Hugh Edward Millington Stutfield [1858–1929]

b. 1858 — Turriff, county of Banff, Scotland
d. 1929

Stutfield was a solicitor, an alpine climber, and an author. He accompanied John Norman Collie [1859–1942] on some of his trips to Canada. Stutfield’s talent as a first-rate marksman saved the party from starvation on many an occasion.

He is listed in Foster’s Men-at-the-Bar (p. 453):

Stutfield, Hugh Edward Millington, B.A., Trin. Coll., Camb., 1881, a student of the Inner Temple 12 April, 1880 (then aged 22), called to the bar 17 Nov., 1884 (3rd son of William Stutfield, of Turriff, N.B.); born 1858.

which volume also contains this fragment about Stutfield’s elder brother:

… 1881 (2nd son of William Stutfield, Esq., of Netherdale, Turriff, co. Banff); born y – 19, Old Buildings, Lincoln’s Inn, W.C.

The location Turriff, county Banff, “N.B.”, presumably refers to “North Britain”, or Scotland, as it was sometime called. Netherdale is the name of the particular dwelling, still extant.

The three adventurers associated with the discovery of the Columbia Icefield were Hugh Millington Stutfield, Hermann Woolley and John Norman Collie. Stutfield was a wealthy British stockbroker who through careful and considered investment was able to retire early from the London Stock Exchange and pursue his interest in travel. He was also a crack shot with a rifle and shotgun, a talent that later allowed him to save his fellow climbers from a difficult predicament in Canada with respect to supplies. It was this same talent, however, that caused him to be hunting instead of climbing when the full extent of the Columbia Icefield was discovered in 1898.

— Sandford

British Columbia Land Surveyor James Alexander Walker started surveys in the upper Fraser River area in 1912, during the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. In 1913 and 1914, he surveyed within the three-mile land reserve on the Fraser near McBride, subdividing the country into 40-acre tracts. That year 80,000 acres of land were opened by the provincial government. Walker reported that “a great rush resulted, about 175 pre-emptions having been filed upon. All summer clearing land and building cabins have been the chief industries in the valley. A splendid type of settlers, by far the majority of whom are English-speaking, has come in. There are no Indians in the valley from Tête Jaune Cache to the Fort George Indian reserves.”

Walker was educated in Guelph Public Schools and Collegiate Institute and at the University of Toronto, from which he obtained a diploma in civil engineering in 1908, a bachelor in applied science in 1910, and a post-graduate degree of a civil engineer in 1926. In 1915 Walker entered private practice in civil engineering and surveying, but he gave up this work to enlist with the Canadian Expeditionary Forces. In 1916 he trained in the first course given by the Royal School of Infantry in Esquimalt, B.C. He received his commission as lieutenant in the 72nd Seaforth Highlanders of Canada and trained with Yukon Infantry Company’s 225th Battalion. Being refused for overseas service, he was transferred to the Canadian Field Artillery with headquarters in Ottawa.

After 1919 Walker established a private practice in Vancouver and subsequently served on planning commissions in that city.

Conrad Kain [1883–1934]

b. 1883 — Nasswald, Austria
d. 1934 — Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada

Kain was an Austrian mountain guide who guided extensively in Europe, Canada, and New Zealand, and was responsible for the first ascents of more than 60 routes in British Columbia. He is particularly known for pioneering climbs in the Purcell Mountains and the first ascents of Mount Robson (1913), Mount Louis (1916) and Bugaboo Spire (1916).

Arnold Louis Mumm [1859–1927]

b. 1859 — London, England
d. 1927 — Bay of Biscay, Atlantic Ocean

Mumm, a London publisher, first came to Canada in 1909, at the invitation of Alpine Club of Canada director Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945]. After attending the 1909 ACC camp at Lake O’Hara, Mumm, along with Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett Amery [1873–1955], Geoffrey Hastings [1860–1941], and Moritz Inderbinen [1856–1926], made an attempt on Mount Robson. On their way to the mountain, they met George R. B. Kinney [1872–1961], who reported that he and Donald “Curly” Phillips [1884–1938] had been successful on their own attempt (a claim later disputed). Mumm’s party, hobbled by difficulties of the route and lack of time, was not successful.

Mumm returned with British professor John Norman Collie [1859–1942] in July, 1910, when the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway’s steel had been laid as far as Wolf Creek, about one hundred miles east of theYellowhead Pass. The party spent some time about Mount Robson, but there was so much snow on the mountains and the weather was so stormy that climbing was out of the question, and they were able to ascend only some of the lesser peaks.

The next summer, 1911, Collie and Mumm made another trip, the first to go north of the Athabasca to explore and climb. They ascended the Stoney River, crossed a high pass to the Smoky River, then up Glacier Creek, which they ascended to Mount Bess.

In 1913 Mumm decided to climb Mount Geikie, which three years earlier, when on Yellowhead Mountain, he had seen rising far above its fellows. He was turned back by a storm. Mumm made many climbs in the Alps, Canada, Japan and New Zealand, in addition to accompanying Tom George Longstaff [1875–1964] to the Himalayas.

“Tête Jaune” (“Yellow Head”) was the nickname of Pierre Bostonais, an Iroquois who worked for the North West and Hudson’s Bay fur trading companies. During the fur trade, a cache (French for a hiding place) was built by removing a round piece of turf about 50 cm across, excavating the dirt, and lining the excavation with dry branches. After the cached goods were inserted, some earth and the round piece of turf were put on top, and the surplus earth all carefully removed.

According to Milton and Cheadle, who crossed the Yellowhead Pass in 1863, Bostonais’s original cache was at the confluence of the Robson River and Fraser River. The present location of Tête Jaune Cache is near the site selected during the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, at the head of navigation on the Fraser River.

“Bostonais” was a name applied by Indigenous people to Americans of European descent, “Boston Men.” Normally a nickname, Pierre Bostonais may have acquired it as a family name after his family moved from American territory to the Montreal area. (As early as 1670, a number of Iroquois, converted by French priests, left what is now New York State to live near Montreal.) Iroquois were brought out west by the fur trade companies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as voyageurs, hunters, guides, and trappers. Many Iroquois stayed in the west when their contracts with the fur companies expired, settling east of the Rockies between the Athabasca and Peace Rivers.

Pierre Bostonais first appears in the archives of the Hudson’s Bay Company in January 1805, when the factor at the fur trading post of St. Croix (now in Minnesota) wrote, “This afternoon Tête Jaune’s son expired after a long and painful malady of upwards of three months.” In 1810 Tête Jaune was for a time employed by the North West Company, perhaps arriving at Rocky Mountain House, on the North Saskatchewan River. By 1816, when he is mentioned in the North West Company ledger, Tête Jaune was a “free” Iroquois, not engaged to any fur trade company. Twice in Hudson’s Bay Company books from 1821 to 1823 there are entries of “Pierre Bostonais dit Tête Jaune.”

Colin Robertson [1783–1842], in charge of Fort St. Mary (near the present-day town of Peace River, British Columbia), recorded in his journal for December 1819, “Tête Jaune, the free Iroquois, has given me a chart of that country across the Rocky Mountains.” Tête Jaune guided a party across the mountains the next spring and returned at the end of October. “Tête Jaune and Brother Baptiste arrived — the Iroquois all enjoyed themselves with a booze.” Tête Jaune and Baptiste appear again in 1825, when the Hudson’s Bay Company required a guide over the Yellowhead Pass, then a little-known route. (There is no record that this pass was used by either company prior to 1824, when chief trader Joseph Felix LaRocque tried to establish a post at “Moose or Cranberry Lake.”)

In 1825, Hudson’s Bay Company governor George Simpson [1792–1860] ordered chief trader James McMillan [1783-1858] to explore the pass. At Jasper House, McMillan hired Tête Jaune as guide. They left Jasper House on 18 October, and by October 24, after a trip of about 120 miles, reached Tête Jaune Cache. In his report to William Connolly, McMillan specifically mentioned “Tête Jaune’s Cache,” the first recorded reference to this place name.

Tête Jaune probably spent the winter of 1825-26 at Fort Alexandria, on the Fraser River north of Quesnel. In early May 1826, just before the departure of the fur brigade from Fort St. James for Fort Vancouver, Connolly received word about the “Iroquois guide who remains sick at Alexandria.”

In early November 1826, Tête Jaune and Baptiste arrived at Fort St. James. “In the evening that old rogue Tête Jaune, and his brother, arrived from below, dread of the Carriers who threaten vengeance for the death of their relatives, is the cause of their coming this way. These people brought nearly one Pack of Beaver between them.”

Tête Jaune and Baptiste apparently spent the winter of 1826–27 with the Carriers (Dakelh). The brothers returned to Fort St. James in mid-April. Connolly wrote, “I never saw two more wretched beings in my life — since the Fall they have not Killed one Marten between them. They are however good Beaver Trappers & being well furnished with Traps they may perhaps do well — But they are such notorious rascals that no dependence whatever Can be placed in them.” That fall, the brothers were at Bear Lake (Fort Connelly). “I am glad this district is rid of them,” wrote Connolly. “They are brothers who seldom do any good. And very frequently do Mischief.”

In the spring of 1828 word reached Connolly that Tête Jaune, Baptiste, and their families had been “cut off by the Beaver Indians, as a punishment for Hunting upon their lands.” Connolly wrote that “this Melancholy Occurrence took place last fall at Finlay’s Branch, but by whom perpetrated could not be ascertained — The natives throughout the District have for a long While past looked upon the Iroquois as Robbers and despoilers of their lands, and it is only in Consideration for us that they have not long before this taken the only means in their power to rid themselves of their depredators.”

George Rex Boyer Kinney [1872–1961]

b. 1872 — Victoria Corner, New Brunswick, Canada
d. 1961 — Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Kinney became interested in climbing while serving as a minister of the Methodist Church in Banff and Field [1]. He accompanied Arthur Philemon Coleman [1852–1939] on his unsuccessful trips to Mount Robson in 1907 and 1908 [2]. Kinney returned alone in July 1909, met Donald “Curly” Phillips [1884–1938] near Jasper, and travelled with him through the Yellowhead Pass and the Moose River valley to Mount Robson. After being repelled by weather several times, they reached what Kinney and Phillips reported to be the peak of Mount Robson [3] [4].

During the Alpine Club of Canada camp at Mount Robson in 1913, Phillips stated that he and Kinney had not ascended a final 50-foot dome of snow [5], and official credit for climbing the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies goes to Conrad Kain, William Wasborough Foster [1875–1954], and Albert H. McCarthy [1876–1956] [6].

See Kinney at Robson for more information.
[7]

The Commission produced the following maps of the Mount Robson area:
Alberta-British Columbia Boundary Commission maps 1924

The Interprovincial Boundary Commission as first formed in 1913 was composed of three members, Viz., J. N. Wallace, D.L.S., Dominion representative, A. O. Wheeler, B.C.L.S., British Columbia representative, and R. W. Cautley, A.L.S., Alberta representative. These three gentlemen carried on the work of the Commission until July, 1915, when the Dominion Government decided that its interests could be looked after by the Alberta representative, Mr. Cautley. So, from July, 1915, Messrs. Wheeler and Cautley have carried on the boundary work to the satisfaction of the various governments involved.

— McCaw 1919