British Columbia general election, 1875

This was the second election held after British Columbia became a province of Canada on July 20, 1871. Many of the politicians in the House had served with the Legislative Council or Assembly or the Executive Council, or had otherwise been stalwarts of the colonial era - some supporters of Confederation, others not. Some were ranchers or mining bosses from the Interior, others were colonial gentry from the Island and New Westminster, and others direct arrivals from Britain, Ireland or "Canada", which was still considered a different place not only in the minds of the politicians but in the language used in Hansard during this period.

Votes 5,656 Candidates 55 Members 25

Vancouver Island 4,477 votes total in thirteen seats 344.38 voters per seat:

Mainland:

Note that these figures refer to votes actually cast, not the population per se nor the total of the potential voters' list.

The issues of Chinese immigration and the unbuilt railway defined the politics of the period, and were the main topic of debate in the campaign as well as in the House. As ever since in British Columbia politics, a tough stand against the Dominion Government (Ottawa) upon these issues, and over better terms for BC, was a prerequisite for success at the polls. Politicians and newspapermen (often the same thing in the early Legislature) were alarmed that British Columbia appeared not to have a say in the route of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and that Ottawa had no plans to assist in immigration to the new province in order to build the railway and otherwise populate the former colony. The issue of a promised railway along the east coast of Vancouver Island to its southern tip at Victoria was also of major political importance, especially to voters in the Island ridings (Victoria City, Victoria, Nanaimo City, Comox, Alberni, Cowichan, Esquimalt).

Also occupying the House were capital proposals and expenditures on projects such as improvements to the Dewdney Trail, the Cariboo Road, the Grand Trunk Road (Old Yale Road), and the financing of the Lillooet Cattle Trail, even though its main proponent, Thomas Basil Humphreys, the first MLA for Lillooet, was now MLA for Victoria. Victoria City MLA Andrew Charles Elliott, soon to be Premier, had been a provincial Magistrate in Lillooet and also supported the project, then the largest capital expenditure in the new province to date, and larger than anything outlaid in the colonial period. The trail was finally built and used in its entirety and for its original purpose - bringing cattle from the West Fraser rangelands directly to the Coast - was a financial disaster (as were also the Dewdney, Cariboo and Grand Trunk projects, and as had been the Douglas Road originally.

...
Wikipedia