Hi again Lawrence and list, As a result of my previous posting I have been having an "off-list" conversation with a very nice and knowledgeable lady , Claudia Cole, who is an Archival Research Agent working in BC. She has corrected my assumption about New Westminster and tells me that "The Cassiar" was indeed in the New Westminster administration district at that time - despite the enormous geographical separation. Claudia was far too polite to correct me in public herself, but I felt that I should straighten out the record, particularly as it does help to confirm your (Lawrence's) data. I didn't mention it before but we do have in our catalogue a book, Year Book of British Columbia - 1903, catalogue #CA0166, which contains a lot of general and statistical information on Cassiar and even some mentions of "Lightning Creek" although I'm not at all sure that there was only one of these so you might need more information to track that particular reference. On the PS to your later posting; "PS would Peter OLLIER have come overland or via sea to the west coast at that time?" As "steamers" (steam ships) were in service in the last quarter of the 1800's it was possible to travel to the west coast by sea but it was a long - not to say dangerous - journey. On the other hand there were plenty (relatively) of ships crossing the Atlantic and travel from coast to coast was a possibility. Before the "National Trans-continental Railway" was completed cross continental rail transport was mostly on the US side of the border. There were also available overland "road" routes through both the US and Canada so while you might find out which routes were more popular I think you would need more information to know which route your ancestor actually chose. Malcolm Archive CD Books Canada Inc. President: Malcolm Moody PO Box 11 Manotick Ontario, K4M 1A2 Canada. (613) 692-2667 WEB SITE: http://www.ArchiveCDBooks.ca > Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2006 11:46:09 -0500 > From: Malcolm Moody <malcolm@archivecdbooks.ca> > Subject: Re: [CAN-BC] New to list, help needed-Lawrence > To: CAN-BRITISH-COLUMBIA@rootsweb.com > Message-ID: <2c7ae1f65814a739eeae189966969073@archivecdbooks.ca> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed > > Hi Lawrence, and welcome to the BC list, > > A little help I think. We have already released a reproduction on CD > of Lovell's 1874 Gazetteer of British North America, our cat. # CA0104, > but it has no reference to any of the place names you mentioned (except > New Westminster of course but I'll get back to that.) > > <snip> > > The entry goes on to further describe access routes for goods and > mail, which was said to be forwarded from Victoria "in earlier years" > which makes me wonder if the "New Westminster" reference might be a > mail route since it is clearly no where near "Cassiar." No mention of > Lightning Creek anywhere (in either gazetteer) but consider the ".... > There are also a number of small creeks in the area ..." part of the > quote above. > > <snip>