Talk:James Douglas (governor)

New Pictures

Ok seems that this guy, Howcheng has screwed up the pictures on this article. However perhaps this is an opportunity to throw some more diverse pictures into this article. Keep your eyes peeled. Kilter 19:42, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

New edits

Got rid of some of the high-school simplifications and introduced some details/accuracy; this article/bio needs a lot of work yet, though.Skookum1 21:57, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

In case it is of use, an image of the person's tombstone at Ross Bay Cemetery is available at commons.wikimedia. KenWalker | Talk 16:18, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Scots Canadian cat? Barbadian cat? African-Canadian cat?

Never really liked using those cat names for people in pre-provincial BC history anyway; but I note that he hasn't been given an "ethnic sort" category of any kind. Should he even? Pretty much he defined what it was to be "British Columbian" (even before that term existed) and he's neither Caribbean nor Scots by culture; only by inheritance and part-upbringing. The country here is what made him what he was; can't really consider him a Scot, nor a West Indian, at least not in cultural/ethnic-identification terms, only by family line....interesting question re a lot of these early guys, in fact; even marking the Orcadians as Scots isn't quite right.Skookum1 02:45, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm wondering that, myself. My inclination would be Scots-Canadian, given his paternity and extended education in Scotland. Strictly speaking, he was a British subject all his life. Fishhead64 06:42, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Bastardy, miscegenation and documention

I've deleted the unsourced claims that Douglas was illegitimate and that his mother was "free coloured". This is partly because that stuff was brought in from a merge with a fork article by the block-evading sock-puppet of a banned WP account (see here, here, and here), and thus is suspect and delete-worthy for that cause alone. Perhaps more importantly, though, these things cannot be stated as facts, for lack of the needful documentation -- unless something further has been found in recent years, of which I've not learned. Without a reference, these don't belong in the article as "facts". They might be mentioned as speculative possibilities, which to my understanding is what they are, but that, too, needs a reference.
-- Lonewolf BC 20:19, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Just an after-thought on the need for care in these matters: Formerly, claims that Douglas had African ancestry were liable to be made in an attempt to smear him (or just for sake of sensationalism). That might still be the case, in some circles, although plainly nowadays such talk simply does not blacken a man's name (ho-ho) the way that it did in Douglas' own lifetime, nor even 50 years ago. (Somewhat the same goes for claims that Douglas was a bastard -- a literal one, I mean -- although I had never met with any such claim before reading it in the older version of the article on him, here.) Of late, the danger is much more of an opposite kind: that claims of African descent will be made out of a socio-politically based wish to "lay claim" to this important and generally honoured historical figure, for purposes of "Black Pride". Either way, editors must beware of biased sources, and of letting such bias slip into the article.
-- Lonewolf BC 20:24, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

The definitive history written by University of Victoria lecturer John Adam in 2001 has settled this issue. Douglas was the illegitimate son of John Douglas and Martha Anne Telfer. Telfer was classified in the historical record as a "free coloured" woman from Barbados, who came to what is now Guyana in the 1790s, where she would eventually meet John Douglas, with whom she had several children. In the language of that time and place, "coloured" meant any combination of black and white ancestry.
-- User:Proteotopian

"...born in Demerara (now part of Guyana)..."

I changed the wording for Douglas' birthplace to the above because Demerara was a separate colony at the time. Not till 1814 was it joined into "Demerara-Essequibo", and not till 1815 was Berbice added to create "British Guiana", the immediate colonial forerunner of Guyana.
-- Lonewolf BC 20:40, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
P.S.: Besides, the original colonies retained their separate identities considerably, even after their administrative mergers. To my understanding, these identities survive to some degree even today.
-- Lonewolf BC 20:29, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Canadiana.org citation invalid and POV

I looked up the ref accompanying this quote:

The treaty-making was halted after the Colony ran out of money to pursue its expansion policy.

partly because that's a "pat" explanation for why the treaty-making process wasn't continued; more to the facts, Douglas' relatively generous treatment and political support of the First Nations was one of the reasons he got turfed from office; www.canadiana.org is a poorly-written site, and only pullls on goevrnment sources and the extremely-poorly-written/researched Canadian Encyclopedia Online (whose gold rush material was so bad I had to send them off a lengthy criticism of all their many errors earlier tonoight). Also, the transformation of even the www.canadiana.org content somehow got changed from "The Aboriginals gave up nearly 570 square kilometers of land in exchange for cash, clothing and blankets. They were able to retain existing village lands and fields for their use, and also were allowed to hunt and fish on the surrendered lands." to "some blankets and a few shillings" in an obviously POV pastiche-rendering all too reminiscent of the cliches about the sale of Manhattan. In actuality, the Peninsula and Cowichan-area chiefs were, like Maquinna before them, very astute businessmen and wouldn't have settled for a cheap buyout; nor, given Douglas' long and continuing business relationship with them, he can't afford to have been seen (by them) as swindling them; they got what THEY saw as far barter at the time; and if it was only a few shillings that they got, how was it the Colony ran out of money? I can't remember the dollar, or rather sterling, figures at the moment but they weren't cheap; and farther up-island the Kwakiutl were in no mood to negotiate.... I'd have expected these numbers to be present at canadiana.org, since they are used as the cite. Knee-jerk cliches like this are rife in a lot of BC historical writing; but they should always be examined especially when they turn up in government-funded/backed sites, or in eastern-written sites like the Canadian Encyclopedia. I actually stopped by here to see what this article had on the Douglas Treaties, but since there's only what's been culled from Canadiana.org, which itself is a cut-and-paste from other sites, it looks like I'm on my own and will have to dig into the Akriggs and whatever else I have around here; Hauka's great, the Square Toes book was a crashing boor and way too p.c., and the other one I haven't read.....Skookum1 06:59, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

The "few shillings" note was referenced in Bob Reid's article in British Columbia: A Brief History in Colony of Vancouver Island. I'll let you be the judge of the accuracy of his claim and the appropriateness of the citation tag. Fishhead64 01:38, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Tried to look for it, but it's gone.Skookum1 11:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

By the way, the Akriggs quote one of the Douglas Treaties, which as you can tell by the redlnk doesn't have an article yet. I'm wondering if the full text of such a treaty should go in the article, or if I should put it in Wikisource as it's a source document? Thoughts? Similarly there's Declaration of the Lillooet Tribe, which I created a long time ago but now realize probably should have been put in Wikisource.Skookum1 11:41, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Sir James Douglas (disambiguation)

Not a necessity, but has to do with James Douglas disambugiation page; see [Talk:James Douglas]]Skookum1 08:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)