John Work
Irish
1792 – 1861
John Work was an Irish-born Hudson's Bay Company chief factor whose reports of Haida gold finds helped spark the 1851-52 Queen Charlotte Islands gold excitement. A Victoria pioneer, he sat on Vancouver Island's Legislative Council until his death.
Biography
John Work was born about 1792 in County Donegal, Ireland, and joined the Hudson's Bay Company in 1814. Over nearly five decades of service he led trading and trapping expeditions across the Pacific Northwest, from the Columbia and Snake River country to the coastal trade, leaving sixteen journals from 1823 to 1851 that are among the richest records of the fur-trade era. He rose to chief factor and a seat on the company's Board of Management for its Western Department.
Stationed at Fort Simpson on the north coast in the 1840s and early 1850s, Work was among the first company officers to report Haida accounts of gold in the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii). Word of the find at Gold Harbour on Moresby Island, relayed through HBC channels and confirmed by expeditions in 1851-52, set off a brief maritime gold excitement in which American vessels raced north and Britain moved to assert authority over the islands, a rehearsal for the mainland gold colonies to come.
Work settled his large Metis family at Hillside farm near Fort Victoria, becoming the largest private landowner on Vancouver Island, and served on the colony's Legislative Council from 1853 until his death in Victoria on 22 December 1861. His descendants remained prominent in British Columbia, and Work Point and the Work Channel recall his name.