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Rough-edged PRINCE GEORGE , carved from the forest to become British Columbia's sixth largest city (pop. 78,000), is the general area's services and transport centre, so you're highly likely to become acquainted with its dispersed and half-deserted downtown streets. Forestry, in the form of pulp mills, kilns, planers, plywood plants and allied chemical works, is at the core of its industrial landscape - if you ever wanted the inside story on the lumber business, this is where to find it.

Simon Fraser established a North West Trading Company post here in 1805, and named it Fort George in honour of the reigning George III. As a commercial nexus it quickly altered the lives of the local Carrier Sekani people, who abandoned their semi-nomadic migration from winter to summer villages in favour of a permanent settlement alongside the fort. Little changed until 1914 when the arrival of the Grand Trunk Railway - later the Canadian National - spawned an influx of pioneers and loggers. The town was connected by road to Dawson Creek and the north as late as 1951, and saw the arrival of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway in 1958 - two developments that give some idea of how recent the opening up of the far north has been.

The town is a disorienting open-plan network of roads and sporadic houses between Hwy 97 and a sprawling downtown area at the junction of the Fraser and Nechako rivers. As far as sightseeing is concerned, you might as well stick to what Prince George does best and take the surprisingly popular free tours around some of its big mills and processing plants; to reserve a place, contact Tourism Prince George opposite the bus terminal at 1198 Victoria St and 15th Avenue (Mon-Fri 8.30am-4pm, Sat 9am-4pm, Sun 9am-4pm; longer hours in summer; tel 562-3700 or 1-800/668-7646, www.tourismpg.bc.ca ). Company buses generally pick up from the Tourism Prince George offices and deliver you to one of several firms, the biggest currently being Northwood Pulp and Timber, where you are shown thousands of seedlings being grown in controlled conditions, the sawmills, and one of the continent's largest pulp mills. Outside, in a graphic illustration of the scale of forestry in the region, logs, planks and piles of sawdust the size of small hills stretch almost as far as the eye can see.