Chilliwack-Cultus Lake.
2 candidates, one seat.

The Province of British Columbia describes the Ts'elxwéyeqw Tribe as seven Stó:lō Nation and Stó:lō Tribal Council bands in the Chilliwack area: Aitchelitz, Skowkale, Shxwhá:y, Squiala, Tzeachten, Yakweakwioose and Soowahlie. Its page records 574 members. Skowkale First Nation calls its community Sq'ewqéyl and says its people are one of the tribes of the Stó:lō, known as the People of the River, whose ancestors lived in the land drained by the Chilliwack River. The Province places Soowahlie on the Chilliwack River, 12 km south of Chilliwack, with a population of 436.

BC Parks says local First Nations knew Cultus Lake as Swee-ehl-chah or Tsowallie. BC Geographical Names records that Cultus comes from Chinook Jargon and means bad, and that the Indigenous people believed the lake was the home of evil spirits. The Geographic Board of Canada adopted the name on June 30, 1914. The Chilliwack Museum and Archives adds that for the Stó:lō the lake was an important place for spirit quests.

A naming submission sent to the Chilliwack school district explains Stitó:s as a Halq'eméylem place name meaning Place of Crossing. The authors say the Ts'elxwéyeqw people built a tall lookout tower there, where the Chilliwack River meets the Vedder River. The district's new school at 5337 Tyson Road carries the name Stitó:s Lá:lém Totí:lt, and the submission translates the second part as house of learning. The school was a voting place in the district in 2024.

The Chilliwack Museum and Archives says that after the 1858 gold rush many people came to the Chilliwack area. A.C. Wells, Adam Vedder and Jane Evans were among the settlers who claimed land in the 1860s along what became the Sardis corridor. By 1867 First Nations reserves had been set aside beside the Chilliwack River, which once flowed through parts of Sardis. The museum credits Mrs. Adam Swart Vedder with the name Sardis: she opened her Bible at random and found it in Revelation 3, 1. Residents petitioned for a post office in 1887, and Alex Campbell built the first store in 1891.

The museum says the Methodist Church founded the Coqualeetza Residential School in 1888 and built a large school building in 1894. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation dates the school from 1889 to 1940. The museum says Coqualeetza now serves as a centre for the Stó:lō Nation. It also records that A.C. Wells' Edenbank Creamery became the first co-operative creamery in British Columbia in 1896, and that hop growing on Vedder Road ended in 1997 when the last farm stopped production. The British Columbia Electric Railway reached Sardis in 1910 and brought electricity, water and telephone service.

At Vedder Crossing the Chilliwack River changed course. The museum says a flood in 1875 partly blocked the river, which sent some of its water into a small creek known as Vedder Creek. The blockage was complete by 1891 and a bridge was needed. Vedder Road was the main route to Vancouver until 1926, because Sumas Lake was drained in 1924 and a bridge over the Vedder Canal opened in 1925.

The Chilliwack Museum and Archives traces Yarrow to a post office that opened on Majuba Hill on July 1, 1900, in the home of William and Mary Jane Chadsey. In 1910 the British Columbia Electric Railway finished a line along the foot of Vedder Mountain beside Sumas Lake and named a station Yarrow. The museum gives two accounts of the name: one says it comes from the yarrow plant that grows in the area, and the other says the builder named the station after the bitterest herb in the community, because a landowner had made the work difficult.

A history site run by Yarrow residents dates the Sumas Lake Reclamation project to 1920 to 1924. The Vedder River was sent into the Vedder Canal, and the lake bed became farmland. The Sumas First Nation timeline gives the years as 1920 to 1925 and says the work created 33,000 acres of farm land and devastated the traditional way of life of the Semá:th people. The residents' chronology records that the first Mennonite families reached Yarrow in February 1928 and took temporary housing on Majuba Hill. On September 13, 1928 the new school opened with 29 students from 21 families, the museum says.

The community then built its own institutions. Mennonite Brethren built a first church in 1930. Raspberry growers formed the Yarrow Growers Association in 1936. The Yarrow Waterworks District received its charter in 1944 and later added irrigation, sidewalks, street lights and a volunteer fire department. In 1952 the community bought the former Sharon Mennonite Collegiate Institute on Wilson Road for $60,000, and it served as Yarrow Junior High School until 1964.

The Chilliwack Museum and Archives says Cultus Lake was a summer resort and picnic area until the early 1920s. One family history in the museum's account places camping at the lake in the 1870s or 1880s. In 1924 the City of Chilliwack and the Township of Chilliwhack formed a joint committee to govern the lake, and permanent buildings began to appear on leased lots. The Cultus Lake Park Board was formed in 1932. The park's own governance page says the Legislature passed the Cultus Lake Park Act on April 13, 1932, after the City and the Township petitioned for it.

The Park Board says its five commissioners now include three elected from Cultus Lake Park and two from the District of Chilliwack, and that the park holds 640 acres of land. A pavilion built near Main Beach in 1939 housed a dance hall, post office, store and library, and the museum says it was later torn down. When the military training base opened near Vedder Crossing in 1942, a severe housing shortage led owners to winterize summer cottages, and the lake became a year-round community. BC Parks says Cultus Lake received provincial park status in 1948.

A Veterans Affairs Canada plaque record says Camp Chilliwack was established in February 1942 near Vedder Crossing, in response to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour. It housed No. 112 Canadian Army Basic Training Centre and an engineer training centre moved from Saskatchewan. The Chilliwack Museum and Archives says Vedder Crossing had stayed rural until the 1940s, and that it became a tent city when the Canadian Military Engineers arrived in April 1942. One resident remembered only two houses on the east side of Vedder Road between Promontory Road and the Vedder bridge before the camp came.

After the war the camp became Canadian Forces Base Chilliwack, which trained military engineers for the combined armed forces after 1968. The record says the Canadian Forces Officer Candidate School moved there in 1970 and the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, arrived in 1994. Budget cuts closed the base in 1997. A memorial on Caen Avenue, dedicated on November 11, 1997, carries the words Home of the Canadian Military Engineers.

BC Geographical Names records that the Township of Chilliwack was incorporated on April 26, 1873 and the City of Chilliwack on February 21, 1908. On January 1, 1980 the two merged into the District of Chilliwack, and the municipality became a city again in 1999. The record says the name comes from a Halkomelem word that scholars read as valley of many streams.

The University of the Fraser Valley says it began as Fraser Valley College in 1974 to 1975, and that by 1975 it had over 2,300 students across Chilliwack, Abbotsford, Mission, Hope and Agassiz. Trades programming began in Chilliwack in 1978 and an Agriculture Centre opened in 1986. In 2012 a renovated building of 150,000 square feet opened at Canada Education Park, and most Chilliwack programs moved there from Yale Road. The Agriculture Centre of Excellence followed in 2014. The Chilliwack campus was a voting place in the district in 2024.

Global News reported that on November 16, 2021 the City of Chilliwack ordered residents of Yarrow, from Boundary Road to Browne Road and all of Majuba Hill, to leave immediately. The city gave the reason as the risk of flooding after an atmospheric river, which is a long band of heavy rain. Residents were told to register at the reception centre at the Neighbourhood Learning Centre at Chilliwack Secondary School, and to leave by Boundary Road to Keith Wilson and then over the Keith Wilson Bridge.

The order followed one by Abbotsford for the Sumas Prairie, and Highway 1 between Abbotsford and Hope was closed by flooding and road debris. Yarrow lies on land that was the shore and bed of Sumas Lake before the drainage of the 1920s, which the Chilliwack Museum and Archives says turned that land into farms.