ABOUT US
Making Dreams Come True
The Steelhead Community Association meets monthly in the Steelhead Community Hall, a beautiful, volunteer-built log hall surrounded by forest that offers a warm, rustic, and inviting feel, where our members work hard to make our community's dreams come true!
​
Through our annual Community Activities Program, we offer inclusive, free and low-cost activities and events for rural residents throughout the year, including Open Playtime Fun 'n' Run time, Friendly Fridays, Family Fridays, and regular Yoga classes.
​
We also offer hall rentals for special events and filming.
Community Association
​​
The Steelhead Community Association is a registered non-profit society set up for the sole purpose of improving community living.
We are committed to breaking down the barriers of social isolation by engaging and connecting residents of all ages, backgrounds, and cultures with each other through the provision of our Community Activities Program. Through this program, which typically takes place in the unique, beautiful, and relaxing environment of the Steelhead Community Hall facility, neighbours meet neighbours and become supportive friends and allies. Over the years, our program activities have continued to foster a network of residents and volunteers who, whenever they are called upon, support and assist each other, no matter the need.
​
Our Community Activities Program provides direct benefits to residents through the annual provision of the following free or low-cost community activities: Breakfast with Santa, Easter Breakfast and Egg Hunt, Games Nights, Friendly-Friday Socials, Halloween Party, Ladies’ and Men’s Parties, Paint Nights, Oktoberfest, Spring Market (to promote local artisans, crafts, and home-based businesses), Stave Falls Social, Summer Barbecue, Tiny Tots Playtime (for ages 0-5 years and their parents), Wildfire and Emergency Preparedness Planning and Evacuation Training, Work Bees/Roadside Garbage Pickup, and Volunteer opportunities with the SCA Board of Directors, FireSmart Community, and Emergency Operations Centre supports. The Steelhead Community Association takes great pleasure in providing programming that residents of all ages can participate in and enjoy.
​
We are also committed to improving community living through our advocacy work. We aim to bring residents’ ideas and concerns to the forefront and to provide guidance on the direction of planning and development in Steelhead. Community residents are urged to be aware that such developments are only beneficial to our community if concerns about safety and environmental issues are addressed.
Although maintaining our non-profit status requires a lot of volunteer work and commitment, it provides us with recognition and credibility as a distinct community. The Steelhead Community Association acknowledges the generous support of the City of Mission, including Community Enhancement Grant funding and, because we’re a non-profit run wholly by a group of dedicated volunteers, an annual Permissive Tax Exemption.
​​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
Membership Information
​
Become an active member of the Steelhead Community so that you can better support your community and be represented at various tables that affect you and your family. Having a Steelhead Membership provides you with an opportunity to play a direct role in the Community Hall and other projects your Association is working on!
​
How much does it cost and how do you join?
Joining the Association is easy!
The cost is $20/household per year.
Membership fees can be sent via eTransfer to steelheadcommunity@gmail.com (Please include your name in the memo & fill out membership form) or pay the fee at the Annual General Meeting in June of each year.
​
​​
​
​​
Volunteer Opportunities
There are lots of ways you can volunteer your time in support of our community. Here are a few:
- Help maintain our Community Hall by volunteering time at the work bees (grounds and/or building).
- Support ongoing fundraising efforts and activities.
- Share a fundraising idea you’d like to coordinate to help raise funds for SCA.
- Help coordinate and oversee a community social event like a Children’s Christmas Party, Easter Egg Hunt and/or Community Barbecue.
- Help share important community information as part of the telephone committee.
- Change the sign board at the corner of Cardinal and Ainsworth on a regular basis.
We welcome other ideas you may have for how you can be involved.
If any of the above appeal to you, please send us a note through our contact page.
​
​
General Information
Steelhead Boundaries & Population
​
The boundaries of Steelhead, as defined by long-time residents of the community, are from Mill Pond (including the Rod and Gun Club), the southern boundary; District of Mission Landfill (either/or to the dam at Stave Lake), the northern boundary; The peak of Red and Steelhead Mountains, the western boundary; and the peak of Campbell Mountain, the eastern boundary.
​
The population of Steelhead is estimated from the 2001 Census and from the ill-defined community boundaries from that Census that set Steelhead boundaries as slightly smaller than as community-defined:
​
Dwellings: 255 to 300 (233 in 2001 Census)
Population: 720 to 800 (655 in 2001 Census)
History
​​
The Steelhead Community was first settled in and around 1900 to 1910 as a colony of newsmen who worked in Vancouver for the World, Herald and Province Newspapers and who commuted home on the weekends. Their wives and children maintained permanent residence as per the requirements for homesteading in the area, and the commuting newsmen husbands and fathers brought back and forth letters, necessities and all the latest from Vancouver, family and friends.
​
"The wives were mostly ‘City Gals’, unused to making do with very little. Though, I heard of the ‘buckets of tears’ they said they shed, I don’t think any of them regretted their pioneer life in Steelhead."
Zelda Apps, circa 1950
(Steelhead School Teacher -1916)
​
As Steelhead became more established it attracted settlers who began to earn a living out of the thick, lush forests. A population of permanent residents ran “jingle-pot” mills amidst logging operations that delivered product to Mission.
​
The first school in Steelhead was established in 1915, and the first community hall was built in 1929 and opened its doors on June 2. The first dance was held in the community hall on July 19th and the next evening, the hall burned to the ground.
​
By the 1940s, most of these “jingle-pot” mills were closed because the hills were logged off and therefore unprofitable to those little operations. Municipal forestry reserves were established in the 1940s, and in 1958 a Tree Farm License was granted, with the original purpose being to reduce local unemployment and to provide a wood source for the local mills.
​
In 1955 land was donated by a Steelhead resident who wished to remain anonymous and in 1956 the Steelhead Community Association built a community hall with funds raised by the Ladies Auxiliary and other fundraising means. The hall was opened in April 1956 and remained active until around 1970 when the SCA sold the land and the building and adopted the old schoolhouse (where the current hall is situated), which was used until sometime in the 1980s when it was torn down.
​
Mission Municipal Tree Farm was the only municipal tree farm in British Columbia until 1993, and continues to provide the community with the stability of steady local employment as well as producing revenue for District of Mission community funding and capital grants, while employing responsible and sustainable harvesting practices.