In honour of Black History Month, we wanted to share this piece of Victoria Black history that was found during the process of researching for You Are Here: Pop-Up Docs.
In 1860, over the course of the rapid colonisation of “British Columbia” during the Gold Rush, a group of men who had come up from what-is-now California formed Victoria’s first and only militia at the time. Kept out from joining the Fire Brigades due to the members of the brigades opposition to integration (as many of the men in these units were from slave-holding states), 44 black men formed the Pioneer Rifles.
The Pioneer Rifles had a hall on Yates Street and often practised on the sunny slopes of Beacon Hill (Meegan). Children would play beside them as parents watched on.
The Pioneer Rifles were rather popular among Victoria residents. Formed under the Govenorship of James Douglas, the Victorian Pioneer Rifles Corps continued as leadership passed from Douglas to James Kennedy. The VPRC hoped to partake in the parade held in honour of the Kennedy’s inauguration, but were denied. Parade organisers were aware that as the only milita in Victoria, it would have been traditional for the Pioneer Rifles to lead the parade. They argued this would lead other groups to withdraw in protest and barred the rifle corps from participating.
Undeterred, the group continued to hold public drills in hopes of changing the organisers minds and allowing them to participate. They “paraded their band through the streets every evening,” until the eve of the event when they held a “special ceremony.” During this ceremony, the members of the “Ladies of Victoria” presented them with a silk Union Jack and said these words, “Men, as long as this flag shall wave over you, you may rest assured that no man, or set of men, or nations can grind you under the iron heel of oppression!”
The public drills and words of the Ladies of Victoria did not sway the decision of the committee and the Victorian Pioneer Rifles Corps were ultimately prevented from participating. The group held its own party during the parade and, a week later, marched to the Legistlative buildings. They wore their formal dress uniforms and were led by their brass brand. The Pioneer Rifles requested to see Governor Kennedy who eventually emerged and gave a rather pathetic speech about how he was “used to ‘coloured people'” having spent time on the Ivory Coast and hoped that “race consciousness” “imported from the United States” would disappear from local society. Discouraged upon hearing these words, the corps turned around returned to their drill hall. A political cartoon featured in the Peninsula Times article and included above satirizes the speech and depicts the VPRC’s reaction.
The Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corps eventually disbanded in 1866 as public interest, and thus also funding, waned.
Due to constraints of the project and the way it was structured, employing interviews to share the majority of the historical information in the production, the history of Victoria’s Pioneer Rifle Corps wasn’t included in the overall Pop-Up Docs. As the researcher on the project, I still wanted to find an opportunity to share it.
This archival material is courtesy of UBC Library Open Collections: BC Historical Newspapers. The article, “When black men were Victoria’s only militia,” is from the Peninsula Times issue April 10, 1978.
To read the original Peninsula Times article, click here for a PDF version.