Where to Celebrate Canada Day in Richmond BC

In Richmond, July 1 means Steveston

Canada Day is not something I go to. It arrives at my door. It starts with road-closure signs going up, then a marching band warming up somewhere I cannot see, then the smell of salmon on charcoal drifting over the rooftops by mid-morning. By eleven my street is a parking lot and Biscuit has decided to spend the day under the bed.

If you want the short version: Richmond BC does Canada Day in one place, and that place is the Steveston Salmon Festival, down at the southwest corner of the city where the Fraser meets the Strait. The rest of Richmond is comparatively quiet, which is either a problem or the whole point depending on how you feel about crowds. I will cover both.

What the Salmon Festival actually is

It is a community festival, not a civic spectacle, and it has been running a very long time. That lineage shows in the format. It is a single day, it centres on Steveston Park and the community centre grounds just up from the village, and it spills down Moncton Street and out toward the waterfront.

The core of it is the salmon barbecue, which is exactly what it sounds like: volunteers cooking salmon over open fire pits in enormous quantity, sold by the plate. There is a parade in the morning along Moncton. There is a foot race earlier still, with a short course for kids and families and a longer one for people who run on purpose. There is a food fair, a kids midway with rides and games in the park, craft and horticultural displays, and cultural performances including martial arts and Japanese community programming that reflects Steveston's history as a fishing village built substantially by Japanese Canadian families.

The schedule shifts a little each year and the organisers publish it ahead of time. I am not going to give you start times, because the one year I confidently told a friend when the parade began, I was wrong by forty minutes and she still brings it up.

The salmon barbecue, and why you should get in line early

This is the part people travel for and it is the part that runs out. The volunteers cook a finite amount of fish. Tickets go on sale, the line forms well before serving begins, and on a good-weather year the whole thing is done before the afternoon has properly finished. If eating barbecued salmon is your actual goal for the day, treat everything else as secondary. Get in line, accept that you are standing in it, and bring somebody to talk to.

Bring cash, too. Some of the festival takes cards and some of it does not, and the queue is not where you want to discover which is which.

The parade

The parade runs along Moncton Street in the morning and it is a proper small-town parade, which I mean as a compliment. Fire trucks. Community groups. Dance schools. Scouts. Somebody's restored tractor. Politicians waving from convertibles at people who are mostly there for the candy being thrown to the kids on the curb.

Curb space along Moncton goes early. Families who have been doing this for twenty years turn up with folding chairs long before anything starts, and they are not being unreasonable, they are being correct. If you arrive fifteen minutes before the parade you will watch it from behind three rows of shoulders. Go early or stand further along the route where the crowd thins out.

Read this part before you get in the car

Do not drive into Steveston village on July 1. I am not being precious about it. The streets close, the residential blocks fill by mid-morning, and people spend a genuinely miserable hour circling to a parking spot that does not exist.

The alternatives are all better. Bike in along the West Dyke Trail or the south dyke, which is what I would do and what a lot of people already do; there is bike parking near the village and the ride itself is flat and lovely. Take the bus, which runs into Steveston from the Canada Line at Brighouse. Or drive but park well north of the village, up toward Steveston Highway, and walk the last fifteen minutes down. That walk is not a punishment. It is a pleasant stroll past gardens and it saves you the worst hour of your day.

If you are coming with someone who cannot walk far, come very early, before the closures tighten, and be prepared to wait out the afternoon rather than try to leave at peak.

How the day tends to unfold

Early morning is the best-kept part of the whole thing. Before eight the village is calm, the light is low on the water, and you can get a coffee and a seat like a normal person. The race goes off, the parade follows, and by late morning the park is filling.

Midday through mid-afternoon is peak everything: the barbecue line, the midway, the food stalls, the heat if the weather cooperates. Late afternoon it starts to loosen. By early evening the festival packs up and the village exhales, and this is my favourite hour of Canada Day in Steveston every single year. The crowd thins, the patios fill with people who have been on their feet for eight hours, and the light on the Fraser does what it does in early July.

Eating around the festival

The festival has its own food, but the village restaurants are all open and all slammed, so time it deliberately. Fish and chips is the obvious craving down there and the obvious bottleneck. Pajo's Fish & Chips on the wharf has a lineup on a normal Tuesday in July, so on Canada Day it is a commitment. Dave's Fish & Chips has the same problem in a different shape. My workaround is to eat at eleven or after three, or to walk out to Garry Point Grill & Fish N Chips, which sits far enough from the middle of it that the queue behaves better and you can eat on the grass looking at the water.

For breakfast before the parade, Steveston Bakery is the right call if you want something in your hand while you stake out a curb. Diplomat Bakery is the other option and both will be busy, but bakery-busy moves quickly.

Afterward, the two things my family has done for years: something cold, then something with a chair. Timothy's Frozen Yogurt and Screamers Soft Serve & Treats both handle the cold part, and the line for both is long but honest. For the chair, Britannia Brewing Steveston or O'Hare's GastroPub & Liquor Store once the festival has broken down, around when your feet start filing complaints.

If crowds are not your thing

Plenty of people in Richmond spend July 1 deliberately avoiding all of the above, and I have had some of my best Canada Days that way. Garry Point Park is technically right there, but the far end of it, out past the memorial, holds its own even on the busiest day of the year, and the wind off the Strait keeps it feeling open. The West Dyke Trail north of Garry Point empties out fast once you are twenty minutes along it. Terra Nova is calm. Iona Beach, out past the airport, is the quietest shoreline in the city on any day including this one.

One note so nobody plans their evening around it: fireworks are not really Richmond's tradition on July 1. People who want a big display tend to drive or ride into Vancouver for it. I would treat any fireworks in Richmond as a bonus rather than the anchor of your night.

What I would actually do

Bike in early along the dyke. Coffee and something from the bakery. Watch the parade from the thinner end of Moncton where you can actually see. Get in the salmon line before it looks like it needs getting into. Eat on the grass. Leave the village by mid-afternoon, ride the dyke home, and come back at seven when it is quiet and the patios have seats again. That is the whole plan and it has worked for years.