Richmond-Queensborough.
3 candidates, one seat.

The Musqueam Indian Band, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, says its ancestors have lived throughout and stewarded the Fraser River estuary for thousands of years. Its website names both Richmond and New Westminster among the places that are today portions of Musqueam territory. The Musqueam Declaration of 10 June 1976 describes the territory it claims as including the left bank of the Fraser River and the South Arm of the river downstream to the sea, with the lands, islands and waters between.

The City of New Westminster's heritage consultants wrote in 2012 that the Kwantlen and Stó:lō First Nations first used the land of Queensborough as part of their seasonal round, collecting food from the land and fishing in the Fraser River. They say the low, fertile ground supported food crops, especially cranberries. They add that nearby Poplar Island was set aside as part of local First Nations reserve land and was later the site of a smallpox isolation hospital, and that salmon canneries in Queensborough gave jobs to fishers and canning workers once settlement began in the 1870s and 1880s.

The City of New Westminster states on its own pages that it stands on the unceded and unsurrendered land of the Halkomelem speaking peoples. The B.C. government lists the Qayqayt First Nation at New Westminster with a population of 20 and says the nation is not participating in the B.C. treaty process.

The chronology in New Westminster's heritage management plan of 1993, repeated in the City's 2012 context statement, records that the 1859 Trutch survey of Richmond marked the eastern tip of Lulu Island as a Government Reserve. The statement says Colonel Moody's survey laid a grid of District Lots over Queensborough, which differs from the sections, blocks and ranges used on the rest of the island. It says the 600-acre District Lot 757 passed from the province to the City of New Westminster in 1889, when the city received a new charter, and that Alexander Ewen, a cannery owner, bought the neighbouring 140-acre District Lot 758 in the same year.

In 1890 the City sold 525 acres to Donald McGillvray, who owned a foundry on the island and was responsible for building a wagon bridge to the mainland. The statement dates the railway bridge to 1891 and says 600 acres were dyked in 1892. The auction brochure of 1892 promised an electric tramway and described the land as suited to manufacturing, shipping, market gardening, fruit growing and plant nurseries. BC Geographical Names records that the Queensborough post office opened on 1 December 1908, was named to recall an early name for New Westminster, closed on 18 May 1910 and reopened on 1 April 1911. The Queensborough Ratepayers Association formed in 1911.

When Alexander Ewen died in 1907, his large tract was divided into small, affordable lots, which the statement says led to a short period of new housing. A second period of building ran from 1925 to 1945, and the statement reports that the population reached 1,500 to 2,000. The BC Electric Railway tramline on Ewen Avenue opened in 1912, together with the first school, Queen Elizabeth School. The statement lists Japanese and Chinese berry farms, a dairy herd, orchards and market gardens, and says Chinese and Japanese market gardens developed along Ewen Avenue. Sawmills, canneries, a box factory built in 1905 and Mercer's Star Shipyards, built in 1940, gave work to Japanese, Scandinavian, Chinese, Slovak, Italian and Indo-Canadian residents.

Several of their halls remain. The statement says the Italian community founded the Italian Mutual Aid Society in 1929 and built the Roma Hall with volunteer labour in 1932. Slovak immigrants arrived after the First World War. The 1986 heritage inventory dates the Slovak Home to 1939 and Tatra Hall to c.1939. The City's Time Traveller series says the New Westminster gurdwara began in 1911 or 1912 in a home at 344 Boyne Street. On 4 March 1919 Bhai Bishan Singh paid $250 for the house next door, which served as the gurdwara until the building at 347 Wood Street opened in the winter of 1975.

The Canadian Pacific airplane plant was constructed in 1942, and industrial activity and housing both increased during the Second World War. The statement says both Japanese and Italian nationals suffered dislocation and relocation during the war. The Fraser River flood of 1948 almost breached Queensborough's old dykes.

The City of Richmond Archives tells the story of the South Arm shore in Time and Tide. Nathan Woodward and his 18-year-old son Daniel arrived from Ontario in 1874 and settled around No. 5 Road, south to the Fraser River. In 1893 the municipality bought three-tenths of an acre from Nathan Woodward for $75, and a wharf there became known as Woodward's Landing. The Canadian Northern Railway built a Lulu Island branch from the British Columbia Electric Railway track in Queensborough and west along the South Arm. Its trestle ran 12,880 feet on 3,472 cedar pilings, it had stations at Queensborough, Woodward's Landing and Steveston, and it opened officially in March 1917. Peat bog fires on 30 June 1918 destroyed several small trestles and part of the long one, which was never repaired.

A ferry linked Woodward's Landing with Ladner from the fall of 1913. The book gives its traffic as more than 48,000 cars in 1932 and 378,000 in 1956, and says the last crossing was made by the Delta Princess on 23 May 1959, because the Deas Island Tunnel opened that year. A new industrial line, begun in 1931, ran along the North Arm and south beside Shell Road. Crown Zellerbach announced a plant on 26 January 1955 on 3,000 feet of South Arm shore between No. 3 and No. 4 Roads, and its official opening followed in September 1956.

The City of Richmond Archives says Trites School stood at Westminster Highway and No. 7 Road until 1933. That year it moved to No. 9 Road and Westminster Road to serve the children of the Japanese community in east Richmond and Queensborough, and it took the name of Alexander Hamilton, a berry farmer and school trustee who had agreed to the move in 1932. After the attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941 the Canadian government decided to remove all people of Japanese descent from coastal communities to a distance of at least 100 miles from the ocean. The Archives says students were forcibly removed from schools in 1942, especially in Steveston, Sea Island and east Richmond. Hamilton Elementary moved to Gilley Road and Westminster Highway in 1959 and to 5180 Smith Drive in October 1995.

Other schools followed the farms on the South Arm. Thomas Kidd Elementary opened on Shell Road in 1957 as a two-room school. Walter Lee Elementary began in 1960 as an annex to James Whiteside School, and Daniel Woodward Elementary began in 1961 as an annex to Kidd for the new Shellmont subdivision. Hugh McRoberts Junior Secondary opened in 1961 for the South Arm community. Cambie Secondary was replaced in 1995 by a new school at Jacombs Road and No. 5 Road, and the East Richmond Community Centre is part of the same facility.

The Queensborough Bridge opened in 1960, according to the City's context statement, and the provincial transportation ministry says it was originally built in 1960 and carries four lanes of Highway 91A. A city study of 1965 found that more than 2,300 people lived in Queensborough, that 62% of its land was vacant, and that on nearly all roads open ditches took the place of sewers. The statement records that the lack of sewers stopped residential building in 1966 and led to a moratorium in 1969. The City adopted a Queensborough Plan in 1971, built a new community centre in 1978 and began sewer construction in 1979.

The Annacis Freeway and the Alex Fraser Bridge opened in 1984. The statement says the highway divided the neighbourhood and brought many more cars, and it also kept homes apart from industrial areas. On the Richmond side, the City adopted its first Hamilton Area Plan in 1986 and a new plan on 19 June 1995. The Richmond News reported in 2013 that, in the city's figures, Hamilton's population rose from 800 in 1991 to 4,100 in 2001.

The first new subdivision in Queensborough opened in 1990, and the City approved the Port Royal waterfront housing in principle that year. Council adopted the Queensborough Community Plan in 1995, and Port Royal began construction. The statement records zoning approval for Queensborough Landing in 2001, a Wal-Mart in 2003, the closure of two sawmills and the opening of the Starlight Casino in 2007, and the purchase of the former Interfor sawmill site by Port Metro Vancouver in 2009. Work on enlarging the Queensborough Community Centre began in 2011. In Hamilton, a City report says a new community centre space and a fire hall opened in 2011, and Richmond adopted the updated Hamilton Area Plan on 25 February 2014.

The City of New Westminster began a demonstration ferry between Quayside and the Port Royal public dock on 4 August 2017 with the MV Hollyburn, which held 40 passengers and four bicycles. On 27 September 2021 Council apologized to the South Asian community for its predecessors' part in the Komagata Maru incident of 1914. It named the Queensborough River Walk and the ferry docks in commemoration of the Komagata Maru, and unveiled a plaque on 4 October 2022. In August 2025 the City signed a service agreement for the ferry that runs to 31 December 2030. On 30 January 2026 the Province announced a $20.8-million contract for the renewal of the Queensborough Bridge, with work expected from spring 2026 to fall 2027.