A horse team loaded with supplies and boxes of trout eggs, 1930. Photo: 2004.42.28
In the late 1920s, as Forbidden Plateau became a more popular destination, Clinton Wood, who would later become the president of the tourist trade development Bureau, contacted Major J.A. Motherwell, Dominion chief supervisor of fisheries, and suggested stocking some of the lakes. The fisheries department approved the suggestion, and in June 1929, one hundred thousand Kamloops trout eggs arrived on the E&N Railway from the Cowichan Lake hatchery.
Local fisheries officer Captain Harry Beadnell supervised the transporting of the eggs up to Forbidden Plateau by pack horse in hot weather. It was a race against time to get them seeded in lake water before they hatched. Against all odds, the experiment was successful, and the stocking was repeated in subsequent years, resulting in plenty of good-sized trout in the subalpine lakes.
