Board

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.