The Fraser River

While other people get diamonds for their 10 wedding anniversary, Carol Blacklaws got covered in silt from her first time rafting down the Fraser River.

Thirty years later, she and her husband Rick remain enthralled with the Fraser – the 11th largest river in Canada – and are hoping to raise the profile of its rugged and wild beauty through their new coffee-table book, The Fraser, River of Life and Legend.

“We view the river as being a very beautiful place that has hidden gems that are accessible to us here in B.C.,” Carol said. “We enjoy going on the river, we have an affiliation to the river that we want to share.”

The book begins in the river’s Upper Reaches at Moose Lake – the only lake on the Fraser – and the glacial waters at Mt. Robson before flowing in a ‘sediment-rich slurry’ toward the Pacific Ocean. The Blackwells’ journey, captured over 20 years of exploration, shares the intimate history, both past and present, on the river’s shores as it wends its way through the Cariboo, the Grasslands and Fraser Canyon to the salty waters of the Strait of Georgia.

The Blackwells, whose son became a river guide and named his own son Fraser, want to raise the profile of the Fraser, recognizing it for the rich resource that it is. While lakes and oceans are touted as tourist draws, much of the Fraser is only accessible by backroads or river rafts. There are few campsites and little accessibility except to those who work on it.

Locals know their sections of the river, Rick said, but “the river isn’t that accessible to the average person.” He described the Fraser as a “river of diversity like four or five countries that are joined,” each with different characteristics: the broadness of the river in the Robson Valley, the Cariboo where the river is right next to surface and the Grasslands where the river drops down.