The Ballad of Billy Barker
While at Ross Bay Cemetery recently, I checked out a subject long of interest to me: Billy Barker, the namesake for Cariboo’s Barkerville.
Barkerville, B.C., named for the inimitable Billy Barker who made and spent a fortune. At least he had a good time while it lasted. His later years weren’t as happy. —BC Archives
I had to smile—Billy’s an RBC ‘star,’ having an end-of-the-row marker denoting his final resting place. Better yet, he has a handsome and expensive retro bronze marker giving a brief biography. What a far cry from the time of his death in Victoria’s Old Men’s Home for indigents.
Billy’s grave is in the Potter’s Field section of the cemetery which he shares with other penniless wards of the state; how ironic that it’s now prime waterfront property with a sweeping view of Juan de Fuca Strait and the Olympic Mountains!
Not that Billy was always broke; quite the contrary; he made a king’s fortune. But, alas, he married unwisely and blew it all. At least he left us, besides a great story and his name on our Mainland maps, these lines from a ditty he liked to sing:
“I’m English Bill,
Never worked and never will’
Get away, girls,
Or I’ll tousle your curls.”
That’s our Billy to a T.
* * * * *
A Cornishman, bearded Billy arrived in booming Victoria during the 1858 stampede when up to 20,000 frenzied gold seekers descended on the little settlement, en route to the fabled mines of Cariboo. Little is known of Barker's background other than the fact he was a potter who’d abandoned his trade for the sea.
Historians feel, however, that once in Victoria, Billy deserted ship to seek his fortune in the promised land. Whatever the case, he was in Victoria—and soon in trouble. For the first entry in Barker's fabulous record is a brief report in an 1861 newspaper: “Wm. Barker was arrested yesterday afternoon on a charge of threatening to stab a Mr. Townsend at the Victoria Hotel."
Unfortunately for researchers, most news stories of that period are cryptic to the point of despair and, a day later, it noted that our hero was released on his own recognizance. Or, as the reporter put it, Billy was “let down easily."
The reasons for Billy's trouble, the cause of the fight—not a syllable. Upon reviewing Billy's marvellous career, we can only conclude that he must have been provoked beyond endurance as violence seems to be totally out of character.
Not that Barker was the most easy-going of individuals. His fiery temper and readiness to do battle for his rights were common knowledge. But even Billy's friends must have despaired when the valiant ex-potter, ex-seaman locked horns with the notorious John Copland. This delightful character and his shrewish wife made more noise and enemies than all residents combined.
He it was who’d carried, bodily, amid a heavy barrage of crockery and foodstuffs laid by Mrs. Copland, from the city's first mayoral dinner. This ignominious affair had resulted from Copland's refusal to surrender the speaker’s chair. Hence, inn typical frontier fashion, his inglorious exit.
On another occasion, upon finding a dead cat in his garden, and blaming the deceased feline’s choice of resting place upon the efforts of a longtime opponent, the enraged John Copland had marched to that individual's place of employment and soundly thrashed him about the head and shoulders—with the cat.
This was the charming individual with whom battling Billy Barker chose to do battle in court!
On Jan. 23, 1862, Barker and Copland appeared in police court before Magistrate Augustus Pemberton to settle Copland's claim for the sum of 10 pounds sterling, 2 shillings and 11 pence, alleged to be owed him by the defendant “for work done at Salt Spring Island”.
Whereupon Magistrate Pemberton had interjected the observation that his court was limited to cases involving 10 pounds and less. But, he explained, if Billy had no objection, Copland could lower his suit to 10 pounds. This way, they could settle the case then and there and be done with it.
Pemberton looked expectantly to Billy. Copland looked expectantly to Billy. Billy looked back, chuckled the Colonist, “denied the debt, decided that he would give his opponent the trouble of taking out another summons, and disappeared with his books accordingly”.
This has to be one of the few occasions that Copland not only lost his case but failed to get in the last word.
Adding insult to injury, Billy denied a return bought by departing for the Cariboo to try his luck as a miner. Upon arriving at Williams Creek, he found, as had so many before him, that the best claims, high above the canyon at Richfield, had long been staked. Latecomers had no choice but to work for the more successful operations, try their luck in new ground ignored as worthless, or move on.
Billy, undaunted, chose the second line of attack and drummed up enough financial support to stake six claims below the canyon where 4,000 miners had already clawed more than $2 million in raw gold from the hard ground.
Months of backbreaking labour followed, Billy picking and shovelling his way down to bedrock time and again without making a strike. The scant records do not tell whether he made even enough to live on or he relied upon grubstakes from those willing to gamble on a middle-aged, tempestuous Cornishman who refused to quit against all good advice.
Winter passed, and it was 1862. Still, Billy wouldn’t give up. When others laughed—some even said he was crazy—he just worked harder. When his first six claims proved worthless, he staked eight more. But, with summer, even his boundless optimism was at last exhausted, his money gone. All his work, all his hopes had been in vain.
It was about this time, according to one account, that none other than ‘Hanging’ Judge Matthew Begbie staked the disheartened Barker “because it was less expensive to help him than to pay his way out”.
With renewed faith, Billy returned to his latest claim. More weeks passed with him digging feverishly into the barren earth. Down, down, he dug, without a sign of ‘colour.’ When he reached the 40-foot level he still hadn't seen a trace of gold. This time, he knew he was beaten.
He’d continue to bedrock, then quit. But Billy's hard work and determination weren’t to go unrewarded. Two feet deeper, he struck the Mother Lode—the richest claim to date. Overnight, the broken miner was a rich man. From a 600-foot-long wedge of ground, Billy would reap more than half a million dollars—$1,000 to the lineal foot!
Almost instantly, the lonely flat that Billy had worked alone became a shacktown of feverish fortune hunters who staked, picked and tunnelled under virtually every square inch of rock and earth, as word spread throughout the Pacific Northwest of his immense strike.
“Billy Barker has struck the lead on Williams Creek, on the flat above the canyon, at a depth of 52 feet, obtaining $5 to the pan," roared the British Columbian of New Westminster. The rush was on as 10,000 men and women hurried to the new El Dorado, and the once deserted flats became a roaring townsite with the building of homes, saloons, stores—and saloons. Soon Barkerville, named after the stocky, bandy-legged Cornishman who wouldn't say die, was billing itself as the “largest town west of Chicago and north of San Francisco”.
And still the adventurers came, from the four quarters of the globe, in search of gold at the end of the rainbow. Some trekked overland from eastern Canada. Many never made it, falling victim to inexperience, lethal winters and rampaging rivers. Others fought their way up the deadly Fraser Canyon. Farmer, sailor, dancing girl, nobleman and thief—all headed for Billy's once-neglected flatland of Barkerville.
As for Billy, now a prosperous and respected businessman, he decided to spend Christmas in Victoria. and in so doing, he set in motion the sad chain of circumstances which would reduce him from King Midas to a penniless, broken old man.
Billy's tragic fate is unveiled in a small announcement in the Colonist of January 1863: "Married—on January 13th, by the Rev. M. MacFie, at the Metropolitan Hotel, William Barker of Williams Creek, Cariboo, B.C., to Elizabeth Collyer, widow, late of London and passenger by the ship Rosedale from England."
Alas, poor Billy was to find, all too late, that his merry widow would be his ruin.
Historians have been able to learn little about Mrs. Barker other than that the gay London lady loved a good time. And in rip roaring Barkerville, where men outnumbered the dancehall girls and a handful of miners’ wives by 250 to one, Mrs. Barker had an unequalled opportunity to indulge herself.
At night, after a gruelling day overseeing the work on his claims, Billy wanted nothing more than to take off his boots and settle before a warm fire with a relaxing bottle and his bride. Mrs. Barker, however, had other plans, and Billy soon found himself competing for her affection with men half his age.
Never want to hoard his wealth, he became the wildest spender in camp. Thousands of dollars of his fortune went to down-and-out prospectors, Billy grubstaking them even when he knew their claims to be barren. More hard-won dollars went to the welfare of his old friends. But by far the majority of the treasure for which he’d laboured a year in rock-hard ground, in freezing snow and to the jeers of those who thought they knew better, went in a vein bid to keep his young wife.
In Barkerville, Richfield and neighbouring gold camps, Billy Barker was king of the spenders, throwing pokes of dust and nuggets to the wind as he conducted one cyclone tour after another of the saloons and gaming houses, singing his ditty and warning to the hurdy-gurdy girls.
But, not unexpectedly, even his princely fortune—worth 20 times as much as today—couldn't last indefinitely at this rate.
Then... the money was gone. And with his wealth, wrote historian Lewis LeBourdais, "went the women!” Billy's fabulously rich claims were finished and in the later years he found employment as a cook on a road crew. Thirty-two years after Barker's wonderful strike, he was in Victoria. Reported the Colonist: “William Barker, the old Cariboo minor for whom Barkerville was named, is seriously ill at the old man's home of a cancer which has infiltered [sic] his left jaw, the left side of his neck and his left shoulder.
“He experiences considerable pain from it, but it is out of the question to attempt to operate on him. Dr. Geo. Duncan, the city's medical health officer, is attending to him and doing all he can to alleviate his sufferings. Mr. Barker was one of the vanguard of oldtimers who went to the Cariboo to dig their fortunes out of the gravel and sand."
Ten wweeks after, Billy Barker was dead at 75. He was buried in a pauper’s unmarked grave in Ross Bay Cemetery. In July 1962, a century after he struck it rich, 50 oldtimers and dignitaries attended the unveiling of a new headstone for Billy's final resting place. The plaque, honouring his contribution to B.C., was unveiled by Miss Lottie Bowron, born in Barkerville, and daughter of the town's first gold commissioner.
“As a native daughter of the town to which he gave his name," said Miss Bowron in a brief tribute to Billy and the 1000s of anonymous miners who would helped make British Columbia a province, “I am here tonight.
“Some of them have graves; others, alas, do not. Quite humbly, and with love, I unveil this plaque.”
Like Billy's claims, Barkerville had soon petered out. As the gold became harder to find, the restless miners moved on to new El Dorados. By 1900 it was a little more than a ghost town, its only residents a handful of old men who had nowhere else to go. In its time it had yielded the incredible treasure of $50 million dollars.
In 1958, during the B.C. Centennial, the provincial government began the vast project of restoring Barkerville as an historic park and, today, 1000s annually visit the scene of the province’s wildest gold rush. Visitors savour the intriguing atmosphere of Wellington Moses’ barbershop, sit on the worn pews of St. Xavier's church, and sip root beer at the old Barkerville Hotel. Some even pan for gold.
But present-day Barkerville is more than an elaborate tourist attraction. It’s a fitting tribute to the hard-working, courageous miners like Billy Barker who wrested their living from the inhospitable earth, and in so doing, laid the foundation for a great province.
Those who are planning to visit Barkerville, perhaps this summer, surely will treasure the experience. Perhaps, if they're extremely lucky, and listen very carefully, they may hear the protesting squeak of a swinging door as a bandy-legged bearded old Cornishman swaggers up, to the bar, singing, "I'm English Bill, never worked and never will..."
