page_title: John Bonser (steamship captain)
section_title: Upper Fraser River
hierarchical_section_title: John Bonser (steamship captain) / British Columbia / Upper Fraser River
caption_attribution_description: English: Captain John Bonser (third from left) near Nechako River. Photo taken July 29th, 1909.
context_page_description: John Henry Bonser was a steamship captain from Oregon, United States and British Columbia, Canada. He piloted dozens of sternwheelers over his 40-year-long career and pioneered many rivers in the Pacific Northwest.
  John was born in 1855 at Sauvie Island near the banks of the Columbia River in Oregon, the second son
  of James Halstead Bonser. Riverboating was a tradition in the Bonser family, as both John's father and grandfather had been rivermen on the Scioto and Ohio rivers.
context_section_description: In 1909, John Bonser was hired by the  Fort George Lumber and Navigation Company of South Fort George to pilot the Nechacco, which would later be renamed the Chilco. Under his command the Nechacco would be the first sternwheeler to navigate the treacherous Grand Canyon of the Fraser.
  The Fort George Lumber and Navigation Company then built the Fort Fraser in which Bonser pioneered the route to Tête Jaune Cache in 1910. 
  Both sternwheelers would often be chartered by pioneer surveyor Frank Swannell who traveled on them to areas he was surveying in the Nechako Valley along the Stuart and Nechako rivers.
caption: Captain John Bonser (third from left) near the Nechako River
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