CITY OF CHANGES: The difference of a lifetime
Former Mayor George Ferguson has witnessed Abbotsford's growth from a sleep country town into a thriving city.
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Updated: July 09, 2009 7:19 AM
His clothes may have been drenched in sweat from a day spent in the blazing midsummer sun, but that wasn’t enough to deter this 10-year-old boy from putting in a working man’s shift.
With only a cent and a half handed out for each pound of hops picked, there was little benefit in working anything less than full tilt.
On a good day, if he put his mind and body into it, he could walk home with a buck and a half in his pocket.
This is one of the earliest childhood memories of George Ferguson, an Abbotsford resident for the best part of 80 years and mayor for 30 of those.
Ferguson relays this story while sitting in a rocking chair in the front room of his Sumas Prairie home on Campbell Road.
Born in Vancouver in 1925, Ferguson moved with his parents to the dairy farm in 1929. He has remained there since.
With much of Abbotsford’s growth occurring in the city core, Ferguson’s decision to stay on Sumas Prairie meant he has not been surrounded by the cranes and jackhammers. He was, however, in the centre of the Fraser Valley’s economic hub back in the 1930s.
Campbell Road was the main link between Abbotsford and Chilliwack.
Abbotsford was still a village, Ferguson recalls, and so a lot of people in Sumas Prairie did their business in Chilliwack – the Fraser Valley’s main town of the day. People in Matsqui, he said, tended to shop in Mission.
When Highway 1 was built in the early 1960s, the picture changed.
Soon, there was a commercial core in Abbotsford. Businesses that would eventually become the Sevenoaks and Westoaks malls moved into the area.
Single family homes were becoming the norm as building boomed. Sixty-five per cent of Abbotsford’s current housing stock was built between 1971 and 1996, with 28 per cent of that total occurring in the ’80s.
Perhaps the biggest change was in 1994, when the District of Abbotsford and the much larger District of Matsqui amalgamated. That merger swelled the new City of Abbotsford’s population to 90,000.
Since then, Ferguson has seen the construction of large-scale projects to help cope with increased demand for services, including the Mount Lehman Interchange, the Abbotsford hospital and the three Plan A projects.
Looking back, however, Ferguson questions whether Abbotsford’s dramatic facelift has been for the better.
“You sometimes wonder. We never knew where the key to the house was, and people would often go to the post office and leave their car idling,” he said. “That all changed.”
The growth in population has brought growing pains, according to Ferguson, including a surge in crime.
Future challenges, he suggests, will include finding a sustainable water supply for Abbotsford and managing even more people as they move to the city.
“Our biggest problem is how to meet all the demands that everybody wants.
“There will be more high-rises but we have to be careful where we are putting them. Abbotsford has a real bright future, but people need to realize there’s only so much money and there has to be priorities in order to move the area ahead. It’s going to take real good management...”
Now 84, the former mayor is never short of an opinion. After three decades at the helm of civic politics, however, he is happy to step back and leave the city’s management to others.
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