The Fraser River rises in the Rocky Mountains in eastern British Columbia, then runs 1,400 kilometres in a giant S shape: north, then south, and finally west from the town of Hope to the delta known as the Lower Mainland. The flood plain along this stretch of the river is known as the Fraser Valley.
A few years ago we moved to a farm on the side of this valley, about 100 kilometres east of Vancouver. The farm’s hand-hewn timbers, stone fence and mountain view with no human beings in sight, all made us curious about the past— first about the farm itself, and then about the forest that surrounds it and the people who had walked these mountain paths before us.
“My River of Disappointment” is what the fur trader Simon Fraser called the river in 1808; later it was given his name by his friend, the explorer David Thompson. Fraser didn’t do much naming. He was travelling with Natives and they told him what the places were called. The people of the valley called the river Stó:lō, and their lives were so shaped by it that they called themselves by the same name. The salmon runs were like nothing else in the world. On shore there were elk and deer, roots, berries and greens in the early spring. In a single day, the current could propel a canoe the same distance it would take a week to walk. This land and climate are so generous the people who lived here could spend most of the winter in ritual and celebration.
According to archaeology, the story of settlement in the Fraser Valley begins ten thousand years ago when the glaciers pulled out and the people moved in. In the memory of those whose families have lived here through the ensuing 350 generations, the story that begins with Simon Fraser is one of loss: first there was smallpox, then the land was taken and their children seized. For the millions of us who moved here after Fraser, the story is one of gain: trees the circumference of ten men, rich black soil, ocean views. Throughout the valley, these opposing narratives are written in the rocks and flowing in the river.
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