Chasing the Golden Butterfly: Your passport to B.C.’s past
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Updated: August 19, 2009 11:16 AM
Discover powerful transformer gods, ride with Chinese cowboys and walk down the Grand Boulevard of B.C. history this summer while Chasing the Golden Butterfly.
This heritage tourism project combines a passport program — like the one used during Expo 86 — with the increasingly popular pastime of GPS-geocaching. Chasing the Golden Butterfly guides travelers to historic sites in some of the most beautiful and culturally significant regions of B.C.
The colourful, 60-page passport document has pictures, fun facts, maps and coordinates for 88 living history sites on three different routes in the B.C. Interior. It also contains the stories of three period characters traveling those routes, allowing tourists to follow in their footsteps. Each character is “chasing the Golden Butterfly,” a term used in D.W. Higgins’ book on the 1858 Fraser River Rush, The Mystic Spring.
The routes wind through spectacular scenery, vibrant communities and heritage sites that date back as far as 10,000 years. Route One, “The Pathway To Gold,” follows the Trans-Canada and Highway 97 from Hope to Barkerville in the Cariboo. Route Two, “The Spirit Trail,” takes visitors from Port Douglas at the top of Lake Harrison all the way to Hat Creek, near Lillooet. Route Three, “The Round Up Route,” is a magnificent Circle Tour starting in Cache Creek and winding through communities like Merritt, Logan Lake and Ashcroft.
Chase your own golden butterfly and feel the power of Utszím’alh, a supernatural transformer at the sacred site of Ncát’us on Route Two. Visit Yale on Route One and walk down historic Front Street, the hub of the 1858 gold rush, the building of the CPR and the spot where B.C. decided to join Confederation. Or take to the trail with Nan Sing, a 19th Century Chinese packer and cowboy who rode the sage brush-clad hills outside Cache Creek on Route Three.
Passports are free and available at participating Visitor Centres, Husky and Mohawk service stations and other partner outlets. Once you’ve visited a site, you can get your passport stamped, sign the logbook at the geocache or both.
Chasing the Golden Butterfly is an initiative by the New Pathways to Gold Society in partnership with BC150, Canadian Heritage, B.C. Transmission Corporation, Gold Country Communications Society, Vancouver, Coast & Mountains Tourism Association, Cariboo Chilcotin Coast Tourism Association and community sponsors. It also has the support of participating Husky and Mohawk service stations.
For more information, please visit the New Pathways to Gold Society website, newpathwaystogold.ca.
Don Hauka was a speaker on the MV Native paddlewheeler this month, and has given some copies of his book to The Observer, which are now available at the office during business hours.
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