John Sebastian Helmcken

John Sebastian Helmcken (1824 to 1920) was a physician of the Hudson's Bay Company who spent seven decades in what became British Columbia. Born in London to parents of German descent, he apprenticed as a druggist and physician and finished his certification at Guy's Hospital. He first went to sea as a ship's surgeon on a Hudson's Bay Company voyage to York Factory in 1847, and in 1849 he took a post as company physician and clerk on Vancouver Island, handling a smallpox outbreak on the voyage with the loss of a single life. He settled at Fort Victoria, where he later served as surgeon for the company and physician of the provincial jail, and sat on the board of the Royal Jubilee Hospital. He was founding president of the British Columbia Medical Society in 1885 and helped found the Medical Council of British Columbia, which licences doctors there. Beside medicine he served as speaker of the colonial assembly and negotiated the terms under which British Columbia joined Canada in 1871.