In March 1850, HMS Driver dropped anchor in Victoria harbour and Richard Blanshard stepped ashore, the first governor of the Crown colony of Vancouver Island. The Driver fired a salute of 17 guns, the bastion answered and all the fort turned out to see the start of the first Crown government west of the Great Lakes. It was a memorable day in the history of what was to become British Columbia.
Blanshard was a 33-year-old bachelor, and an enigma in many ways. No one quite knew what to make of him. No house had been prepared for him; he was given a room in the fort.
He evidently didn't like that and chose to remain aboard the Driver. A few days after his arrival here, he went in the Driver to Nisqually, on Puget Sound.
While the Driver was loading cattle and sheep for Fort Victoria, Blanshard met Dr. William Fraser Tolmie, who later wrote of the governor: "Mr. Blanshard, the governor of Vancouver Island, came as passenger in the Driver and spent three days here. He is a tall, thin person, with a pale, intellectual countenance -- is a great smoker, a great sportsman, a protectionist in politics and a latitudinarian in religious matters. His manner is quiet and rather abstracted, and though free from hauteur or pomposity, he does not converse much."
Eventually a small house was built for Blanshard just outside the fort on Government Street, between Bastion and Yates. There he lived a lonely existence.
He soon was in disagreement with powerful, autocratic James Douglas, of the Hudson's Bay Co. Dr. J.S. Helmcken in his reminiscences gives us glimpses of Blanshard's days here, though Helmcken was undoubtably biased, being a servant of the company and son-in-law of Douglas.
Helmcken arrived at the fort in the sailing vessel Norman Morison only a few days after Blanshard. The Norman Morison was in quarantine when, Helmcken wrote years later: "One night while I was in bed and asleep the captain woke me and said Governor Blanshard had come on board from HMS Driver to see you. Well, I suppose I grumbled and the governor sent word not to bother as there would be plenty of opportunities later. I did not see him. The fact is I should have got up with alacrity but I suppose I was tired or lazy. Having a sort of hazy idea that I was to be his assistant should have made me at once meet him and show off my best qualities, if I had any. However, Blanshard and I never became friends -- he evidently did not care for me."
Helmcken goes into some detail regarding the rift between Blanshard and the company: "Dr. Benson -- a grumbler -- had become attached to Governor Blanshard and shared with him mutual grumbling about the Hudson's Bay Co. These people were in too much of a hurry and thought a colony could be formed in a day.
"Doubtless the governor and the parson (Rev. Staines) and everyone else had to put up with many inconveniences and only thought of the civilized life they had left, but they did not adapt themselves to a rough and ready country -- if they had they might have been much more comfortable and happy.
"They wanted a great deal more than could be supplied them from the limited means at disposal -- they wanted the luxuries of a civilized and populous country. Besides, no one even then would tolerate the airs of superiority they chose on all occasions to put on."
Benson, wrote Helmcken, "was a sterling, honest, kind-hearted and upright man, but he could not serve two masters -- Blanshard and the Hudson's Bay Co. in the shape of Douglas -- in fact, this divided authority led to 'parties' and was the source of very much bad feeling and trouble afterwards."
Helmcken gives the clearest picture of Blanshard, so it is worthwhile carrying on with his reminiscences: "The governor's house was only a four-room building on about four lots, faced with planed shingles. It was comfortable, but not commodious. The governor was better -- so I had little to do with him just then -- and indeed never had much for he did not take a fancy to me and so I did not court him. I was not like Benson, not given to grumble and complaints of the Hudson's Bay Co. The company thought they knew their business about colonization and Blanshard held a contrary opinion. Douglas and Blanshard seldom were brought into actual collision, save when Blanshard summoned him to appear before him because he had signed the ship's register on change of captains, which the company had always done.
"At the time it was a small thing -- but gave Blanshard an opportunity of showing his authority, much to the delight of Yates, Langford, Skinner and that ilk. Douglas was dignified, but attended."
Former provincial archivist and librarian Willard Ireland wrote: "Plagued by ill health, disheartened by the slow development of the colony, disappointed by the unsympathetic attitude of the Colonial Office, disillusioned by the insignificance of the role he could play as Royal Governor, Blanshard tendered his resignation on Nov. 18, 1850. Nine months were to intervene before he could leave the colony. Early in September (1851) Blanshard set sail for San Francisco in HMS Daphne en route to England by way of Panama. Never again did he revisit the colony he helped to found."
Blanshard fades away after that. But he was not long in England before he married Amelia Hyde. They took up residence in the Blanshard estate, Fairfield, in Hampshire.
The rest of his life may be pieced together from letters written from England and brief notes in English newspapers. Mrs. Blanshard lived but 14 years after her marriage. The Lymington and Isle of Wight Chronicles of Feb. 9, 1866, announced: "Death of Mrs. Blanshard -- we regret to inform our readers of the death of Mrs. Blanshard, the wife of Richard Blanshard, Esq. of Fairfield House, Lymington. It is not only a large circle of friends that will deplore her loss, but that loss will be keenly felt by many of the poor of the town."
After her death Blanshard apparently could not bear the loneliness of Fairfield House and so moved to London.
Blanshard died in 1894, when he was 77, and the Lymington and South Hants Chronicle said: "Funeral of Mr. Richard Blanshard, J.P. -- The funeral of Mr. Richard Blanshard, of Fairfield, took place at Boldre Churchyard on Tuesday morning and attracted considerable notice, the deceased gentleman having been years ago a well-known personage of the town. Since the death of his wife in 1866 he seldom spent much time at his Lymington residence, but his interest in the place was always kept up and appeals to his charity for any local object always met with a generous response, and in his death the poor have lost a generous benefactor."
Few people in his English home town knew Blanshard had ever been governor of Vancouver Island. It was apparently an experience he wished to blot out.
"It is easy to belittle the significance of his work," archivist Ireland said many years later. "The fact remains, however, that with his coming the rule of the fur trader gave way to the rule of the Crown. His was the distinction of being the first governor of that part of our province that was first brought under Imperial rule. It was he who laid the constitutional foundations of our province."
Today, the man might be almost forgotten -- but his name survives on one of the major thoroughfares in Victoria, and on one of the largest government buildings on Blanshard Street.