Hindu Temple Burnaby

Inaugurated on 15 May 1972, Hindu Temple Burnaby — formally registered as the Hindu Cultural Society and Community Centre of B.C. — is among the oldest Hindu temples in Canada, predating most of the larger Toronto-area mandirs by well over a decade. It began modestly, founded by a small group of Hindu families in a prayer hall in northern Burnaby, at a time when Metro Vancouver’s Hindu community was still small; a separate secondary source on Vancouver’s South Asian community notes that Indo-Fijian Canadians established “the first Hindu temple in Vancouver” in 1972, the same year as this temple’s own stated founding, though the two accounts have not been directly cross-confirmed as describing the same institution.

As the congregation grew over the following decades, the society undertook a major rebuilding project, opening a new 31,000-square-foot temple building at 5420 Marine Drive in Burnaby in January 2018, with capacity for roughly 1,600 worshippers. Beyond daily worship, the temple today runs the Ganesh Hindi School, a seniors’ support centre, yoga and health programs, and regular community meal (Preeti Bhojan) services, functioning as a broad Hindu cultural and religious hub for Greater Vancouver rather than a single-deity shrine.