Roy Howard Bio

Roy Howard

Roy was born in 1948, grew up in a suburb of Sacramento, California, where the nearby Sierra Nevada Mountains and an occasional trip to the more distant Grand Canyon provided his early wilderness hiking experiences.

Roy and his wife Jill immigrated to Canada in 1975 and moved to a remote undeveloped property in the Robson Valley. There they homesteaded, raised two children and earned a living in various occupations, including aspects of forestry and residential construction, most recently as the owner of a solar system installation business.

He had been concerned about wilderness preservation and the state of the environment since his teen years and eventually co-founded a local environmental organization in the Robson Valley, which over time evolved into the Fraser Headwaters Alliance (FHA). One of the projects FHA undertook was restoration and improvement of the historic Goat River Trail, which dates back to 1886, as a route between Barkerville and the Upper Fraser River. It was adopted as part of the National Hiking Trail in the late 1990s as the most logical path across the Cariboo Mountains and has been the focus of FHA’s (and Roy’s) efforts ever since to maintain, improve and add adjacent routes to connect to it as part of the National Hiking Trail.

Roy has a BSc in Zoology from University of California, Davis.