John Houston (newspaperman)

Born in Alton, Canada West (now Ontario), Houston's career as a newspaper publisher in British Columbia spanned twenty-two years, beginning in 1888 in the town of Donald.

Undeterred, John decided to have his paper published in Victoria and when the first edition got to Prince Rupert, it carried the headline that the GTP discourages newcomers to town.

Other editions followed, and for two months, the Victoria-based Prince Rupert Empire blazed with editorials, prose and often poetry, describing the railway managers as "tin-gods" and accusing them of "a thousand blunders".

Charles Melville Hays, who was then the president of the Grand Trunk Pacific, arrived in Prince Rupert later that year and offered John a permit to put his building wherever he liked.

John began encouraging other people to squat on the mineral claims by the wharf, instead of buying lots in the new GTP townsite, thus creating the community of Knoxville.

John's South Fort George articles were often humorous and included notices as to whose cow recently had a calf and what he'd had to pay for eggs that week.

In March 1910, the work and excessively cold caught up with him and John contracted pneumonia and was pulled on a toboggan down the Blackwater Trail to the Quesnel hospital by his friend and fellow pioneer settler, William J Cooke.