The Northernmost Road

"The Northernmost Road" is the second section of the long poem Giscome Road. Giscome Road is about the constellation of places in northern British Columbia that were named, directly or indirectly, for John Robert Giscome. Born in Jamaica in 1831 and coming to B.C. with the California black migration of 1858, "he mined the Cariboo and the Omineca country with considerable success." The old arrivant, the "discoverer" of the Giscome Portage route from the Fraser River into the Arctic Watershed. Died in Victoria in 1907, buried there at Ross Bay. The locations in the north continue to exist and, though remote, are reachable. The G in Giscome Road is hard, in keeping with Cariboo pronunciation; island pronunciation of the name varies.