Mifflin Gibbs was the first black person elected to public office in B.C.

To mark Canada’s 150th birthday, we are counting down to Canada Day with profiles of 150 noteworthy British Columbians.

The Fathers of Confederation tend to dominate the imagination as white, whiskered and well-heeled — pinnacles of prosperity in the property-owning social upper crust. But one of B.C.’s most remarkable framers of the terms under which the westernmost province joined Canada was a black man who started out as a carpenter’s apprentice.

Mifflin Wistar Gibbs was born in Philadelphia on April 17, 1823, the second of four children born to Jonathan C. Gibbs, a Methodist minister, and Maria Jackson, whom he described as “a hard-shell Baptist.” In 1831, when he had been enrolled in school for only a year, his father died suddenly and he had to find work to support his ailing mother. He was eight years old. Gibbs held and drove horses for a doctor for $3 a month until he was 16 when he apprenticed to a carpenter.

In 1839, he joined a literary society whose members included educated anti-slavery activists. Gibbs was soon helping slaves escape from the South. In 1849, famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass invited him on a lecture tour of New York state.

The following year, Gibbs followed the California gold rush to San Francisco where he worked as a carpenter and as a bootblack. He saved his earnings and became partner in a business importing fine boots and shoes. He started a newspaper. In 1857, he found himself subject to a poll tax although as a black he was denied the vote. Since he couldn’t vote, he refused to pay. His property was seized and put up for auction.

In June, 1858, he joined a contingent of more than 400 San Francisco blacks invited to Vancouver Island by James Douglas, brought a big inventory of miners supplies and equipment, sold out immediately and the next day was in business in Victoria as a merchant. He was elected to Victoria city council in 1866, the first black person elected to public office.

He was the Saltspring Island delegate to the Yale Convention, a meeting of 26 delegates from around B.C., which was important in propelling the colony toward union with Canada in 1871. Gibbs returned to the U.S. in 1870, settled in Arkansas, became the first black judge in the country, then a diplomat, founded a bank, and died July 15, 1915, having left an indelible mark on B.C.