Cold Christmas for Errant Colonial Treasurer

In the year and a-half since his arrival in Victoria, George Tomline Gordon had been appointed treasurer for the Crown Colony of Vancouver Island, elected the member for Esquimalt in the Legislative Assembly, and elected commanding officer of the No. 1 Company, Vancouver Island  Volunteer Rifle Corps. He had a beautiful wife, a large, loving family and a fine farm. 

But the knock on the door of Twin Oaks, the night before Christmas 1861, was not that of friends or carollers. It was Police Supt. Horace Smith with a warrant for Gordon's arrest. When, minutes later, sleigh bells rang for George Gordon, they were on Smith's horse-drawn paddy wagon.

That's next week on the BC Chronicles.

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PHOTO: Journalist and political enemy Amor De Cosmos soon found a way to get even for Gordon's having beaten him at the polls.