Metro Vancouver Parks: Queen’s Park
byJumping between mud puddles and crunchy multicoloured leaves on the forest floor, Fall is my favourite time of year to enjoy the trails and scenery of our local parks. It’s not too late to leaf peep around Metro Vancouver as lush green leaves slowly turn to fiery orange on rain-soaked branches. One of the best places to enjoy the season is Queen’s Park in New Westminster.
Getting Here
Coming from the Valley, take the Pattullo Bridge’s Royal Ave exit. Loop around and then turn right on 1st Street then right on 3rd Avenue. From Vancouver, you can take the Canada Way exit, following it all the way down to McBride and turning right into the park before you get to the Pattullo exit. You can also come up from Queensborough or Richmond via Royal Avenue, turning left at 6th then right on 3rd Avenue. By transit, you can take a 155 bus from the Braid Millenium Line SkyTrain station.
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Features
Queen’s Park has one of the best adventure playgrounds around and when I was little, we would play hide and seek with wild bunnies (or those that escaped the childrens farmyard). Within the park’s 75 acres there are sports fields for soccer, rugby (with uprights) or baseball, a waterpark, washrooms, rose gardens, a bandshell, tennis courts, and the arena (home of the Salmonbellies). There are also picnic shelters and a concession stand.
The trail network connects to the New Westminster Greenway system. I found an interesting self-guided walking tour outlined on this site that includes a stop at Irving House, the arena, and the park.
The neighbourhood around Queen’s Park (on the West side) is a great place to view Christmas lights during the holiday season as well. There are some beautiful homes that are always lit up in style.
1918 – Lovers Walk, Queen’s Park, New Westminster
Photographer: W. Brown, Archives Accession Number: 3165
History
New Westminster Parks & Recreation was established in 1861, while the city was still the capital of BC (and five years before they moved the capital to Victoria). Queen’s Park was established in 1886, the same year that Vancouver was incorporated as a city.
Should you have a suggestion for the next Metro Vancouver or Fraser Valley park profile, please feel free to leave a note in the comments. I also accept guest posts should you wish to contribute your own piece about a local park.
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Don’t forget that Queen’s Park also has the Bernie Legge Theatre, home of the Vagabond Players!
http://www.vagabondplayers.ca
Great place for a picnic. There are nice tall trees everywhere which provide shade on hot summer days
I loved Queen’s Park (JT and I walked it last year). A lot of fun 🙂
Thanks for doing a post on Queen’s Park. I was born and raised in New West, and while I’m a real live Vancouverite now, through and through, New West will always be home.
And, you haven’t experienced fog until you’ve experienced a Queen’s Park fog. There was one week in highschool where the fog rolled in from the river, through the park, and covered the entire city for a whole week. It made it into the yearbook for that school year! It didn’t lift once. Eerie. And dangerous!
This is my fave park…
We went there on weekends as a kid and we would zoom across the trees on the zipline? haha. To be a kid again!
Queen’s Park is great! For those who like to wander, I’d suggest walking over to Tipperary Park as well. Queen’s is great with kids, but Tipperary has a lovely quiet beauty with its fish pond and twisting paths. Tipperary Park is right next to New Westminster’s City Hall, which is a short walk from Queen’s Park through a neighbourhood of gorgeous heritage homes. In the summertime, Tipperary is also home to the Thursday afternoon Farmers Market in New West.
Living in New West we have spent a lot of time in Queen’s park, I actually got married in the rose garden there.
Our favourite parks, other than Queen’s park are bear creek park in surrey (great playground, waterpark not just train and mini golf) and blue mountain park in coquitlam. My son used to love blue mountain for it wonderful little bike paths.
Another park we have visited lot in summer at the weekends in confederation park in Burnaby. Its not a big park, however is great to stop here before or after a train ride at the burnaby central railway. The trains are actually miniature steam trains and for only a couple of dollars a ride its a cheap fun day out.