lan Monroe pilots nephews Leonard and Andrew Foster and son Doug
The Valley Sentinel, June 15, 2012

After Ian George Monroe [1951–1987], pilot, killed in a helicopter accident. Monroe and others made presentations to the Wilderness Advisory Committee, eventually leading to the creation of Kakwa Provincial Park.

Ian Monroe, the fifth child of Everett Monroe [1917–1998] and Dorothy Apsey [1920–1979], was a member of the third generation of a family of trappers, guides, and prospectors in Kakwa area. Ian got his fixed wing pilot’s license, floatplane, and helicopter endorsements and became a third partner in CCI Aviation. CCI stood for Charlie Chitwood, Charlie Leake, and Ian Monroe. The CCI camp is at the base of this mountain.

Name adopted in March 1988 as submitted by McBride Chamber of Commerce and BC Parks.

Mile 53 from the north-west, at the backwater SS Operator can be seen on the river
Valemount & Area Museum

James Alexander Walker surveyed the area in 1914:

From Mile 53 — this mileage is reckoned from the Summit at Yellowhead Pass along the railway — the [Fraser] river is navigable in high water as far as Soda Creek, a distance of nearly 500 miles. The Fraser has proved to be invaluable to the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, despite the fact that so many lives and so much property have been lost in its waters. These accidents have happened mostly through carelessness and ignorance. The chief obstacles to navigation are due to the existence of shifting sand and gravel bars, the Goat Rapids, the Grand Canyon, and the Giscome Rapids, all above Fort George. High water minimizes this danger for the larger craft, but presents sometimes greater dangers for the smaller ones.…

Construction of the GTP from the east suffered several delays. Encouragement was given the company by the McBride government of BC, in the form of an exemption from the payment of taxes for ten years, but it was 1912 before the steel reached the eastern boundary of BC. By the end of 1912 it had reached Mile 53 within the province. The work was continued apace during 1913 and reached Prince George by the end of that year.

Mile 53 was the slightly more sophisticated area of Tête Jaune. Nicknamed “Snob Hill” by the workers living in the tent town one mile away, Mile 53 was home to the engineers, magistrate, surveyors and the bosses. Mile 53 was also the site of both the Siems Carey and Foley, Welsh, and Stewart’s wharves and warehouses. The two companies had sternwheelers which competed for business carrying supplies down the river. The warehouses beside the river were up to 400 metres long. A forest fire destroyed all the houses at Mile 53 in 1916, after Tête Jaune had become a deserted ghost town.


Named in 1924 by climbing party of Allen Carpé [1894–1932] and Rollin Thomas Chamberlin [1881–1948], in association with the nearby mountain and pass that they proposed be named Mount David Thompson and David Glacier, in the mistaken belief that the pass was the true source of the North Thompson River.

John Memeno, the last Cree Indian to remember James Evans, with church leaders at Norway House, Manitoba, 1925. Chown at the right.
United Church of Canada Archives

Mount Chown was named for Samuel Dwight Chown [1853–1933] of Winnipeg, Manitoba, a general superintendent of the Methodist Church, and one of the founders of the United Church of Canada. The United Church was formed in 1912 due to the needs of hundreds of small prairie towns where it was impractical to have 3 or 4 separate churches. The peak was named by H.A. Stevens in 1912.

This mountain is called “Mammoth Mt.” on J. Norman Collie’s 1910-11 map and on the “Preliminary Map of the Canadian Rocky Mountains between Jarvis Pass and Yellowhead Pass” (Bull. Amer. Geog. Soc. Vol. XLVII, No. 7, 1915), showing the route followed by Mary L. Jobe in August 1914, with guide Donald Phillips.

Both maps shows the Holmes River as “Beaver River.”

Twins Arthur John Cochrane [1891-1941] and Thomas Walter Cochrane [1891-1967] arrived in the area in 1911 to work on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway around McBride. The brothers homesteaded in the Robson valley, and worked with Donald “Curly” Phillips [1884–1938] and Roy Frederick Hargreaves [1891–1971] at Mount Robson and Berg Lake, respectively. (Biography supplied by daughter-in-law Ishbel Cochrane).

Informal name used by mountaineers to refer to the range at the head of the McLennan River, also called the Cariboo Range (of the Cariboo Mountains). Neither “Cariboo Range” nor “McLennan Range” are official names.

Quoting an article in the October 31, 1861, British Colonist about Alfred C. Perry, Munday wrote, “This may be the earliest record of exploration in what is now officially the McLennan Range, but as all early references are to the Cariboo Range that term will be used here.”

Thorington wrote, “Cariboo Range. This range is now officially the McLennan Range. The first crossing was made in 1947 by R. T. Zillmer and his son, from Tête Creek to Canoe River, thence to the N. Thompson and out to Gosnell.”

Zillmer responded that there was no official change of the Cariboo Range to the McLennan Range, a name he used for “that higher portion of the Cariboo Range which is E. of the Raush River and the headwaters of the Azure River, and E. and N. of the North Thompson River.”

Ray Zillmer [1887–1960] wrote of his exploration of the source of the North Thompson River:

It was my purpose [in 1939] to travel up the Thompson Valley to its source, explore its source, determine its relation to the Raush, and cross the range, if possible, going out by way of the Canoe River.…

We had two other alternatives. One was to climb the moun­tain E. of where we then stood, by following a ridge alongside and S. of a creek that came into the Thompson a little N. of us, named Blackstone Creek by Miss Frye. Above timberline we would get to a large icefield which fed this creek and which we called Blackstone Glacier.

Ella Frye was a trapper on the North Thompson for many years.