Colonial Despatches

Gordon Head, a suburb of Victoria, is located east of Mount Douglas, overlooking the Haro Strait. The area was named after Captain Gordon, who was, according to Walbran, detailed for special service on the coast from 1845-46.1

Finlayson writes of Gordon's 1845 visit to Fort Victoria, during which Gordon remarked that he would not give one of the barren hills of Scotland for all he saw around him.2 How far up the political chain this unfavorable opinion reached is difficult to say; perhaps Gordon's slight was significant for the Oregon Territory dispute, which would be settled, at least on paper, a year later with the signing of the Oregon Treaty.

• 1. John T. Walbran, British Columbia Coast Names (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1971), 209.
• 2. Ibid., 210.