History Helps Volume Seven, Number 7, June 2007
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• Greetings
• Celebrating 150 Years
• Subscription, Privacy Policy

GREETINGS!

Celebrating 150 Years

In 2008 the Province of British Columbia will be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the founding of the colony on the mainland. The 100th anniversary was marked in 1958, and a year earlier, the little mascot for the occasion made his appearance in British Columbia newspapers.

“Century Sam tells of BC’s past

Century Sam, a pioneer Fraser River gold miner in 1858 made his stake and holed up for the winter. Like Rip Van Winkle he slept for years. Only a few months ago he was awakening by the stir of approaching Centennial celebrations. Amazed at the changes which have taken place, Sam now tells [us] something of B.C.’s past, contrasting it to the present. As to our future he says, ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’

‘Folks, they’ve picked me to tell about B.C. and they picked the right man. Because I was here before B.C. That's right. If you don’t believe it you can look it it up.

I was here when B.C. was N.C. “New Caledonia” she was called by the Scotch fur-traders when they ran the place. I hear somebody say, ‘Ain’t the Scotch still running it?” However, that’s a different story.

It was gold that gave me and B.C. a start. Before 1858 Vancouver Island was a colony and a recognized place and the Queen Charlottes had a lieutenant-governor. But the whole mainland, U.S. to Alaska, Rockies to Pacific, was just a big hazy thing on the map.

We had a population then about Whalley’s size, for all of B.C.

But, in 1858 the news got out that there was $50 a day to be got from gold on the banks of the Fraser River. In no time half the world was trying to get here.

We had the greatest tourist boom we ever had. There was over 1,700 left San Francisco in one day for Hope and Yale. The Fraser just about put San Francisco out of business.

With all this commotion it was necessary that we get organized as a Place. We asked Queen Victoria to name it. She looked over the maps they had on us in London and she picked British Columbia.

Well, I seen a lot of strange things in them old days. And I’ll tell you more about that later. But what I saw in the past ain’t half as strange as what I see here now.

If you’d told us old fellows that there’d be a million and a half people here, and machines rippin’ through the clouds and pictures flashing through the sky and buildin’s [sic] scrapin’ the heavens ... Why, we would have thought you was crazy.

I look around me today, and I say “Sam, you’ve really started something.”’”

Source: The Ladner Optimist, 20 June 1957, page five.

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Gwen Szychter, M.A.

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