Sleuthing on the Trail of Stone, Part 1 of 3 Destination Disaster – James Hector and the CPR

Imagine yourself as an internationally respected scientist, knighted by Queen Victoria for service to the British Empire, and travelling to Canada as an honoured guest of Canadian Pacific Steamships and Railway (CPR).

How might it have felt to be fêted en route, greeted by officials, photographed and quoted, all for an accident that wasn’t unusual for your era? What might you do, primed to relive with your accompanying son, the adventures of your youth, when you were his age?

On 7 August 1903, Sir James Hector, recently retired from academic and geological positions in New Zealand, landed in Vancouver, BC, with his 26-year old son Douglas, intending to show the young man the Rocky Mountains and to point out places of his exploits as a young explorer in those shining ranges.

The CPR had arranged everything for a public relations extravaganza. But within days it all became death and dissolution.

He also hoped to visit Peter Erasmus, an old Métis friend whom he hadn’t seen in over four decades. The CPR had arranged everything for a public relations extravaganza. But within days it all became death and dissolution. The beloved son died, the celebrations were cancelled, and Sir Hector never saw Erasmus at all. He immediately returned home, soon to die himself in sharply declining health.

Apart from a few place names in the Rockies and two stone monuments, his sad tale has been largely forgotten. Through this account, may he be re-established in his due place.

Landmarks remaining include the former Hector railway siding on the CPR and Mount Hector with its nearby lake in Alberta. Lost to common knowledge are two granite monuments; a small obelisk sited in an encroaching forest on the Great Divide, and a coffin-shaped stone lying in Mountain View Cemetery at Revelstoke, BC. All, including the stones’ source quarry, are inextricably linked by the Fraser Canyon, the CPR, and this author’s masonry research.

Sir Hector’s visit had been initiated by letter from CPR President Thomas Shaughnessy (later addressed as Sir himself) to Sir James in the spring of 1903, proposing that Hector retrace some of the route of his early exploring party and meet another foreign guest, with the expectation that they would find appreciative audiences and significant media attention regarding their accomplishments. Unknown to Shaughnessy was that, at home, his foremost guest was overdue for retirement and being criticized for such, despite an illustrious career¹.

The other invitee was Englishman Edward Whymper, a similarly aging, though still-famous mountaineer and scientist in his own right. He came to fame in 1865 with the first successful ascent of the Matterhorn in the European Alps, though his grand effort was immediately overshadowed by the falling deaths of four companions on the dangerous descent.

The simultaneous triumph and tragedy of his accomplishment catapulted Whymper into international fame for the rest of his life.

The simultaneous triumph and tragedy of his accomplishment catapulted Whymper into international fame for the rest of his life. He subsequently made a living through writing, artistic illustration, and public speaking about his various expeditions.

He continued to pursue foreign climbing and conducted experiments on altitude sickness. Whymper’s career never escaped the shadow of this tragic climb.

Whymper was already in British Columbia when the Hectors arrived. His assignment with the Canadian Pacific was more comprehensive than that of his senior acquaintance. For the previous two years, Whymper had been under contract as a consultant to the railway, which hoped that his writing and speaking would boost tourism at their four luxury hotels in the western mountains, all situated in spectacularly scenic areas.

Mountaineering was more popular in those days than it is now, both in Europe and North America, and Canadian summits were de rigueur among the international elite. Even 18 years after the railway’s completion, first ascents still awaited wealthy and refined ‘explorers’ during the time of this story, in 1903.

Decades before, James Hector was engaged by the 1857-60 British North America Exploring Expedition (more easily named for its leader Captain John Palliser, as the Palliser Expedition), commissioned in Britain to explore, map, and scientifically document lands west of Lake Superior and to the north of the still-informal 49th parallel border, and east of the Columbia River.

As The Canadian Encyclopedia explains, “The explorers amassed astronomical, meteorological, geological and magnetic data, and described the country, its fauna and flora, its inhabitants and its ‘capabilities’ for settlement and transportation.”

A railway through it hadn’t yet even been conceived, but one of six passes those explorers traversed through the Rockies was eventually chosen by the CPR in 1883. It marks the Great Divide of waters flowing east to Hudson Bay and those flowing to the Pacific.

Dr Hector, the team’s young geologist and surgeon, was kicked senseless by a horse...

Alongside that river’s watershed, Dr Hector, the team’s young geologist and surgeon, was kicked senseless by a horse which was damned tired and fed up after weeks of hauling somebody else’s breakfast over horrific routes while required to forgo its own Wheaties. Hector lived to tell the tale, and probably earned more than a few beers to encourage his tale.

His party was in the process of swimming its pack train across a glacier-fed river above Wapta Falls, a frightful white drop of 60 feet. Hector wrote:

No one kept a timepiece on the patient, and the confused records today show Hector was unconscious anywhere from two to six hours. Evidently he gave no sign of movement, breath, or heartbeat, but also likely was that his companions didn’t know how to properly assess their inert leader (Hector’s group was on a side-assignment for their captain, Palliser).

When Hector revived, he must have been disconcerted by the shallow grave open nearby because erroneous live burial was a peculiarly Victorian horror. Meanwhile, Hector’s dedicated men had been yanked emotionally from the chaos of scattering horses, to sudden death by an excited beast, then to the miracle of resurrection.

Decades later this site carries the name Kicking Horse River.

The good doctor was too pained to open his own medicine chest, so gave instructions to prepare a reliever on his behalf. Still rattled by events, Erasmus wouldn’t do so until Hector signed a waiver declaring that his friend was acting under his specific direction and was not responsible for any mortiferous reaction!

Decades later this site carries the name Kicking Horse River. Days later, their starving, bedraggled party was barely able to hobble its way over the pass which was headwaters of the Kicking Horse, also called the Great Divide. This route too, became the later salvation of the CPR and a topic of this article.

A small audience surrounded the grand old man in the cosy lobby of Glacier House, the CPR hotel near the summit of Rogers Pass in the Selkirk Range. He had arrived that afternoon on the Pacific Express with son Douglas, and was warmly welcomed by Mrs Julia Young, the manageress much beloved by guests and employees alike.

Another guest present was Mrs Mary Schäffer, artist, author, and mountain woman. Although from Philadelphia, she knew the Kicking Horse legend and paid the venerable gentleman close attention. In time, she developed into an historian and explorer in her own right.

Sir Hector [...] virtually ignored the growing complaints of Douglas...

Sir Hector was in his glory. So much so that he virtually ignored the growing complaints of Douglas, who had been suffering pain since disembarking in Vancouver. Dr. Hector had trained as a surgeon, but that was briefly in his youth, and he had since been employed in geologic and administrative matters most of his career. So he wisely asked another doctor present, Charles Schäffer, husband of Mary, for his opinion. But Dr Schäffer was an ophthalmologist!

Nevertheless, he diagnosed appendicitis and recommended immediate removal to Revelstoke, the nearest medical facility—44 miles distant by rail. Hector dithered, but abruptly in the night caught a westbound freight, gaining passage in the caboose for himself and his heir.

Douglas’s swollen appendix ruptured before his operation. The procedure provided temporary relief from pressure, but infecting bacteria escaped into his abdominal cavity and multiplied.

He died the next day.

This was prior to the discovery and use of antibiotics. Hector the senior was now taken under the kindly wings of CPR superintendent Thomas Kilpatrick and his new wife Elsie, recently matron of Revelstoke’s Queen Victoria Cottage Hospital where Douglas had been admitted.

Sir Hector telegraphed those he knew at Glacier House: 24 hours too late. We could not save him.

Mary Schäffer was stunned as she read the terse statement.

After the Hectors had left Glacier, Edward Whymper arrived on the Atlantic Express. He had been tracking the progress of the famed man through newspaper accounts, and was scheduled to meet him later. But as he was in nearby Donald at the time, suffering rainy weather, lack of beer, and a badly infected foot, he decided to meet Hector early. Dr Schäffer, also a stranger, was again called to examine a body part outside his specialty (eye conditions).

He had infected and swollen feet from walking the track all the way from Field...

His advice: keep off your feet, which was the obvious thing to say because Whymper’s boots no longer fit. He had infected and swollen feet from walking the track all the way from Field in a strange self-orientation to mountain scenery along the line.

His ‘research’ didn’t generate any ideas useful to the CPR, but they kept him on for another season, probably hoping he would produce a magazine article or two promoting tourism to the area. Nope—as implied earlier, Whymper was notorious for his dismissal of people he deemed of inferior status. He never produced anything worth the investment that the company made in him. This must have irked Thomas Shaughnessy, known as a notorious penny-pincher. In his daily journal, Whymper wrote:

Five mourners from Glacier House now crammed into yet another caboose, but their train was delayed and painfully slow. Near Illecillewaet, a sudden stop threw one of the ladies, a Mrs Gleason, forward through the cupola window, and more blood was shed. Screaming, she was lifted down and dabbed with handkerchiefs. Whymper was unsympathetic, writing:

Finally they walked to the Kilpatrick home where the body was lying and joined the funeral cortege. Whymper mentions being introduced to a Mr McArthur (looked much younger than I should have supposed), a government surveyor engaged in a big project at that time, defining the tangent of the 49th parallel. His attendance was probably simple coincidence, but he may have been invited as one who could tell Hector about his current project, still incomplete since the latter’s 1858 visit!

Sir Hector and Whymper were previously known to one another by reputation and correspondence only. Whymper wrote in his daily journal:

CPR officials tried to turn Sir James’s course as well, but he was impenitent. His spirit was crushed and he knew he was now unable to perform for the benefit of the company, no matter how much they appeared to make it all about him. After a final series of somber photographs at the CPR hotel above the Revelstoke station, the mournful group bid farewell.

One might imagine the CPR had some plaque, some aesthetic erection, ready to unveil when Hector would have reached Kicking Horse Pass. A few years after, they were stopping summer passenger trains at the Great Divide to view this natural wonder.

Was the original publicity to have been no more than a handshake across a forking stream, or a few photographs? Unfortunately no record remains of what was intended, or taken away. Shaughnessy’s shiny idea had tarnished, and thought too sad an irony to carry forward, perhaps. Best buried under a rock.

Admirers of Sir Hector didn’t let that happen. Even before 1903 was out, the Schäffers began advocating for a memorial of some kind, and allied with powerful personality Arthur O Wheeler, a Canadian government surveyor and future founder of the Alpine Club of Canada. Their desire included a gravestone for Douglas as well. It took three more years, and a measly $50 cheque from Shaughnessy, before sufficient funds were raised. A stonemason was hired to carve and install both blocks. Superintendent Kilpatrick provided the stone. It wasn’t his own, but he knew a suitable quarry and arranged for its transportation.

The source of these stones has always been a question. Parks Canada has no records, despite long providing interpretation for this site (lying between Yoho and Banff National Parks). The scholarly journal Alberta History thoroughly examined these details in 2002, but couldn’t determine any source other than “in the Cascade Range.” Wheeler indicated it came from a former Rocky Mountains Park.⁷ Neither is correct.

I, the author, am both a scientist and a stonemason. My research for this article led to an overgrown quarry alongside a former CPR siding in the Fraser Canyon. It’s located in BC’s Coast Range, and is within the CP subdivision called Cascade. The locale was an industrial stone source first mined during the days of construction by contractor Andrew Onderdonk, and some of that stone is still in active use on the mainline today.

In two articles subsequent to this, I will discuss how crystalline analysis confirmed this quarry, how engineering of the Victorian era is still relevant today, and how this source of commemorative stone was put to use in other structures for the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Sir James Hector wasn’t Canadian, and perhaps this explains some of the poor recognition of his name in this country. He was already being forgotten when American Mary Schäffer revived his deeds after meeting him. She then privately took on publicity in heartfelt empathy with her hero’s loss.

Today the CPR has forgotten his contribution to its success, but outdoor adventurers and rail historians can still wend the routes of his exploits using this article.

Loss of historical memory is an unfortunate part of our current era, but nor did Capt Palliser’s final report provide hope for future route finders. Palliser, as senior author, felt that passage through the Canadian Shield, as well as the western cordillera, was too onerous and that any railway would have to utilize American territory. This was even before that country’s 1869 completion of their own transcontinental road.

Hector left indelible marks on the landscape and in scientific knowledge of three countries. He was buried in 1907 in Lower Hutt, near Wellington, New Zealand, where he spent all of his married life, and is still respected for his advancement of that country. They, like some of us here in Canada’s west, remember him yet. Please consider a trip to the two monuments described as a way of making history come alive in a personal way.

1. “James Hector.” Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hector, as accessed 12 December 2020.
2. Lakustra, Ernie. The Intrepid Explorer: James Hector’s Explorations in the Canadian Rockies, Fifth House Ltd (Calgary, Alberta 2007): pages 91-92.
3. Erasmus, Peter. Buffalo Days and Nights, (Glenbow-Alberta Institute, 1976): page 77. The book was ghostwritten and first published 45 years after the author’s 1931 death.
4. Schäffer, Mary S “Sir James Hector” Rod and Gun in Canada, vol. 5, #8 (January 1904): pages 416-418.
5. Ibid.
6. All Whymper quotes herein from pages 83-85 of his notebooks held in the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff, Alberta.
7. Lampard, Dr Robert. “The Hector memorials of 1906: tributes to Sir James Hector and Douglas Hector,” Alberta History, vol. 50, #4 (Autumn 2002): page 2.