100 Years ago, settlers drained the lake that covered Sumas Prairie and was home to the Semá:th People. In November, 2021, climate change-related flooding temporarily brought the lake back.
View the complete page image content from the Globe & Mail newspaper (including advertisements, obituaries, etc.) from 1844 to present, with a 5 year embargo.
The UFV Heritage Collection is a working collection of rare, unique and historically valuable material, consisting primarily of books and other material related to the people and communities of the Fraser Valley. This primarily published collection is intended to preserve and make available components of the historical record for researchers and the public.
Videos
Produced and directed by Doug Neetz, written by Bob Fuger, narrated by Lonnie Andrews, recorded by Harold Wiens.
"Dr. K Jane Watt states in her book High Water: Living with Fraser Floods many of the people she talked to felt that we are in a time of historic forgetting. That is likely true: few regard the Fraser River as the heart and soul of British Columbia and few indeed realize the significance to us all of the lands behind the dykes of the Fraser River estuary. Dr. Watt's book, supported by the Dairy Industry Historical Society is certainly a timely reminder as collectively we contemplate disastrous floods of 1894 and 1948 in the context of a rapid growth of the human population, new demographics and sustainability of the regional economy."
Near the Pleistocene Termination, a glacier-dammed lake in central British Columbia suddenly drained to the south along the Fraser River valley. Floodwater travelled 330 km down the valley to Hope, British Columbia, and from there to the west into the Salish Sea near Vancouver.
"If the dyke had broken above Rosedale, the city of Chilliwack would have been under water. The reason for the high water level in the Fraser River in 1948, that flooded from the middle of May to the middle of June, was a heat wave in many parts of British Columbia that lasted three weeks, melting the heavy snowpack in the interior of BC."
The Lower Mainland has experienced two major Fraser River floods in the past 130 years. The largest Fraser River flood on written record was in 1894, and the second largest was in 1948. Earlier large-scale floods on the river are also part of the oral history of Coast Salish First Nations. [From Website]
The online Historical Photographs Database provides access to over 38,000 digitized images. We are continuing to scan images and add them to the website.