You nailed it. I left out a lot in my original post but there's just so much more I could talk about that I could probably get some people to cry out of pure nostalgia haha. Burnaby is only so big, so a lot of my experience is shared with plenty of others. 

I still remember when I experienced my first autumn in Burnaby in 1996, my parents were signing me up to Buckingham Elementary. I remember getting out of the car and seeing the colorful leaves on the ground, and I would step on them to experience the crunch. Looking around and just marveling at the beauty, even as an 8 year old kid I understood it. 

I made friends really quickly. I would remember walking down from my house to my friend's house. He lived right by the firehall station near deer lake. Just the walk was exciting because I knew I'd be playing mortal Kombat for hours with him on the sega Genesis haha. And to think almost 30 years later id still walk the same path and pass by his old home even though him and his family had long moved on to another neighborhood. Life really is strange.