Monckton, Philip Marmaduke

Philip Monckton was born in South Africa and educated in England. At the age of 17, Monckton entered articles with a distinguished surveyor and engineer, the late E.A. Cleveland, B.C.L.S., P.Eng., as a pupil in surveying, and after writing his final examinations in 1913, he was awarded his commission as a British Columbia Land Surveyor. He then took a year's course in mining engineering at the University of Washington 1914-1915. War service followed with a commission in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, 1915-1919; after he had attained the rank of Captain he returned to resume land surveying in British Columbia. He married Lavender (nee O'Hara) at St. Albans in January 1918.

Although not officially a civil servant until 1941, most of Mr. Monckton's professional career was devoted to Provincial Government assignments, mainly on exploratory triangulation surveys in northwestern British Columbia. Place names such as Terrace, Kitimat, Skeena, Nass, Iskut, Stikine, Finlay and Kechika Rivers, Meziadin and Bowser Lakes, and Telegraph Creek exist in his reports to the Surveyor General though the years 1921-1940.

In September 1942, after having a year's permanent appointment in the British Columbia Forest Service, Mr. Monckton was granted leave to accept a commission in the R.C.A.F. to perform engineering and surveying duties on the West Coast and later in Quebec. He returned to the Provincial Civil Service in November 1944, after which departmental surveys under the Land Act occupied most of his attention until his retirement in 1957. A special assignment in 1947 was a reconnaissance survey of possible routes for a highway from Hazelton northwest to the Yukon via the Kispiox, Nass, Bell Irving, Iskut, Stikine Rivers and Atlin. Segments of his proposed location are now followed by the Cassiar-Stewart road.

Philip Monckton died on October 4th, 1965 in the Vancouver General Hospital after a heart attack.