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Introduction of Representative Government in British Columbia Until Almost the End of the Colonial Period

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Introduction of Representative Government in British Columbia Until Almost the End of the Colonial Period IOUCIO The original minute books of the legislatures of Vancouver Island and British Columbia are among the most prized possessions of the Provincial Archives of British Columbia. Entered in longhand in leather-bound volumes, by a variety of hands over a span of twenty-one years, these journals represent the most tangible documentary evidence of the initiation and evolution of parliamentary institutions and practice in the colonies that comprised the territory that is now the province of British Columbia. With the exception of perhaps twenty pages, the originals of which have apparently not survived, these volumes constitute the entire record of the official proceedings of the Council, Executive Council, Legislative Council, and General Assembly of tie colony of Vancouver Island, and the Executive Council and Legislative Council of the colony of British Columbia. The need for such a publication has long been noted. Although the journals of the Legislative Council of British Columbia were published annually at the time on a press brought to New Westminster by the Royal Engineers, the legislature of Vancouver Island predated the arrival of the first printing press in 1858. There- after, newspapers carried fairly complete reports of the deliberations of the As- sembly, but meetings of the Legislative Council were closed to reporters until 1864 in Vancouver Island and 1865 in British Columbia. Meetings of the Executive Council in both colonies were officially secret. In 1918 the Provincial Archives commenced the publication of the records of Vancouver Island with the publication of Memoir No. H, Minutes of the Council of Vancouver Island: Commencing August 30th, 1851, and Terminating with the Prorogation of the House of Assembly, February 6th, 1861, edited by E. 0. S. Scholefield. This was followed closely by Memoir No. III, Minutes of the House of Assembly of Vancouver Island, August 12th to September 25th [27th], 1858 (1918), and Memoir No. IV, House of Assembly Correspondence Book, August 12th, 1856, to July 6th, 1859 (1918). The curious time frame covered by each volume is explained by the fact that each consists of the initial original minute or correspondence book, without regard to the lifespan or session of the originating institution. For reasons now lost in obscurity, the publication of these records was never resumed, although a body of typescripts still preserved in the Archives bears mute testimony to the fact that further publication was clearly intended. A part of the explanation may be that the subsequent minutes of the Council could not be then located. Nor have they been found to this day. It is not known if the minutes existed in Scholefield's time, but they were almost certainly not in the Archives in the 1930's when W. Kaye Lamb drew up the manuscript classification system for the Archives because he did not assign a number to the missing minute book. Lamb obviously was unaware of the hiatus for in at least two separate articles he stated categorically that the minutes of all the colonial legislatures had been preserved in their entirety) The case of the missing minutes assumed added interest when the writer sought to obtain copies of them from the Public Record Office in London, which the governor was required to file every six months with the Colonial Office. These "rth Clb Offl rd: th Crn Cln rd," Pacific Northwest Quarterly, I (nr 8, 2 "rd f th Erl rdn f th ltr n rth Clb," Canadian Historical Review, I (br 40, 4400. were readily obtained, except for the period from 26 June 1861 to 3 February 1862, which coincides with the Second Session of the Second House of Assembly. Further investigation revealed that Governor James Douglas forwarded the minutes in question to London on 20 March 1862, 2 but the Public Record Office could find no evidence that they had ever reached London. Additional evidence indicated that in 1861 Douglas had been forced to use oversize stationery from an American supplier when a shipment of regulation stationery from Her Majesty's Stationery Office had been lost t sea. 3 Could these minutes by chance have been filed on the larger stationery and therefore filed irregularly? Yet another exhaustive search of the Public Record Office produced no further clues to the fate of the errant minutes. Meanwhile, archivists in the Provincial Archives sifted through a backlog of uncatalogued materials in storage without success. Among new acquisitions from a Victoria warehouse was some material from the colonial era, including the instru- ment Douglas issued to appoint Richard Clement Moody to the "Council" of British Columbia (reprinted among the illustrations in Volume IV). Inquiries of the Victoria City Archives uncovered original minutes written by W. A. G. Young of the first meetings of Heads of Departments of Vancouver Island (reprinted as Appendix C, Volume I, 392-96). These minutes, along with other Young papers, recently had been transferred from a vault in the Land Registry Office, where they had lain for longer than the oldest employee there could remember. This find was especially intriguing because it covered the same time frame as the missing Council minutes and because Young, as acting colonial secretary, was the man who had forwarded the Council minutes to England. Moreover, these records furnished important documentary evidence of Douglas' efforts to obtain advice on executive matters before the establishment of the Executive Council, and even before he had requested such an establishment. But the fate of the missing Council minutes remains a mystery, and only time will reveal f a copy remains extant. The missing minutes unfortunately cover a critical time in the evolution of the Council into the Legislative Council, but in terms of the content of these records, the loss is not too serious inasmuch as one can deduce fairly accurately from the journals of the Assembly the issues that came before the Council during this session. Indeed, with the exception of the minutes of the Executive Councils of both colonies, the official journals of the legislatures ought more properly to be desig- nated as proceedings rather than minutes. They do not constitute a record of the debates in their respective bodies; they are not a Hansard. Although the early records of the Council of Vancouver Island summarize the discussion of that body in some detail, the journals of the Assembly and Legislative Council of Vancouver Island and of the Legislative Council of British Columbia only rarely record any- thing beyond official actions. In contrast, the minutes of the Executive Councils of both colonies are extremely informative and encompass the full range of issues on which the governor solicited the advice of his official advisers. These delibera- tions were never made public, and each member was required to take an oath not to divulge their nature. 2 l t tl, 20 Mrh 862, Grt rtn, bl rd Off, CO 0, p. 6, f., rvnl Arhv f rth Clb. 3 l t tl, 28 M 862, CO 0, pp. 24. xxv In nvr Ilnd, th frt nppr pprd n 88 nd bn vr f th ttn f th rt f Abl. h ft tht rprtr r brrd fr th Cnl, hh l t hv ndtd t bn n r, rd th r prtlrl f Ar C, th rdn dtr f th rth Clnt, h dtl lld fr pplrl ltd ppr h ntd f th xtn lndtn n tht dbtd "th ld dr l n ntn r npr." 4 pln th Cnl th th ltv Cnl n 86 dd nt ltr th xtn tt f ffr. Onl n Mrh 864, drn h lt n ff n nvr Ilnd, dd l pn tn f th ltv Cnl t th pr, prt ntnd b Gvrnr Arthr Edrd Knnd ntl th trntn f th ln n 866. A lr ttn prvld n rth Clb hn th frt ltv Cnl rfd t dt hn bn, dtr f th Wtntr rth Clbn, t t tn, rlvn ntd b vt f fv t fr "tht th dr b ld t trnr" nd th pr ppld th p f th ffl nt pn rt. 5 bn hrd th vt trnfrd th lltr nt "Str Chbr" nd, rjtn th ffl rrd t "dr nd nntllbl," rn h r dtld nt ndr th ldr, "ltv Cnl (Srt . "6 h ltv Cnl ntnd t xld th pr nd pbl drn th n tht bn n br 864 bt fnll pnd t dr t th pbl hn t dptd r lbrl Stndn Ordr ntrdd b Gvrnr rdr Sr n nr 86. 7 hrftr n r rprtd t lnth n th nppr h nt nvrbl ntn h r dtld nfrtn thn rrdd n th ffl nt rprntd hr. Onl drn th dbt vr Cnfdrtn n 80 n ttpt d t rprt vrbt th dbt n th lnl lltr. h dbt rrd hl th ltv Cnl t n Ctt f th Whl n hh, thnll, n nt r pt, n rrd f th dbt ppr n th ffl nt. btl b f th prtn f th bjt, th vrnnt ppntd W. S. Sbrht Grn, ltr nd jrnlt fr tr, t prvd plt trnrpt f ht h br d. h dbt r pblhd t th t n t Gvrnnt Gztt Extrrdnr nd rprntd n dffrnt frt ltr tht r nd n n 2. S ll rltd r th dbt t th ffl jrnl f th lnl lltr tht th r rprntd hr Appndx A, l . n ndvdll, th jrnl rprntd hr r nt f rt dt nn t th pltl htr f lnl rth Clb. Expt fr th jrnl f th Extv Cnl nd th dbt vr Cnfdrtn, th ntnt ftn td, th tl rptt, nd th btn dppntn.
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