School Name History

Location

2272 Windsor Street, Abbotsford, BC

Opened

Middle Level 
2006 Simpson Traditional Middle moved to Windsor Street and was renamed Abbotsford Traditional Middle.
Secondary Level 
2004 on Lower Sumas Mountain Road; 2006 moved to Windsor Street site 

The School

Abbotsford Traditional Middle can trace its history back to Simpson Elementary. It was a one-room school that opened in 1933. This school, originally called North Peardonville school, was named after James Simpson (1890-1960) who was a pioneer farmer in the Peardonville area from 1921 to 1959. The school was on Simpson Road, also named after him. He was a Matsqui city councillor and a member of many boards, including the MSA Hospital Board, the Fraser Valley Milk Producers’ Association, and the advisory board to the Veteran’s Land Act.

In 1951, the school moved to a new three-room building on Simpson Road. It had one hundred ten students in grades 1-6 in the first year. Three new classrooms were built later and in 1962, the school population expanded to include grade 7. In 2001, Simpson Elementary became Simpson Traditional Middle School. Grades 5-6 students enrolled the first year and Grade 7-8 students joined them the next year. The elementary students moved to Ross Elementary. In four years, Simpson Traditional Middle grew from one hundred sixteen students the first year to four hundred forty-eight.

Abbotsford Traditional Secondary was the first traditional high school in B.C. It opened in 2004 in the former Mountain Park Community Church on Lower Sumas Mountain Road. The purchase agreement permitted the church to continue holding some activities and Sunday services in the school building.  The renovated building included two science labs, a gym, ten classrooms, an art room, a music room, a student lounge, and an industrial kitchen. There was a wireless computer system throughout the building and every student was given a laptop. As the school principal said, “Every classroom is a computer lab.” There were two hundred students when the school first opened.

The school district decided to reorganize the choice programs of the district. Simpson Traditional Middle School would join Abbotsford Traditional Secondary in one campus on Windsor Street. The Career and Technical Centre building on the Windsor Street site went through major upgrades. In 2006, the traditional middle and secondary students moved to the newly renovated building. Because the traditional middle school would no longer be on Simpson Road, the name was changed to reflect its new location. Simpson Traditional Middle became Abbotsford Traditional Middle.

In December of 2021, parents and staff of the two traditional schools requested a name change to Abbotsford Traditional School. They felt this would lead to the middle and secondary schools being viewed as one school. A committee was established to consider the name change, but as of 2022, the schools still had their separate names. 

Origin of the Name

Abbotsford was named by an early settler, John Charles Maclure. In 1888, Maclure sold the right of way through his land to the Canadian Pacific Railway.  He did this on condition that they build a train station there. He named this place Abbottsford in honour of a family friend Henry “Harry” Abbott. Abbott was the western superintendent of the Canadian Pacific Railway.   Originally, on maps and documents, the name was spelled with two “t”s. In 1922, a petition was presented asking to change the spelling to “Abbotsford,” like the name of the home of a famous Scottish writer, Sir Walter Scott. In a letter dated 1924, Maclure said the town was named after Harry Abbott, but still the modern spelling with one ’t' links the town’s name to Sir Walter Scott’s home.

Scott named his home after a nearby river crossing or ford. The crossing was called Abbotsford because the monks of an abbey used the ford to cross the River Tweed. An abbey is a religious community whose leader is called an abbot.

The Community 

For thousands of years, the Sto:lo, the People of the River, lived here in the Fraser Valley. In the 1800s, the Sto:lo were displaced as people from Britain, Europe, and other countries arrived. The gold rush of 1858 brought the first wave of people from all over the world. By the 1860s, new settlers began establishing farms on the Sumas and Matsqui Prairies. The coming of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1887 brought another wave of settlers. The dense forests disappeared as they were cleared for farmland and lumber mills sprang up. The village of Abbotsford was established in 1891. It grew over the years into a town and became the city of Abbotsford in 1995 when it joined with Sumas and Matsqui.