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VOL. 80 PART 2 MARCH 2022
responded by evicting thousands
of Indigenous people from Victoria
and its vicinity and setting fire to
their dwellings. For the most part,
the Indigenous people from up
north returned to their home communities.
The inevitable result was
that smallpox was thus delivered
throughout British Columbia and
spread with alarming rapidity. It
has been estimated that seventy
per cent of the Haida people died
in the ensuing epidemic.
There can be no doubt that the
colonial government knew that the
failure to contain the virus would
have deadly and catastrophic results—
they were even warned
about it in explicit terms in the
local press. Yet the colonial government
deliberately chose not to take
any serious steps to limit or prevent
the spread of the illness
among the Indigenous people and
instead exacerbated the situation
by forcing them from their camps.
Some may argue that the European
settlers acted purely out of
self-interest, albeit with callous disregard
for the health of their
Indigenous neighbours, and did
not desire the death and destruction
that the epidemic wrought.
That may be so, but either way, the
result was the same. Even when an
outcome is not desired, it is nevertheless
intended when it is the
foreseen consequence of one’s
deliberate act.
Gordon Hilliker, Q.C.
Vancouver