New Westminster, British Columbia

**New Westminster**

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(Flag of New Westminster)

(Coat of Arms)

Member of Parliament Peter Julian (NDP)
Dawn Black (NDP)
Member of the Legislative Assembly Chuck Puchmayr (NDP) Mayor Wayne Wright Councillors Jonathan Cote
Calvin Donnelly
Bill Harper
Betty McIntosh
Bob Osterman
Lorrie Williams Location Population (2001) 54,656 Immigrant Population 15,025 (28%) Languages English(Official) 78%
French(Official) 1%
Non Official 21% Religion United Church 20%
Catholic 30%
Other 30%
No Religion 20% Private Dwellings 26,035 Unemployment rate 7.6% The Corporation of the City of New Westminster is a small but historically important city in British Columbia, Canada. The city has a total population of 54,656 (2001 Census).

Geography

New Westminster is part of the Greater Vancouver metropolitan area, located on the Burrard Peninsula, on the north bank of the Fraser River. The city is 19 kilometres (12 miles) southeast of the Vancouver city proper, adjacent to Burnaby and Coquitlam and across the Fraser River from Surrey. A small portion of New Westminster called Queensborough is located on the eastern tip of Lulu Island, adjacent to Richmond. The total land area is 15.3 square kilometres.

Demographics

New Westminster's population is older and generally less affluent than surrounding communities in the Vancouver area, and there is a higher degree of social dependency (social assistance, pension and disability income) among the City's population. However, compared to the rest of British Columbia, New Westminster has average demographics. Some notable New Westminster's natives include actor Raymond Burr, race car driver Greg Moore, magician Leon Mandrake, and professional baseball player Justin Morneau.

External link: New Westminster at Statistics Canada.

History

In 1866, the colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island united as "British Columbia" with New Westminster as capital. However, much to the chagrin of New Westminsterites, Victoria, located on the distant southern tip Vancouver Island, replaced New Westminster as the capital of the newly amalgamated Colony of British Columbia. New Westminster was again upset when Victoria was designated as the provincial capital when British Columbia joined Canadian Confederation in 1871).

Historical urban geography

New Westminster has been drastically changed by time and by the results of its incorporation into the wider urbanization of the Lower Mainland:

BC Penitentiary

In 1878, the Government of Canada opened the British Columbia Penitentiary, the first federal penitentiary west of Manitoba. "BC Pen" or simply "the Pen" as it was known (and also in old days as the "skookum house" in the English-Chinook Jargon patois common in early BC), was located between the Sapperton neighbourhood and what is now Queen's Park. It housed maximum security prisoners for the next 102 years, closing in 1980.^* and has been the scene of many famous trials and executions, including those of the Wild McLean Boys, Slumach and Simon Gunanoot. The original centre block (reputedly haunted) of the Pen still stands and has been revamped into condominiums and a fancy restaurant, while the rest of the Pen's grounds have been filled with newly-built townhouses and condominiums.

The Pen's armoury and dockside holding cell have been restored as a riverside park on the Fraser River, which will utlimately connect to the regional network of biking and walking trails and the city's waterfront promenade project.

Chinatown

New Westminster's Chinatown was one of the earliest established in the mainland colony and also one of the largest. Originally located along Front Street, it was relocated to an area known as "The Swamp" at the southwest end of downtown, bounded roughly by Royal Avenue, Columbia Street, and 8th and 12th Streets (now a large shopping plaza area). Chinatown was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1898 and only partly rebuilt afterwards.

Columbia Street

Until the completion of the Highway 1 Freeway, which bypassed New Westminster to its north, Columbia Street along the city's waterfront was the main commercial retail and service centre for the Fraser Valley and nearby areas of Burnaby and Coquitlam. Most major department store chains as well as long-established New Westminster retailers thrived in a time when road travel to Vancouver remained distant for Valley communities and also when daily interurban rail service to and from Chilliwack was still in place. The quality of shops was such that even Vancouverities would make the trip by interurban or, later on, by Kingsway (originally called the Westminster Highway or Westminster Road) to shop on Columbia Street. As well as the retailers, Columbia Street was also home to major movie houses, rivalling in size and quality those on Vancouver's Theatre Row. The freeway is generally conceded to have 'killed" Columbia Street, and it has remained in a slump despite ongoing civic efforts to revitalize it.

Front Street

Originally a dockside street and market, and also the location of the original Chinatown, Front Street was converted into a truck-route bypass and elevated parkade during the 1960s in an effort to provide increased parking for adjacent Columbia Street. In recent decades it has been the focus of the city's thriving antiques and second-hand trade. All these shops are relocating in the next few years as Front Street and its parkade will be demolished to make way for the new North Fraser Expressway.

Government House

The original colonial Government House was located approximately where the McBride Street offramp for the Pattullo Bridge is now, with its grounds including some of the Woodlands Home for Children, and the street configuration in that area has been drastically changed in the meantime because of the bridge .

New Westminster CPR Station

Adjacent to the New Westminster Skytrain Station, the city's former Canadian Pacific Railway station has been renovated and converted into a branch of The Keg restaurant chain.

Queensborough

Queensborough was the name originally chosen for the colonial capital by Royal Engineer commander Colonel Richard Clements Moody. When Queen Victoria designated New Westminster instead as her new capital's name, the name Queensborough became applied to New Westminster's portion of Lulu Island, across the north arm of the Fraser from the southern end of the city. Queensborough is today a low to middl with its own distinct identity-income housing area, although some new condominium complexes have sprung up adjacent to the Westminster Quay development, which connects via a foot-crossing on an old rail bridge. In the Chinook Jargon, an adaption of the name Queensborough - "Koonspa" - is the usual name for New Westminster as a whole.

Sapperton

Sapperton was originally a "suburb" of New Westminster, built as housing for decommissioned Royal Engineers ("Sappers"). It is the location of the historic Fraserview Cemetery, which rivals Victoria's Ross Bay Cemetery for the number of historically significant graves and monuments. Also located in Sapperton is Royal Columbian Hospital.

Sixth and Sixth

An uptown commercial area around 6th St and 6th Avenue re-emerged during the 1960s when the Sears department store chain built a new shopping centre, now Royal Centre Mall, adjacent to Moody Park.

The West End

Apposite to Sapperton's north-end, New Westminster's West End was once fairly separate from the city proper, with a commerical node at 10th Ave and 20th Street

Westminster Quay

Westminster Quay was an Expo-era development to revitalize New Westminster and accompanied the development of the Skytrain line to Vancouver. In addition to a large public market and first-class hotel, a large condominium tower and townhouse complex was built, accessed from the older Columbia Street area of downtown by an overpass. The impetus provided by this project has spilled over onto the inland side of the rail tracks, with new tower developments focussing on the area southwest of 8th Street (the area known formerly as "the Swamp" and Chinatown).

Commerce and industry

With the completion of the trans-continental railway in 1886, trade began to shift to nearby Vancouver. Nonetheless, New Westminster weathered the loss, and remained an important industry and transportation centre. The local economy has always had a mix of industrial sectors, but it has evolved over the years, moving from a reliance on the primary resources of lumber and fishing in the 1800s, to heavy industry and manufacturing in the first half of the 1900s, to retail from the mid 1950s to the 1970s, to professional and business services in the '90s, and finally to high tech and fiber optic industry in the early 2000s.

Arts and culture

The city has several live performance venues ranging from the Massey Theatre adjacent to the New Westminster High School to the Burr Theatre, a converted cinema on Columbia Street, and two or theatrical venues in Queens Park. The Royal City Musical Theatre, a long-established New Westminster tradition, uses the Massey, while comedy and mystery theatricals use the stages in Queens Park. Also in Queens Park is the Queens Park Arena, longtime home to the legendary New Westminster Salmonbellies professional lacrosse team, as well as an open-air stadium used for baseball and field sports. The Burr, restored by funding from the estate of Raymond Burr has recently been home to an effort to produce professional-quality British mysteries and comedies but has been forced to close due to financial difficulties.

Hyack Festival and the Hyack Battery

New Westminster's May Day celebration began in 1870 and continues as an important civic tradition to the present day, lending the city the distinction of having the longest running May Day celebration of its type in the British Commonwealth. The May Day festival, held on the Victoria Day weekend and more formally known as the Hyack Festival, is distinguished by the Anvil Battery, also known as the Hyack Battery, a tradition created by the New Westminster Regiment during colonial times as a surrogate for a 21-gun salute. With no cannons available in the early colony, the regiment - known as the Hyacks, from the Chinook Jargon for "fast" - improvised by placing gunpowder between two anvils, the top one upturned, and igniting the charge from a safe distance, hurling the upper anvil into the air.

Educational institutions

Douglas College, a major community college has campuses in New Westminster and Coquitlam. The college has an enrollment of 12,000 students and offers degrees, associate degrees, two-year career and University Transfer programs to local, national and international students.

The Justice Institute of British Columbia offers training to municipal police forces, fire departments, provincial corrections, court services and paramedics with the British Columbia Ambulance Service. The Institute operates a Centre for Conflict Resolution, a Centre for Leadership and Community Learning, Executive Programs, a Public Safety Seminar Series and the Aboriginal Leadership Diploma Program.

School District 40 New Westminster has one high school (New Westminster Secondary School), two middle schools, and nine elementary schools.

Transportation

There are no freeways within New Westminster’s city limits, although the Trans-Canada Highway (Highway 1) is accessible from nearby Burnaby and Coquitlam.

The Queensborough Bridge (part of Route 91A) connects Queensborough to mainland New Westminster, while the Pattullo Bridge (part of Routes 1A and 99A) links New Westminster with Surrey. A lesser-used Derwent Way Bridge connects Queensborough with Annacis Island of Delta.

Public transportation is provided by TransLink. Along with a number of bus routes, the city is also served by the following stations on the Skytrain system:

22nd Street Station (Expo Line, Millennium Line)
New Westminster Station (Expo Line, Millennium Line)
Columbia Station (Expo Line, Millennium Line)
Sapperton Station (Millennium Line)
Braid Station (Millennium Line)

The city is located within Zone 2 of TransLink’s fare structure.

Streetcars and the Interurban

New Westminster was once linked to Vancouver and other municipalities by the BC interurban streetcar network. The following links have examples of that system:

Sports and Recreation

The city's New Westminster Salmonbellies are one of the oldest professional lacrosse teams in Canada, and also have junior and midget teams. The 'Bellies, as they are also known, have won the Mann Cup twenty-four times.

The New Westminster Royals were a professional minor-league team from 1911-1914, in the heyday of the Pacific Coast Hockey League. Their home rink was the Denman Arena in Vancouver, which they shared with rivals the Vancouver Millionaires.

Playing at Queen's Park Arena were two incarnations of another professional minor league team, the New Westminster Bruins (1971-1981, and 1983-1988).

Education

External links

Historical Photos

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