The True Story of Canada's "War" of Extermination on the Pacific

by Tom Swanky

At the inception of colonial rule on Canada’s Pacific Coast, natives “universally believed” Governor Douglas used smallpox as a weapon to kill them in lieu of treaties or paying for land. Yet Canadian historians routinely dismiss this profound allegation without mention. In Canada’s greatest catastrophe, perhaps 100,000 B.C. natives died from smallpox during 1862/63. Before then, the First Nations were still sovereign. Afterward, British Columbia subjugated and dispossessed the depopulated First Nations through small wars billed as policing and by hanging several natives resisting colonialism. This is a detective story. It begins with the last action of the smallpox period, the hanging of five Tsilhqot’in Chiefs ambushed at a peace conference in 1864. The book then follows the smallpox trail back though the Tsilhqot’in War seeking its origin. It describes the smallpox carnage everywhere while seeking evidence of deliberate disease spreading. Does this trail lead to the Governor’s office as alleged?

Genres: History

504 pages, Paperback

First published May 16, 2012