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41679 LOUGHEED HWY |
British Columbia Tourism Region : Vancouver, Coast, & Mountains
Description From Owner:
- Fraser River after Simon Fraser (1776?-1862). Fraser was born in Bennington, Vermont. At the end of the American Revolution, his Loyalist family moved to Canada, where he joined the NWC in 1792 and was admitted as a partner in 1802.
- In 1805 he was chosen to open to the company's trade the country west of the Rocky Mountains.
- Between May and July 1808, with a party of twenty-three others (two clerks, two Indians, and nineteen French-Canadian voyageurs), he made his great journey down the Fraser River from modern Prince George to the river's mouth south of modern Vancouver.
- It was a bitter disappointment for Fraser when he reached the ocean to discover that the river down which he had travelled could not be the Columbia.
- The Fraser River was first discovered by Sir Alexander Mackenzie during his journey to the Pacific in 1793. In the map printed with his Voyages in 1801, Mackenzie called the river 'Tacoutche Tesse or Columbia River.'
- Father Morice said 'Tacoutche Tesse' came from tacoutche, a corrupted form of a Carrier word meaning 'one river within another' (possibly referring to the confluence of the Fraser and Nechako), and tesse or desse,
- meaning 'river' in the language of Mackenzie's eastern Indian companions. The coastal Indians called the Fraser the Cowichans' River.
- The Spaniards never found their way up the mouth of the Fraser, but in 1791, finding evidence that they were near the mouth of a major river, they named it the Rio Floridablanca in honour of the Prime Minister of Spain.
- The Fraser was also known in early days as the New Caledonia River and as the Jackanet River. It was named after Simon Fraser in 1813 by David Thompson. By a pleasing coincidence, the Thompson River was given its name by Fraser.
- With permission from G.P.V and Helen B. Akrigg 1997 British Columbia Place Names. UBC Press.
Address of this page: http://bc.ruralroutes.com/FraserRiverWatershed