The Curious Passage of Richard Blanshard

Seeking to stop American settlers from overrunning the island and provoking violence with Indigenous people, the British government in 1849 created the “Colony of Vancouver’s Island and its Dependencies” and designated the HBC the “true and absolute lords and proprietors” of the island — an arrangement that would last until the company sold the territory back to the Crown in 1867. In exchange, the company promised to people the island with British colonists. 

Chief factor Douglas was the company’s original choice for governor of Vancouver Island, but politics intervened to thwart his chances. Instead, British Secretary of State for the Colonies Earl Grey and HBC chairman John Pelly settled on the wealthy and well-connected Blanshard. Trained in the law, the thirtyone- year-old Blanshard had spent most of his adult life in London tending to family business matters. His only experience in the colonies was a stint in India in 1847–49, during which he volunteered with Britain’s Bengal Native Infantry to suppress an uprising against British rule in the Second Sikh War. 

Blanshard’s motives in applying for the no-expenses-paid governorship remain unclear. There are indications that he envisaged using Vancouver Island as a stepping stone to positions of greater glory within the Empire. But, although he was the rightful ruler of the colony, he discovered on arrival that the HBC held the de facto power — and that the company had no interest in peopling the island with pesky settlers, nor in helping him to establish civil government. 

Barry Gough’s book documents how, over the course of the year 1850, Blanshard’s governorship floundered and the man himself spiralled into a “state of ill health bordering on derangement and fear of death.” Blanshard resigned his position in November 1850 and returned to England the following year, ceding control of the colony to Douglas. 

As in his other books, Gough excels at placing local events and individuals in the broader context of the British Empire. He depicts Blanshard in a sympathetic light, portraying him as a competent, well-intentioned man who never stood a chance against the entrenched power of the HBC and its formidable chief factor. A less charitable observer might interpret Blanshard’s trajectory as a classic case of hubris and nemesis — the hubris of a man who presumes to rule a land of which he knows nothing, and his nemesis (punishment and downfall) as he sinks into the morass where he ventured of his own accord.