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'Burnaby', British Columbia, Canada, is the city immediately east of Vancouver. It is the third-largest city in British Columbia by population, surpassed only by Surrey and Vancouver itself.
It was incorporated in 1892 and achieved City status in 1992, one hundred years after incorporation. It is the current seat of the Greater Vancouver Regional District.

Contents

History

Geography and land use

Burnaby parks and lakes

Transportation

Demographics

Religious profile

People and politics

Industry and economy

Education

Symbols

Sister cities

Surrounding Municipalities

Reference

See also

External links

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 89.12 square kilometers (38.07 sq mi) 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 370 metres (1,200 ft) 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 of 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.

Burnaby parks and lakes

Major parklands and waterways in Burnaby include Burnaby Lake, Still Creek, the Brunette River, Central Park, Deer Lake, Squint Lake, Robert Burnaby Park, Kensington Park, and Burnaby Mountain Park.

Transportation

The 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 2002). 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, Cariboo Road, Willingdon Avenue, Kensington Avenue, Sperling Avenue, Royal Oak Avenue, Gaglardi Way, and North Road. East-west routes linking Burnaby's neighbouring cities to each other include East Hastings Street, Barnet Highway, the Lougheed Highway, Kingsway (which follows the old horse trail between Vancouver and New Westminster), Canada Way 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.

Demographics

Religious profile

★ 35.3% No religious affiliation

★ 21.3% Roman Catholic

★ 19.9% Protestant

★ 6.1% Christian, not included elsewhere

★ 4.9% Buddhist

★ 4.8% Muslim

★ 2.9% Sikh

★ 2.3% Christian Orthodox

★ 1.5% Hindu

★ 0.4% Eastern religions, not included elsewhere

★ 0.3% other religions, not included elsewhere

★ 0.3% Jewish
Source Data: Burnaby Community Profile from 2001 Census at Statistics Canada

People and politics

While Burnaby occupies about 4% 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 205,261. 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 been home 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 Greater China (including Taiwan, Hong Kong & Macau), South Korea, 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 (NDP), 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. In the May 2005 provincial election, residents of the city sent a mix of BC Liberal and NDP representatives to the British Columbia legislature.

Industry and economy

Major technology firms such as Electronic Arts, Creo (now part of Eastman Kodak), Ballard Power Systems, and TELUS base their operations in Burnaby; heavy industry includes Chevron Corporation and Petro-Canada petroleum refineries on the shores of Burrard Inlet. Other companies, including eBay and Best Buy Canada, have significant facilities in Burnaby as well. The City features high density residential areas, major commercial town centres, rapid transit, high technology research and business parks, movie and TV studio facilities, comprehensive industrial estates, and major post-secondary institutions, including Simon Fraser University and the British Columbia Institute of Technology.

Education

School District 41 is responsible for the public schools in Burnaby. It also has a Community and Adult Education Department, and also an International Students' Programme.

Symbols

Burnaby's official flower is the rhododendron.

Sister cities

Burnaby has three sister cities (or "twin towns"):

★ Gatineau, Quebec, Canada

★ Kushiro, Japan

★ Mesa, Arizona, United States.

★ A housing estate in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, Ireland is also called 'The Burnaby'

Surrounding Municipalities

Reference

★ Adapted from http://burnaby.ca

See also

★ Burnaby Public Library

External links

★ City of Burnaby

★ Tourism Burnaby

★ Burnaby Public Library