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ELLISON, PRICE, metalworker, farmer, rancher, constable, businessman, magistrate, and politician; b. 6 Oct. 1852 in Dunham Massey, England, seventh child of James Ellison and Ellen Fearnett; m. 7 Dec. 1884 Sophie Christine Johnson in Priest’s Valley (Vernon), B.C., and they had four daughters and four sons; d. 10 Dec. 1932 in Vernon.

Education and immigration

Price Ellison’s father, an illiterate shoemaker and canal inspector, died in 1860. The following year Price’s mother married James Wood, who helped raise Price and his siblings. Price was educated in Bowden, Cheshire, England, and in Manchester. For about five years starting in 1868, he apprenticed as a blacksmith and whitesmith. Ellison emigrated to the United States in 1873 and made his way to California to seek his fortune in the gold fields. Disappointed by his prospects, he left for British Columbia hoping to have better luck, and arrived in Victoria early in 1876. He then travelled to the northern Okanagan region, where he and three partners briefly worked a placer claim at the Cherry Creek gold mines, after which he was employed by Forbes George Vernon at the Coldstream Ranch.

Indigenous displacement and land development in the Okanagan

Ellison settled in the northern Okanagan region near land whose Indigenous residents had recently been displaced. In 1861, under the direction of Governor James Douglas*, a reserve had been created in the area. It would come to be known as Priest’s Valley after Oblate missionary Paul Durieu*, who built a house there in 1862. By 1865, however, to make way for settlers, Justice of the Peace John Carmichael Haynes* had received permission from colonial authorities to reduce the reserve to a small plot on the shores of Okanagan Lake and create two new reserves at the head of the lake. Within a few years much of the former reserve lands and the area around them had been purchased or pre-empted by ranchers, including Luc Girouard, Edward John Tronson, Francis Jones Barnard*, Charles Frederick Houghton*, and Cornelius O’Keefe*. Land was still available for settlers in the Priest’s Valley area in 1878, when Ellison pre-empted 320 acres and began blacksmithing, farming, and ranching. He received his certificate of improvement for that pre-emption in 1883, and shortly thereafter purchased the land to obtain his crown grant. He expanded his holdings, and by 1890 his ranch included approximately 1,200 acres south and east of Vernon, which would be incorporated two years later. He began subdividing this land into residential lots, which likely provided the capital to purchase other properties. Ellison bought four separate ranches in 1891–92 and others in the Okanagan as they became available, subdividing and selling various parcels as he progressed. He would eventually own 11,000 acres on which he grazed 2,500 head of cattle, 1,500 sheep, and 300 horses. During this time he had begun to improve his agricultural practices. He purchased purebred breeding stock, winning prizes at the 1891 Okanagan and Spallumcheen Agricultural Society Exhibition for the best ram and stallion. That year he also constructed a three-mile irrigation ditch to serve his Vernon property, including his apple orchard, and in the summer of 1892 he planted fruit trees on a new property he purchased at Okanagan Mission (Kelowna). His exhibit of barley won first prize at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition the following year. By 1894 Ellison was reputedly the Okanagan’s largest wheat grower.

Constable and magistrate

Despite the objections of the local government agent, in 1879 Ellison was appointed a constable. He came to public attention in 1882 when he spent over two months searching in vain throughout the Pacific northwest mining camps for the man known as Smart Aleck, the alleged murderer of tax collector Aeneas Dewar. Ellison was popular with Okanagan residents, as evidenced in April 1883 when 54 of them successfully petitioned the government to reinstate him as a paid constable.

Ellison entered into two legal battles in 1885. One involved a dispute with Francis Walker over ownership of land. Government agent Walter Dewdney wrote to his superior that “either one party or other [were] perjuring themselves,” and he subsequently ruled in favour of Walker. In the second case, Ellison was ordered by the same magistrate to remove a fence that he had placed across a public road running through his property. According to Dewdney’s correspondence, Ellison was unhappy with the decision and became “so violent in his language” that Dewdney ordered him out of his office. Despite these episodes, after Dewdney’s death Ellison was appointed justice of the peace in 1893 and stipendiary magistrate the following year.

Marriage and the Vernon News

In 1884 Ellison had met and married Sophie Christine Johnson, who had travelled from Peoria, Ill., to Priest’s Valley with a cousin to visit their uncle. She taught in the first school in Priest’s Valley before marrying Ellison. In 1893 Ellison became a partner in the Vernon News. Three years later he and two partners founded the Vernon News Printing and Publishing Company to manage and print the newspaper. After reorganizations in 1914 Price, Sophie, and family members held about 90 per cent of the shares. Price and Sophie’s daughter Myra King and her husband, Howard Clarke DeBeck (they married in 1920), would play an increasing role in the business until its sale in 1933. Sophie also took an interest in community affairs and served as the first president of the Vernon Women’s Institute [see Adelaide Sophia Hunter*], founded in 1916.

Provincial politics

Ellison and his wife’s controlling interest in the Vernon News no doubt helped advance his political career. He was first elected to the British Columbia legislature in 1898, for the riding of Yale East, as a supporter of the outgoing administration of John Herbert Turner*. (Party lines would not be established at the provincial level in British Columbia until 1903.) Ellison was re-elected in 1900 and would win the seat for the new riding of Okanagan under the Conservative banner in 1903, 1907, 1909, and 1912. He would serve in Richard McBride*’s government as chief commissioner of lands and works from 1 Nov. 1909 to 10 Oct. 1910, and then as minister of finance and agriculture.

Ellison was an avid outdoorsman, and in 1910 he conducted an expedition in the alpine region of Vancouver Island with his daughter Myra and others to scope out the land for a park. Not long after, as chief commissioner of lands and works, Ellison introduced the bill that would turn the area into British Columbia’s first provincial park, Strathcona Park.

As minister of agriculture Ellison sponsored bills dealing with agricultural associations and noxious weeds, and proposed amendments to laws regarding forest fires, contagious animal diseases, trespassing, and water. As minister of finance he introduced a bill to appoint an auditor general and others to modify taxation, trade licence, and fire insurance acts. Ellison showed an abiding interest in irrigation, which was essential to the development of the Okanagan. He was a participant in various western Canadian conferences on the subject and always advocated greater government involvement in irrigation projects. While an mla, he had encouraged his colleagues to pass the 1909 Water Act. Later, as an influential cabinet minister, Ellison supported the passage of a new water act introduced by Minister of Lands William Roderick Ross in 1914; notably, it made provision for the creation of water-users’ communities, private water companies, and public irrigation corporations.

Ellison is remembered locally for the projects he supported in his Okanagan riding – a courthouse and new jail in Vernon, hospitals in Vernon and Kelowna, and schools throughout the district. In an award-winning essay published in the British Columbia Hist. News, student George Richard argues that Ellison’s actions in the government were motivated by his private interests, noting that the granite for the provincial courthouse was taken from a quarry he owned and district schools were built next to his subdivisions, making them attractive to prospective purchasers. As a large landowner and developer, Ellison might have found it difficult to avoid conflicts of interest, but he does not appear to have made efforts to do so, an approach that would lead to his political downfall.

Downfall

On 8 March 1915 Ellison resigned as minister of finance and agriculture (the portfolios were transferred to William John Bowser) as the result of a scandal involving his private purchase of livestock from the Colony Farm of the provincial Mental Hospital in Essondale (Coquitlam) [see Henry Esson Young]. He had defended himself in the legislature, claiming that he had not personally profited from the transactions. His explanation was accepted by the Conservative-leaning Daily Colonist and the family-controlled Vernon News, but he was pilloried by newspapers such as the Vancouver Daily Province, which editorialized on 9 March 1915: “Ellison’s explanation … amounts to this: The whole transaction was unprofitable, therefore there was nothing wrong about it [but] what Mr. Price Ellison does not apparently understand is the impropriety of the whole transaction.”

In 1916 Ellison began to have financial difficulties related to the Dominion Stock and Bond Corporation, of which he was president and principal guarantor. The situation came to a head in October 1916 when the Royal Bank of Canada issued a writ claiming $15,000 from Ellison to cover the company’s debts. The following month Ellison lost nearly all his land holdings to his creditors. His Vernon home and a few parcels of land were spared because they were held in the names of family members, and he and his family maintained controlling interest in the Vernon News.

Ellison was defeated as the Conservative candidate in the North Okanagan riding in 1916. He did not contest the election of 1920 and ran unsuccessfully as an independent in 1924. The following year he suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed, and in 1932 he died of bronchial pneumonia.

Assessment

A pioneer of the Okanagan, Price Ellison was an ambitious self-made man who gained his fortune through land speculation and agriculture and who became a respected figure of the area. As an mla and provincial cabinet minister, he contributed to bringing public irrigation projects to the region and helped to establish many of its institutions, including hospitals, schools, and the Vernon courthouse. He managed British Columbia’s finances frugally and introduced the bill creating its first provincial park. Yet he did not shy away from conflicts of interest, an approach that led to his eventual political downfall, and his association with the Dominion Stock and Bond Corporation cost him his extensive land and stock holdings. His name nonetheless remains prominent in the Okanagan, where a community (now situated within the city of Kelowna), a lake, and a provincial park were named in his honour.

Duane Thomson