John King Barker

Times had indeed changed for John King Barker, back in 1906.

Gone was the fortune he’d spent a lifetime wresting from the soil; gone was his youth and gone was his health. Old, bent and feeble, the miner hoped to visit an old friend one last time before joining those of his comrades who’d passed on before him.

But if the road that stretched before Barker, 118 years ago, was short and narrow, that behind him was as as long and colourful as that of three human lifetimes: a career as a prospector and adventurer which makes a modern reader marvel at the hardships that pioneers contended with in their search for gold.

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PHOTO: Although he had much in common with Billy Barker, the namesake for British Columbia’s most famous ‘ghost town,’ John King Barker, the subject of next week’s BC Chronicles, had his own story to tell. —BC Archives