| The first military unit ever formed in British Columbia was the Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corps. This black unit, know as the African Riflers, was put together in 1860 to defend Canada against the Americans, and lasted until 1866. The soldiers worked without pay, built their own drill hall, and ordered uniformes all the way from England, but for a long time the only guns they could get were "archaic flintlocks, borrowed from the Hudson's Bay Company, in which were little better than broomsticks." Blacks also formed the first police ofrce in Victoria, the capital of the colony, but within weeks they were replaced by whites because of racist protest and threats of violence. |
|
