10 Facts About Alfred Waddington

Alfred Waddington was the first colonial Superintendent of Education from 1865 to 1867 and was an advocate of free public education.

Alfred Waddington completed his early education in England, attended a school in Paris and then attended the University of Gottingen in Germany.

In 1862, Alfred Waddington began lobbying the press and his political allies for support for a wagon road from Bute Inlet to Fort Alexandria where it would connect to the Cariboo Road and continue on to the goldfields at Barkerville.

Alfred Waddington received approval for the construction early in 1863.

Alfred Waddington's Road was never completed because of the war, but was examined in later years as one of the main possible routings for the mainline of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

In 1865, Alfred Waddington was appointed Superintendent of Education for the colony Vancouver Island, but when the Island was annexed into British Columbia in 1866, the Board of Education no longer had any authority.

Alfred Waddington served two terms as a member of the Vancouver Island Assembly.

Alfred Waddington resigned in 1867 and the rest of the Board decided to close all of the schools on Vancouver Island.

Meanwhile, Alfred Waddington had never forgotten his Bute Inlet route and began campaigning for a transcontinental railway to be built along that route, selling his rights to the federal government in 1871.

Alfred Waddington was in Ottawa lobbying for this very purpose when he died of smallpox on February 26,1872.