Friends of the B.C. Archives � Road to Ruin: James Douglas and the Obfuscation of the Cariboo Wagon Road

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Sunday, February 21st, 2016
2:00 PM to 3:30 PM

Dr. Frank Leonard will explore the finance, construction, and early operation of the Cariboo Wagon Road. His research rests largely on a review of Governor James Douglas’s dispatches to the Colonial Office in London, along with the private comments that officials attached to them. Its conclusions challenge the traditional, celebratory view of Douglas’s government of the mainland colony.

Frank Leonard is an adjunct associate professor in the Department of History of the University of Victoria. His book, A Thousand Blunders: The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and Northern British Columbia (1996), was awarded the CHA Clio Prize for British Columbia. For his research he had access to a wealth of original documents, among them the GTP legal department files, providing him with insights into the decisions that formed the basis for policies in townsites and on Indian reserves.

Image: Men working on the Cariboo Wagon Road, around 1868. Photograph by Frederick Dally, D-08064 RBCM/BC Archives