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Lady Amelia Connolly Douglas, a Red River Métis, was the wife of James Douglas, the Governor of Vancouver Island and the British colony of British Columbia. Amelia Connolly, like so many other women of her era, could have lived her life in relative obscurity, living and dying amongst other Half-Breeds in the Red River Settlement. She no doubt would have been happy to live and socialize in a society where the majority of the residents were mixed-bloods such as herself. Although, like many of her contemporaries, she married a Hudson’s Bay Company fur trader, unlike them she happened to wed James Douglas. His remarkable career would take them to North America’s west coast, where they would spend the majority of their lives, and where Douglas would rise from lowly clerk to the father of a province. Eventually her husband’s knighthood would bestow on Amelia the title of Lady Douglas, which is how she was remembered for decades after her death. |
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