Maple Ridge is British Columbia's fifth-oldest municipality (after New Westminster, Victoria, Langley, and Chilliwack).
On March 26, 2014, Maple Ridge residents voted to change the community's status from district municipality to city.
Subsequently, Maple Ridge Council submitted its request for status change to the Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development.
Port Hammond is known for its small cottage-like mill houses originally built by the local mill to house its workers, Ruskin is the location of a community hall of the Sons of Norway, although the area was founded by English followers of John Ruskin, and Kanaka Creek originally was a community for Kanaka employees of Fort Langley.
[2] According to the 2021 census, religious groups in Maple Ridge included:[8] 78.5% of residents spoke English as their mother tongue in 2021.
Maple Ridge hosted the only North American high-volume manufacturer of lithium-ion batteries, E-One Moli Energy.
[13] However, the factory suffered major layoffs due to the 2008 recession and now only hosts a small product testing team.
Over time the city has been a background for a number of films and television series, including The X-Files, Bordertown, Smallville, Bird on a Wire, We're No Angels, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and Stargate SG-1.
The city is currently working to zone new commercial and industrial lands in order to expand local employment opportunities.
Maple Ridge offers one of the largest Remembrance Day celebrations in the Lower Mainland each November 11 at Memorial Peace Park.
88 and boasts annual attendance of over 2,000 local residents for the parade of veterans and first responders and moving Cenotaph ceremony.
[14] Maple Ridge is the hometown of several well known athletes such as baseball players Larry Walker and Tyler O’Neill, deceased race-car driver Greg Moore, and hockey players Cam Neely, Brendan Morrison, Brad Hunt and Andrew Ladd.
In addition, residents of Maple Ridge vote for representatives to the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia and the House of Commons of Canada.
In the 2017 BC Provincial Election, the British Columbia New Democratic Party won both of Maple Ridge's seats.
Samuel Robertson Technical Secondary School, opened in 2005, was designed to allow students to experience various technologies as well as their traditional education.
These include Kanaka Creek Elementary, which operates a year-round schooling system, exchanging a long summer break for shorter breaks throughout the year; and Alouette Elementary School, which operates a cyberschool program, enabling some students to work from home on a computer on certain days.