David Thompson Heritage Lands

Wildsight wants to introduce you to an exciting proposal to commemorate David Thompson's explorations of the Canadian Rockies and the Columbia River route to the Pacific.  The David Thompson Heritage Lands National Historic Site of Canada proposal is intended to recognize both an historic event in Canada’s past and a remote and spectacular pristine wilderness located in the Canadian Rockies.  

Canada is a vast landscape of unsurpassed natural beauty, much of which is forever altered by human activities. Wildsight proposes a unique opportunity to acknowledge both Canada’s First People and an important historical figure while

safeguarding a wilderness and an out-of-time experience still unchanged two centuries later.  

With the government of British Columbia’s support, Wildsight proposes to submit the 13,000 hectare David Thompson Heritage Lands for designation as a National Historic Site of Canada, incorporating the lands and viewscapes bounding the Athabasca Heritage Trail from the Athabasca Pass, through Pacific and Jeffrey Creek to the confluence with the Wood River.

The area is remote, even by Canadian Rocky Mountain standards, and represents an ecosystem more akin to BC's coastal forest than to the high and dry country associated with the Rocky Mountains. 

It’s a magical, majestic mountain setting. With towering peaks, vast primeval forests, and pristine lakes, it’s a Canadian postcard come to life. This is an unroaded wilderness, the only place Thompson explored he could still recognize 200 years later.

Ancient trees of the rare BC inland temperate rainforests preside over critical connectivity corridors for wildlife, like the endangered Mountain Caribou, mountain goat and blue-listed grizzly bears.  305 species at risk call this type of ecosystem home.  The pristine waters teem with fish. 

The proposal is a good fit with the current land use designation, forest resource planning, and the Golden Backcountry Recreation Plan that determined, by immediate consensus, that the area would be zoned non-motorized, deep wilderness.

National Historic Site status is non-regulatory and simply serves to demarcate an area that is of high importance for specific values.  This form of designation calls attention to the historical, wilderness, and recreational values of the David Thompson Heritage Lands and will encourage hikers and back country skiers to visit the area.  This proposal has the potential to become a draw for those backcountry recreationalists who can appreciate a deep wilderness experience and also have an interest in historic and cultural values.  It fills an empty niche in terms of tourism marketing.

There is increasing competition for the growing tourism market in British Columbia. At the same time, tourism consumers are becoming more discriminating. There is a growing interest in "authentic tourism", a value-added experience that allows the consumer to participate and to learn. This is reputed to be the fastest growing segment of the tourism market.

We ask that British Columbia support designation as a National Historic Site of Canada the portion of landscape unit G1, in the Golden Forest District, comprising the lands and viewscapes bounding the Athabasca Heritage trail, including the Athabasca Pass, Pacific Creek and Jeffrey Creek. 

There are few places remaining where those of us immersed in modern life can actually experience time travel or the closest parallel. Travelers passing through the historic Athabasca Trail may, deep in the rain forest, imagine themselves part of a forgotten era. They will know the same surroundings experienced by David Thompson. Here, as in no other place, the adventurer follows in the footsteps of the explorers and First Nations people, seeing the same things they saw, experiencing a pristine, sometimes hostile, but totally natural landscape, symbolizing the bravery, tenacity and vision of Canada's heritage.