Ruskin is a rural, naturally-treed community, about 35 mi (56 km) east of Vancouver on the north shore of the Fraser River.

It was named around 1900 after the English art critic, essayist, and prominent social thinker John Ruskin.

The border to the south is the Fraser River and to the north the point where Whonnock Creek crosses the Mission borderline.

Aside from the sawmill and a logging operation, the members had set up a general store, a smithy, and a shoemaker's shop.

Lacking money and facing potential bankruptcy the Society surrendered its assets to E.H. Heaps & Co. who had supplied the machinery for the mill on credit.

Heaps built a logging rail line that grew northwest until it reached Dewdney Trunk Road and down a short distance along the east side of Kanaka Creek.

There were plans and promises for a new and even larger mill but Heaps's Ruskin logging and lumber operations went in receivership after the building boom in Vancouver crashed in 1913.

The company owned tree-limits but could soon count on a continuous supply of cedar when Abernethy-Lougheed won the contract for 8,000 acres of timber at Stave Lake in 1914.

In 1924, the Cash Grocery store to a new building on the north side of the railway tracks, where it served the community for more than half a century.

The Ruskin railway station, built in 1910, stood here until there were no longer enough passengers to warrant a stop of the scheduled trains.

With the station also the resident CPR agent disappeared, whose services the industry thought to be "absolutely essential.

"[11] After Heaps took over the operation of former Ruskin Mills the school moved to a location on 96th Avenue at the foot of 284th Street.

When in 1916 the old schoolhouse was replaced by a two-room building, the residents pulled the old structure across the street and made it their community hall.

That first building burned down in 1922—the date shown on the front of the hall today—and was replaced by the present structure, opened in 1924.

Ruskin Dam is in the District of Mission, standing at the narrowest point of what had been the Stave River canyon, was completed in 1930 for purpose of hydroelectric power generation.

A small employees' village or camp adjacent to the facility is also referred to informally as Ruskin Dam.

The railway's track-grade is still extant through the community, and the portion of it along Hayward Lake is now a walking trail; some of its trestles still stand in ruins, partly demolished to keep people from climbing on them.