McGowan's War

As Wikipedia so blandly puts it, “McGowan's War was a bloodless war that took place in Yale, British Columbia in the fall of 1858...at the onset of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. It was called Ned McGowan's War after one of the conflict's main antagonists...”

Bloodless it may have been, a tempest in the proverbial teapot, a farce, even. But bland, never!

To diss Ned McGowan as being just “one of the main antagonists” is an insult, not just to the man himself but to anyone who enjoys a good story. In reality, colonial administrators feared Ned McGowan, who’d barely escaped a hangman’s noose in California, as a direct threat to British sovereignty of mainland British Columbia.

In response, Governor of Vancouver Island James Douglas called out the army, in this case the Royal Engineers, under the command of Colonel Richard Moody. With ‘Hanging’ Judge Matthew Begbie, his orders were to put down the anticipated uprising of American interlopers at all costs.

Even with these historical heavyweights playing lead roles in the ensuing drama, it was disgraced ‘Judge’ Ned McGowan who stole the show.

As you’ll see in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO CAPTION: Hill’s Bar ‘antagonist’ and ‘belligerent,’ Ned McGowan could be a charming rogue—even some of his enemies couldn’t help liking him. —Wikipedia https://archive.org/stream/narrativeofedwar00mcgo#page/n14/mode/1up, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7613976