Garry Point Park: A Visitor's Guide

Garry Point is the park at the end of everything. Steveston runs west along the water until the houses stop, the land opens out into a couple of dozen hectares of grass, gravel, driftwood and wind, and then the Strait of Georgia takes over. I am out there most weeks, usually at the wrong end of a bike ride, usually with a dog pulling hard toward the beach roses.

It is the best sunset in Richmond BC and one of the worst places in the city to be underdressed. Both of those facts should shape your visit.

Where it is and how to get in

Take Moncton Street west through the village until the road bends toward the water, and follow it to the end. There is a large lot at the entrance, and on a sunny summer weekend it is full by early afternoon with cars idling in the aisles waiting for someone to leave. That is the single most avoidable mistake here. Come before eleven or come after five and it stops being a problem at all.

The better approach is not to drive. Garry Point is a ten-minute walk from the Steveston waterfront, so park once in the village, eat there, and walk out. On a bike, the West Dyke Trail delivers you straight into the north side of the park without any of that.

Facilities are basic and seasonal. There is a concession near the entrance, and washrooms I would not build a plan around outside the warm months. There is no shade worth the name anywhere in the park. That last one catches people every July.

What is actually in it

Less than you would expect, and that is the appeal. Garry Point is mostly open ground: rough grass, gravel paths, an enormous amount of sky, the mouth of the Fraser's south arm on one side and open water on the other. Freighters sit at anchor out on the flats. Tugs work past with log booms behind them. Planes come down toward Sea Island in a slow line to the north. On a clear day the mountains stack up behind Vancouver to your right and you can make out the shape of Vancouver Island straight ahead.

Kuno Garden

The Japanese garden near the middle of the park is small and easy to walk past, and it is the part of Garry Point I would be most annoyed to hear you skipped. It is named for Kuno Gihei, whose letters home to Wakayama are credited with bringing a generation of Japanese fishing families to Steveston. There is a pond, a stone lantern, careful planting, and just enough hedge to take the edge off the wind. Five minutes to walk it. Worth ten of sitting still in it.

The cherry trees at this end of the park are why Garry Point gets busy in spring. Bloom timing moves by a week or two every year depending on the winter, so I would not book a weekend around it in advance. Watch the trees, then go on a weekday morning when you can actually see them instead of the backs of other people's phones.

The fishermen's memorial

Out near the water there is a tall metal sculpture shaped like a net-mending needle, standing on its own with nothing around it. It commemorates the people from this harbour who did not come back, and the names are the part that lands. Steveston is a working port, not a themed one, and this is the spot where that stops being an abstraction. Read it before you go and take pictures of the sunset, not after.

The beach, so called

There is a shoreline and it is not a swimming beach. Expect cobble, sand in patches, a great deal of driftwood, and mudflats when the tide is out. It is excellent for beachcombing, for throwing sticks, and for letting children get comprehensively filthy. It is not somewhere you swim, partly because it is the mouth of a major river and partly because the current out there is not interested in your opinion.

The beach roses along the dune edge bloom through the early summer, and for about three weeks they smell like the entire park.

The wind, and the kites

Garry Point has essentially no shelter. The prevailing wind comes in off the water from the west, which is why the park is a kite-flying institution and why I have watched more than one picnic blanket become a sail. Bring a windbreaker in August. In February bring the actual coat, a hat, and low expectations about your ears.

It matters for photography too. Long exposures need something to brace against out here, and the grass is not going to hold still for you.

The dyke trail

Garry Point is the southern end of the West Dyke Trail, which runs about five and a half kilometres north along Sturgeon Bank to Terra Nova. Flat, gravel, wide, marsh on one side the whole way. This is the ride I do most mornings, and I have learned two things. The wind is usually westerly, so head into it first and let it push you home. And the birding is far better than the trail's plain appearance suggests. Herons all year, snow geese in the cold months, raptors working low over the grass. Carry binoculars in November and you will not resent the weight.

Going the other way, the path takes you back along the harbour to the village, past the cannery, and eventually out to Britannia Shipyards. Garry Point to Britannia and back is a solid hour and a half at a walking pace with stops.

Eating around it

There is a concession at the entrance in season, Garry Point Grill & Fish 'N' Chips, and it does exactly the job you need it to do when you are already out there and the alternative is getting in the car. For anything more considered you are walking back into the village.

My usual order of operations is Pajo's Fish & Chips down on the harbour float if the weather is good and I can live with the lineup, then something cold on the walk out. Sweet Surrender Gelato and Timothy's Frozen Yogurt both sit in the village and both get used, depending on who I am with and how strongly they argue. Sally's Homemade Ice Cream is the third in that rotation. If I am taking family somewhere with a tablecloth and a view, Blue Canoe Waterfront Restaurant upstairs on the waterfront handles it and is a short walk from the park. And I do not come out this way without stopping at Steveston Bakery on the way home, because bread is the only souvenir worth carrying.

If you want the short version: park in the village, not at the park. Eat before you walk out. Take a layer you think is unnecessary. Give yourself an hour on the grass with nothing planned.

When to go

Sunset, obviously, but the good sunsets are not the summer ones. In July the sun goes down late and far to the northwest and the crowd is substantial. In October and November it drops over the open water early, the sky does something ridiculous roughly one evening in four, and there might be nine other people in the whole park. That is my Garry Point.

Second best is a clear cold morning in January when the air is sharp enough to show you the whole Island and there is still frost on the grass. Bring a thermos, because I would not count on the concession in January. Expect to have the place more or less to yourself, which in a city of two hundred thousand people is not a small thing to be able to say about anywhere.