Between the Columbia and Fraser

The last two days we’ve traced how the United States and Canada developed as separate countries around parallel river systems.

The Hudson-Mohawk concentrated economic activity on and near the Atlantic coast. The St. Lawrence-Ottawa penetrates farther inland and opened the interior of the continent in three directions to the fur trade of New France.

The sweep of the central plain is north-south, and this was crisscrossed by railroads that linked the eastern rivers to the western mountains. Here again, an east-west flow sets in. Through the mountains run north and south, the rivers that rise in them run east and west.

The US-Canadian boundary originally followed the 49th parallel only as far as the Rocky Mountains: an artificial line across the plains. But when it came time to extend the border to the Pacific, a pair of rivers to the West coast influenced where the line would run.

The western section of the Canadian-US boundary lies between two competing rivers: the Columbia and the Fraser. British and Canadian traders competed with American ones to the mouth of the Columbia, and claimed the lands northward as part of the future Canada.

Americans in the west wanted a border farther north, that would include the Cariboo gold rush area and a link to Alaska. But Britain and the US were not prepared to go to war for the third time in a century over undeveloped western territory, and agreed to compromise.

The US wasn’t prepared to give up the Columbia estuary. The Fraser mattered less. If the lower Columbia was to be American, it was only fair Britain have the other large river delta. Extending the 49th parallel over the mountains to the Pacific accomplished this.

The Columbia and Fraser rivers on the Pacific coast became with parallels of the Hudson and St. Lawrence on the Atlantic. With one exception: no western river provides an opening to the interior on anything of the scale that the St. Lawrence or Mississippi does.


In the north another pair of rivers differentiates our two countries. The Yukon River, like the Columbia, originates in Canada but turns west to flow through Alaska to the Pacific. The Mackenzie lies fully within Canada and flows northwest to the Arctic Ocean.


If France had held the St. Lawrence and her string of forts down the Mississippi in 1759, North America would be very different today. The dominant culture would be French.

The Thirteen Colonies would have continued to depend on Britain for protection against France as Canada did later against the US. Eventually they would have gradually evolved to independence as Canada did. In the south New Spain would include Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

In the northwest Alaska would still be Russian. In the northeast Denmark’s control of Greenland would probably extend to Baffin Island and other parts of the Canadian arctic.