Here’s to Rev. Kinney who wouldn’t climb Sundays TETE JAUNE Cache — Breathes there a man with soul so dead he wouldn’t love the Robson Valley where everybody, including the United Church minister who climbed Mount Robson, is just a bit squirrely? Gather around. Hear about this part of B.C. where nobody can ever get anything exactly straisht. Start with the name of this place. Who Tete Jaune was named after is a mystery. People here don’t know any more than they know how to pronounce his name. There were three early fur traders who might have been the original Tete Jaune, but people keen arguing about which was who and writing different things in history books. For a while, this place had an easier name to handle. Ragtown. When the railway builders came through, it was said to be the big- gest tent city in North America. Whisky was smuggled into the construction camp in pig car- casses, which may explain why bootleggers have been called Blind Pigs for almost all this century. Over this little settlement that doesn’t know its daddy looms Mount Robson, a magnificent obelisk of striated rock whose head is usually lost in the clouds where it joins the gods in thinking of large matters. itis the tallest peak in the Ca- nadian Rockies. In early days, people thought it was the tallest in all B.C. One thing ... nobody knows who Mount Robson was named after. A popular view is that it is named after Premier John Rob- son, fearless editor of the New Westminster Columbian who went to jail for slandering Chief Justice Matthew Begbie. He was a good man and no doubt deserved a mountain, but not this one. Mount Robson was named before John was known to anybody except his mummy. The name may commemorate an carly settler named Robinson, his name shortened. Otherwise it probably immortal- izes a different forgotten man, an MP Collins to discuss fed budget MARY COLLINS, Capilano-Howe Sound MP, Associate Minister of Na- tional Defence and the Minister Responsible for the Status of Women, will ad- dress the general meeting of the Capilano-Howe Sound Progressive Conservative riding on March 21. Collins will discuss the federal! budget and the status of the con- stitutional debate. The federal Capilano-Howe Sound riding covers an area roughly west of Mosquito Creek’ in North Vancouver through West Vancouver, Bowen Island, Squamish, Whistler and north up’ to D’arcy. The meeting is scheduled to Start at 10 a.m. at the site of the former taternational Plaza Hotel, 1999 Marine Dr., in North Van- couver. Members of the public are in- vitec to attend. For more information call Hugh McLellan at 986-1757. Paul St. Pierre nie | PAULITICS & PERSPECTIVES early packer in this pass through the Rockies who was kicked in the head by one of his horses and translated to the great mountain pastures of Eternity where packhorses and the profanity that goes with them are not admitted. But these matters are of little consequence when set beside the wondrous oddness of Rev. George B. Kinney, a Maritimer, a man who was determined to climb Robson one way or another, In 1907, Pastor Kinney tried to climb the mountain in the com- pany of the famed Colfeman brothers of Alberta. He distinguished himself as a good pistol shot, collecting grouse for camp meat, but as one of the Colemans said, ‘‘He was at his best when depending on himself.’’ At Robson, as with any high mountain, getting to the top isa gamble with weather. Usually, the peak is hidden in cloud. In 1907 they failed. They came back in 1908, and, after weeks of slogging through the trackless mountain passes, they huddled under Robson for 16 days waiting for a break in the weather. : Quality, Service, Price, Selection, your Satisfaction. LANGLEY Highland Village 4-20556-s0ln Aver - '5-56t' NORTH & WEST 530-6313 MAPLE RIDGE VANCOUVER 833 West Broadway 873-3941 VANCOUVER (amalgamated) 1456 Lonsdale Avenue 987-1611 463-31 On only two consecutive days did the sky clear, and one of those days was the sabbath when Rev. Kinney forbade climbing. They went back to Alberta defeated again and not all that happy with religion. In 1909 Rev. Kinney got word that Englishmen, foreigners, as he called them, were going to try to be first on the summit. Within one week (they didn’t have bureaucracies to arrange such things in 1909), the pastor had put together packhorses and grub and, with $2.84 left in his pockets, set out to conquer Rob- son alone. On the way through the passes he picked up Donald (Curly) Phillips, a man later famed as a mountain guide. Curly Phillips apparently enlisted just for the fun of risking his life. Together, this pair, using a bit of rope, one old ice axe and scarcely anything clse except en- thusiasm, sleeping by night on the mountainside in a hole chipped out of the ice, reached either the top crest or the pinnacle of Rob- son. Fifty years later almost to the month, climbers found a cairn on the top ridge with Kinney’s ac- count of his climb and a Canadian flag. Both were lost in the process of being passed on to the Alpine Club of Canada, which never en- tirely approved of Mr. Kinney because of a suspicion he hadn’t scaled an extra 50 feet of ice to stand on the utmost peak of the mountain. An official Alpine Club party climbed the mountain in 1913 and theirs is the recognized first climb. Only a lake, no mountain, is named Kinney. You and I may prefer the old pastor, who wouldn't climb Sun- days, who had no proper equip- ment, who was lucky to live through it, who died in Victoria in the 1950s. He was a bit off-cen- tre, but that's usual in these parts. Friday, March 20, 1992 ~ North Shore News - 9 HOT STAR} 34% New Mandarin & Szechuan Restaurant Daily Lunch Specials 11:30am - 3:00pm | $4. $50 @ +GST. includes fried rice and soup EAT IN OR TAKE OUT __ FREE DELIVERY for orders over $15.00 ( within * 10% off pick-up order * Open Daily for Lunch & Dinner 11:30a.m. to 10:30p.m. Licensed Premises 986-2088 741 Lonsdale Ave. (7th and Lonsdale) North Vancouver MASTER TUNE-UP | BRAKE & MUFFLER | 4. FREE COURTESY “INSPECTION FOR - ELECTRICAL SYSTEM. 1 2 FREE COURTESY Te ‘COOLANT INSPECTION s, OIL SERVICE - i098 7 bs ee MARINE DAIVE w ALL WORK LIMITED GUARANTEE FOR 1 YEAR WITHOUT VOIDING MANUFACTURER'S WARRANTY. ORIGINAL PARTS OR BETTER. 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