Cole Harris

After the mid-1880s, the majority of British Columbians were immigrants, most coming directly or indirectly from the British Isles, but others from continental Europe, and a considerable number from across the Pacific.

This new society was, itself, a late product of and an active participant in the process of colonialism, yet such was the extent of its domination that most immigrant British Columbians were oblivious to the impact of their society on the peoples they had largely displaced.

What sort of society was this? Most Brits would have said it was modern, part of the British empire, part of the Dominion of Canada--European civilization and progress. It was not a modern or a colonial society where European elite and troops guarded over a large indigenous population. Neither was it an pre-industrial agrarian society. To understand this society in some comprehensive way is to come to terms, I think, with its largely immigrant character. It was influenced by industrial capitalism and the tactics of social control of the modern nation-state. However, there were some basic consequences of immigration: British had left their home setting for another and encountered a different land with different mix of peoples. Mix one severely disrupted indigenous population and a largely immigrant population in a new land, juxtapose to unfamiliar peoples and ways in a dramatic terrain, and stir.

British immigrants to BC assumed what Edward Said said in Orientalism. He called it "imaginative geography" of the world. Europe, the centre of civilization, versus the rest of the world, less civilized, ordered, somewhat mysterious and barbarous or savage. This was a cultural construction of the European mind. They saw themselves as the bearers of civilization and progress; the rest of the world was stereotypes that emphasized European superiority (and hid achievements by non-europeans).

Jean Barman

BC was finally becoming Canadian, or so it seemed. The railways functionned to 'draw those provinces out of their own narrow circle and give them the sense of larger citizenship'. National conception was being born. However, during the late 19th / eartly 20th century, British Columbia looked very British (even though they were in the midst of creating their own traditions).

As more British immigrants arrived, so a renewed British ambience attracted yet others. "In Vancouver and to an extent British Columbia, a typical Ontario man would not feel at first quite at home". "There was a prevalence of British accents among store clerks, school teachers and policemen--the number of British papers in the newstands, the abundance of Tudor houses, the popularity of flower gardens". Some people who didn't quite make it in Britain flourished in BC. Whatever the locale, middle-class Britons sought to re-create familiar class-based instituions, ranging from social clubs to private schools on the British model. Underlying their actions was the same assumption of superiority over the host society that had half a century earlier been exhibited by many colonial Victorians towards Canadians. A preference for leisurely lifestyle further divided many middle class Britons from industrious Canadians imbued with the Protestant work ethic.

In retrospect, it is clear that this generation of Britons exercised influence beyond their numbers. They entrenched a BC accent which was widely accepted until the 20th century. Many acquired the accent even though they had been born in BC and never travelled past Seattle or Vancouver (or never at all).

The social institutions that these immigrants transplanted soon extended into society as a whole. Private schools were on the British model and became favoured by Canadians. Men and women who made their fortune in the golden west sought for their sons and daughters a private education over the still-British public schools. There was still a model of class-based privilege for the first half of the 20th century. Their consequence was to reinforce social and economic divisions from the top down.