Minoru Park and the Richmond Cultural Centre

Minoru is the park I have known longest. Growing up in Broadmoor, this is where we ended up on any afternoon that needed filling. My mother would park at the Cultural Centre, hand us over to the library, and go do the rest of her errands at Richmond Centre across the road. I read most of a childhood in that building.

It is still, by a wide margin, the most useful park in Richmond BC. Not the prettiest. Garry Point has the sunset and Terra Nova has the room to breathe. But Minoru has a library, an art gallery, a pool, ice, a track, ponds full of ducks, a chapel and cherry trees, with a shopping mall and the end of the Canada Line directly across the street, all inside a ten minute walk. Nowhere else in this city stacks that much on top of itself.

The lakes, which are ponds

Everyone calls them Minoru Lakes. They are ponds, connected, with a bridge, a fountain running in the warm months, willows leaning over the water and a permanent population of ducks and extremely confident geese. Walking the loop slowly takes about fifteen minutes. This is the flattest and most forgiving green space in the middle of the city, which is why the path carries every possible kind of person: strollers, walkers with canes, tai chi groups early, teenagers with bubble tea, and wedding parties in formalwear cutting across the grass toward the chapel.

Spring is the good season here. The cherry trees come out and the park gets photographed to death for about ten days. Go on a weekday morning if you want any of it to yourself. Do not feed the geese, partly because you should not and partly because they will remember you and they will tell the others.

The Cultural Centre is the real reason to come

The Cultural Centre off Minoru Gate is one building holding several things, and most people who use it only ever use one of them.

The main branch of the Richmond Public Library is in there, and it is a serious library rather than a token one, with a large Chinese language collection and enough seating that you can actually get work done on a rainy Tuesday. The children's programming runs constantly and it fills, so register ahead instead of turning up hopefully with a toddler and discovering the session went days ago.

The Richmond Art Gallery is in the same complex. It shows contemporary work, the shows turn over through the year, and it is small enough that half an hour counts as a proper visit rather than a rushed survey. I go partly because it is easy to fit in around everything else in the building and partly because it is quiet in a way that almost nothing in central Richmond is quiet. I have never once had to queue. When there is something family-oriented up, there is usually a hands-on component for kids attached to it.

The same building runs arts studios, where the city teaches pottery, drawing and printmaking to all ages, and a media lab where members can book time on editing gear and recording space. That last one is genuinely underused. I know two people who cut podcasts and short video there, and if you have a project and no equipment, go ask at the desk rather than assuming it is not for you.

The heritage and museum displays in the complex have shifted around over the years, so I am not going to tell you exactly what is where. Ask when you are inside. The building is not hard to read.

The chapel and the cenotaph

The little white chapel near the middle of the park is an old church that was moved here, and it is one of the most photographed buildings in Richmond, almost entirely by wedding parties. If you turn up on a Saturday in June there will be someone getting married, and the decent thing is to walk around rather than through.

The cenotaph is close by, and that is where the city gathers on Remembrance Day. The crowd is bigger than newcomers expect. If you are going, walk in or take the Canada Line, because the parking that morning is hopeless and you will spend the ceremony looking for a spot.

The sports side of the park

The other half of Minoru is athletic. There is an outdoor track with a grandstand, open to anyone when it is not booked, which is where I do the two or three sessions a year in which I pretend to be a runner. Around it are ball diamonds, sports fields, lawn bowling greens and the arenas, which have supplied Richmond's minor hockey and figure skating for as long as I can remember and smell exactly the way an arena should.

The newer aquatic and active living centre on the Granville Avenue side replaced a much older pool and is a serious upgrade, with lane swimming, a leisure pool and a large older adults' centre attached. That centre is busier and more social than any gym I have ever belonged to. My mother goes for the swim and stays two hours for reasons that have nothing to do with swimming.

There is an off-leash area in the park as well, which is why Biscuit knows this place by name. It is not the best off-leash in Richmond and I would not drive across the city for it. It is fenced, central and reliable, and on a wet Wednesday that is worth more than scenery.

Parking and getting there

This is the easiest park in Richmond to reach without a car, and that is its real advantage over Terra Nova or Garry Point. Brighouse station sits at the end of the Canada Line a short walk away on the far side of Richmond Centre, and nearly every bus route in the city passes within a few blocks. If you drive, there are lots off Granville Avenue and off Minoru Gate. They fill on tournament days and during blossom season, at which point the mall parkade is your fallback and you walk over from there like everyone else.

Food and coffee nearby

You are steps from the No. 3 Road corridor, so this is not a hard problem to solve. Saint Germain Bakery has a spot inside Richmond Centre and it is the quick answer when you want something to eat on a bench by the ponds. Kam Do Bakery on No. 3 Road is my pick for a bun and a milk tea, and New Town Bakery does the steamed buns I grew up on, which I will still cross the city for. For a real sit-down meal after a morning in the library, Golden Paramount Seafood Restaurant is close and does dim sum properly with no drama about it. If you want something fast and filling, Silkway Halal Cuisine does noodles and skewers, and John 3:16 Malaysian Delights is where I send people who tell me they are bored of ordering the same four dishes. Ice cream, if the day has earned it, is Daydreamers by Cafe 33.

How I actually use it

Two hours, weekday morning. Library first, because the holds shelf is the reason I came. Then the gallery if there is something new up. Then a loop of the ponds with a coffee, twice around if the weather is behaving. If Biscuit is with me it is the off-leash and no gallery, because she has opinions about being left in the car.

With a visitor I would pair Minoru with Richmond Centre, call it the city centre half of the day, and drive out to Steveston for the afternoon. Minoru is not a destination the way a waterfront is. It is infrastructure, in the best sense of that word. It is where the city put the things it wants everybody to be able to get to, and it put them all within sight of one another, next to the train. Having grown up using it, I do not think Richmond gets enough credit for that decision.