A BRIEF HISTORY OF UBC’S CAMPUS Hear that construction? It’s a sign that UBC’s campus is evolving — something that it has been doing since Point Grey was selected as the site of the UBC campus in 1910, and even before then. UBC is located on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, particularly the Musqueam First Nation. The land also belonged to the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. In other words, no treaty was ever signed between the First Nations and the government that officially designated the land as belonging to the province. Today, we attempt to reconcile this theft with a land acknowledgement before all major events to
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remind us of whose land we are on. Point Grey was initially established by the British government as a colonial admiralty reserve, presumably for strategic reasons related to protecting English Bay and the Fraser River estuary. It was selected as the site of the UBC campus about half a century later, but it was not the first campus location for the university. The formal construction of permanent buildings officially began in 1914, though construction was halted with the outbreak of World War I with only land-clearance and the frame of the Science Building completed. The university moved into the buildings of the former McGill University College
