The Company Province 1871-1933 The Rush For Spoils 0771076754, 0771076762

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OKANAGAN COLLEGE LIBRARY BRITISH COLUMBIA

The Ruslfor Spoils The Company Province

1871-1933 “ P ro u d swells th e tid e w ith loads o f freighted ore, A nd sh o u tin g Folly hails th e m from h er shore.” O liv er G oldsm ith

M artin R obin

The Deserted Village

22522 M cC lellan d an d S tew art L im ited T o ro n to

1972 by M artin Robin ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Cloth edition 0-7710-7675-4 Paperback edition 0-7710-7676-2 Printed in Canada The Canadian Publishers

McClelland and Stewart Limited 25 Hollinger Road, Toronto 374

C on ten ts Preface / 9 I Great Expectations / I I II An Early Barbecue: 1871-1903 / 49 III Sir R ichard’s Realm: 1904-1907 / 87 IV Rails of Steal: 1908-1912 / 107 V The Carnival of Graft: 1913-1916/125 VI The Reign of Virtue: 1917-1921 / 165 VII The Shaughnessy Crusade: 1921-1924 / 187 VIII The Politics of M uddle: 1925-1928 / 214 IX Business Government: 1929-1933 / 232 Notes / 266 Bibliography / 308 Index / 309 Cartoons Between Pages 164 and 165

To Shandy, Bob, Garry, Ivy, R uthy and Allen

Preface

Many books have been written about British Columbia; few about its politics. The romance of settlement, the hot rush for gold, the majestic physical milieu, the turgid melodrama of union with the Dominion, the petit regional cul-de-sacs, have drawn thousands of pages from writers possessed by the province’s dazzling beauty. But mundane political his­ tory, the sort that treats the fightbe tween classes for shares of the wealth, disputes betweerTparties over the course of development, the ways and means used by politicians to purchase allegiance, has been neglected. H is to the task of illuminating the political side of British Columbia history, in its profoundly gloomy as well as cheerful aspects, that I address myself in these two volumes. While the volumes formally cover the century following British Columbia’s entry into Confederation in 1871, the major detailed emphasis is on the politics of the twentieth century. The century’s turn, when relatively disciplined parties emerged using standardized fed­ eral labels, forms a natural break in the evolution of the province’s polit­ ical history, and the preceding three decades, important as they may be, are treated only cursorily, in the way of an introduction. I received much aid and co-operation during the course of research and writing. To the Canada Council, I am grateful for the aid of a post­ doctoral fellowship during a year’s leave of absence from Simon Fraser University, which helped out with a short-term research grant. Mrs. Anne Yandle and her colleagues in the Special Collection Section of the Library at the University of British Columbia were always friendly and co-opera­ tive, and I thank them for the help proffered. I am equally indebted to Miss Shirley Mooney and the staff in the clipping library of the Van­ couver Sun, who gladly made available to me their indispensable facili­ ties. Mr. Willard Ireland and most of his staff at the Provincial Archives were helpful as well. To Paul Phillips, Bruce Hutchison, Emil Bjarnason and Paddy Sherman I am indebted for reading the manuscript, pointing out errors and sug­ gesting changes. Many interesting, and amusing, discussions with John Taylor, between games of shuffleboard and bowling, and over cups of 9

CH APTER I

10 The Rush for Spoils

Great Expectations

coffee at the Student Union Building of the University of British Co.| lumbia, helped me formulate my thoughts. Donna Watt typed the first part of the manuscript with great efficiency. A special word of thanks to Jean Jordan, who briskly typed the latter half of the manuscript, and endured my foibles with cheerful compassion. My wife, Grace, aided me in the thankless task of proof-reading. Martin Robin

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.” J.J. Rousseau Discourse on the Origins o f Inequality

“The poets tell us it was gold and silver, but, for the philosophers, it was iron and corn, which first civilized man, and ruined humanity.” J.J. Rousseau Discourse on the Origins o f Inequality

“Miner loved children and respected women and afterwards when I knew it was my friend they had caught at Douglas Lake for holding up the C.P.R. at Ducks, I wept. He educated 18 children from the proceeds of his profession, never held up people, only companies.” Maisie Hurley The Outlaws

When Goldwin Smith visited British Columbia in the late years of the nineteenth century and asked a local resident to describe his politics, he received a curt reply: “government appropriations”. Smith’s respondent could have answered differently. He might have described himself as a Grit or Tory, or perhaps entered into a disquisition on his political philos°phy, touching on such matters as the public good, justice, or the rule °f law. But he preferred instead to present himself honestly as the rough citizen of a pioneering acquisitive culture. Now Goldwin Smith was not eorge Gallup. He possessed few of the cute litmus tests which contem­ porary students of public opinion administer periodically to discern the P° itical complexions of the populace. But had Smith, armed with a nada Council Grant or with funds supplied by the research department 01 a large cosmetics firm, sampled a wider range of opinion, he would

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Great Expectations 13

probably have found the views of this gentleman to be quite normal. The sea of mountains which Goldwin Smith entered upon when he crossed the border from Alberta was already occupied, though sparsely, and dominated, certainly, by men, organized into companies, who pursued material profit with a relish typical of a pioneer industrial society. I The contrast with the Prairies was striking. The great flat and rolling land masses of wild grass and wheat, blanketed during winter with endless miles of frozen snow, caressed by bright sun and warm winds during the brief summer respite, were on the threshold of an agrarian revolution, begun in the 1890s and proceeding with great haste at the turn of the century. Soon the great wheat basin, and the rolling Alberta foothills, would fill with emigres from the American Midwest and Ontario, with “sturdy peasants in sheepskin coats”, scooped up by the thousands from eastern and central Europe and deposited in ethnic clusters by colonizing agents on the Prairies, where they developed a flourishing wheat economy. At the turn of the century, the Canadian Prairies formed an agrarian frontier, an outer expanse of freeholders who subsisted on the export sale of the great cereal staple. British Columbia, too, subsisted on staples, but not on the staple of wheat, which was so scarce it had to be imported to feed a growing industrial population. Here nature and history conspired to give birth to a business civilization, raised on the base of the extractive industries of mining, lumbering and fishing. “To one who crosses the Dominion, wrote Albert Metin, “there is no sharper contrast than between the Cana­ dian West, the old prairie country, almost totally agricultural, and British Columbia, mountainous, forested, and almost entirely devoted to mining.”1 I The first staple which propped the Coast economy was fur, especially the prolific sea otter, which basked by the hundreds of thousands in the icy coastal waters, oblivious, poor creatures, to the great slaughter which awaited them. At the time of its creation as a crown colony in 1849. Vancouver Island was little more than a fur preserve sprinkled with trading forts manned by company employees who bartered with the Indians. The Russians were the first to discover the fur trade potentialities of the Pacific coast and Russian traders did a thriving business for decades before English explorers discovered the coast. It was not until after the third visit of Captain James Cook in 1778, during which his crew put' chased a load of sea otters from the Indians for a few trinkets and » song, and sold them in Macao at a handsome profit, that English trading companies bestirred themselves and entered the Maritime fur trade. The two great British eastern trading monopolies, the South Sea Company and the East India Company, had never shown a primary interest in th‘

mrnerce of furs and the initiative was taken by the Hudson’s Bay Com. nv formed in 1670, which had already established an inland empire through trade with the Indian tribes of Canada East. The early Maritime trade was a haphazard and predatory affair, comprising transitory raids on the coast. The fur commerce stabilized only with the expansion of overland exploration and trade during the period 1793-1818.- Successful exploitation of the fur trade, and of the Indians who performed the labour functions of trapping, preparing and transporting the furs, was facilitated by the instrumentality of the large company which possessed the neces­ sary resources and continuity in personnel and policy. As overland trade developed, trading posts were established, garrisons maintained, routes of access created, and relations with the Indians placed on a permanent and stable basis. The overland route was spearheaded by the North West Company, a partnership of Canadians based in Montreal. A company partner, Alex­ ander Mackenzie, set out to discover the elusive river of the West and reached tha Pacific coast in July 1793, the first explorer to traverse the continent overland. Mackenzie was followed by the bold expeditions of Simon Fraser and David Thompson and the Nor’Westers set up a series of forts between 1798-1815, partly to meet the challenge of the American fur seekers who quickly followed the pioneer expedition of Lewis and Clark in 1803. American companies like the Rocky Mountain Company, the St. Louis Fur Company and John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company were active in the coast fur trade in the decades after the turn of the century but the hegemony of the North West Company was assured when it purchased Astoria and bought out the Astor firm. The sole remaining major competitor north of the forty-ninth parallel was the Hudson’s Bay Company and in 1821 both companies agreed to drop their rivalry and merged. The settlement and colonization of the Coastal and Interior areas north of the forty-ninth parallel was meagre in the decades following the merger o the fur companies. The stimulus to colonization was provided by the mericans who began to enter the area of Old Oregon in droves following e Panic of 1837, spurred on by the jingo cry of “Fifty-four forty or ^8 t . The American settlement, fed by the Missouri and Ohio areas, t ^ ^ n 1849’ granted to the Hudson’s °mpany upon terms which required it to establish settlements of

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14 The Rush for Spoils

British subjects within five years and to apply 90% of returns from th5 v with a minimum of division of labour, was not the stuff on which sale of land and minerals to public improvement. But the company wa5 W build a stable economic system. “Placer camps,” wrote R E. Gosnell, a poor colonizing agent since, as Hubert Bancroft wrote .. it was be. •‘have always been the graveyards of the brightest hopes of mankind.”8 coming a pretty well-established fact that foxes, beavers and nativ5 When the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia merged hunters do not dwell long in apple orchards.”11 Long before the Treaty jn 1866 and joined Confederation five years later, the gold excitement of Washington, the Hudson’s Bay Company had dabbled in agriculture waS receding as the placer frontier shifted north after the quick exhaustion through a subsidiary known as the Puget’s Sound Agricultural Company of the Cariboo reserves. Wild Horse Creek, Big Bend, Rock Creek, which had farms at Fort Vancouver and Williamette, occupied by ex- Boundary Creek and Similkameen had spasmodic outbursts, but trans­ employees. But the colony remained, until the gold rush of 1858, a fur portation problems limited effective exploitation. Similar obstacles lim­ trade settlement clustered around Fort Victoria. In 1854 there were only ited development in the Omineca and Cassiar districts, where gold was 450 settlers and no more than 500 acres colonized, a condition that did later found. The placer mining industry afforded the new province a weak not materially change in the next few years.4 base. In 1867, the output of the mines was almost $4,000,000 while in All was changed, however, by the great Fraser River Gold Rush of 1871 it was only $1,400,000.“ The white population counted no more than 1858. The first mineral discoveries in what Albert Metin described as 9,100 persons mostly concentrated in Victoria, New Westminster and the “Province miniere du Canada” were along the coast and resulted in Nanaimo. Agriculture was little developed and restricted to the New the scattered production of coal in small establishments on Vancouver Westminster district and the southeast peninsula. There was little demand Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands.5 In later years, lode gold and for forest products. The export trade was limited to the shores of Burrard copper were found on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. But what Inlet where two sawmills stood on the edge of the dark forest from which started the mining industry in earnest was not coal or small lode gold sprang the city of Vancouver. Although some lode mines had been pros­ deposits but the discovery of placer gold in 1858. Some placer gold had pected, the limited transportation facilities prevented any extensive dev­ been mined as early as 1852 but wild reports of massive concentrations, elopment. A colonial census taken in 1870-71 revealed the following enough to make every man a king, on the Fraser, Thompson and Co­ distribution of occupations in the colony: 2,300 persons in mining, 1,800 lumbia, attracted thousands of fortune seekers, miners, adventurers- agriculture, 1,300 trade, and only 400 in manufacturing.10 Mining ac­ human flotsam and jetsam—from California and the Pacific Northwest. counted for 75% of the exports.11 The huge influx led to the creation in 1858 of the mainland Colony of The decade following Confederation was a period of slow growth and British Columbia, proclaimed in November of 1858, presided over by high expectations. By 1881, mining was less important in the export Governor James Douglas, and kept in line by the iron hand of Judge picture, accounting for just under 60% of the total, while exports of the fishing industry expanded tenfold during the same period. Between 2,600 Matthew Baillie Begbie and his local magistrates. But the Fraser rush, like its antecedents and successors, soon slowed and 2,800 persons were engaged in each of the main export industries to a trickle and many of its unruly participants returned home to Cali­ °f mining, fishing and agriculture.1- The manufacturing sector had ex­ fornia in search of further ways to easy street. For those who remained panded to include 2,900 persons, nearly half of these in the “preserved however, there were further enticements as the gold frontier arched articles of food industry,” mostly fisheries products. About 400 were northward; to the Cariboo in the early 1860s as thousands trekked alonj employed in sawmills and the remainder in small-scale manufacturing. y the early 1880s, therefore, the British Columbia economy had dethe Cariboo Road from Yale to Barkerville and Williams Creek; to the somewhat from the date of entry into Confederation. The fur Stikine river where gold was panned in 1861; to Omineca in 1862 and ti-6 the Cassiar from 1872-1880. The northward thrust of the gold frontid had6 WaS ^ St kecom^nS a faded relic of a romantic past. A relative shift reached its peak with the discovery of gold in 1898 in the creeks of tbjj 0* 0ccurred away from the primary export staple—gold—which was the Klondike River, a tributary of the Yukon. Between 200,000 and 300,00 oped13' CaUSC reg‘on’s growth, a new export staple had develsh—and a manufacturing sector, albeit small, emerged. But the people started for the Klondike and of these 50,000 reached the uppeJ llu interior of Canada and Alaska.6 “They’re all millionaires in their minds, the - caPa'-)dities of the region, which dazzled visitors to the far west of wrote Robert Service of the travellers of the Trail of ’98.7 vousi°ntment’ ^ad n0t ^et been rea^zed- The Coast province stood nery poised on the threshold of the development of a massive resource Placer gold, present in limited quantities and mined in an inefficietf1

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16 The Rush for Spoils

extractive economy, destined to be carved out of the majestic wilderness I by rapacious entrepreneurs acting through companies; an economy whose I basic outline, drawn in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, remains with us today fundamentally unchanged. A discerning visitor to British Columbia in the late seventies described her as a lady with ‘great expectations’: “She has been, ever since the first flush of the Fraser River gold excitement expired, waiting—a sort of Micawber of Colonies—tor ‘something to turn up’. At one time Cariboo was ‘to make the country;’ I but that died the death of the Fraser River. Then ‘lumber’ was to be the fortune of everybody, but there was no market, and the big trees still grew. Then copper, then coal, gold, and sometimes silver, have been the materials on which the often sanguine colonists hoped ‘to hold on’. . .. At present the Canadian Pacific Railroad is the something of the future which, when completed, everybody is to grow rich o n .... The completion of the C.P.R. main line in 1886, after fifteen years of quarrelling between the provincial and federal governments, was a key factor in the emergence of the new economy. British Columbia now had a transportation connection with Canada across the Rockies, and pro­ vided a further market for eastern manufactured goods. And Canada at long last had a major port looking out on the Pacific, a vital harbour which facilitated commerce with the Orient and Australasia. The British Columbia ocean ports soon became the gateways to Asia. The ship­ building and lumber industries expanded to service the new commerce. Located at the terminal point of the C.P.R. line, Vancouver quickly grev/j into a major commercial city replete with harbour facilities and trading and commerce houses, and quickly surpassed Victoria and New West­ minster as the major seat of commerce and the local ruling class. The Terminal City, like so many other places in British Columbia, was the child of the C.P.R..14 I Equally significant were developments in the Interior in the 1880s and ’90s. The placer gold era had exhausted itself, except for the last might} Klondike gasp in 1898; but there grew in its trail a new mining industry, centred in the Kootenay and Boundary areas, which soon raised British Columbia into the leading mining province in the Dominion. The nej mining frontier was the northern extension of the Inland Empire centre in the western American states of Utah, Colorado, Idaho and Montand The American mining frontier had rebounded northward and eastwaf from California following a huge influx of western-moving population into the southern coastal area in the 1840s. Base metal mines—lead, zinc—quickly studded the mountain states and Spokane, Washington1' from which radiated numerous railway feeders, served as the key smeltiw centre of the Inland Empire. “Whether north or south of the line,

British Columbia, Idaho or Montana, men talked of mines, struggled for mines, and founded their laws and industries on mines. Other forms of industry were subsidiary to mining.”15 The mountains of the Kootenay and Boundary regions, combed by American prospectors and coveted by capitalists, broke out in a rash of mines in the 1880s and ’90s as the few placer camps slowly shrivelled into the curious remains of a dying era. Silver, copper, lead, quartz, and zinc were all discovered in ample quan­ tities, camps constructed, and towns grew up adjacent to the mines. Nelson, Rossland, Trail, New Denver, Slocan City, Sandon, Kaslo, Grand Forks, Phoenix, Greenwood, emerged overnight as boom towns servicing the capital of the Inland Empire, Spokane. Silver, lead and quartz were mined in the Slocan district by the Payne, Slocan Star, Rico and Whitewater companies. The North Star, the great producer in the east Kootenays, was started by Americans but later taken over by Donald Mann of Canadian Northern Railway fame in 1893.16 The most famous of the east Kootenay mines, the Sullivan at Kimberley, discovered in 1892, soon became a leading world producer of lead, zinc and silver. Fernie, in the east Kootenay area, emerged around the turn of the century as a major coal-producing centre, providing coke for the mines and smelters of British Columbia and Montana, as well as coal to the railways which serviced the new industry. It was with good reason that British Columbia became known as the mining province, producing more copper, silver and gold than the rest of the country combined, as well as providing about one-third of the national production of coke.17 Base metals and coal were not the only export staples which flourished in the post-C.P.R. era. Endowed with magnificent stand of forests of Douglas fir, spruce, cedar, hemlock and other varieties of useful trees, the lumber and allied industries soon achieved an eminence which they have not yet relinquished. The completion of the railroad, the opening 0 t e Prairie market, the demand created by the expanding mining and s ippmg industries, and the burgeoning urban centres, stimulated the aft^ 1 u°^ ^umber ininsu?ntl' fec^era\ P 0Stures °f the provincial governments are rooted in ahsm 0faQre^u°na^Srn cluahtatively different from the communal nationas a nati ^ £C Columbia politicians have never described her Was nevenl ^ ^as never endured the humility of conquest. Force religiousr h b° nd ° f union between the province and Dominion. Ethnic, an cultural survival in the face of an alien conquering group

48 The Rush for Spoils

was not a major historical and political theme in a province which is a vast cultural and religious mix. Class and regional divisions have been traditionally more important threats to social cohesion than religious or ethnic divisions and disputes with the federal government have been in no way ethnic or cultural except, of course, in an indirect way, when the federal government encouraged Oriental immigration or was accused of being under the control of Quebec. Lacking a communal base, regional sentiments in British Columbia have understandably not developed into a separatist consciousness. “There is no reason for a separatist move­ ment,” Metin observed, “in a country which has all the political liberties. If one occasionally speaks of leaving the federation, it is bargaining to get some advantages.”129 But local politicians have been careful to exploit regional sentiments in a society as internally balkanized and class-divided as British Columbia. Like the frontier myth, British Columbia provin­ cialism deflected internally divisive sentiments onto an alien external authority and shrewd politicians have caused the spoiled child of Confed­ eration to fret and weep over the alleged alienation of its resources, through the instrumentality of the federal government, to the poor sister provinces of the “Great Dominion”.

C H A PT E R II

An Early Barbecue: 1871-1903

“British Columbia! Steady, all together, boys,

British Columbia! Shoulder close to shoulder, boys, Then if foes molest her, faithful we shall be; Staunch and true for ever, boys, to Old B.C.”. “To Old B.C.”

In the winter of 1871, John Foster McCreight, a nervous, fidgety, stubborn gentleman “imbued with many of the prejudices that belonged to his special class-environment of that day both in England and British Co­ lumbia”, was summoned by Joseph William Trutch, engineer, road builder, speculator and Lieutenant-Governor, to the premiership of the infant province of British Columbia.1 This was an important occasion, closely following, as it did, the first election of the new Legislative As­ sembly held under the Constitution Act of 1871. The Crown Colony of British Columbia, presided over by a Governor who received his instruc­ tions direct from the Imperial Government through the Colonial Secre­ tary on Downing Street, had enjoyed neither representative nor respon­ sible government, the two prizes coveted and gained by Liberal Demo­ crats in the older provinces. The United Colony was an autocracy ruled y the Governor and his appointed officials on the Executive and Legislat've Councils. er During the 1860s, however, there developed an agitation for self govl_7ment by tbe small proprietory class of merchants, traders, miners and achf6^ W*1° reco§nized tbat freedom to trade was conditional upon the and'eVement ° f rePonsible government. The laws which regulated trade ™ could then be determined by the representatives of the local cmmern^t* commun'ty’ free from interference from the Imperial GovD°Ugla h °?:inated by distant commercial interests. Governor James was notS ad l0n§ feared the b°gey °f popular rule and felt that there ''shrnent3 !U^ c*ent base °f population or property to permit the estabfor the r ° i3 S.ystem °f se^f government.2Writing to the Secretary of State lained th°t°nieS °n *be eve *be Cariboo Gold Rush, Douglas maina none of the stable elements necessary to justify popular rule 49

50 The Rush for Spoils

had developed in the colony; the British element was small, manufacturing and farming classes were absent, few large landed proprietors existed except holders of building lots in towns, there were no producers except miners, and the general population was essentially migratory—the only fixed population, apart from New Westminster, being the traders settled in the several inland towns from which the miners obtained their supplies. He considered it “unwise to commit the work of legislation to persons so situated, having nothing at stake, and no real vested interest in the colony.”3 But Douglas’ case became increasingly unacceptable to the burgeoning local trading class, which emerged in the 1860s in Victoria, New Westminster and the Cariboo, and their political spokesmen who demanded the free determination of laws which protected and regulated the flow of their new possessions. With the growth of trade and the stabilization of settlement, a new political class was born. Vancouver Island, an agent of the federal government reported soon after Confed­ eration, enjoyed “a population of peculiar intelligence,” a proprietory class with enough leisure, because of the bountiful supply of Indian and Chinese labour, to show its zeal for public affairs.4 Criticism of the taxa­ tion and tariff policies of the colonial regime, the large civil list and inadequate public works, mounted as the decade drew to a close and the Imperial authorities, sensing the new direction, made provisions for the inclusion of both responsible and representative elements in the new constitution. By Article 14 of the proposed Terms of the Union with Canada, dated July 7,1870, the Dominion Government agreed to consent to the introduction of responsible government when desired by the people of British Columbia. The same section stated the intention of the Gov­ ernor of British Columbia to amend the existing constitution of the Legis­ lative Council so that the majority of its members should be elected. A subsequent order-in-council provided for a new council consisting of nine elected and six appointed members, which met in January 1871, agreed to the Terms of Union, and later passed the Constitution Act whereby a Legislative Assembly of twenty-five members, thirteen elected by the Mainland and twelve by Island constituencies, was substituted for the Legislative Council.6 The election which preceded McCreight’s accession to the premiership followed the quaint rules of a nascent electoral system. Nominations were oral and voting open. The election was staggered rather than simul­ taneous and extended over three months, from October to December And, strangely enough, the Chinese, not yet defined as the yellow peril enjoyed the right to vote, and exercised it fully, especially in the Lillooe' district.7 McCreight’s ministry lasted no more than a session. The new premia

A n Early Barbecue 51

was a stodgy and exact lawyer, “bad-tempered and queer,”8who opposed the idea of responsible government while serving as Attorney-General during the last days of General Musgrave’s regime. His choice as premier was not popular with the progressive oppositionists led by John Robson, Amor de Cosmos and T. B. Humphrey, although parties, in the sense of disciplined principled groups did not exist. “With the union,” F. W. Howay wrote, “all things had become new, and it was difficult to deter­ mine just where the lines of cleavage would run or what forces would compel it.”” Alignments were largely personal and temporary and the oppositionists, reinforced by the virulent criticisms of de Cosmos’ Daily Standard, were as much opposed to McCreight personally as to his poli­ tics. A ready cause of debate was the “Mainland versus Island split”, a sectionalism which plagued Coast politics until the early nineties, by which time the Mainland’s hegemony was firmly established and class tensions, aggravated by a swift industrial growth, became salient. The Mainland-Island cleavage coloured all aspects of public policy during the McCreight and subsequent administrations: railroads, public works, tax­ ation, legislative and cabinet representation. The McCreight ministry put through useful formative legislation during the first session, the most important measures being the adoption of the tariff and excise laws of Canada, definition of the privileges, im­ munities and powers of the Legislative Assembly, the abolition of tolls on the Cariboo Road, the provision for the establishment of a public school system and for the regulation of public works. Shortly after the opening of session, however, the government was defeated on a motion of non-confidence involving the question of an increase in the sessional indemnity. McCreight resigned and Amor de Cosmos—alias William T. Smith—was summoned to the premiership. The new ministry, known as the de Cosmos-Walkem ministry, did not substantialy alter the course of its predecessor.10 Indeed, it accepted with few minor revisions its predecesssor’s address in reply to the Speech from the Throne. The times being depressed, the government pursued a policy of retrenchment and severely pared the civil list. The old system of open voting was superseded by the ballot while the system of dual repre­ sentation, which enabled de Cosmos to represent the electoral district of Victoria in the House of Commons as well as serve as the senior member for the Victoria district in the provincial house, was abandoned in 1873." Denied dual representation, de Cosmos quit his legislative seat and lead­ ership of the government. Walkem, who had presided over local affairs while de Cosmos consorted with his federal friends in Ottawa, now be­ came premier in name as well as in fact. The major problem of the new government was the Canadian Pacific

52 The Rush for Spoils

Railway. To the nascent trading class of the white settler communityi no more than 10,000 people, the Canadian Pacific Railway was a godsend The construction of the line, which promised to stimulate a depressed economy, would create a huge demand for goods and services, raise the value of property to holders in the vicinity of the track and provide the missing trading link with the great Dominion east of the Rockies. Ac­ cording to the eleventh article of the Terms of the Union, the federal government undertook “to secure the commencement simultaneously within two years of the date of Union, of the construction of a railway from the Pacific towards the Rocky Mountains, and from such point as may be selected, east of the Rocky Mountains towards the Pacific, to connect the seaboard of British Columbia with the railway system of Canada, and further to secure completion of such railway within ten years of the date of Union.”'2 But the Article, except for the dates of com­ mencement and completion, was hardly specific. Both the line of route and the location of terminus were left unspecified and became heated subjects of political controversy between the competing trading interests of Victoria, New Westminster and the Cariboo. “The subsidiary questions of line of route and location of terminus,” Howay wrote, “so far as they entered into the local political strife, may be considered as but one ques­ tion and as merely a phase of the ‘Mainland versus Island cry. 11 De Cosmos sat for Victoria and favoured the local interest there. Although Walkem represented the Cariboo, he had powerful alliances and sym­ pathies with the Victoria merchants led by Dr. J. S. Helmcken, who argued that the Island railway was a section of the Canadian Pacific Railway and should receive first priority in construction. It became clear by July 1873 that the federal government was still far from commencing construction and that the Terms of Union, which set a two year limit on the beginning of construction, would be violated. The de Cosmos-Walkem regime, goaded into action by the Victoria shopocracy pursued a militant fight Ottawa policy. The provincial governmen on July 25, 1873, formally protested against “the breach of terms,” 14wm ^ the legislature passed a resolution promising to submit any proposal o the alteration of the Terms of Union, which the Mackenzie federal go ernment demanded, to the people for their endorsation. British Coluit^ assumed an attitude of stubborn adherence to the Terms, the w ^ Terms, and nothing but the Terms,” and the Mackenzie government, ha pressed for funds and facing opposition within its own party, sought #1 and means to pacify the enraged province. James D. Edgar, the federal Liberal whip, was sent to British Columbia as a mediator ^ met with a cold reception from the local authorities who flatly *nSlSoflj on the strict fulfillment of the Terms. The provincial government s

A n Early Barbecue 53

memorialized the imperial government and the Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon, acting as an arbitrator, outlined his decision, subsequently know n as the Carnarvon Terms, in a despatch to the Governor General in November 1874. By then, opposition to the de Cosmos-Walkem regime began to mount. Mainland oppositionists objected that by instigating an arbitration which involved a modification of the Terms of Union, the government had reneged on its promise to first submit the matter to the people. Car­ narvon’s failure to recommend monetary compensation for breach, to­ gether with his recommendation in favour of the immediate com­ mencement of the Island section of the railway, was hardly calculated to pacify the grasping New Westminster jobbers. The fires of local rage were further fed by Mackenzie’s decision to make the Carnarvon Terms-providing for the immediate building of the Esquimalt and Nan­ aimo section, active prosecution of Mainland surveys, and a minimum annual expenditure of $2,000,000 on railway works—conditional upon the completion of the works without a tax increase.15 When the Senate, fol­ lowing the dictates of Edward Blake, refused to ratify Mackenzie’s pas­ sage of the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway bill, the Walkem govern­ ment found itself back where it started before Edgar’s visit. The government soon proved unable to resist opposition pressures for an immediate election. Disaffection with the state of the railway negoti­ ations was reinforced by the hardships of a depressed and stagnant economy. Public debt mounted as the government plunged into a public works program while the financial dealings of de Cosmos, premier of the first of a long line of governments to be infected with the virus of scandal, did not help matters. In pre-Confederation days, de Cosmos had een a staunch advocate of the people’s rights and a righteous censor th 1 allotments of capital were made to each province in Edwarr|10n t0 P°Pulatl0n- De Cosmos, according to a public letter of British C ieWuney’ n6Ver successful,y refuted, called a meeting of the *80,000 ° UlTi ‘a rePreser,tatives *n Ottawa for the purpose of demanding amonp ^ ° rth of shares of the company’s capital stock to be divided members e™Selves in addition to those alloted to the province.17 The °Ppositi0 retUSed to attend and the matter was dropped by all save the earlier