I Would Not Object to a Little Revolution Now and Again in British Columbia

British Columbia has been a province of Canada since 1871, but it has always been an awkward partner in Confederation. From the very beginning, its political leaders threatened to go their own way if Ottawa failed to live up to the terms of its agreement to build a railway to the Pacific within ten years. “I would not object to a little revolution now and again in British Columbia, after Confederation, if we were treated unfairly; for I am one of those who believe that political hatreds attest the vitality of the state,” argued Amor de Cosmos, one of BC’s early premiers. In 1876, the BC legislature, unhappy with delays in the construction of the transcontinental railway, passed a motion threatening secession from Canada. Not for nothing did John A. Macdonald come to describe British Columbia as “the spoilt child of the dominion.”

--Philip Resnick, The Politics of Resentment: British Columbia Regionalism and Canadian Unity (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2000), 3.