Prince George
Rough-edged PRINCE GEORGE , carved from the forest to
become British Columbia's sixth largest city (pop. 78,000), is the
general area's services and transport centre, so you're highly
likely to become acquainted with its dispersed and half-deserted
downtown streets. Forestry, in the form of pulp mills, kilns,
planers, plywood plants and allied chemical works, is at the core
of its industrial landscape - if you ever wanted the inside story
on the lumber business, this is where to find it.
Simon Fraser established a North West Trading Company post here
in 1805, and named it Fort George in honour of the reigning
George III. As a commercial nexus it quickly altered the lives of
the local Carrier Sekani people, who abandoned their
semi-nomadic migration from winter to summer villages in favour of
a permanent settlement alongside the fort. Little changed until
1914 when the arrival of the Grand Trunk Railway - later the
Canadian National - spawned an influx of pioneers and loggers. The
town was connected by road to Dawson Creek and the north as late as
1951, and saw the arrival of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway in
1958 - two developments that give some idea of how recent the
opening up of the far north has been.
The town is a disorienting open-plan network of roads and
sporadic houses between Hwy 97 and a sprawling downtown area at the
junction of the Fraser and Nechako rivers. As far as sightseeing is
concerned, you might as well stick to what Prince George does best
and take the surprisingly popular free tours around some of
its big mills and processing plants; to reserve a place, contact
Tourism Prince George opposite the bus terminal at 1198 Victoria St
and 15th Avenue (Mon-Fri 8.30am-4pm, Sat 9am-4pm, Sun 9am-4pm;
longer hours in summer; tel 562-3700 or 1-800/668-7646,
www.tourismpg.bc.ca ). Company buses generally pick up from
the Tourism Prince George offices and deliver you to one of several
firms, the biggest currently being Northwood Pulp and Timber, where
you are shown thousands of seedlings being grown in controlled
conditions, the sawmills, and one of the continent's largest pulp
mills. Outside, in a graphic illustration of the scale of forestry
in the region, logs, planks and piles of sawdust the size of small
hills stretch almost as far as the eye can see.
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