School Name History
Location
34620 Old Yale Rd, Abbotsford, BC
Opened
1971
The School
In 1967, approval of the purchase of fifteen acres for the site of the future Yale Secondary was granted. A new school was needed to meet the needs of the growing population in the west end of Abbotsford and to relieve overcrowding at Abbotsford Junior Secondary. Yale Secondary opened in 1971 as a junior high for about five hundred students in grades 8, 9, and 10. In 1986, it became a full secondary school. The grade tens of that year remained as grade elevens, and in 1987, the first class of grade twelve students graduated.
Origin of the Name
Yale Secondary is on Yale Road. Yale Road and the school are named after James Murray Yale, who joined the Hudson’s Bay Company as a fur trader in the early 1800s. In 1827, he came to work at Fort Langley, BC, and for the next thirty years he had an important influence on the development of the Fraser Valley and B.C. in general. His name was chosen for the school by a committee of parents and students. They considered names submitted by people in the community and chose Yale because they felt the name of the school should reflect the history of the area.
Originally, the team name for Yale Secondary was The Highlanders. This was chosen because Yale Secondary was at a higher elevation than other high schools in the district. Also, it was mistakenly thought that Yale was a Scotsman. Actually, he was born in Quebec. In 1986, the students petitioned to change the name Highlanders to the Yale Lions and the team logo became a lion.
James Murray Yale (1796-1871)
James Murray Yale was born in Lachine, Lower Canada (now Quebec) in 1796. At age nineteen, he started working as a fur trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company in the Athabasca region of what is now Alberta. The Hudson’s Bay Company was competing for furs with the Northwest Company. Friction between the companies sometimes led to harassment. In 1817 Yale was seized by the Northwest Company and held at Tidee Lake, but he was released unharmed five months later.
He moved in 1821 to take charge of Fort George near the mouth of the Columbia River in what is now the state of Washington, USA. He then went north to work at the Hudson’s Bay fur trading posts of Fort Alexandria and Fort St. James. He became ill and came south to Fort Vancouver so he could get medical treatment. In 1827, after an exploratory trip down the Fraser River, he became company clerk at Fort Langley in the Fraser Valley. By 1834, he was in command of the fort. He had it rebuilt a few kilometers upstream in 1839, and when the fort burned down a year later, he rebuilt it again. It was one of the largest forts ever built by the Hudson’s Bay Company.
In 1844, he became chief trader at the fort. The trade in furs was dwindling by then, so Yale found new products to earn money for the company. Workers built wooden barrels which were filled with cured salmon and cranberries to ship as far away as Hawaii and California. The fort farm was expanded. Its produce was used to supply food for Fort Langley and other Hudson’s Bay forts. Some produce was exported to Alaska to supply the fur trading posts of the Russian American Company. During his time at Fort Langley, Yale continued to explore new routes, travelling up the Fraser River as far as where it meets the Thompson River. When gold was found near Barkerville in the interior of B.C., thousands of men hoping to strike it rich came from all over the world to join the gold rush. Yale helped the Governor of B.C, James Douglas, establish new forts along the routes north to sell provisions to the miners. The company store at Fort Langley did a brisk business in blankets and woollen clothing, metalware such as pots and frying pans, various mining tools including gold pans and pickaxes, and food--mostly flour, bacon, beans, and molasses.
In 1860, Yale retired. He went to Montreal for a few months, but then returned. He moved to Stromness Farm near Victoria and lived there until his death in 1871.
The Abbotsford School District graciously acknowledges the Abbotsford Retired Teachers Association for collecting the histories and stories of our schools as part of their "What's in a name?" 50th-anniversary project.