I was surfing and thinking about Lawrence Ollier's enquiries and somehow I got looking on the 'net (I'm easily distracted) for any references to Van Winkle, a B.C. ghost town near Wells and Barkerville. Did you know that Laura M. Dodd was the postmaster in Van Winkle in 1893? (http://www.rootsweb.com/~canbc/bc1893.htm ). From that I ended up looking at Barkerville a bit. The great gold rush in the Cariboo started about 1858. Lawrence Ollier's ancestor was in the U.K. in 1861 (U.K. census), but may have been in B.C. by 1875 (B.C. voter's list). Could he have been lured by gold fever? Gold was found in Lightning Creek in 1861. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley,_British_Columbia The Barkerville website is at http://www.barkerville.com/ Under "Gold Rush Trail Journal" click on "View or download our latest issue". http://www.barkerville.com/current_issue.html Click on bottom item, Entire Gold Rush Trail Journal Issue #1 which takes you to http://www.barkerville.com/pdf%20files/GRT_Journal_2000.pdf . This is a big file so it takes awhile to download. Go to page headed "The Road to Riches" (page 5); the first column mentions Lightning Creek. Issue #2 http://www.barkerville.com/pdf%20files/Gold%20Rush%20Trai%20Journal%2001 .pdf Page 17 Another big file; maybe you can look at just the last section. Also: "The Cariboo Sentinel" Vol. 9 No.1: page 5 mentions Lightning Creek. Vol. 11 No. 1: page 6 makes a reference to "Lightning dust", as in the price given for gold from it. The Wikipedia article on Stanley, BC has a downloadable hi-res map of the area http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/50/Stanley_Map.jpg BC.com has an article on area, directed towards tourists: http://www.britishcolumbia.com/regions/towns/?townID=3584