Sir James Douglas. By Robert Hamilton Coats and R. E.
Goenell. (T. C. and E. C. Jack. 21s. net.)—This volume belongs to the series of "Makers of Canada." Most of these distinguished persons have to do with Eastern Canada. Here we are taken to the West, a region much later in development, but with some great advantages of its own, notably that of climate. James Douglas, a scion of the famous Scottish house, went out to take up a post in the North-West Company in 1820. In the following year the Company was amalgamated with its old rival—we might say enemy—the Hudson's Bay Company. Young Douglas was disposed to throw up his appointment, but was persuaded to stay. We may pass over the early years of his official life. In 1838 the Company obtained an exclusive right to Vancouver Island for twenty-one years. The grant was to be void unless a settlement was made within five years. Of course, the Company did not want to make settlement* It imposed a prohibitive price of 41 per acre on the land which it sold, with the additional burden that for every hundred acres the settler was to import three families or six single settlers. What it wanted was not colonists, but furs. In 1858 its rights were purchased by the Government for 257,500. The Colony of British Columbia came into existence, and James Douglas became the first Governor, severing, of course, his connexion with the Company. Not much had been done to develop the country. In 1854 there were, besides seventeen thousand Indians, four hundred and fifty inhabitants of various nationalities, three hundred being divided between Victoria and Sooke, one hundred and twenty-two at Nanaimo, and the rest at Fort Rupert. Five hundred acres were under cultivation, but of these all but forty belonged to the Company. So much for the settlement effected in twenty years. Douglas held office up to 1863, when he resigned, not without genuine expressions of regret from the Colony. We have passed over various matters of controversy, differences with Russia and the United States about boundaries, and internal differences. It has been enough to call attention to a valuable addition to this most praiseworthy series.
Previous page
