We can find reminders of British Columbia history all around the globe. Sometimes, we stumble upon those reminders.
In Brisbane, Australia, a few months ago, I had time to kill. So I took the train from the central business district west to Toowong, the location of a cemetery with 120,000 graves. At one time, it was the main cemetery for Brisbane. There had to be lots of history there.
I walked from one end to the other and back again. The cemetery is set, to a certain extent, in a bowl. There is a deep valley in the middle, with steep hills on the sides.
It’s a grim, gloomy place. Unlike, for example, Royal Oak Burial Park in Saanich, Toowong does not provide perpetual care, which means many of the older markers are filthy and falling apart.
There are exceptions — and they include the graves of notables that are maintained by the government of Queensland.
Near the end of my hike through history, I walked up the final hill, drawn by a couple of impressive monuments. Yes, they marked the spots of important people. No, I had never heard of them before.
Then I turned to one side and saw a name that I certainly did recognize: Sir Anthony Musgrave. He was in that place of honour in Toowong because, at the time of his death, he had been governor of Queensland.
Eighteen years earlier, Musgrave had had the same position in British Columbia. As the last governor before we joined Canada as a province, he played a pivotal role in bringing people together to agree on terms of Confederation.
Musgrave was born in Antigua, in the West Indies, in 1828. He trained as a lawyer in England, and in 1854 was named colonial secretary for Antigua. In 1860 he became temporary administrator of St. Vincent, and in 1862 was named lieutenant-governor there.
He spent the rest of his life serving the British Empire as an administrator.
Musgrave was appointed governor of Newfoundland in September 1864. He came to the conclusion that Newfoundland had to be joined to the other British North America colonies, something that did not happen until 60 years after his death.
Newfoundland had representative government when Musgrave was there, and he was not able to persuade others that the colony would gain by joining the other colonies. So rather than being an active participant in the creation of Canada, Musgrave was an observer. He was in Ottawa in November 1867 for the first session of the new Parliament of Canada.
His dream, as reported in the St. John’s Gazette, was “the eventual union of all British provinces in North America, in a noble Dominion, stretching from mid-Atlantic to Pacific Ocean shores, under the Crown of Old England — a Dominion which shall include British Columbia as well as Newfoundland.”
In 1869, after failing at his goal in Newfoundland, he was appointed to British Columbia. He had a straightforward assignment: Get the colony on the Pacific coast to join Canada. It was just three years after the colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island had united, and there was still scant evidence that the merger had been a good idea.
Much of his trip here was by rail, between New York and San Francisco. He arrived in Victoria, on HMS Satellite from San Francisco, on Aug. 23, 1869.
“His Exellency Governor Musgrave arrived here yesterday, and is now the legitimate occupant of ‘Cary Castle,’” the British Colonist reported the following morning.
His trip across the continent had convinced him that a transcontinental railway should be part of any plan to unite British Columbia with Canada. But the odds of getting the idea of union accepted, with or without a railway, seemed poor.
The legislative council had voted against it just a few months before Musgrave’s arrival.
Most people in Victoria were opposed to union with Canada, which they saw as a second choice behind remaining independent. Fear of being forced to join the United States was the only thing that made them think Canada would be a viable alternative.
Musgrave changed that, gradually convincing people that the Canadian choice was the best one for British Columbia. He spent six weeks touring the colony, and dealt with many of the outstanding grievances he heard on the Island and on the mainland.
He worked on the most influential people, using his powers of persuasion to get them on side and working with the government. He stepped around those, such as Amor De Cosmos, the founder of the British Colonist, who were making their own overtures to the authorities in Canada.
Musgrave’s actions helped ensure that the idea of confederation was accepted, then presented to the legislative council, where debates lasted a month in early 1870.
That fall, Musgrave called an election for the legislative council, and pro-union candidates won. On Jan. 20, 1871, the terms of confederation were accepted by the council.
Thanks to his efforts, British Columbia became the sixth province of Canada. On July 25, five days after we joined confederation, the career civil servant left. He had been here only 23 months, but changed the course of our history.
After leaving British Columbia, Musgrave — who was knighted in 1875 — served in Natal, South Australia, Jamaica and Queensland, where he died on Oct. 9, 1888, in Brisbane.
All public offices in Queensland were closed the day of Musgrave’s funeral. He was buried with full military honours, since he was the commander-in-chief of the forces of the colony at the time of his death. After last rites, a volley was fired over his grave.
As the Brisbane Courier described it: “The site chosen is the top of the principal slope of the cemetery, a little lower down and to the right of the last resting place of the late Governor Blackall.”
In 1985, a plaque marking his contribution to our past was unveiled at Government House.
But the real memorial to Musgrave is the one where he is buried — in Toowong, the suburb of Brisbane, ready to be discovered by a British Columbian out for a casual stroll through history.