Rainbow's End
By Mike Youds, B.C. Heritage: Revisiting Pioneer Roots on Lac des Roches
Published in Kamloops Daily News, August 27, 2005
“Is this the island?”
As though searching for lost treasure, we kept repeating the question on a short canoe tour of Lac des Roches.
The only treasure we sought, though, was a quiet lakeshore tent site and a little shade to relieve the August heat.
According to the rough map in the backcountry guide there is a cigarshaped island on Lac des Roches. Finding it was not so easy.
A year ago, en route to Williams Lake, we stopped by the picturesque chain of lakes along Highway 24 and pondered their crystal-clear waters as a weekend paddle.
My girlfriend, Pam, was especially moved by the beauty of Lac des Roches. She is a descendant of the MacDonald clan. It was there, in the South Cariboo almost a century ago, that her ancestors homesteaded as the first settlers in the area.
Their story is part of an extraordinary frontier saga chronicled by her greatuncle, the late Ervin Austin MacDonald, in a well-known regional history called The Rainbow Chasers. The late Gordon Gibson Sr., who recorded his early exploits in The Bull of the Woods, said of The Rainbow Chasers, in characteristic hyperbole: “It's a hell of a good story ... It might be even better than mine.”
I'll second that.
First published in 1982 by Douglas & McIntyre, the book was recently reprinted by TouchWood Editions, part of the Heritage Group, as part of their Classics West Collection. I had not read earlier editions, so this new one offered some light summer reading to go along with the canoe trip.
DEVELOPMENT LOOMS
There was an additional motive for our paddle tour, though. Lac des Roches is among a number of Interior lakes flagged by the provincial government for accelerated real estate development. In its wisdom Victoria wants to see a 500-lot subdivision along the lake. This might be an opportunity to revisit roots - whether they be rustic remnants or family memories - that could be overrun in the onslaught.
As it lies, Lac des Roches is hardly a wilderness preserve. There are three resorts on the lake and vacation/retirement homes along roughly half of its northern shore.
Although not as popular a fishing destination as countless neighbouring lakes, it supports populations of Kamloops and Gerard trout as well as burbot. In summer, boaters, water-skiers and tubers frequent the lake, but its 657 hectares, uninhabited southern side and indented shorelines seemed to offer enough opportunity for an overnight getaway.
There is a public access site at the east end of the lake, where the original connection to Little Fort, MacDonald Trail, used to run. A single RV was parked there and we introduced ourselves to Wayne of 100 Mile House. Ten minutes later, as we packed up the canoe, he returned.
“I wanted to properly introduce myself to the great-granddaughter of Archie MacDonald,” he said, revealing his familiarity with local lore.
Who was this man Archie and why does his name still resonate in these parts?
BULL OF THE WOODS
He was born in the Ottawa Valley in 1839, the sixth child in a family of seven sons and six daughters. The family had emigrated to Bytown (later Ottawa) to escape religious restrictions imposed on Catholics in their native Glengarry, Scotland. In Upper Canada the family farmed successfully near Carlsbad Springs and Archie became a lumberjack in the thriving, wild and often violent logging industry of the time.
By age 21 he was a boss, a bull of the woods as they were called, and a local legend for his death-defying ability to break logjams. A tragic rift in the family, however, forced him to leave in pursuit of riches and adventure.
Archie found a little of the former and a lot of the latter, which is what makes this tale of wanderlust such compelling reading. Gold fever was sweeping the western U.S. As he left he told his young brother that he was off to find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. He never returned.
He staked a claim in Colorado and earned grudging respect for his wiliness and sharp-witted sense of self-preservation.
He became known as The Canadian and later teamed up with a fellow Canuck, Big Jim Thompson. The partners prospected around the States and down to Mexico for years.
After a year in Sonora the Canadians figured they'd finally found their rainbow with a promising silver claim. They arrived back at camp one day to find a band of 30 Mexicans showing them the border at gunpoint, effectively quashing their hopes in that country.
They headed north and continued prospecting for several years in Montana and Idaho. There they befriended the Flathead Indians and their chief, Grey Eagle. Grey Eagle took such a shine to Archie - whom he called Canada - that he wanted him to marry his daughter. Still a wanderer, Archie wanted no part of matrimony but realized that just saying no might not be the wisest option. Instead he and Big Jim made a narrow, night-time escape and left that country behind as well.
In the early 1880's, the pair turned to droving cattle from Montana to Revelstoke to feed crews building the CPR. It was while crossing the remote Columbia that Archie suffered his nearest brush with death. This alone is an amazing tale of survival and one of the best parts of the book, so I won't spoil the story.
At this point Archie had been roaming for a quarter century and had not yet started a family or a ranch in Fort Colville, Wash. Aside from the pioneer hardships of the tale, it is this Dickensian nature of the man to constantly reinvent himself that makes The Rainbow Chasers such a remarkable story. After his wife Mary Malinda died in childbirth, he reluctantly gave up his children to an orphanage (not uncommon for widowed fathers in those days), reclaimed them to settle a farm in Alberta, grew weary (at age 68) of Prairie winters and set off - on horseback across the Rockies - with his sons in a continued quest to find the rainbow.
“Boys,” he told his family at breakfast after a particularly fierce winter in March 1907. “I had a dream last night and in it I saw the nicest layout for a ranch that you could ever hope to find. It was on a beautiful lake with open fields sloping down to the shore. I have a hunch we should go have a look for it.”
His hunch eventually led them to what they dubbed Long Lake, or Lac des Roches. They followed the same route as the Overlanders had taken in 1862, the Yellowhead Pass, leading them to Tete Jeune Cache and down the North Thompson River.
AN ISLAND PERCH
“Is this the island?”
It was not the island on the map, but it was definitely a wilderness camping spot. After spending the afternoon circling the lake we settled in for the evening, claiming for our tent the only four square feet on the island that were almost flat.
Considering the modest effort it took to get there, the setting was splendid. Loons did mating dances on the smooth waters. Bald eagles used the craggy pines overhead to hunt for fish. As I lit a campfire, one swooped over, just a metre or two above my head, as though asserting its territory. I could hear the beat of its wings.
From here, the quietest stretch on the lake, we watched the sun set over the hill where Archie and his boys found their rainbow 98 years ago. Publisher Rodger Touchie of Heritage House says the group decided three years ago to publish at least one western classic story a year that had been out of production for some time.
Their hunch with Packhorses to the Pacific proved correct (the book is now in its second reprinting), and he expects the same will be true of The Rainbow Chasers.
“Simply, it's a good read,” he explains. “It portrays the pioneers and the spirit of the people we ultimately believe opened up the West.
“All are biographical and deal with people demonstrating the will that, fundamentally, the West is proud of. In truth, we think those are the types of stories new readers will like to discover.”
“What we are doing, to a degree, is keeping alive a voice we feel is fundamental to our cultural heritage.”
After Archie died in 1929, the ranch was sold and his sons went their separate ways. Their descendants are scattered across the region.
We kidded that he and the boys might join us around the campfire that night, but apart from a roadside plaque there seems to be little evidence left of the lake's first settlers.
Ervin Austin MacDonald, who wrote of his father's endeavours, died in 1986. His book endures as a testament to a way of life that has all but vanished.
Mike Youds is The Daily News' arts and entertainment reporter. He can be reached at myouds@kamloopsnews.ca