Kamloops Centre.
5 candidates, one seat.

Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc, the Nation whose reserve lies beside the city, gives its own account of the name. Its website says the word Kamloops is the English translation of Tk̓emlúps, which means where the rivers meet, and that the place for centuries has been the home of the Tk̓emlúpsemc, the people of the confluence.

The Nation says the Secwépemc people at one time occupied one large traditional territory of 145,000 square kilometres. It also says the Kamloops Reserve land base was established in 1862 under the direction of Governor James Douglas. The Nation places the reserve east of the North Thompson River, north of the South Thompson River and adjacent to the City of Kamloops.

BC Geographical Names says the name Kamloops comes from the Secwepemctsín language, and records the meeting of the waters as one of its meanings. The same record says Alexander Ross of the Pacific Fur Company established a post at Cumcloups in May 1812. The North West Company built a competing post nearby in 1812, and the Hudson's Bay Company later brought the trade together there. A monument at Riverside Park marks Fort Kamloops as a national historic site. The Canadian Encyclopedia says the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1885, and BC Geographical Names records that Kamloops was incorporated as a city on 1 July 1893.

The Canadian National Railway came later. Its station at 500 Lorne Street was built in 1926 and 1927 by the local firm Johnston and Company, to plans made by the railway's architects in Winnipeg. The federal government designated it in 1992 under the Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act. The register entry calls it one of the few remaining buildings of what was once a large railway complex.

The Kamloops Museum and Archives says Kamloops was a growing population centre in the early 1880s and needed a permanent medical facility. Dr Simon J. Tunstall, a doctor for the Canadian Pacific Railway, arrived in 1884, and the museum links his arrival to the campaign for a permanent hospital. In 1885 a hospital was built on the north side of Lorne Street, where 3rd Avenue ends. It was a two-storey wood frame building with a verandah on each level and 12 beds.

The cornerstone of a new building was laid on 23 June 1911, and the museum says the new Royal Inland Hospital opened on 14 September 1912 in a ceremony led by the Duke of Connaught. It held 110 beds. The museum also holds the records of the hospital's School of Nursing, which was open from 1901 to 1974 and graduated 913 nurses. Interior Health gives the hospital's address as 311 Columbia Street. Its Phil and Jennie Gaglardi Tower, with 107 beds, opened to patients in 2022.

The North Shore grew out of a land company. The Wren News reports that in 1903 Cecil Ward, an Englishman acting for Canada Real Properties, bought land along the west shore of the North Thompson River near Jamieson Creek. The Canadian National Railway yard was built on the Kamloops Indian Reserve instead, which ended hopes of a town the article calls Wardville. The first school in Brocklehurst opened in 1930, and the Wren says the Brocklehurst name comes from Ed Brocklehurst, who had returned to England by 1907. B.C. Fruitlands went into receivership in 1931 and kept operating. In 1946 the provincial Water Rights Branch took over its irrigation company to create the B.C. Fruitlands Irrigation District, and the village of North Kamloops incorporated in the same year.

North Kamloops became a town in 1961 when it reached a population of 6,000. It had 12,000 residents when it amalgamated with Kamloops in 1967, which was 4,000 more than the city. The Wren says Brocklehurst and Dufferin incorporated as independent municipalities instead of joining Kamloops. It reports a declaration on 21 December 1972 that all municipalities and unorganized districts within Greater Kamloops would be dissolved on 1 May 1973, and it lists Tranquille and Dufferin among the rural settler communities that had grown up in the valley. The Canadian Encyclopedia gives the same two stages: North Kamloops in 1967 and the surrounding areas in 1973.

The Kamloops Museum and Archives says Tranquille Sanatorium opened in 1907 at the Fortune Ranch, northwest of Kamloops, for people with tuberculosis. It was first named the King Edward Memorial Sanatorium and was run by the Anti-Tuberculosis Society of British Columbia until 1921. In that year the province took over its management and renamed it Tranquille Sanatorium. Dr J.C. Fagan was its first director. After the First World War the federal government erected more buildings for soldiers who had contracted tuberculosis, and by 1932 the sanatorium could take up to 360 patients.

The museum says the sanatorium continued until 1958, when advances in the treatment of tuberculosis had helped control the disease. Its buildings then passed to the provincial Mental Health Services Branch, and the site became an institution for people with mental disabilities. BC Geographical Names says the Tranquille River takes its name from a chief whom early records spell Sanquil and whom fur traders nicknamed Tranquil for his quiet, easy manner. The river flows southeast into the east end of Kamloops Lake.

Thompson Rivers University says its own history began in 1970, when the provincial government created several new colleges for regions outside the cities served by the province's three universities. Cariboo College was housed in the Kamloops Indian Residential School facility and welcomed its first 367 full-time and 200 part-time students in September 1970. It moved to its current campus on McGill Road in 1971, sharing the new Main building with the Kamloops Vocational School. It became a university college in 1989, took the name University College of the Cariboo in 1991, and became Thompson Rivers University in March 2005 under the Thompson Rivers University Act.

Parks Canada says the former Kamloops Indian Residential School opened in 1890 as the Kamloops Industrial School and closed in 1978. It was run by the Roman Catholic congregations of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Sisters of St. Ann. It stands on the north bank of the South Thompson River below Sqeq7é7em, the Mounts Peter and Paul. On 12 February 2025 Parks Canada announced, with Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc, the designation of the former school as a national historic site.

The City of Kamloops says development of the Aberdeen area began in or about the late 1970s, starting in the lower central area and spreading outward. Klohn Leonoff did the geotechnical work for Dominion Construction Properties Ltd. On 29 March 1995 Golder Associates was asked to inspect damage to the pavement on Howe Road and Van Horne Drive. Ground movement had affected a cluster of homes south of Howe Road, and the movement became known as the Van Horne Slide.

Golder Associates, acting for the City, installed 13 wells that pump groundwater out of the slope, and by early 1996 the slide had been effectively stopped. The Provincial Emergency Program compensated the owners of the damaged homes. The City's summary, current to 31 December 2020, counts 30 pumped wells in Aberdeen, 14 of them in the Van Horne Slide area, and 103 instruments that measure groundwater pressure, with 25 more in Van Horne. It says a large portion of Aberdeen depends on continuous treatment to stay stable.