History
The area was first inhabited by the Coast Salish people, including the Kwikwetl'em people. The first European settlers began farming beside the Pitt River in 1859. A major impetus to the creation of a municipality was when the Canadian Pacific Railway moved its freight terminus from Vancouver to "Westminster Junction", where a spur line branched off to the Fraser River port of New Westminster in 1911. Port Coquitlam was first incorporated as a municipality on March 7, 1913. Port Coquitlam was originally mostly farmland; however, because of the densification and expansion of Vancouver, it has now become mostly suburban housing, especially in the northern and southwestern areas of the city. The economy has diversified with a variety of industrial and commercial developments, including metal fabrication, high technology industries, and transportation.
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“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)