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209 Dutch Lake Road |
British Columbia Tourism Region : Thompson Okanagan
Description From Owner:
- Dawson Falls after George Herbert Dawson, Surveyor-General of British Columbia 1912-17.
- Dutch Lake - 'Dutch' is a corrupted form of 'Deutsch' and refers to an early German settler.
- Foghorn Mountain - 'Foghorn' seems to have been a popular name for mineral claims there were Foghorn claims here, near Greenwood,
- and near Ymir, and this fact casts doubt on the picturesque local story about a foghorn being used to help sheepherders lost in the mountain mists.
- Helmcken Falls - After Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken (1825-1920), who arrived in Victoria from England in 1850. After a dangerous and arduous assignment to Fort Rupert, he returned to Victoria, where in 1852 he married Cecilia, daughter of Governor Douglas
- Helmcken took an active part in the political life of the young colony as a staunch supporter of his father-in-law. He was a member of the first Legislative Assembly of Vancouver Island in 1855, of which he subsequently served as Speaker.
- After first opposing BC's entry into the Canadian confederation, Dr. Helmcken came around to support it, and he was offered, but declined, a seat in the federal senate. He preferred to devote himself to his family and his medical practice.
- In his memoirs Eric Duncan recalls the shack in the middle of a thoroughfare where 'rough but kindly Dr. Helmcken had his office and surgery, a queer place, crammed with old copies of Blackwood's Magazine. '
- After R.H. Lee, BCLS, discovered these magnificent falls in 1913, he wrote to Premier McBride asking his permission to name them McBride Falls in his honour.
- McBride suggested that Lee 'call the falls you mention after the venerable J.S. Helmcken, whose name I believe has not been connected with anything on the mainland
- and who desires to have his name preserved in the geography of British Columbia for which he has done so much' (quoted in R. Neave, Wells Gray Park, pp. 52-3).
- Hemp Creek - Formerly Little Clearwater River, but now named for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum L.) , out of the stems of which the Indians wove rope and fishing lines.
- Since Indian hemp does not grow here, the name probably derives from a misidentification of the look-alike spreading dogbane (Apocynum androsaemifolium L.)
- Montigny Creek - After Montaigné, a Beaver Indian chief who perished with many of his followers in the flu epidemic of 1919.
- With permission from G.P.V and Helen B. Akrigg 1997 British Columbia Place Names. UBC Press.
Address of this page: http://bc.ruralroutes.com/DawsonFalls
