The Significance of 'Fraser' in Fraserview Cedar Products

When the founders of Fraserview Cedar Products chose the name “Fraserview”, they were thinking of British Columbia’s longest river and the significant role it has played in the development of this region of Canada.  From its source in the Rocky Mountains, the river flows 1375 km and ends at the City of Vancouver, the Pacific Ocean and near the Company’s main manufacturing facility.

The Fraser River provided not only a means of transportation to the First Nations People, who were the first inhabitants, but a source of food as well.  The river is the greatest salmon river in the world.  Each year the Fraser River allows six species of Pacific salmon to return to spawn and end a life cycle that began three to four years before.  The millions of salmon that make the Fraser River part of their life’s journey go to support a significant sport and commercial fishery.

By any standard, the Fraser River embodies a natural and human heritage as significant as any other river in the world.  It embraces the heartland of British Columbia’s ecological, social and economic diversity.  With settlement also came industries and urban areas grew along the river to the point where today the economic activity within the Fraser River Basin accounts for 80% of the provincial and 10% of the national gross domestic product.

The Fraser River’s dominant impact on the development and life of British Columbia is as vividly apparent today as it was in the past.  Throughout centuries of habitation, the ancestors of today’s First Nations established communities that had a fundamental link to the river.  Plants and animals associated with the river environment provided the basis of life for these people.

Exploration associated with the fur trade provided the stimulus for European influence within the watershed.  Simon Fraser, whose name will forever be associated with this river, was the first white explorer to arrive in 1808 as a representative of the North West Company seeking out new territories for trade.  In 1858 gold was discovered in the lower Fraser River Valley and, in 1861, the Cariboo region of the upper river.  Both of these discoveries stimulated a rapid increase in settlement and transportation along the river.  To support the influx of people, industries such as agriculture, commercial services and forestry became established.  Some of the world’s largest and finest softwood timber grows near the Fraser River Basin including western red cedar which, not only dominates, but is unique to this region.  Being close to this magnificent river and in the business of manufacturing lumber products made from the western red cedar tree, it only seemed natural the name Fraserview Cedar Products should follow.