Businesses and developers take heart. Your angst over how to complete projects given worker shortages in the Capital Region is nothing new.

Vancouver Island’s first governor encountered the same problem 150 years ago. Sir James Douglas, then chief factor for the Hudson’s Bay Company in Victoria, wrote to colonial offices in London, England in March of 1858 concerned about completing surveying projects with too few workers.

“Mechanics refusing employment at any thing under 12/6,” Douglas wrote to secretary of state Henry Labouchere, “and common laborers 5/- a day, besides their food … may have the effect of raising the present rate of labor; …”

Leading up to the 1858 proclamation that declared B.C. a British colony, Douglas wrote regular despatches (the old spelling of dispatches) to his superiors in London, England with reports of events, summaries of actions and requests for help.

“These documents are relevant today because of current land claims negotiations,” said Chris Petter, head of UVic’s special collections, the department that has taken responsibility for storing the 58 spools of microfilm transcriptions that cover colonial dispatches from 1846 to 1871. Dispatches from Douglas could be illuminating, Petter says, “because they mention all the transactions between colonial administration and aboriginal groups.”

For example, in 1857 and early 1858, UVic history professor Daniel Marshall says documents show Douglas wrote to his superiors warning of American gold rush miners heading to the Fraser River canyon and potential trouble between First Nations in the area.

“When Douglas originally warns there could be war,” Marshall said, “he writes to Lord Lytton in Britain that First Nations are particularly protective of ‘their’ resources and land, and he talks about it in terms of ‘their’ resources and land.”

First Nations were mining gold in the canyon to trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company. As Douglas warned, they became upset when miners from Oregon and California shouldered their way in, building ditches, draining lakes and laying waste to First Nations villages.

Concerned he might be taken to task for not preventing brutal exchanges between the two factions, and perhaps with an eye to staying in the running for governor, Douglas failed to mention the conflict in the dispatches he sent to London in the summer of 1858. He was appointed governor later that year.

Many more insights into B.C.’s history could be uncovered in the dozens of microfilm spools that remain to be digitized. But it’s expensive. Digitizing and posting just the 1858 transcriptions and document scans to the Genesis website (http://bcgenesis.uvic.ca) cost about $5,000, paid for in part with a one-time grant. Until more funding is available, many more years of B.C. history will remain in UVic’s special collections vault.

vmoreau@saanichnews.com