If it is true that the history of Victoria’s upper-class social life begins with the Douglas family, then this narrative must start many miles away in Demerara, British Guiana (now Guyana). It was there that a son was born in 1803 to a Creole woman. The child’s father was a prosperous Scottish merchant named John Douglas who held interests in South American sugar plantations.
Douglas did not marry his Creole mistress, despite having two sons and a daughter by her. He did, however, take full responsibility for those children, arranging for their later education in Lanark, Scotland. Then, in 1809, he decided to marry Jessie Hamilton of Glasgow and had three more daughters by her.
The child born in Demerara in 1803 was James Douglas, who would establish Fort Victoria and, during his lifetime, become known as “The Father of British Columbia.” James Douglas’s actual date of birth has frequently been the subject of contention. He himself recorded it as June 5, but his descendants believed it was August 15, and this date is carved on his monument in Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria.
Having completed his education in Scotland by the age of fifteen, James Douglas sought his father’s permission to travel to North America and pursue a career in the fur trade with the North West Company. His older brother, Alexander, had already taught him something of the trade and so, in May 1819, he set sail from Liverpool, England, aboard the Matthew.
He received his first instructions in Montreal. He was assigned to Fort William and travelled there by canoe. Those first years in the unexplored continent were full of adventures that were all eagerly embraced by the young man. Douglas was tall and very strong, and he always cut a striking figure. He also gained a reputation of being somewhat hot-headed and was frequently reprimanded by his superiors. One incident in 1820, when he was transferred to Île-à-la-Crosse, resulted in his fighting a duel with an employee of the rival Hudson’s Bay Company. Fortunately, no blood was spilled.
Later, when the HBC amalgamated with the NWC and merged all their operations, Douglas was faced with a career decision—either to leave the fur trade completely or transfer his loyalties to the new company. He chose the latter.
In 1825 at twenty-two, James Douglas crossed the Rocky Mountains and set foot for the first time in New Caledonia (now British Columbia). In November he arrived at McLeod Lake where John Tod was the officer in charge.
He was then posted to Fort St. James to serve under Chief Factor William Connolly, the man who would become his father-in-law. In April 1828, Douglas entered a form of marriage, legal but known at that time as “the custom of the country,” with Connolly’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Amelia. Connolly himelf officiated at the ceremony.
In many ways James’s and Amelia’s backgrounds were similar, for she was born of a union between Connolly and a Cree woman named Miyo Nipiy. Although Amelia’s father lived with Miyo Nipiy for nearly thirty years, also in a custom-of-the-country marriage, he never legally married her and eventually left her to marry Julia Woolrich, a white woman.
For most of her life, Amelia was very conscious of her mixed-race background. Nevertheless, she agreed to enter into a similar marriage arrangement with James Douglas and had already borne him six children before they were more formally married in February 1837. This ceremony, performed by the Reverend Herbert Beaver, firmly cemented their already happy union. It is ironic that James and Amelia Douglas, who later became the central figures in Victoria’s early social life and the arbiters of all moral convention, both came from multiracial backgrounds.
During the early years of their life together, Douglas spent many hours reading and improving his knowledge of world conditions so that he could clearly and concisely write down his own observations of pioneer life. It is believed that forty-five volumes of British classics, as well as A History of England, a French dictionary, and numerous other textbooks, accompanied him when he first came to BC, and he read them numerous times through the years.
William Connolly frequently warned Douglas about his short temper and advised him that co-operation and friendship with the local people were essential if the fur trade were to survive. This advice was put to the test on one occasion when Douglas was left in charge of the fort in Connolly’s absence. Chief Kwah of the Carrier Nation forced entry into the fort by flashing a dagger at Douglas, who immediately lunged for his musket. Douglas was not quite quick enough; three of Kwah’s warriors swiftly pinned him to the ground and tied him with a rope. The chief then told Douglas he had come to avenge the earlier killing of one of his own men, Zulth-Nolly, by Douglas and some HBC men.
Douglas, “damning and swearing and calling them big rascals,” eventually quieted down, remembered Connolly’s advice, and calmly explained why it had been necessary to kill Zulth-Nolly.4 Five years earlier he had murdered some company men at Fort George, leaving their bodies to the village dogs. His killing had, therefore, been an act of justice by the company men, explained Douglas.
Chief Kwah was a man of honour. He admired Douglas’s calm approach to the tense situation. In addition, Amelia and some other women at the fort began to throw down blankets, tobacco, and clothing for the warriors as a trade offering in exchange for Amelia’s husband’s life. The chief decided not only to spare Douglas’s life but also to accept the goods as payment for the insult to his village, and an unpleasant situation was averted.
James and Amelia had many more such adventures through the years. Then, in 1840, after twenty-one years of service to the company, Douglas was promoted to chief factor and began concentrating his time and effort on surveying the Pacific coast, eventually establishing Fort Victoria.
At the fort, James Douglas insisted upon a certain standard of social behaviour from his men. He strongly believed in good citizenship and gentlemanly conduct in all things. His standards were high and he implemented all that he himself had learned. Control of one’s temper at all times was paramount, as was courtesy to one’s fellow man and strict obedience to the company. These standards, laid down by Douglas, were to become the foundation upon which Victoria’s early social life was based.
The fort, which became the obvious centre of all social activity, was a quadrangle, “about one hundred yards long and wide, with bastions at two corners containing cannon.”5 The outer stockade was built of fifteen-foot cedar posts, brought in by the Native people from Cedar Hill (now Mount Douglas), and inside it there were twelve one-and-a-half-storey buildings. These included storage buildings, an Indian trading shop, and a large general trading store.
The Douglas family lived in quarters at the mess-room, and another family, the Finlaysons, occupied what was known as the counting house. The belfry bell, in the middle of the yard, tolled regularly for meals, deaths, weddings, church services, fires, and, on occasion, to warn of approaching danger.
According to Dr. Helmcken, the fort doctor and later son-in-law of James Douglas, the prevailing colour of paint used throughout the fort was “Spanish brown” and “whitewash was abundant.”6
By far the most interesting section of Fort Victoria was Bachelors’ Hall, a large portion of the building housing a common room in its centre with four rooms leading off it (two on each side). Three of these rooms were occupied by Dr. Helmcken, J.W. McKay, and Captain Nevin. The fourth was used as a surgery. Bachelors’ Hall was the scene of most of the revelries at Fort Victoria and much of Victoria’s early social life.
Above Bachelors’ Hall, a small school was run by the Reverend R.J. Staines and his wife, alongside their own quarters. On occasion the children up above would pour water down through the cracks and holes in the floor and onto the men below, no doubt in an effort to quiet them when things became a little rowdy.
By the summer of 1851, a private residence had been built for the Douglas family. It was away from the fort on the shores of James Bay, on the site now occupied by the Royal British Columbia Museum and Archives complex. Amelia Douglas was delighted to finally have her own home in which to raise her family. Her thirteenth child was born in 1854; only six of the Douglas children survived to adulthood.
Dr. Helmcken had by that time fallen in love with the oldest Douglas daughter, Cecilia. This happened soon after his arrival at Fort Victoria when he spotted her through an open door leading to James Douglas’s office. Later, he described the moment he first saw her. She was, he wrote, as active as a little squirrel, and one of the prettiest objects he had ever seen. She was short, graceful, and, in his eyes, very pretty, with a dark complexion and lovely black eyes. The doctor wrote in his Reminiscences that he was more or less captivated by her.
Their courtship was typically Victorian—very proper and circumspect and always chaperoned, consisting of evenings spent “drinking hot chocolate and singing,” with appropriately early hours being kept.7 The doctor pointed out that Cecilia’s mother, Amelia, was “awfully jealous” and liked to keep her children close to her. To begin with, therefore, his courtship was not welcomed. All five Douglas girls, Cecilia, Jane, Agnes, Alice, and Martha, were shy, and dominated by their loving but over-protective mother.
When it was finally agreed that Helmcken could marry Cecilia, James Douglas gave them land next door to where his own house stood. A crofter, mechanic, and odd-job builder, Gideon Halcrow, was assigned the task of building the house, which still stands today in its original location.
The wedding date was brought forward at the request of the bride’s father, who was planning to leave on a dangerous mission in January 1853. He was pursuing a Cowichan Indian and the son of a Nanaimo chief accused of murdering a company shepherd in the Lake Hill area. James Douglas wanted to be sure his daughter was happily married before he left, in the event that he did not return. Helmcken was only too happy to oblige, and the wedding date was fixed for December 27, 1852. It took place inside the fort, and the ceremony was performed by the Reverend Staines.
As the house being built for the newly married couple was not finished, they temporarily moved into Governor Blanshard’s house on the corner of Government and Yates streets. There they were given two rooms and a kitchen, and an Indian named Dick acted as their servant. Dick was paid “two blankets and a shirt per month and Indian provisions occasionally” for his trouble.8
The tradition of family life was very important to James and Amelia Douglas, and this tradition was continued through the lives of all of their children within their own marriages.
Martha was the youngest and perhaps most attractive of the Douglas girls; she later became the wife of Dennis Harris. Extraordinarily revealing letters were written by James Douglas to Martha between 1872 and 1874, while she was in England, having been sent there by her father to “get rid of the cobwebs of colonial training and give [her] a proper finish.”9 With typical Victorian patriarchal guidance, Douglas instructed his daughter from afar, telling her frequently how much she was missed at home, though at the same time insisting upon a high standard of conduct.
Frequently, the blatant hypocrisy of Victorian life also crept between the lines of those letters. For instance, Douglas reprimanded his daughter for referring to resting her “weary legs” when it would have been “nicer and more appropriate” to say “weary limbs.” He continued: “I wish you to be in all respects ladylike, both in speech and manner. A lady never uses slang phrases, which are essentially vulgar, and to me unbearable.” Douglas also reminded her to keep up with her studies even though he wanted her to enjoy her trip. “Arithmetic must not be neglected; no art is more necessary or useful in the daily affairs of life.”
When Martha requested a side trip to Paris, her father was adamant: “It might improve your manners by associating with kind, easy, engaging French girls. But there is one strong objection, which I cannot overcome: that is the dread of French morals and sentiment which I believe to be so different from our own. It may be bigotry on my part, their moral sentiments may be as pure as our own, but still the impression remains unchanged in my mind.” These comments clearly reveal a standard of morals set by Victorian patriarchs that was, in turn, agreed upon and almost always upheld by their children.
In the summer of 1874, James Douglas decided to visit Martha in England, perhaps to reassure himself that all was well. They later returned home together, after prolonged visiting in both England and Scotland.
By far the most interesting and scandalous story concerning the five Douglas girls was the elopement of Alice Douglas in August 1861. This episode in Douglas family life was a definite departure from the norm.
When she was only seventeen, Alice impulsively ran off with Charles Good, son of the Reverend Henry Good. They were married by an American justice of the peace aboard the British schooner Explorer at Port Townsend, but upon their return to Victoria, Douglas insisted on their undergoing a second marriage ceremony, to make sure the union was legal. He was far from happy about his daughter’s marriage and would have preferred to have it annulled. Realizing that the union had already been consummated, he decided to make the best of it.
His predictions that the relationship would turn out badly were proved correct. A few years later, after having had three children together, the couple decided to part, he to England and Alice to San Francisco, where she obtained an American divorce and then remarried. The English courts did not recognize the divorce, so Good agreed to apply for a divorce himself. James Douglas later commented that “had she trusted her father more, and put less faith in Good, how different, and how much more happy, would her lot in life have been.”10
James and Amelia’s only son, James, also caused his father much grief. He was sent to England at an early age for an education, which his father thought essential if his son were to succeed in life. Douglas once commented that James was “a child of many cares, the only one out of a family of 13 who is not in the enjoyment of robust health.” This was a surprising remark considering that seven of his children died in infancy and two of the six who did survive lived only into their thirties.
Douglas had high hopes for his son and once remarked in a letter to one of his sons-in-law, A.G. Dallas, “I have reproved him for his many boyish projects of going to sea in a merchant marine, becoming a farmer etc., which would be altogether inconsistent with my plans.”11
As a typical Victorian father, James Douglas frequently reproached his son in correspondence, and, because so many of the Douglas letters survived, there remains today a revealing chronology of the conflicts that existed between father and son while young James was in England. On one occasion, for instance, he cautioned his son about an unwise “emotional entanglement” with a certain young lady. On another, he informed him,
there is no royal road to learning: It is impossible for anyone to get on, and make his mark in the world, without plenty of hard work. You have a great deal yet to learn. I wish you to write a better hand and a less slovenly letter; you must study composition to express your ideas neatly and clearly.12
James junior was obviously a disappointment to his father, who frequently pointed out moral lessons as examples for his son to live by. Victorian fathers took it upon themselves to control and dictate their sons’ paths in life and, despite the occasional rebellion, sons usually obeyed.
In the Douglas family, however, father and son never seemed to reconcile their differences. James returned to Victoria in 1870, went into public life, and was eventually elected to the legislature. He later married the daughter of the Honourable A.C. Elliott, the fourth premier of BC, and had two sons, John and James. He died at the age of thirty-two in 1883.
In 1869, news arrived to brighten the Douglas household. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Amelia Douglas’s father’s first marriage to the Cree woman, Miyo Nipiy, had in fact been valid, so his second marriage to Julia Woolrich was null and void. This news finally freed Amelia of her illegitimate status and seemed to bring her out of her shell, enabling her to take a more active role in her husband’s affairs.
In the past she had seldom been seen in public. She had been reclusive while the law courts in eastern Canada were considering the appeal made by her brother to contest their father’s will and claim his share of William Connolly’s estate. Once Miyo Nipiy’s legitimacy was proven and the news reached Victoria, Amelia was a changed person. She began to entertain in her home and was even seen out in public.
Possibly the most rewarding aspect of the court’s decision was that it enabled Amelia to take pride in her heritage. In later life, she enjoyed relating Indian legends to her grandchildren and once invited a Songhee chief to visit her home.
By that time, Douglas had retired. He had enjoyed his travels through Europe and had returned to Victoria looking forward to a few more years of contentment. He always took a daily walk and frequently drove around Victoria and surrounding areas. He enjoyed reading, smoking his pipe, and, especially, he loved to be with his family. At Amelia’s request, he smoked only outside on the front veranda.
Douglas liked to be thought of as the patriarchal figurehead of his family and, despite a stern, dignified, and somewhat cold outward appearance, he was also a man of compassion. He had risen from company employee to chief factor, from governor of Vancouver Island (succeeding Richard Blanshard) to governor of the Crown Colony of BC. He had been knighted by Queen Victoria and had received accolades and praise from around the empire.
His death in 1877 came swiftly and without pain as he sat talking with his son-in-law, having earlier complained of mild chest pains. Victoria mourned his passing, and the funeral given to the grand old man far surpassed any seen before in the city.
Lady Amelia Douglas outlived her husband by thirteen years. She continued to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, surrounded by her children and grandchildren. Members of the Douglas family lived in the family residence for another ten years. In 1902 an auction of family furniture was held, and a few years later the old house was torn down.
The Douglas family can be considered the founders of early social life in Victoria. In particular, James Douglas’s personal character traits became firmly imprinted in the lives of those who lived at the fort. His standards of behaviour became the law, and he was responsible for the way Victoria’s social life and behaviour began and evolved as the city grew. It is relatively easy to understand how, despite his own somewhat questionable start in life, Douglas took it upon himself to head up that so-called aristocracy in early Victoria, and how his attitudes and principles came to form the basis of future class distinctions.
With a population in the beginning of little more than two hundred, and no other guidelines to show them the way, the first colonists gladly embraced a set of social standards by which to live. Thrown together in unusual circumstances, and relatively isolated from the rest of the world, men and women who perhaps would not otherwise have considered spending time together were suddenly obliged to live side by side. The Douglas law, tied irrevocably to company principles, appeared to them to be a sound and effective way of life.
But nothing lasts forever. In his Reminiscences, Dr. Helmcken remarked on the changing social scene that was already happening in the 1850s following the arrival of the farming families sent out by the PSAC:
The arrival of such nice people altered matters amazingly. There were English ladies . . . rara avis . . . very pleasing and nice. No longer had the officers to look to themselves for amusements. Visits—little teas—occasional parties, or amateur theatricals, or a ball in the messroom took place . . . so life became extended, more artificial and more expensive.13
That “extended, more artificial and more expensive” life can be seen through one of those PSAC families—the Skinners.