British Columbia British Columbia British Columbia (BC; ) is the westernmost province of Canada, located between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. With an estimated population of 4.817 million , it is Canada's third-most populous province. The first British settlement in the area was Fort Victoria, established in 1843, which gave rise to the City of Victoria, at first the capital of the separate Colony of Vancouver Island. Subsequently, on the mainland, the Colony of British Columbia (1858–1866) was founded by Richard Clement Moody and the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment, in response to the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. Moody was Chief
Politics of British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell following the ouster of Gordon Wilson (who led the party from effective oblivion to Official Opposition in the 1991 general election), many consider it to be effectively a rebirth of the defunct BC Social Credit Party. British Columbia is the only province in Canada with recall-election and initiative legislation. These measures applied following the 1991 referendum. Only one recall petition was ever deemed to have had any success: that compelling MLA Paul Reitsma to resign his seat in 1998 – hours before he would have been removed from office. British Columbia was the first province in Canada