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Barnet, on Burrard Inlet, was established as a sawmill town when the North Pacific Lumber Company opened the Barnet Mill in 1889. One of Burnaby area’s first industrial developments, the mill was among the largest in the British Empire. The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was extended into the area in the 1880s, and Barnet developed into a company town with a general store, school, post office, and community hall. In 1909, the mill burned down and was immediately rebuilt.

Because of the site’s isolation, the company provided houses for families and bunkhouses for single workers; in 1909, the bunkhouses were moved from the mill site to the village.

The mill closed in 1929 and later reopened as the Barnet Lumber Company, which adopted a "whites only" labour policy. Many Japanese Canadians, therefore, began working for smaller sawmills or for the Nichols Chemical Plant (later General Chemicals), which opened in 1905. A small Japanese Canadian community developed east of Barnet. The Nichols Chemical Plant built a two-story apartment known as the bunkhouse, where four or five Japanese Canadian families, including the Yasui, Kajima, and Kokuryo families, lived. At least one Japanese Canadian resident, August Neimi, worked on the Canadian Pacific Railway section crew at Barnet.