Burnaby, British Columbia, is a city immediately east of
Vancouver. It was incorporated in 1892 and achieved City status in 1992, one hundred years
after incorporation. It is the seat of the Greater Vancouver Regional District.
History
In the first 30 to 40 years after its incorporation, the growth of Burnaby was influenced by its location between expanding
urban centres of Vancouver and New
Westminster. It first served as a rural agricultural area supplying nearby markets. Later, it served as an important
transportation corridor between Vancouver, the Fraser Valley and the
interior of the Province, as well as one of the first-tier bedroom community suburbs
of Vancouver itself, along with North Vancouver and Richmond.
At incorporation, the municipality's citizens unanimously chose to name it after legislator, speaker, Freemason and explorer,
Robert Burnaby, who had been private secretary to Colonel Richard Moody, British Columbia's land commissioner in the mid-1800s.
In 1859, Mr. Burnaby had surveyed the freshwater lake near what is now the city's geographical centre; Moody chose to name it
Burnaby Lake.
Geography and Land Use
Burnaby occupies 98.60 square kilometers (38.07 square miles) and is located at the geographical centre of the Greater Vancouver Regional District.
Situated between the City of Vancouver on the west and Port Moody, Coquitlam and New Westminster on the east, the City is further bounded by Burrard Inlet and the Fraser
River on the North and South respectively. Burnaby, Vancouver and New Westminster collectively occupy the major portion of
the Burrard Peninsula. The elevation of Burnaby ranges from sea
level to a maximum of 1,200 feet (370 metres) atop Burnaby Mountain. Overall, the physical landscape of Burnaby is one of hills,
ridges, valleys and an alluvial plain. The land features and their relative locations have had an influence on the location, type
and form development in the City.
Burnaby is a maturing, increasingly integrated community, which is centrally located within a rapidly growing metropolitan
area. Burnaby's characteristic has shifted from rural to suburban to largely urban. Still, Burnaby's ratio of park land to
residents is one of the highest in North America, and it maintains some agricultural land, particularly along the Fraser
foreshore flats in the Big Bend neighbourhood along its southern perimeter.
Transportation
The Vancouver SkyTrain rapid transit system crosses Burnaby
from east to west in two places: in the south along the Expo Line (completed in 1986) and in the middle along the Millennium Line
(completed in 2001). The SkyTrain has encouraged closer connections to New Westminster, Vancouver, and Surrey, as well as dense urban development at Lougheed
Town Centre on the city's eastern border, at Brentwood Town Centre in the centre-west, and most notably at Metrotown in the
south.
Major north-south streets crossing the City include Boundary Road, Willingdon Avenue, Royal Oak Avenue, Sperling Avenue,
Gaglardi Way, and North Road. East-west routes linking Burnaby's neighbouring cities to each other include Hastings Street and
the Barnet Highway, Lougheed Highway, Kingsway (which follows the old horse trail between Vancouver and New Westminster), and
Marine Drive/Marine Way. Douglas Road, which used to cross the city from northwest to southeast, has largely been absorbed by the
Trans-Canada Highway and Canada Way. Since the 1990s,
Burnaby has developed a network of cycling trails. It is also well served by Greater Vancouver's bus system, run by the Coast
Mountain Bus Company, a division of TransLink.
People and Politics
While Burnaby occupies about 4 percent of the land area of the Greater Vancouver Regional District, it accounted for about 10%
of the Region's population in 2001. It is the third most populated urban centre in British Columbia (after Vancouver and Surrey)
with an estimated population of 197,292. Like much of Greater Vancouver, Burnaby has always had large ethnic and immigrant
communities: to cite two examples, North Burnaby near Hastings Street has long played host to many Italian restaurants and
recreational bocce games, while Metrotown's ever-sprouting condominium towers in the
south have been fueled in part by more recent arrivals from China, Hong Kong, and the former Yugoslavia.
Politically, Burnaby has maintained a centre-left city council (which recently completely eliminated the City's debt) and
school board for many years, while sometimes electing more conservative legislators provincially (for the Social Credit and BC Liberal parties) and federally (for the Reform, Alliance, and Conservative parties). Its longest-serving
politician had been Svend Robinson of the New Democratic Party, Canada's first openly homosexual member of Parliament, but after 25 years and seven elections he resigned his
post in early 2004 after stealing and then returning an expensive ring. Burnaby voters endorsed his assistant, Bill Siksay, as his replacement in the spring 2004 Canadian federal election.
Industry and Economy
Major technology firms such as Electronic Arts, Creo, and Ballard Power
Systems base their operations in Burnaby; heavy industry includes Chevron Corporation and Petro-Canada petroleum
refineries on the shores of Burrard Inlet. The City features high
density residential areas, major commercial town centres, rapid transit, high technology research and business parks,
comprehensive industrial estates and major post-secondary institutions, including Simon Fraser University and the British Columbia Institute of Technology.
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