‘Old Square Toes’ Douglas proved to be lucky find for British Columbia
Colonial governor was formidable of intellect, forceful of character
To mark Canada’s 150th birthday, we are counting down to Canada Day with profiles of 150 noteworthy British Columbians.
His flinty gaze framed by a starched collar and unruly mutton chop whiskers, Sir James Douglas is every bit the Father of British Columbia generations of schoolchildren have consigned to memory for history exams.
To his rough-hewed contempo- raries — strictly behind his back, for he was known for a fisticuffs and a fiery temper — he was “Old Square Toes,” forceful of character, formidable of intellect, and remarkably well-read for one who came to a wild, mostly-illiterate frontier as a 16-year-old fur trade apprentice.
Douglas was born in 1803, in Demerara, British Guiana, one of the three children of sugar trader John Douglas and Martha Ann Ritchie, a Creole woman whose mother was described as a “free coloured” woman from Barbados.
When his father returned to Glasgow, he took his two sons to be educated in Scotland, where James won acceptance with his fists.
By 1820 he was in Western Canada in the fur trade, and is recorded as duelling with swords over an insult.
Soon he was crossing the Rockies and stationed at Fort St. James, founded by Simon Fraser. He married Amelia Connolly, the daughter of a fur trader and a Cree woman.
In 1828, he killed a Carrier man who himself had murdered some fur traders at what is now Prince George. When angry Carriers threatened to murder him in retaliation, Amelia interceded. Douglas was transferred to Fort Vancouver at the Columbia River mouth. He rose rapidly in the fur trade and when it seemed likely that the Oregon Territory would go to the United States by international agreement, he was sent in 1843 to found Fort Victoria.
For Canada, the choice was fortuitous. When gold was discovered on the Fraser River in 1858 and American opportunists of all kinds flooded north from California, Douglas unilaterally asserted British control over the mainland. He imposed British regulatory controls, then surrendered his fur trade offices to become governor of the two colonies.
Under Douglas, treaties were signed with First Nations on Vancouver Island, he faced-down American military threats, he authorized the building of a road to the Interior — B.C.’s first megaproject — and presided over the birth of democratic government and the rule of law.
“A practical man, but yet a visionary, Sir James Douglas was also humanitarian,” historian Margaret Ormsby wrote for the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.
“He treated individuals, including Negro slaves and Indians, with a respect that few of his contemporaries showed.”