Charles Henry Allison was an enterprising man. In 1912, aside from being part owner of the local telephone company, he also served as pharmacist and postmaster. Allison came to Quesnel quite by accident when the steamer he was on couldn’t navigate the Cottonwood Canyon on the way to Fort George and was forced to dock at Quesnel. Hailing from Port Perry, Ontario, Charlie was a Freemason and member of Fidelity Lodge No. 428
In his new frontier home he longed for the same like-minded associations he enjoyed back east. So he set out with a handful of other Masons to start a Masonic lodge in Quesnel.
In order for a lodge to be born, it must be sanctioned by a constituent lodge and Cariboo No. 4 in Barkerville authorized the fledgling Quesnel lodge to meet under its warrant.
It is interesting to note that Cariboo No. 4, which began in 1867, is still active today!
The first members of Quesnel No. 69, as it would be known, were men from all walks of life. An integral member of the new lodge, Edward Leight Kepner, owned the Occidental Hotel and was a Past Master of Union Lodge No. 324, in Mifflintown, PA.
Albert John Elliot’s “tobacco and billiards” business occupied the ground floor of the newly constructed lodge building on Carson Avenue. He was a member of Simpson Lodge No. 157 in Newboro, Ontario.
Other original members of Quesnel Lodge No. 69 were Robert Blades – foreman of the Wingdam mine, V.P. of the Quesnel Hockey Association and member of Hiram Lodge No. 17, New Jersey; farmer and road superintendent Henry Harry Moffat; farmer and butcher William Thomas Ewing; and John George Hutchcroft, part owner and editor of the Cariboo Observer, and a member of Petrolia Lodge No. 194, in Petrolia, Ontario.
James Climenhage is a member of Quesnel Lodge No. 69 and current Lodge Historian.