“Formerly known as Henderson Road, Barrow Road was renamed after City and Township amalgamation in 1981. The road was named for Edward Dodsley Barrow, former resident of Chilliwack area and Minister of Agriculture for B.C. in the 1920s.
Barrow immigrated to the Fraser Valley in 1892 and worked at various jobs. By 1896 he had saved enough money to purchase 71 acres on Camp River Road, which he cleared and farmed. This propery later becamse the A.D. Rundle farm.
Barrow served as Councillor of the Township of Chilliwhack in 1905-1907, but was unsuccessful in a bid for the position of Reeve. He was a Director, then President of the Chilliwack Creamery Association, and was the first President of the Fraser Valley Milk Producers’ Association in 1917-1918.
In 1916 Barrow was elected as the Liberal M.L.A. for Chilliwack. In 1918, when John Oliver became Premier, he was named Minister of Agriculture. His major achievement in government was the Sumas Lake Reclamation Project, which was completed in 1923. He demonstrated his faith in the project by moving his farm to “”The Cottonwoods””, on Yale Road just east of the Vedder Canal. Local fears of economic competition caused by the project contributed to his electoral defeat, however, in 1928.
In 1922, Millicent Barrow died, and in 1928, E.D. Barrow married another widow, Mrs. Ralphia Weir Still McLean, a noted Conservative of Nakusp, B.C. Ralphia died in 1934 on the eve of the Barrows’ return from a road trip to Enland. She is buried in Ringwood.
E.D. Barrow served another term as M.L.A. from 1933 to 1937. Following his second defeat, he returned to full-time farming. He served as first president of the B.C. Federation of Agriculture in 1935.
E.D. Barrow was honoured as the Chilliwack Board of Trade’s first Citizen to be Recognized in 1953. He died on December 28, 1956.
Barrow’s daughters, Dorothy and Hilda, who were both nurses and were both unmarried, managed the farm after his death. Hilda died in October, 1963, and Dorothy died in April, 1981. he has two sisters, Alice Jane and Emily, and a brother Albert, who also lived in Chilliwack, but it appears they died without issue. “