Hope, British Columbia in the context of E. C. Manning Provincial Park

The Fraser Valley is a geographical region in southwestern British Columbia, Canada and northwestern Washington State. It starts just west of Hope in a narrow valley encompassing the Fraser River and ends at the Pacific Ocean stretching from the North Shore Mountains, opposite the city of Vancouver BC, to just south of Bellingham, Washington.

In casual usage it typically describes the Fraser River basin downstream of the Fraser Canyon. The term is sometimes used outside British Columbia to refer to the entire Fraser River sections including the Fraser Canyon and up from there to its headwaters, but in general British Columbian usage the term refers to the stretch of Lower Mainland west of the Coquihalla River mouth at the inland town of Hope, and includes all of the Canadian portion of the Fraser Lowland as well as the valleys and upland areas flanking it. It is divided into the Upper Fraser Valley and Lower Fraser Valley by the Vedder River mouth at the eastern foothills of Sumas Mountain, although the Lower Valley section upstream of McMillan Island and the Salmon River mouth (at Fort Langley) used to be called the Central Fraser Valley up until 1995 (see Central Fraser Valley Regional District).

The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush (also Fraser Gold Rush and Fraser River Gold Rush) began in 1858 after gold was discovered on the Thompson River in British Columbia at its confluence with the Nicoamen River a few miles upstream from the Thompson's confluence with the Fraser River at present-day Lytton. The rush overtook the region around the discovery and was centred on the Fraser Canyon from around Hope and Yale to Pavilion and Fountain, just north of Lillooet.

Though the rush was largely over by 1927, miners from the rush spread out and found a sequence of other gold fields throughout the British Columbia Interior and North, most famously that in the Cariboo. The rush is credited with instigating European-Canadian settlement on the mainland of British Columbia. It was the catalyst for the founding of the Colony of British Columbia, the building of early road infrastructure, and the founding of many towns.

Greater Vancouver, also known as Metro Vancouver, is the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada. The term Greater Vancouver describes an area that is roughly coterminous with the region governed by the Metro Vancouver Regional District (MVRD), though it predates the 1966 creation of the regional district. It is often used to include areas beyond the boundaries of the regional district but does not generally include wilderness and agricultural areas that are included within the MVRD.

Usage of the term Greater Vancouver is not consistent. In local use, it tends to refer to urban and suburban areas only and does not include parts of the regional district such as Bowen Island, although industries such as the film industry even include Squamish, Whistler and Hope as being in "the Vancouver area" or "in Greater Vancouver". The business community often includes adjoining towns and cities such as Mission, Chilliwack, Abbotsford and Squamish within their use of the term Greater Vancouver, though since the creation of the Metro Vancouver Vancouver Regional District, the term Metro Vancouver has come to be used in the media interchangeably with Greater Vancouver.

The Coquihalla River (originally locally /ˌkɒkɪˈhælə/ or more recently and popularly /ˌkoʊkɪˈhælə/) is a tributary of the Fraser River in the Cascade Mountains of the Canadian province of British Columbia. It originates in the Coquihalla Lakes and empties into the Fraser River at Hope.

The Coquihalla River forms the northern boundary of two portions of the Cascades, the Skagit Range and the Hozameen Range. The river flows through a deep, narrow valley, dropping 3,400 feet (1,000 m) in 33 miles (53 km), a tumultuous course that creates an incessant roar.

Major-General Arthur Reid Lempriere (Ewell, Surrey, England, 22 August 1835 – 10 April 1927) was a British Army officer of the Royal Engineers, including of the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment that founded British Columbia as the Colony of British Columbia (1858–1866).

He was in the third and the largest group of Royal Engineers to arrive in British Columbia in 1859. He served in British Columbia until 1863. Lempriere surveyed the route from Hope to Lytton through the Coquihalla River in 1859. Three geographical features are named for him in the northern reaches of the North Thompson River and along British Columbia Highway 5 in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District of the British Columbia Interior, between the communities of Kamloops to the south and Tete Jaune Cache-Valemount to the north:

Yale is an unincorporated town in the Canadian province of British Columbia, which grew in importance during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush.

Located on the Fraser River, it is generally considered to be on the dividing line between the British Columbia Coast and the Interior regions of the British Columbia Mainland. Immediately north of the town, the Fraser Canyon begins and the river is generally considered unnavigable past this point. Rough water is common on the Fraser anywhere upstream from Chilliwack and even more so above Hope, about 32 km (20 mi) south of Yale. However, steamers could make it to Yale, good pilots and water conditions permitting, and the town had a busy dockside life as well as a variety of bars, restaurants, hotels, saloons and various services. Its maximum population during the gold rush era was in the 15,000 range. More generally, it housed 5,000-8,000. The higher figure was counted at the time of evacuation of the Canyon during the Fraser Canyon War of 1858.