Between Mount McNaughton and Mount George Graham
53 N 118.75 W — Map 83E/2 — Google — GeoHack
Name officially adopted in 1985
Not currently an official name
Boundary Commission Sheet 30 (surveyed in 1924)
Association with Mount McNaughton.
Association with Mount McNaughton.
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.
In 1871-72, Canadian Pacific Railway surveyors Roderick M. McLennan [1805–1908] and Charles Horetzky [1838–1900] made a reconnaisance from the Big Bend of the Columbia River up to the North Thompson River.
McLennan left Kamloops on 19 August 1871 and in October decided to winter his party in the vicinity of Tête Jaune Cache. He built a camp four or five miles upstream from the Canoe River on what consequently came to be named Camp Creek. In 1872 he undertook an expedition to Moose Lake [1].
“The stream here called McLennan River, its real source, is also known as Mica Creek,” reported Munday in 1925 [2].

Fulton McKirdy, Swift Creek (Valemount)
Valemount and Area Museum
Fulton Alexander McKirdy (1874-1960) was born in Toronto, the youngest of eleven children. His father died when he was seven, and his mother moved to a farm near Wingham. In 1884 Fulton went to live in Nipigon with a brother, who operated a guiding outfit and trading post. In 1896 he started working on bridges for the Canadian Pacific Railway, and two years later came west to work on the Crow’s Nest branch. Almost the whole crew contacted typhoid fever; McKirdy was one of the few to recover.
With horses bought in Cranbrook, McKirdy and H. Dart travelled to Golden and prospected north up the Columbia River to the mouth of the Canoe River. In 1899, after a return to Golden, he prospected along the Canoe, Swift Current, and Fraser rivers. During the winter he trapped. In 1906 or 1907 he was one of the first to stake a homestead in the township of Cranberry Lake (now Valemount). McKirdy chose a field that had been burnt off for horse-pasture by the Indians who passed through the valley during summer hunting trips. When he first plowed his field, he unearthed Indian arrowheads and other artifacts. He named the creek that bordered his property “McKirdy Creek.”
In 1910 fires from the railroad right-of-way clearing and slash burning were spreading into valuable timber. McKirdy was appointed fire warden, reporting to Revelstoke until 1912, when the divisional headquarters were moved to Tête Jaune Cache. McKirdy became an assistant forest ranger in 1917 and remained in that capacity until 1940. After 1940, he became a forest fire look-out, first on Mount McLennan, Birch Island, and then on Tum Tum Mountain [in Washington state?] until his retirement at age 82 in 1956.
In 1919 McKirdy married Margaret Waite (1900-1983), who had come from Vancouver to Swift Creek in 1918 as a schoolteacher. In 1923 he was appointed justice of the peace.
Many descendants live in the Valemount area.
Two McKale brothers settled in the valley after the First World War. James R. McKale first came through on the railway survey (presumably the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway). He was a charter member of the Royal Canadian Legion, in 1927, and one of the initial trustees of Elks Lodge 247, in 1933. Jack B. McKale was a stationary fireman on the railroad up to the time of the end of steam locomotives in the mid-1950s. He ran the ice house in McBride in early 1920s, and also the local dray business. The house he built on Main Street still exists.
R. E. McKale (1910-1950), relationship unknown, is buried in the McBride cemetery.
Locally the river is known as the Blackwater Riverr.

Grand Trunk Pacific Railway topographical crew of Elliot, Semple, Anderson, and McIntosh at an improvised table in the woods, 1912 (P986.5.80)
Exploration Place — Fraser Fort George Regional Museum
McIntosh Creek is shown on the 1931 Pre-emptor’s map (Tête Jaune Sheet) but not on the 1923 Sheet.
A McBride marriage registry shows “George Frederick Oettle [and] Mary Isabelle Mcintosh 1928.”(1)
The Robson Valley Chapter of the Back Country Horsemen of BC created an equestrian recreation site on Mcintosh Road (off Highway 16, 12 km west of McBride) around 2023.

Captain James Herrick McGregor
CVWM
Previous to 1915 this river was known as the Fraser River North Fork (or South Branch of North Fork Fraser River, and also formerly known as Big Salmon River.
Surveyor James Herrick McGregor [1869–1915] was born in Montreal and received his early education in the east. He obtained his commission as a British Columbia Provincial Land Surveyor 1891. He practiced his profession for a few years in the Kootenays and subsequently settled in Victoria.
McGregor was involved in the 1891-98 triangulation and photo-topographic surveys of the southern Rocky Mountains in the vicinity of the Alberta-British Columbia boundary.
McGregor did much of the exploration and survey work in the area around the confluence of the Fraser River and McGregor River upstream of Prince George.(1)
He enlisted in World War I and was killed in the Battle of Ypres.
“McGregor Mountains” adopted in the 1930 BC Gazetteer as labelled on BC Lands’ map 1H, 1917. Form of name changed to “McGregor Range” in 1958.
Named in association with McGregor River.
Gabriel Franchère [1786–1863], who travelled through the Athabasca Pass with the North West Company’s brigade in 1814, wrote, “Mr J. Henry, who first discovered the pass, gave this extraordinary rock the name of M’Gillivray’s Rock, in honor of one of the partners of the N. W. Company.”
William McGillivray [1764?-1825] , elder brother of Simon McGillivray and uncle of Duncan McGillivray, was one of the leading members of the North West Company. He was a member of the House of Assembly of Lower Canada, 1808-09, for Montreal West, and of the Legislative Council of Lower Canada, 1811-25. He died in 1825 in London, England.
McGillivray was born in Scotland and brought to Montreal in 1784 by his uncle Simon McTavish of McTavish, Frobisher and Company. McGillivray was made a partner in the North West Company in 1790, and on McTavish’s death in 1804 McGillivray became the company’s chief director. Fort William, the company’s headquarters on Lake Superior, was named in his honor in 1807. McGillivray commanded a company of voyageurs in the War of 1812, assisting Issac Brock at the capture of Detroit. In recognition of these services he was appointed to the legislative council of Lower Canada in 1814. Between 1814 and 1816 he directed the North West Company’s opposition to the Red River Settlement and was captured when Lord Selkirk seized Fort William in 1816 as a reprisal for the destruction of the settlement. McGillivray emerged unscathed from the protracted legal proceedings that followed. He was associated with his brother Simon and with Edward Ellice in 1821 during the negotiations that ended in union between the Hudson’s Bay and North West companies and was made a member of the joint board formed to manage the fur trade. He died in London, England.
McGillivray’s Rock is close to the lake known as the Committee Punch Bowl at the summit of Athabasca Pass.
Gabriel Franchère was probably mistaken in crediting “J. Henry” with naming and discovering the Athabasca Pass. David Thompson was the first European recorded to have crossed the Athabasca Pass, early in 1811.
The wife of Simon Fraser [1776–1862] was daughter of Colonel Allan McDonell of Dundas County, Ontario.
The feature was named by the Alberta-British Columbia Boundary Commission in 1921.