Spuzzum, British Columbia

Spuzzum is a very small town in British Columbia, Canada. Because it is on the Trans-Canada Highway, approximately 50 km (31 mi) north of the community of Hope, it is often referred to as being "beyond Hope". The village was immortalized in the early 1980s by the band "Six Cylinder" in a song with the refrain "If you haven't been to Spuzzum, you ain't been anywhere."

The name Spuzzum may be a local variant of spatsum, a Chinook Jargon word for the reed used in basket-weaving. One source claims that the name is an Indian word meaning "little flat", and that Spuzzum was the boundary between the Stóːlō and the Nlaka'pamux peoples. [Citation | last =Akrigg | first = G.P.V. | last2 =Akrigg| first2 =Helen B.| title =1001 British Columbia Place Names | place=Vancouver | publisher =Discovery Press | year =1969 |edition = 3rd, 1973] rp|162

The town is often used in humorous contexts due to its small size - see for example " [http://www.spuzzuminstitute.com/ The Spuzzum Institute of Technology] ". Until it burned down at the end of the last century, Spuzzum boasted a single gas station and general store, which served as the hamlet's most diverting roadside landmark. As if to sum up its comic status in local cultural life, both sides of a one-time sign on the Trans-Canada Highway read "You are now leaving Spuzzum".

Spuzzum is also the name of the local First Nations government, which is part of the Nlaka'pamux group. Their offices and community hall and most housing are located between the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks and the Fraser River, just north of where the store/gas station had formerly been.

During the Fraser Canyon War, 3,000 miners from farther up the Canyon gathered at Spuzzum, whose indigenous people were "friendly" and neutral in the conflict, as refuge from attacks by the Nlaka'pamux who lived farther up the canyon.

ee also

*Spuzzum First Nation
*Fraser Canyon Gold Rush
*Fraser Canyon War
*Alexandra Suspension Bridge
*Pahallak
*Kowpelst

References

Bibliography

Local elder Annie York's books in the field of ethnobotany are valuable resources for the history of native peoples in the lower Fraser Canyon. They include:
*"They Write Their Dreams on the Rock Forever: Rock Writings in the Stein River Valley of British Columbia" (with Chris Arnett and Richard Daly)
*"Spuzzum: Fraser Canyon Histories, 1808-1939" with Andrea LaForet