Colonial Despatches

Andrew Muir worked as a coal miner for the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Rupert, before he settled in Victoria in 1853 and became the town's first sheriff.1 As Parker, John to Peel, Sir Frederick 28 November 1851, CO 305:3, no. 10075, 215 shows, Muir provided a statement for the incident in which three British seamen were killed near Fort Rupert.

Muir sailed from Scotland in 1848 with several family members, including his father, John, who became a prominent settler, with a logging and sawmilling operation in Sooke.2 Upon their arrival at Fort Rupert, the Muirs discovered they had been misled about the conditions, and when local officials ignored their complaints, Muir and his cousin John McGregor organized a strike.3 Fort Rupert manager George Blenkinsop called Muir a rebellious person [who] kept the men off their duty, and had he and McGregor imprisoned at the fort for six days.4

Muir left Fort Rupert soon after, and worked briefly in San Francisco and Astoria, Oregon, before moving to southern Vancouver Island in 1851.5 He arrived in time to submit a written complaint about his treatment at Fort Rupert to the departing governor, Richard Blanshard, which led to Blenkinsop and other officers being criticized by the HBC's London committee.6 Blanshard discusses the complaint in this letter. Muir completed his term as sheriff and then promptly died of chronic alcoholism on January 13, 1859, the day of his daughter Isabella Ellen's baptism.7 He was 31.8

• 1. Daniel T. Gallacher Muir, Andrew, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.
• 2. Ibid.
• 3. Ibid.
• 4. Ibid.
• 5. Ibid.
• 6. Ibid.
• 7. Ibid.
• 8. Ibid.