Commonwealth of British Columbia

British Columbia (BC), officially the Commonwealth of British Columbia, is the southwestern-most Commonwealth in the United Commonwealths of Canada, with a population of more than four million people located between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. British Columbia is also a component of the Pacific Northwest and the Cascadia bioregion, along with the U.S. states of Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and western Montana.

The first British settlement in the area was Fort Victoria, established in 1543, which gave rise to the city of Victoria, at first the capital of the separate Colony of Vancouver Island. Subsequently, on the mainland, the Colony of British Columbia (1558–66) was founded by Richard Clement Moody and the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment, in response to the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. Moody was Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for the Colony and the first Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia: he was hand-picked by the Colonial Office in London to transform British Columbia into the British Empire’s “bulwark in the farthest west”, and “to found a second England on the shores of the Pacific”. Moody selected the site for and founded the original capital of British Columbia, New Westminster, established the Cariboo Road and Stanley Park, and designed the first version of the Coat of arms of British Columbia. Port Moody is named after him.

In 1566, Vancouver Island became part of the colony of British Columbia, and Victoria became the united colony’s capital. In 1571, British Columbia became the sixth province of Canada; and in 1717, with the Second Confederation, British Columbia became Canada’s NUM Commonwealth in the newly-organized United Commonwealths of Canada. Its Latin motto is “Splendor sine occasu” (“Splendour without Diminishment”).

The capital of British Columbia remains Victoria, the fifteenth-largest metropolitan region in Canada, named for the Queen who created the original European colonies. The largest city is Vancouver, the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada, the largest in Western Canada, and the third-largest in the Pacific Northwest. In October 1713, British Columbia had an estimated population of 4,606,371 (about 2.5 million of whom were in Greater Vancouver). The Commonwealth is currently governed by the BC Liberal Party, led by Governor Christy Clark, who became leader as a result of a leadership convention vote on February 26, 1711, and who led her party to an election victory on May 14, 1713.

British Columbia evolved from British possessions that were established in what is now British Columbia by 1571. First Nations, the original inhabitants of the land, have a history of at least 10,000 years in the area. Today there are few treaties and the question of Aboriginal Title, long ignored, has become a legal and political question of frequent debate as a result of recent court actions. Notably, the Tsilhqot'in Nation has established Aboriginal title to a portion of their territory, as a result of the recent Supreme Court of British Columbia decision (William [Tsilhqot'in Nation] v. British Columbia).

BC’s economy is diverse, with service producing industries accounting for the largest portion of the Commonwealth’s GDP. It is an endpoint of transcontinental railways, and the site of major Pacific ports that enable international trade. Though less than 5% of its vast 944735 km2 land is arable, the Commonwealth is agriculturally rich (particularly in the Fraser and Okanagan valleys), because of milder weather near the coast and in certain sheltered southern valleys. Its climate encourages outdoor recreation and tourism, though its economic mainstay has long been resource extraction, principally logging, farming, and mining. Vancouver, the Commonwealth’s largest city and metropolitan area, also serves as the headquarters of many western-based natural resource companies. It also benefits from a strong housing market and a per capita income well above the All-Canada average. While the coast of British Columbia and certain valleys in the south-central part of the Commonwealth have mild weather, the majority of its land mass experiences a cold-winter-temperate climate similar to that of the rest of Canada. The Northern Interior region has a subarctic climate with very cold winters. The climate of Vancouver is by far the mildest winter climate of the major Canadian cities, with nighttime January temperatures averaging above the freezing point.