Gold is found along the banks of…

Gold is found along the banks of the Fraser River in the Fraser Canyon north of Yale in 1858.

When word gets out about the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, Victoria is transformed overnight into a tent city as prospectors, speculators, land agents, and outfitters flood in from around the world, mostly from San Francisco.

The Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Langley burgeons economically as the staging point for many of the prospectors heading by boat to the Canyon.

At this time, the region is still not under formal colonial authority.

The 1846 Treaty of Washington, which had settled the Oregon boundary dispute, established the border between British North America and the United States at the 49th parallel from the Rocky Mountains to the sea, the original American proposal, with all of Vancouver Island retained as British territory.

In 1849, the crown Colony of Vancouver Island had been created; and in 1851, James Douglas was appointed Governor.

Douglas, fearing challenges to the claim of British sovereignty in the region in the face of an influx of some twenty thousand Americans, ...