By 1844, artist-turned-inventor Samuel F. B. Morse had developed a device capable of transmitting electrical signals across vast distances along a metal wire. Known as a telegraph, this ground-breaking technology revolutionized communications, allowing people living thousands of miles apart to 鈥渢alk鈥� to each other in Morse code.

Western Union was the first telegraph company to link the eastern United States and San Francisco. About this time, other forward-thinkers began to see the device鈥檚 potential to connect not just communities, but continents. In July 1858, Cyrus W. Field鈥檚 Atlantic Telegraph Company finally laid the first undersea cable across the Atlantic, and industrialists on both sides of the ocean were confident the endeavour ushered in a new age.

Their optimism proved short-lived because by September, the cable had stopped functioning. Yet others, including American entrepreneur Perry Collins, saw Field鈥檚 initial failure as an opportunity.

During an overseas tour, Collins discovered that Russia was working diligently to extend its telegraph lines eastward from Moscow to Siberia. Upon his return to the United States, he approached Hiram Sibley, head of the Western Union Telegraph Company, with the idea of constructing an overland telegraph line running through the Northwestern United States, the British colony of British Columbia, and Alaska (then Russian territory), across the Bering Strait, and from there to Moscow and the rest of Europe. Sibley warmed to the concept, and together, the two men made plans for the Collins Overland Telegraph.

Collins chose Colonel Charles S. Bulkley, a military man with considerable experience in telegraphy, to supervise the construction. Exploration and construction workers were divided into four groups, with one operating in BC, another in Alaska, and a third exploring around the Amur River in Siberia. The fourth party went to tiny Port Clarence, in Russian Alaska, to construct the line across the Bering Strait.

New Westminster became the telegraph鈥檚 BC terminus, and construction crews began stringing line north along the Cariboo Wagon Road in May of 1865. The onset of winter halted work near Quesnel, but in the spring of 1866, it started northwest toward the Alaska Panhandle. By the end of that year, the line had reached the Bulkley and Kispiox Rivers.

That鈥檚 when fate intervened. In 1866, entrepreneurs laid a second cable across the Atlantic, restoring telegraph service between London and North America and making the Western Union project obsolete.

Collins and Sibley abandoned their ambitious plan to connect North America and Europe by telegraph. In Northern BC, their contractors left behind tools, insulators, spools of wire, and countless broken dreams. Witsuwit鈥檈n people salvaged some of the wire and used it to build the last in a series of bridges that spanned the Bulkley River near Hagwilget.

The Collins Overland Telegraph鈥攚hich cost investors approximately $3 million before work ground to a halt north of Hazelton in February 1867鈥攚as an abject economic failure. However, it did blaze a trail that others could follow through Northern BC.

The discovery of gold along a little-known stream in the Yukon twenty-nine years later created renewed demand for a communications link between Canada鈥檚 Far North and the country鈥檚 urban centres. The result was the Yukon Telegraph, which followed much of the old Collins route before striking northward from Hazelton toward the goldfields around Dawson City.

To house the men needed to keep the telegraph operating, the federal Department of Public Works established stations every thirty or forty miles (38鈥�64 km) along the line. Most of them, including the one built near the present site of Richmond Loop in 亚洲天堂 Lake, were small log structures staffed by two men: an operator and a lineman. Initially, the operator was responsible for monitoring telegraph messages sent up and down the line and repeating them when necessary, while it was the lineman鈥檚 job to keep the telegraph functioning. Later, realizing that isolated stations like the one in 亚洲天堂 Lake generated little revenue, the Yukon Telegraph also made operators responsible for repairing breaks in the line.

It was a hard life. To gain employment with the Yukon Telegraph, operators and linemen had to agree to work a minimum of three years, after which they were eligible for a paid leave of two months. Relief was only granted in exceptional circumstances, and it wasn鈥檛 uncommon for telegraph linemen and operators to see no one else for months at a time. Winters were especially difficult鈥攃ooped inside their tiny cabins for days or weeks, the men quickly grew tired of each other鈥檚 company. Eventually, workplace conflict became so prevalent that the Department of Public Works agreed to build a second cabin at each remote station, so the men could live apart.

The feud between Malcolm McKinlay and George Wallace鈥� two of 亚洲天堂 Lake鈥檚 early telegraph men鈥攊s a testament to what isolation can do to a relationship.

McKinlay (sometimes misspelled 鈥淢cKinley鈥�) hailed from Prince Edward Island. One of twelve children born to Murdoch and Christy Mary McKinlay, Scots from the Isle of Skye who immigrated to PEI in 1841, Malcolm attended Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown and then taught school for a while. It must not have been to his liking, because by the time he was thirty, he was working as a telegraph operator in Emerald, a small, unincorporated community in the middle of the island.

In 1883, after the death of his first wife, Malcolm followed two of his brothers to Alberta. He farmed for a while but remained interested in telegraphy. Within a few years, he was working for the Dominion Telegraph in Edmonton, and later, at Leduc, where he served as the station鈥檚 first operator. According to family sources, he even played a role in naming the community that sprung up around his telegraph office.

Malcolm remarried in 1904, and approximately four years later, he assumed the telegrapher鈥檚 duties in 亚洲天堂 Lake. On June 10, 1908, he pre-empted land near the present site of the Village of 亚洲天堂 Lake鈥檚 sewage lagoons, and it was here he met the man destined to be his lineman.

In the fall of 1908, George Wallace and his wife Bessie staked land north of 亚洲天堂 Lake adjacent to what is now Loch Lomond. The Wallaces immigrated to Canada from South Africa, where it was rumoured George had fought against the British. This nugget of information, along with his habit of speaking Zulu during arguments with his wife, earned him the nickname 鈥渢he Boer.鈥�

George claimed he was born in Scotland, but others who knew him said he was a Cossack from the Russian steppes. Regardless of his ancestry, 鈥渢he Boer鈥� was everything Malcolm McKinlay was not. Described by Barney Mulvany as a 鈥渄ecidedly illiterate man whose greatest accomplishment was his skill with a rifle,鈥� George had a violent and uncertain temper that made him dangerous to antagonize.

Under normal circumstances, it is unlikely Malcolm (an avid reader) and 鈥渢he Boer鈥� would have had much to do with each other. Yet because they were the only white settlers in 亚洲天堂 Lake at the time, the two men ended up co-workers. Malcolm鈥檚 job was to monitor and relay telegrams from the outside world, and George was responsible for keeping the telegraph line intact.

Oil and water do not mix. The two men did not get along, and their mutual dislike eventually reached a level that stopped any civil communication between them.

At that point, it is said that McKinlay devised a system whereby the two men could avoid direct contact. Whenever the telegraph connection was broken, McKinlay would nail a red arrow to a tree pointing toward the direction of the problem. An arrow pointing west indicated no signals were coming from Hazelton, and Wallace should head in that direction with his tools, while one pointing the opposite way suggested the line needed Wallace鈥檚 attention somewhere between McKinlay鈥檚 cabin and the next, in Fraser Lake.

For a time, the system allegedly worked well for both men. At length, though, McKinlay became so annoyed with Wallace that he pointed the arrow east or west every morning, even when the telegraph line was functioning.

Despite their differences, the men remained workmates until the fall of 1911, when Malcolm returned to his farm in Namao, a rural community north of Edmonton. He died in 1934 at the age of eighty-six and was buried in the Edmonton cemetery.

George 鈥渢he Boer鈥� Wallace and his wife stayed in 亚洲天堂 Lake. He became the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway鈥檚 first section foreman for the area and continued to work his farm. Sometime around 1920, he sustained injury or illness while helping repair the first Gerow Island bridge, and was transferred to the hospital in Hazelton for treatment. He died there.

Today, both men, like the Yukon Telegraph, are but footnotes in the history of 亚洲天堂 Lake. Malcolm McKinlay鈥檚 cabin, which became a favourite stopping point for pack trains run by Cataline and others, disappeared sometime in the 1980s, but the mountain north of town that bears George Wallace鈥檚 nickname has endured.

(c) 2023 Lakes District Museum Society