Origin of the name unknown.
Origin of the name unknown.
Miette Pass — Centre Passage.
Report of the Commission Appointed to Delimit the Boundary between the Provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, III. 1925
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.
Tête Jaune Cache, showing old camping ground of fur trappers. In the distance is Mica Mountain. 1910
F.A. Talbot, New Garden of Canada
Frederick Talbot travelled through the area in 1910 with a party of Grand Trunk Pacific Railway employees. He wrote,
Certainly there is plenty of scope for development in all sorts of ways. The mountains teem with minerals of all descriptions, Keller showing us specimens of galena, gold, silver and other valuable metals, claims for which he had staked out. Mica Mountain is a great storehouse of mica, and some of the mineral obtained from it is quite noteworthy. It is white, and of good cleavage, and sheets from 32 inches square upwards can be readily obtained. If such veins are extensive, the mica mining prospect here is brilliant indeed. About twenty claims have already been staked, and the large block of this mineral which carried off a distinguished award at the last Paris Exhibition was mined on this mountain. When the neighbourhood becomes more accessible, prospectors will pour into the country, and carry out their task upon a broad, scientific basis, whereas up to the present only the surface here and there has been scratched. The wealth in the mountains hereabouts is beyond human conception, and, after the experience of Cobalt, he would be a rash man indeed, no matter what his geological and other qualifications might be, who would dare to say what could not be found.
Ontario-born Dan McPhee (b. ca. 1886) moved to the Dunster area in the early 1920s. A licensed log scaler, he worked for local mills, and sold hay to their horse-logging operations.
Mary Adeline Amelia McPhee (b. Alexandria, Ontario, 1895, d. McBride, 1962) was resident of Dunster since the late 1920s, when she came west to join her brother, Dan McPhee, at the Dunster farm.
John Alexander McNaughton (1893-1958) and his wife Bessie Agnes McNaughton (1893-1955) homesteaded in the Dunster area in 1920. John was born in Ontario, Bessie in Michigan. Around 1924 John started to work on the Canadian National Railroad section crew, and continued until 1937 when they moved to Prince Rupert for the railway. Their son Don remained on the farm.
Association with Mount McNaughton.
General Andrew George Latta McNaughton (1887–1966)
The former name for the man-made reservoir now called Kinbasket Lake recalls Andrew George Latta McNaughton (1887-1966), soldier and diplomat. McNaughton was born in Saskatchewan and joined the faculty of McGill University upon graduation. He had been a member of the Canadian Militia since 1909, and after the outbreak of war in 1914 he served overseas, was wounded twice, and became a brigadier-general in command of the Canadian Corps Heavy Artillery by the end of the war. He remained in military service until 1935, when he became president of the National Research Council. He returned to the army with the outbreak of World War II, and in 1942 became Commander of the First Canadian Army. After his retirement in 1944, he became Minister of Defense, and subsequently held many diplomatic posts. McNaughton was leader of those who advocated development of the Columbia River for hydro-power.
When the name McNaughton Lake was proclaimed by the British Columbia cabinet in 1973, a number of the residents of the East Kootenay area lobbied to change the name to Kinbasket Lake. After seven years of strenuous argument, the name was officially changed. The former name was widely dispersed and appears on maps and other documents.