Hugh Drummond Allan was born in Scotland and came to Canada around 1907. He became a British Columbia Land Surveyor in 1912. His professional work was carried on mainly in the Kamloops district, where he resided, and the North Thompson River valley. In 1913 he surveyed in the Canoe River area. “From Mile 49 on the Grand Trunk Pacific I proceeded with my party by wagon and reached the Canoe River in one day,” he reported.

Allan was shortly predeceased by his wife and infant child, whether before or after his enlistment after the start of the first World War in 1914. He returned to Scotland and enlisted in Princess Louise’s (Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders). In March 1916, Allen, then second lieutenant, made a will in which he bequeathed all his fortune to “Mrs. Kelly,” the mother of his late wife, Gladys Irene Frederika Allan. “[A]nd I declare that I leave nothing to my own relatives not from any want of affection but because they are much better provided for than my late wife’s relatives and I have not a great deal to leave.”

Sometime in 1916 he was wounded, and in 1917 he was killed leading his company at Croiselles, France.

His estate was probated in 1917, coming to a value of $5540. In March 1918 his executor discovered that “there was due to the said deceased from the Imperial Pensions Department the sum of $532.96.”

The National Archives of the U.K. has officer service records pertaining to Lieutenant Hugh Drummond Allan of Princess Louise’s (Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders).

There is another Canadian figure of Scottish birth named Hugh Allan [1810–1882], a shipping magnate.

A. L. (Peter) Withers was a national park warden in Jasper from 1920. He owned one of the two pairs of skis in town, and during the winter of 1921 he used his skis to make his winter patrols [1]. Withers appears in a 1921 photo of a Jasper hockey game [2].

In 1924 he accompanied Allen Carpé [1894–1932] and Rollin Thomas Chamberlin [1881–1948] in climbs in the Cariboo Mountains, including first ascents of Mount Titan (now Mount Sir Wilfrid Laurier), Mount Challenger (now Mount Stanley Baldwin) and Mount Albreda [3, 4].

In 1930 Withers was one of a group of five Jasper men who skied to Banff, leaving Jasper on 14 January 1930 and following what is now the Icefields Parkway. Joe Weiss, Vern and Doug Jeffery, and Frank Burstrom were his partners. During the previous summer they had travelled by horse to several cabins in Jasper and Banff and stored bags of food for the trip. Near Saskatchewan River Crossing they were met by two Banff wardens who had snowshoed out to look for them. The trip was a bit easier after that as they had broken trails to get them to Bow Lake and then to Lake Louise and Banff. They arrived just in time for the Banff winter carnival on 4 February [5].

In March of 1930, Withers assisted in packing the party of Russell Hoadley Bennett [1896–1981] of Minneapolis, Clifford White [1902–1964] of Banff, and Joe Weiss of Jasper on their “attack on Snow Dome,” which failed “because of faulty planning conjoined with protracted bad weather” [6].

Rollin Thomas Chamberlin was a professor of geology at the University of Chicago who made numerous guided climbs in the Rocky and Selkirk Mountains in 1910, including the Lake Louise, Lake O’Hara, Field and Glacier areas. In 1924, Chamberlin, Allen Carpé [1894–1932] and A. L. (Pete) Withers made a number of first ascents in the Cariboo Mountains, including Mount Titan (now Mount Sir Wilfrid Laurier) and Mount Challenger.

Allen Carpé was an American engineer and mountaineer who was a member of the Alpine Club of Canada from 1920.

In 1924 Carpé, Rollin Thomas Chamberlin [1881–1948], and A. L. (Pete) Withers went up Tête Creek “and made some fine climbs, among them Mount Sir Wilfrid Laurier.” [1]

In 1925, he was a member of the expedition that made the first ascent of Mount Logan. He lost his life on Mount McKinley in May 1932, as the leader of a party making scientific observations relating to cosmic rays.

Carpé’s name appears with and without an accent in various documents.