Fleetwood Town Centre
Encyclopedia
Fleetwood Town Centre or Fleetwood is a town centre
Town centre
The town centre is the term used to refer to the commercial or geographical centre or core area of a town.Town centres are traditionally associated with shopping or retail. They are also the centre of communications with major public transport hubs such as train or bus stations...

 of Surrey, British Columbia
Surrey, British Columbia
Surrey is a city in the province of British Columbia, Canada. It is a member municipality of Metro Vancouver, the governing body of the Greater Vancouver Regional District...

, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. According to the 2006 census, the population of Fleetwood was 50,284.

History

After the Yale Wagon Road (officially the Grand Trunk Road, now Old Yale Road) opened in the late 19th century, farming, logging
Logging
Logging is the cutting, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks.In forestry, the term logging is sometimes used in a narrow sense concerning the logistics of moving wood from the stump to somewhere outside the forest, usually a sawmill or a lumber yard...

 and fishing
Fishing
Fishing is the activity of trying to catch wild fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping....

 became the primary industries of new settlers from New Westminster and Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

.

In 1907, Edith and James Francis settled near present-day 160 Street and Fraser Highway. Over the next decade, several of Edith's family — whose birth name was Fleetwood — joined them. In August 1915, Edith’s brother, Arthur Thomas Fleetwood (also known as Tom Fleetwood) joined the 47th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces, and he was sent to France to fight in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. He died as a result of battle wounds on 8 September 1917.

Edith applied to the provincial government for a charter to name her community after her brother. In 1923, local residents formed the Fleetwood Community Association, with Edith as one of the founding members. The Fleetwood Community Hall was built in the 1930s, and is located across from the Fleetwood Community Centre, which opened in 1995.

The Fleetwood Community Association commissioned a life size bronze of Thomas Fleetwood which was unveiled on 6 September 2008 at the Fleetwood Community Center.
Rapid population growth beginning in the 1970s brought with it retail, commercial and multi-family residential developments. Residents turned down attempts to develop light industrial properties. A branch of the Surrey Public Library, the Fleetwood Library, serves the local neighbourhood. The Fleetwood Community Center and the adjacent walking park, Francis Park, serves the whole Fleetwood area and beyond. The Surrey Sports and Leisure Center is managed by the manager of the Fleetwood Community Center. The area around the Fleetwood Library, the Surrey Sports and Leisure Center and the Fleetwood Community Center is becoming very age-friendly for seniors. The last amenity to be developed by the City of Surrey was a pedestrian activated traffic light at the intersection of 160th Street and 83rd Avenue.

External links

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