Article content The Cheam First Nation has expanded its tourism ambitions in the eastern Fraser Valley with the purchase of a luxury resort on the Fraser River with postcard views to another of its ventures. The resort property, the Fraser River Lodge outside Agassiz, is an imposing log structure sitting amid emerald-green fields that offers guests guided-fishing excursions and gourmet dining in a wilderness setting. Last week, the Cheam said they closed on the purchase of the property for $18 million — another piece in their efforts to assemble a land base to build sustainable ventures in ecotourism.
“We live in one of the probably most highly developed resource extraction areas in Western Canada,” Chief Darwin Douglas said. “So we think it’s time that we really take a look at what activities can be sustainable going forward.” The lodge has a panoramic view of mountains in the Skagit Range on the south side of the Fraser River, where the Cheam are partners in the Cascade Skyline Gondola, a proposal to build a sightseeing lift into the alpine near Bridal Veil Falls.
The Cheam viewed Fraser Valley Lodge, when it came up for sale, as a natural extension of the Nation’s ambitions for tourism. The lodge purchase secures property adjacent to a Cheam reserve near Agassiz and follows the purchase of farmland nearby, which combined with land it already owns, is intended to form “a base for an ecosystem-based farming initiative.” “We need to be thinking about these.