Sir Joseph William Trutch, (18 January 1826 – 4 March 1904) was an

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-born

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

surveyor Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is ca ...

and

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, a ...

who served as first

Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia The lieutenant governor of British Columbia () is the viceregal representative of the , in the province of British Columbia, Canada. The office of lieutenant governor is an office of the Crown and serves as a representative of the monarchy in ...

Early life and career

Born in

Ashcott Ashcott is a small village and civil parish located in the Sedgemoor area of Somerset in the south-west of England. The village has a population of 1,186. The parish includes the hamlets of Ashcott Corner, Berhill, Buscott, Nythe and Pedwell. T ...

, England, Trutch's early childhood was spent partly in Jamaica, although his family returned to England in 1831, where he later attended

grammar school A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary school ...

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. Following an apprenticeship to

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...

Sir John Rennie, he travelled to California after hearing news of the

California Gold Rush The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California fro ...

of 1849. He arrived in British Columbia in 1859, following the

Fraser River The Fraser River is the longest river within British Columbia, Canada, rising at Fraser Pass near Blackrock Mountain in the Rocky Mountains and flowing for , into the Strait of Georgia just south of the City of Vancouver. The river's annual d ...

gold rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, New Z ...

of 1858. He found employment by working various government contracts as a surveyor, and in 1862 was contracted to construct a portion of the

Cariboo Road The Cariboo Road (also called the Cariboo Wagon Road, the Great North Road or the Queen's Highway) was a project initiated in 1860 by the Governor of the Colony of British Columbia, James Douglas. It involved a feat of engineering stretching fro ...

between Chapmans Bar and

Boston Bar Boston Bar is an unincorporated community in the Fraser Canyon of the Canadian province of British Columbia. Name The name dates from the time of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush (1858–1861). A "bar" is a gold-bearing sandbar or sandy riverbank, and ...

along the canyon of the Fraser River. Tolls collected from a suspension bridge along the road, along with prudent land acquisitions, made Trutch a wealthy man.

Colonial politics

Beginning in the 1860s, Trutch became involved in colonial politics, serving as the Chief Commissioner of Land and Works, and became a well-known resident of

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...

. As the Chief Commissioner of Land and Works, he was a member of the

Legislative Council of British Columbia The Legislative Council of British Columbia was an advisory body created in 1867 to the governor of the "new" Colony of British Columbia, which had been created from the merger of the old Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia (a.k.a. ...

in the

colony In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the ''metropole, metropolit ...

. Throughout his political career, Trutch was noted for his hostility to

land claims A land claim is defined as "the pursuit of recognized territorial ownership by a group or individual". The phrase is usually only used with respect to disputed or unresolved land claims. Some types of land claims include aboriginal land claims, A ...

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people, and demonstrated contempt for their concerns. In a letter to his mother, Charlotte, regarding the Indians of the

Oregon Territory The Territory of Oregon was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from August 14, 1848, until February 14, 1859, when the southwestern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Oregon. Ori ...

he wrote, "I think they are the ugliest and laziest creatures I ever saw and we should as soon think of being afraid of our dogs as of them." (23 June 1850, Joseph Trutch Papers, UBCL, folder A1.b.) And in a letter to the Secretary of State, "I have not yet met with a single Indian whom I consider to have attained even the most glimmering perception of the Christian creed." (26 September 1871, BC Papers Connected with the Indian Land, p. 101) In 1867 Trutch refused to recognize the legitimacy of the reserves established by the former governor, James Douglas, and had them re-surveyed, reducing their size by 91%. His memorandum of 1870 denied the existence of aboriginal title, setting the stage for the colonial assembly to prohibit aboriginal people from pre-empting unoccupied, unsurveyed, or unreserved land without special permission; this decision effectively established a maximum and denied natives the right to acquire lands held by non-natives (A Sto:lo-Coast Salish Historical Atlas, page 164). These policies have had lasting repercussions in modern British Columbia politics with respect to the ongoing process of resolving native land claims.

Province of British Columbia

In 1863 Trutch's sister, Caroline Agnes Trutch, married Peter O'Reilly and in 1870, Trutch's brother John married the sister of the colonial governor

Anthony Musgrave Sir Anthony Musgrave (31 August 1828 – 9 October 1888) was a colonial administrator and governor. He died in office as Governor of Queensland in 1888. Early life He was born at St John's, Antigua, the third of 11 children of Anthony Musgr ...

. Trutch and Musgrave became close. Following the establishment of the

Canadian Confederation Canadian Confederation (french: Confédération canadienne, link=no) was the process by which three British North American provinces, the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, were united into one federation called the Canada, Dom ...

in 1867 they worked together to negotiate British Columbia's entry, which occurred in 1871 after they secured a promise for the construction of the

Canadian Pacific Railway The Canadian Pacific Railway (french: Chemin de fer Canadien Pacifique) , also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), is a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway is owned by Canadi ...

(CPR). Trutch was the

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following Confederation, a position he retained from 1871 to 1876. Following his tenure as lieutenant governor, Trutch was appointed a "Dominion agent for British Columbia", and helped to oversee the construction of the CPR in the province. He left this office in 1890 and returned to England. He died there in 1904 in

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

, the county of his birth.

Legacy

The locality of Trutch, British Columbia () along the

Alaska Highway