Ruskin Dam and Powerhouse

Silvermere Lake, locally called Hullah's Lake, is located on the west side of Silverdale, a rural neighborhood of Mission, British Columbia, is a man made lake. It is visible from and adjacent to the Lougheed Highway, which follows a causeway on the lake's south side. The lake covers an inter tidal prairie with natural drainage patterns coming off of the Silverdale and Silverhill areas on the East side of the lake and joining the Stave River above the highway. BC geological survey aerial photography from the early 1950s shows this Photo # BC1782:40) The lake was created by diking both of off the highway and on the North end to Hayward road. The dikes were constructed buy dump and push methods with raw gravel mined from the North end of the island. The only native ground removal from the bottom of the lake was done by dredging was along the South end, in front of the houses, to increase depth and at the North end to create more land base for development. The North dredging created a hole that used to be up to 30 feet deep. All of this was part of a 1950s vintage real estate development by Norman William (Ned) Hullah's. He built his private estate on the naturally occurring hill along the west side of the lake. This hill now locally known as the Island, though previously it was known as Hullah's Island. The ownership of the island is split more or less equally down the middle between I.R. on the West and Private land on the East. The private portion includes the lake bottom to the Fraser 1896 high water mark in front of all of the housing along the shore. The portion South of the highway was recently subdivided out to Ducks Unlimited. The name Stave River was created by Hudson's Bay Company employees. The native name for the river is forgotten, although modern-day natives refer to it as Skayuks ("everyone died"), also the name given to one of three villages that were located in the delta marshlands of the lower reaches of the river at the time of non-native settlement (1870s onwards). The name is a reference to consequences of the successive smallpox plagues and other disease pandemics which destroyed the populations and cultures of the Fraser Valley.

Hayward Lake is a lake and reservoir on the Stave River in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, Canada. Located in the District of Mission about 60 km east of Vancouver, Hayward Lake is formed by Ruskin Dam, which lies about 3 km upstream from the Stave River's confluence with the Fraser River at Ruskin, which sits astride the Mission-Maple Ridge boundary. The lake begins at the tailrace from the Stave Falls Dam and is about 7.5 km in length and an average of 0.5 km wide, with a maximum width of 1.5 km when lengths of small inlets are taken into account.

Whonnock is a rural, naturally treed, and hilly community on the north side of the Fraser River in the eastern part of the City of Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada. It is approximately 56 kilometres east of Downtown Vancouver on the Lougheed Highway Whonnock shares borders with three other Maple Ridge communities. To the west the borders are 256th Street with Albion and upper Kanaka Creek with Webster's Corners. To the east Whonnock Creek forms the border with Ruskin. To the north is the municipal border and to the south the Fraser River.The name Whonnock is derived from a Halkomelem word for humpback salmon or pink salmon, the only kind of salmon to ascend Whonnock Creek. Whonnock Creek flows from the north, above Dewdney Trunk Road, south to the Fraser River passing Whonnock Lake or from Xwô:leqw / Wõ:leqw.

Ruskin is a rural, naturally-treed community, about 35 mi (56 km) east of Vancouver on the north shore of the Fraser River. It was named around 1900 after of the English art critic, essayist, and prominent social thinker John Ruskin. Ruskin is one of the historical communities of the municipality of Maple Ridge. In that context Ruskin borders on its west side with the community of Whonnock by the Whonnock Creek and the Whonnock Reserve, and on the east side with the municipality of Mission. The border to the south is the Fraser River and to the north the point where Whonnock Creek crosses the Mission borderline. Ruskin touches the Stave River at the tip of the southwest corner where the Stave River flows into the Fraser River. The area generally understood as Ruskin goes beyond those boundaries. Ruskin in a social sense straddles the municipal border of Maple Ridge and Mission. In that close-knit community there was and is no border separating residents from Maple Ridge from those in Mission. Residents who lived and are still living along the western shore of the lower Stave River, even if they live in the municipality of Mission, consider their neighbourhood as Ruskin.

The Stave River is a tributary of the Fraser, joining it at the boundary between the municipalities of Maple Ridge and Mission, about 35 kilometres (22 mi) east of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in the Central Fraser Valley region. Blocked since the 1920s by two dams built by the BC Electric Railway at Stave Falls and one at Ruskin, the only free-flowing parts of the Stave today are the 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) between Ruskin Dam and the Fraser and the 45 kilometres (28 mi) from its source in Garibaldi Provincial Park to the head of Stave Lake. Prior to power development the total length of the river was c. 85 kilometres (53 mi).

'Whonnock Lake It is a natural muskeg lake and, if left alone, it will slowly turn into a peat marsh. The only regular water input is from the north. There is an exit to Whonnock Creek on the south-east side originally closed off by a sandbar (beaver dam) that was replaced in 2008 by a man-made berm and fish channel. This is where the water escapes from the lake to Whonnock Creek. In the past beavers regulated the water level of the lake — now the city does that. and rural-residential neighbourhood in eastern Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada, located about 40 miles (64 km) east of Vancouver in the upland area of Whonnock south of the Dewdney Trunk Road. The lake is used as a practice facility for the Ridge Canoe and Kayak Club, and has hosted many sprint kayak and canoe competitions.

Silverdale is a semi-rural neighbourhood of the District of Mission, British Columbia, Canada, located about 40 km east of Vancouver on the east bank of the Stave River at its confluence with the Fraser. Noted for its historic Italian Canadian community, its economy was farming, fishing and logging based until the general suburbanization of Fraser Valley life in the 1960s and 1970s. Of its Italian community, notable offspring include Phil Gaglardi, former BC Highways minister, and speed-skater Eden Donatelli. Silverdale is also notable as the site of Canada's first train robbery, by the "Gentleman Bandit" Billy Miner, and it is there he is supposed to have first used the polite "Hands Up!" in the course of the robbery.The lakeshore residences on the east side of Silvermere Lake are part of Silverdale. Silvermere was created by the dredging of the marshlands in the area. Silverdale was named after Silverdale, Staffordshire. The name was chosen from a list of British places by J. A. Skinner, an early postmaster.

Rolley Lake Provincial Park is a provincial park in British Columbia, Canada. It is located on Rolley Lake in the Stave Falls area of Mission, British Columbia. The area was inhabited by the Sto:lo people, homesteaded in 1888 by James and Fanny Rolley, and later used for logging operations. The park now provides campsites, use of the lake, and hiking, with an area of 115 hectares (280 acres).Rolley Lake has a day-use area, camping site, and two popular hiking trails. Rolley Lake trail circles the lake and is an easy 3-kilometre (1.9 mi) loop. Rolley Falls hike is a 2.5-kilometre (1.6 mi) out-and-back trail that starts at the campsite and leads to nearby waterfalls.

Stave Falls Dam is a dual-dam power complex on the Stave River in Stave Falls, British Columbia, Canada. The dam was completed in 1912 for the primary purpose of hydroelectric power production. To increase the capacity of Stave Lake, the dam was raised in 1925 and the Blind Slough Dam constructed in an adjacent watercourse 500 m (1,600 ft) to the north, which was the site of the eponymous Stave Falls. In 2000, the dam's powerhouse was replaced after a four-year upgrade. The original Stave Falls powerhouse was once British Columbia's largest hydroelectric power source, and is a National Historic Site of Canada.

Mount Lehman or Mt. Lehman (49°07'00"N, 122°23'00"W) is a small rural community located in the Fraser Valley of south western British Columbia, Canada. The community was established in 1874 and became part of the District of Matsqui in 1892. The District of Matsqui was incorporated into the present day City of Abbotsford, British Columbia in 1995. Mount Lehman is situated on an area of upraised land (hence, where the "Mount" comes into the name), that lies between the flat plains of Matsqui Prairie to the east and Glen Valley to the west. The original historic community can be roughly bounded by the Fraser River in the north, Harris Road in the South, Bradner Road in the West, and Matsqui Prairie in the east. Mount Lehman is named for Isaac Lehman. In 1875, first cousins Samuel and Isaac Lehman pre-empted many acres of land in the area.

Steelhead is a rural community in British Columbia, Canada, located in the northern District of Mission and east of Stave Falls.

Bradner is a community within the City of Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada, located in a rural northwest region of that city which also includes Mount Lehman. Bradner occupies a height of land above the Fraser River, immediately across which is the community of Silverdale, a part of the District of Mission, and Ruskin, on the border between Mission and Maple Ridge. On the floodplain below to the west is the Langley rural neighbourhood of Glen Valley, while on the floodplain to the east, which is called Matsqui Prairie, the nearest Abbotsford neighbourhood is Matsqui Village. Bradner was formerly part of the District of Matsqui, which in 1995 was amalgamated into the City of Abbotsford. Bradner was named after Thomas Bradner, a settler in the area who homesteaded there in 1895. A Bradner Post Office was designated in 1912 and Bradner was a station on the British Columbia Electric Railway interurban line from New Westminster to Chilliwack after the expansion in 1910. Bradner is near-totally agricultural in nature, and is noted for its annual show of blooms, as the crops in the area are largely floral, particularly daffodils, a legacy of the many farmers of Dutch extraction who helped found that area's agricultural industry. In 1928, Mr. Fenwick Fatkin, a recent settler from Vancouver, wanted other local growers to showcase their daffodils and this became the humble beginnings of the famous annual Flower Show. In the beginning, only 10 types of daffodils were displayed. Today, there are over four hundred, some of which are still of a Fatkin variety.Another notable celebration in the Bradner community is the annual May Day parade. Every year, a sixth grade student is selected to become the May Queen. In 2009, the first May King was elected. Hunter was the first May King to be elected in 2009. This raised much controversy in the community, as tradition was not being followed. Bradner also has a local, monthly newspaper. The Bradner Barker is distributed every month during the months school is in session. It often features work submitted by students at Bradner Elementary.