Boas was one of the first Jewish merchants of the
Cariboo gold fields that capitalized on the supply-demands of the miners.
2In this
despatch,
Douglas quotes
Levi’s letter to Boas, who was at the firm’s
New Westminster headquarters, about the conditions and opportunities in
Barkerville:
It is only 5 or 6 weeks more that pack trains come in here, and then we can get any
price for them … You bet I would soak into them. The Country is alright, there is
more gold in it as there was in California, dont say nothing to nobody.
Boas lived an interesting life in
Barkerville. He almost died in a fire,
3 and he sat on a committee responsible for finding the murderers of two Jewish merchants.
4
- 1. William Henry Knight, Hand-book Almanac for the Pacific States: an Official Register And Business Directory
... for the Year 1864 (San Francisco: H. H. Bancroft, 1864), 420.
- 2. Cyril Edel Leonoff, Pioneers, Pedlars, and Prayer Shawls: The Jewish Communities in British Columbia and
the Yukon (Victoria: SONO NIS Press, 1978), 45.
- 3. Fire in Barkerville, The Cariboo Sentinel, June 17, 1865.
- 4. Marie Elliott, Gold and Grand Dreams (Victoria: Horsdal and Schubart, 2000), 13.