Jim Ross, the Guide of Choice

Jim Ross was born in 1886 in Gray County, Ontario, and at age of 16 was out cutting railroad ties in logging camps. He drifted west, homesteaded in a number of provinces, and by 1926 was getting his mail in Hudson's Hope, and making his living as a trapper.²⁸  He was digging in for the winter on his line at the head of the Sikanni River, when Jack Thomas showed up with his big game hunting show. Thomas had a problem; his crew had quit, and after working their way down a bottle of overproof rum, Ross was convinced to try a new occupation as a guide. It turned out the hunter was a fellow by the name of Colonel Harry Snyder, and he and Ross hit it off right from the start. As the story goes, somewhere on a Sikanni sidehill, Snyder suggested they get in the dude wrangling business, as he could round up the dudes, Ross figured he could put together an outfit and crew, and for the next thirty years, they were on the trail together throughout the north.²⁹

One of their more interesting trips occurred in 1927, when Harry Snyder put together quite a cast of characters. Prentiss Gray was a prominent New York banker and sportsman who was instrumental in developing the Boone and Crockett club's record book system. He had 6 cameras along on this trip, and left an impressive legacy of photos. Gray, along with Frank Dewing from Montana, arrived at Spirit River via the Edmonton, Dunvegan and BC Railway, then over rough roads to Rolla Landing on the Peace, where they accompanied Morris "Mac" McGarvey and the mail boat upriver to Hudson's Hope. Meanwhile Snyder, with Carrol Paul, a retired navy commander from Michigan, and Quebec college student George Bates had been making their way by water down the Peace system with trapper/riverboat man Slim Cowart of Summit Lake. Also along was Elmer Keith, who had hired on as a "Dutch oven" cook, and although he went on to become one of North America's best known gun and hunting writers, the cooking was soon turned over to Joe McFarland, a Hudson's Hope trapper. McFarland as well as having the skills to bake bread on a campfire was also known for his log building skills.

Pete, Joe, and Sam Calliou called Jackfish Lake south of Hudson's Hope home, and were the backbone, of this and many a Jim Ross crew over the years. The 1927 hunt took them south of the Peace into the Wapiti country in search of bighorn sheep, and they harvested some good rams on the head of the Narraway River. They trailed the outfit right through to Dome Creek on the Fraser River, and caught the train at Bend. Prentiss Gray returned for another trip into the area with Jim Ross in 1928, with a primary goal of evaluating the area along the BC/Alberta border for a possible railroad route. Pete and Joe Calliou were back with the crew, along with Billy Taylor and one of the better bronc riders in the country, Johnny Napolean. H.M. Dimsdale, the civil engineer along for the purpose, confirmed it would be feasible to bring a railroad through "Gray Pass" but it was never built.³⁰

Jean McDougall, was the youngest daughter of the former Hudson's Bay factor in Hudson's Hope, and in 1930 married her Lynx Creek neighbour Jim Ross. Over the next few years the couple had four sons (Lynn, Lorne, George, and Norman), but life on a wilderness homestead, with Jim often off on the trapline or guiding had its challenges and the marriage came apart after 8 years. Young Lynn eventually joined his father in the business and went on to establish one of the more successful Northern BC guide outfitting operations.

Snyder lost big in the stock market crash of 1929 and his financial and medical health were poor which prompted a visit to Chicago physician, Dr. Marquardt, who was of course a hunter. The good doctor's prescription was a 90 day hunting trip north into the Sikanni and Prophet River county with Jim Ross, and it worked so well, that Snyder made a point of trying to do a similar trip every fall for the next 25 years.³¹  This kept Ross busy with Snyder parties throughout the 1930s, and as well as the Callious, his crew included local Peace River folks like Al Lamont, Edgar Dopp, Frank Canton, Slim Garbitt and Jack and Don McDougall. Key to any bush crew was the cook, and Ted Boynton, who ran a restaurant in downtown Hudson's Hope when he wasn't on the trail, was one of the best and a mainstay of the Ross crew. Trip planning would often start with Snyder sending a telegram to Ross in Hudson's Hope, which would read something like " Jim my boy, will have two hunters with me... will fly into Deadman Lake on Aug 20 ....meet us there with Pack train and crew... and of course don't forget to bring Ted Boynton along as our cook. Tell Ted to bring plenty of prunes and navy beans. ...Can't hardly wait to get back their into the mountains with you again. Harry." ³²

Snyder had a long association with a number of Natural History museums, and many of his early trips involved collections for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.³³  In the 1930s, he was associated with the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), and helped to sponsor and organize a number of trips into Northern BC, and the Northwest Territories (NWT). In the summer of 1934, assistant curator of the AMNH George Goodwin was with Jim Ross and a Hudson's Hope crew, collecting small mammals in the Halfway River area. Ross and Goodwin then headed north to join the Snyder party in Wood Buffalo Park where they found the bison in the rut and extremely dangerous. The whole crew headed by airplane back to northern BC, where they connected with the Ross packtrain at Kluachesi Lake. They hunted their way down the east slope to Deadman Lake, and then back north for a 2nd (and more successful) try at bison.³⁴  Jim Ross and Ted Boynton were back in the NWT with Snyder and Goodwin again in 1935, this time over to the Thelon River for muskox, and then back west to the Nahanni River in search of the black-tailed Dall sheep. Stan MacMillian of Mackenzie Air service, then picked up the whole crew, including Snyder's daughter Dorothy, and S.J. Sackett from Chicago, and flew them down to Tuchodi Lake in northern BC. Here, Ross's 25 head of pack horses had arrived from Hudson's Hope with guides Slim Garbitt, Joe Calliou and local trapper Bert Sheffield. On the first day of hunting they collected three rams out of a bunch of forty-one located in a high alpine basin west of the lakes. The northernmost native elk herd in North American inhabited the Tuchodi and Gathto River areas, and the party collected eight specimens for the Canadian Museum of Natural History, as well as the AMNH. Bill Forrester, of the BC Game Commission, estimated some 250 animals in the herd, and Snyder made an unsuccessful appeal to the Commission to have the area set aside as a game sanctuary.³⁵  D.A. Feathers headed up another AMNH collecting expedition into the Sikanni/Besa River area in 1936, and Garbitt, Calliou and Boynton were the crew. Ross was also in the area with a second hunting party consisting of an Italian count and his wife. Both outfits were stranded by an early September snow storm which dropped 5 to 7 feet of wet snow.³⁶  Ross and the count, trapped on the west side of the pass were forced to butcher their pack mule, and the wily old trapper fashioned crude snowshoes from the hide, and finally broke a trail out to the east slope, and reunited the count with the countess. The story of the resourcefulness of his Canadian guide, no doubt was recounted many times back in Italy by the thankful count.³⁷

As well as accompanying Snyder, on his many exploits in northern BC and the NWT, in 1943, Ross also found himself as foreman of Snyder's new ranch on the Red Deer River near Sundree, Alberta. Ross was the first foreman, helped get the ranch up and running and of course guided Snyder on hunting trips to the headwaters of the Red Deer and North Saskatchewan Rivers. By the mid 1940s, Ross was back in the north, basing out of Dawson Creek where son Lynn was in school, but also guiding hunters in the Pink Mountain area, or trapping around the Federal Ranch on the Graham River. Lynn Ross, started on the trail with his dad in 1946 at the age of 15. Along with Lynn a number of other young fellows from the Hudson's Hope area including Jim Watson, Don Beattie, and Garry Vince all got their start working for Jim Ross and went on to establish their own successful guiding and outfitting businesses in northern BC. Otto Brady, whose father had homesteaded at the mouth of Cypress Creek, was one of Ross' key guides in the early 1950s. Jim Ross passed away in October of 1962, at Quarter Creek on the upper Halfway River, where he and son Lynn and his wife Ann, had built up a remote wilderness ranch and outfitting headquarters.³⁸

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Footnotes