Dawson Creek, British Columbia

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

Template:British Columbia municipality infobox| altitude = 665 | province_name=British Columbia | regional_district=Peace River | year=1936 | mayor_name=Calvin Kruk | MLA_name=Blair Lekstrom | MP_name=Jay Hill | area_total=20.66 | population_as_of = 2004 | population_total = 11,290| time_zone= MST | postal_code= V1G| area_code= 250 | footnotes = Official website: City of Dawson Creek| }}

The city of Dawson Creek is a small city in northeastern British Columbia, Canada. It covers an area of 20.66 km² with a 2004 population of 11,290 people, according to BC Stats.Template:Ref 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.Template:Ref 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".

1 History
2 Demographics
3 Economy
4 Transportation
5 Geography and climate
6 Culture and recreation
7 Government and politics
8 Notes and references
9 External links

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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.Template:Ref

After much speculation by land owners and investors, the Northern Alberta Railways built its terminus 3 km (2 miles) from the village.Template:Ref 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.Template:Ref This helped the village's population surpass 500 people in 1941,Template:Ref 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 plantTemplate:Ref was built in this period, 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.

Image:Dawson Creek former logo.JPG

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.

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Demographics

Image:Dawson Creek Population.png The first census to include Dawson Creek as a defined subdivision occured 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. 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,Template:Ref 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.

Image:DawsonCreek BC crime.png 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).<ref name=crimestats/>

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Economy

Image:Mile Zero Post.jpg 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.Template:Ref 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 CreekTemplate:Ref 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.

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Transportation

Image:Dawson Creek BC Road Network.jpg Dawson Creek's road network was laid out in the mid-20th century as the town rapidly expanded. It uses a grid pattern of large blocks of land connected to one another by only a few intersections, such as at a bridge over a creek or at a railway crossing. Because there are many internal intersections with stops signs in the grid pattern, traffic is forced onto two major roads. The two most heavily-used roads are 8 Street going north-south and Alaska Avenue going southeast-northwest. These two roads meet at a traffic circle where a metal statue marks the beginning of the Alaska Highway. The major trip generators are the businesses along the southern portion of 8 Street and the central part of Alaska Avenue. Most trips to and from Alberta go through town, especially work-related trips to the oil-producing rural areas. These trips come north along 8 Street, then northwest along Alaska Avenue, or vice versa. Despite the designation of highway 2, south and west of town, as a "dangerous goods route", many industrial trucks also use this route along 8 Street and Alaska Avenue, which often slows traffic and damages the road.

The city has developed as the crossroads of major highways and as the service center for the agriculture industry. The highways it has access to include Highway 2, or 8 Street (to Grande Prairie and southern Alberta), Highway 49, or Alaska Avenue east of the traffic circle (to Peace River and northern Alberta), and Highway 97, or Alaska Avenue west of the traffic circle (north to Fort St. John and Alaska and west to the B.C. Interior and the Lower Mainland). The city heavily promotes itself as the southern terminus, or Mile "0", of the Alaska Highway. While the 8 Street/Alaska Avenue traffic circle is the beginning of the Alaska Highway, there is a Mile "0" post several blocks west into town, which is a central landmark and has distances from Dawson Creek to other points along the route, culminating in 2,400 km (1,523 miles) to Fairbanks, Alaska.

Image:8 Street, Dawson Creek.jpg

Passenger rail service began in 1931 with the Northern Alberta Railways building its northwest terminus in the town. In 1958, the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (later known as BC Rail) connected Dawson Creek to the B.C. Interior so that Pacific ports in Vancouver and Prince Rupert could be reached. As the town has a resource-based economy, moving commodities such as grains, oil and gas by-products, and foresty products via rail was always more important than moving passengers, and so the last passenger train left Dawson Creek in 1974. Today, BC Rail connects Dawson Creek to Chetwynd, from which the rail extends southwards through the Rocky Mountains to the BC Interior and northward to the cities of Fort St. John and Fort Nelson.

Greyhound Bus lines connect Dawson Creek to Vancouver via a 19-hour bus ride along Highway 97 and Highway 1, and also to Edmonton via Grande Prairie. A small airport was built in 1963 and had its 1,524 m (5,000 ft) runway paved in 1966. This airport was privatized from Transport Canada, and is now locally owned and operated. Today only one commercial airline, HawkAir, maintains regular flights from Dawson Creek.

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Geography and climate

Image:Dawson Creek 1996.jpg 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.Template:Ref

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.Template:Ref 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.

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Culture and recreation

Image:Dawson Creek Art Gallery.jpg 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 & ExhibitionTemplate:Ref 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.Template:Ref

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 MultiplexTemplate:Ref, 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 millionTemplate:Ref, once construction began the project was projected to cost CAD$35 million.Template:Ref 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.

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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. Two school board trustees, for representation on school board #59, are also elected on the same ballot. 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.Template:Ref

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 and re-elected in 2005. 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.Template:Ref

Template:Canadian politics/party colours/BC Liberal/row

BC Liberal

Blair Lekstrom

2,167

56.74%

57.74%

Template:Canadian politics/party colours/NDP/row

NDP

Pat Shaw

1,314

34.41%

32.76%

Template:Canadian politics/party colours/Green/row

Green

Ariel Lade

338

8.85%

9.50%

Template:Canadian politics/party colours/BC Liberal/row

BC Liberal

Blair Lekstrom

2,176

66.93%

64.20%

Template:Canadian politics/party colours/BC Social Credit/row

Social Credit

Grant Mitton

530

16.30%

17.33%

Template:Canadian politics/party colours/NDP/row

NDP

Elmer Kabush

252

7.75%

7.69%

Template:Canadian politics/party colours/Marijuana/row

Marijuana

Michelle Rainey-Fenkarek

134

4.12%

4.45%

Template:Canadian politics/party colours/Green/row

Green

Stacey Dean Lajeunesse

126

3.88%

4.08%

Template:Canadian politics/party colours/BC Unity/row

Unity

Garret Golhof

1.02%

2.25%

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.

Template:Canadian politics/party colours/Conservative/row

Conservative

Jay Hill

2,291

60.53%

58.71%

Template:Canadian politics/party colours/NDP/row

New Democratic Party

Michael Hunter

785

20.74%

20.69%