At incorporation, the municipality's citizens unanimously chose to name it after the legislator, speaker, Freemason and explorer Robert Burnaby, who had been private secretary to Colonel Richard Moody, the first land commissioner for the Colony of British Columbia, in the mid-19th century [REF].
In the first 30 to 40 years after its incorporation, the growth of Burnaby was influenced by its location between the expanding urban centres of Vancouver and New Westminster.