356 THE ADVOCATE
VOL. 78 PART 3 MAY 2020
man from Northern Ireland who would fight at the drop of a shamrock”, he
somehow managed to get himself appointed a special constable in 1869. He
is said to have used his office to “harry the Stó:l¯o people under the guise
of upholding the law”.45
On one occasion, for example, Greer arrested four Stó:l¯o who had done
nothing and put them in a chain gang. He had to be ordered to release them.
On another, he had the chief of Chilliwack Landing, Teméxwtel, charged
with assaulting him, but at trial the fact that the prisoner “was in a terribly
battered and shattered state, while Greer hadn’t a scratch on him”, made
the justices suspicious. Other witnesses testified that Greer had fenced in
some Stó:l¯o land, and when Teméxwtel had protested, Greer had beaten
him severely. Case dismissed. But Greer seems to have been as lucky with
prosecutors as he was with juries, because he was never charged with
assaulting Teméxwtel.
One settler maintained that Greer “does not act with any judgment, nor
discipline, nor order of any kind”, and many, if not most, members of the
Chilliwack community signed a petition to have him removed as constable.
He was fired in 1870 but seems afterwards to have continued to “present
himself” as a constable for a number of months. Throughout his time
at Chilliwack he continued to squat, illegally, on various lots, to quarrel with
the Stó:l¯o and to ignore the requirements of the pre-emption laws. (When
he complained that local Indigenous people were removing his pre-
emption posts, officials determined that it was in fact Greer who was removing
the posts.) Eventually, when news of the CPR’s new route leaked out,
he moved on to Kitsilano.46 As Trevor Williams points out, Greer “was never
held to account for his violent and arbitrary arrests of the Stó:l¯o people or
his questionable land dealings in Chilliwack”.47
This, to my mind explains Begbie’s reference to Chilliwack when he sentenced
Greer, whose violence, especially towards Indigenous people, was
well known.48 Some juries may not have cared, but Begbie did. Before sentencing
Greer, I imagine he may have been remembering Charley rising
from his chair at the inquiry years before and exclaiming, “I was much
afraid of Greer. He talked strongly. I was much afraid.” And then, turning to
Begbie, saying, “Oh, Tyhee, I will not tell a lie, but I have never seen a man
like Greer.”
Two sides.
ENDNOTES
1. Lani Russwurm, “Vancouver Was Awesome: The
Fight for Greer’s Beach”, Vancouver Is Awesome (28
August 2014), online: <www.vancouverisawesome.
com/history/vancouver-was-awesome-the-fight-forgreers
beach-1929330> Russwurm, “The Fight for
Greer’s Beach”. The article is based on a book by
the same author entitled Vancouver Was Awesome:
A Curious Pictorial History (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp
Press, 2013).
2. The occasion was his reply to an address from the
city council congratulating him on his knighthood.
Referring to the cases, he said he “had done things