Giant’s Bath tub, Source of the Smokey [sic]. Mount Robson.
William James Topley, 1914
Library and Archives Canada

Translation of a native name, after smouldering beds of coal in the river banks; in Cree, kas-ka-pi-te; in Stoney swo-da (Joseph Burr Tyrrell [1858–1957]).

The Smoky River originates in the northern area of Jasper National Park from Adolphus Lake. It then flows north east through the Willmore Wilderness Park until it passes near the town of Grande Cache. It continues north, passes through the hamlet of Watino and merges into the Peace River south of the town of Peace River, Alberta.

Perhaps the “Boucanne or Smoke River” referred to by Gabriel Franchère [1786–1863], respecting his voyage through the Athabasca Pass in 1814:

The hunters attached to this post were then absent in the direction of the Boucanne or Smoke River; as far as I could learn it was called by voyageurs who, having seen a volcano belching forth heavy smoke in the nearby mountains gave it this name.

Robson Glacier, Rearguard Mountain and Mount Robson. Smithsonian-Alpine Club of Canada Mount Robson expedition.Photo: Byron Harmon, 1911
Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies

In 1917, while serving in the Canadan Army Medical Corps in France, George R. B. Kinney [1872–1961] wrote to Arthur Hinks, the secretary of the Royal Geographical Society in London, that he would be pleased to deliver a lecture on mountaineering in the Canadian Rockies, illustrated by “100 choice colored lantern slides, second to none (by report), and taken from my own negatives.… Mine are the original photographs taken of these hither to unexplored regions, and names like ‘Berg Lake,’ ‘Tumbling Glacier,’ ‘Robson Glacier,’ ‘Mt. Rearguard,’ ‘the Helmet,’ and ‘the Extinguisher’ that now have a permanency, were my suggestions, while Dr. Coleman gave the name of Lake Kinney on Mt. Robson’s western foot” (1). Kinney delivered the lecture in January 1919, and was subsequently elected a Fellow of the RGS (2).

Kinney had accompanied Arthur Philemon Coleman [1852–1939] and Coleman’s brother Lucius on the first mountaineering expedition to Mount Robson in 1907, when they approached from the Fraser River side and got little further than Kinney Lake. They returned in 1908, guided by Adolphus Moberly [1887– ?] and John Yates [1880– ?], who took them up the Moose River valley and approached Robson from the north. They became the first people to report on Berg Lake, Tumbling Glacier, Robson Glacier, Rearguard Mountain, The Helmet, and Extinguisher Tower, features Kinney named after their appearances.

By walking a hundred yards from our camp into the valley Mount Robson came into view during the rare intervals when the clouds drifted away, disclosing an imposing dome of white rising eight thousand feet above our valley, the lower part banded with courses of rock. Immediately behind our little grove a half-mile of glacier flowed, separating us from the cliffs of the Rearguard, one of the subordinate peaks, which reached a height of about nine thousand feet.

— Coleman (3)

From his vantage on Mumm Peak during the 1911 Alpine Club of Canada–Smithsonian Robson Expedition, Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] described the rugged ridge running from the centre of Mount Robson’s north-east face. “The ridge ends in a semi-detached rock mass, aptly named by Coleman ‘Rearguard.’”

Coleman did not claim to have named Rearguard.

Paleontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott [1850–1927] explored in the Mount Robson area in 1912:

Directly above Blue Glacier a point of rock was named by Dr. Coleman “The Helmet,” and the great black mountain in the center, which he called the “Rearguard,” is now given the Indian name of Iyatunga (Black Rock) (note: name approved by the Geographical Board of Canada, December, 1912) (4)

“Iyatunga” is no longer official. No one seems to have used it except Walcott.

Jasper Park warden Percy Hamilton Goodair (died 1928 at the age of 52) was killed by a grizzly bear and buried near his cabin in the Tonquin Valley. Goodair was an educated Englishman who traveled extensively in South Africa and Australia before coming to Jasper and joining the warden service.

In September 1928, after Goodair failed to contact Parks headquarters for over a week, wardens went in to search. Their dog found Goodair’s snow-covered body lying on a trail near the cabin. He had claw marks on his face and a handkerchief stuffed under his arm in an attempt to stop bleeding from an opened artery.

An attendee who had met Goodair at the 1926 Alpine Club of Canada camp in the Tonquin stated, “So died, where he would have liked to, one of the most delightful and cultivated gentlemen I have known. He was in no sense a climber, although he could mount the hills faster than I care to do; but he had an intense love of the mountains surpassed by no man. You know the setting of his Maccarib Creek Cabin faces towards the Ramparts. Of that glorious outlook he never tired. We spent five nights with him and he would call us our again and again to see the magnificent and ever-changing light effects on the peaks.”

In Goodair’s files was a letter stating, “If anything happens to me I want to be buried in the mountains.” The wardens made a coffin with floor-boards from the cabin veranda. A number of Goodair’s Masonic brothers went in with the doctor and police, who were holding an inquest, and conducted the funeral. “He was one of our best wardens and loved the outside life and disliked the town,” said a Parks report.

The was formerly known as “Warden Peak” in association with Portcullis Peak. After the Goodair, the new name suggested in his memory by the Alpine Club of Canada.