Burnaby South-Metrotown.
4 candidates, one seat.

Burnaby's page on Nations and territories names four Nations for the city: xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem). It says each has its own history and its own traditional territory, and that those territories cover the city fully or in part. The district's southern boundary is the Fraser River.

Musqueam's territory page says its ancestors have lived throughout the Fraser River estuary, and have cared for it, for thousands of years. The same page says the Musqueam Declaration of 10 June 1976 describes a territory that includes Burnaby, Vancouver, Richmond, New Westminster and other cities.

The Squamish Nation's page gives its traditional territory as 6,732 square kilometres. It lists parts of Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster inside that territory and says some village sites in it date back 3,000 years.

Heritage Burnaby records that in 1860 the Royal Engineers were building the road from New Westminster to Vancouver, which is now Kingsway. They set aside a military reserve at the highest point of the trail along the ridge. A fire had burned the original forest before 1860, and the stumps left an open view over the land below. By the 1880s the councils of New Westminster and Vancouver both saw the reserve as a possible place for recreation. While the tram line was under construction, the province moved to turn the whole reserve into a park, and on 14 January 1891 the Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia proclaimed it a public recreation ground.

The Central Park neighbourhood grew around the park. Heritage Burnaby calls it one of the first and fastest-growing communities in Burnaby, set along the electric tram line and Vancouver Road, which is Kingsway. The province used the area for a settlement project called the Central Park Small Holdings. The record places the subdivision and sale of the land in 1894, a date it gives as an estimate, and by 1899 the settlement had grown enough to build an Anglican church.

Heritage Burnaby's records for the Fraser River side of south Burnaby begin in 1862. That year Hugh MacRoberts, a farmer on Sea Island in Richmond, built a trail to New Westminster to bring his produce to market, and the trail later became Marine Drive. The riverside land had been used as cranberry bogs, and its soil suited hay and root crops. A settlement grew around River Road, the Dundonald School opened there in 1905, and the Fraser Arm Post Office followed three years later. The records say the Fraser Arm area took its name from the place where the tram crossed Gilley Avenue on its way down to the North Arm of the Fraser River.

By the late 1920s the Fraser Arm area was turning into an industrial and manufacturing district. The Canadian National Railway built a bridge from Burnaby to Lulu Island in 1931. Chinese market gardens also grew there, and in 1926 the Vancouver Sun estimated that Chinese farms in the Lower Fraser Valley supplied 90 per cent of the green vegetables sold in the Vancouver market area.

In 1972 Council adopted the Big Bend Development Plan, and soon afterwards 620 acres, a figure the record gives as an estimate, were added to the Agricultural Land Reserve, the province's protected farmland. Heritage Burnaby says that by the 2000s the Big Bend held 160 acres of productive farmland and over 400 acres of parkland, together with business and industrial areas. It lists the area at Marine Way and Boundary among them. Boundary Road is the western boundary of this district.

Heritage Burnaby says Nelson Avenue School was established in 1912 to serve the Alta Vista district. The same archive gives Alta Vista as the historic neighbourhood of South Slope Elementary. The building on Irmin Street that stands today is an annex that the architects Bowman & Cullerne designed in the Classical Revival style and finished in 1927. It was built to match the original Windsor Street School building. Elections BC lists Nelson Elementary School as a voting place in the district.

Ocean View Burial Park, at 4000 Imperial Street, dates to 1919. Heritage Burnaby calls it the first non-sectarian cemetery in British Columbia that was created as a business for profit, which means a burial ground tied to no single church. Local investors led by Lieut. Col. G.H. Dorrell organized it as the Ocean View Cemetery Company, and Albert F. Arnold of the Canadian Financiers Trust Company designed its landscape.

The oldest surviving public school building in Burnaby stands at 6650 Southoaks Crescent. Joseph Henry Bowman designed the Kingsway East School, and it was completed in 1913 as the planned auditorium and gymnasium of Burnaby's first high school. Economic limits and the First World War led the municipality to use it as Kingsway East Elementary School until 1921. Burnaby South High School opened there in 1922. The school stands in Burnaby South Memorial Park with a cenotaph and memorial tennis courts. The City rehabilitated it for community use in 2002 and 2003 and renamed it the Alan Emmott Centre. The Canadian Register of Historic Places records its formal recognition on 23 November 1992.

Heritage Burnaby says the years after the Second World War brought fast growth in homebuilding in the Alta Vista area, with the Sussex and Suncrest subdivisions and new schools and amenities for the larger population. In the Sussex-Nelson area just south of Metrotown, the homes next to Metrotown date to the 1950s, and the single-family homes south of Rumble Street date to the 1960s and 1970s. As of 1980 it had more people than any other area the City studied for planning. In Suncrest, a small residential area south of Central Park, most of the housing dates to 1930 to 1960.

Maywood Elementary School, at 4567 Imperial Street, was built in 1962 between Nelson and Suncrest schools to relieve crowded classrooms at both. It was built on one level with no basement and no high stairs, in a line of classrooms that could be extended. Additions followed in 1964, 1966, 1967, 1971 and 1972, and fires in 1979 and 1989 caused damage that needed partial reconstruction.

A photograph caption in the City archive says the South Burnaby Men's Club began buying properties in 1965 with an initial investment of $7,500. The Bonsor Recreation Complex at 6550 Bonsor Avenue grew from that effort, and the South Burnaby Metro Club is based there. Swangard Stadium opened in Central Park on 26 April 1969. It is named after Erwin Swangard, a former managing editor of the Vancouver Sun, and was paid for entirely by private donations and civic and provincial grants.

In 1977 Burnaby's Planning Department and Norman Hotson Architects produced an 83-page report called Burnaby Metrotown: a development plan. The Real Estate News Exchange reported in 2017 that this was the last full plan for Metrotown before the 2017 one. Heritage Burnaby says the idea for Metrotown was first expressed in the 1970s, that the building now called Metropolis at Metrotown opened in 1986, and that the Expo Line of the new SkyTrain system soon served it.

TransLink's account says SkyTrain opened on 11 December 1985 with eight days of free rides, and that fares began on 3 January 1986. The new train line joined downtown Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster. Heritage Burnaby says the Metrotown complex later grew into three adjoining malls: Metropolis at Metrotown, Metrotown Centre and Station Square. Its address is 4700 Kingsway.

The City archive records that the Central Park library branch was replaced by the Bob Prittie Metrotown branch in 1991. A council report from 4 March 1991 is titled as a plaque to commemorate the opening of the branch. The library stands at 6100 Willingdon Avenue, at the corner of Central Boulevard. In 1992 South Slope Elementary School, at 4446 Watling Street, opened as the school for the B.C. Provincial School for the Deaf, which replaced the Jericho Hill School for the Deaf in Vancouver.

Two buildings opened in 2000. Nikkei Place says its museum and cultural centre has offered programs, exhibits and events since 22 September 2000, and the centre's address is 6688 Southoaks Crescent, on the street where the Alan Emmott Centre stands. The Crystal Mall opened the same year at Kingsway and Willingdon Avenue. The Tyee reported on 2 July 2019 that the developer Stanley Kwok led the project, that building began in 1996 on a 750,000-square-foot mall costing $200 million, and that the Asian financial crisis of 1997 struck during the work. The mall replaced the Dragon Inn restaurant.

Heritage Burnaby says two office towers at the Metrotown complex were occupied in 2001 by Shaw Cable and TransLink. In late July 2017 Burnaby's council approved the Metrotown Downtown Plan unanimously, the Real Estate News Exchange reported on 5 September 2017. The plan replaced the 1977 plan and allows mixed-use towers along Kingsway between Wilson and Nelson Avenues. The City's table of town centres lists 25,800 residents in Metrotown in 2011 and 66,800 projected for 2041.

On 5 May 2023 the City announced a process to build a new City Hall in Metrotown, where Civic Square was one proposed site. After public input in summer 2023, the City says residents supported the Civic Square site and also wanted City Hall to stay centrally located. Council then directed staff to study a phased replacement of City Hall at its present site, 4949 Canada Way.