Ferndale

Area description

Ferndale, in upper Mission, is an area which runs approximately from Dewdney Trunk Road to Stave Lake Road (east to west), and from Richards Avenue to Dewdney Trunk (north to south) which is not a known area of Indigenous habitation. It was not a destination for the earliest European settlement either, being too far from transportation routes. Nevertheless, in the 1890s a few families were entering these forested uplands ̶ enough in 1893 to put up a rudimentary log school. In the late 1930s a number of Mennonite settlers arrived and began to hold religious services, erecting a small church in 1940, but they were not a large community. Ferndale eventually had a small store and a gas station and schools, but no post office. Its most recent school was closed in 2008. The area remains fairly rural.

Much of the Ferndale area is now government-owned. The Mission municipality built a new municipal office here in 1972, and west of it are its Public Works buildings. Federally-owned is a large tract of land on which a minimum-security correctional institute was opened in 1974, followed by a medium-security institute in 1977.