John McDougall House

This is reportedly the second-oldest private house surviving in Kelowna. It was the second residence built on the ranch pre-empted in 1860 by John McDougall, whose previous employment by the Hudson's Bay Company makes connections to the earliest days of European contact with the Okanagan First Nations people.

About 1865 McDougall built this small gable-roofed, squared-log house, with two rooms around a central hearth (now gone). This replaced his original log cabin and trading post of 1860, and was itself replaced in 1886 when he built a larger squared-log house for his large and lively family (his wife, Amelie, and their ten sons).

After his wife's death around 1889, John McDougall sold his by-then 480-acre ranch to G.G. MacKay of Vancouver, who resold it to the Governor General, Lord Aberdeen, and Lady Aberdeen in 1890 (see 1056-1060 Cameron Avenue). The house therefore has added value for its association with the Governor General. McDougall moved across the lake to Westbank, where he remarried and lived until his death in 1903.

In 1967 G.D. 'Paddy' Cameron, then owner of the Guisachan Ranch, donated this building to the Father Pandosy Mission historical site, and it was moved to the Mission. While it was not historically a part of the Mission, it was located nearby and is consistent with the site's secondary role as a collection of pioneer buildings from Kelowna. The house has been restored and furnished to evoke the pre-townsite period of pioneer life in the Central Okanagan, and has a valuable heritage education function.

It is remarkable that all three houses built by John McDougall, one of the area's earliest and historically more significant settlers, have been preserved. The first house and trading post was disassembled log-by-log and reassembled in the Kelowna Centennial Museum (470 Queensway). This second log house was moved here. The third house (1060C Cameron Avenue) has also been moved, from the Gordon Road right-of-way in 1984, closer to Guisachan House.