Free with your ticket guidebook on Tour Day

Guided neighbourhood walking tours

11:30 AM | 1:00 PM | 2:30 PM | 4:00 PM

Sign up ahead of time for any one of the four tour times at the NWHPS Welcome Centre at Tipperary Park on Tour Day (limit: 30 Homes Tour ticket holders per tour). Then meet at the Queens Avenue entrance to Tipperary Park at the foot of Fourth Street 10 minutes before your tour time.

Save 45 minutes to an hour of your Tour Day for a fascinating sidewalk tour & talk about nearly 20 historic homes within four square blocks. Filled with anecdotes about grand homes, modest homes and split homes; New  Westminster’s storied beginnings; and the Royal Engineers’ grand yet precise design of Queen’s Park in 1859; you’ll find that it’s not your regular tour!

With the advent of the Gold Rush in 1858 and American pressure to push its border up from the 49th to the 54’40 parallel to join Alaska, the main administrative center at Fort Langley needed to move to the north side of the Fraser, sit high on a hill and be easily defensible. New Westminster was ideal. The Royal Engineers got to work laying out the new city. With the spot chosen, what would we name it? Initially the Sappers wanted to name it Queensborough, but our friends over in Victoria weren’t too keen – for obvious reasons. The early settlers couldn’t agree on a new name either. So what do you do when you can’t agree with your siblings? You go to Mom – and they went to the greatest mom of them all, Queen Victoria – who chose to name our city New Westminster.

Now what’s that about splitting houses? Check out our Neighbourhood Guided Walking Tour blog at:

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