Topic
Art, music, film, and the subcultures that grew up in Burnaby's basements and storefronts.
Joe Sakic turns 57 on July 7, born in Burnaby to Croatian immigrants who spoke no English at home. He is the anchor of a small, verifiable list of people who actually started here — and a correction to two names the city keeps claiming by mistake.
Artom Butenko · 5 min read
Behind a plain door at the Harry Jerome Sports Centre is a wooden track banked at 47 degrees — a near-vertical wall you can walk up to and touch. It is the only indoor velodrome west of Ontario, and almost nobody driving past knows it is there.
Ilarion Bohatyrov · 4 min read
The architect who designed the building was interned as a child. The land was purchased with redress money. The opening date was chosen to mark the anniversary of an apology. Inside are 670 recorded voices and 52,500 photographs from a community that lost everything and built this anyway.
Artom Butenko · 9 min read
Edmonds: a Dublin speculator who built a tramway to inflate his own land prices. Gilmore: a bureaucratic typo that replaced a politician's real name forever. Metrotown: a term borrowed from a Baltimore urban planning report. Sperling: it was Pole Line Road until someone renamed it after the electricity company's manager. Every name is an act of power somebody forgot to explain.
Artom Butenko · 7 min read
In the 1890s, Chinese farmers leased land nobody else wanted and turned cranberry marshes into the most productive vegetable farms in the region. By 1921, they supplied ninety per cent of British Columbia's vegetables. They were barred from voting, owning property, and holding municipal jobs. Twenty-seven of their farms may still be operating.
Artom Butenko · 7 min read
Afghan halal beside Serbian sausage beside Sudanese groceries beside Ethiopian injera. The most diverse neighbourhood in Metro Vancouver tells its story through food. Every storefront on this South Burnaby strip is somebody's first chapter in Canada.
Artom Butenko · 5 min read
A guide to outdoor hobbies in Burnaby — a fifty-year-old horsemen's club on the lake, a boat rental running since 1972, an archery range in the reeds, a miniature railway built by engineers who've been meeting since 1929. Spring is here. The city is wider than you think.
Artom Butenko · 6 min read
Canada's most influential punk scene wasn't born in gritty urban streets—it emerged from the split-level basements of Burnaby Mountain. How childhood friendships in a bedroom community produced D.O.A., The Subhumans, and the country's first indoor skatepark.
Artom Butenko · 17 min read
Black History in Burnaby: What the Archives Don't Tell Us — and What the Community Is Building Now
Brenda · 8 min read
Bridge Studios didn't just host TV shows—it built the foundation of BC's film industry. From The X-Files to Supernatural, this is where the Pacific Northwest learned to play other worlds.
Artom Butenko · 8 min read
Before the glass towers and the regional library system, there were small rooms, donated books, and volunteers who believed a city needs more than roads and schools—it needs stories.
Ilarion Bohatyrov · 7 min read