About Sapperton

Sapperton is a neighbourhood in the City of New Westminster, located in Greater Vancouver on Canada's west coast.

Long before European contact, Sto:lo nations set up summer fishing camps near the spot where the Brunette River feeds into the Fraser River. In 1859 the British Royal Engineers established a camp slightly to the west of that spot.

Royal Engineers are nicknamed 'sappers', therefore the name 'Sapper's Town' was used to describe the original location of their camp. That name was later used for the neighbourhood which emerged in the same area.

About SappertonHistory.ca

This is a prototype website that is testing new technologies for developing online histories and web-based archival collections. The goal is to eventually develop a user-driven, online history and digital archive collection for the neighbourhood of Sapperton.

This project is sponsored by Peter Van Garderen, a Sapperton resident. Peter's New Westminster-based company, Artefactual Systems Inc., specializes in open source technologies for archival institutions.

This website is run using ICA-AtoM which is open source archival description software that Artefactual Systems is developing on behalf of the International Council on Archives.