Frank Swannell

He kept a journal of his work and collected over 5000 unique pictures of the era, which were donated to BC Archives for the benefit of future researchers.

Their subjects include stagecoaches, sternwheelers, old forts and remote villages, mountains and rivers, pioneer settlers, miners and First Nations people.

[1] The construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway caused a great deal of interest in Central and Northern British Columbia, and settlers were arriving looking for agricultural land, which needed to be surveyed before it could be sold or pre-empted.

Aside from surveying, Swannell also had to worry about keeping food supplies on hand for his crew, a problem which was quite often nearly insurmountable as there were few farms in the region and goods often took three weeks or longer to arrive from Hudson's Bay Company stores on pack trains or by canoe.

In 1909, Swannell and his crew began the season by surveying lots in the Lillooet and Pemberton areas and several locations around Anderson and Seton Lakes.

From there, Swannell traveled to Moricetown, Hazelton and Prince Rupert, taking many pictures of the pioneer communities and First Nations villages along the way before returning to his home in Victoria that November.

He and his crew would travel a total of 1,700 miles that season, most of it by raft, but some of them by a relative newcomer to the route into Northern British Columbia, the automobile.

[1] Swannell visited the Big Kettle Fumarole at the junction of Humar Creek and the Omineca River during his surveys and provided a description in his government report.

[1] Late in 1914, Swannell enlisted to fight in World War I and in 1919, joined an anti-Bolshevik force in Siberia where he was wounded in the shoulder.

The expedition continued on horseback, but in late September, with winter fast approaching and the horses beginning to die of disease and starvation, Bedaux called a halt to the trip just short of their destination.