Talk:Amor De Cosmos

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This guy is so cool I can't believe it. He changed his name to "Lover Of The Universe" and then got elected to govern a province?!?! That rules.

• Only in BC my friend --Simon.Pole 00:32, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

African-American (mulatto?)

I'd been given to understand in high school that Amor De Cosmos was part African-American, but there's nothing about that in the article. Is it true?--Anchoress 10:15, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

It's the first I've heard of it. If there is any evidence for this, it would be interesting to know what it is. Fishhead64 15:05, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know but I wonder if you might be thinking of James Douglas? KenWalker | Talk 18:40, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

No, it was definitely Amor De Cosmos that my teacher told us about, but maybe he got them mixed up?--Anchoress 22:39, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Lover Of The Universe???

Who translated that? "Amor de Cosmos" would roughly translate as "Cosmos' love". Compare it to "amor de madre" ("mother's love" - the one a mother feels for her children). The Spanish word for "lover" is "amante".

I think that it was intended to be latin, not spanish. --JGGardiner 01:50, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

It's not even correct Latin. But that's how he translated it. Fishhead64 17:22, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Yep. That's why I said "intended". --JGGardiner 17:29, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

If it's not even correct Latin (and I don't even think "Cosmos" is a word in Latin), then why is it currently described as "inaccurately translated as 'lover of the universe'"? --Saforrest 10:29, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

If a writer or editor is going to inform us that something is not correctly translated, in principle they should offer either a correct translation or an explanation that this is something that was made up or incorrectly translated. DJC —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.151.99.58 (talk) 17:52, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

In Latin, de does not mean "of" (it means literally "down from", or in an extended sense "concerned with"), and it demands the ablative case (while cosmos is a Greek nominative). AnonMoos (talk) 09:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, look, he translated it as "Lover of the Universe," that was his intention. His Latin was clearly atrocious. I don't know what the big deal is. fishhead64 (talk) 07:08, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

The intended meaning has always been quite clear, but somebody mentioned that it was not good Latin, and somebody else asked why, so I explained why... AnonMoos (talk) 11:26, 4 November 2010

There was a lot of bad Latin kicking around California, see E Clampus Vitus (a plaque bearing that motto was one of the only things found at British Columbia in later years...I think if you look, you'll find somewhere the act of the California legislature which was required to confer that name on him, and the wording of it, and all his bios, give "Lover of the Universe", at least as the intended meaning. He may have been Nova Scotian, but the "cosmic" and even-then-flakey nature of California often rubbed off on him; he's not the first Californian (because he was, for a while) to come up with some cockamamey philosophy and give themselves a new name, often a misnomer.....Skookum1 (talk) 05:49, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

This was pretty clear in the article already: "Smith successfully petitioned the California State Assembly to change his name to "Amor De Cosmos" (inaccurately translated as "Lover of the Universe"), to pay tribute, as he said, "to what I love most...Love of order, beauty, the world, the universal." And just to note re teh first comment above, it's extremely unlikely that a white Californian, British or American, would choose a name in Spanish, given the politics of the time and of California's origins....Skookum1 (talk) 06:38, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Anti-Chinese policy missing

As one historian, Joseph Morton, observed, and many others, you couldn't run for office, or win, in BC in those days if you didn't have vocal anti-Chinese policies; one of the most famous political cartoons of De Cosmos shows him beating a "coolie", driving them from BC. It was a Central Canadian cartoon, lampooning de Cosmos, who like other BC politicians was opposed to the use of Chinese railway labour, and wanted Ottawa and/or London to engage emigrants from the British Isles - experienced railway workers and miners from Scotland, Cornwall, Wales and Ireland - to be imported; Ottawa wanted cheap labour and hired an American (Onderdonk) to do it, once BC surrendered to Ottawa's demands that Chinese labour be used. MacDonald said something to the effect of "if you don't want the Chinese to build it, you won't have the railway", which was seen as a betrayal of British Columbian interests (and was only said after Victoria acclaimed into office as MP after his routing in the East). Throughout the 1870s there were protests of one kind or another about "Carnarvon Terms of Separation", which was a reference to this policy, and also to the prevailing notion in BC that Victoria was to be the railhead, as the Terms had said "build a line to Vancouver" (meaning Vancouver Island). Taht wording was in fact one of the reasons Van Horne chose the name Vancouver for what had until then been known as Granville, as it was still a hot-button issue by the 1880s. Funding for the drydock, which was a British Navy megaproject already extant at Union, was needed to keep the province's/city's economy going - partly due to the failure/delay of Ottawa to build the railway; other spending issues and promises in the Terms were also broken; the article makes it sound like only the drydock was an issue, and it was just BC wanting money; it was BC wanting what it had been promised, along with a lot else, including obligations, underscored during Dufferin's visit, concerning British settlement of the colony with railway workers, who would then settle and also would drink enough to support excise tax revenues (one of the province's main revenues, then as now, i.e. taxes on booze, etc). This article strikes me as cribbed from maybe only teh Parliamentary website, maybe the Dictionary of Cdn Biography online, and shows some bias in choice of issues and presentation; like all early Premier article, over time it needs lots of work, as does British Columbia history in general.Skookum1 (talk) 05:58, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Surely there are some decent biographies of Amor de Cosmos that could be used to improve this page. One problem with only using the Parliament's official biographies is that they tend to eliminate or gloss over many topics that could be considered controversial to modern readers. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 20:56, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

role in freemasonry and secret societies also missing

I understand that Amor also brought freemasonry, for better or worse, to Victoria and B.C. There are records such as an early newspaper ad which confirm his role in this regard. The Victoria freemasons are also notable for laying the cornerstone to the first synagogue in Canada. The role of the occult in Victoria history (to the present) is somewhat well-known, but rarely reported. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.156.74.2 (talk) 02:37, 3 June 2013 (UTC)