Welcome to Mission, British Columbia, Canada
Your Mission (Pitt Meadows, Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam, Port Moody, Mission)
area contact is Jim Williams (REMAX Ridge-Meadows Realty.) Please refer to the "Relocating to Mission" section to the right for
the phone number, address, website, and email address to contact Jim Williams directly.
Ask about the REMAX MLS real estate homes for sale including residential houses, apartments, condos, duplexes, acreages and farms.
Mission summary
Mission is a Canadian district municipality, in the province of British Columbia and is situated on the north bank of the Fraser River, overlooking the Fraser Valley.
Mission is the twenty-third largest municipality in British Columbia, with a population of 34,505 (2006). Mission was incorporated in 1892 and is 225.78 kmē in size.
Originally it was two separate incorporations, the District Municipality of Mission and the smaller Town of Mission City; these were amalgamated by plebiscite in
1969.
Unlike the other Fraser Valley municipalities Mission is mostly forested upland with only small floodplains lining the shore of the Fraser River, with some benches of
relatively poor-quality farmland rising in succession northwards above the core developed area of the town. What agricultural land there is in Mission was once the heart
of the berry industry in the Fraser Valley, but this ended due to the consequences of the great Fraser flood of 1948 which flooded the lowlands; that industry is now
largely centred across the river in the neighbouring municipality of Abbotsford.
The municipality is bisected 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 municipality is west and north of that river. A
small portion of the lower Stave still runs free in its last two miles before its confluence with the Fraser at Ruskin, which is on the border with the larger
municipality of Maple Ridge to the west. This hydroelectric system was the largest hydroelectric project in southwestern British Columbia until the 1950s and was built
by the British Columbia Electric Railway (BCER) to provide power to the electric street railway and interurban system in Vancouver. During the heyday of the communities
at Ruskin Dam and Stave Falls Dam, the BCER ran an electric railway down the west side of the river, both for freight and for passenger service, connecting with the CPR
at Ruskin. During the construction of 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.
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 to Deroche are part of the social and commercial matrix centred on
Mission but have never joined the municipality; their local societies are built on dairy, berry and corn farming as well as a large First Nations community at Lakahamen
on Nicomen Island.
Forestry and agriculture are Mission's chief resource sectors and provide the basis for varied related retail and service activities. Over the past few years,
transportation improvements have enabled the manufacturing sector to expand beyond sawmilling and food processing. Mission also holds the only municipal tree farm
license in British Columbia.
Agriculture is 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.
Text & photo credits
The text contained in 'Mission Summary' above is courtesy of Wikipedia.com.
The article ('Mission Summary') is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License
(See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.)
It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Mission, British Columbia".
