106 British Columbia Women’s Institutes
THE B.C. WOMEN’S INSTITUTES —

The story of rural development in British Columbia unfolds in a warm
and living way from the pages of B.C. Women’s Institute history.

Stories of early explorations come from Women’s Institutes along the
B.C. Coast and we hear of the great navigators, Captain Cook and Captain
Vancouver, and of Spanish mariners, exploring and charting gulfs, islands
and bays and leaving their names as records.

From the north our Women’s Institutes tell the story of the fur traders
—their explorations and their trading posts. We hear of Simon Fraser
establishing Fort St. John, and his headquarters Fort St. James on Stuart
Lake in 1806. Fort Fraser, Fort George and Fort Alexandria bring colourful
tales of fur brigades travelling by canoe upon the Fraser River, overland on
the Brigade Trail to Fort Okanagan, and by canoe again on the mighty
Columbia to the sea. Camosum (later Victoria) and Fort McLaughlin (Bella
Bella) at the Coast, Fort Langley, Yale and Hope on the lower mainland
provided excellent trading centres.

Although the fur traders had no interest or intention of encouraging
settlement of this new found territory yet the protection of their strategic-
ally placed posts, their self-supporting farms, their trading supplies and
above all, their established routes of transportation, provided the basic
pattern of the opening of this territory. To cap it all, they had the right
man in the right place at the right time! James Douglas, Governor of all
these western posts of the Hudson’s Bay Co., was a man of dignity, shrewd-
ness and leadership. When word came of the discovery of gold along the
lower Fraser and Thompson Rivers, Gov. Douglas at his headquarters at
Victoria, controlled the surge of eager miners and sent urgent representa-
tions to London regarding the need for regular procedures of government.

In 1858, the British Government established the crown colony of British
Columbia and the course of true settlement began under organized govern-
ment. And just in time—for the fabulous gold finds in the Horsefly and
Barkerville areas were drawing ever-eager gold-seekers in a mad rush. From
the exhausted gold fields of San Francisco, from around Cape Horn, and
across the fever-ridden Isthmus of Panama they came. Only a man of Gov.
Douglas stature could have controlled this determined, boisterous medley.
Victoria, swelled from a tiny settlement to a young city, became a port of
Customs and registration.

Reports from our Institutes along the famous Cariboo Road tell of the
marvellous engineering work done under the leadership of Col. Moody and
his Royal Engineers. We hear of pack trains of horses and of mules; of
stagecoaches, unfortunate camels and footsore travellers—even of the two
Australians bringing their possessions on a wheelbarrow—all on the trek to
the Golden Cariboo. Barkerville became, almost overnight, a city of ten
thousand souls—second in size to San Francisco west of the Rockies. Some
made great fortunes but to most it became only an exciting and often grim
experience—“where each little nugget is purchased in blood.” In a few years
the surface gold was exhausted and it became apparent that the most suc-
cessful ventures were the stopping-places and the freighting outfits.