By Dannie Gore, Sr.

Sir James Douglas had a scotch father, Caribbean mother, and became one of the great makers of modern Canada.

Starting as an apprentice, he rose to be head of the rich and powerful Hudson’s Bay Company.

Douglas was chief pioneer of the Canadian Northwest, the First Governor of British Columbia and was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1863.

He’s important, too, in the history of American North-West. Records of the time call him a “mulatto.” MacLean’s magazine called him “Mulatto King of British Columbia.