Tweedsmuir Provincial Park is one of British Columbia’s largest—and oldest—protected areas. Extending from Ootsa Lake to the Bella Coola Valley, it originally encompassed more than 5,400 square miles of wilderness.
Thousands of tourists from around the world have visited the park since its establishment in May 1938. Some of those visitors were wealthy, but few had more celebrity than the park’s namesake.
John Buchan, First Baron of Tweedsmuir, was born on August 26, 1875, in Perth, Scotland. While his family wasn’t poor by any stretch of the imagination—his father was a church minister educated in Edinburgh, his mother the daughter of a Broughton sheep farmer—they were not members of the Scottish aristocracy. Buchan didn’t become Lord Tweedsmuir of Elsfield until King George V appointed him Canada’s fifteenth Governor-General in 1935.
Buchan was a successful writer, historian, diplomat, and politician long before taking up residence at Rideau Hall. A graduate of Oxford University, he worked as a tax lawyer while simultaneously pursuing a career in journalism, then gave both up in 1901 to help Lord Alfred Milner rebuild Britain’s South African colonies after the Boer War.
Upon his return from the “Dark Continent,” Buchan married Susan Grosvenor, the daughter of a well-connected politician, and became a partner in the publishing firm of Thomas Nelson & Son. He served as a journalist and intelligence officer early in the First World War, but by the end of it had become head of Great Britain’s Ministry of Information. Other successes followed, and he entered politics as a Member of Parliament in 1927.
The one constant in Buchan’s life was his love of writing. He was a prolific wordsmith who authored more than fifty books in forty years. While many were works of non-fiction, he also found time to craft thrillers. His most famous novel, The Thirty-nine Steps, was a spy story that Alfred Hitchcock later made into a movie.
Buchan was still writing when he took over as Canada’s Governor-General, but it quickly took a backseat to his new duties as the King’s representative. He was determined not to be the stereotypical Crown appointee; unlike his predecessors, he made himself available to Canadians and toured the country as often as his official duties allowed.
Buchan once described Canada as “a country and a people without much glamour,” but seeing it changed his mind. “There is an immense friendliness in the North,” he wrote later. “It is a true democracy, for there are no distinctions of classes. The trapper is on the same social level as the Hudson’s Bay post-master, or the police sergeant. Everybody is known by his Christian name, and they are all ready to help each other. A man will take enormous pains to get a neighbour out of a difficulty, even though he may not be a particular friend of his. In the face of a harsh Nature human beings seem to have acquired a keener sense of responsibility towards each other.”
While his views on Canada’s social structure may have been naïve, Canadians appreciated them. Perhaps that is why the BC government chose to name its new 5,400-square-mile park after him in 1936.
Buchan was thrilled. “I need not tell you how honored and delighted I am to have your new park named after me,” he wrote in his reply to Premier Pattullo. “I think I should prefer it to be called Tweedsmuir Park as that is the name by which I am formally associated with Canada.”
Within weeks of the announcement, Buchan procured maps of BC’s Central Interior. In August 1937, after a well-publicized trip to the Arctic, he met his wife and youngest son, Alastair, in Edmonton. Then the three of them, accompanied by aides and helpers, boarded a Canadian Pacific Railway train bound for Burns Lake.
The Buchans arrived here at 8:15 a.m. on Saturday, August 14, 1937. The town had a full slate of activities planned, but poor weather intervened and forced the postponement of most events.
It stopped raining long enough at 3 p.m. for the Buchans to leave their train. Wells Gray welcomed them to British Columbia, after which Burns Lake’s three commissioners—D. Deneen, B. A. “Bun” Smith, and A. R. “Andy” Brown—extended the town’s felicitations. Fanny Trousdell, who ran the town bakery while her husband, E. F. Trousdell, painted signs, presented the visitors with a book of views of Burns Lake and District. Little Gertrude Taylor gave Lady Tweedsmuir a bouquet of roses.
Then it was time to tour the hospital on Fourth Avenue.
“Decorated cars were ready to drive His Excellency to the Burns Lake Hospital, but he preferred to walk the few blocks [from the station],” reported the Advance, Burns Lake’s newspaper. “Rev. Frank Busfield escorted the party to and from the hospital, and presented Miss Rhoda M. Campbell, RN, the lady superintendent, to His Excellency. Miss Campbell in turn presented the members of the hospital staff, who conducted the party through the building. Their Excellencies expressed appreciation of this splendid institution, built and operated by the Women’s Missionary Society of the United Church. Lady Tweedsmuir took a keen interest in the patients, especially 12-year-old Raymond Stanyer, who had recently had the misfortune of having his left arm amputated following an accident.”
Stanyer must have made an impression on the visiting dignitaries because Lady Susan went back to the train and got him a copy of The House of the Four Winds, an adventure novel her husband had written in 1935.
Later in the afternoon, the visitors attended a Young Rangers Band meeting at the Burns Lake Community Hall, where they were inducted into the organization as honorary members. “It was the initiation of Lord Tweedsmuir as Grand Honorary Chief Ranger that stole the show,” Jack Long of Palling wrote later. “It became the most important event in the history of the Young Ranger Bands.”
After spending Saturday night in Burns Lake, the Buchans and their entourage—now bolstered by Assistant Superintendent T. W. S. Parsons of the BC Provincial Police, Col. William Josiah Hartley Holmes of the Canadian Armed Forces, two Members of the Legislative Assembly, William “Bill” Saunders of Palling, and a sparrow hawk named “William”—left town on Sunday in five automobiles.
Their journey to Ootsa Lake was a herky-jerky affair. The party stopped several times to greet well-wishers, including a delegation from the Lake Babine Nation that made Lord Tweedsmuir an honorary band member and “Chief of the Big Mountain.”
William “Bill” Gilgan, a forest service employee at the time, was one of the residents charged with making the Buchans feel appreciated during their visit. He laboured for two days in the pouring rain to ensure the Southbank ferry terminal looked suitably festive.
“I was working for the forester at Southbank when Lord Tweedsmuir came through,” Gilgan in a 1987 interview. “We had to meet him at Southbank, and the two days before he arrived, we had to build archways on the head frames on the dock on the Southside. We cut spruce bows and we made these beautiful big spruce arches, and I remember it rained all day for two days there while we were putting those up. We had to work in the rain because he was arriving the next day. Fortunately, he did arrive the next day, and it quit raining and, of course, they were quite impressed with the nice arches we had built.”
Margaret Gardner watched the procession from her home along Francois Lake. “Several cars, escorting the honored visitors, drove right past our house,” she wrote in her book Wooden Sidewalks. “A few people were at the wharf to greet them and Their Excellencies shook hands with everybody, until the ferry landed to take seven or eight cars across Francois Lake. It was not necessary for us to go to the wharf; we could see everything from our porch.”
At Ootsa Landing, after another event and several speeches, the Buchans and their entourage climbed into riverboats for the trip to their base camp on lntata Lake.
A week or two earlier, parties of men and women had worked long hours in the rain to erect a tent city suitable for a Scottish lord and lady. The camp, located on a low promontory named in Lady Susan’s honour, was nicer than some homesteads in the area. There were bathtubs and fine china, camp beds and comfortable chairs.
And plenty of staff. Local women like Margaret Van Tine Carlson, Ruth Trousdell, and Caroline McNeill handled the cooking and domestic chores while their neighbours made sure the Buchans had everything they needed.
“Presently we rounded a corner of the river and on a headland saw a little township of tents, and a flag-pole from which fluttered the Governor-General’s flag. Below, in the small bay, lay four seaplanes looking as innocent as a taxi rank in Piccadilly,” wrote Lady Susan later in an article for National Geographic. “I would like to make my readers believe that we lay under the stars, bitten by mosquitos and black flies, and molested by grizzlies and cougars, but the truth is that our camp, provided by the hospitable British Columbia government, was the last word in comfort. We slept in sleeping bags laid on camp beds, and there was always hot water available; but, as usual in a tent, I at once began to lose everything, and spent much of my time ranging my ‘Mountie’ bag and my ‘sausage’ for lost articles.”
For the next seven days, the Buchans explored BC’s newest park by riverboat, packhorse, and airplane. They followed in the footsteps of Alexander Mackenzie by walking a portion of his famous trail to the coast. Alastair caught fat trout with rainbow scales and crimson mouths, and they all feasted on the wild beauty of Eutsuk Lake.
While Lord Tweedsmuir loved every minute of it, his wife experienced some moments of discomfort. Trail rides made her sore, and the floatplanes gave her vertigo. But these were minor inconveniences, and they didn’t mar what was otherwise an enjoyable trip.
The rains returned after a week of good weather and marooned the distinguished visitors at Point Susan for their final two days in the Lakes District. When the weather cleared, they flew to Bella Coola—but not before thanking everyone who had made their stay memorable.
“Before they left Intata Lake, Their Excellencies shook hands with members of the staff who had worked hard to make their stay at the Intata Lake forestry camp enjoyable,” reported the Ottawa Citizen on August 24, 1937. “The Governor-General presented gifts to Mrs. H. C. McNeil of the cook and dining tent staff, Bill Kerr, camp foreman, and [Game Warden] Dave Roumieu.”
After a couple of days in Bella Coola, the Tweedsmuirs boarded a steamship for Prince Rupert, where they caught the train back to Ottawa.
Lord and Lady Tweedsmuir never forgot their trip into the wilderness south of Ootsa Lake. Memories of that time and place, and the people they encountered on their journey, stayed with them for the rest of their lives.
“I have now travelled over most of the Canada and have seen many wonderful things, but I have seen nothing more beautiful and more wonderful than the great park which British Columbia has done me the honour to call by my name,” John Buchan wrote in 1938. “Its five thousand square miles contain some of the loveliest lakes, rivers, and mountains on the continent; it shows every variety of North American game except the mountain sheep; it provides a happy hunting-ground for the sportsman, the fisherman, the naturalist, and the mountaineer. It is of historic interest, too, for there Alexander Mackenzie completed his great journey to the Pacific. I write these lines to invite Nature lovers to this noble reserve and to assure them that they will not be disappointed.”
Lady Susan echoed his comments. “To those whose heart is in the kind of sport which involves skill and hardihood and loneliness, and who regard wildlife as a sacred thing, and will never divulge the shy secrets of the wilds, the Tweedsmuir Park reserve is like the gift of a fairy godmother,” she told the readers of National Geographic. “It is one of the few remaining earthly paradises for the sportsman and lover of nature. It is largely unexplored, and even unmapped. I hope it will remain remote, though accessible to visitors, and with proper accommodations at a base like Point Susan. I shall always think of it as I saw it last summer and fall, a place exquisite and far away, where life goes on as in the morning of the world.”
John Buchan, First Baron of Tweedsmuir, suffered a stroke while shaving and died in Montreal on February 11, 1940. His body was cremated, and his ashes buried in the Elsfield churchyard near Oxford. Lady Susan also returned to England, where she wrote several books, including a biography of her famous husband.
While Tweedsmuir Park remains much as it was when the Buchans visited eight-five years ago, the country around it has changed greatly.
In the early 1950s, little more than a decade after the vice-regal visit, the Aluminum Company of Canada announced plans to flood Ootsa and six other lakes as part of the Kenney Dam hydroelectric project. Resident Genevieve Blench Barteaux, whose parents homesteaded on Bald Hill, was horrified and wrote to Lady Susan.
“I have received your letter and I cannot tell you how deeply I am in sympathy with all you say [about the Alcan project],” Lady Susan replied on August 24, 1949, from her home in Elsfield. “My husband and I camped on Intata Lake and I shall never forget the beauty and remoteness of Tweedsmuir Park. We fully understood that as it belonged to the Canadian nation it was never to be touched in any way by commerce, and I am heartbroken to hear that there is this project … I have never seen anything so lovely as Tweedsmuir Park and I cannot bear to think of it as being spoilt.”
Despite her fame and good connections, there was nothing Lady Susan could do to stop the project. Today, the idyllic place she and her husband camped in 1937—along with the homes and dreams of a generation—lie deep beneath the waves of Rio Tinto’s Nechako Reservoir.
© 2022 Michael Riis-Christianson and the Lakes District Museum Society
