The Demise of the Vancouver Telegraph
A bitter editorial feud ends with the folding of a rival newspaper, revealing the fierce competition between Olympia and Vancouver for regional influence.
We regret to announce the demise of that eccentric but interesting paper, the Vancouver Telegraph. The Telegraph has seen fit to parade the nominal editor of the Standard as the cause which led to the seizure of the press. The people of Vancouver will not be so unreasonable as to expect us to furnish at our own cost the type and press for them to print a paper devoted especially to their local interests, and one whose principle vocation was to keep alive old prejudices against the people identified with the interests of Olympia and the Sound. We can examine the people of Vancouver for wishing the Capitol located in their city, but we do think that Telegraphers have rendered themselves ridiculous by holding out the delusive hope that the court would be bullied into giving them the benefit of a nondescript law.
“The press makes public opinion.”
The competition between Olympia and Vancouver for the status of the regional center was a defining civic struggle in the 1860s. This editorial captures the 'boosterism' and partisan territorial disputes that defined the era's press.
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