Clearbrook, Abbotsford

Clearbrook is a neighbourhood of the City of Abbotsford,

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

, located in the western portion of the city in the vicinity of Clearbrook Road. The area was originally known as Sandy Flats or West Abbotsford, and was located in the Poplar district of the

District of Matsqui Matsqui is a former district municipality in British Columbia, Canada. It was incorporated in 1892 and merged with the district municipality of Abbotsford in 1995 to create the new City of Abbotsford. Matsqui used to be the western part of what is ...

. It became known as Clearbrook by the late 1940s, most likely named after Clearbrook Road, a road that originally ran from Old Yale Road south across the Canada-USA border to nearby Clearbrook,

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

. The area was heavily logged in the early 20th century by the Abbotsford Lumber Company and other smaller logging firms which left behind nothing but large stumps and small trees. In 1930

Mennonite Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radic ...

immigrants who had migrated to

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

from Russia beginning in the 1870s as well as those who had fled the Soviet Union in the previous decade began settling in the area. After several years spent clearing the land, these early settlers were able to plant strawberries and raspberries before eventually building dairy and poultry farms. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

a commercial area began to develop, with the intersection of Clearbrook Road and South Fraser Way serving as the focal point. Mennonites continued to move to the area, increasing the population to around 4,000 by 1967. A secondary school, the

Mennonite Educational Institute The Mennonite Educational Institute (MEI) is an independent country day school located in Abbotsford British Columbia, approximately 70 kilometres from Vancouver. MEI consists of four divisions — a preschool, elementary, middle, and secondary s ...

, and two post-secondary schools -- Bethel Bible Institute and

Mennonite Brethren Bible Institute Mennonite Brethren Centenary Bible College (MBCBC), Shamshabad, founded in 1920,H. T. Esau, ''First Sixty Years of M. B. Missions'', The Mennonite Brethren Publishing House, Hillsboro, 195/ref> is a ministerial training institution of the Confer ...

(the two schools later merged to form what is now

Columbia Bible College Columbia Bible College (CBC) is an institution of higher education in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada. The college states that its mission is to "equip people for a life of discipleship, ministry and leadership in service to the church an ...

), were established in Clearbrook in the 1940s, as were a number of Mennonite congregations. By the 1980s the population of the area had reached around 20,000, due to a large influx of people from a variety of backgrounds, most notably

Sikh Sikhs ( or ; pa, ਸਿੱਖ, ' ) are people who adhere to Sikhism, Sikhism (Sikhi), a Monotheism, monotheistic religion that originated in the late 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, based on the revelation of Gu ...

and

Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

immigrants from

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, mainly from

Punjab Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising ...

. The area is now indistinguishable from the rest of what is now Abbotsford, although many Mennonite Brethren and Mennonite Church congregations continue to flourish in the Clearbrook area, along with Gurdwaras (Sikh temples) and a Hindu temple. {{Authority control Neighbourhoods in Abbotsford, British Columbia Mennonitism in British Columbia