Burnaby North.
3 candidates, one seat.

The City of Burnaby says it is on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) Peoples, and that each Nation has its own history and its own traditional territory that fully or partly covers the city. The northern edge of this district is Burrard Inlet, which the Tsleil-Waututh Nation calls səlilwət. On its website the Nation writes: "We are səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh Nation), People of the Inlet."

The Squamish Nation gives its traditional territory as 6,732 square kilometres. It says the territory includes parts of Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster and all of Burrard Inlet, and that some village sites in it date back 3,000 years. The Burnaby Village Museum's history guide says that several important village sites existed along the shores of the inlet before Europeans arrived, and that remains of ancestral villages, long-term campsites and other heritage sites have been found along the northern shoreline of Burnaby. The guide adds that as neighbourhoods expanded, federal policies cut Indigenous people off from their traditional resources, and that many heritage sites were overrun by farmland, industry and urban development.

Heritage Burnaby records that before 1900 Hastings Street in Vancouver reached east only as far as Renfrew Street. By 1903 the growth of the Barnet mill meant that provincial authorities ordered Hastings Street extended to meet the Barnet Road trail, which gave a direct route into Vancouver. The Burnaby Village Museum's guide says the neighbourhoods of north Burnaby developed along Hastings Street, as those of south Burnaby did along the interurban tram and Kingsway.

Land sales followed the road. Heritage Burnaby says real estate ventures were active in the Vancouver Heights and Capitol Hill areas by 1908, that the Scott Brokerage Company advertised lots there in 1909, and that the name Capitol Hill comes from the Capitoline Hill in Rome. In 1909 Charles J. Peter built the mansion Overlynn at 3755 McGill Street for $75,000, to a design by the architects Maclure and Fox. Parks Canada's register says that buyers of lots in the subdivision had to build houses worth $3,500, at a time when the average house price was $1,000. In 1912 Arthur Wall built the Wall Block at 3722 Hastings Street, which still has shops on the ground floor and apartments above.

The British Columbia Electric Railway Company built a streetcar extension along Hastings Street in 1913. Heritage Burnaby holds a photograph of its construction at 5206 Hastings Street, where Walter Holdom had built tea rooms on his property to entertain people who might buy land. The line opened at Capitol Hill on 23 December 1913, with the reeve, councillors and railway officials present.

Gilmore Community School at 50 Gilmore Avenue replaced a wooden schoolhouse built on the site in 1912. Heritage Burnaby says the brick building opened in 1915 to a design by Joseph Bowman, the school board architect, with an addition in 1922 and an auditorium in 1929. It calls the school the first brick school in Burnaby and the only school of its era left in the city. The name honours the provincial politician Hugh Gilmour, and the archive says a civic clerk changed the spelling without meaning to.

Burnaby North High School began in 1921 with classes in the basement of a Presbyterian church and opened in 1922 at 4375 Pandora Street, a building that is now Rosser Elementary. Heritage Burnaby notes that before it opened, Burnaby students had to travel to Vancouver to study beyond the elementary grades. Capitol Hill had a one-room school from 1913, which a four-room school replaced in 1923 at 350 Holdom Avenue. Two-room additions followed in 1926 and 1927.

Confederation Park was established on 25 June 1927 at 250 Willingdon Avenue. Heritage Burnaby says it grew from the Capitol Hill subdivision of the 1909 land sales. After the market fell in 1914 the municipality acquired many properties on which owners had not paid tax, and in the 1920s local women's groups pressed for a place to play. The park was dedicated to the sixtieth anniversary of Confederation, on a narrow site of 26 acres beside a ravine, with money from residents and local businesses.

Heritage Burnaby says Vancouver Heights stayed an important residential and shopping centre between 1925 and 1954, with its own Board of Trade and a North Burnaby Library. The Burnaby Village Museum's guide describes the Heights as a more prosperous part of north Burnaby, where residents sponsored tennis and lawn bowling clubs. It says shopkeepers on Hastings Street and on Kingsway each promoted their own area, which divided the municipality into a north and a south identity, and that no drivable road joined north and south Burnaby directly.

In 1935 the California company Standard Oil announced a refinery in Burnaby. Heritage Burnaby says residents greeted the news with cheers because they wanted work during the Great Depression. The refinery, called Stanovan after Standard Oil - Vancouver, began operating in 1936 on Burrard Inlet with a capacity of 2,000 barrels a day, and the capacity was doubled during the Second World War. The archive records that the company's name was changed to Chevron Canada Limited in 1976, and places the site at 355 Willingdon Avenue North in the Vancouver Heights neighbourhood.

Willingdon Heights was a new subdivision of the years after the Second World War. The Burnaby Village Museum's guide says work began in 1946, that within eighteen months it had become a model subdivision between Gilmore and Willingdon avenues and Parker and Graveley streets, and that the first veterans and their families moved in during 1947. A 1948 brochure quoted by Heritage Burnaby describes a project of 500 homes planned by the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, and calls it the largest single veteran housing project in Canada for homes that individuals own.

The Capitol Hill Community Hall Association had formed in 1912 and met in a machine shop, in the first Howard Avenue School until it burned down in 1924, and later in other local buildings. Volunteers built the hall at 361 Howard Avenue to a design by the architect Harold Cullerne, with materials that were donated or bought at a discount. Heritage Burnaby says the association held its first meeting there on 16 December 1947 and the last construction work finished in February 1948. The Hastings streetcars stopped running in 1949.

In July 1953 Burnaby's council approved a $12,000,000 housing and shopping development at the northeast corner of Lougheed Highway and Willingdon Avenue, with plans for 400 homes and a shopping centre of 30 acres. Heritage Burnaby calls it the first large subdivision in Burnaby built with sewers, paved streets and other services. Brentwood Shopping Centre opened in August 1961 with Eaton's, Loblaw's and Zellers as its anchor stores, and the Miss604 site reports that it was then the largest mall in British Columbia.

Burnaby North High School moved in 1961 from Willingdon Avenue to a new building at 751 Hammarskjold Drive, in the Parkcrest-Aubrey area. The old building became Burnaby Heights Junior High School and stayed in use until 1982. The Burnaby Village Museum's guide says the municipality's population grew from 30,328 in 1941 to 100,157 in 1961, and that the freeway opened in 1964 and split Burnaby down the middle. The commission's 2023 report names Highway 1 as part of the southern boundary of the district.

Helen Arnold opened Helen's Children's Wear in 1948, and in 1955 she moved into the building next door, which the North Burnaby municipal office had left. Heritage Burnaby records that in 1956 she had a neon sign installed at 4142 Hastings Street. The designer Reeve Lehman of the Wallace Neon Company in Vancouver made it as a cloud that reads Helen's and a girl on a swing that moves by an internal motor and gears. The sign is nine feet six inches high and nine feet wide. Burnaby gave it heritage designation by Bylaw No. 12771 on 19 April 2010, and the archive calls it one of the best surviving examples of kinetic neon art in North America.

The same archive says the neighbourhood was called Vancouver Heights until the 1970s, when a new park named Burnaby Heights Park led newcomers to adopt the name Burnaby Heights. In the 1960s and 1970s the shopping area grew and a Retail Merchants Association formed, later called the Heights Merchants Association. On the Capitol Hill side, the City established a conservation area on the northern side during the 1970s and 1980s.

Jack Kuyer took over Valley Bakery, which his father George had opened in 1957, and helped to start Hats Off Day, a festival where merchants thank their customers. The Burnaby Beacon reports that four local business owners founded it in the early 1980s. On Saturday 3 June 2023 it ran on Hastings Street from Boundary Road to Gamma Avenue, and the parade returned for the first time since 2019.

Miss604 reports that the open-air shopping centre was enclosed in 1970 and given a second level and a fabric roof in 1980. Heritage Burnaby says Brentwood became one of Burnaby's four official town centres between 1955 and 2001, serving the north-west of the municipality, with the mall as its largest commercial development. In 1996 the City adopted a Brentwood Town Centre Development Plan to make the area a focus for denser housing and commerce, public transit and leisure facilities.

Bisnow reported on 22 December 2014 that Shape Properties had bought the mall in 2010 and planned to redevelop a site of 28 acres with 11 residential towers. TransLink announced in March 2025 that upgrades at Brentwood Town Centre station were complete, with a new elevator, two new escalators and a larger concourse. The Burnaby Beacon reported that the old mall closed on Monday 5 May 2025, after London Drugs, the last store, moved to The Amazing Brentwood, and that Shape Properties was seeking the council's approval to build residential towers on the site.