Under a Northern Star

Sir James Douglas: Colonial Governor

After the United States passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Sir James Douglas, the colonial governor in British Columbia, enabled Blacks from San Francisco to migrate to Canada. They became known as the "Black Pioneers." This section contains extensive personal documentation of Douglas's life and career between the years 1835 and 1867. Letters contains multiple volumes of the original handwritten copies of his correspondence; Journals leads to his private records of early exploration of the Pacific coast and voyages to Alaska, Fort George (now Prince George) and elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest. In History you will find an overview of Sir James Douglas's role in bringing the Black Pioneers to British Columbia, as written by Crawford Kilian, author of Go Do Some Great Thing: The Black Pioneers of British Columbia.