Bridal Veil Falls Provincial Park is located on the Trans-Canada Highway just east of Rosedale, British Columbia, Canada, part of the City of Chilliwack. The community of Bridal Falls is located adjacent to the falls and park was well as the interchange between the Trans-Canada and BC Highway 9 and has a variety of highway-based tourism services.
It is located near the 38th highest waterfall in British Columbia (Bridal Veil Falls) and is commonly stated incorrectly as the 4th tallest in Canada. The falls drop 122 metres (400 feet) over a wide rock face, creating a "veil-like" effect, however, only the bottom 200–250 feet can clearly be viewed from the base, due to significant foreshortening due to the viewing-points' location at the base of very steep mountainside. It is located at the south end of the land set aside as provincial Park. Its source is from Mount Archibald and flows into Bridal Creek where it travels to Cheam Lake Wetlands Regional Park and finally to the Fraser River.
During drier summer months, the volume of the water decreases significantly, reducing the visual effect of the waterfall.
Bridal Veil Falls tend to freeze during cold winters and creates a wall of unstable ice. Although it is nice to look at, the base of the falls becomes an extremely hazardous area and the park remains closed during the winter season.
Bridal Veil Falls was named in the 19th century by the village of Popkum. In the early 20th century, the village utilized the waterfall with a hydro-electric generator to power the chalet and heated swimming pool in the village. Only the concrete foundation of the generator can be found today.
Famous quotes containing the words bridal, veil, falls, provincial and/or park:
“But whether or not a man was asked
To mar the love of two
By harboring woe in the bridal house,
The bridegroom wished he knew.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking?—the entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world—a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“It was a time of madness, the sort of mad-hysteria that always presages war. There seems to be nothing left but war—when any population in any sort of a nation gets violently angry, civilization falls down and religion forsakes its hold on the consciences of human kind in such times of public madness.”
—Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930)
“With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan,—mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards; because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth; because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufacturers and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Therefore awake! make haste, I say,
And let us, without staying,
All in our gowns of green so gay
Into the Park a-maying!”
—Unknown. Sister, Awake! (L. 9–12)