People uprooted from Maple Ridge (1)

Non-Indigenous settlers from the Hudsonʼs Bay Company began farming in the Maple Ridge area in the 1850s. The Canadian Pacific Railway reached the community in 1885, linking it to Port Moody and later Vancouver. Pitt Meadows was united with Maple Ridge from 1874 to 1896 but became a separate municipality in 1914. The histories of Ruskin, Whonnock, and Haney are closely linked with that of Maple Ridge. Dairy and berry farming were the area’s primary industries.

Mankichi Eyemoto, one of the earliest known Japanese Canadian settlers in Pitt Meadows, arrived in 1904. Other families, including the Fujimotos, settled there by 1912. By the 1920s, Japanese Canadians comprised roughly one-third of the population in the area. Most farmed berries and vegetables, with a focus on strawberries. Much of the farmland once owned by Japanese Canadians, which was appropriated and sold for very low prices during the uprooting, now constitutes extremely valuable residential lots.