to voters in the Island ridings (Victoria City, Victoria, Nanaimo City, Comox, Alberni, Cowichan, Esquimalt). Also occupying the House were capital proposals and expenditures on projects such as improvements to the Dewdney Trail, the Cariboo Road, the Grand Trunk Road (Old Yale Road), and the financing of the Lillooet Cattle Trail, even though its main proponent, Thomas Basil Humphreys, the first MLA for Lillooet, was now MLA for Victoria. Victoria City MLA Andrew Charles Elliott, soon to be Premier, had been a provincial Magistrate in Lillooet and also supported the project, then the largest capital expenditure in the new province to date, and larger than anything outlaid in the colonial period. The trail was finally built and used in its entirety and for its original purpose - bringing cattle from the West Fraser rangelands directly to the Coast - was a financial disaster (as were also the Dewdney, Cariboo and Grand Trunk projects, and as had been the Douglas Road originally. Non-party system There were to be no political parties in the new province. The designations "Government" and "Opposition" and "Independent" (and variations on these) functioned in place of parties, but they were very loose and do not represent formal coalitions, more alignments of support during the campaign. "Government" meant in support of the current Premier; "Opposition" meant campaigning against him, and often enough the Opposition would win and immediately become the Government. The Elections British Columbia notes for this election describe the designations as "Government (GOV.) candidates supported the administration of G.A.B. Walkem. Those opposed ran as Reform (REF.), Opposition (OPP.), Independent Reform (IND.REF.), or Independent Opposition (IND.OPP.) candidates. Those who ran as straight Independents (IND.) were sometimes described as Government supporters (IND./GOV.). The Walkem Government Actual governing coalitions were very shaky, and between 1871 and 1903, when parties were formalized in BC, there were sixteen governments (as defined by Premierships) but only ten elections. This was one of the few early elections that produced a stable regime, as the mandate was called for and won by the incumbent government of the popular George Anthony Boomer Walkem, who retired from the office of Premier a year later only to return in 1878 to serve again as Premier for a full four years further - a record in the period. In this election he had already been in office since the previous year, being voted to the position of Premier