Wikipedia
The Cariboo is an intermontane region of British Columbia along a plateau stretching from the Fraser Canyon to the Cariboo Mountains. The name is a reference to the caribou that were once abundant in the region. The Cariboo was the first region of the Interior north of the lower Fraser and its canyon to be settled by non-indigenous people, and played an important part in the early history of the colony and province. The boundaries of the Cariboo proper in its historical sense are debatable, but its original meaning was the region north of the forks of the Quesnel River and the low mountainous basins between the mouth of that river on the Fraser at the city of Quesnel and the northward end of the Cariboo Mountains - an area that is mostly in the Quesnel Highland and focused on several now-famous gold-bearing creeks near the head of the Willow River, the richest of them all, Williams Creek, the location of Barkerville, which was the capital of the Cariboo Gold Rush and also of government officialdom for decades afterwards (it is now a museum town). This area, the Cariboo goldfields, is underpopulated today but was once the most settled and most powerful of the regions of the province's Interior. As settlement spread southwards of this area, flanking the route of the Cariboo Road and spreading out through the rolling plateaus and benchlands of the Cariboo Plateau and lands adjoining it along the Fraser and Thompson, the meaning changed to include a wider area than the goldfields.
The grasslands of the Cariboo are home of the regionally-endangered American badger (Taxidea taxus jeffersonii).
Cariboo was a federal electoral district in British Columbia, Canada, that was represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1871 to 1892.
This riding was first created as Cariboo District following British Columbia's admission into the Canadian Confederation in 1871. The name was changed to "Cariboo" in 1872, and existed in this form until it was abolished in 1892 when it was amalgamated into the new riding of Yale—Cariboo. In 1914, Yale—Cariboo was redistributed and Yale and Cariboo were separate ridings once again, though with smaller areas than before. The Cariboo riding lasted until 1966. The succession of ridings for the Cariboo area since then has been:
- Kamloops—Cariboo (1966—1976)
- Cariboo—Chilcotin (1976—2003)
- Cariboo—Prince George (2003 - )
- Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo (2004 - )
The Chilcotin region of the riding, west of the Fraser River, was from 1966 to 1976 part of the Coast Chilcotin riding.
The original form of the riding was the whole of the Cariboo Plateau and both Cariboo and Lillooet Land Districts. Its southern boundary was on the northern edge of the New Wesminster riding, and later the Burrard riding, then the North Vancouver riding, with near-coastal localities such as Pemberton, Squamish, Britannia Beach and Port Douglas all politically part of "Cariboo".
Under the Representation Act of 1892, the constituencies of Yale and Cariboo were united to form Yale—Cariboo. In 1914 that riding was broken up and the Yale and Cariboo riding-names were restored, although the new constituencies were considerably smaller than before. The restored Yale riding included the Boundary Country around Grand Forks and Greenwood, but the Kootenay was now a separate riding and the town of Yale itself was not in the restored Yale riding, but in the new riding of Westminster District. The first election using the new boundaries was in 1917. "Government" and "Opposition" were used during the wartime campaign to designate the governing Conservatives vs the Opposition Liberals.
A major redistribution in 1952 took away the southern half of the Cariboo district, with a southern boundary at 52 degrees 30 minutes north, just excluding Williams Lake and the south bank of Quesnel Lake. The rest of the riding extended to the Little Rancheria River and the border with Yukonand the Northwest Territories, therefore including the Omineca, Prince George and Peace River districts.
The Cariboo electoral district was abolished in 1966. Successor ridings were:
- Coast Chilcotin (1966 - 1976)
- Kamloops—Cariboo (1966 - 1976)
- Prince George—Peace River (1966 - 1976)
- Skeena (1914 - 2003)
Cariboo was one of the twelve original electoral districts created when British Columbia became a Canadian province in 1871. Roughly corresponding to the old colonial electoral administrative district of the same name, it was a three-member riding until the 1894 election, when it was reduced through reapportionment and became a two-member riding until the 1916 election, after which it has been a single-member riding. It produced many notable Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs), including George Anthony Boomer Walkem, third and fifth holder of the office of Premier of British Columbia and who was one of the first representatives elected from the riding; John Robson, ninth Premier of British Columbia; and Robert Bonner, a powerful minister in the W.A.C. Bennett cabinet, and later CEO of MacMillan Bloedel and BC Hydro.
Cariboo is an adapted spelling of the word "caribou" (wild reindeer as known in North America). The term can refer to:
- Cariboo, an intermontane region of British Columbia along a plateau stretching from the Fraser Canyon to the Cariboo Mountains
-
Cariboo Mountains, the northernmost subrange of the Columbia Mountains, entirely within the province of British Columbia, Canada
- Cariboo Mountains Provincial Park
- Cariboo Plateau, a volcanic plateau in south-central British Columbia, Canada
- Cariboo Regional District — Regional District
- Cariboo District, a former federal electoral district in British Columbia, Canada, that was represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1871 to 1872
- Cariboo (electoral district), a former federal electoral district in British Columbia, Canada, that was represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1871 to 1892
- Cariboo (provincial electoral district) — the former provincial electoral district
- Cariboo Gold Rush
-
Cariboo River, a river in British Columbia
- Cariboo River Provincial Park
- Cariboo Road
- Old Cariboo Road
- Cariboo Hill Secondary School
- Cariboo Runaway. a youth-adventure novel
- Cariboo, British Columbia, the old name of Lamming Mills, British Columbia
- Cariboo, an official neighbourhood of the City of Coquitlam, British Columbia
- Cariboo camels, the Bactrian camels which were used on the Douglas Road and the Old Cariboo Road in 1862 and 1863 to haul freight during the Cariboo Gold Rush
- Cariboo, California, a region in Plumas County, California
Usage examples of "cariboo".
Thling-Tinneh, mighty chief of the Sticks And the land of the Tanana, ruler of the salmon and the bear, the moose and the cariboo!
Of a night he visited in Chief Thling- Tinneh's lodge of moose and cariboo skins, talking big and dispensing tobacco with a lavish hand.
Even now have I laid by skins of the beaver, of the moose, of the cariboo, that I might win favor in the eyes of Thling-Tinneh, that I might marry Zarinska, his daughter.
It was lying stretched out on the floor of his log cabin, the eyrie he built for himself 7,000 feet up in the Rockies just east of the famous Cariboo area.
I tried to imagine what it had been like up here less than a hundred years ago when the Cariboo gold rush had been on and these creek beds had been crowded with men from all parts of the world.
In his mad ride Leloo had been so intently listening for sounds from behind that he never once thought of sounds ahead, and in this pause of the rattling hoofs and flying stones, his ears caught the rumble of wheels coming towards him, the gentle beat of six horses trotting slowly, and the cheery whistle of the big Canadian who drove the Cariboo stage.
The profligate lumbering operations that had stripped away so much of the Canadian forest earlier in the century were now at an end, and nature was fast reclaiming the remoter parts of the Cariboo and Chilcotin country.