In this Gold Rush Trail storyteller series episode, we return to the Royal BC Museum to meet with Dr. Lorne Hammond. Here, he shares with us how the lack of modern firearms during the gold rush era played an exceptional part in limiting the death toll and casualties of the time. Unlike those being used in Western America, the guns used in the Canyon War and throughout BC’s gold rush were much more difficult to use and less accurate. While showing us one of the museum’s military guns from 1858, Dr. Hammond shares with us that if the gold rush had been 10 years later, when more modern firearms came into the region, BC’s gold rush would have resulted in far more bloodshed.
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