Reformer and Journalist
In 1858, De Cosmos and his brother moved on again, this time heading north to British North America as they wished to live under the British flag once again. They also sensed an opportunity in the booming city of Victoria, capital of the Colony of Vancouver Island. The city, since 1843 a quiet village of about 300 until the spring of that year, was just entering an economic boom as it became a jumping-off point for miners headed to the New Caledonia (now mainland British Columbia) to participate in the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. De Cosmos founded a newspaper, The Daily British Colonist, which survives today in its current incarnation as the Victoria Times-Colonist.
De Cosmos was the editor of the Colonist through 1863, and quickly established himself as an opponent of the administration of Sir James Douglas, governor of the colony and the former Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company for Vancouver Island. De Cosmos decried the "family-company compact" of Hudson's Bay men and Douglas associates who controlled the political and social affairs of the colony, even after Douglas's retirement in 1864. This group generally distrusted representative government, and believed in maintaining a hierarchical social order through government support for an established church, a landed gentry, and a private, denominational system of education.
De Cosmos was a liberal reformer cast in the mold of John Locke and John Stuart Mill. He argued passionately for unrestricted free enterprise, public education, an end to economic and political privileges, and — above all — the institution of responsible government through an elected assembly. However, true to the Victorian spirit of the age, De Cosmos was also a proponent of social progress through economic and population growth. He was a tireless advocate for economic diversification, being one of the first British Columbians to argue for a policy of encouraging development of the "three F's" — farming, forestry, and fisheries — that would underpin the region's economy for the next century.
Read more about this topic: Amor De Cosmos
Famous quotes containing the words reformer and/or journalist:
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