James Douglas

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Sir James Douglas, (August 15, 1803 – August 2, 1877) was a Canadian fur trader and politician who became the first governor of the Colony of British Columbia. Douglas was the son of a wealthy Scottish planter and a free coloured woman of Creole ancestry. He worked for the Hudson's Bay Company, of which he became Chief Factor. From 1851 to 1864, he was Governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island, as which his authority nominally extended to the mainland Colony of British Columbia, during its Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. As a consequence of his indifference to the development of the mainland colony, in preference for the increase of the power of his Hudson's Bay Company associates in Victoria, Douglas feuded with the mainland colony's popular founder and Lieutenant-Governor Richard Clement Moody, whose office was of higher prestige but lesser authority than his own. Robert Burnaby observed that Douglas proceeded with "muddling [Moody's] work and doubling his expenditure" and with employing administrators to "work a crooked policy against Moody" to "retard British Columbia and build up ... the stronghold of Hudson's Bay interests" and the latter's "landed stake". John Robson, who was the editor of the British Columbian and future Premier of British Columbia, wanted Moody's office to include that of Governor, to make Douglas obsolete.