1 The Birth of Modern British Columbia

PRINCE GEORGE - The forest that crowns steep bluffs to the south of here cast a ragged black silhouette against the dark blue of the first, faint pre-dawn blush.

I'd hauled myself out of bed at 4 a.m., as Simon Fraser had on the same morning in 1808. Not even the birds were up and this brawny industrial city of 77,000 slumbered around me as I made my bleary way through deserted streets to the banks of the great river that now bears Fraser's name.

The river shimmered in the gloom as it must have for him on that distant Saturday morning. Luminous, alive, its current murmuring behind the shadowy whisper of ancient cottonwoods, their leaves stirring in the breeze created by the billions of litres of water surging from a watershed the size of entire European countries.

For all of the scene's tranquility, there was an ineluctable menace in the river. It was in spate, as it had been for Fraser. I watched as huge boils and eddies roiled the slick surface. Uprooted trees swept into view and just as swiftly vanished. And then, to remind me that all things are relative, one small, bright green frog plopped from the bank into the water and breast-stroked calmly away downstream as though the torrent was a mere puddle.

Frog or no frog, I contemplated the apprehensions and questions that must have filled Fraser's mind as he went through last minute preparations for his meticulously-planned descent of the river.

They were questions that would have occurred to any conscientious expedition leader, particularly one like Fraser, described by American historian H. H. Bancroft, who wasn't one of his leading fans, as "ambitious, energetic, with considerable conscience, and in the main holding to honest convictions."

Have I chosen the right men for the rigors of this journey? Is young John Stuart the best choice to take over if I'm lost? Do I have enough provisions? Will the people I meet be friendly or hostile? Will the canoes hold up? How many of us will return from this venture into the unknown?

On the far side of the river, counterpoint to the natural music and its invitation to think into the past, a lone truck loaded with shrink-wrapped forest products growled across Simon Fraser Bridge and laboured through its low gears, inserting some 21st century punctuation to my reverie as it crawled up the hill to Highway 97 and points south.

It was a sound that I'm sure Fraser would have appreciated. He was a businessman first and he had a hard head for the bottom line, although the 18-wheeler getting an early jump on traffic represented commerce on a scale the fur traders might have imagined only in a laudanum dream. And the idea of a modern paved highway running parallel to the desperate passage by water he'd be exploring in flimsy birch canoes likely wouldn't even enter his mind.

It occurred to me, though, since some of the back roads I'd soon be traveling on the final leg of his journey to what's now Vancouver promised to be little better than the roads in his day.

Explorer barely remembered

From a farm field in Vermont where his eventful life began, my four-year search for Simon Fraser had led me across a still-wild continent to this place. From here, with a thrust of his foot and sharp dipping of paddles, he had launched his astonishing journey of exploration and a claim on historical immortality. His life reads like an historical epic, his account of the journey like an adventure novel and yet, I found, as the bicentennials of his adventures approached, he was barely remembered even in the British Columbia he founded.

It was from near where I stood in the pre-dawn gloom that at 5 a.m. on May 28, 1808, four canoes of the North West Company nosed into the relentless current of the muddy torrent that the Carrier people called Lhtha-khoh  and which Sir Alexander Mackenzie had labeled Tacoutche Tesse on a map printed in 1801.

Once again, as has occurred so many times in following Fraser's elusive footsteps, I found myself trying to unravel a small mystery. That was the baffling question of where the actual embarkation point was.

The precise spot from which the momentous journey pushed off remains unknown. Some think it was from the mouth of the Nechako River, others from Old Fort George. But rivers wander and judging from the old watercourses mapped in Rev. Francis Edwin Runnals' A History of Prince George, published in 1946, the Nechako two centuries ago entered the Fraser considerably to the west and south of where it empties today. On the other hand, the site where old Fort George was located, with its steep, undercut banks, is anything but canoe friendly.

If Runnals was right about the Nechako mouth and Fort George Park isn't congenial, then the place that pops up as a plausible candidate is nearby Paddle Wheel Park. River boats took advantage of the very low banks to discharge passengers and cargo well into the 20th century for precisely the same reason that it makes a desirable canoe landing.

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