Mission is a city in the
Lower Mainland of the province of
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...
, Canada. It was originally incorporated as a district municipality in 1892, growing to include additional villages and rural areas over the years, adding the original Town of Mission City, along an independent core of the region, in 1969. It is bordered by the city of
Abbotsford to the south and the city of
Maple Ridge to the west. To the east are the unincorporated areas of
Hatzic and
Dewdney.
It is situated on the north bank of the
Fraser River
The Fraser River () is the longest river within British Columbia, Canada, rising at Fraser Pass near Blackrock Mountain (Canada), Blackrock Mountain in the Rocky Mountains and flowing for , into the Strait of Georgia just south of the City of V ...
, backing onto mountains and lakes overlooking the
Central Fraser Valley southeast of
Vancouver
Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...
.
Geography
Unlike the other
Fraser Valley municipalities, Mission is mostly forested upland with only small floodplains lining the shore of the Fraser River. Some benches of farmland rise in succession northwards above the core developed area of the city. Mission was once the heart of the berry industry in the Fraser Valley, with "Home of the Big Red Strawberry" as Mission's slogan in the 1930s and into the 1940s.
The more southerly portion of the municipality is bounded on the west by the lower reaches of the
Stave River, which consists mostly of the lakewaters of two hydroelectric reservoirs,
Stave Lake and
Hayward Lake. Although the vast majority of the population of Mission lives well to the east of the Stave, over 50% of the northern land area of the municipality is west and north of that river; its extreme northwest corner is on the far side of upper
Alouette Lake. A small portion of the lower Stave still runs free in its last two miles before its confluence with the
Fraser Fraser may refer to:
Places Antarctica
* Fraser Point, South Orkney Islands
Australia
* Fraser, Australian Capital Territory, a suburb in the Canberra district of Belconnen
* Division of Fraser (Australian Capital Territory), a former federal ...
at
Ruskin; its last three-quarters of a mile forms the border with the larger municipality of
Maple Ridge to the west.

Over 40% of Mission is tree farm, making it one of two communities with municipal
tree farms (the other being
Revelstoke, with a much smaller and newer farm). Mission's tree farm celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2008. It comprises much of the northern part of the district, including the area west of the Stave River, up to the district's northern boundary near the foot of
Mount Robie Reid; a small sliver of Mission District is at the head of
Alouette Lake (normally thought of as being in Maple Ridge).
The eastern boundary of the municipality roughly coincides with the division between the Mission upland and the alluvial floodplain of Hatzic Prairie, which resembles much of the rest of the Fraser Valley Lowland. The unincorporated communities from
Hatzic eastwards through
Dewdney and
Nicomen Island to
Deroche are part of the social and commercial matrix centred on Mission but have never joined the municipality, as is also the case with areas north of Hatzic and Dewdney such as
McConnell Creek and
Durieu; the local economy and societies are built on dairy, berry and corn farming as well as a large
First Nations
First nations are indigenous settlers or bands.
First Nations, first nations, or first peoples may also refer to:
Indigenous groups
*List of Indigenous peoples
*First Nations in Canada, Indigenous peoples of Canada who are neither Inuit nor Mé ...
community at the Indian Reserves of the
Leq' a: mel First Nation, formerly known as the Lakahahmen First Nation, on
Nicomen Island and
Deroche.
Government
Mission was incorporated in 1892 and is in size. In 1922 the District of Mission was partitioned by the creation of the Village of Mission, which later became the Village of Mission City, then the Town of Mission City, until amalgamated with the District by plebiscite in 1969.
The City of Mission uses the current Council-Manager system of local government. The present Council, was elected on October 15, 2022. The current mayor is Paul Horn. A notable past mayor is
Pam Alexis who resigned as the mayor of Mission in November 2020 after winning a seat for the provincial riding of
Abbotsford-Mission in the
Legislative Assembly of British Columbia
The Legislative Assembly of British Columbia () is the deliberative assembly of the Legislature of British Columbia, in the province of British Columbia, Canada. The other component of the Legislature is the lieutenant governor of British Columbi ...
.
History
The Town of Mission City took its name from the local
St. Mary's Mission and Residential School established earlier in 1861 and began as a land promotion. The town's core commercial properties and residential streets were auctioned off through
James Horne's auction, the "Great Land Sale" May 19, 1891, with buyers brought in via the CPR mainline from Vancouver as well as from Eastern Canada. Soon afterwards, Harry Brown French, an American from New York, came to the city and founded the
Mission Regional Chamber of Commerce on June 19, 1893.
["Old Document Reveals Board Founded in '93", ''The Fraser Valley Record'', Mission, BC, Canada, 19 April 1945.] It was the first
Board of Trade
The Board of Trade is a British government body concerned with commerce and industry, currently within the Department for Business and Trade. Its full title is The Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of ...
in B.C."
[Kask, Glen. "First board of trade in B.C.", ''The Fraser Valley Record'', Mission, BC, Canada, 16 June 1993.] Some of the early houses and commercial buildings were, in fact, specifically designed to be reminiscent of small towns in southern Ontario in order to encourage buyers. Hailed at the time as a new metropolis, the fledgling town's location at the junction of the
Canadian Pacific Railway
The Canadian Pacific Railway () , also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), is a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway is owned by Canadian Pacific Kansas City, Canadian Pacific Ka ...
mainline with a northward extension of the
Burlington Northern Railroad
The Burlington Northern Railroad was a United States–based railroad company formed from a merger of four major U.S. railroads. Burlington Northern operated between 1970 and 1995.
Its historical lineage begins in the earliest days of railroad ...
brought name suggestions that included East Vancouver and North Seattle. The name Mission City was chosen due to the site's proximity to the historic
St. Mary's Mission of the
Oblate order just east of town, which was founded in 1868 (now the
Peckquaylis Indian Reserve).
At the time of founding, the swing-span
Mission Railway Bridge opened in 1891 was the only crossing of the Fraser River in the Fraser Valley below the
Alexandra Bridge, and all rail traffic between Vancouver and the United States was necessarily routed through Mission until the
New Westminster Bridge at
New Westminster
New Westminster (colloquially known as New West) is a city in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia, Canada, and a member municipality of the Metro Vancouver Regional District. It was founded by Major-General Richard Moody as the cap ...
was built in 1904. The rail bridge at Mission doubled duty as a one-way alternating vehicular bridge until 1973, when a long-promised new
Mission Bridge was finally completed. The bridge's location is geographically important at the head of the tidal bore on the Fraser River, and its water level gauge is an important measure of the Fraser's annual and sometimes dangerously large spring
freshet.
Mission City's original retail core was in the small area of lowland between the CPR mainline and the river. Following the great flood of 1894 a few years after the town's founding, the core was relocated just north of the rail line at the foot of the hillside rising above the rail junction. This small commercial strip, originally named Washington Avenue, later Main Street and since the 1980s called First Avenue, is only four or five blocks long and was one of the principal commercial centres of the Fraser Valley for many decades and had a lively retail trade and social life. Following the 1894 flood, abandoned buildings and lots in the old downtown were taken over by Chinese merchants and workers, creating a Chinatown which lasted until the 1920s.
The western part of the district, the
Stave Valley, is largely rural and forested but its watercourse is home to what was the largest hydroelectric project in British Columbia until the
Bridge River Power Project opened in 1961. It was built by the
British Columbia Electric Railway (BCER) to provide power to the electric street railway and interurban system in Vancouver. The
Stave Falls Power Co. operated a light-gauge railway for passenger and freight service up the lower canyon of the river to the
dam at
Stave Falls. During the construction of the
Ruskin Dam (completed 1931) the railway was rebuilt at a higher elevation so as to skirt the new Hayward Lake reservoir. The rail line has long been discontinued, but the old grade and its trestles are now part of a recreation trail circling the reservoir.
Flanking the outraces of the powerhouse at Stave Falls there was once a fairly large community (300 houses), which was served by the railway via connections to the
CPR line at
Ruskin, although the (then very rough) Dewdney Trunk Road used the dam to cross the
Stave River. Population in the Stave Falls area is now away from the dams, west along the Dewdney Trunk towards Maple Ridge, in a rural farm-and-wilderness area south of
Rolley Lake Provincial Park.
Up against the Maple Ridge boundary near the waterfront on the west side of the Stave, and halfway between the dam and the mills at Ruskin, was a large drive-in theatre for many years. It is now a large trailer park, and the most populated of Ruskin's neighbourhoods.
The building of the Highway 1 freeway on the south side of the Fraser in the early 1960s brought huge population growth and large shopping malls to formerly rural Abbotsford, Matsqui, Sumas and Langley; as a result Mission lost its "anchor", the main Eaton's department store in the Valley, and the town's Main Street businesses lost much of their business to the new shopping malls a few minutes away across the river. This process was accelerated with the opening of the new bridge in the mid-1970s.

Despite a cohesive business community and new retail malls on the edges of the old core, Mission's retail community has never regained its former prominence in the
Fraser Valley. Burgeoning "
exurban" population growth connected with the rapid growth of the population of the
Lower Mainland and encouraged by a new
commuter rail
Commuter rail or suburban rail is a Passenger train, passenger rail service that primarily operates within a metropolitan area, connecting Commuting, commuters to a Central business district, central city from adjacent suburbs or commuter town ...
line direct to downtown Vancouver, the
West Coast Express, has reversed this trend.
Outside of the core "urban" area, most of which had been the Town of Mission City, the former District of Mission was a collection of distinct rural communities, each with their own history and sometimes distinct ethnic flavour. Silverdale, west of Mission on the east bank of the lower Stave River, was homesteaded in the 1880s by Italian immigrants. Neighbouring Silverhill was founded by a Finnish Utopian sect who were superseded by Scandinavian and German settlers following a forest fire that virtually wiped out the Finns.
Steelhead, in the northern part of the district, was originally a weekend retreat for some of Vancouver's press community. Other localities such as Ferndale, Cedar Valley and Hatzic were farming communities of mixed origin, with Europeans and anglicized French-Canadians alongside the usual English-Scottish Canadian mix typical of much of the Fraser Valley. Throughout the Mission area before
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, there was a large Japanese-Canadian population involved in berry farming, logging and milling and in the fishery on the river.
In 1954,
Benedictine
The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict (, abbreviated as O.S.B. or OSB), are a mainly contemplative monastic order of the Catholic Church for men and for women who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. Initiated in 529, th ...
monk
A monk (; from , ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a man who is a member of a religious order and lives in a monastery. A monk usually lives his life in prayer and contemplation. The concept is ancient and can be seen in many reli ...
s obtained land near Mission, where they set up their
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an Anglican church in the City of Westminster, London, England. Since 1066, it has been the location of the coronations of 40 English and British m ...
and Seminary of Christ the King. They have lived there ever since, running their own farm and teaching high school and college men at the seminary.
The berry industry, formerly the district's largest and most important, formed the heart of the town's annual summer party, the Strawberry Festival. The Strawberry Festival began in 1946, when it was suggested by the Board of Trade. But with the impacts on this industry (
relocation of the Japanese during wartime and the devastating
flood
A flood is an overflow of water (list of non-water floods, or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are of significant con ...
of 1948), the strawberry theme was abandoned. The town acquired the rights to the Western Canada championships of the
Soap Box Derby, which were held annually in a specially built facility until 1973; the Derby has been revived in the new millennium.
Mission's other major industry was logging, and the town's several mills were noted for being the world's largest suppliers of red cedar
shakes and shingles. The District of Mission has operated for many years its own
tree farm, covering most of its northern and northwestern mountainous forests. This tree farm served as a model for silvicultural management on a larger scale throughout British Columbia as well as provided a unique income source for the municipality. From 1967 through the 1970s, the Soap Box Derby shared the July 1
Dominion Day holiday with a large
Loggers Sports event, one of the largest in British Columbia and important on the
North American Loggers Sports Association circuit.
In the 1960s and 1970s there was a large cluster of productive mills on the waterfront in Mission, for many years world capital of red cedar shake production (the mill at
Whonnock outproduced the largest of the Mission mills, but Mission's city of mills was the largest overall producer). Nearby Eddy Match Co., between Mission and Hatzic, was the largest matchstick-making plant in the world until it closed in the 1960s; its only rival was in
Hull, Quebec.
Adjoining it was the Empress Foods Co. cannery, the survivor of the struggles of the berry industry in the Central Fraser Valley, and dating from the days of Mission's supremacy as strawberry capital of the valley before the 1948
Fraser River
The Fraser River () is the longest river within British Columbia, Canada, rising at Fraser Pass near Blackrock Mountain (Canada), Blackrock Mountain in the Rocky Mountains and flowing for , into the Strait of Georgia just south of the City of V ...
flood wiped it out. In more recent times one of these buildings was for a while converted into the province's largest
marijuana
Cannabis (), commonly known as marijuana (), weed, pot, and ganja, List of slang names for cannabis, among other names, is a non-chemically uniform psychoactive drug from the ''Cannabis'' plant. Native to Central or South Asia, cannabis has ...
grow-op, in a scandal involving one of the town's wealthiest families.
Mission is noted as the home of a long-established professional dragstrip,
Mission Raceway Park, which was moved in relatively recent times outside the dyking of the lower part of town to reduce noise in residential and commercial areas nearby.
In 1972 a large tract of land in central Mission's Ferndale area, flat upland at the top of the slope above downtown, was acquired by the federal government and developed into two large penal facilities. One is a
minimum security facility, and the other is a
medium security prison. The northern part of the district, and the wilds of the Stave River basin to the north of it, are home to a few wilderness work camps for young offenders and low-risk convicts; these camps have over recent decades participated in the ongoing clearing of vast forests of flooded-out trees from the inundated areas of
Stave Lake, opening the lake to water recreation and public exploration.
In the 1990s, The Junction Shopping Centre, Mission's largest shopping centre located near the southern tip, was opened to the public.
On March 29, 2021, the District of Mission was reclassified as a city.
Economy
Historically,
forestry
Forestry is the science and craft of creating, managing, planting, using, conserving and repairing forests and woodlands for associated resources for human and Natural environment, environmental benefits. Forestry is practiced in plantations and ...
, hydroelectricity and agriculture were Mission's chief resource sectors and provided the basis for varied related retail and service activities. In recent history, transportation improvements have enabled the manufacturing sector to expand beyond sawmilling and food processing.
Forest and wood related industries dominate the manufacturing sector, with an emphasis on
redcedar shake and shingle mills. Mission also holds the only municipal tree farm license in British Columbia.
Agriculture
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created ...
is mostly restricted to a narrow belt along the Fraser River, and the unincorporated Dewdney-Deroche district east of Mission contains the majority of the farms in the area. There are about 96 commercial and hobby farms in the area. Dairy is the chief agricultural enterprise; other income sources include poultry, hogs, beef and vegetables.
Mission's largest employer is the local school district, School District #75, and its second largest employer is the District (i.e. the municipality) itself.
Transportation
Transportation infrastructure includes
Abbotsford-Mission Highway 11, and the
Lougheed Highway 7. Mission is also accessible through commuter rail, the
West Coast Express, which runs five trains in each direction a day, five days a week, between
Vancouver
Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...
and
Mission City Station. Bus service in Mission is served by the
Central Fraser Valley Transit System connecting with the
City of Abbotsford, as well as
TransLink with service to
Coquitlam Central Station
Coquitlam Central station is an Intermodal passenger transport, intermodal rapid transit station in Metro Vancouver served by both the Millennium Line—part of the SkyTrain (Vancouver), SkyTrain system—and the region's West Coast Express commut ...
via route 701. Three days per week
Via Rail
Via Rail Canada Inc. (), operating as Via Rail or Via (stylized as VIA Rail), is a Canadian Crown corporation that operates intercity passenger rail service in Canada.
As of December 2023, Via Rail operates 406 trains per week across eight ...
's ''
The Canadian'' provides eastbound flag stop service from
Mission Harbour railway station. Westbound service on The Canadian is provided through Abbotsford due to
CN and CPR utilizing
directional running through the
Thompson and
Fraser Canyons.
Mission differs from some of the other Fraser Valley communities because of its access to the Fraser River. The Fraser near Mission is for the most part undeveloped and unspoiled which makes Mission the launch point for many water based activities that happen year round. Boat tours run from Mission's docks on Harbour Avenue, which are also home to sport and commercial fishing vessels; the Fraser has famous salmon runs and population of
green sturgeon.
Climate
Mission has an
oceanic climate
An oceanic climate, also known as a marine climate or maritime climate, is the temperate climate sub-type in Köppen climate classification, Köppen classification represented as ''Cfb'', typical of west coasts in higher middle latitudes of co ...
(
Köppen climate classification
The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...
''Cfb'') due to its proximity to the Pacific Ocean. However, Mission has plentiful rainfall all year round, with a drying trend in the summer.
Demographics
In the
2021 Census of Population conducted by
Statistics Canada
Statistics Canada (StatCan; ), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture. It is headquartered in ...
, Mission had a population of 41,519 living in 14,098 of its 14,701 total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of 38,554. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.
At the
census metropolitan area
The census geographic units of Canada are the census subdivisions defined and used by Canada's federal government statistics bureau Statistics Canada to conduct the country's quinquennial census. These areas exist solely for the purposes of stat ...
(CMA) level in the 2021 census, the Abbotsford - Mission CMA had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.
The community has a young population, with a median age of 36.4, according to the 2001 Canadian census,
Ethnicity
The largest group is
European Canadian, comprising approximately 74% of the population, but even within that Mission's ethnic makeup is very complex, with, in addition to British settlers, large numbers of Germans and Dutch, but also Finns, Norwegians and other Scandinavians, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, anglicized French-Canadians and others.
There is a sizeable First Nations community, forming 8.6% of the population. The
Peckquaylis Indian Reserve, which is the former St. Mary's Residential School and its grounds, is a centre for services and governments of the
Sto:lo communities in the area to the east.
The largest visible minority group in Mission are South Asians, primarily
Indo-Canadians comprising 10.7% of the population.
Mission's
Indo-Canadian community was active since the early 1900s. An Indo-Canadian volleyball team, "Mission Sikhs", was active in the area.
Naranjan Grewall became the first Indo-Canadian elected to public office when he took a position in Mission City's government.
[Mahil, Lovleen.]
Indo-Canadian Community in Mission
Archive
. ''Mission Community Archives'', Mission Museum. Retrieved on March 16, 2015. According to the
2021 Canadian census
The 2021 Canadian census was a detailed enumeration of the Canada, Canadian population with a reference date of May 11, 2021. It follows the 2016 Canadian census, which recorded a population of 35,151,728. The overall response rate was 98%, whic ...
, the South Asian population in Mission stood at 4,330 persons, forming approximately 10.7% of the total population,
up from 2,220 persons or 6.6% of the total population as of the
2006 Canadian census.
[Profile of Diversity in BC Communities 2006 Mission]
Archive
. Government of British Columbia. Retrieved on October 24, 2014.
Mission's
Japanese Canadian
are Canadians, Canadian citizens of Japanese people, Japanese ancestry. Japanese Canadians are mostly concentrated in Western Canada, especially in the province of Japanese Canadians in British Columbia, British Columbia, which hosts the largest ...
community began in 1904, when Kumekichi Fujino moved to the city. Many ''
issei'', or first generation immigrants, included prospective farmers and "picture brides", or women who communicated with suitors through the mail for the purpose of marriage. Organizations established in Mission included the Japanese Farmer's Association (Nokai), established in 1916; the Mission Judo Club; the Mission Buddhist Church; and a Japanese Language School. The ethnic Japanese people in Mission had of land on 103 properties by 1930. During the pre-
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
era 30% of Mission's public school enrollment consisted of ethnic Japanese. The Nokai had 79 members in 1942. The World War II-era
Japanese Canadian internment disrupted Mission's ethnic Japanese community as their properties were confiscated, and productivity decreased as the farms were managed by their new non-Japanese. Many Japanese chose not to move back to Mission in the post-war era, even though they were permitted to come back in 1949.
[Wong, Kathy.]
Japanese-Canadian Community in Mission
Archive
. ''Mission Community Archives'', Mission Museum. Retrieved on March 16, 2015. In 2006 there were 145 Japanese living in Mission, making up 4.1% of the city's visible minorities.
[
*Note: Totals greater than 100% due to multiple origin responses.
]
Religion
According to the 2021 census, religious groups in Mission included:
*Irreligion
Irreligion is the absence or rejection of religious beliefs or practices. It encompasses a wide range of viewpoints drawn from various philosophical and intellectual perspectives, including atheism, agnosticism, religious skepticism, ...
(23,160 persons or 57.0%)
*Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...
(12,905 persons or 31.8%)
*Sikhism
Sikhism is an Indian religion and Indian philosophy, philosophy that originated in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent around the end of the 15th century CE. It is one of the most recently founded major religious groups, major religio ...
(3,275 persons or 8.1%)
*Hinduism
Hinduism () is an Hypernymy and hyponymy, umbrella term for a range of Indian religions, Indian List of religions and spiritual traditions#Indian religions, religious and spiritual traditions (Sampradaya, ''sampradaya''s) that are unified ...
(380 persons or 0.9%)
*Islam
Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...
(285 persons or 0.7%)
*Buddhism
Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
(275 persons or 0.7%)
*Judaism
Judaism () is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic, Monotheism, monotheistic, ethnic religion that comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jews, Jewish people. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of o ...
(55 persons or 0.1%)
* Indigenous Spirituality (35 persons or 0.1%)
Education
School District 75 Mission operates public schools in the District of Mission and in the unincorporated areas to the east. Students from Deroche/Lake Errock, Dewdney, Nicomen Island, Hatzic Island and Hatzic Prairie/Durieu and McConnell Creek elementary schools attend post-secondary at Mission Secondary School.
The '' Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique'' operates one Francophone school: ''école des Deux-rives'' primary school.
Sports
Mission has a mix of sport offerings locally standard to any municipality in this region. One exception is the large outdoor trail network within the Tree Farm and Interpretive Forest. Mission is home t
world-class mountain bike trails
as well as plenty of backcountry hiking opportunities that lie within the District Limits.
Mission is home to a Pacific Junior Hockey League team - the Mission City Outlaws.
Mission is also home to th
Mission Soccer Club
(MSC), which was established in 1974 and celebrated 50 years in 2024. MSC calls the Mission Sports Park its home. MSC is a member of the BC Soccer Association and the Canadian Soccer Association. MSC's programming is based on the Canadian Soccer Association and BC Soccer Association Long Term Player Development.
Mission's soccer history is rich, with multiple successes in the Pakenham Cup and Presidents Cup. Mission has won the Pakenham Cup 4 times (1924, 1925, 1950, & 1951) with the honours in 1951 split with Bradner FC. The reason is the longest Pakenham Final on record, lasting well over four hours. After a complete game and three overtime periods, Bradner and Mission decided to call it a draw and share honours.
Mission's Fraser Valley Soccer League Division 2 men's team won the Presidents Cup in 2022 and are the current cup holders for 2024 after dominant displays throughout those tournaments. The same team was league champions in the Division 2A 2021-22 Season and the Division 2B 2022-23 Season.
Kidnapping and murder of Jessica Russell
Jessica Russell was a young Canadian girl who disappeared from a Vancouver
Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...
suburb on the morning of May 4, 2000, and was found dead the next day after she was kidnapped and murdered by a 20 year old man whose name was David Trott as he ostensibly took her to school. She was found dead in an incinerated trailer near Mission, British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...
.
Media
Notable people
*Pop singer and '' Canadian Idol'' finalist Carly Rae Jepsen
*Electro-pop singer Lights Poxleitner
*1976 Olympic silver medalist swimmer Gary MacDonald
*Poker
Poker is a family of Card game#Comparing games, comparing card games in which Card player, players betting (poker), wager over which poker hand, hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, with varying rules i ...
Pro Player Brad Booth
*NHL
The National Hockey League (NHL; , ''LNH'') is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Cana ...
athlete Gage Goncalves
*Big band
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and ...
era musician Mart Kenney and his wife, Norma Locke
*singer-songwriter and Juno nominee Paul Janz
Paul Janz (born 1951) is a Canadian theologian who was formerly a prominent singer-songwriter of pop rock music in the mainstream and contemporary Christian markets. He is known for such hits as "Every Little Tear", "One Night", "All I Have", " ...
*2005 CFOX Seeds winner Dave Faber and Ray Bull of 604 Records' recording artist Faber Drive
* 1988 Olympic short-track speedskater Eden Donatelli
*Swimmer Brent Hayden (Canadian Record holder in the 50m, 100m, & 200m freestyle, 2007 100m freestyle World Champion, 3x Olympian (2004, 2008, 2012), and 2012 Olympic Bronze Medalist)
*Actor Graham Wardle from Heartland
*WNBA (Sacramento Monarchs) basketball player Kim Smith
*1996 and 2000 Olympic swimmer Shannon Shakespeare
*High jump
The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern, most-practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat f ...
athlete Debbie Brill
*Justice of the Superior Court of Justice, Ontario Todd Ducharme
*Former logging company owner and British Columbia political figure Norman Jacobsen
* Margaret Lyons, first female vice-president of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is the Canadian Public broadcasting, public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a Crown corporation that serves as the national public broadcaster, with its E ...
.
*Hip-hop
Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hi ...
artist Powfu.
*Hip-hop
Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hi ...
artist Lil Windex
Neighbourhoods
Mission's neighbourhoods include a number of rural localities which were part of the District Municipality before amalgamation and which still have some strong local identity. The following list is incomplete, due to the emergence of modern-era development neighbourhoods, but covers the historical localities (usually defined by a school and a store of the same name):
* Cade-Barr
* Cedar Valley
* Clay Road
*Cherry Hill
Cherry Hill often refers to:
* Cherry Hill, New Jersey, a township in Camden County, New Jersey
* Cherry Hill, Prince William County, Virginia, a census-designated place
Cherry Hill may also refer to:
Places Canada
* Cherry Hill, Nova Scotia, a ...
*Deroche
*Dewdney
*Historic Downtown- 1st Avenue business strip
*Historic Central Mission- 2nd Avenue to 7th Avenue
* Hatzic
*Hillside
*Ferndale
* Keystone Road
* Silverdale
* Silverhill
* Stave Falls
* Stave Gardens
* Ruskin (also part of Maple Ridge)
* Steelhead
* Richards Road
* West Heights
Non-Mission District neighbourhoods
Unincorporated communities and rural areas to the east of Mission are linked closely to Mission, partly because of School District No. 75, but also because Mission is the dominant service centre for the north side of the Fraser between Maple Ridge and Agassiz-Kent
Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...
. These communities include:
* Hatzic Valley
** Durieu
** Hatzic Prairie
** Hatzic Island
** McConnell Creek
** Miracle Valley
* Dewdney
* Nicomen Island
* Deroche
* Lake Errock
Neighbouring communities
Sister cities
* Oyama, Shizuoka
is a List of towns in Japan, town located in Suntō District, Shizuoka, Suntō District, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. , the town had an estimated population of 17,297 in 7496 households and a population density of 127 persons per km2. The total ...
, Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
, since October 1996
Freedom of the City
The following people and military units have received the Freedom of the City of Mission.
Individuals
* Abraham "Abe" Neufeld: 2007.
* Valerie Billesberger: 26 April 2022.
* James "Jim" Hinds: 26 April 2022.
* Glen Kask: 26 April 2022.
* Doug Pearson: 26 April 2022.
See also
* Mission Bridge
* Mission Railway Bridge
Notes
References
*Schroeder, Andreas. ''Carved from Wood: Mission, B.C. 1861-1992'' The Mission Foundation (1991).
*Cherrington, John. ''Mission on the Fraser'' Mitchell Press (1974). ISBN B0006CL344
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External links
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{{Authority control
1868 establishments in Canada
Cities in British Columbia
Populated places established in 1868
Populated places in the Fraser Valley Regional District
Populated places on the Fraser River