Skip to content

Council records from 1894 to present day now available online

Burnaby city council records dating back to 1894 are now available at the click of a mouse. City staff have added another 76 years of minutes to its online database, which launched last year with records from 1970 to present day.
minutes
Above, Burnaby city council minutes from 1910. Records from 1894 to present day are now searchable online through the Heritage Burnaby website.

Burnaby city council records dating back to 1894 are now available at the click of a mouse.

City staff have added another 76 years of minutes to its online database, which launched last year with records from 1970 to present day.

“You’d be amazed at how many people want to go back and look at old records, old documents and decisions from past councils – researchers, people dealing with property, people dealing with issues around all sorts of things to do with the city,” said Coun. Colleen Jordan, chair of Burnaby’s heritage commission.

The newly added records are some of the oldest known surviving documents.

In the early years of Burnaby’s incorporation, council met for its weekly meetings in some rather unusual places, including the tram station, local schools and private homes. (The city incorporated in 1892.)

There was no permanent or secure place in Burnaby where official records could be stored, according to a city press release. To remedy this situation, council authorized the purchase of a large safe in March 1898. It could hold all the records and it would be housed in a municipal building in New Westminster.

A fire destroyed New West’s entire downtown six months later, and with it burned the minute books from 1892 to 1894.

In October 2004, however, the British Columbia Archives in Victoria found the 1895 to 1898 records in their holdings and donated them to the City of Burnaby.

Jordan said while the records of the city’s first three years may not exist, the commission is looking at gathering newspaper clippings from the time period to fill in the gap.

In the meantime, she encourages the public to check out the records on the Heritage Burnaby website at heritageburnaby.ca.

“To have all of those available electronically and you don’t have to go to the archives and ask them to bring out the minute books ... it’s pretty neat,” said Jordan.