Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Walker, Thomas A.
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- Walker, Tommy
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Description area
Dates of existence
1904-1989
History
Thomas. A. Walker was born in 1904 in Gravesend, Kent, England and educated at Marlborough College. He studied brewing and malting at a London brewery and in 1923 joined a firm of grain importers, from which he resigned in 1929 to emigrate to Canada.
Walker settled in the Bella Coola Valley, where he cleared land for a farm and helped to build Stuie Lodge, later renamed Tweedsmuir Lodge. He became a professional guide and outfitter, owning saddle and pack horses. In 1937 he was an active participant in the establishment of Tweedsmuir park.
In 1940, Walker married Marion Bullock-Webster and she helped him operate Tweedsmuir Lodge until 1948. In that year the Walkers travelled overland with a pack-train 900 miles to the headwaters of the Stikine River in northern B.C. Here, at Cold Fish Lake, they started a big game hunting outfit.
Walker eventually became disenchanted with trophy hunting and developed a lasting concern for the unaltered ecosystem of the Spatsizi area. He joined with others in 1956 to propose a wilderness research foundation; this later took form as the Spatsizi Association for Biological Research, of which he was a director and treasurer.
In 1968, the Walkers sold their business and property at Cold Fish Lake but retained their trading post at Tatogga Lake on the Stewart-Cassiar highway, where they also operated a small sawmill for local use. They sold the store and sawmill in 1972 and retired to live in Smithers. In 1976, Tommy Walker's book, Spatsizi, was published; it is an autobiography and the story of his battle to save that wilderness area which is now the Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Park (created in 1975). Predeceased by his wife Marion in 1988, Tommy Walker died in 1989.
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Revised Khughes 2019-02-21
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Biographical history taken from original MS finding aid.