Cariboo

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.

Cariboo (electoral district)

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:

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".

Cariboo (provincial electoral district)

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.

Demographics

Political geography