Sir James Douglas was born in Demerara, now a part of Guyana in South America, in 1803. He was the son of a Scottish father and free Black mother. He was well educated when he was young which undoubtedly helped make him the man that he would become along with the ability to deal with some of the road blocks that would have been placed in front of him due to his ancestry.
He would come to what would eventually be Canada in the spring of 1819 to enter the fur trade business. He would move up the ranks in the Hudson Bay Company gaining experience and authority. In 1830 he was stationed at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River in what would become Washington State as the chief accountant. He would spend the next 19 years there rising in the ranks again. First as Chief Trader, then obtaining the commission of Chief Factor, the highest possible rank for field service with the HBC.
In 1849 Britain leased the entirety of Vancouver Island to the HBC with a condition that a colony was to be created. Douglas moved the headquarters of the western portion of the Company from Fort Vancouver to Fort Victoria.
He was not initially appointed to be Governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island - the position instead went to Richard Blanshard. However, most practical authority rested with Douglas, as the chief employer and person in charge of its finances and land, and he effectively drove Blanshard from the position. After the resignation of Blanshard in 1851, the British Government appointed Douglas as the Governor of Vancouver Island. However, he was still Chief Factor of the HBC, which led to a number of years of balancing the important and time-consuming duties of both positions and was often the subject of controversy.
In 1856 gold was discovered in the Thompson River, a tributary of the Fraser River, and a year later in the Fraser River itself. This sparked an influx of miners and others, as word of the discoveries spread south to the United States. Thousands of Americans flooded into British Columbia, beginning the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. Douglas, although he had no political authority on the mainland, felt compelled to exert British jurisdiction over the territory, and stationed a warship at the mouth of the Fraser in order to issue licences to prospectors and merchants. A major task during the huge inflow of settlers was to prevent violence between the recent arrivals and the local natives.
Douglas' actions in exerting British sovereignty over the mainland is generally conceded today to have helped exert control over American miners, and undermine American territorial ambitions toward this part of British North America. Shortly thereafter, the Colonial Office formally ratified Douglas' proclamation of sovereignty and established a new colony encompassing the mainland.
In 1858 the British Parliament created the Colony of British Columbia, and appointed Douglas as Governor. It was after this act that Douglas was asked to resign as Chief Factor of the western portion of the Hudson's Bay Company. The Company's trade monopoly on the mainland was not renewed, and neither was Douglas' position as Chief Factor. A judge, Matthew Baillie Begbie (the so-called "hanging judge"), was sent out to help Douglas maintain order and uphold British law in the area. Along with the judge came a contingent of Royal Engineers, to construct an infrastructure to help open the resources of the land to be exploited by the colony. Soon after his appointment as Governor Douglas was awarded with an appointment as a Commander of the Order of the Bath in recognition of his service as Governor of Vancouver Island.
When his service to the Empire ended, Queen Victoria increased his position in the Order of the Bath to Knight Commander. Upon his retirement Douglas was honoured with banquets both in Victoria and New Westminster, the capital of the mainland.
Douglas kept an active lifestyle but stayed out of politics in all forms. He died in Victoria of a heart attack on August 2, 1877 at the age of 73. His funeral procession was possibly the largest in the history of B.C. and he was interred in the Ross Bay Cemetery.
Much of the information for this waymark came from the internet, in particular, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.