Dawson Creek, British Columbia

For the TV series, see Dawson's Creek. For the town at the centre of the Klondike Gold Rush, see Dawson City, Yukon.

The city of Dawson Creek is a small city in northeastern British Columbia, Canada. It covers an area of 20.66 km² with an estimated 2004 population of 11,394 peopleBC Stats (March 22, 2006). "Dawson Creek District Municipality" (pdf), Community Facts, Retrieved 24 April 2006. Its nickname is the "Mile 0 City" because it is at the southern end of the Alaska Highway. Dawson Creek derived its name from the creek of the same name that runs through the city. The creek was named after George Mercer Dawson by a member of his land survey team when they passed through the area in August 1879.First Traveler Through Dawson, 1879 The News, Progress Edition, 27 April 1979. Because the city is the service center for the rural areas south of the Peace River, the seat of the Peace River Regional District, and the crossroads for entering British Columbia north of the Rocky Mountains from Alberta, the city dubbed itself "The Capital of the Peace".

History

Dawson Creek was one of the farming communities established by European-Canadian settlers moving west through the Peace River Country. The pace of migration increased after the homestead grants were given to settlers in 1912 by the Canadian government. With the opening of a few stores and hotels in 1919, Dawson Creek became the most important settlement in the area. The incorporation of the Dawson Creek Co-operative Union on 28 May 1921 bolstered the settlement's role as the area's main business centre.Coutts, M. E. (1958). Dawson Creek: Past and Present, An Historical Sketch. Edmonton: Dawson Creek Historical Society.

After much speculation by land owners and investors, the Northern Alberta Railways built its terminus 3 km (2 miles) from the village.The Choice of Terminal for the N.A.R.. Dorthea Calverley, 1983. URL accessed on 17 November 2005. The golden spike was driven on 29 December 1930, and the first passenger train arrived on 15 January 1931. The arrival of the railway and the construction of many grain elevators attracted more settlers and helped Dawson Creek become incorporated as a village in 1936. In 1939, as World War II was beginning, refugees from the Sudetenland arrived in the region and settled on land bought from the Canadian Pacific Railway and held in trust by the Canadian Colonization Association.The Sudeten Settlemet in the Peace River District, an article from the Calverley Collection. This helped the village's population surpass 500 people in 1941,Dawson Creek. BritishColumbia.com. URL accessed on 21 November 2005. but by 1943 the population was in the thousands. The community rapidly developed in 1942, as thousands of American army troops, engineers and contractors poured into the city, which had become the terminal of rail transport, to construct the Alaska Highway.

In 1951, with the completion of the highway's construction and the workers long-since gone, the village's population was approximately 3,500 people. Dawson Creek experienced tremendous growth during the 1950s, especially after the John Hart Highway and an associated rail line linked the town to the British Columbia Interior and the Lower Mainland. Western Canada's largest propane gas plant was built in this period,Calendar of Peace Country Milestones Peace River Block News, 4 August 1972. and federal government offices were established. The village obtained city status in 1958, and by 1961 the city's population had reached approximately 11,000 people.

Growth slowed in the 1960s, and the city reached a peak population of 12,392 in 1966. In the 1970s, the provincial government established offices, Northern Lights College opened a Dawson Creek campus, and the Dawson Creek Mall was constructed. Several modern grain elevators were built, and the town's five wooden grain elevators, nicknamed "Elevator Row", were dismantled. Only one of the historic elevators remain today, converted to an art gallery. Since the 1970s, the town's population and economy have not significantly increased. This is primarily attributable to the nearby town of Fort St. John becoming a centre for industrial development and Grande Prairie becoming the same in the commercial sector.

Since 1991, the city has undergone three boundary expansions. The first, in the southeast corner of town, incorporated undeveloped land on the basis of a planned veneer factory by Louisiana-Pacific Canada. However, the company abandoned its plans after the city extended services to the location, with the factory only half-built. The second expansion incorporated an existing Louisiana-Pacific Canada oriented strand board factory in the northwest corner of town, while the third incorporated undeveloped land south of the airport for future commercial or industrial development.

Demographics

The first census to include Dawson Creek as a defined subdivision occurred in 1941 and counted 518 residents. The second census, in 1951, counted 3,589 residents, a seven-fold increase. Five years later, the 1956 census recorded 7,531 residents.BC Stats, British Columbia Municipal Census Populations, 1921–1971, November 17 2005 This rapid growth was due to Dawson Creek acting as the southern rail terminus for the construction of the Alaska Highway in 1942 which brought thousands of workers through the city. The new highway made the city an important location for transshipment from trucks-to-train and a crossroads for entry to northeastern British Columbia from Alberta and led to continued growth throughout the 1950s and 1960s. However, since the late 1970s, Dawson Creek's population has remained stable.

According to the 2001 Canadian census,Statistics Canada, Community Highlights for Dawson Creek, 2001 Community Profiles, December 10 2005. there were 10,740 people living in the city in 4,410 households in 2001. Of these households, 30% were one-person households, 26% were married couples with children, and 26% were married couples without children (provincial averages were 27%, 27%, and 29%, respectively). The median age of Dawson Creek's population is 34.0 years old, younger than the BC median of 38.4 years, with 22.4% of its residents under the age of 15, more than BC's 18.1%. Likewise, 11.1% of Dawson Creek's residents are over 65 years old, whereas 13.6% are province-wide. The dominant religion, with 37% of the population claiming adherence, is Protestantism, followed by a Catholic minority at 18%. Only 2.8% of residents claimed to be a visible minority, which is significantly lower than the 21% provincial average.

In 2004, the twenty-one officer Dawson Creek Royal Canadian Mounted Police municipal detachment reported 2,603 Criminal Code of Canada offenses. This translated into a crime rate of 231 Criminal Code offenses per 1,000 people, which is much higher than the provincial average of 125 offenses per 1,000 people. During that year, the city had higher crime rates, compared to the provincial average, on all criminal code offenses except theft from motorvehicles (19.8 reported crimes per 1,000 people in the city, 20.2 provincially), heroin-related (0 reports in the city, 0.13 per 1,000 people provinicially), and murder (0 reports in the city, 0.03 per 1,000 people provinicially). The city had slightly higher but comparable levels of offensive weapons charges, cannabis-related, robbery, and motor vehicle thefts. However, on that same per 1,000 people basis, the city had much higher levels of shoplifting (13.8 city, 4.2 provincially), cocaine-related (7.8 city, 1.4 provincially), commercial break-and-enters (11.2 city, 4.2 provincially), residential break-and-enters (13.9 city, 6.0 provincially), and non-sexual assaults (26.2 city, 9.9 provincially).

Economy

The economy of Dawson Creek is based around four major industries: agriculture, retail, tourism, and oil and gas activities. Agriculture has historically been the most important industry to Dawson Creek, as the city is a transshipment point for agricultural products. The city is surrounded by the Agricultural Land Reserve, in which the soils produce consistently good yields of quality grain and grass crops, such as wheat, oats, rye, barley, flax, hay, alfalfa and sweet clover.Harry Giles, Dawson Creek, "The Cross Roads of the North" The Vancouver Province, 1953. Livestock was also important to the region, but less so since a Canadian BSE crisis. Dawson Creek has a large service and retail sector that caters to both the rural community and the city's inhabitants. However, significant retail leakage to the closest major Albertan city, Grande Prairie, as Alberta does not charge any provincial taxes on retail purchases, while B.C. charges 7%. The problem of leakage has been exacerbated in recent years by the introduction of large-format retail stores such as Wal-Mart. Residents still cross the border for high-priced items, but purchase the medium- and low-priced items, that were formerly economically impractical to obtain in Alberta, from foreign-owned large-format chain stores.

Also, Dawson Creek also has a large tourism industry driven by its place as Mile '0' of the Alaska Highway. Thousands of people drive on the Alaska Highway every year, starting in Dawson Creek and ending in Fairbanks, Alaska. This trek ofen occurs with recreational vehicles, sometimes in convoys, with many stops along the way. In the winter, the hospitality industry caters to workers from the oil patches. The oil and gas activities that have driven the Fort St. John economy have recently spilled over to the Dawson Creek economy as well. Discoveries south of Dawson CreekCity of Dawson Creek and Fisheries Renewal BC, Kiskatinaw River Watershed Plan, May 2003, p28. and higher energy prices have caused the city to seek more oil- and gas-related development.

Also, from the 2001 Canadian census, Dawson Creek's unemployment rate was 10.4%, and its participation rate was 69.5%, whereas the provincial rates were 8.5% unemployment and 65.2% participation. Dawson Creek's higher participation rate reveals that more people in the city are employed or are seeking employment, but the city's higher unemployment rate shows that there are not enough jobs to satisfy the demand for work. The employment rate may be affected by the city's dominant industries, which involve seasonal and unstable (year-to-year) jobs in processing, mining and agricultural products, as well as oil and gas drilling. However, the incidence of low income with private households is lower, at 16.5%, than the 17.8% provincial average.

Transportation and infrastructure

Dawson Creek's road network was laid out in the mid-20th century as the town rapidly expanded. The City maintains 83 km (52 mi) of paved and 15 km (9 mi) of unpaved roadsReed Construction (2005), Municipal redbook: an authoritative reference guide to local government in British Columbia, Burnaby, BC, 23. ISBN 0068-161X in mostly a grid pattern of large blocks of land connected to one another by only a few intersections, for example at a bridge or railway crossing. Because there are many internal intersections with stops signs in the grid pattern, traffic is forced onto two arterial roads, 8 Street going north-south and Alaska Avenue going southeast-northwest, which meet at a traffic circle where a metal statue marks the beginning of the Alaska Highway. Despite the designation of B.C. highway 2, south and west of town, as a "dangerous goods route", many industrial trucks also use these arterials, which often slows traffic and damages the roads. The city acts as a crossroads for several provincial highways eminating from the traffic circle including highway 2 (south to Grande Prairie and southern Alberta), highway 49 (east to Peace River and northern Alberta), and Highway 97 which, at the northwest corner of the city, splits into highway 97S (southeast as the 'John Hart Highway' to Chetwynd and Prince George) and highway 97N (north as the 'Alaska Highway' to Fort St. John, British Columbia and the Yukon)

Dawson Creek is also a regional node for air, rail and bus service. The Dawson Creek Airport, which services commercial flights by Hawkair and Central Mountain Air, was built in 1963 and had its 1,524 m (5,000 ft) runway paved in 1966. There are larger airports in Fort St. John and Grande Prairie that maintain a more comprehensive flight schedule than that available in Dawson Creek. Passenger rail service was available in Dawson Creek between 1931 and 1974. This passenger service began with the Northern Alberta Railways building its northwest terminus in the town and was extended in 1958 to B.C. Interior and Vancouver in 1958 when a rail line was built through the Rocky Mountains. However, as the town has a resource-based economy, moving commodities such as grains, oil and gas by-products, and forestry products via rail was always more important, so the last passenger train left Dawson Creek in 1974. Greyhound Bus lines maintains a bus station in Dawson Creek and connect the city to Vancouver, Edmonton (via Grande Prairie) and Whitehorse (via Fort Nelson).

The city draws its water supply from the Kiskatinaw River, 18 km (11 mi) west of town. The water is pumped into a settling pond then one of two storage ponds before being pumped into a treatment plant where it is flocculated, filtered and chlorinated. The City also provides drinking water for Pouce Coupe and rural residents. Sewage is collected by 81 km (50 mi) of sanitary sewers and processed by a lagoon system.

Dawson Creek is located in School District 59 Peace River South which maintains five elementary schools (Tremblay, Parkhill, Frank Ross, Crescent Park, and Canalta elementary schools), one middle school (Central Middle School) and one high school (South Peace Secondary School). Northern Lights College's main campus is located in Dawson Creek and offers diplomas for a wide range of two-year programs.

Geography and climate

Dawson Creek is flat, rising only in the northeastern corner above the rest of the city. The creek from which the city takes its name runs east-west through the middle of the city, though it is no longer used by fish. According to the Canada Land Inventory the city is on, and surrounded by, class 2C soil wherein the soil has moderate limitations, due to an adverse climate, that restrict the range of crops or require moderate conservation practices.Agriculture Capability Detailed Description. Provincial Agricultural Land Commission. URL accessed on 17 November 2005.

Dawson Creek is located in the southwestern part of the Peace River Country, 72 km (45 miles) southeast of Fort St. John, and 134 km (83 miles) northwest of Grande Prairie. It is in the B.C. Peace Lowland ecosection of the Canadian Boreal Plains ecozone on the continental Interior Platform. The area has a subhumid low boreal ecoclimate as it is in the Cordillera Climatic Region. The city draws its water supply from the Kiskatinaw River, 18 km (11 miles) west of town, which drains north into the Peace River.

In the summer the city is often dusty and dry. Heavy rain showers are sporadic, lasting only a few minutes. The average precipitation in July is 83.5 mm with an average temperature of 15.2 ºC. In the winter the city can get bitterly cold and dry. It gets an average snowfall of 171 cm per year with a January average of 33 cm and −14.7 ºC. The city is subject to very heavy winds year round.Wind Power. Peace Energy Co-op. URL accessed on 20 November 2005. The area uses Mountain Standard Time year round since it already has long daylight hours in the summer and short daylight hours in the winter.

Culture and recreation

The culture of Dawson Creek is centered around its designation as Mile '0' of the Alaska Highway. A Mile '0' post, as depicted in the flag, is located in the historic downtown area, one block south of the Northern Alberta Railways Park. This four acre, mostly paved, park is the gathering point for travellers and the official beginning of the Alaska highway. A metal cairn pointing the way to Alaska stands in traffic circle to the east of the park. The park also includes the Dawson Creek Art Gallery which is located in a renovated grain elevator; it exhibits works from local artists and craftsmen. The Station Museum, connected to the art gallery, displays artifacts and exhibits associated with the construction of NAR railway and the Alaska highway. Other parks in Dawson Creek include the Mile Zero Rotary Park with a swimming pond for children and a heritage village, called the Walter Wright Pioneer Village with some of the first buildings constructed in the area. The biggest event in Dawson Creek is its Fall Fair & ExhibitionAgricultural Fair, Rodeo & Exhibition. Dawson Creek Exhibition. URL accessed on 17 November 2005. which is a five-day professional rodeo, with a parade, fairgrounds and exhibitions held annually since 1953. Other annual events in Dawson Creek include the Dawson Creek Symphonette and Choir in March, the Dawson Creek Art Gallery auction in April, the Dawson Creek Spring Rodeo in June, and the Peace Country Blue Grass Festival in July.Major Events in Dawson Creek. Tourism Dawson Creek. URL accessed on 17 November 2005.

For outdoor recreation, there is a golf course, ice rink, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, a skateboard park, and a speed skating oval within the municipal boundaries. Nearby Bear Mountain, located south of the city, provides over 20 km (12 miles) of snowshoeing and cross-country skiing trails, as well as, areas for downhill skiing and about 500 km (300 miles) of trails for snowmobiles, mountain bikes and all-terrain vehicles. For indoor recreation, the city boasts two ice hockey arenas, a curling rink, and an indoor swimming pool, all grouped together in the heart of the city. However, the South Peace Community MultiplexSouth Peace Multiplex. City of Dawson Creek. URL accessed on 17 November 2005., a new community facility under construction on the outskirts of the city, will replace the swimming pool. While an area wide referendum on the Multiplex projected a cost of CAD$21.6 million$21.6 Million Multiplex to be Built in Dawson Creek, CivicInfo BC News, 16 April 2004., once construction began the project was projected to cost CAD$35 million.Gary Rusak, Infrastructure Money to go to Multiplex, Peace River Block News, 4 April 2005. It will be located away from residential uses but close to the Exhibition Grounds and will feature an indoor rodeo arena, convention centre, and a potential gambling area.

Dawson Creek is served with several regional newspapers. The Peace River Block Daily News and the Alaska Highway News, both part of the Canwest Global chain of local papers, are dailies available in Dawson Creek. However, the Peace River Block Daily News is published in town and focuses more on Dawson Creek news whereas the Alaska Highway News is published in Fort St. John. The Northeast News is a free weekly published in Fort St. John but which has sub-offices in Dawson Creek and Fort Nelson. The only radio station broadcasting from Dawson Creek is CJDC 890 AM (country music) and the only television channels broadcasting from the town are the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation affiliate CJDC-TV and the community television station run by the Cable 10 Society.

Government and politics

The City of Dawson Creek has a council-manager form of municipal government. A six member council, along with one mayor, is elected at-large every three years. The current mayor, Calvin Kruk, served on the city council for three years before being elected mayor in November 2005. Kruk defeated the incumbent mayor, Wayne Dahlen, who was elected mayor in November 2002. Two school board trustees, for representation on school board #59, are also elected by the city. The mayor and council approve all municipal by-laws and yearly budgets. The city funds its own fire department, which covers the city plus 5 miles into the rural areas, but contracts police work to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.Organizational Chart (pdf). City of Dawson Creek. URL accessed on 17 November 2005.

Dawson Creek is situated in the Peace River South provincial electoral district and is represented by Blair Lekstrom in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. Lekstrom was elected mayor of Dawson Creek in 1996 and re-elected in 1999. In the 2001 provincial election he was elected as the district's Member of the Legislative Assembly with 67% support from Dawson Creek pollsStatement of Votes, 2001: Peace River South Electoral District. (pdf) Elections BC. URL accessed on 17 November 2005. and re-elected in 2005 with 57% supportStatement of Votes, 2005: Peace River South Electoral District. (pdf) Elections BC. URL accessed on 18 November 2005. from the city. Before Lekstrom, Peace River South was represented by Jack Weisgerber. Weisgerber was originally elected as a member of the Social Credit Party in 1986. In the late-1980s, as part of the ruling government Weisgerber served as the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources and Minister of Native Affairs. While his party lost power, Weisgerber was re-elected in 1991, and he served as party leader in 1992-1993. In 1996 Weisgerber won re-election again but as leader of the Reform Party of British Columbia even though Dawson Creek polls put him in third place behind the BC Liberal Party and New Democratic Party candidates in a close race.Peace River South Electoral District, 36th Provincial General Election - May 28, 1996. Elections BC. URL accessed on 17 November 2005.

Federally, Dawson Creek is located in the Prince George—Peace River riding. The riding is represented in the Canadian House of Commons by Conservative Party Member of Parliament Jay Hill. Before Hill, who was first elected in 1993, the riding was represented by Progressive Conservative Frank Oberle. Oberle served as its MP for 20 years, between 1972-1993. Like the rest of the riding in recent elections, Dawson Creek voters heavily favour the conservative candidates.