Upon arrival at James Cooper's Bilston Farm, Thomas Blinkhorn set about clearing the site and getting it in good working order. Men were brought from England to work on the farm and other workers, native to the Sandwich Islands were also brought over as agricultural workers to help with the site clearance. James Cooper still worked for the Hudson Bay Company and traded between Vancouver Island, Hawaii and San Fransisco and so was frequently traveling. He left the management of his Metchosin farm in Blinkhorn's capable hands. Thomas bought another sixty acres in his own name and turned it into a dairy farm with a profitable dairy herd. Martha Beeton Cheney, Ann Blinkhorn's niece kept a diary upon her arrival at Vancouver Island which she called Volume 2 as she had kept a diary of the voyage from Great Britain but unfortunately it had been lost during a storm on the voyage en route to Vancouver Island. In Volume 2 she writes of the happy times of rides on horseback with her uncle around the farm, and the big sprawling farmhouse that was always full of people. Many of those visitors were old shipmates from the Tory and all became great friends. Others were acquaintances that Thomas had met since arriving at Metchosin and his home was always open and became a meeting place where everyone gathered and shared good times. Other settlers in the vicinity saw the success of Thomas's farm management system, something he had learnt from his time working on the sheep stations in Australia, and he was asked to manage other farms in the area. Thomas Blinkhorn and his family were now part of a thriving community with good friends and at last he had the life that he had always wanted. Thomas was now a well respected member of the Metchosin community. In March of 1853 Thomas and three other Hudson Bay settlers, superintendents of other farm settlements, were commissioned as Magistrates and Justices of the Peace for the Metchosin area. Whether Thomas's convict past was known to the Governor or not, or whether it was the fact that these were independent settlers with a fair degree of education or whether they were just desperate for some law and order is not clear. I would surmise that Thomas's past experiences of being arrested, his trial and incarceration on the prison hulk ships, the subsequent transportation to Australia, working as a convict, the time on the sheep stations, the eventual return to England and the voyage to Vancouver Island were the perfect life lessons for him to call on as a fair Justice of the Peace. This new responsibility required Thomas to travel to Fort Victoria on a monthly basis for the Court of Petty Sessions. This was a perilous journey as the road had not yet reached Metchosin. It was nine miles by water on the Fraser River to Fort Victoria from Bilston Farm and Thomas had to travel it in all weathers, often in the canoes of the Native North Americans of Vancouver Island. In 1855 Martha Cheney married Captain Henry Bailey Ella, a ship's captain of one of the Hudson Bay Company ships, whom she had probably met when he visited the Blinkhorn Farmhouse.  Thomas Blinkhorn had suffered several severe colds, some of which probably turned into pneumonia from the constant cold of travelling to the Court of Petty Sessions. During an early winter, in September of 1856 on the homeward journey of one such trip, the river crossing was frozen and they had to walk across the ice. The ice cracked and Thomas fell in the water and had to finish his journey in wet clothes. This led to a severe bout of pneumonia and Martha Chaney Ella wrote in her diary, that her uncle was very unwell and she feared for his health. The illness lingered. Thomas was racked with coughing and it is believed that he burst a blood vessel in his head during one of these extreme coughing fits, something we now call an aneurysm. On October 13th 1856 Thomas Blinkhorn passed away. He had only been in Vancouver Island for five years but during that time he was credited for making a thriving settlement in a new land which brought prosperity to the region. James Cooper was in England at the time of Thomas's death. He had run into several problems with the Hudson Bay Company and eventually had to sell Bilston Farm and left the company. Thomas's widow,  Ann Blinkhorn sold the dairy farm and along with her niece Martha and her husband Captain Henry Ella, they moved into the town. The house known as Wentworth Villa, on Fort Street, Victoria, British Columbia is now a Heritage Architecture Museum.  In the late 1860's George Henry Richards a commissioner in British Columbia, responsible for the selection and designation of place names and other landmarks renamed the peninsular where Thomas Blinkhorn settled, Blinkhorn Island and the Mountain that overlooked Metchosin and the nearby lake were renamed Mount Blinkhorn and Blinkhorn Lake. In 1858 prosperity came to Vancouver Island again when gold was discovered in the Fraser River near Fort Victoria. It is still mined today. The legacy of Thomas Blinkhorn, a Sawtry Man lives on in Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.