Burnaby
— — the city the mountain looks down on.
Not only on a wall.
“A city of roughly a quarter million people sitting between Vancouver and the Fraser River. Simon Fraser University crowns Burnaby Mountain at the north end; Deer Lake and Burnaby Lake hold the middle quiet. The SkyTrain glides through Metrotown on its way east. A place that is both suburb and centre, depending on which part of the day you ask.
Burnaby, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Burnaby is the third-largest city in British Columbia, with a population of about 250,000 in 2021. It lies immediately east of Vancouver in the Metro Vancouver regional district, bordered by Burrard Inlet to the north, the Fraser River to the south, and the cities of New Westminster and Coquitlam to the east. The land sits on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples. Burnaby was incorporated as a district municipality in 1892 and became a city a century later, in 1992.
Burnaby Mountain rises 370 metres above the harbour at the city's north edge, with Simon Fraser University built across its summit. The campus, designed by Arthur Erickson and Geoffrey Massey and opened in 1965, was laid out as a single horizontal complex along the ridgeline. On a clear day the view runs from the North Shore mountains to the mouth of the Fraser. The Kamui Mintara totem grouping, gifted by sister city Kushiro in 1990, stands above the harbour view.
Most visitors arrive via the SkyTrain Expo or Millennium Lines, which cross the city east-west through Metrotown and Brentwood. Burnaby Lake Regional Park offers a quiet ten-kilometre loop around its shoreline; Deer Lake hosts the Burnaby Art Gallery and the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. The Burnaby Village Museum, a recreated 1920s streetscape, opens free of charge from May through September. Burnaby Mountain Park, with its view of Indian Arm, sits at the north end of the city above Simon Fraser.