Is British Columbia the Spoilt Child of Confederation?

Ottawa's habit of calling BC self-centred or spoiled began more than a century ago. Almost as soon as the West Coast settlements had joined the federation, eastern politicians and newspapers noticed a barrage of constant complaints coming from the new province. Better-endowed with natural resources than most, BC's inhabitants nevertheless had a pesky habit of insisting that the rest of the country had made an enforceable contract in 1871: the railway was a paramount condition of Confederation. BC insisted time and time again that the Terms of Union had to be kept, or 'the deal was off.' What the alternative might be was not clear, in either the last century or this, but there has always been a suspicion that the US was seen as a substitute partner.

--Edwin R. Black, "British Columbia: 'The Spoilt Child of Confederation,'" in Politics, Policy, and Government in British Columbia, ed. R.K. Carty (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1996), 33.