Fonds - Henry Blurton fonds

Henry James Blurton was born in Stourbridge, Worcestershire, England in 1873, the son of John and Frances Blurton. He moved to Calgary in 1889 and to British Columbia in 1892. He became a trapper and big game hunter in the Lillooet and Chilcotin country. In 1899 Henry Blurton homesteaded property in Mara. He married May Holland in 1907 and they had three daughters, Frances, Gertrude May and Ruth. Henry was appointed honourary game warden in 1908 and permanent provincial game warden in 1910, when he covered the district south to the U.S. border. In 1914 he was transferred to Lillooet, where his district covered Squamish to the Chilcotin. He resigned in 1916 and passed the examinations to become an assistant forest ranger. Henry became an avid photographer. He put the best of his photographs of trapping, packing, live animals and the mountain ranges in an album which was shown at the Canadian fur exhibit during the Wembly Exhibition in England in 1925. Henry was a successful prospector; he collected rocks and mining specimens for various exhibitions and wrote a booklet "Mining Possiblities in the Okanagan Valley" which included excerpts from mining reports dating back to 1895. Henry enjoyed writing poems and music; he compiled his favourite verses with some reminiscences in a booklet entitled "Rhymes of a Mountain Man". Henry died in Enderby in 1952. Following his death, Henry's daughter, Frances Selwyn Campbell assumed a pen name of Edythe March and wrote a biography and fictionalized biography of her father, plus several books of poetry.