In addition to the communities of African descent that were established in the Atlantic Provinces, Canada West and Quebec, a Black presence also developed on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The majority of the estimated 400 families who settled on the Pacific coast in the 1850s were free, skilled and financially independent former residents of California, where African Americans were increasingly barred from enjoying the full rights of citizenship and faced increasing segregation (Winks, 2000). The immigrants were warmly welcomed by Governor James Douglas (an Afrodescendant born in British Guiana), the local newspaper and clergy; they were represented by spokespersons such as Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, a successful businessman; and their relatively small number initially raised fewer of the concerns that the larger groups in Nova Scotia and Canada West caused  
among White Canadians. Nevertheless, members of the community experienced prejudice: when they volunteered to serve with the fire brigade, they were rejected; their military group (the Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corps) was segregated and so was the worship in the Congregational Church on Vancouver Island and the theatre in Victoria; they were attacked by the editor of The British Colonist for apparently not supporting his bid to become Attorney General; and they were excluded from jury duty, the Victoria Literary Institute and the temperance society (Howay, 1939; Kilian, 1978; Winks, 2000). By the late 1860s, Black settlers in the West were receiving a very poor welcome in Canada.