The Monroe family has been in the McBride area since before 1912. George Monroe (1885-1974) was born in Idaho and graduated from high school in West Virginia. George taught school in Washington state before immigrating to Canada in 1903. After a few years in Alberta, where he and brother Adrian started cattle ranching, he came west with the advance crew of the Grand Trunk Pacific railroad. He was hired to pack supplies for the GTP by horseback. In the fall of 1912 he came to McBride looking for a homestead. He built a raft and set out from Burns Landing. Initially he poled upstream and found what he thought was good agricultural land but the Fraser River floodline on the trees was higher than he could reach so he decided to float downstream and find a homestead on a bench above the Fraser River. He drifted down the Fraser until he came to the mouth of Monroe Creek. (Tumbledick Creek is a smaller branch of Monroe Creek.) In 1913 he gazetted his homestead claim on land nearby. He returned to his family in Alberta to organize settler effects. in 1914 with a friend, Alex Farquarson, he returned to Tumbledick Creek to build his home. His wife Ethel and children Warner and Sadie arrived Christmas Eve that year. Son, Everett was born in 1917. George’s brother Adrian (1889-1950) and father David Taylor Monroe (1844-1933), a veteran of the American Civil War, also moved to the valley. Many descendants live in the area.

Over the years the Monroes farmed, raised sheep, trapped and made posts and poles. George was foreman at Wally Jeck’s first mill at Mile 5 in 1918. In 1926, so the children could attend school, the family moved back to the United States. George attended a seminary in Indiana and held pastorates in Michigan and Colorado. In 1930 they returned to their farm near McBride. For many years their greenhouse, gardens and fruit trees helped supply fresh fruit and vegetables to McBride. They also sold lambs and chickens. In the early days George acted as minister and occasionally as undertaker.

Sadie Frye and Warner Monroe : interviews — BC Archives

Recorded by Imbert Orchard, location unknown, 1974

Mrs. Sadie Frye [neé Monroe] tells a story of how her mother became a bootlegger around 1910 at Albreda. She offers her first memories of coming to McBride. She describes travelling by river and by horse to McBride; fishing for trout in the streams; Bridal Creek; picking raspberries; a general description of the landscape; her memories of McBride and experiences as a child; the road between McBride and Prince George, offered as an election promise in 1916, when women were allowed to vote; Pat Burns Landing; steamships and supplies; the building of the bridge; her grandchildren are the fifth generation of their family, Monroe, to farm the same land; a fire on the property. TRACK 2: Mrs. Frye continues by discussing the naming of the Mountain View district; a story about shooting a bear who was after their sheep; another story about a grouse chase where her brother played a trick on her; baking bread and using it as bait to catch a bear (unsuccessfully); and a description of her mother’s character. Then Mrs. Frye’s brother, Warner Monroe, offers his memories about coming to McBride.

>

During construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway in the early 1910s, fill for the roadbed was often moved by wheelbarrow. Contracts for the work were given to small groups. A number of Indians who worked in such way near McBride camped in the area on Mountainview Road that is still known as Moccasin Flats.

“Your Commissioners suggest that the name of Moat Passage should be given to the lower summit of Tonquin Pass, in reference to Moat Lake, a pretty sheet of water, one mile long, which approaches within a few chains of the summit on the Alberta side.”

The Commissioners were Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] and Richard William Cautley [1873–1953] of the Alberta-British Columbia Boundary Commission in 1921.

Adopted in 1982 on Mount Robson Park map as an established local name. Mist Glacier is the westerly arm of Berg Glacier (sometimes called Tumbling Glacier).

Jack Mintz, a locomotive foreman for the Canadian National Railway, moved with his family from Moose Jaw to the McBride area in 1914.

Carl and Helen Mintz were early settlers at Tête Jaune. Their fourth child was born the morning Carl was killed in a logging accident, in the early 1950s.

The minotaur was a monster of Greek mythology, having the body of a man and the head of a bull. The peak was named by alpinist Cyril G. Wates [1883–1946] in 1929, according to Putnam. I haven’t found any record of this in Wates’s articles in the Canadian Alpine Journal.

Origin of the name unknown.

Origin of the name unknown.

Baptiste Millette, an employee of the fur-trading North West Company, was the namesake of Roche Miette and other “Miette” place names in the vicinity.

Miette Hill on the Continental Divide drains into Clairvaux Creek on the Alberta side. Clairvaux Creek is a tributary of Miette River in the Athabasca River drainage.