Go do some great thing : the black pioneers of British Columbia
Sir James Douglas, the first governor of British Columbia, was the son of a Creole and probably had Black ancestors. The invitation that his government sent in 1858 to a group of Black would-be settlers in San Francisco does not read, however, as a brotherly welcome; it was probably just a shrewd move to bolster the British Empire in the west. On arriving in Victoria, a Black shopkeeper named Mifflin Gibbs was discouraged that "the business portion here is generally owned by old fogies who are destitute of Yankee enterprise." Gibbs prospered nonetheless. So did many other Blacks from pre-Civil War America and the British West Indies: draymen, saloon keepers, barbers, carpenters, restaurateurs, dentists, prospectors, homesteaders. They helped shape the future of Victoria, Barkerville, Kamloops, Saltspring Island, the Peace River country and the Queen Charlotte Islands--even the remote Cassiar district. Whether writing of today's British Columbia Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or of Judge Matthew Baillie Begbie's infamous show of prejudice in a Cariboo court, or of a lifeguard who taught a generation of Vancouverites to swim, Kilian evokes each era--from that the Hudson's Bay men to that of the civil rights movement--with sensitivity and power
Print Book, English, 1978
Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver, 1978