His Excellency, The Late Right Honourable The

Lord

G.C.M.G., C.H.,  Governor-

Tweedsmutr,

General of Canada, after whom Tweedsmur Park

is named.

Photo: Courtesy King’s Printer, Victoria, B.C.

shelving beaches of the finest sand, there
are savage rock bluffs, and reedy marshes
where waterfowl breed .. .

There are limitless forests that stretch
from the ice-bound peaks of the Coast
Range to the equally savage heights of
the Canadian Rockies; forests broken
in that five-hundred mile stretch only by
lake or river or alpine highland that rears
too high for forests to exist . .

There are the game trails, the moose
wallows, the salt-licks, the virgin game
country that you have dreamed about,
that you read about in pioneer tales but
always imagined you were a generation
or two too late to see for yourself.

The haunts of the loon, and the marsh-
loving moose . . . they will call you and
once you yield, your yielding will repeat,
and repeat...

“Something hidden. Go and find it.

Go and look behind the Ranges...

Something lost behind the Ranges.

Lost and waiting for you. Go!”

—Kipling.

Tweedsmuir Park is a great triangle
in the rough, the southern tip peering
into the Bella Coola Valley, the western
side following the summit of the Coast
Range until roughly west of Ootsa
Lake, following which the northern side
sweeps in a big crescent eastward and
southward. It is a big territory, fifty-four
hundred (5,400) square miles in extent,
big enough to hold all the wonders we
have mentioned, and more.

Lying on the eastern shoulders of
the Coast Range, the park enjoys the
protection of the huge west walls of

Page Four

rock, the icy fingers of which torture
the moisture-laden clouds from the
Pacific Ocean until they surrender most
of their burden. Then the Cascades use
the alchemy of Nature to change this
moisture into glistening crowns and flow-
ing mantles of ermine . . . and Tweeds-
muir Park is assured, also, of more rain-
less, cloudless days than one would ex-
pect of the district so close to the pre-
cipitation-pregnant Pacific Ocean.

From these lofty shoulders on the west,
with major peaks seven or eight thousand
feet high, the park gradually assumes
an altitude of about twenty-five hundred
feet, with higher plateaus and lower
stream courses.

Apart from the western rampart, the
southern part, nearest the Bella Coola
Valley is the highest, given to glacier-
scraped summits like Thunder Summit,
with glorious timber-line vegetation and
tremendous flower beds; and with always
the savage back-drop of the major and
yet untrod peaks just south of the Bella
Coola Valley.

There you find the little rocky tarns,
the extensive timber-line meadows, the
Rainbow Mountains, the Indian Village
of Ulkatcho where you see the wandering
Carriers at home and where you will see
nature not altogether unspoiled but almost
entirely in the raw.

And across the Bella Coola River to the
south there is the mighty Mystery Falls,
and Cariboo Mountain where you ride
for days above timber-line, gazing across
narrow valleys into mountains of another
geological era, still held in the frigid grip
of the Ice Age.

The southern part of the park is where
the equestrian revels, where his horse is
his companion, his beast ‘of burden, his
mode of transport.

In the northern part the horse takes
second place. Here you are in the land
of lakes and rivers; and< the whine of
powerful out-board motors drowns out

The Honourable Alastair Francis Buchan (Lor

Tweedsmuir) and Assistant Commissioner T.W-!

Parsons (now Commissioner) when His Exce
lency visited the park in August, 1937.

Photo: Courtesy King’s Printer, Victoria, B. (

pack-horse profanity. Here you have th
tremendous circle of Ootsa River, Oots
Lake, Whitesail Lake, FEutsuck Lak
Tetachuck Lake, Euchu Lake and Intat
Lake in a magnificent circle of water
ways, which, with deep bays and tributar
streams, offers three hundred and fit
miles of the most varied and the mo:
delightful water-travel in the country
There is everything from low foreste
shores and sandy beaches in Euchu Lake
and the seven thousand foot mountain
rising sheer from the water at the head
of Whitesail and Eutsuck Lakes.
Partly because this is one of the old
est waterways of the province and partl
because it is a part of the Dominion Gov
ernment Waterways Scheme, the river
are kept free of navigation hazards an
deep channels are marked through swii
water. On the several places where por
tages are necessary between Eutsuc

Eutsuck Lake, Tweedsmuir Park, part of the 350 miles of navigable waterways.
--Photo: Copyright, Clifford R. Kopas, Bella Coola, B.C:

THE SHOULDER STRA