Colonel Richard Moody

Captain Henry Reynolds Luard

Captain Robert Mann Parsons

Lt. Charles William Wilson

Lt. Arthur Lempriere

Sjt. James Sym Lindsay

Sgt. William McColl

Corporal William James Bowden

Sapper Thomas Argyle (5157)

Sapper Henry J. Benney

-Return To The RE Living History Group-

A tiny military force in a vast and boisterous gold rush colony, the 220 men of the Royal Engineers laid the foundations for much of British Columbia.

This was a new colony created by gold. Word of rich strikes on the Fraser River reached San Francisco in 1858. Within twelve months, some 30,000 gold-seekers had poured into the region, mostly American, mostly “anti-British”, all heavily armed and desperate for riches. The few hundred British residents, Hudson’s Bay Company men and farmers, were overwhelmed. The HBC’s chief factor, James Douglas, sought help from the Colonial Office in London.

The answer to Douglas’ plea was the Columbia Detachment of the Royal Engineers, 160-strong, under Col. Richard Moody. An advance party of Engineers was on hand at Fort Langley in November 1858 to see Douglas sworn in as governor of a new Crown Colony. The bulk of the force arrived the next spring on the sailing ship Thames City after a four-month journey from England.

The job of the Columbia Detachment was three-fold. First, they would carry out a program of public works, surveying and laying out townsites and aiding in road construction. Second, they would serve as a defence force against American annexation and Indian insurrection. Third, they would create a British presence in the colony and “promote a high social standard of civilization” for this new frontier.

An additional 65 Royal Engineers and their officers were to assist with the work of the British Boundary Commission. By an 1846 treaty, the boundary with the United States was fixed as the 49th parallel from the Rockies to the Pacific. However, no one knew just where on the ground this hypothetical border actually lay. It fell to the Commission to survey and mark this line across some of the most rugged terrain in North America.

The contributions of the “Sappers” to their new colony were many. They saw to the construction of badly-needed roads, including the magnificent 400-mile Cariboo Wagon Road into the interior. From their headquarters in Sapperton, they laid out the capital at New Westminster, set aside Stanley Park as a military reserve, built public offices and churches, and laid down key highways including Kingsway and North Road. They produced maps, surveyed lands and settled miners’ disputes. Just as critically, most of the enlisted men with their families stayed on as loyal and productive settlers after their military work was completed.

Above all, the presence of the Royal Engineers ensured that this extraordinary new Pacific colony would survive as a British possession, paving the way for a Canada stretching from sea to sea.