British Columbia

In my class we have been researching and reporting about a community (or a country). I picked British Columbia and here is my work about it.

British Columbia

Culture & History

Since the retreat of the great glaciers about 10,000 years ago, Aboriginal populations have inhabited the British Columbia landscape.

British Columbia's first people may have journeyed to the region from Asia via a land bridge across the Bering Sea. As the ice receded, forests advanced and fluctuating sea levels exposed the temporary land passage linking Asia to the New World.

It is thought that British Columbia's coastal region became one of the most densely populated areas in North America. Prior to European contact, British Columbia's First Nations populations may have numbered some 300,000. The Aboriginal way of life would continue undisturbed for thousands of years, until the arrival of the British in 1778.

European Arrival

When British naval explorer Captain James Cook reached the west coast of Vancouver Island in 1778, he was eager to trade with the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) people. In his wake, waves of European settlers arrived, carrying smallpox and other diseases that decimated Aboriginal populations in the late 1700s.

Nearly a century later, British agent James Douglas was searching the Pacific Coast for a new Hudson's Bay Company headquarters. He was welcomed by the Lekwammen, whose villages dotted the shores of what is now Greater Victoria. Douglas settled in and selected a site called Camosack. A year later, in 1843, Fort Victoria was built in the area now known as Old Town, the heart of Victoria's downtown.

Gold Rush in British Columbia

The discovery of gold in the Fraser River and the Cariboo brought a rapid influx of prospectors, merchants, pioneers and other colourful figures to BC in the 1860s. They came from around the world, arriving from as far away as China. It was a time of rapid economic expansion; sleepy hamlets became bustling cities, and new roads, railways and steamships were constructed to carry the extra load.

Boomtowns were born and legends made, but not all experienced good fortune. The Aboriginal peoples lost most of their ancestral lands and, in 1876, First Nations populations were made subject to the federal Indian Act, which regulated every aspect of their lives.