Association with Mount Kimmel.

The Hargreaves Brothers: Frank, Roy, George, (unknown), Jack, (unknown), 1922-1930, Mount Robson. Credit: Ishbel Cochrane.
Valemount & Area Museum

Roy Frederick Hargreaves (1891–1971) founded Mount Robson Ranch and built the Berg Lake Chalet. He and brothers Frank (1885–1940), Jack (1895–1971), George (1883–1936) and Dick (1908–1987) homesteaded at Mount Robson after World War I. For many years, they were well-known guides and outfitters in the Mount Robson area.

Their parents Edward (1846–1939) and Matilda (1852–1904) moved to Oregon from England in 1881, but soon immigrated to Canada “to live under the British flag.” After Matilda died, the family was frequently on the move. George and Roy were the first to leave home, and in 1905 they helped cut a trail from Golden to Tête Jaune Cache.

Jack came to Jasper in the winter of 1913–14 to play hockey. The next summer he started working for the Otto Brothers outfitters, and in the winter of 1917, accompanied Donald “Curly” Phillips [1884–1938] and Mary Jobe on their trip to the Wapiti and Mount Sir Alexander area. Mary Jobe wrote, “Phillips had an assistant, Jack Hargreaves, a strong, manly young fellow, willing in every emergency, and always good tempered. I have rarely had a more unselfish companion on the trail.”

Roy, Frank, and Jack served in the Canadian Army in the World War I. Roy survived the first gas attack on Canadian forces, but he spent many months in a British hospital. Edward and Matilda’s daughter Myrtle married and stayed in Jasper, and daughter Ethel married and moved to Iowa.

In 1921, Jack and Frank filed on homesteads near Mount Robson. With an eye towards the tourist business, they erected several log buildings and a small store. They were soon joined by George and later by Roy. The four brothers began to outfit and guide hunting parties, using about 70 head of horses and concentrating on the Berg Lake area. Although they carried on business under the name of Hargreaves Brothers, each maintained his own separate part of the pack string and his share of the equipment. In 1922, Jack married Jasper teacher Gladys Guild (1897–1985). The following year he moved back to Jasper, where he operated a guiding and outfitting business, having up to 85 horses on the trail at one time. Both he and Hargreaves Brothers operated separately for many years.

In 1923, Roy married Sophia MacLean (1892-1991), a school teacher from Cape Breton working in Jasper. That same year, Edward pre-empted a homestead at Mount Robson, a couple of miles from the ranch. In 1924, George, Frank and Jack rebuilt Curly Phillips’s trail to Kinney Lake. In 1926, George filed on land close to Jackman Flats. Frank later took an adjoining homestead, and they all kept guiding and outfitting. Dick married Alice Couture, and after a short stay at Jackman, they moved to Jasper where was a carpenter for the park and the railway. George died on the trail.

The “CN Cabins” which the brothers built near Robson Pass in 1921 were operated by the Hargreaves for several years, until Roy obtained a lease on five acres of land on Berg Lake. In 1927, he built the Berg Lake Chalet, a tourist facility which provided meals and accommodation for over 50 years. Chuck Chesser, who had been working for Roy since about 1926, became a partner in 1931, the same year that he married Sophia’s sister Anne Maclean. “Chesser and Hargreaves, Guides and Outfitters” lasted until the late 1940s, when Chesser went to work for the Canadian National Railway. Roy raised beaver, farmed fox for several years, tried mink for one year, and couldn’t get marten to breed. During the war he got rid of the foxes and ran a sawmill at Tête Jaune Cache with Harry Partridge.

Frank was murdered at his cabin at Jackman in 1940. In 1951, Arthur Cunningham admitted to murdering a man at Endako, and before he was hanged, also claimed to have shot Frank Hargreaves.

In 1959, Roy sold the ranch to Alice Wright, who named it the Mount Robson Ranch. Roy and Sophia moved to Ladysmith, returning to visit Mount Robson several times a year. Sophia made regular trips to Berg Lake until 1976, when she was 84. In 1977, when the Berg Lake Chalet was closed, she made her last trip, by helicopter. In 1988, she was living at a senior citizens’ lodge in Salmon Arm. The operation of Mount Robson Ranch was taken over by Roy and Sophia’s daughter Myrtle Mae Ishbel Hargreaves and her husband Murray Cochrane.

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

Stanley Joseph “Windy” Carr [1890–1983] ws 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. 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) (1).

With two other returned veterans, he started an outfitting business at Banff (2). 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.

Joseph Emery L’Heureux and his wife Dorothy Edith (born Dundas, Ontario, 1896, d. 1967) settled near Mount Robson in 1936 or 1937. He was listed in the 1937 Tête Jaune voters’ list as a farmer. The L’Heureux’s started up a tourist outfitting business, and when war interrupted the venture they sold and moved near Tête Jaune where Joe had homesteaded several years before. They trapped up Swiftcurrent Creek in the 1950s. In 1969, Joe took up residence in the men’s provincial home in Kamloops.

The Robson Valley Courier newspaper published the following article when Joe left McBride:

The story of his life presents itself as a mosaic of colour and action. He has been waterboy, logger, trapper, millwright, carpenter, forester, guide jeweler, homesteader, soldier and an employee with the engineering department of the B.C. Highways. Joe is a self-made man in the truest sense of the word. Orphaned at the age of 8 when his father died (his mother died when he was 5) he was farmed out to families who agreed to keep him. At the age of 12 he decided to go on his own, and took French leave. “I got a job as waterboy in a logging camp,” he reminisces. “I determined to make something of myself, and I had only myself to rely on. I didn’t have a single relative on the North American continent.” He went to night schools while he was working days, and sometimes had saved money so that he could go to regular day schools, for a few weeks at a time, sometimes several months at one stretch. He read innumerable books on construction, so that at last he could get jobs with construction crews; he did the same with lumberman’s manuals, ant at last could do millwright work and general mechanics. He married in 1936, and he and his new bride moved to a place in the Mt. Robson area, where he built a home and set up a camp for hunters, for whom he acted as guide. He furnished horses, tents, and pack outfits. During the winter months he trapped up the Swift Current creek.

The L’Heureux’s moved back to the homestead at Tête Jaune after eight years at Robson, and he took a job with the Forest Service. He built the Forest Service buildings there. He is a veteran of the First World War and served four and a half years with the medical corps in France for two years as a first-aid man in the trenches, and later in London in the hospitals. Although the couple had no children, they enjoyed a deeply satisfying and loving life together. Mrs L’Heureux, who died a year and a half ago, was a landscape painter. They made many trips together to scenes she wished to paint. He worked in semi-precious stone, and fashioned many a lovely costume piece from jade, agate, and other jewel stones from around the world. “I hate to leave McBride”, said Joe. “I have so many friends here. But I’m coming back for visits as soon as my eyes get fixed up. I can get that done in Kamloops, one eye at a time, and I’ll be back then.”