McDougall House (Cameron)

This building has value for being one of the very few pre-1890 houses remaining in Kelowna, for being a relatively rare log house, for having been built by John McDougall, whose previous employment by the Hudson's Bay Company makes connections to the earliest days of European contact with the Okanagan, and for its having been part of the Kelowna estate of Lord Aberdeen, Canada's Governor- General.

John Baptiste McDougall was significant in the history of Kelowna for his relationship to the heydays of the fur trade. Born at Fort Garry (now Winnipeg) in 1827, he entered the employment of the Hudson's Bay Company at the age of 16 and worked as labourer, middleman, and bowsman. It was his participation in the annual HBC Brigades from northern British Columbia through the Okanagan to the Columbia River posts that made him aware of this area. After he left the direct employ of the Hudson's Bay Company he operated a profitable HBC store, starting in 1860, at the Okanagan Mission settlement established by Father Pandosy and the Oblates.

McDougall prospered. By 1879 he had a farm worth $1,600, with 180 cattle, 30 horses, and 20 hogs. His accommodation also grew. The original log hut and trading post of 1860 was replaced by a modest log cabin later in the 1860s. In 1886 he built this, the third house, a larger, squared-log residence, for his family (ten sons and his wife Amelie). After the property was bought by Lord and Lady Aberdeen in 1890, Lady Aberdeen wrote that 'the ceilings and walls were, however, well-riddled with pistol shots which supported the rumours they heard of the wild doings of the younger members of the McDougall family.'

After his wife's death about 1889, John McDougall sold this by-then 480-acre ranch to G.G. MacKay of Vancouver, who resold it to Lord and Lady Aberdeen in 1890. McDougall moved across the lake to Westbank, where he remarried and lived until his death in 1903.

The Aberdeens built their own residence on the rechristened Guisachan Ranch, and this building became housing for the ranch manager.

It is remarkable that all three houses built by John McDougall, one of the area's earliest settlers, have been preserved. The first house and trading post was disassembled log by log and reassembled in the Kelowna Centennial Museum (470 Queensway). The second log cabin was given by Paddy Cameron to the Father Pandosy Mission (3685 Benvoulin Road) and moved there. This third house has also been moved, although the much shorter distance from the Gordon Road right-of-way,