Abbotsford South.
3 candidates, one seat.

The Sumas First Nation, whose people are the Semá:th, says on its website that they have lived on and cared for the lands and waters around what is now Abbotsford since time immemorial. The Nation describes its traditional territory as stretching between the Sumas and Vedder mountains and including Semá:th Xó:tsa, the former Sumas Lake. It says the territory once reached south across the present border into Washington State, and that it overlapped in part with the territory of the Máthxwí and Leq'á:mel First Nations.

The Nation's territory page says seven villages were part of Semá:th and that its lands covered more than 20,000 acres. The main upper village, Kw'ekw'e'i:qw, stood at the site of the present reserve, which the Nation calls only a fraction of its traditional territory. Kw'ekw'e'i:qw is also the Nation's name for Sumas Mountain. The page adds that neighbours called this area Kilgard, a name that refers to a kiln brickwork factory. It describes Thunderbird Caves on the south-facing side of the mountain, where the Nation's oral history says people took refuge during a great flood.

The Nation's timeline says that in 1953 the Semá:th and the Leq'á:mel separated under the Indian Act, and the Semá:th received Indian Reserve 6, their current reserve. It records that in 1919 another Sumas reserve, number 7, was sold to the Soldier Settlement Board.

The Encyclopedia of British Columbia says the Canadian Pacific Railway built a branch line from Mission to the United States in 1889. Huntingdon takes its name from Huntingdon, Quebec, the home of Benjamin Douglas, the first settler in the area. Douglas and a partner laid out a townsite at the border, and it became a port of entry with a hotel and a customs office. The entry says the neighbouring town of Sumas, on the American side, grew more than Huntingdon did.

An electric line followed. The Fraser Valley Heritage Railway Society, which restores cars of the British Columbia Electric Railway, says the company's Fraser Valley line was completed in 1910 and that passenger service began on October 3, 1910. The line ran from downtown Vancouver to Chilliwack, and Abbotsford and Sumas were among the settlements it served. The society records that the line last carried passengers in 1955, on a special trip from Chilliwack for a Grade 3 class from Yarrow.

Aberdeen lies on the west side of Abbotsford, and BC Geographical Names adopted the name in 1951. The Abbotsford School District says Hugh Currie, who donated land for the school and the cemetery, named the school Aberdeen because many Scottish immigrants had settled in the area. The first school building went up in 1890. In 1900 the school moved to Fraser Highway and Bradner Road, which was then called Aberdeen Road. The district adds that the area around the school took its name from the school. Bradner Road is now the western boundary of the electoral district.

BC Geographical Names says the name Abbotsford first appeared on John Charles Maclure's map on July 9, 1891, and that the post office opened on January 1, 1892. Abbotsford was incorporated as a village on February 22, 1924. On November 17, 1972 it amalgamated with the District of Sumas to form the District of Abbotsford. On January 1, 1995 that district merged with the District of Matsqui, and the City of Abbotsford was created.

The same office records that the word Sumas comes from an Indigenous word meaning a big level opening. The earliest record is the 1808 journal of Simon Fraser, who described a round mountain that Indigenous people called shemotch. The name Sumas Mountain was adopted on December 12, 1939.

Parks Canada says Sikh pioneers from India built the Abbotsford Sikh Temple in 1911, using lumber from a nearby sawmill where many of them worked. The Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada designated it a national historic site in 2002. Parks Canada gives the reason as the oldest surviving example of the temples that played a religious, social and political role in the first period of Sikh immigration to North America. The temple stands at 33089 South Fraser Way, one of the roads that form the district's northern boundary.

The Canadian Encyclopedia says Mennonites settled the low-lying farmland of Matsqui in the late 1920s, largely in Clearbrook. The Encyclopedia of British Columbia says the Clearbrook post office was first named Pinecrest in 1952, after the Pinecrest Auto Court. Residents complained, the name changed to North Clearbrook, and in 1957 it became Clearbrook. The same encyclopedia says Sumas Clay Products, a brick factory formerly at Clayburn, has been based at Kilgard since 1920.

Sumas Lake lay between the Sumas and Vedder mountains, in the area now called the Sumas Prairie. The Semá:th say the lake gave them food, a home and a route for travel, and that it was a sacred place in their oral histories. Their timeline says pressure from farmers and railway companies led the provincial government to build canals, dikes and pumping stations between 1920 and 1925. It says the work created 33,000 acres of farm land, and that it ended a way of life the Semá:th had relied on for thousands of years. The territory page gives 1924 as the year the lake was drained.

The Province says Sumas Lake was drained in the 1920s for several purposes, including farming. A provincial news release of February 14, 2024 says the Barrowtown Pump Station opened in 1983. It pumps water from the low prairie through the Sumas Canal and into the Fraser River.

The provincial news release of February 14, 2024 says flood water broke through the Sumas River dike during the heavy rain storms of November 2021, which the release calls atmospheric rivers. A dike is an earth bank built to hold water back. The release says the Barrowtown Pump Station was nearly overwhelmed. It lists upgrades that include a six-metre floodwall and new pump motors, and says the Province committed $76.6 million to pay for them. In April 2023 the Province, the Semá:th, Matsqui and Leq'á:mel First Nations, and the cities of Abbotsford and Chilliwack set up the Sumas River Flood Mitigation Collaborative Framework.

On March 31, 2025 the Province returned the 36-hectare Lightning Rock site on Sumas Mountain to the Semá:th, according to a joint news release of that date. The site holds a stone known as Lightning Rock, which Stó:lō history counts among more than 100 places where ancestors were transformed into stone. It also holds the burial place of smallpox victims from the 18th century. The release says the Province and the Semá:th signed a memorandum of understanding in 2017 and that the Province announced its purchase of the site in March 2024. It also says the Province, the Nation and the City of Abbotsford agreed to hire a third party to study other routes for the quarry road that crosses the site.