Ecological History of My Neighbourhood in Mission, B.C.

I live on 7th Avenue in Mission, British Columbia. When I normally look around my neighbourhood, I mostly just see houses, roads, yards, parks, and other parts of a regular residential area. I had never really thought much about what the area looked like before all of this was built. After looking into its environmental history, though, it is pretty clear that the landscape around my neighbourhood has changed a lot over time. Long before Mission became a city, this area was already being used and managed by Indigenous peoples. Later, logging, farming, transportation, and residential development all changed the environment again.

Mission is located within the traditional territory of the Stólō, or “People of the River.” According to the City of Mission’s history of the area, the Fraser River was extremely important to Stólō communities. People travelled along the river in large canoes and traded dried salmon, fruits, and other goods with communities from the coast and interior.¹ The importance of the river makes sense when looking at Mission today because the Fraser is still one of the biggest physical features shaping the area.

One thing from Unit 1 that helped me understand this better was the idea that the land before European settlement should not just be thought of as untouched wilderness. Nancy Turner and Sandra Peacock show that Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast actively managed plants and landscapes. Some of the methods they discuss include selective harvesting, weeding, transplanting, burning, and maintaining areas where useful plants grew.² They argue that Indigenous peoples were not simply taking resources from the environment, but were actively changing and managing it to make important foods, medicines, and materials more reliable.³

This is especially interesting when looking at the Fraser Valley. Turner and Peacock discuss wapato, an edible root that grew in wetlands, and mention that wapato swamps were once common throughout the Fraser Valley. Many of these wetlands later disappeared because they were drained for agriculture.⁴ I think this is important because it shows that the landscape around Mission before European settlement was not just empty land waiting to be developed. People had already been living in and interacting with this environment for thousands of years.

The physical environment also played an important role in how people lived here. Mission sits on the southern slope of the Coast Mountains overlooking the Fraser Valley. The area has a mild, wet climate along with hillsides, gullies, forests, streams, and a wide variety of plant life.⁵ Salmon were especially important to the Stólō, and the relationship between the people and the Fraser River is still an important part of how Mission understands its local history.

The landscape started changing much more rapidly with European settlement during the nineteenth century. The area between the Stave River and Hatzic Lake was incorporated as the Municipality of Mission in 1892.⁶ Logging also became one of the area’s earliest major industries. The Mission Museum’s Tackling the Timbers in Mission exhibit explains that commercial logging in Mission developed during the 1880s. Early logging supplied barrel staves and fuel for sternwheelers before expanding into railway ties, lumber, shakes, and shingles. The railway and Fraser River were especially important because they made transporting logs and lumber much easier.⁷

This would have had a major effect on the environment around what eventually became residential Mission. Forests were cleared, transportation routes were built, and some of the cleared land became available for farms and settlements. This connects with another idea from Unit 1. Ted Steinberg explains how European colonization was connected to changing ideas about private property, markets, and making land economically productive.⁸ Looking at Mission, I can see this fairly clearly because the landscape gradually changed from Indigenous-managed environments and forests into areas increasingly used for logging, farming, transportation, and settlement.

Agriculture was another part of this change. Agriculture became important to Mission’s development, including the area’s history of berry production.⁹ Farming also had environmental consequences. Forested areas had to be cleared, while wetlands in parts of the Fraser Valley were drained or altered to create agricultural land. Turner and Peacock’s discussion of the disappearance of Fraser Valley wapato wetlands is one example of how agricultural development could completely change an existing ecosystem.¹⁰

Eventually, the area around 7th Avenue became much more residential. Houses, paved roads, sidewalks, lawns, storm drains, and planted vegetation became normal parts of the landscape. Something I found particularly interesting is that environmental change is still happening directly around my neighbourhood. The 7th Avenue Greenway was completed in August 2023 and provides a route between Dewdney Trunk Road, Fraser River Heritage Park, and Grand Street that makes it easier for people to walk, wheel, and cycle.¹¹ I probably would not have thought of something like a bike and pedestrian route as environmental history before taking this course, but it does show changing ideas about how cities should be designed and how people move around them.

Mission also has to manage some of the environmental problems that come with urban development. According to the City of Mission, the city’s drainage system includes about 100 kilometres of storm sewer mains and 140 kilometres of roadside ditches, along with creeks, streams, and smaller rivers.¹² The City’s Land Clearing Management Program also places restrictions on clearing around environmentally sensitive areas, including streams. Riparian vegetation is important because it provides fish habitat, helps maintain biodiversity, and provides corridors for wildlife.¹³ This shows how development has created the need to actively manage parts of the environment that would once have functioned more naturally.

Invasive species are another environmental issue in Mission today. The Fraser Valley Invasive Species Society identifies four types of knotweed found in the Fraser Valley: Japanese, giant, Bohemian, and Himalayan knotweed.¹⁴ The City of Mission also identifies knotweed and giant hogweed as invasive plants of particular concern. Knotweed can be especially damaging around waterways because it crowds out native vegetation and can contribute to stream-bank erosion.¹⁵

After looking into the environmental history of my neighbourhood, I see the area a lot differently than I did before. What looks like a normal residential street today is really the result of a long history of people interacting with and changing the environment. Stólō communities were using and managing this landscape long before European settlement. Later, logging, farming, the railway, roads, and housing changed it again. Today, changes are still happening through things like stream protection, invasive species control, stormwater management, and the 7th Avenue Greenway. It made me realize that even a neighbourhood that seems pretty ordinary has a much longer environmental history behind it.

Footnotes

1. City of Mission, “About Mission,” accessed July 15, 2026, https://www.mission.ca/community-environment/about-mission.
2. Nancy J. Turner and Sandra Peacock, “Solving the Perennial Paradox: Ethnobotanical Evidence for Plant Resource Management on the Northwest Coast,” in Keeping It Living: Traditions of Plant Use and Cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America, ed. Douglas Deur and Nancy J. Turner (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005), 105–17.
3. Turner and Peacock, “Solving the Perennial Paradox,” 145–46.
4. Turner and Peacock, “Solving the Perennial Paradox,” 142.
5. City of Mission, “About Mission.”
6. City of Mission, “About Mission.”
7. Mission Museum, “Tackling the Timbers in Mission,” Community Stories, accessed July 10, 2026, https://www.communitystories.ca/projects/tackling-the-timbers-in-mission/.
8. Ted Steinberg, “A Truly New World,” in Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 13–14.
9. City of Mission, “About Mission.”
10. Turner and Peacock, “Solving the Perennial Paradox,” 142.
11. City of Mission, “7th Avenue Greenway,” accessed July 14, 2026, https://www.mission.ca/business-building/current-city-projects/7th-avenue-greenway.
12. City of Mission, “Storm Sewer,” accessed July 14, 2026, https://www.mission.ca/services/water-sewer/sewer/storm-sewer.
13. City of Mission, “Land Clearing Management Program,” accessed July 18, 2026, https://www.mission.ca/land-clearing.
14. Fraser Valley Invasive Species Society, “Knotweed Species,” accessed July 15, 2026, https://www.fviss.ca/invasive-plant/knotweed-species.
15. City of Mission, “Invasive Species & Plants,” accessed July 14, 2026, https://www.mission.ca/community-environment/environment-sustainability/bears-wildlife/invasive-species-plants.