"Popular thinking has given the impression that there was not much going on here, except for the well-to-do from New Westminster and Vancouver, ... who camped in the summers at Boundary Bay, beginning in the late 1880s. We know, however, that land was pre-empted there as early as the 1860s, or maybe the 1870s, although these individuals were mostly absentee owners...

What is important to note in an exploration of the history of Tsawwassen is that there were individuals and families permanently settled here [in the 1800s], with the intention of making a home and a living. Granted, they had to clear the land first, as did settlers almost everywhere else in Canada. Sometimes they did the clearing themselves ...Others could afford to hire someone to do the work ...

And when enough individuals and families had come to the area, they brought with them the need for the makings of a community -- roads, schools, churches -- and all before 1900. Those are the people and times that this history is most interested in discovering, as well as those people who were resident here in the first half of the 20th century. The rest of us, who came later, are standing on their shoulders."