Chilliwack River

The same river carries two names. Above the bridge at Vedder Crossing it is the Chilliwack. Below the bridge it is the Vedder.

Chilliwack comes from the Halkomelem Tcil'Qe'uk, valley of many streams, which is fair enough given how much of this board is tributaries. Vedder came later, after Volkert Vedder, a settler who reached the district around 1860. Anglers tend to use whichever half they happen to be standing in.

It also runs the wrong way for a river on this coast. The headwaters sit at Hannegan Pass in Washington's North Cascades, and the water flows north across the border into Chilliwack Lake before turning west down the valley toward the Fraser. Around a hundred kilometres, most of it in Canada, all of it starting in another country.

It is the busiest fishing river in the Lower Mainland: chinook, coho, chum, pink and sockeye through the autumn, steelhead across the winter and spring.