Article content The mighty Fraser River lies at the heart of B.C. It is the province’s longest river, rising in the Rocky Mountains and flowing 1,375 kilometres before entering the Pacific Ocean at Vancouver.
Its drainage basin is the size of Britain. Its salmon migrations are key elements of Indigenous culture and B.C.
’s commercial fishery. The Fraser Delta houses Canada’s largest port facility. The river is unassailably large, free-flowing without dams on the main stem, and powerful.
We are reminded of the Fraser’s power during the annual spring floods that routinely sends 10,000 cubic metres of water per second through the most densely populated part of Western Canada. Residents of smaller communities built along the river live in awe of the river’s power and fear that it will wash them away in a flood. In larger communities, flood defences allow us to forget that one of the most powerful mountain rivers in the world debouches into the ocean in our backyard.
Yet the river is also fragile in ways we might not expect. When people think about protecting the Fraser River, they often think of protecting the birds living on the delta mud flats, salmon who use the river as a superhighway to get to their spawning grounds, and the rich diversity of plants and animals that live along the river. It is rarer that people think of what makes up the habitat of these plants and animals.
It is sediment, chunks of rock broken away from canyon walls, crushed by glaciers, and worn r.