Daycares will soon be busier than ever in Abbotsford due to a spike in births last year that resulted in an all-time high for the city.
A report from the BC Vital Statistics Agency revealed that 1,906 children were born to Abbotsford mothers in 2024, surpassing the recent spike in 2023 by nearly 10 per cent.
Up until recently, births throughout Abbotsford, as well as the rest of B.C., had plateaued for quite some time, remaining below 1,700 births for the city since 2014. However, this all began to change around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The birth rate initially surged early on during the pandemic, leading to the 2021 numbers nearly breaching that 1,700 threshold.
It then over-corrected the following year, resulting in 2022 having the lowest number of Abbotsford births in more than 15 years.
A dramatic correction once again occurred in 2023, with the city getting 1,735 new babies that year, which already marked the most amount of births in a single year since 2011.
However, things got even crazier in 2024 as Abbotsford mothers gave birth to more babies than ever before, nearing the 2,000 newborns.
As the number of children born reached new heights, so too did the name Oliver, which joined its female counterpart Olivia as the top two baby names in the province in 2024.
While Olivia has been cemented as the most popular female name since 2015, Oliver finally made its return to the top of the male list for the first time since 2019.
With a record number of children born in Abbotsford last year, it means that the local school system is going to be put under an even greater strain in future years, especially considering that the neighbouring communities of Chilliwack and Mission also experienced double-digit percentile increases in births from 2023 to 2024.
This is coming at a time when the Abbotsford School District is already operating at , with the biggest space issue being at the kindergarten level, where local facilities are currently at 140 per cent capacity.
This problem isn't isolated to just Abbotsford, either, as public kindergarten facilities across the province are sitting at 107.8 per cent capacity, with plenty more children on the way.
