b. 1776 — Mapletown, New York, USA
d. 1862 — St. Andrews West, Ontario

Simon Fraser opened the fur trade west of the Rocky Mountains, and was the first white person to descend the Fraser River to its mouth. Fraser was born in Bennington, Vermont, and came to Québec with his mother after his father, a Loyalist officer, died as a prisoner of war during the American revolution. Fraser joined the North West Company in 1792 and was sent to the Athabasca department. He became a partner in the company in 1801. He founded the New Caledonia posts of McLeod Lake (1805), Stuart Lake (later Fort St. James, 1806), Fraser Lake (1806) and Fort George (1807).

During May and June of 1808, with a party of nineteen French Canadian voyageurs, two clerks, and two Native Americans, Fraser made his journey down the Fraser River from just upstream of present-day Prince George to present-day Vancouver. It was a bitter disappointment for him to discover that the river was not the Columbia, and that it was not a practical canoe route to the coast.