Captain Grant Creek is named in honour of Captain John Marshall Grant, Royal Engineers. The creek was named on December 15, 1981 by the Government of British Columbia.
Captain John Marshall Grant was born at sea in 1822. He attended the Royal Military Academy Woolwich where he was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in January 1842. By May 1855, he had been promoted to Captain and in September 1858 sailed to Canada as the Senior Captain of the Columbia Detachment under Colonel Moody. Arriving in Esquimalt in November 1858, Grant proceeded to the RE encampment at Fort Langley but by spring 1859 had built a home in Queenborough (which would later be renamed New Westminster). With the Detachment’s mandate to establish order and assist in the settling of the Lower Mainland, Grant soon became involved in numerous projects including the surveying and construction of the Hope Trail and Cariboo Trail, improvements to the Dewdney Trail into an all-weather wagon road, the design and construction of Christ Church Anglican in Hope and Various improvements in New Westminster. The Detachment was disbanded in 1863 and Captain Grant returned to England where he retired as a Colonel in 1882. He died in Bournemouth in April 1902.
