history short answer

HSTR 324B Powerpoint Notes 21 July

Lecture 19 July

British Columbia at Confederation:
Responsible Government, A Railway, and Immigration Restrictions

Responsible Government

• Terms of Union, Clause 14:“the Government of the Dominion will readily consent to the introduction of responsible government when desired by the inhabitants of British Columbia”

Who were the voters the government was responsible to?

Image: Joseph Trutch as BC’s first lieutenant governor

Voting Rights in British Columbia

Those who were not on the voters’ lists could not pre-empt land or become lawyers, doctors, public servants.

A Transcontinental Railway (Clause 13)

• “The Government of the Dominion undertakes to secure the commencement simultaneously, within two years from the date of the 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 the completion of such railway within ten years from the date of the Union.”

Railway terminus?

• Where was the “seabord of British Columbia”? Burrard Inlet, or Vancouver Island?

• Victorians wanted a route through Bute Inlet, Quadra Island, Seymour Narrows, south along east coast of VI

• How feasible was this route?

Railway deferred (1871-1885)

• 1872: Conservatives won election

• 1873: Pacific Scandal – Cons had accepted funds from Sir Hugh Allan, president of railway co. Macdonald lost support of majority of MPs, resigned.

Image: John A. Macdonald (Conservative)

Alexander Mackenzie

• 1873: Gov Gen asked Mackenzie and coalition of liberals to form a government

• Economic depression, transcontinental railway surveyed but construction delayed

• 1877-1878: railway would follow Fraser River route, Esquimalt would not be terminus

Image: Alexander Mackenzie (Liberal) Prime Minister, 1873-1878

Resentment on Vancouver Island

• Carnarvon Terms: agreement negotiated by GG Carnarvon in 1874 for railway from Esquimalt to Nanaimo

Images: Governor General Lord Dufferin visited BC 1876; “Carnarvon Terms or Separation” Arch

Macdonald returns as Prime Minister, 1878

National Policy

• Tariff on imported manufactured goods

• Increase Canada’s population by settling the West

• Build a railway across the country

Representing Victoria in H of C

Completing the railway

CPR obligated to build and operate rail line from Ontario to BC within 10 years, in Canadian territory

Canada gave the CPR:

• • Land grants (25 million acres)

  • Funding (25 million dollars)

  • Guaranteed market

  • Tax breaks on equipment

Image: William Cornelius Van Horne, director of operations for CPR from 1882

Map: Survey and final route of Canadian Pacific Railway

Canadian Shield (650 miles), Prairies (850 miles), Mountain ranges of BC (400 miles)

Yellowhead Pass vs Roger’s Pass?

Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway land grant (1883)

• Land grant 1883 (map): surface rights to 800,000 acres, land, timber, everything below surface except gold and silver

• Contract to E & N Rwy Co (Robert Dunsmuir and Associates)

• Railway completed 1886

Chinese Immigration

1858: Arrival of the first Chinese immigrants in British Columbia from California.

1859: First Chinese immigration directly from southern China (Guangdong Province) via Hong Kong.

1850s-1860s: Thousands of Chinese immigrants heading to the gold fields of the Fraser River and the Cariboo (i.e. Quesnel and Barkerville)

Racialization

• From “race” to racialization

Racialization:

• Process by which racialized groups are identified as different

• Assigned stereotypes due to physical appearance or origin

• Coerced into specific living conditions

Jean Barman on “Invisible Women” – how were definitions of Indian status or whiteness flexible?

Increasing segregation and regulation of Chinese residents after Confederation

Restrictions on employment and residential space

• August 1875: barred from municipal work, Victoria

• July 1878: barred from provincial work

• 1885: Victoria passed “cubic air by-law”

Employment opportunities for Chinese men in BC

• Labourers

• Cooks

• Domestics

• Farmers

• Cannery workers

• Miners

• Merchants

Chinese workers on the CPR

• Dangerous, low paid positions

• Essential to construction of railway

• 1881-1884: about 16,000 Chinese immigrants came to Canada (6500 employed on CPR)

• Not viewed by government or white British Columbians as appropriate settlers

Image: Chinese work crew laying tracks, lower Fraser Valley

Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration, 1885

• What was the purpose of the Royal Commission?

• Who did the commission interview?

• What questions did it ask?

• What were its findings?

Keeping B.C. White, 1885-1903

1885: RC on Chinese Immigration

1885: Introduction of the Chinese Head Tax ($50) “Act to Restrict and Regulate Chinese Immigration into Canada”

1900: Increase of Head Tax to $100 (“Chinese Immigration Act”)

1903: Increase of Head Tax to $500

Exceptions were only granted for diplomats, tourists, academics and students with valid visas, and merchants

Image: Head tax certificate of Jung Bak Hun

Organizing within the Chinese Community

• Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA, 1884)

  • Est in response to provincial legislation to stop immigration, tax Chinese

• Chinese Public School (1909)

Poems by Chinese immigrants on cell walls of Victoria’s immigration building

My Wife’s Admonishment (1911)

You go abroad to seek wealth because we are poor.

In your sojourn, do not sow your wild oats.

Before you departed, I enjoined you to remember

You have a wife and children at home.

Please work diligently and be frugal with money.

Two years hence, return home to sweep your ancestors’ tombs.

Remember our backs are bare

Not half a cup of rice can be scooped from the pot.

All our housewares are worn and torn;

Our house is dilapidated.

Your gambling has driven us to poverty.

In tears, I beg you to repent.

You are fortunate to have an elder brother to pay your head tax

Always remember your gratitude to him

What were challenges and obligations facing Chinese men in BC?

Lecture 20 July

Industrialization in British Columbia

• Forms of energy before Industrial Revolution?

• Forms of energy after?

Images: Eulachon drying on racks at the Nass River (BCA, G-09232); Mining Recorder’s cabin, Manson Creek (BCA, B-01300); Jean (Cataline) Caux, mule train loading at Harvey Bailey’s for Babine Lake (BCA, A-03049)

Origins of Industrial Revolution in Britain:

• Fuel: scarcity of wood, access to coal (steam engine 1760s)

• Transportation: functioning railways by 1820s

• Mechanization: desire to produce own cotton textiles (1840)

Technological Changes

Industrialization: “a process of change from an agrarian handicraft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacture.”

• New materials: iron and steel

• Energy sources: coal, petroleum, hydroelectricity

• New transportation and communication: locomotive, steamship, telegraph

• Mechanization: engines, factories, less reliance on human energy

Coal Mining and Steam Power

• Use of steamships

• Demand for coal (new settlements)

Images: SS Beaver (BC Archives, B-07246); Nanaimo, late 1850s (BCA, C-00568)

Waterpower

• Use of water in the gold rush

Image: Cornish wheel used water from flumes to pump out a mine shaft, 1867 (wheel and flume at Williams Creek, BCA, A-00558)

Railway transportation

Railway:

• New control over nature

• Runs day and night, in any weather, through obstacles

• Access to resources

• Expands settlement

• CPR and demand for wood?

Images: Tunnel at Mount Stephen, trestle through the Illecillewaet Valley (BCA, B-08415, B-06990)

Pre-industrial logging: human and animal power

Fallers:

• Determine how to cut the tree

• Use of springboards, axes, cross-cut saw

Bucker: cut log into sections

Yarding crew: move log to skid road

Transportation of logs

• Axemen removed bark and knots

• Swampers cleared windfall

• Teamster: in charge of oxen or horses (could use pulleys, rigging)

Images: Skid road at Shawnigan Lake, 1904; Chemainus logging camp 1890, Oxen pulling logs over skids

Steam donkeys

• Boiler, engine, winch, steel cable mounted on a frame

• Hauled logs

• Increased speed of yarding

• Steam donkeys produced in Vancouver by 1890s

• How might donkey engine change working conditions?

Image: Steam donkey, Kamloops, 1880s

Salmon Canning

From local staple to global resource

First Nations consumption

HBC consumption and export

Industrial Revolution:

• Canning technology

• Market for protein

Image: Cleaning salmon at Stuart Lake. Photo by Frank Swannell, 1909

Early canning operations in BC

• 1870: Alexander Ewen sent 300 cases of cans to England from Fraser River

• John Sullivan Deas: African-American tinsmith, built cannery on Deas Island in 1873

• 1870s-1880s: proliferation of coastal canneries

• 1877: 55,000 cases of canned salmon exported from BC

Images: salmon can label (BCA, I-61591), Deas Island fishery on the Fraser River (D-05348)

Stages of salmon canning:

Images: Salmon fishing on the Fraser River, Anglo-BC Packing Company receiving salmon, Royal Packing Company salmon canning plant at Claxton, cans ready for export (BCA, B-07375, A-06839, A-08197, A-06838)

New technologies in canning and fishing

• Smith Butchering Machine (“Iron Chink”), 1906

  • Decapitated and cleaned 1 salmon/second

  • Replaced 25-50 workers with just 2

• Easthope engines, New Westminster, from 1910

• Larger boats

Images: salmon butchering machine, advertisement for Easthope engine

Coal mining in Nanaimo

• 1850s – Indigenous workers mining for HBC

• 1852 – Scottish work crew arrived

• 1853 – steam engine for pumping water

• 1855 – settler pop 150, 42 houses

• 1864 – Vancouver Coal Mining and Land Co bought mine

Vancouver Coal Mining and Land Co.

• Tolerated unions

• Offered land and company housing

• Welfare, housing and fuel to widows and children

Image: Vancouver Coal Mining and Land co operations (BCA, A-04407)

Dunsmuir and Sons, Wellington

• Miner, then mine manager

• Discovered coal deposits at Wellington in 1869

• Financial backing naval officers

Image: Robert Dunsmuir (BCA, A-01254)

Wellington Mine

• 1871: mine opened, union formed

• Lack of good housing, company store

• Dangerous working conditions, lack of support for dependents

• Hiring white and Chinese workers

• Refused to negotiate with unions

Images: interior of South Wellington Coal Mine Ltd (BCA, A-04414); No. 5 mine shaft at Wellington, BC (BCA, B-04907)

Miners’s strike, Wellington, 1890-91

• 1887-8 – explosions at Vancouver Coal Co. (148 men killed) and Wellington mine (77 deaths)

• Recruiting new workers

• Expectation of pit committee, safety commissions

• Rejected at Wellington mine

Labour organization

• Bryden would “not treat with a committee, that it was degrading for a boss to do so, and sooner than he would submit to such an indignity he would dig clams for a livelihood.”

• Formation of Miners’ and Mine Labourers’ Protective Association

  • Fair wages and hours

  • Worker safety

  • Exclude Chinese workers

  • Recognition as union

• Tactics: petition, work 8 hours/day, electing MLAs, organizing boycotts, 18 mo. strike

Image: Mine superintendent John Bryden

Company and government response

• Evicting from co. housing, strike breakers

• Peaceful response from miners

• Sympathy from mayors of Victoria and New Westminster, Vancouver Trades and Labour

• Militia to Nanaimo

• Wore down the strikers

Image: James Dunsmuir

Summary

• Mechanization

• Steam replacing animal and human power

• Human-pace to factory-pace

• De-skilling

• Overcoming natural obstacles

• Natural resources enter global market on large scale

• Fewer employees, more control for employers

Questions for Discussion

• How was coal mining organized by skilled and less skilled work? What divisions existed within the workforce?

• What kind of working conditions did British coal miners on Vancouver Island want?

• How did mining companies exert control over the labour force?

• What did you think were the strengths and weaknesses of this article?

Lecture 21 July

Victoria and Vancouver

Reminder: Final Exam on Thursday July 27

Driving through Victoria, 1907

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp1qWV5OZec

• What elements of a modern city do you see here?

• What looks strange from a modern point of view?

CPR and Demographic Change

• 1884 – Victoria 8000 – Burrard Inlet – 900

• 1891 – Victoria 16,841 – Vancouver – 13,709

• 1901 – Victoria 20,919 – Vancouver 27,010

Urbanization in BC:

• 1891: 38 percent urban

• 1911: 52 percent urban

Victoria, 1880s-1890s

• Insecurity

• 1890: 5th most productive manufacturing output

• 1891: 11th largest city in Canada

• 1901: surpassed by Vancouver

Image: Looking south on Government Street, ca. 1900 (BCA, A-03016)

Seal Hunt

• Seal coats

• Sealing fleet based in Victoria ($3 million)

• Changing fashions, overhunting

• North Pacific Fur Seal Convention 1911

The sealing schooner Vera homeward bound with 228 seals and 22 sea otters, ca. 1890 (BCA, B-03114)

Albion Iron Works

• 1862: founded by Joseph Spratt

• boilers, railway cars, marine engines

• 1882: acquired by Robert Dunsmuir

• Albion Iron Works closed down before the First World War

Images: Marine boiler made for the SS Joan, 1892; wagons loaded with stoves for China (BCA, A-06219; A-06221)

Terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway

• Original terminus was Port Moody

• Extended 24 km west to Gastown (Granville/Coal Harbour)

• June 1886: fire destroyed Vancouver

• December 1886: Vancouver pop 2,000

Images: Port Moody; Vancouver in 1886

Growth of Vancouver

• Entrepreneurs, capital, labourers arriving

• Speculative growth

Image: Corner of Granville and Georgia Streets, 1889 (BCA, B-03657)

Meeting point of land and water transportation

• 1887: regular steamship service to China and Japan

Image: Empress of India at CPR dock, Vancouver, 1891 (Vancouver Public Library, 19882)

CPR as Landowner

• CPR given 10 square miles

• Hotel Vancouver

• Opera House

Images of above buildings (BCA, B-00160, BCA E-02258)

BC Sugar

• Benjamin Tingley Rogers est. BC Sugar in 1890

• Financial backing from CPR and city council

• Sugar imported from Philippines

Image: BC Sugar Refining Company (BCA, A-00531)

Victoria

• 1890: electric streetcar in Victoria (5 miles)

• Electric lighting

• Telephones

• Brick and stone buildings

• New legislature

• Deindustrialization (Victoria and Vancouver)

Image: Opening of the new Legislative Buildings in Victoria, February 1898 (BCA, A-02647).

Summary

• Rapid transformation of Vancouver

• Victoria outpaced in pop

• Victoria and Vancouver becoming modern in terms of amenities

• Deindustrialization in Western Canada

Memories of Victoria and Vancouver

• Roger Monteith, born in Victoria in 1885

• Isabel Sweeny, born in Vancouver in 1889 (daughter of Henry Ogle Bell-Irving)

• What changes taking places in these urban centres?

• Contrasts between Victoria and Vancouver?

• Through what lenses are these stories told?

Source: Robert Budd, Voices of British Columbia