Murphy Orlando Shewchuk is a Canadian writer. He is a past National President of the Canadian Authors Association. He currently resides in Merritt, BC.
Kamloops is a city in south-central British Columbia, Canada, at the confluence of the two branches of the Thompson River and east of Kamloops Lake. It is located in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, whose district offices are based here. The surrounding region is more commonly referred to as the Thompson Country.
Events from the year 1858 in Canada.
British Columbia gold rushes were important episodes in the history and settlement of European, Canadian and Chinese peoples in western Canada.
In 1865, James Todd (1832–1925) and his family established a ranch south-east of Kamloops, British Columbia. He and Lew Campbell could be considered the first settlers of Barnhartvale, British Columbia.
Lewis Campbell (1831–1910) was a pioneer rancher in the Kamloops area of western Canada. Campbell and James Todd were the first settlers in what is now Barnhartvale, British Columbia.
Heffley Creek is a neighbourhood of Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada along the Yellowhead Highway. The city's northernmost community, it is bordered by the Thompson River to the west, Sun Peaks to the east, Rayleigh to the south, and Vinsulla to the north. It contains a general store, community hall and elementary school. Along with the Rayleigh neighborhood, it is physically separated from the rest of Kamloops by the Thompson River and by the Kamloops Indian Reserve; one must leave the city limits of Kamloops in order to travel from Heffley Creek/Rayleigh to the rest of the city.
The Dewdney Trail is a 720 km (450 mi) trail in British Columbia, Canada that served as a major thoroughfare in mid-19th century British Columbia. The trail was a critical factor in the development and strengthening of the newly established British Colony of British Columbia, tying together mining camps and small towns that were springing up along the route during the gold rush era prior to the colony's joining Canadian Confederation in 1871. The route's importance and urgency was prompted because many new gold finds were occurring at locations near the US border that were much more easily accessed from Washington Territory than via any practicable route from the barely settled parts of the Lower Mainland and Cariboo. Today, approximately 80 percent of the former trail has been incorporated into the Crowsnest Highway.
Nicola, also Nkwala or N'kwala, was an important First Nations political figure in the fur trade era of the British Columbia Interior as well as into the colonial period (1858–1871). He was grand chief of the Okanagan people and chief of the Nicola Valley peoples, an alliance of Nlaka'pamux and Okanagans and the surviving Nicola Athapaskans, and also of the Kamloops Band of the Shuswap people.
The Rock Creek Gold Rush was a gold rush in the Boundary Country region of the Colony of British Columbia. The rush was touched off in 1859 when two US soldiers were driven across the border to escape pursuing Indians and chanced on gold only three miles into British territory, on the banks of the Kettle River where it is met by Rock Creek, and both streams turn east to where in times since developed the city of Grand Forks. The first claim was filed by an Adam Beam in 1860, and the rush was on, composed mostly of Americans and some Chinese, all of whom had come overland from other workings, either at Colville or Oregon or all the way from California.
The Big Bend Gold Rush was a gold rush in the Big Bend Country of the Colony of British Columbia in the mid-1860s.
The Queen Charlottes Gold Rush was a gold rush in southern Haida Gwaii of what is now the North Coast of British Columbia, Canada, in 1851.
The Hudson's Bay Brigade Trail, sometimes referred to simply as the Brigade Trail, refers to one of two routes used by Hudson's Bay Company fur traders to transport furs, goods and supplies between coastal and Columbia District headquarters at Fort Vancouver and those in New Caledonia and also in Rupert's Land. Importantly the route was that used by the annual "Hudson's Bay Express", a shipment of the company books and profits to company headquarters.
Dalles des Morts, also known as Death Rapids in English, was a famously violent stretch of the Columbia River upstream from Revelstoke, British Columbia, Canada, now submerged beneath the waters of the Lake Revelstoke Reservoir.
Donald McLean, also known as Samadlin, a First Nations adaptation of Sieur McLean, was a Scottish fur trader and explorer for the Hudson's Bay Company and who later became a cattle rancher near Cache Creek in British Columbia's Thompson Country. McLean was the last casualty of the Chilcotin War of 1864 and the father of outlaw and renegade Allan McLean, leader of the "Wild McLean Boys" gang.
Mark Sweeten Wade was a medical doctor and noted historian of early British Columbia history. A doctor at the Kamloops Home for Men in the 1920s, he was able to interview many veterans of the province's early gold rush, including many of the more famous names in the history of the Cariboo Road, the Cariboo Gold Rush and the Overlanders of 1862 led by Thomas McMicking. He also wrote on medical legislation and hospital policy in the province of British Columbia as well as a biography of explorer Alexander Mackenzie. His works have served as an important source of biographical and historical detail by later historians.
William Alexander Mouat was a British seafarer. Born in London, he spent much of his career with the Hudson's Bay Company in British Columbia on the west coast of Canada. He became master of several merchant ships including the Otter and the Labouchere. His last posting was at Fort Rupert where he died in a canoe accident. He was married to Mary Ann Ainsley and they had eight children.
William Charles was a Pacific coast pioneer, Hudson's Bay Company factor, and a prominent figure in the early history of British Columbia.
Joseph William McKay (Mackay) was a fur trader, businessman, politician and explorer who had a long career in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada.
The history of Chinese Canadians in British Columbia began with the first recorded visit by Chinese people to North America in 1788. Some 30–40 men were employed as shipwrights at Nootka Sound in what is now British Columbia, to build the first European-type vessel in the Pacific Northwest, named the North West America. Large-scale immigration of Chinese began seventy years later with the advent of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858. During the gold rush, settlements of Chinese grew in Victoria and New Westminster and the "capital of the Cariboo" Barkerville and numerous other towns, as well as throughout the colony's interior, where many communities were dominantly Chinese. In the 1880s, Chinese labour was contracted to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. Following this, many Chinese began to move eastward, establishing Chinatowns in several of the larger Canadian cities.
