British Columbia of British Columbia, and Victoria became the united colony's capital. In 1871, British Columbia became the sixth province of Canada. Its Latin motto is "Splendor sine occasu" ("Splendour without Diminishment"). The capital of British Columbia remains Victoria, the fifteenth-largest metropolitan region in Canada, named for Queen Victoria who ruled during the creation of the original colonies. The largest city is Vancouver, the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada, the largest in Western Canada, and the second-largest in the Pacific Northwest. In October 2013, British Columbia had an estimated population of 4,606,371 (about 2.5 million of whom were in Greater Vancouver). The
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