Sternwheelers and Canyon Cats: Whitewater Freighting on the Upper Fraser (review)

‘Frazers River,’ Governor George Simpson of the Hudson’s Bay Company declared in 1828, after surviving a harrowing boat trip through the Fraser Canyon, ‘can no longer be thought of as a practicable communication with the interior; it was never wholly passed by water before, and in all probability never will again.’ As Jack Boudreau shows, Simpson was wrong, but not far wrong. In the days before the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (gtp) connected northern BC to the wider world, the upper Fraser River carried both freight and passengers. Scows, barges, and sternwheelers were hauled through narrow canyons using cables and the considerable skill and knowledge of steamer captains. Freelance river pilots, known as ‘canyon cats,’ guided freight through the Grand Canyon, an especially treacherous point dividing the major settlement of Fort George from upstream access to Yellowhead Pass (in the Rocky Mountains) and points east. Cargoes got through, but at a considerable cost in lives and property. The steamer Charlotte, for instance, the first to offer regular freight and passenger service in the region, came to grief when the cable guiding it through Fort George canyon slipped off the pin holding it to the rock face. Swinging sideways and almost out of control, the Charlotte was saved only when its captain coolly beached it. Other travellers, not so lucky or so skilled, disappeared into the waters. Such stories of adventure and tragedy are the meat of Boudreau’s book.

This is a work of popular history. Environmental historians and historical geographers, nevertheless, will appreciate the clear sense that Boudreau gives of the troubles that were inherent in connecting BC to the industrial world. British Columbians relied on, were restricted by, and found multiple ways to overcome their challenging natural environment. Rocks inconvenient to river traffic were quickly blasted out of the way, the names of the men who handled the powder going down in local lore. The canyon cats, in a more subtle interaction with nature, turned their deep local knowledge of one critical place into a very good living. Boudreau reports that some made over $1,000 per month in 1913, compared to the $2.00 to $3.50 per day workers were being paid to build the gtp nearby.

But while it is possible to extract such insights from the book, none of them are developed at any length. The stories are the heart of the action. The book also features a fine selection of revealing and stirring photographs and colourful selections from primary material in the form of recreated newspaper ads. All of this speaks to the extensive research Boudreau conducted.

Boudreau has navigated the river himself, including as part of historical recreations, and his personal commitment to this history and this place is obvious. While this benefits his storytelling, it introduces other problems. Boudreau assumes too much knowledge on the reader’s part. The geography of the region and of movement on the river is often very murky. The map that is included shows only the Fraser and its tributaries, leaving out other landforms, and as a result is difficult to interpret. I found it to be of little use. Potentially interesting points go under-explained. Though we hear much of how steamers navigated rapids using guide cables, for example, we are never told how this worked. How was tension kept in the cable as the steamer moved upstream, for instance? Why, as Boudreau tells us at one point, did steamer captains often forgo the cables? Finally, while the chapters are arranged in a rough chronology, events are not discussed so as to make historical development very understandable.

There is little scholarship on the development of transportation networks in bc, as Cole Harris has pointed out in his essay ‘The Struggle with Distance’ (in Harris, The Resettlement of British Columbia, UBC Press, 1997). As a supplement to Harris’s essay this book will be useful to scholars with an...