The Life and Times of Amor De Cosmos

Hey folks! Today I want to tell you about  a man by the name of Amor De Cosmos. He was interesting, controversial even in his own time  for a wide variety of reasons. He was considered eccentric, annoying, and full of himself by his  contemporaries and historians often portray him as very misanthropic in contrast to his very  public life as a politician and newspaper man. De Cosmos never married and he didn't seem to  have very many close friends but he considered himself a politician of the peo

ple - at least  the white ones anyway. He founded a newspaper that took jabs at his political adversaries, he  is considered to be a Father of Confederation, but if you ask your typical British Colombian or  even a Canadian who Amor De Cosmos was, most of them probably wouldn't know so I want to try and  tell more people about this guy because he was really weird and interesting and also important  to the foundation of modern Canada, I guess? In this video I want to explore the Life and Times  o

f Amor De Cosmos to better understand the man who many historians have described as an Enigma. Amor De Cosmos was born in Nova Scotia in 1825 but he spent most of his life in  Victoria where he is also now buried. If we were to take a look at the headstone that  marks that burial we would find not one name but two. When he was born, his parents announced him  to the world as William Alexander Smith and he did hold on to that name for about the first two  decades of his life before he decided on

something a bit more illustrious - but we'll come to that  in a minute. William Alexander Smith had pretty humble origins working as a grocery clerk with a  company called Whitman and Company. Back in those days we actually respected grocery clerks and  paid them a livable wage so it wasn't a bad life, but eventually news came from California and  it was golden. The California Gold Rush was in full swing and people from all across  North America, and even across the pond, came rushing to stake t

heir claim and make it  big. William also heard this news and decided that he also wanted to head West and venture  into California. He had a number of options but he ultimately decided to go for the long slow  and cheap route he took a caravan across the width of North America. William's party was forced to  Winter in Salt Lake City, spending several months just waiting to get back on the road until  the ground began to thaw and the snow began to melt allowing them to head out on the path  to r

iches once again. At one point as they were finally marching close to California it seems that  William grew impatient and decided to take a horse and head out on his own ahead of the rest of the  party. What he didn't take into account was that he was about to cross the Great Salt Lake Desert.  I am told that this great stretch of barren land is a very arduous stretch of the journey and that  there is no drinkable water for about three days. There is water but the alkali content is so  high tha

t it can actually kill animals and can cause a bout of unfortunate symptoms in human  beings like: vomiting, lethargy, confusion, oral pain, and more!! All things you don't want  to experience while in an unfamiliar land where help is very unlikely to arrive should you require  it. William's brother, Charles Mckeivers Smith, actually wrote about William's Adventure across  the expanse of North America and it's from these records that we know that William drank from  the alkali water source, ambl

ed off track, and nearly died on his journey to California. He  somehow managed to stagger back onto the correct path and find some clean drinking water but  before long he eventually arrived in California in a bit rougher shape than when he left Salt  Lake City but nonetheless alive and well. One of the first things he did in California after  presumably resting for a little bit was go down to the courthouse and petition to have his name  William Alexander Smith changed to Amor De Cosmos. There

was much debate around allowing him to do  this but in the end he stated: "I desire not to adopt the name of Amor De Cosmos because it smacks  a foreign title, but because it is an unusual name and its meaning tells what I love most: love  of order, beauty, the world, the universe". And his petition was granted and from then on  our humble grocery clerk from Nova Scotia was known as Amor De Cosmos. The caravan that he had  previously travelled with arrived in California three weeks after he did

and he had not entrusted  them with the tools and materials needed to mine a vein of gold, but instead when they arrived  he went and picked up his photographer's tools. William made his money photographing miners  with their plots and when his brother Charles arrived a few years later they worked in  tandem making their way by speculating and taking photographs of the land as far as I know  none of these photos still exist so anything that I'm showing on screen is just an example of  what they

might have been taking pictures of but once again Amor De Cosmos was getting antsy and  the gold in California was beginning to dry up. But good news came to California in 1858 because  gold had been found in the Fraser Valley, North, up past the American border and into the heart  of a British colony called British Columbia. If you were a minor in California that wanted  to go North you first had to stop in a little village, a former Hudson's Bay Company outpost  called Victoria to obtain your

mining license. Here you could purchase your license of course  as well as any other number of provisions and tools before heading onto your journey to the  Fraser Valley at the time the population of Victoria was a few hundred settlers but within  about a month of that news story going out the population absolutely exploded to the tens of  thousands Amor De Cosmos was on one of the first boats from California and when he arrived on this  rainy little Island he had initially decided to get into

the fishing and lumber business but  instead what he decided this place needed was an honest newspaper. Now he wasn't the only one to  have this idea because about 10 newspapers started between 1858 and 1860 but as Gordon Hawkins writes  in his book The De Cosmos Enigma: "Some newspapers lasted two to four years, others took only a few  months to disappear. But with flair, fluency, a recognizable target or two, and a capacity for  righteous indignation (all of which De Cosmos came to possess in

abundance) a long street life  could be assured" On December 11th, 1858 the British Colonist published its very first issue  and it is actually still around today! You can still purchase this newspaper at grocery stores  and the like, or more likely you can read their articles online, but nowadays you might know it  as the Times Colonist. I feel like we know enough about De Cosmo's character at this point that when  I tell you that he almost immediately used his newspaper to criticize and attac

k politicians that  he didn't like, we really shouldn't be surprised. In particular he had it out for Sir James Douglas  the former Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company and the current governor of the colony of  Vancouver Island. De Cosmos got his feet under him in Victoria and almost immediately started taking  swings at the top of the political food chain. With his barbed comments on the governance of the  colony a regular feature of the British Colonist publications it really was just a m

atter of time  before he decided to enter that arena himself. De Cosmos saw himself as a politician but the  current politicians didn't want him anywhere near their decision-making chambers and did  everything in their power to try and keep him out. Hawkins writes that: "De Cosmos regarded  purposeful agitation as his calling and showed himself as a foe of unearned privilege and the  family company compact" which did indeed make up most of local politics at the time. After retiring  as an editor

from the colonist Amor De Cosmos made his first foray into attempting to be elected  into a political position and it didn't go well when he first campaigned another settler by the  name of John Helmecken wrote that Amor De Cosmos had gotten up on stage and told of his adventures  in California and how he was the most rootin' tootin' guy around and he had a revolver in each  of his boots and Helmecken also wrote that De Cosmos appeared to be quite drunk throughout this  entire ordeal. The next

day the British colonist wrote that his voice was "rendered feeble by  illness". It's interesting because Amor De Cosmos might not have been an editor anymore but he  was still in fact the owner of this paper, so a bit of a bias there. Despite the drunkenness  this attempt at politics might actually have been successful if his arch nemesis the governor James  Douglas had not interfered there had recently been a group of African Americans who had also  recently arrived from California and through

a little bit of bureaucratic fudgery they were given  the right to vote specifically for this election unable to win their vote Amor De Cosmos  suffered his first defeat in politics and I suppose somewhat unsurprisingly not long  after those African-American settlers had their right to vote rescinded. De Cosmos was not  one to be deterred though and he tried running for a different election a few months later  but the deck was still stacked against him the government decided that because his na

me was  registered in California because remember when he first arrived there he changed his name etc  etc the government decided that because he had his name registered in California he could not  stand in an election on the colony of Vancouver Island unless he referred to himself as "William  Alexander Smith, also known as Amor De Cosmos" if you were legally able to vote at the time  you had to say that whole thing otherwise your vote didn't count. He lost this election  because somebody simpl

y voted for De Cosmos. This was the early days where all of the rules  were truly made up because it was later revealed that the voter list was completely out of date  and the guy who called the winner of the election actually did not have the authority to do so.  Politics are wild today, but they were INSANE back then. However in 1863 Amor De Cosmos finally won  a seat in the legislative assembly of Vancouver Island officially cementing himself as a very  prominent figure in British Columbia's

history he would go on to be a part of two very important  confederations the first occurred in 1866 when the colony of Vancouver Island joined and became  a part of the colony of British Columbia once Vancouver Island joined BC plans to  join Canada were already in motion because remember at this time Vancouver Island and  British Columbia prior to joining were two separate British colonies they were not a part  of Canada yet they were their own thing when it came to British Columbia and its fu

ture  there were kind of three options on the table we could be annexed by the United States and  join them we could remain a British colony or we could join Canada and this was the option  that Amor De Cosmos threw his support behind the Confederation League was very quickly founded  in order to gain public support for uh BC joining Canada and De Cosmos was an early member in  1871 terms of Confederation were agreed upon and British Columbia officially joined Canada the  cosmos illustrious poli

tical career though was far from over because he's shortly thereafter became  the second premiere of British Columbia for my non-Canadian viewers a premier is like the leader  of the province so when I say that Amor De Cosmos was the Premier of British Columbia I mean like he  was in charge of the entirety of British Columbia. In order to tell you about this next bit and  how Amor De Cosmos stint as a premier came to a rather abrupt end I need to tell you about a  transcontinental railway. There

were many articles and deals that were struck made to sweeten the  deal for confederation between British Columbia and Canada and that included article 11 which  afforded the construction of a railway between British Columbia and the rest of the country this  would help move people goods and business out towards BC not leaving them out of that sweet  sweet Eastern Canadian economy the thing is it takes a real long time to build a railroad  especially when that railroad is going across what is t

oday the second largest country in  the world but the timeline was making people anxious everyone had agreed to the terms  of Confederation but would Canada actually follow through for what it's worth it seems like  a Amor De Cosmos did what he could to renegotiate the terms of Confederation in order to expedite  the construction efforts for the railway to the West Coast but at the end of the day his opponents  were able to capitalize on people's anxieties and fears about the railway potentially

not being  completed on February 7th, 1874 a mob stormed the legislature of British Columbia forcing it  to adjourn early people were very dissatisfied with Immortal Cosmos and within two days Amor De  Cosmos had submitted his resignation as Premier he was not fully out of the political Arena yet as  he was still a member of parliament but at this point in his life all of his biggest political  achievements were now a thing of the past we've been talking a lot about Amor De Cosmos and  his acti

vities in politics but we haven't really been talking much about what his politics  were aside from the fact that he was obviously pro-confederation with Canada he also believed  that a government should be made up of elected representatives not appointed representatives  he believed in the power of the people but if you ask me which people this is where it  gets a bit sticky when it came to religion he held the very firm belief that church and state  should be kept wholly separate and was activ

ely against the forcing of Christianity and religion  on Indigenous peoples of Canada. With all of this being said a liberal attitude will only get us so  far with a colonial politician during this time. De Cosmos, like many of his contemporaries, had  very poor views on indigenous peoples - which I am not going to repeat because his views are  gross - but I will mention this because it is relevant today and a lot of movements that are  occurring around the country Amore De Cosmos was against ma

ny of the Indigenous land concessions  and he felt that certain governments were being too lenient and that this was going to get in the  way of legitimate quote settlement of the land he also had some really bad opinions on Chinese  settlers because in his view they refused to assimilate into white culture Chinese settlers  were the primary workforce on the Transcontinental Railway that we just discussed and Amor De Cosmos  I guess had a problem with this and tried to pass a resolution or a law

basically banning anybody  with hair longer than seven inches from working on the railway the reason for this seemingly odd ban  is because during this era Chinese men wore their hair in a queue - I hope I'm pronouncing that  right - and by banning any men with long hair from working on this railway it would prevent  pretty much the entire Chinese workforce on the railway from being able to earn a living.  Ironically, when he first tried to get this ban passed Amor De Cosmos was himself sportin

g a  very shaggy head of hair that is reported to have been much longer than seven inches. Funnily enough  though, he wasn't quite racist enough to win back his seat in 1882 when a guy named Noah Shakespeare  who was running on a very virulent anti-Chinese platform won the seat and De Cosmos retired from  political life. Despite his prominent political role De Cosmos was still very much considered very  eccentric by his contemporaries: he was notably terrified of electricity refused to have anyt

hing  to do with it, refused to ride the streetcars, refused to have it installed in his house, and  he even went so far as to say that it should be illegal to construct a telephone pole outside of  somebody's house without their consent. He also at one point tried to create a hot food delivery  service to the miners in the Klondike which while I'm sure the miners of the 1860s would have loved  to have had UberEats 150 years early but I think Amor De Cosmos was a little ahead of his time on  tha

t one. Though he was always considered a pretty eccentric fellow the last few years of the life  and times of Amor De Cosmos was marked by a steep decline in mental and physical health. There is  a lot of speculation amongst historians about his very odd nature and his eccentricities and there's  a lot of people that think that maybe because he drank from that alkali water source or maybe  he inhaled some of the fumes from when he was a photographer are all some theories about why he  was kind o

f just an odd guy. But I think sometimes when we look at the weird guys of history we try  and explain away why they might act the certain way that they do but I think a lot of people  kind of overlook the fact that neurodivergent people exist and have always existed so it is  my personal theory that Amor De Cosmos while he may have ingested something that he should  not have that maybe affected him later in life, I think that the guy was just neurodivergent? But  I am not a psychologist and we

will never truly know what this guy's deal was and that is okay!  The health of a Amor De Cosmos deteriorated and in 1895 he was declared of unsound mind. His brother  Charles cared for him until his death in 1897. In general I find that a lot of Canadians are  extremely disconnected from their history and I think a big reason for that is because it is so  inaccessible. For example, if you want to learn about a specific Roman Emperor you can find  dozens of books and documentaries written in mul

tiple languages from different perspectives but  when I was doing the research for Amor De Cosmos I think there was only one book written after like  1980 that I could refer to. Which is really weird because I feel like given the current political  situation in Canada, I feel like we need to be looking backwards, we need to be looking at how  these systems came to be, why they're in place, and try to understand them so that we can make  them better and more equal. But what do I a, humble histori

an slash YouTuber, know? I hope  this video helps make Canadian history even a tiny little bit more accessible. I'm definitely  going to be doing more Canadian history on the channel in the future so please subscribe if  that is something that you're interested in. I also talk a lot about museums on this channel,  if that is your bag and want to come along on this very odd journey with me. Next week, I am going  to be releasing a museum/history news segment which is very new to this channel but

it'll help  you keep up to date with what's happening on the international history and museum scene, so be  sure to hit notifications so you don't miss it! Thank you for sticking it out to the end of  this video, I really do appreciate it and I hope that wherever you are you have a wonderful  day or evening and I will see you next time The thing is it takes a long time to build a wail road - a railroad (baby voice) it  takes a long time to build a wail woad