When John and I have visitors arriving in Vancouver for the first time we try to accomplish two things: Get them out on the water, and get them up on the mountains. From both vantage points you can experience the wild nature of our region while looking out on our City of Glass.
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The trip from the airport, down Granville Street or Cambie Street, gives a nice first impression of our iconic city with towers and neon in front of a green mountain backdrop. There are a few other places you can drive to that will offer sweeping views of Vancouver if you’re looking for a quick photo-op. Thanks to Honda Canada I have visited some great scenic Vancouver viewpoints, here are some of my favourites:
Scenic Vancouver Viewpoints
Burnaby Mountain Park
How to get there: Part of the Burnaby Mountain Conversation Area. From the west, head east on Hastings all the way until you reach the Burnaby Mountain Parkway. From the east, take Gaglardi Way from Highway 1 all the way up to Burnaby Mountain Parkway. From their direction, turn north on Centennial Way and take the road all the way up until it loops at Horizons Restaurant and you’re there. Free parking is available.
Notes: Walk over to the Playground of the Gods (Kamui Mintara) and do a quick loop of the lookout area that faces Indian Arm. It’s beautiful during the day but pretty epic in the evening when the light from the city and the setting sun shines through these wooden poles.
Cypress Lookout
How to get there: Take Highway 1 through West Vancouver and use exit 8 for Cypress Bowl Road. Wind up the road until you see a pullout on your right. Free parking. Hop out and enjoy the panoramic views!
Notes: This spot is also called Barrett’s View, named after Dave Barrett who was the 26th Premier of British Columbia for three years between 1972 and 1975. As an MLA, he pressed the Minister of Forests to honour a commitment to preserve forest lands in Cypress Bowl. What followed was an eight year effort by Barrett to save Cypress Bowl from chainsaws and residential development.
How to get there: Jericho Beach, followed by Locarno and Spanish Banks, is the first of the three beaches along a sandy stretch in Point Grey. West 4th is your best bet to get out there, following it west until it splits north into Marine Drive then north again into Discovery Street where you’ll arrive at the Jericho Sailing Centre and surrounding parking lots.
Notes: On top of the views of the city, looking east from the beach, Jericho Beach has tennis courts, picnic tables, a swimming raft, a lifeguard on duty, playing fields, and more. There is a fee to park.
How to get there: Queen Elizabeth Park is located atop Vancouver’s highest point, boasting 52-hectares of green space and the stunning Bloedel Conservatory. Your best bet to get directly up to the viewpoint is to enter the park off Ontario where East 33rd becomes West 33rd, behind Nat Bailey Stadium. Then follow the signs for Seasons and the Conservatory, taking the road up to the top. Pay parking is in effect.
There are two viewpoints. The first is along the back side of the parking lot, looking out at Burnaby. The second is heading north, around the front of the Bloedel Conservatory.
Notes: Would you believe the lush and floral Queen Elizabeth Park used to be a quarry? It’s worth taking a walk down from the viewpoint to explore its beautiful gardens, old quarry waterfall, and brightly blooming grounds.
Follow Scott Graham, @WFLBC on Twitter, for a single day and you’ll discover two things. The first is that he takes awesome downtown building photos and the second is that he’s absolutely crazy about his adorable daughter.
This little angel is his inspiration for hosting fundraisers over the years, usually combining his passion for local beer with the support of a great cause. His next event is Casks for Surrey Memorial, which will take place at the end of August.
The event will have 2 casks of local craft beer, one from Big Ridge and another from Surrey’s Russell Brewing. There will be a silent auction and raffle, with prizes donated by local businesses including Big Ridge, Dead Frog Brewing, Famoso Pizzeria, The Joseph Richard Group, Tasty Indian Bistro, Starbucks, and more.
Graham’s daughter not only spent time in Surrey Memorial‘s NICU when she was born, but she also had a very close call earlier this summer and spent several days in their care. By attending Casks for Surrey Memorial, your donations and contributions will go to the Surrey Memorial Hospital Foundation and their continued work in the community.
Big Ridge Brewing runs a free roundtrip shuttle from King George SkyTrain and you can call (778) 938-7433 to schedule your pick-up. More information is available via the Facebook event listing.
This post has been contributed by Ben Hill, Communications Volunteer Stanley Park Ecology Society (“SPES”). I have been following SPES since I moved into the West End almost a decade ago and I have been a member for two years. I wanted to offer the team an opportunity to share their news, events, and work so I have created “SPES Saturday” where they contribute and share stories with my audience once a month.
Stanley Park’s Changing Shores
Restoring the Beaver Creek estuary
Stanley Park’s spectacular seawall no doubt influenced TripAdvisor’s June 2014 decision to name it the world’s best urban park. The scenic 8.8 km stroll is one of the best ways for both locals and tourists to explore the Park perimeter and take in the stunning views of downtown and the North Shore. But the seawall hasn’t had the same positive impact on the marine life at its edge.
Fish access to Beaver Creek is limited by the seawall. (SPES photo)
A good example of this can be found where Beaver Creek meets Burrard Inlet. Before seawall construction began in 1917, this site was home to a small estuary supporting an array of aquatic life. Now the stream is no more than a trickle and the intertidal habitat is much less varied. But Stanley Park Ecology Society (SPES) is working towards rehabilitating this.
This fall and winter, SPES is embarking on a major project to return this part of the Park to a semblance of its former function while enhancing salmonid access to Beaver Creek. Before restoration work begins, SPES has been and will be conducting surveys to record the site’s current intertidal life. This baseline data will help us measure the ultimate success of the restoration taking place over the next few months and the years following. Once completed, we aim to see more animal and plant life, particularly sea grasses, which provide great habitat for everything from juvenile fish to crabs to tiny insects.
Surveys began this past July as our Conservation Technician and a team of SPES volunteers waded out into the ocean with a seine net to document the fish found here. At low tide the next day, the team surveyed the exposed beach to record the plants and animals living on the shore.
(L) SPES staff and volunteers conduct a beach seine at the Beaver Creek outfall.
(M) SPES staff identify fish netted in the beach seine.
(R) A Pacific staghorn sculpin is identified and released. (SPES photos)
The seine netted a variety of fish, which is a good sign for the health of this shallow water area. They included Pacific staghorn sculpin, starry flounder, surf smelt and – best of all – two young salmonids (the collective scientific name for both salmon and trout).
Since Beaver Creek is an historic salmon bearing stream, it is heartening to see young salmonids taking advantage of the inshore habitat. The shore survey turned up the familiar bull kelp, sea lettuce seaweed, limpets and barnacles along with the often overlooked creatures including marine worms, purple shore crabs and other assorted arthropods.
SPES Conservation Technician Brian Titaro conducts a shore survey at the Beaver Creek outfall. (SPES photo)
With the restoration of Beaver Creek’s estuarine habitat, we’re one step closer to increasing the diversity of life along Stanley Park’s shores while reviving the original natural landscape of this beloved urban park.
Generous supporters of the project include: EcoAction (Environment Canada), Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation, HSBC Bank of Canada, Recreational Fisheries Conservation Partnerships Program (Fisheries & Oceans Canada), Pacific Salmon Foundation.
Information on SPES’ other habitat restoration activities in Stanley Park can be found online.
It’s been an incredible summer in Vancouver this year and it still isn’t over. In a single day you can hike, climb, paddle, swim, and golf — and I did just that last week. Our home is such a great place for adventure or a sip on the patio, appreciating the arts or for lounging at the beach. Pictures say a thousand words but I really love seeing how visitors and locals alike put together video postcards for this fair town, with different angles, cameras, music, and effects. Please enjoy this roundup of Vancouver summer videos:
Mark Kleiner could write the definitive guide to being in a indie glam rock band in Vancouver in the 1990s and it would be something far more insightful and entertaining than a BuzzFeed-esque mega list with animated GIFs — although his bright orange Wally’s Burgers t-shirt would have to make an appearance.
His band, the Mark Kleiner Power Trio, is playing its first live show in 12 years in Vancouver next week. Along with drummer Kurt Dahle (New Pornographers, Neko Case) and bassist Pete Mills (Flash Bastard), the trio will rock a selection from their 2002 album Love to Night, some new songs, and tunes from Mark’s 90s Vancouver-based bands Jungle and Sister Lovers.
This week I called Mark in his hometown of Biggar, Saskatchewan, a small town of about 2,500 people outside of Saskatoon where he has been serving two congregations as an ordained Lutheran minister for the last three years serving PALS (Presbyterians Anglicans & Lutherans in Service). We talked about his career, music, many facets of living in Vancouver, and coffee.
“I still love rock and roll, and I probably do more music now than I ever did.” Mark, who describes himself as a father, minister, and musician, says that all of these roles cross-pollinate. “I love music and I had a fallow period of close to a decade and you know, which is actually been nice because now I just have a different relationship to it and I’m just really excited to share the new material.”
While he hasn’t yet been working in the studio, he has been writing and recording will come next. “I’ve just been raising kids, getting a degree, and doing a lot of other things. I’m looking forward to getting back at ‘er and sharing the music.”
“Mavis Staples said people talk about ‘the devil’s music’. She said ‘the devil doesn’t have any music’ and I like that.”
It seems like a pretty big leap to go from opening for bands like Mötley Crüe to leading church service every Sunday but Mark finds parallels in his professions, that both involve his unwavering love of music.
“It’s been very freeing for me to not only accept but to celebrate music. I love the conversation that happens between the church and culture, and that happens in music. If you look at rock and roll — that’s what I grew up on with like 50s rock and roll, all that stuff — that came out of gospel and it came out of a conversation between gospel and the blues. I’m fascinated by that conversation and it doesn’t mean that things are always an easy fit.”
Mark credits the power of music as being a connective force for him over the years, allowing him to stay in touch with friends he met in Vancouver when he made his way out here in the 1990s, and even leading to our conversation.
When he gets back to town within the next few days he has plans to meet up with old colleagues and to visit his favourite coffee shop, Gene Cafe on Main Street, for which he’s even writing a song called Slang for Gene. “Gene is where time gets lost and the day gets found, and I love being there.”
“I’m on the orange handle now cause I really blew out my system on East Vancouver coffee back in the day so now I have to resort to decaf, and they have the best decaf Americano in the world at Gene.” He told me he knew their secret ingredient, revealing that it’s probably caffeine. He laughed and shared a great Vancouver coffee story:
Another Vancouver institution close to Mark’s heart is Wally’s Burgers, which used to be on Kingsway as well as a lineup of independent record stores like Red Cat and Zulu. Other than that he’ll check out their venue, Fox Cabaret, and find a place where he can read some local zines.
“Vancouver is such a physically attractive place that it attracts so many people, but also people who are running and looking for something else. It bears a lot of the advantages and challenges of being that place.”
“I share a lot of artists’ concerns with how global capital is really making Vancouver’s affordability out of reach for so many people and yet when I go back there’s a resiliency that I witness in the city. People do find ways to endure and I just really hope that the arts community in Vancouver can continue, because it is threatened by the cost of living. The health of a city is really measured by what would be called its biodiversity in nature but in this city it’s more like economic diversity. Having people of many different earning levels being able to co-exist and to live in the same postal code.”
While Commercial Drive and Mount Pleasant tend to be his epicentre on every visit, Mark also wants to stop by Cherry Grove in Coal Harbour, which is said to be the world’s first AIDS memorial. Back in 1985, three cherry tree were planted across from the Vancouver Rowing Club to commemorate friends and family who died of AIDS. Mark informed me that the Vancouver Park Board recently approved a plaque to be installed about this memorial for which he’s also written a song.
Cherry Grove on the left of this image. Photo credit: Rikki / Julius Reque on Flickr
Although only Kurt lives in Vancouver now, Mark says this is the city that spawned them as a group. “As of late I’ve really started to write more literally about [Vancouver] and about how it kind of lives in my heart. I’m really excited to come back, reconnect with Kurt and Pete, and play the show and we’ll do some old songs, we’ll do some new songs, we’ll do some covers, basically we’ll celebrate what we do and hopefully raise some money for refugee relief at the same time.”
Mark Kleiner Power Trio at Fox Cabaret in Vancouver
The Mark Kleiner Power Trio will play the Fox Cabaret (2321 Main Street) on Friday, August 15, 2014 with guests Zed Dreppelin at 7:00pm (early show). Tickets are available for $12 in advance from Red Cat and Zulu Records. All proceeds from the evening go towards Syrian refugee relief.
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This post has been contributed by Ben Hill, Communications Volunteer 
