In the earliest references to this location, it was called “Wolverine Pass.” Named in association with Carcajou Creek.

The name appears as “Wolverine Pass” on the 1915 map North and West of Robson by Donald “Curly” Phillips [1884–1938].

“Nearly midway between Bess Pass and Robson Pass is a pass of the watershed which is locally known as Wolverine Pass, noted
Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] during the 1924 Alberta-British Columbia Boundary Commission survey. “There is another Wolverine Pass in a more southerly part of the Canadian Rockies, so the pass under discussion is here referred to as Carcajou Pass, a synonym for Wolverine.”

Pertaining to passes on the Great Divide, Wheeler wrote, “North of Mount Robson are a number of passes …. Of these Carcajou Pass, 5120 feet in altitude, originally named Wolverine Pass, but changed on account of duplication, is most striking. Its summit is a broad swamp, numerous channels carrying off the glacial outflow of the magnificent ice-bound cirque below Mt. Phillips. Here, half a dozen icefalls sent their masses down in wildest confusion.”

The word carcajou was used by the French in North America, and is apparently of Indian origin. “The fur hunter’s greatest enemy is the wolverine or carcajou,” wrote Milton and Cheadle in 1863.