New Westminster, British Columbia

New Westminster was a Census Division in British Columbia as recorded in the 1881–1921 Canadian census series. It comprised the constituent Census Subdivisions listed below for each year it appears in the published volumes. BC 1921 federal electoral district named after New Westminster; not coterminous with city.

Population trajectory across census years

Aggregate population summed from constituent Census Subdivisions in this Census Division each year. Where the published 1851–1921 census volumes report a CD-level total, the figures should match within rounding; for cities split into wards, the per-CSD sum may diverge from the published CD aggregate.

Constituent Census Subdivisions by year

1881 census

• Cassiar, Northern Interior (pop 3,566)
• Coast of main land (pop 6,208)
• North (pop 4,003)
• South (pop 1,640)

1891 census

• New Westminster (pop 21,839)
• New Westminster, City—Cité wd (pop 6,678)
• Vancouver, City—Cité wd (pop 13,709)

1901 census

• Chilliwak wd (pop 3,680)
• Delta wd (pop 5,074)
• Dewdney (pop 3,767)
• New Westminster, City—Cité wd (pop 6,499)
• Richmond (pop 4,802)

1911 census

• Chilliwack wd (pop 7,515)
• Chilliwack c wd (pop 1,657)
• Delta wd (pop 8,651)
• Dewdney (pop 11,315)
• Hastings townsite, Vancouver c pt
• Lot 301, Vancouver c pt (pop 2,784)
• New Westminster, C wd (pop 13,199)
• Richmond (pt) wd
• Yale pt wd

1921 census

• Delta wd (pop 13,633)
• Indian reserves (pop 146)
• New Westminster, C wd (pop 14,495)
• Richmond (pt) wd (pop 17,708)

Lineage

Boundary changes connecting this Census Division to others in the 1851–1921 series, derived from spatial polygon overlap across census-year boundary files.

• Split off from British Colombia in 1881.
• Merged into Burrard (1901) in 1901.
• Split into Fraser Valley in 1921.

Identifiers

• HGIS Canada CD ID: CD_BC_New_Westminster

Sources

Census Division boundaries derived from the Canadian Peoples / TCP 1851–1921 Census Subdivision boundary files (NAME_CD_<year> attributes, hosted at the HGIS Lab, University of Saskatchewan). Constituent-CSD memberships use the P10_falls_within CIDOC-CRM relationships emitted by the spatial CIDOC builder. Wikidata grounding for Census Divisions performed via the HGIS Canada Knowledge Graph project's MCP-assisted disambiguation pipeline. See the About / Methodology page for the full data pipeline.