Dr. John Helmcken, one of 80 immigrants who arrived in 1850, is usually regarded as the first man to practise European medicine on the Pacific Coast of Canada, although he had numerous predecessors on the ships of explorers and traders. A tavern-keeper's son, Helmcken was known by children in Victoria as 'Dr. Heal-my-skin'. Helmcken became the First Speaker of the Vancouver Island General Assembly and helped to negotiate the colony's entrance into Confederation. Not politically ambitious for himself, he maintained his medical practice until his retirement in 1910 at age 86 and died ten years later. Vividly described in Emily Carr's memoirs, Helmcken was one of the few gentry in early Victoria worthy of veneration.