Canada
The fear of losing the territories to the West
was also behind Canada's interest in the colony of British
Columbia. By the end of the 1860s, the Cariboo gold rush was
over and British Columbia was facing a very large public debt. Some British
Columbians wanted their colony to become part of the United States. Their
side received a boost in 1869, when an American transcontinental railway
offered West Coast people an easy way to travel and ship their products
to the East. Towards the end of 1869, a petition to join the United States
was circulated: it was signed by one hundred and four people (out of a
population of roughly ten thousand inhabitants).
[D] Click for larger version, 76 KB Photograph of a Canadian Pacific Railway Surveying Operations Camp, 1871
Other British Columbians started a campaign to persuade the inhabitants
to join Canada. One of the leaders of the campaign was the editor of the
British Colonist, who had changed his name from Smith to Amor de Cosmos.
Talks between the colony and Canada began in 1870. It was finally agreed
that British Columbia should enter Confederation, that the large debt
of the province would be taken over by Canada, and that a Canadian railway,
to link British Columbia to the East, would be begun within two years
and completed within ten years. British Columbia became the sixth Canadian
province on July 20, 1871.
British Columbia
The colony of Vancouver Island had been set up by the British government
in 1849 to keep the American settlers (who were moving into Oregon at
that time) from taking it over. Then, in 1856, gold was found on the mainland.
The colony of British Columbia was created in 1858 because of the Cariboo
gold rush. Queen Victoria named the colony. The original boundaries of
British Columbia were drawn in 1858 when the colony was created. The boundaries
were: the United States to the south; the Pacific Ocean to the west, the
55th parallel in the north; and, to the east, the watershed between the
rivers that flowed into the Pacific and those that flowed to the Atlantic
and Arctic Oceans. In 1863, a northern territory, the Stickeen Territory,
was added to British Columbia, and the northern boundary became the 60th
parallel. The two colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island were
joined in 1866; they kept the name of British Columbia, and Victoria became
the capital city. When British Columbia joined Canada as a province in
July 1871, it kept both Vancouver Island and the previously delimited
boundaries.
The animation Territorial
Evolution 1867 to 1999 shows sequentially the history of the
political boundary changes in Canada from Confederation to the creation
of Nunavut.
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