Monthly Archives: March 2014

Carr Road

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British Columbia. Road
Forks S off Highway 16 W of Tête Jaune Cache
53.0053 N 119.513 W Google — GeoHack
Roads are not in the official geographical names databases
Windy Carr (right) and unidentified cowboy. Ca. 1910. V577/24/na66 - 1904

Windy Carr (right) and unidentified cowboy. Ca. 1910.
V577/24/na66 – 1904
Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies

Stanley Joseph “Windy” Carr [1890–1983] was born in Leyton, Essex, England, to Frederick Joseph and Fanny Carr. In 1907 Carr came to Canada, “pursuing a dream to be a cowboy.” In 1910, after working on cattle ranches in the Calgary area, he became a guide for Brewster Brothers at Lake Louise (1). He joined the Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force in 1916, suffered a shrapnel wound in the foot while serving in France in the cyclist battalion, and was demobilized in 1919 with pay of $116, including $15 separation allowance and back pay at $1.10 per day (equivalent to about $20 today) (2).

With two other returned veterans, he started an outfitting business at Banff. In 1921 he married Scottish-born Jessie Clark [b. 1895], who had come to Calgary with her family in 1910. After a year in Calgary, the Carrs moved to Los Angeles. In 1926, the “call of the Rockies” brought them back to Canada. After working a year for the Hargreaves at Mount Robson Ranch, Carr bought property at Tête Jaune Cache and built a home and guest ranch, the Half Diamond M Ranch. He became a popular outfitter and guide for mountaineering expeditions in the area (3, 4).

Carr served as justice of the peace, postmaster (1937–1953) (5), stipendiary magistrate, juvenile court judge, coroner, school trustee, and honorary fire warden, and was a sergeant in the Pacific Coast Militia during World War II. He was a lifetime member of the Masonic Lodge at Cochrane, Alberta, and a long time member of the McBride Royal Canadian Legion. He worked for years to get the Yellowhead Highway completed. Carr was known as “Windy” because of the stories he delighted to tell. He died in Victoria. Jessie (“Jay”) Carr celebrated her 90th birthday in 1985, at Mount Robson.

Carr Road was originally part of the old wagon road from McBride to Valemount. When a new bridge was built across the Fraser River at Tête Jaune Cache, the wagon-road bridge was blasted out.

References:

  • 1. Stewart, Maryalice Harvey. Brewster family and Stanley Carr research. 1967. Archives and Library, Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies
  • 2. First World War Personnel Records, Library and Archives Canada. Carr, Stanley
  • 3. Zillmer, Raymond T. [1887–1960]. “The first crossing of the Cariboo Range.” Canadian Alpine Journal, Vol. 31 (1948):26–37
  • 4. Wexler, Arnold [1918–1997]. “Ascents in the Cariboo Mountains.” Canadian Alpine Journal, Vol. 27 (1950):41-50
  • 5. Post Offices and Postmasters: 1851 – 1981 (1851–1981). Library and Archives Canada
Also see:

Cariboo Siding

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British Columbia. Railway point
Former name for CNR siding at Lamming Mills
53.35 N 120.2667 W — Map 93H/8 — Google — GeoHack
Earliest known reference to this name is 1911 (GTP map)
Not currently an official name.
94 miles west of the Yellowhead Pass on the Canadian National Railway
This railway point appears on:
Grand Trunk Pacific Railway map [ca. 1912]
Grand Trunk Pacific Railway timetable 1914
Grand Trunk Pacific Railway map ca. 1918
Grand Trunk Pacific Railway map 1919
Pre-emptor’s map Tête Jaune 1923

Cariboo was the name of a Grand Trunk Pacific Railway station at Mile 94, four miles west of McBride.

Wrigley’s British Columbia Directory, 1918:

CARIBOO: station and shingle mill on the G. T. P., 5 miles from McBride. No residents except shingle mill hands, numbering about 25. Local resources: Cariboo Lumber Co shingle mfrs, W N Jack managing owner.
Lawson C mixed farming
Lawson J mixed farming

References:

  • Wrigley Directories, Limited. Wrigley’s British Columbia Directory. Vancouver: 1918. Internet Archive
Also see:

Cariboo Mountains

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British Columbia. Mountains
Between Rocky Mountain Trench and E side of Bowron Lake
52.9167 N 120.25 W — Map 93A/16 — Google — GeoHack
Earliest known reference to this name is 1861 (James Douglas)
Name officially adopted in 1918
Official in BC – Canada
This mountains appears on:
Trutch’s map of BC 1871
Amos Bowmans’ map Cariboo 1895
W. A. D. Munday’s map Cariboos 1925
Cariboo Mountains

Cariboo Mountains

The name “Cariboo” is derived from an Algonquian word xalibu, meaning “pawer” or “scratcher,” referring to the North American reindeer. The name was first applied to the goldfield area around Quesnel and Barkerville, where caribou were once abundant. The name goes back to at least 1861, near the beginning of the gold rush, when governor James Douglas [1803–1877] of the colony of British Columbia used the name “Cariboo” to describe the area in dispatches to Britain.

Raymond T. Zillmer made a number of explorations in the Cariboo Mountains in the 1930s and 40s and wrote articles about area in the Canadian Alpine Journal and the American Alpine Journal.

The Cariboo Range is important in the development of Canada. When the Canadian Pacific Railway considered the matter of its route across the continental divide, it tentatively selected Yellowhead Pass, for it offered the easiest crossing. But that decision was frustrated by the Cariboo Mountains. A practical railroad route led from Yellowhead Pass to the Fraser River and down the Fraser until the Cariboo Range was reached, about 50 miles west of the pass. Here, from an elevation of 2400 ft., at Tête Jaune Cache, the Cariboo Range rises in a very short distance to as high as 11,750 ft., the height of Mt. Sir Wilfred Laurier, the highest peak of the entire Interior Ranges of British Columbia. If a route could not be found across the range, a long detour to the northwest or to the south was necessary—the routes now followed by the Canadian National Railway. So from 1871 to 1874 four well- equipped expeditions sought a route across the Cariboo Mountains. But they found that only high glacial passes were available. So the route across Yellowhead Pass was abandoned in favor of the more southerly route now used by the Canadian Pacific Railway.

— Zillmer 1939

The name “Cariboo Mountains” was officially adopted in 1918, not “Cariboo Range” as labelled on Bowman’s 1887 map of the Cariboo Mining District.

References:

  • Holway, Edward Willet Dorland [1853–1923]. “The Cariboo Mountains.” Canadian Alpine Journal, 8 (1917):36-39
  • Trutch, Joseph William [1826–1904]. Map of British Columbia to the 56th Parallel North Latitude. Victoria, B.C.: Lands and Works Office, 1871. University of Victoria
  • Bowman, Amos B. [1839–1894]. Maps of the principal auriferous creeks in the Cariboo mining district, British Columbia. Ottawa: Geological Survey of Canada, 1895. Hathi Trust
  • Bowman, Amos B. [1839–1894]. Map of the Cariboo Mining District, British Columbia, to illustrate the report of Amos Bowman. 1895. Cariboo Gold Rush
  • Zillmer, Raymond T. [1887–1960]. “Explorations in the Southern Cariboos.” Canadian Alpine Journal, Vol. 27 (1939):48-61
  • Zillmer, Raymond T. [1887–1960]. “The exploration of the Cariboo Range from the east.” American Alpine Journal, 5:2 (1944):261-274. American Alpine Club
  • Thorington, James Monroe [1895–1989]. “Canada, Cariboo Range.” American Alpine Journal, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1949). American Alpine Club
  • Akrigg, Helen B., and Akrigg, George Philip Vernon [1913–2001]. British Columbia Place Names. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997. Internet Archive
  • British Columbia Geographical Names. Cariboo Mountains
Also see:

Carcajou Pass

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Alberta-BC boundary. Pass
Fraser River and Smoky River drainages
Between Holmes River and Carcajou Creek
53.2333 N 119.2667 W — Map 83E/3 — Google — GeoHack
Earliest known reference to this name is 1924 (Wheeler)
Name officially adopted in 1925
Official in BC – Canada
This pass appears on:
Phillips’s map NW of Robson 1915
Boundary Commission Sheet 32 (surveyed in 1922 &1924)
Boundary Commission Sheet 33 (surveyed in 1923)

In the earliest references to this location, it was called “Wolverine Pass.” Named in association with Carcajou Creek.

The name appears as “Wolverine Pass” on the 1915 map North and West of Robson by Donald “Curly” Phillips [1884–1938].

“Nearly midway between Bess Pass and Robson Pass is a pass of the watershed which is locally known as Wolverine Pass, noted
Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] during the 1924 Alberta-British Columbia Boundary Commission survey. “There is another Wolverine Pass in a more southerly part of the Canadian Rockies, so the pass under discussion is here referred to as Carcajou Pass, a synonym for Wolverine.”

Pertaining to passes on the Great Divide, Wheeler wrote, “North of Mount Robson are a number of passes …. Of these Carcajou Pass, 5120 feet in altitude, originally named Wolverine Pass, but changed on account of duplication, is most striking. Its summit is a broad swamp, numerous channels carrying off the glacial outflow of the magnificent ice-bound cirque below Mt. Phillips. Here, half a dozen icefalls sent their masses down in wildest confusion.”

The word carcajou was used by the French in North America, and is apparently of Indian origin. “The fur hunter’s greatest enemy is the wolverine or carcajou,” wrote Milton and Cheadle in 1863.

References:

  • Wheeler, Arthur Oliver [1860–1945]. “The Alpine Club of Canada’s expedition to Jasper Park, Yellowhead Pass and Mount Robson region, 1911.” Canadian Alpine Journal, Vol. 4 (1912):9-80
  • Cautley, Richard William [1873–1953], and Wheeler, Arthur Oliver [1860–1945]. Report of the Commission appointed to delimit the boundary between the Provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. Part II. 1917 to 1921. From Kicking Horse Pass to Yellowhead Pass.. Ottawa: Office of the Surveyor General, 1924. Whyte Museum
  • Wheeler, Arthur Oliver [1860–1945]. “Passes of the Great Divide.” Canadian Alpine Journal, Vol. 16 (1927–1927):117-135
Also see:

Canoe River

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British Columbia. River: Columbia River drainage
Flows E into Kinbasket Lake near Valemount
52.7833 N 119.1667 W — Map 83D/14 — Google — GeoHack
Earliest known reference to this name is 1811 (David Thompson)
Name officially adopted in 1930
Official in BC – Canada
This river appears on:
David Thompson’s map North-West Territory of the Province of Canada 1814
John Arrowsmith’s map BC 1859
Trutch’s map of BC 1871
George Monro Grant’s map of Yellowhead Pass 1872
Collie’s map Yellowhead Pass 1912
Boundary Commission Sheet 27 (surveyed in 1920 & 1921)

In 1811, at this river’s confluence with the Columbia River, North West Company explorer David Thompson [1770–1857] and his men built the canoe in which they voyaged down the Columbia.

Our residence was near the junction of two Rivers from the Mountains with the Columbia: the upper Stream which forms the defile by which we came to the Columbia, I named the Flat Heart, from the Men being dispirited ; it had nothing particular. The other was the Canoe River ; which ran through a bold rude valley, of a steady descent, which gave to this River a very rapid descent without any falls…

Birch trees grew in the vicinity, but because of the mild climate, according to Thompson, the bark was too thin to use. So his men “split out thin boards of Cedar wood of about six inches in breadth and builded a Canoe of twenty-five feet by fifty inches in breadth, of the same form of a common canoe, using cedar boards instead of Birch Rind, which proved to be equally light and much stronger than Birch Rind, the greatest difficulty which we had was sewing the boards to each other round the timbers. As we had no nails we had to make use of the fine Roots of the Pine which we split.”

References:

  • Thompson, David [1770–1857]. David Thompson’s Narrative of his explorations in western America, 1784-1812. Joseph Burr Tyrrell, editor. Toronto: Champlain Society, 1916, p. 451. University of British Columbia
Also see:

Caniche Peak

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Alberta-BC boundary. Peak
S of Yellowhead Pass
52.75 N 118.3667 W — Map 083D16 — Google — GeoHack
Name officially adopted in 1951
Official in BC – Canada
This peak appears on:
Boundary Commission Sheet 28 (surveyed in 1921)

Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] suggested the name “Poodle Peak” because the summit resembled in shape the head of a poodle. The French word for poodle was chosen “to further distinguish the name,” according to the Akriggs, who do not specfiy their source. Wheeler explored in the Mount Robson area in 1911 and 1913, and was involved in naming places during the Alberta-British Columbia Boundary Commission surveys, 1917–1923.

References:

  • Akrigg, Helen B., and Akrigg, George Philip Vernon [1913–2001]. British Columbia Place Names. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997. Internet Archive
  • British Columbia Geographical Names. Caniche Peak