Boston Bar, British Columbia

Boston Bar
Unincorporated Town
Boston Bar's welcome sign
Country	Canada
Province	British Columbia
Elevation	166 m (546 ft)
Population (2006)
• Total	860
Time zone	PST

Boston Bar is an unincorporated town in the Fraser Canyon of the Canadian province of British Columbia.

The name dates from the time of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush (1858–1861). A "bar" is a gold-bearing sandbar or sandy riverbank, and the one slightly down river and opposite today's town was populated heavily by Americans, who were known in the parlance of the Chinook Jargon as "Boston men" or simply "Bostons". A settlement developed on the east bank of the river to the north of the confluence with Anderson River. This was later moved to the present site with the construction of Canadian Northern Pacific Railway.

The original Nlaka'pamux (Thompson Indian) name of Boston Bar was rendered in English-style spelling as Quayome, which appears commonly on frontier-era maps and in diaries and newspapers of the day. The name originally referred to the other side of the river from today's town, but came into use for the present site after the original was renamed North Bend by the Canadian Pacific Railway.

In June 2011, Boston Bar briefly unofficially changed its name to "Vancouver Bar", in an effort to support the nearby Vancouver Canucks hockey team of the NHL in the Stanley Cup Finals as they took on the Boston Bruins. This follows major retailers such as Boston Pizza unofficially changing their name to "Vancouver Pizza" during the same round of the playoffs.

Across the Fraser River is the small town of North Bend, which could only be accessed by rail or by aerial ferry until January 1986 when the two lane bridge was built. The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) has a small terminal here that is the half way point between Vancouver and Kamloops. The building of the railway played an important role in this region, first with the construction of the CPR line (1881–1885) then later the Canadian Northern Railway (today the Canadian National Railway) line on the Boston Bar side of the river. Boston Bar is a Canadian National Railway divisional point, where the Ashcroft Subdivision from Kamloops to Boston Bar joins the Yale Subdivision from Boston Bar to Vancouver. North Bend is also at the doorstep of the Nahatlatch Valley, a chain of three lakes and the Nahatlatch River.