Prince George-Valemount.
4 candidates, one seat.

The Lheidli T’enneh First Nation says that its traditional territory includes the city of Prince George. The BC Treaty Commission describes that territory as the land around Prince George, including the Nechako and Fraser River basins, stretching east to the Alberta border. The Commission lists Simpcw among nine neighbouring First Nations whose territory overlaps or is shared with that of the Lheidli T’enneh.

Simpcw First Nation says it is one of 17 bands of the Secwe̓pemc, or Shuswap Nation. It calls its territory Simpcwúl̓ecw, gives its area as 5,000,000 hectares and says it extends north to Kakwa Park and east of Jasper, including the whole of the North Thompson Valley. The Encyclopedia of British Columbia names the Secwepemc (Shuswap) and the Dakelh (Carrier) as the peoples of the Robson Valley. The Valemount Museum writes that the name Tête Jaune Cache moved downriver to a periodic settlement of Secwepemc people.

BC Geographical Names says that in 1820 Pierre Hatsinaton, a fair-haired free Iroquois nicknamed Tête Jaune (“yellow head”), guided a Hudson’s Bay Company party from St. Mary’s on the Peace River across the Rocky Mountains to the forks of the Fraser River, where he left some of the furs. The office records other names for the same man in older sources, including Pierre Bostonais and Francois Decoigne. Parks Canada writes that the company used Yellowhead Pass from the mid 1820s to the early 1850s, mainly to carry leather from the Saskatchewan District to its posts in New Caledonia. The Encyclopedia of British Columbia puts the pass 1,131 m above sea level on the British Columbia and Alberta border, 25 km west of Jasper.

In 1862 the Overlanders crossed by the same pass on their way to the Cariboo gold fields. The Canadian Encyclopedia writes that a band of Secwepemc gave the party provisions at Tête Jaune Cache, and that the party split there on 1 September 1862. A small group rafted down the North Thompson River to Kamloops, and the rest went down the Fraser River to Fort George. Parks Canada’s plaque text records that the majority went down the Fraser and others followed the North Thompson.

The Encyclopedia of British Columbia says the modern community of Tête Jaune Cache was set up in 1911 during construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, at the place where the Fraser River leaves the mountains. The Valemount Museum says that between 1911 and 1913 it was the largest settlement west of Winnipeg, that it estimates its population at 3,000, and that most buildings were canvas tents. By 1913, the museum adds, three sternwheelers carried supplies and passengers down the Fraser River.

The same museum records that the river reached a record height in 1913 and washed away the peninsula on which the centre of the town stood. A forest fire destroyed all the houses at the mile 53 townsite, where engineers and surveyors had lived, in 1916, after the town had been deserted. BC Geographical Names gives the post office dates: Tete Jaune opened on 23 April 1912 and closed on 15 January 1917. A second office called Henningville, opened on 1 June 1913 at a site 3 miles southeast along the railway, took the name Tete Jaune Cache on 1 July 1917 and closed on 20 January 1967.

Railway building created most of the towns between Prince George and the Alberta border. BC Geographical Names says the Dunster station was built in 1913 and named by a Grand Trunk Pacific inspector after his home town in England, and that the post office opened in December 1915. McBride began as a station of the same railway. The village says it was founded in 1913 as Mile 90, incorporated in 1932 and named after Premier Sir Richard McBride, and BC Geographical Names records that its post office opened on 15 February 1914.

At Dome Creek the railway built its Second Crossing bridge over the Fraser River just west of the community. BC Geographical Names says the population may have reached 2,000 during that work and was recorded as 150 in 1921. On the North Thompson River a post office opened at Avola in 1913 during construction of the Canadian National line. The place had been Stillwater Flats, and the railway chose the name of a town in Sicily because another Stillwater post office already existed in the province. The Blue River post office opened on 1 March 1917.

The Valemount Museum says Fulton Alexander McKirdy staked the first homestead in the Valemount area in 1906, and that a station was built at Swift Creek when the railway came through Yellowhead Pass in 1914. Logging, a tie-cutting camp and trapping supported a small town with a store, a post office, a hotel and a school. In 1927 the Canadian National Railway moved the station farther along the line and the town took the name Valemount.

BC Geographical Names quotes a railway letter of 2 November 1927 saying that Valemount is a coined word, suggested by a station set in a valley within the mountains. The post office, opened at Cranberry Lake on 1 August 1913, became Swift Creek in 1918 and Valemount in 1928 or 1929. Valemount was incorporated as a village municipality on 13 December 1962. The old station, moved to Main Street and restored over five years, opened as the Valemount Museum in 1992.

BC Geographical Names says that in 1908 George Hammond formed the Natural Resources Security Company and began Central Fort George near the Nechako River. In 1910 a rival town, South Fort George, was laid out on the Fraser River 3 miles south of the old fort. The Grand Trunk Pacific bought Indian Reserve No. 1 for its own townsite, and when the first passenger train arrived on 30 January 1914, BC Geographical Names writes, the town of Prince George was little more than a clearing. The South Fort George post office ran from 1910 to 1959, and the city boundary extended on 1 January 1975 to take in the former village. The South Fort George schoolhouse opened in 1910 with 28 students and was the first in the region, according to The Exploration Place. The City’s Heritage Register lists a house built in 1912 as one of four that remain from before the First World War in South Fort George.

The City of Prince George says the railway company hired the American firm Brett, Hall & Co. to design its town. The plan was drawn in Boston in autumn 1912 and marked out on the ground by surveyor Fred Burden in spring 1913. It used curved and diagonal streets, and it set a railway station and a hotel at the north end of George Street and City Hall in Princess Square at the south end. The present City Hall opened in January 1967 on the same site. The City lists Veterans Plaza, in front of City Hall at 1100 Patricia Boulevard, among its downtown parks.

Western Economic Diversification Canada wrote on 24 February 2017 that the City renamed Fort George Park in 2015 to recognize the Lheidli T’enneh village that stood on the site before the railway and the City. The department announced $377,000 toward a pavilion in the park, built with the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation. The City lists the opening of the Lheidli T’enneh Pavilion in 2018 and the signing in 2017 of a memorandum of understanding on cooperation and communication between the City, the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation and the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George.

On 21 September 2022 Chief Dolleen Logan and the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation Council presented City Council with a territorial acknowledgement plaque for City Hall. Its text is etched in English and Dakelh and reads: “We respectfully acknowledge the unceded ancestral lands of the Lheidli T'enneh, on whose land we live, work, and play.” The City said that future Council meetings would open with a land acknowledgement statement.

On 15 November 2013 the Province reported that construction of the Wood Innovation and Design Centre in downtown Prince George was on time and on budget, with completion expected in the fall of 2014. It said the Province was investing $25.1 million and that the design-build team was working with 13 British Columbia companies. The building uses glulam columns and beams, cross-laminated timber and laminated veneer lumber, all produced in the province.

Canadian Consulting Engineer reported on 4 November 2014 that the centre had officially opened the week before, with six storeys and a mechanical penthouse reaching 29.3 metres. The magazine called it the tallest contemporary wood building in North America. The article says the University of Northern British Columbia would occupy the first three floors, and the university lists the Master of Engineering in Integrated Wood Design as based there. The City lists Wood Innovation Square, at 499 George Street, beside the centre.