History

"To understand what is happening today or what will happen in the future, I look back."
Oliver Wendell Holmes

What is history?

In one sense history is everything that has happened - or has been thought - from the beginning of time. But history is not the mindless memorization of facts and dates. The reason why history fascinates is that it asks the oldest question the human race has ever asked: who are we?

By exploring who we were yesterday, a hundred years ago, or 2,000 years ago, we gather greater understanding about who we are today. It is the most fundamental of all unanswered questions. And history moves us closer to answering it.

History is related to other disciplines, such as economics, geography, philosophy, political science, psychology and sociology. The specialty or subject may change, but each strives to gain a clearer, fuller understanding of the way human beings are. The objective is to discover why we do the things we do - what makes us tick. Seeing history as the exploration of real people - and how they responded to the challenges and realities of their times - gives it a wondrous new perspective. Viewing history as the real hopes, dreams, ambitions, and anxieties of people like ourselves, it naturally engages our curiosity.

Did you know?

He was an illegitimate, mixed-race kid from a single-parent family. But education and hard work got him to the top of the ladder - he even earned a knighthood.

That's not a modern success story, but the thumb-nail tale of Sir James Douglas, the founder of modern British Columbia. Born in British Guiana in 1803, the son of a Scottish plantation owner and Martha Ann Ritchie, a free black woman from Barbados, his prospects weren't great. But his father sent him to a preparatory school in Scotland. His natural smarts and his education helped Douglas rise to head the Hudson Bay Company's Pacific region.

Douglas married Amelia Connolly, a woman of mixed Cree and Irish-Canadian heritage. He became governor of the Crown colonies of Vancouver Island and BC and was knighted upon retiring.

BC historian Margaret Ormsby wrote of him: "A practical man, but yet a visionary, Sir James Douglas was also humanitarian. He treated individuals, including Negro slaves and Indians, with a respect that few of his contemporaries showed."

Douglas College is proud to bear the name of Sir James Douglas.