SALMON ARM

SALMON ARM

Is a small city, located on the Trans-Canada Highway, at the head of the southern arm of Shuswap Lake geographically located roughly halfway between Vancouver and Calgary.

The city’s name comes from its location on a arm of Shuswap Lake, which gets its name from the once plentiful numbers of salmon that swarmed up the tributaries that drain into Shuswap Lake. Despite being home to the Shuswap First Nations people, It first came to life in 1888, when the first white settlers arrived who worked here during construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Salmon Arm is now mostly a tourism-based community with many camping and house boat rental facilities available mainly during the summertime months and is also home to well over 20 provincial parks and recreation areas on Shuswap Lake.

Salmon Arm is considered to be the Shuswap Lake region’s largest incorporated community and it was in 2005, that Salmon Arm celebrated its 100^th year as a incorporated community and thus in the same year it became incorporated as a city.

The city boasts a campus of Okanagan University College which offers a wide variety of diploma programs in many professions.

Forestry, dairy farming, and agriculture are also very important to Salmon Arm’s economy.

The Salmon Arm Silverbacks, a British Columbia Hockey League team play their home games in the city and Dave Scatchard, a former professional hockey player, who used to play for Vancouver Canucks and New York Islanders, is originally from Salmon Arm.   

Salmon Arm’s population: 14,664

NANAIMO

NANAIMO              

Is a large-sized city, overlooking a beautiful harbour on the east coast of Vancouver Island, 110 kilometers north of Victoria.

Coal was discovered here in 1849 and just shortly thereafter, the Hudson’s Bay Company built a trading post. The settlement was first known as Colville Town, named after the company’s governor’s Andrew Colville. It was renamed Nanaimo in 1860 and is a first nations word meaning “strong”. The fort the company built still stands and now is known today as “The Bastion” and is the oldest and fortified Hudson’s Bay Company fort in Canada and today it still stands. Coal played a huge and sustainable role in the city, when production crested at 1,000,000 tonnes in 1923-until World War 2 (WWII), when the coalmines expired giving the city no choice but to close the last mine for good during the 1950s. Nanaimo built good port facilities and was able to make the transaction from being a mining town to a major port city for Vancouver Island.

During the 1990s, Nanaimo became the third-fastest growing city and after Victoria (including all its suburbs), Nanaimo is the second-largest community on Vancouver Island. Tourism, commercial fishing, sawmilling, and just being a major destination center for Vancouver Island are the mainstays of the economy.

Nanaimo became incorporated in 1874 and is third oldest city in British Columbia and the second-oldest in all of Vancouver Island. Malaspina College, one of the most scenic and beautiful post-secondary education institutions on Vancouver Island is located in Nanaimo and is the main college in the city.

The 3,000-seat Frank Crane Arena is home to Nanaimo’s only hockey team; the Nanaimo Clippers of the British Columbia Junior Hockey League (BCJHL) and since the 2003-2004 season, the team has won 2 Fred Page Cups (British Columbia’s Junior Hockey League’s equivalent of the Stanley Cup).

Nanaimo’s population: 78,672

QUESNEL

QUESNEL

Is a small city located at the confluence of the Quesnel and Fraser Rivers, 118 kilometers south of Prince George, and is the largest and most commercialized city of the North Cariboo region of British Columbia.

Previously known as Quesnellemouth, Quesnel is named after fur trader Jules-Maurice Quesnel, who in 1808, escorted Simon Fraser on his exploration of the Fraser River.

Quesnel started out as supply center for the goldfields with the discovery of gold in the Williams Creek area near Barkerville in 1857 because of this Quesnel was made into a stopover point for miners on their way towards Barkerville. Quesnel boomed during the 1860s when the Fraser River became a frequent stopping point for paddle wheeler ships on their way towards Fort George (now known today as Prince George) from Soda Creek. The city celebrates its history and ties with the Cariboo Gold Rush, every July with Billy Barker Days, a 4-day family-fun weekend event that brings families and the community together to celebrate and pay tribute to this era.

In 1865, the Collins Overhead Telegraph arrived at Quesnel. This telegraph was to provide sufficient communication from California to Moscow, Russia and an effective telegraph from North America to Europe but abandoned in 1866 after a line was successfully put down across the Atlantic instead. A cairn commemorating this event is one of many historic highlights in downtown Quesnel, an old Hudson’s Bay Company trading post that dates from 1867 (now gift shop) and an old traffic bridge across the Fraser River that dates from 1929 are among many others.

With several pulp and sawmills and a plywood plant located within the city, Quesnel mostly relies on forestry as its main economic activity. An observation tower at the north end of town provides a panoramic view of most of the sawmills as well as many signs of interest that tell the history of this industry of Quesnel and on how forestry plays a huge economic role here.

Quesnel is also positioned at the junction of 2 highways, Highways #97, and 88-kilometer long Highway #26, which goes to communities such as Barkerville Historic Town, Wells, as well as the provincial park at Bowron Lake, the latter being a popular canoeing area. Highway #97 meanwhile, goes north towards Prince George and the rest of the north-eastern corner British Columbia while the highway south goes from here to Williams Lake, 100 Mile House, Cache Creek where it eventually goes to communities in the Okanagan and eventually the Canada/United States border, just south of Osoyoos.

Quesnel was incorporated as a village in 1928 and became a city in 1979.

Quesnel’s population: 9,326