The Parsnip River is a long river in central

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

. It flows generally north-westward from the Parsnip Glacier in the Hart Ranges to the Parsnip Reach of

Williston Lake Williston Lake is a reservoir created by the W. A. C. Bennett Dam and is located in the Northern Interior of British Columbia, Canada. Geography The lake fills the basin of the upper Peace River, backing into the Rocky Mountain Trench which is ...

, formed by the impounding of the waters of the

Peace River The Peace River (french: links=no, rivière de la Paix) is a river in Canada that originates in the Rocky Mountains of northern British Columbia and flows to the northeast through northern Alberta. The Peace River joins the Athabasca River ...

by the W.A.C. Bennett Dam in 1968. Prior to that, the Parsnip joined with the

Finlay River The Finlay River is a 402 km long river in north-central British Columbia flowing north and thence south from Thutade Lake in the Omineca Mountains to Williston Lake, the impounded waters of the Peace River formed by the completion of the ...

to form the Peace at

Finlay Forks Finlay Forks (also called Finlay Junction and sometimes misspelt Findlay), is the confluence of the Finlay River and Parsnip River. The Finlay Bay Recreation Site, on the southeast bank, is about southeast of the former settlement (on the earlie ...

, with both sharing an alignment along the

Rocky Mountain Trench The Rocky Mountain Trench, also known as the Valley of a Thousand Peaks or simply the Trench, is a large valley on the western side of the northern part of North America's Rocky Mountains. The Trench is both visually and cartographically a ...

Name origin

The river's name derives from the abundance of cow-parsnip ('' Heracleum lanatum''), also known as Indian rhubarb, which grows along its banks.

History

The Parsnip is of historical significance as forming part of the route Alexander MacKenzie took in his epic journey to the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

in 1793. Fish populations and their protozoan and metazoan parasites in the headwater areas of the McGregor River (Pacific drainage) and of the Parsnip River (Arctic drainage) were the subject of studies carried out in the 1970s concerning the proposed diversion of waters across the continental divide. Three parasites ('' Ceratomyxa shasta'', ''Cryptobia salmositica'', and ''Haemogregarina irkalukpiki'') were identified as posing the greatest threat to the fisheries resources of the immediate area and also to the downstream areas. Based in part on these studies, the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority, in a public announcement, suspended engineering studies of the proposed diversion.

Tributaries

* Hominka River * Anzac River * Table River * Missinka River * Crooked River * Misinchinka River ** Atunatche Creek

References

Hisao P. Arai and Dwight R. Mudry. 1983. Protozoan and Metazoan Parasites of Fishes from the Headwaters of the Parsnip and McGregor Rivers, British Columbia: A Study of Possible Parasite Transfaunation. Canadian. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 40(10): 1676–1684 (1983) {{authority control Rivers of the Canadian Rockies Northern Interior of British Columbia Rivers of British Columbia Cariboo Land District