Fraser Valley Regional District Regional District

"In The History That We Share, historian Robert Janning presents a clear and comprehensive depiction of the relationship that existed between the Snuneymuxw First Nation and the Methodist Church of Canada from the time of contact to the day Snuneymuxw children were first sent to the Coqualeetza Residential School, in Sardis, British Columbia. This book gives readers an opportunity to learn what day to day life was like in a First Nation community prior to the implementation of the Indian residential school system in British Columbia. Despite the fact that fear, guilt and shame have for many years conspired to conceal much of the history that we share, an immense body of documentation chronicling our past has been left to collect dust on the shelves of archives and libraries for a century or more. Driven by a consuming desire to better understand how we became who we are today, Janning launched an investigation that took five years to complete. After collecting and chronologically arranging his findings, he was determined that the evidence would get to see the light of day. After all, if it is the truth that will set us free, then is it not high time we took a long look in our rearview mirror?" -- Back cover

xxx, 317 pages : maps, portraits, black and white photographs ; 29 cm

Map researcher and collector Derek Hayes here presents the sixth in a series of critically acclaimed, award-winning historical atlases. Gathered together in a single volume for the first time, here are the maps that shaped Vancouver and the surrounding Lower Fraser Valley. More than 370 original maps chart the region’s development beginning with the years of discovery and exploration. They depict its days as a fledgling colonial outpost, its appearance on the world scene after the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway, through to its emergence as a postwar Pacific metropolis. These maps evoke such historic events and developments as the founding of Fort Langley, the first settlements on the inlet, and the filling in of False Creek, along with more recent aspects of this richly diverse area such as the real estate boom and the explosive growth of Vancouver. Included are many fascinating plans for schemes that never got off the drawing board.

192 p. : ill. ; 30 cm.

One of the world's most fertile agricultural regions, the Fraser Valley is in the midst of explosive change from the pressures of technology and urbanization. The author follows the Valley's history from the eighteenth century when Stalo natives were constantly on guard against visits from raiding Yacultas, through the Victorian era, when waves of settlers fought harsh winters, floods and mosquitoes to build a new community in the Valley, to the twentieth century, when the depredations of two world wars and the impact of the automobile changed the Valley forever. Throughout, Cherrington reminds us that beneath the serene, increasingly urbanized surface of the Fraser Valley, there is a turbulent past of Sasquatches and steamships, fur traders and fishermen, priests and prospectors - a recent past that, in an era of freeways and microchips, seems increasingly remote.

391 pages : illustrations, maps ; 29 cm

The cry of "gold along the Fraser!" Hured men from around the world. By 1858, 25000 had swarmed into the new colony of British Columbia. Some were experienced prospectors, some dreamers; all were hoping for instant wealth.

Gold Along the Fraser details the experiences-the successes and failures-of these adventurers.

64 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Constable John Kirkup was called to a 'gambling and whiskey drive' in Yale, B.C. He wound up arresting the nude hostess. Kirkup, the local newspaper editor, and the pastor fought for abstinence while the unruly workers fought and laid railway tracks. Further up the canyon, the great railwayman Andrew Onderdonk was daring the little steamship Kuzzy through the impenetrable Hell's Gate. Don Waite also recounts the adventures of the gold rush, the fur brigade trails, and Cariboo wagon road.

96 p. : ill., ports. ; 22 cm.

46 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Five corners: the story of Chilliwhack chronicles the grueling agricultural transformation and isolated pioneer settlement situated within the vast, flood-prone alluvial floodplain of the lower Fraser Valley in British Columbia. Ramsey details how the region's formidable physical barriers—specifically the massive, unpredictable seasonal inundations of the Fraser River, the dense, waterlogged riparian forests of the valley floor, and the towering, impenetrable peaks of the surrounding Cascade and Coast mountains—strictly dictated the margins of early human survival and agrarian expansion. By mapping the immense physical labor required to painstakingly construct extensive earthen dikes against the swelling river currents, drain the marshy lowlands for cultivation, and carve rudimentary overland wagon routes through the dense brush to establish the vital "Five Corners" intersection, the narrative highlights the monumental cooperative effort necessary to forcibly convert this volatile riparian environment into highly productive agricultural tracts. The initial geographic isolation from the deepwater coastal ports forced these remote farming homesteads into a strict reliance on the precise topography of the Fraser River for transportation, completely anchoring their early commercial existence and civic development to the precarious navigation of shallow-draft sternwheelers and the severe hydrological realities of the basin. Ultimately, this local historical record serves as a deeply localized spatial history, demonstrating how the extreme riverine geography, heavy seasonal flooding, and immense physical labor of this Pacific Northwest frontier fundamentally shaped the fiercely resilient, tightly knit, and strictly agriculturally dependent character of the Chilliwack settlement.

xii, 96 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 22 cm

Mapping the frontier Charles Wilson's diary of the survey of the 49th parallel, 1858-1862 examines the grueling imperial cartography and immense logistical struggle situated across the profoundly rugged, trans-mountain macro-geography of the US-British Columbia borderlands. Wilson details how the region's formidable topography—specifically the impenetrable, old-growth temperate rainforests of the coastal slope, the sheer, glaciated alpine barricades of the Cascade and Rocky Mountains, and the deep, turbulent river chasms cutting perpendicular to the border—strictly dictated the margins of early scientific reconnaissance, precarious overland supply chains, and the immense physical labor required to physically mark the wilderness. By mapping the Boundary Commission's arduous effort to impose a rigid, abstract political line across violently fractured terrain—requiring the literal chopping of massive forest swaths, precarious high-altitude ascents, and constant battles with severe winter isolation—the narrative highlights how this specific unforgiving, mountainous geography anchored a profoundly grueling, highly isolated feat of imperial engineering. Ultimately, this diaristic and cartographic record serves as a macro-level spatial history, demonstrating how the immense alpine barricades, severe botanical density, and unrelenting climatic extremes of this Pacific Northwest landscape fundamentally shaped the highly arduous, geographically defiant character of the 49th parallel boundary survey.

182 pages : maps, portrait ; 22 cm

152 leaves ; 28 cm

5 leaves ; 28 cm

Denys Nelson’s 1927 centennial monograph, Fort Langley, 1827–1927: A Century of Settlement in the Valley of the Lower Fraser River, documents the strategic transformation of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s primary coastal river post into the administrative cradle of mainland British Columbia. Sited along the tidal reaches of the lower Fraser, the fort’s stockades, agricultural tracts, and river landings were superimposed squarely upon the ancestral territories, seasonal salmon-harvesting grounds, and canoe corridors of the Stó:lō—most notably the Kwantlen and Katzie nations. Nelson’s chronicle details how early fur trade survival and commercial viability hinged entirely on complex interdependent alliances with local Coast Salish communities, who not only provided the thousands of salmon that anchored the fort’s pioneering salted-fish export trade to Hawaii and California, but also commanded the aquatic navigation essential for provisioning the interior brigade trails. By tracing the outpost's evolution from a defensive trading station through the frantic influx of the 1858 Fraser Canyon Gold Rush—culminating in Sir James Douglas’s proclamation of the Crown Colony of British Columbia—to an established agrarian valley, the work illustrates how colonial civic authority and riverine commerce were physically anchored to an enduring Indigenous waterway.

31 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm