• Age: 13
• Grade: 8

Powerful and diligent, Peter O’Reilly played a role in shaping British Columbia in the last quarter of the 1800s. An immigrant from Ireland, O’Reilly landed in Victoria during the height of the Cariboo Gold Rush and was appointed gold commissioner for BC. He held the position of county court judge, and sorted settler and Native disputes, despite often having to function as an assistant land commissioner. From 1880 to 1898, O’Reilly was the federally appointed BC Indian Reserve Lands commissioner. Many of his decisions about the location and size of Native reserves continue to be challenged in the courts to this day.

 

In Peter O’Reilly, we also see the private side of this industrious man, a man who enjoyed the vast wilderness for years, on horseback or by foot, on snowshoes or in a canoe. He had many acquaintances and two close friends, Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie and Edward Dewdney. He lived with his cherished wife, Caroline Trutch O’Reilly, and their children at Point Ellice House in Victoria, BC.

Lynne Stonier-Newman is a freelance writer, historian and communications consultant who is the author of articles, poetry and plays about BC. She was born in Quesnel, where her father was the BCPP patrolman. She is the author of Policing a Pioneer Province, The Lawman: Adventures of a Frontier Diplomat and Peter O' Reilly: The Rise of a Reluctant Immigrant. She was also a contributor to the 2008 CBC Radio One book The Trail of 1858.

Lynne Stonier-Newman's profile page

Peter O’Reilly: The Rise of a Reluctant Immigrant

Peter O’Reilly arrived in BC in time for the ceremonies celebrating its inception as a British colony. As the colony’s new chief of police, his duties included chief gold commissioner, tax collector, assistant land commissioner and eventually county court judge. Most notably, he was head of a commission revising and allocating Indian reserves, the basis of the Reserve system as it remains today. His experiences in Ireland as a police constable had not prepared him for the many challenges of both the land and his job: the mountainous and enormous terrain and the approximately 30,000 lawless and aggressive miners who swarmed to the colony for the gold rush. This biography details not only O’Reilly’s powerful influence on the colony during his lengthy career, but also gives readers a glimpse of a warm-hearted and loving family man.