Joseph William Mckay by Fraser Greg N.;

Author:Fraser, Greg N.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Heritage House
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

11

TRAILS AND TRAVEL

IN THE FIVE years that Joseph McKay spent at Fort Kamloops, he built the HBC’s retail business, supplying Europeans, Chinese people, and First Nations peoples with mining equipment and food supplies in exchange for gold, money, and furs. He also supervised the move of Fort Kamloops to its new location.

There is evidence that in 1859 McKay assisted Captain John Palliser, of the famous Palliser Expedition (1857–59) that was attempting to find an all-Canadian route through the mountains. Jean Webber notes in her article on fur trade posts in the Okanagan and Similkameen that “when Palliser explored up the Pend d’Oreille valley searching for a route through the Selkirks, he was accompanied by Joseph McKay of Fort Shepherd and that route was used by the Hudson’s Bay Company from then on.”1

In October 1864, while on one of his frequent visits to HBC headquarters in Victoria, McKay reported to the British Colonist:

The Kootanais Mines: Mr. McKay, agent of the Hudson Bay Company, arrived from the Kootanais country last week. He states that there are about 5000 people in there now and that provisions are being rushed in from the Dalles. Mr. McKay speaks in the highest terms both of the mines and the general character of that section of the country; and, as an evidence of the confidence the company he represents feels in these diggings, he has left in company with Dr. Tolmie to make immediate arrangements for transferring the Fort Shepherd establishment to the scene of this new and unprecedented excitement.2

A month later McKay went from Fort Kamloops to Victoria again, and again spoke to the Colonist.

The Kootenay Country: Mr. J.W. McKay, Hudson Bay Company’s agent in charge at Fort Kamloops, came down from British Columbia by the Enterprise on Saturday night. Mr. McKay has been engaged during the summer in constructing a TRAIL from Sooyoos [Osoyoos] Lake to Fort Shepherd, the Company’s new station on the Columbia river, just north of the 49th parallel. The total length of the trail is from 90 to 100 miles, and for the greater part of the way it runs through an open level country. . .

THE MINES

Mr. McKay saw numbers of miners passing Kamloops on their way to the mines, but the majority of them would probably winter at Colville, being too late for the mining season of Kootenay. Great confidence is felt in the mines by the residents in the upper country.3

In 1865 the developing trail, named for Edgar Dewdney, the surveyor and engineer who was responsible for building it,4 was extended east to gain access to Wild Horse Creek and the area around what is now Fort Steele. The original miners’ settlement, Fisherville, was named after Jack Fisher, who had discovered the goldfields. When the miners discovered a large gold deposit right under the town, they immediately took the buildings down! They relocated the settlement and named it Wild Horse after wild horses living nearby.5

The gold excitement in Fisherville/Wild Horse was, like many others, short-lived. By 1866 the peak of the rush was over and most miners had left.

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