry), from 1840 to 1848, to such success that he was subsequently granted command of the regiment across the entirety of China.
Richard Clement Moody, his wife Mary, and their four children left England for British Columbia in October 1858 and arrived in December with the 172 Royal Engineers of the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment, and Moody's secretary, the freemason Robert Burnaby (after whom he subsequently named Burnaby Lake). The original Columbia Detachment consisted of 150 Royal Engineers, both sappers and officers, before it was increased to 172. The 'gentlemen' Royal Engineers defined by Moody were his three captains (Robert Mann Parsons, John Marshall Grant, and Henry Reynolds Luard) and his two lieutenants (Arthur Reid Lempriere and Henry Spencer Palmer), in addition to Captain William Driscoll Gosset (who was to be Colonial Treasurer and Commissary Officer). The contingent also included Doctor John Vernon Seddall and John Sheepshanks (who was to be Chaplain of the Columbia Detachment). Moody was sworn in as the first lieutenant-governor of British Columbia and appointed Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for British Columbia.
Ned McGowan's War Moody had hoped to begin immediately the foundation of a capital city, but on his arrival at Fort Langley, he learned of an insurrection at the settlement of Hill's Bar by a notorious outlaw, Ned McGowan, and some restive gold miners. Moody repressed the rebellion, which became popularly known as 'Ned McGowan's War', without loss of life. Moody described the incident: The notorious Ned McGowan, of Californian celebrity at the head of a band of Yankee Rowdies defying the law! Every peaceable citizen frightened out of his wits!—Summons & warrants laughed to scorn! A Magistrate seized while on the Bench, & brought to the Rebel's camp, tried, condemned, & heavily fined! A man shot dead shortly before! Such a tale to welcome me at the close of a day of great enjoyment. Moody described the response to his success: 'They gave me a Salute, firing off their loaded Revolvers over my head—Pleasant—Balls whistling over one's head! as a compliment! Suppose a hand had dropped by accident! I stood up, & raised my cap & thanked them in the Queen's name for their loyal reception of me'.
The founding of British Columbia In British Columbia, Moody 'wanted to build a city of beauty in the wilderness' and planned his city as an iconic visual metaphor for British dominance, 'styled and located with the objective of reinforcing the authority of the Crown and of the robe'. Subsequent to the enactment of the Pre-emption Act of 1860, Moody settled the Lower Mainland. He founded the new capital city, New Westminster, at a site of dense forest of Douglas pine that he selected for its strategic excellence including the quality of its port. In a letter to his friend Arthur Blackwood of the Colonial Office on 1 February 1859 Moody described the majestic beauty of the site:
Moody designed the roads and the settlements of New Westminster, and his Royal Engineers, under Captain John Marshall Grant, built an extensive road network, including that which became Kingsway, which connected New Westminster to False Creek; the North Road between Port Moody and New Westminster; and the Pacific terminus, at Burrard's Inlet, of Port Moody, of the Canadian and Pacific Railway (which subsequently was extended to the mouth of the Inlet and terminates now at Vancouver); and the Cariboo Road; and Stanley Park, which was an important strategic area for the anticipated invasion by the United States. He named Burnaby Lake after his secretary, Robert Burnaby, and named Port Coquitlam's 'Mary Hill' after his wife Mary Susannah Hawks. Moody designed the first coat of arms of British Columbia. He established Port Moody, which was subsequently named after him, at the end of the trail that connected New Westminster with Burrard Inlet, to defend New Westminster from potential attack from the United States. Moody also established a town at Hastings which was later incorporated into Vancouver.
The British designated multiple tracts as government reserves. The Pre-emption Act did not specify conditions for the distribution of the land, and, consequently, large areas were bought by speculators. Moody requisitioned 3,750 acres (sc. 1,517 hectares) for himself, and on this land subsequently built for himself Mayfield, a model farm near New Westminster. Moody was criticised by journalists for land grabbing, but his requisitions were ordered by the Colonial Office, and throughout his tenure in British Columbia he received the approbation of the British authorities in London, and was in British Columbia described as 'the real father of New Westminster'. However, Lord Lytton, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, 'forgot the practicalities of paying for clearing and developing the site and the town' and the effort of Moody's Engineers was continually impeded by insufficient funds, which, together with the continuous opposition of Governor Douglas, whom Sir Thomas Frederick Elliot (1808 - 1880) described as 'like any other fraud', 'made it impossible for [Moody's] design to be fulfilled'.