Yale (federal electoral district)

Yale was a federal electoral district in British Columbia, Canada, that was represented in the House of Commons of Canada from 1872 to 1892 and from 1917 to 1953.

It replaced the Yale District riding, which was created and filled by special byelection in 1871 at the time of BC's entry into the Canadian Confederation. Like the previous "Yale District" riding, the Yale riding spanned both Yale and Kootenay Land Districts, that is to say, the entirety of the southern province from the Fraser Canyon to the Rockies. It was last used in the 1891 election, and was merged in 1892 with the Cariboo riding to form the Yale—Cariboo riding.

That arrangement lasted until 1914 when a further redistribution separated Yale and Cariboo once again. This second incarnation was considerably smaller than the first because the Kootenay district was now in a different riding. The riding of Kootenay had been split off from what had been the original Yale riding in 1903.

The "new" Yale riding excluded the Town of Yale, and when it was reconstituted, coincided with the provincial Okanagan riding except for the city of Salmon Arm.

The new incarnation of Yale lasted until 1952, when the Yale name vanished from the House of Commons and the Okanagan ridings, Okanagan Boundary and Okanagan—Revelstoke were created. The core area of the old riding around the town of historic and once-important Yale, which had long since became depopulated by being bypassed by massive growth elsewhere, was attached to the Fraser Valley riding, then to its successor Fraser Valley East, and then to today's Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon. Yale was not in the second incarnation of the Yale riding when it was reconstituted in 1914.