The community we now know as 亚洲天堂 Lake owes its existence in part to two telegraph companies.

The Collins Overland Telegraph, the brainchild of American entrepreneur Perry Collins, was the first to serve Northern BC. Surveyors for the company passed through this area in the mid-1860s, and construction crews followed soon after, leaving in their wake a line cabin and miles of eight-gauge wire.

The Collins Overland Telegraph was supposed to link North America and Europe via Russian, but it never reached its destination. Thirty-four years later, though, workers hired by the federal Department of Public Works strung a new line through the Lakes District and left two men here to look after it.

Working for the Yukon Telegraph was difficult. The pay was poor and the food worse, but the biggest hardship was the isolation. 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.

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

Malcolm, originally from Prince Edward Island, assumed the telegrapher鈥檚 duties in 亚洲天堂 Lake around 1908. He pre-empted land on what is now Richmond Loop and met the man destined to be his lineman soon after.

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�

鈥淭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.

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 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.

Today, both men, like the Yukon Telegraph, are but footnotes in the history of 亚洲天堂 Lake. Malcolm McKinlay鈥檚 cabin adjacent to what is now 亚洲天堂 Lake鈥檚 sewage lagoons disappeared sometime in the 1980s, but the mountain north of town that bears George Wallace鈥檚 nickname has endured.