People uprooted from Ruskin (136)

Ruskin, in the Maple Ridge district, became a distinct community from Whonnock in 1896. In 1885, the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed. In 1896, the Canadian Co-operative Society was formed; they settled at the mouth of the Stave River and opened the Ruskin Mill. A post office, store, and school were also built. After the co-operative failed in 1899, E. H. Heaps acquired and expanded the sawmill into a major operation. Around 1910, the Ruskin railway station was constructed.

After the First World War, Japanese Canadians established strawberry and rasberry farms in Ruskin. By the 1930s, about thirty Japanese Canadian families owned land, comprising approximately seventy-five percent of Ruskin’s population and half the community’s agricultural land. Ruskin had a Japanese Community Hall on 280th Street, and several Japanese logging and sawmill operations. The forcible uprooting of Japanese Canadians caused much of Ruskin’s agricultural production to end.