Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, Tête Jaune to Prince George, 1914
Showing passenger schedules, miles from Winnipeg, and altitudes.
Highway 5 is a 543 km (337 mi) north–south route in southern British Columbia, Canada. Highway 5 connects the southern Trans-Canada route (Highway 1) with the northern Trans-Canada/Yellowhead route (Highway 16), providing the shortest land connection between Vancouver and Edmonton. Despite the entire route being signed as part of the Yellowhead Highway, the portion of Highway 5 south of Kamloops is also known as the Coquihalla Highway while the northern portion is known as the Southern Yellowhead Highway.
Highway 16 is a highway in British Columbia, Canada. It is an important section of the Yellowhead Highway, a part of the Trans-Canada Highway that runs across Western Canada. The highway closely follows the path of the northern B.C. alignment of the Canadian National Railway. The number “16” was first given to the highway in 1941, and originally, the route that the highway took was more to the north of today’s highway, and it was not as long as it is now.
The highway, named for the Yellowhead Pass, is a major interprovincial route in Western Canada that runs from Winnipeg to Graham Island off the coast of British Columbia via Saskatoon and Edmonton. It stretches across the four western Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
The Yellowhead Highway is part of the Trans-Canada Highway system and the larger National Highway System, but should not be confused with the more southerly, originally-designated Trans-Canada Highway. The highway was officially opened in 1970. Beginning in 1990, the green and white Trans-Canada logo was used to designate the roadway.
The main Yellowhead Highway has been designated as Highway 16 for its entire length since 1977. Prior to this, only the Alberta and British Columbia portions of the highway were designated with this number.
A spur of the Yellowhead Highway, Highway 5, also known as the Southern Yellowhead Highway, connects the main highway at Tête Jaune Cache midway between the Alberta-British Columbia border and Prince George. The highway continues past Kamloops before following the Coquihalla Highway to Hope. Unlike Highway 16, route 5 is not branded as being part of the Trans-Canada system and retains the original Yellowhead signage (whereas Highway 16 uses the Trans-Canada Highway logo).
James McEvoy [1862–1935] surveyed the Yellowhead Pass in 1899:
A mile above this [the fourth crossing of the Miette River above the Athabasca], the river-bottom widens and the stream takes a winding course through marshes and meadows, half a mile to a mile wide. Fourteen miles in a straight line from the Athabasca, Derr Creek, the largest tributary of the Miette flows in through three separate mouths. The valley here is wider than elsewhere and the dry open tract of grassy land between the branching mouths of Derr Creek is known as Dominion Prairie. For two miles farther the valley continues wide and flat, a soft marsh marsh occupying the whole width, forcing the traveller to climb along the timber-strewn hillsides and across angular rock-talus at the foot of cliffs. Beyond this the stream again takes a steeper grade and three miles from Dominion Prairie it is crossed for the last time. The Miette is here scarcely one-third the size that it is near its mouth.
Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot [1880–1924], travelling on behalf of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, crossed the Yellowhead Pass in 1910:
The bottom of this narrow defile was so depressing, owing to constriction of outlook, that we pushed forward energetically until we emerged upon Dominion Prairie, which is first an exasperating stretch of marsh, conducive neither to rapid progress nor to the maintenance of good temper, but which afterwards became drier and easier. We hastened through the grass, four or five feet in height, among burned and scorched carcasses of jack pine, to be pulled up by an unexpected obstacle.
According to James White [1863–1928], “Dominion Prairie was probably named by Canadian Pacific engineers. The derivation is obvious.”
Gabriel Franchère [1786–1863] crossed the Athabasca Pass in 1814 with a fur brigade heading east. He wrote:
On the morning of the 19th we skirted the edge of a little lake. We abandoned our small canoe, which was no longer serviceable and in any case Rocky Mountain Fort was not far away, walked along a sandy beach and finally saw smoke from the house; after fording the lake, which at this season was almost dry, we reached the establishment and met Messrs McDonald, Stewart and McKenzie, who had preceded us by only two days. They were busy building a bark canoe to travel to Fort William or Grand Portage.
A Mr. Decoigne had charge of this post, which does not furnish many furs to the Company, whose principal object in founding it was to make it a warehouse for those on the Columbia River or returning from it. Not expecting us to arrive in such numbers, Mr Decoigne had neither enough food nor sufficient bark to allow us to make the two canoes that we needed to carry us. We therefore killed a dog on arrival, and towards evening one very emaciated horse
The editor of the journal, William Kaye Lamb [1904–1999], noted that Franchère’s Rocky Mountain Fort was built in 1813 on the shore of Brûlé Lake by François Decoigne [1767–1861], a clerk in the North West Company. This post later became known as Jasper House. Decoigne had been a clerk in the NWC since 1798.
The Geographic Board of the Department of the Interior published Place-names of Alberta in 1928. They claimed that the Decoigne station on the Canadian National Railway at Yellowhead Pass was named after François Decoigne, “yellow-haired trapper, after whom the Yellowhead Pass is named.”
Bohi remarks that Decoigne was previously known as Mount Cavell and Geikie.
Morrison Parsons Bridgland
Alberta’s Land Surveying History
Named by Charles Bruce Sissons [1879–1965] in 1923 after Morrison Parsons Bridgland [1878–1948], a Dominion Land Surveyor who named many peaks in Jasper National Park of Canada and the Canadian Rockies. A founding member of the Alpine Club of Canada, Bridgland was chief mountaineer in early Club camps. In the Club’s list of members in 1907, his residence is listed as Calgary and his affiliation the Topographical Survey of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, where he was assistant to Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945].
Sir Allan MacNab, 1853
Wikipedia
Named in the 1927 Premier Range proclamation for the Right Honourable Sir Allan Napier MacNab [1798-1862], joint Premier of Upper Canada (coalition government with Robert Borden) fro 1854 to 1856.
MacNab opposed the reform movement in Upper Canada that was led by William Lyon Mackenzie. When Mackenzie led the Upper Canada Rebellion in 1837, MacNab was part of the force of British regular troops and Upper Canada militia that moved against Mackenzie at Montgomery’s Tavern in Toronto on 7 December, dispersing Mackenzie’s rebels in less than an hour. On 29 December, MacNab and Captain Andrew Drew, of the Royal Navy, commanding a party of militia, acting on information and guidance from Alexander McLeod, attacked Mackenzie’s supply ship at Navy Island. The sinking of the SS Caroline became known as the Caroline affair.
MacNab then led a militia of his own against the rebels marching towards Toronto from London, led by Charles Duncombe. Duncombe’s men also dispersed when they learned that MacNab was waiting for them.
In 1838, Macnab was knighted for his zeal in suppressing the rebellion.
Louis Stephen St. Laurent PC CC QC (Saint-Laurent or St-Laurent in French, baptized Louis-Étienne St-Laurent)
Wikipedia
“Mount Louis St-Laurent” was named in 1964 after the Right Honourable Louis St-Laurent (1882-1973), Canada’s sixteenth prime minister, 1948-57. The designation was in keeping with Premier Range protocols, established in 1927.
“St-Laurent” is how the Prime Minister wrote his family name, not “St. Laurent” as frequently seen.
Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie [1764–1820] travelled the river in 1798 the hope it would lead to the Pacific Ocean, but instead reached its mouth on the Arctic Ocean on 14 July 1789. There is a story, likely apocryphal, that he named it “Disappointment River”, but eventually it was named after him.
Mackenzie was also the first European to cross North America north of Mexico. In 1793 the North West Company of Montréal approved Mackenzie’s plan to search for a route to the Pacific Ocean to facilitate the fur trade. Starting in northern Alberta, Mackenzie led a company up the Peace River. They crossed from the Arctic watershed to the Pacific over an unnamed pass that led to the Fraser River, which Mackenzie assumed to be the Columbia River, the Fraser then but little known. South of the big bend in the Fraser, the party headed west over land and reached salt water. Mackenzie concluded that the route was impractical.
“Mackenzie River / Fleuve Mackenzie” is among the 75 “Pan-Canadian names,” large and well-known Canadian features and areas designated in Treasury Board Circular 1983-58 to require presentation in both official languages of Canada on federal maps. In French, a fleuve is a river that flows into an ocean or sea.