Robert Roland Sansom (1892-1976) and Dorothy (b. 1904) Sansom moved to the McBride area in 1932. Robert, a native of Stanley, New Brunswick, was a conductor on the Canadian National Railway, and a member of the Farmers Institute and Elks. Dorothy, born in North Dakota, was active in the McBride Women’s Institute.
Salient means standing above or beyond the general surface or outline; jutting out; prominent among a number of objects.
While conducting the Alberta-British Columbia Boundary Commission survey in 1922, Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] noted:
[T]he mass last named is that on which the triangulation station, entitled “Mons,” now “Salient S.”, is set at the extremity of its southern ridge. The basin in which this series of crossings of the watershed lies is a delightful park-like area, displaying wide tracts of open grasslands, interspersed with groves and scattering bunches of picturesque spruce trees, which gradually merge into dense bodies of forest growth as the open highlands slope downwards to the valley bottoms, through which wind the several larger streams. All through the open highlands little watercourses with crystal flows wander in many directions.
Source of name uncertain. George Russell [ca. 1891-1981] was born in Watkins, Manitoba, and moved to Dunster in 1920, just after the bridge across the Fraser River was finished. In addition to farming, he worked as a butcher and veterinarian. He left Dunster around 1940.
John Adams, who lived in Dunster from the 1920s, claimed that his father, William Henry Adams [1889-1961], named the creek in the 1940s because horses used to be left free to “rustle for grub” in the natural meadow along the creek.
A camera station named by Alberta-British Columbia Boundary Commission in 1921.
Perhaps named to commemorate someone’s name, tor he brownish-red color usually spelled “rufous, ” or the rufous humming-bird (Selasphorus rufus), which Ned Hollister [1876–1924] of the Smithsonian Institution observed during the 1911 Alpine Club of Canada–Smithsonian Robson Expedition.
A peak of Mount Lyell, named after Swiss Guide Rudolph Aemmer.
The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway station at Mile 117 (west of the Yellowhead Pass) was named “Rooney,” after W. J. Rooney, superintendent of construction in charge of the Grand Trunk Pacific Telegraph Service. In the 1930s Rooney authored several articles in the journal Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity. As a member of the department of terrestrial magnetism at the Carnegie Institute of Washington, Rooney contributed a chapter on Earth-currents to Terrestrial Magnetism and Electricity (1939), volume eight of the Physics of the Earth series.
Sometime between 1918 and 1925 the station was renamed “Goat River.” The name “Rooney” appears on the 1925 CNR map.
During the construction of the GTP there was a hospital at mile 114 which was west of the bridge over the Goat River. The siding and Rooney station was one and a half miles west of the Goat River bridge.
Wrigley’s British Columbia Directory, 1918:
ROONEY: a siding on the G. T. P. Railway, 28 miles west of McBride, and 9 miles east of Loos. Local resources: Farming and prospecting.
Charles Brackel, prospector
Gus Gunderson, section foreman
Mentz Martinson, farming
John VanSlack, farming
The first travellers called them the Glittering Mountains, on account of the infinite number of immense rock crystals, which, they say, cover their surface, and which, when they are not covered with snow, or in bare places, reflect to an immense distance the rays of the sun. The name Rocky Mountains was given them, probably by later travellers, in consequence of the enormous isolated rocks which they offer here and there to view.
— Gabriel Franchère 1854, quoted in Thorington
The earliest reference to this mountain chain is that of James Knight (c. 1640–c. 1721) , governor of York Factory who, in his diary for 1716, states that Indians had told him that very far to the west there were prodigious mountains so high “they cannot see the tops without it be clear weather.” The first mention of their present name is to be found in Legardeur St. Pierre’s journal for 1752, which refers to the “Montaignes de Roche.”
“Mountains of the bright Stones” on Carver’s map, 1778.
The name of the mountains is a translation of an Amerindian name that is closely related to Algonquian; the Cree name as-sin-wati is given as, “When seen from across the prairies, they looked like a rocky mass”.
The Cree name is Usinnewucheyu, meaning “big rocks” (A Dictionary of the Cree Language, by E.A. Watkins, revised by J.A. Mackay, edited by Richard Faries, 1938). The Sekani name for the Rocky Mountains is Tse Tiy. [meaning/significance and extent not provided] (from Guzagi K’úgé, published by Kaska Tribal Council, Watson Lake, 1997). The Ktunaxa name for the Rocky Mountains is Natmuqc/in, pronounced nath-mook-stin. [meaning/significance and extent not provided] (April 2006 advice from Janice Alpine, Ktunaxa Language Program)
“‘There are no Rocky Mountains’ has been the remark of many a disappointed traveller by the Union or Central Pacific Railways,” wrote George Grant in 1872. “The remark will never be made by those who travel on the Canadian Pacific; there was no ambiguity about these being mountains, nor about where they commenced. The line was defined, and the scarp as clear, as if they had been hewn and chiselled for a fortification. There was nothing fantastic about the mountain forms. Everything was imposing. And these too were ours, an inheritance as precious, if not as plentiful in corn and milk, as the plains they guarded. For mountains elevate the mind, and give an inspiration of courage and dignity to the hardy races who own them and who breathe their atmosphere. We could sympathize with the enthusiast, who returned home after years of absence, and when asked what he had as an equivalent for so much lost time, answered: ‘I have seen the Rocky Mountains.’”
“Rocky Mountains / Montagnes Rocheuses” is among the 75 “Pan-Canadian names,” large and well-known Canadian features and areas designated in Treasury Board Circular 1983-58 to require presentation in both official languages of Canada on federal maps.