page_title: Chetwynd, British Columbia
section_title: Demographics
hierarchical_section_title: Chetwynd, British Columbia / Demographics
caption_attribution_description: trend in crime
context_page_description: Chetwynd is a district municipality located on the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in northeastern British Columbia, Canada. Situated on an ancient floodplain, it is the first town eastbound travellers encounter after emerging from the Rockies along Highway 97 and acts as the gateway to the Peace River Country. The town developed during the construction of infrastructure through the Rocky Mountains in the 1950s, and was used as a transshipment point during the construction of hydroelectric dams in the 1960s and 1970s and the new town of Tumbler Ridge in the early 1980s. Home to approximately 2,600 residents, the population has increased little if at all since the 1980s but is significantly younger than the provincial average.
  Once known as Little Prairie, the community adopted its current name in honour of provincial politician Ralph L.T. Chetwynd, just prior to its incorporation in 1962. The 64-square-kilometre municipality consists of the town, a community forest, and four exclave properties. Chetwynd has dozens of chainsaw carvings displayed throughout town as public art. It is home to a Northern Lights College campus.
context_section_description: An initial 1958 population estimate, associated with Chetwynd's application for incorporation, recorded 750 residents—inclusive of nearby work camps. The 1966 Canadian census, the first to define Chetwynd as a distinct subdivision, counted 1,368 residents. Subsequent census counts documented a low of 1,260 people in 1971 before a population boom between 1977 and 1983 during the construction of Tumbler Ridge and the Peace Canyon Dam. The population count slowly declined for the remainder of the 1980s before rising to a high of 3,113 in 1996; nevertheless, the population declined in the late 1990s during the U.S.-Canada softwood lumber dispute when several mills either scaled back production or closed.
  According to the 2006 Canadian census, Chetwynd had 2,633 residents living in 1,025 households. With a median age four years lower than the province's, the population of Chetwynd is young. About 6% more people were single (and never married) and 4% less lived in lone-parent households than the province's proportion. According to the 2001 and 2006 census, while Chetwynd had an increase of 35 families, it had a decrease of 85 lone-parent families and an increase of the same number of common-law families. During the same period, the portion of dwellings being owned shifted from 50% to 62%, while the provincial proportion rose from 67% to 70%. The last complete census, the 2001 Canadian census, found that less than 5% of Chetwynd residents were foreign-born, and 90% of residents had an English-only mother tongue. While not counted as visible minorities during the census, 670 people considered themselves to have an Aboriginal identity, much higher than the provincial 4% average.
  The nine officer Chetwynd Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment, which covered the municipality and nearby rural communities, reported 981 Criminal Code offences in 2005. This translated into a crime rate of 158 Criminal Code offences per 1,000 people, higher than both the previous year's rate of 142 and the 2005 provincial average of 125. In 2004, compared to the provincial average, Chetwynd had tripled the rates of reported impaired driving and cocaine-related offences. Conversely, Chetwynd had much lower rates of robbery, bicycle theft, and theft from motor vehicle.
caption: Crime rate in Chetwynd, 1984–2005[24]
exif: {}