Chartres Brew

Who was Chartres Brew?

Chartres Brew was a Gold commissioner, Chief Constable and judge in the Colony of British Columbia, later a province of Canada.

Born in Corofin, Ireland, Brew served in the Royal Irish Constabulary where he ascended to the position of inspector. In 1858 he was recommended for the office of Chief Inspector of Police for the new Colony of British Columbia to maintain law and order in the goldfields. When he arrived in the Interior, however, he was appointed Chief Gold Commissioner as a constabulary was not established until after the Chilcotin War.

After the attack on the road crew which launched that war, Governor Seymour dispatched Brew to lead an expedition into the Chilcotin District from the head of Bute Inlet, which met up at Puntzi Lake with another expedition from the Cariboo led by William George Cox to lead another from the Cariboo goldfields towns. The result of the expeditions was more a denouement than a show of force, with the two expeditionary forces camped out without any visible adversary, while the hunt for the Chilcotin warriors went on in the deep bush, resulting in the death by ambush of Donald MacLean, former chief trader at Fort Kamloops.