Fascinating facts: Bridge River Valley’s hydroelectric project history

Voices from Bridge River, a beautiful new book by the BC Hydro Power Pioneers along with a writer named Kerry Gold, chronicles the history of Bridge River’s hydroelectric projects, along with the stories of people involved in them.
Complete with unearthed historical photos of both the projects and the valley—spanning from the late 1800s to present day—the book is a must-read for anyone interested in the the history of the area or the long, complicated backstory of the hydro projects it spawned.
While the publication was backed by the BC Hydro Power Pioneers Association, made up of retired BC Hydro employees who aim to give back to local charities and preserve history, the book doesn’t gloss over the problems some of these projects created—from damaging fish habitat to, initially, glossing over the Indigenous communities who have called the area home for time immemorial.
The book is certainly worth a read (you can buy it at powerpioneersgear.com)—and proceeds from its sale go to the BC Hydro Power Pioneers Miracle Millions Campaign for BC Children’s Hospital—but to give you a taste of what’s within its pages, we hand-picked a few fascinating facts about the area (by no means comprehensive) to share.

First, the facts

The Bridge River hydroelectric complex refers to three dams (in Upper Bridge River Valley that includes the Terzaghi and LaJoie Dam), as well as water stores for four generating stations.
While today it contributes six to eight per cent of British Columbia’s electrical supply, back when it was first completed in 1960, it supplied more than half the power needed for the Lower Mainland.
But it all started back in 1912 when Geoffrey Downton, a surveyor, as well as map maker and draftsman, and Patrick Dick Booth, also a surveyor and an engineer, first visited the area and quickly recognized its potential for power.

Lajoie dam

Located at Lajoie Falls near Gold Bridge, this storage dam sits at the highest point on the map of the Bridge River Power Project.
Its initial goal was to help increase the output of the Bridge River plants by serving as “an additional storage reservoir for the extremely variable water runoff,” 55 km upstream from the tunnel intake for Bridge 1.
While a rock-filled storage dam was finished in August 1949, the one-unit powerhouse took seven more years.
The dam, created from 437,000 cubic metres of rock with an intake tower that released water from the Downton Lake Reservoir into Carpenter Lake Reservoir, ultimately came to sit at 753 metres above sea level, bringing the Downton Reservoir to 733 metres.
While this is not included in the book, the Gun Creek Recreation Site, located a mere 8.6 km from Gold Bridge on the shores of the Carpenter Lake Reservoir, is one of the recreation sites that BC Hydro continues to operate in Bridge River.

Minto City

The book might delve into the minutiae of constructing the dams, reservoirs and powerhouses that make up the massive project, but part of its appeal to the average person is the history and personalities it highlights.
To that end, arguably one of the most compelling chapters tells the tale of the now-defunct Minto City.
Located near the Gun Creek Recreation Site, the townsite was the brainchild of “Big Bill” Davidson, who hoped the area would find mining success like neighbouring Gold Bridge and Bralorne. While Richardson built its streets, store, hotel, and mining buildings—ensuring water was flowing and power was running by 1935—Minto never took off and, by 1940, it was fairly empty.
So, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbour at the end of 1941, prompting Canada to declare war against the country, and, subsequently, create internment camps for Canadian-Japanese residents, Minto was chosen as one of those camps. (It goes without saying that the camps are considered a human rights atrocity today.)
The camp, which housed 25 mostly urban families, was self-supporting, with its 325 residents working in the forestry or trucking industry. They also grew flowers and vegetable gardens and sometimes sold their produce in Gold Bridge or Bralorne.
But, after the war ended in 1945, the interned families moved elsewhere.
Then, in 1958, BC Electric (which became BC Hydro in 1962) decided to flood the town, along with a handful of others, to create the Carpenter Lake reservoir for the Mission Dam.
If you visit the old townsite today when water levels are low, you can still find remnants of buildings and, sometimes, even old artifacts.

Salmon

It’s no secret that hydroelectric dams generally have some degree of negative impact on salmon.
Changing water levels and river-flow patterns, habitat loss, and dangers like turbines all impact spawning salmon as they make their epic journey upriver.
Voices from Bridge River chronicles many of these issues and the incremental ways BC Electric tried to improve its projects for salmon dating back to the 1950s.
In 1953, the company came to an agreement with fishery agencies—including the Canadian Department of Fisheries, the BC Game Commission, and the International Pacific Salmon Fisheries Commission—which stipulated the building of a fish ladder to help salmon over the dam so they could reach Seton and Anderson Lakes. (They also added a screen that would prevent fish from sweeping down river into the powerhouse.)
Despite this, the company acknowledged that dam construction would still have an impact on pink salmon fry in particular.
A 1958 study confirmed that both pink and sockeye salmon stocks had been reduced, directly because of water diversion from Bridge River to Seton Lake.
To address concerns about the dwindling population of both pinks and sockeye, later highlighted by the Salmon Commission, BC Electric donated land to (what was then named) the Cayoose Indian Band, now Sekw’el’was, to work on a project addressing lost river spawning habitat. It also completed a two-mile spawning channel in Seton River in 1967 that aimed to help 20,000 spawning salmon.
Then, in 2002, lower spawning channels were completely rebuilt and improved with help from members of the Sekw’el’was, who now maintain care for these salmon restoration facilities.

Indigenous agreement

The book ends with a chapter on the agreement between BC Hydro and the St’at’imc communities.
A long, complex process, it all started in the early ‘90s as the company looked at rehabilitating the Bridge River system facilities, starting with the replacement of Bridge 1 transformers in 2003.
Understandably, the St’at’imc had several issues they wanted to address regarding the impacts of the facilities on their traditional territories. They also wanted to ensure their culture and food sources would be preserved, and navigate developing their own economy.
Negotiated over 17 years, the package is actually 17 separate agreements and it was completed in 2011.
The three overarching agreements included the Settlement Agreement, the Certainty Provisions Agreement, and the Relations Agreement. There were also 11 separate community agreements that ranged from “long-term environmental mitigation plans to help restore land, water, fish, wildlife and vegetation” to a more than $200 million financial package in the form of a trust that would be paid out over 99 years.
While progress was made, issues remain today, the book says, including the 2011 agreements not addressing the schedule for the Lajoie Dam upgrade, which impacts salmon spawning grounds.

There is a copy of this book at the Bralorne Pioneer Museum.
A copy is also being donated to the Gold Bridge Library for borrowing.
The book can be purchased for $30 at www.powerpioneersgear.com and proceeds from its sale go to the BC Hydro Power Pioneers Miracle Millions Campaign for BC Children’s Hospital.