1 The Birth of Modern British Columbia

Still, no one can say for sure whether Fraser left from the Old Fort George site, or from further upstream, perhaps even from around the corner and up the Nechako where Prince George's Heritage River Trail extends from Cottonwood Island Nature Park. A strike against that site, though, is that it tends to flood at very high water and while Fraser's journal did mention the river overflowing its banks in late May of 1808, he doesn't mention flooding in the base camp.

 In any event, much history has been applied retroactively, some of it based upon erroneous assumptions. For example, historians routinely cite the founding of a trading post at Fort George by Fraser in the fall of 1807.

Bob Campbell, curator at the Fraser-Fort George Regional Museum, says his research indicates otherwise. The first permanent fur trading fort in what's now Prince George wasn't actually established until 1820, just as Simon Fraser was retiring from the fur trade.

"He did set up an advance camp here in the fall of 1807," Campbell says, "but they pulled that camp in 1808."

Campbell points out that Fraser's journals and letters don't even name the departure point and there is no reference to it in any of the trading accounts at Fort St. James prior to 1821, when a post is located up the Nechako at its confluence with the Chilako River.

"The Hudson's Bay Company moved it to Fort George in 1823," Campbell says, "then it was closed in 1824 after two HBC employees were murdered. It opened again in 1829 and operated until 1915."

His observation rang a small bell in my memory. I'd seen something similar in a report to the Hudson's Bay Company from John Stuart written at Norway House on Aug. 18, 1824.

"Fort George temporarily established in 1807 for the conveniency of building Crafts to explore Frasers River down to the Pacific Ocean, it was afterwards in 1808 abandoned but permanently established for the purpose of trade in 1820," wrote Fraser's chief lieutenant on the expedition. It doesn't get much more specific than that.

Wherever the expedition embarked, conditions were similar then to those I encountered when I rose well before sunrise on May 28, the same day that Fraser pushed off, and strolled the lovely Prince George riverfront.  

In Fraser's day, as it was on mine, the river was already swollen by spring runoff and according to the explorer's no-nonsense account of the departure was already overflowing its banks, spilling, no doubt back into what's now known as Hudson's Bay Slough, a watery intrusion into residential subdivisions that rings with the sound of redwing blackbirds and the gabble of ducks.

Today, a string of lovely parks, a few old neighbourhoods still at risk of flooding at exceptionally high water, a children's playground, the district museum, a Lheidli teneh cemetery dating from the mid-19th century - the oldest tombstone is from half a century after Fraser - and some industrial rail yards comprise the sweep of shoreline that arcs from the Nechako River to the main stem of the Fraser. Inland lie the commercial core and central urban neighbourhoods of the bustling hub that bills itself the capital city of the northern Interior. Railways, rivers and highways all converge at Prince George, a nexus of transportation links that connect Pacific to Atlantic, industrial heartlands to resource-rich hinterlands, Alaska to California, Vancouver to Whitehorse, Prince Rupert to Chicago.

First base camp in 1807

Yet 200 years ago, this was just a tiny clearing in the boreal forest. There were likely a couple of rudimentary log huts - one for sleeping, one for storage - but even that's conjecture. All that is certain is that in the fall of 1807 Simon Fraser had established an advanced base camp where canoes could be built and where he could forward-stage supplies for his expedition down the unknown river.

In that sense, I suppose it can be argued that this fall marks a mostly unnoticed bicentennial of the heroic trek that lies at the heart of British Columbia's creation myth.

Fraser, who had turned 32 just a week earlier, was in command of the expedition. He had been ordered two years earlier by the company's officers to follow this unknown river to the sea. His mission was mercenary, not scientific. It was nonetheless daring and filled with daunting risk.

Ultimately, Fraser's journey would be recognized by his own peers as a feat of unsurpassed courage, diplomacy and river craft. He would travel almost 2,000 kilometres to tidewater and back, pass through some of the most rugged and unforgiving terrain on the continent, sometimes under desperate conditions. He would make contact with powerful first nations which were not always welcoming. Most telling, he would return home safely with all his men, his patience and leadership extricating them from the most threatening circumstances where lesser men might have resorted to violence.

When Hudson's Bay Company Governor George Simpson repeated the trip 21 years later, traveling downriver one-way in the fall when water was low, he nevertheless concluded with amazement that shooting the same rapids that Fraser's canoes took at high water would be "certain death" nine times out of 10.

In that spring of 1808, as Fraser's canoes were swept southward by "very strong current," the only other Europeans known to have ventured beyond the mouth of the river's great northern tributary, the Nechako, were on an expedition led by Mackenzie, 15 years earlier. He had abandoned the river and struck overland, following the Blackwater River and an old grease trail to the Pacific after hearing from Indians how dangerous were the  lower reaches of the river he called Tacoutche tesse.

Fraser sent north

However, news of a successful overland trek to the mouth of the Columbia by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1805-1806 had dashed hopes for a British commercial hegemony beyond the Rocky Mountains. The sudden prospect of American incursions into the rich pickings a far western fur trade promised had galvanized the North West Company in Montreal.

The senior partners wanted a swifter, less costly way to get furs to market from the remote interior of the continent and they also wanted to assert prior claims on the as-yet-unexploited fur resources on the western slope north of California.

And so, while David Thompson was probing the southern mountains for passes, Fraser had been dispatched to the north, first to establish a trading presence on the western slope, then to determine whether the river reported by Mackenzie was actually the upper Columbia and whether it was navigable for trade.

Fraser had crossed the mountains in late 1805 and set up trading posts at Trout Lake, later called Fort McLeod, at Nakazleh, later named Fort St. James, and at Natleh, later named Fort Fraser. But he'd been plagued by administrative and supply problems.

A letter he wrote from what's now Fort Fraser dated Feb. 1, 1807, complains about "the decay of Trout Lake" under his French-Canadian nemesis, La Malice, who had proved a challenging management problem on the initial expedition across the Rockies.

And a distinct tone of exasperation tinges a further complaint about the forwarding of equipment and supplies that are "bad" and "useless," not the least of which is one pair of coat and trousers for Fraser which are "amazing large" but with "trousers so small that I cannot put them on."

Nevertheless, supply problems notwithstanding, he was determined to complete his mission.

The young trader turned explorer, recently elevated to a partnership in the fur trade colossus, was accompanied by two carefully chosen lieutenants. Second-in-command was Stuart, a trader skilled in dealing with Indians and a master canoe builder. Third-in-command was Jules Maurice Quesnel, fresh from two years under the tutelage of the company's leading map-maker and explorer, David Thompson.

The rest of the party consisted of two Indian guides and translators and 19 French-Canadians, only eight of whom have their names mentioned in journals compiled and edited much later. W. Kaye Lamb, the historian and dominion archivist who sifted through the journals, letters and other documents, identifies them as: La Chapelle, Baptiste, D'Alaire, La Certe, Wacca - this was the nickname of the company's frontier enforcer, identified in later documents as Jean Baptiste Boucher - Bourbone (perhaps a misspelling of  Bourbonnais), Gagnier and La Garde.

They are part of our history now only because of the diligent work of a scholar, so it seemed fitting for me to go up the hill to the deserted campus of the University of Northern British Columbia for a last look at Prince George before setting out. A cold wind blew through the square they call the Agora, swirling around glass pyramids and balconies and buffeting the lone young woman walking down a vast, empty staircase.

At 5:39 a.m., the sun peeped above the bluffs. Suddenly the city was bathed in light. Reflected sunbeams blazed off countless windows, illuminated the huge pillars of steam above the mills from which Prince George derives its prosperity and turned the rivers into molten silver.

I gave one last thought to the tiny clearing in the boreal forest, to the four bark canoes gliding into the immense river to be carried to their destiny on an unstoppable flood, to the clerk Hugh Faries left to await their uncertain return and then I turned south myself, heading downriver, following the paddle strokes of Simon Fraser's great adventure.  

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