Happy 150th Birthday, British Columbia!
150 years ago today the Colony of British Columbia was born! Mind you, the Colony of Vancouver Island was born earlier than that (in 1849) and the two would join together in 1866 to become the creatively named United Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. But, no matter. It’s Happy 150th birthday, British Columbia anyway!
Resident historian, Sarah, passed along the link to this article in the Globe and Mail – well worth the read if you are interested in the origins of BC. It’s all American miners flooding into BC in droves for the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, wars with the “Indians” and “headless corpses float[ing] in the Fraser River.” You know, as opposed to the severed feet we are used to seeing these days.
Fun facts about British Columbia:
- the province covers 944,735 km2
- we’ve got quite a variety of climates: from the coast of the mainland and Vancouver Island, which are temperate rainforest, to our desert regions in the Interior
- our provincial flower is the Pacific dogwood
- our provincial tree is Western Redcedar
- our provincial bird is the Steller’s Jay
- our provincial mammal is the Spirit Bear (a.ka. the Kermode bear)
Comments |2|
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
We’re one of only 7 or so regions worldwide that are temperate rainforests. Or have temperate rainforests. Or where you can find them. You get the picture.
Poor Vancouver Island… it’s like how Victoria became the capital and thus much more important than New Westminster. BC über alles!
Damn… there was something else I was going to say about BC, apart from the mountain pine beetle being our provincial pest/insect.
Well whatever it was, it’s left my poor little brain.
I have it on good authority that Sarah IS Wikipedia, btw.
I would have commented in your other thread, but apparently you have nothing but trackbacks there.