James Douglas
Was Black. Scholars who have studied his life do not agree on the exact date
of his birth. Two different dates are the most likely: June 5th and August 15th.
So, we know that he was born in the summer of 1805. The second point of contention
is the place of his birth. It is known, from one of his daughters, that he was
born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, but no one believed an old lady named Agnes Douglas
Bushby when she related that fact. Agnes died in 1928, after giving that information
to Professor Walter Sage, one of Douglas' many biographers. From the papers
of old friends and colleagues of Douglas during his days in the Hudson Bay Company's
fur trade, it is quite definite that he was born in the tropical colonies of
the British West Indies, in either Jamaica or British Guyana. From what remains
of his father's mention in history, most scholars agree today that James Douglas
was horn in Demerara, Guyana, where his father ran a sugar plantation and other
family business interests. It is positive that James Douglas had a brother and
sister who were born there also.
His father left Guyana in 1809, with the children, and settled in Glasgow. There he married a Scotswoman, Miss Jessie Hamilton. Therefore, James and his brother and sister were probably illegitimate. This led to the last item of discussion about his origins: the identity of his mother. No one knows who she was. A friend and colleague of Douglas wrote that she was a Creole. More than that is not known. Any reader familiar with the history of the West Indies at the time of James Douglas' birth will, however, feel an urge to conclude that she was a Black slave.
The conclusion would not be farfetched. James Douglas was "remarkably dark of complexion, a matter often commented on", says one of his biographers, M. Derek Pethick. And he goes on to point out that in a letter written by Letitia Hargrave, "someone familiar with much personal detail about important officials of the Hudson's Bay Company" while Douglas "was still in the early years of his career" referred to him as a "mulatto".
On May 7th, 1819, James Douglas, not yet 16, embarked at Liverpool to enter the service of the North West Company.
In June, 1858, almost 40 years later, he was Governor of the Colony of vancouver Island, and without ever having to reach for it, he was well on his way to immortality. Indeed, Douglas started in lower Canada with the North West Company, moving westward gradually, following orders. The North West Company was eventually absorbed by the Hudson's Hay Company, but nothing changed in Douglas' life; he remained a loyal officer of the fur trade. In 1842, the company felt thar new headquarters were needed on the Pacific Coast; it was clear then that what are now the territories of the states of Oregon and Washington would in time fall under American jurisdiction. Douglas was asked to find a site in the south of Vancouver Island. The headquarters were effectively moved there in 1849, the year Vancouver Island became officially a Crown Colony. In 1851, Douglas, while remaining the Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, became Governor, He would have remained an obscure autocrat leading a forgotten and remote land, had not gold been Found in 1857. The California goldfields had not lived up to the dreams of thousands who rushed there a few years before. Those disenchanted miners were more than ready to try their luck again, up north. In the Spring of 1858, the small community of Fort Victoria numbered some 500 souls, but their village was the gateway to the gold of the Fraser River. During that Spring, the small community of Fort Victoria was overrun by the arrival of a few thousand goldseekers in transit.
Among them were a fear Black families, who were bona fide settlers, raking refuge in the British colony from years of persecution in California. The goldseekers were of all nationalities, but most of them were Americans and ready to ask the annexation of these territories. some of them were rowdy, and soon there was a public outcry calling for a policing force.
In June of 1858, James Douglas, Governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island, appointed the colony's first policemen. "In a striking move" he chose all Black men. Jamaican. British subjects!
This "striking move" marks for the historian, the beinning of a series of decisions, reversals, hesitations and silences that cloud any possible assessment of Douglas' attitude and personal feelings towards the Black community. It is clear, however, that the Black pioneers were welcome and that the settlement helped Douglas and the interests of the British Empire. The Blacks, persecuted in San Francisco, were unable to identify with the American expansionism; they just enlarged the population on which the Governor could count to maintain the legitimacy of the British rule on the lands lying north of the Juan de Fuca passage.
Douglas' life has been studied at length; he has been viewed as the "sealant of two empires", an autocrat, a "coureur des bois" who got lucky in big-time politics, and again as an efficient public accountant who also took care to have his daughters marry "well" – considering the times, the place and the breadth of the territory under his jurisdiction, it is peculiar that he never emerged as the first modern master-statesman in British Columbia's history.