The Richmond Maritime Festival and BC Day Long Weekend

The first Monday in August is a statutory holiday in British Columbia, and the two days ahead of it are the closest thing Steveston has to a rush hour. That is Richmond Maritime Festival weekend. It runs at Britannia Shipyards, down where Trites Road gives up and the boardwalk carries on out over the mud, and it is the one weekend a year when the whole city seems to remember that we have a working river.

When the wind sits in the right quarter I can hear the stage from my kitchen. So my relationship with this weekend is complicated. It is the best thing the city puts on all summer, and it also means I cannot get my car out of the neighbourhood for three days without a plan. Both of those are true at once. If you are coming from the Golden Village side, or from off-island entirely, here is what I would want somebody to tell me.

What it actually is

Britannia Shipyards is a National Historic Site, but not the glass-case kind. It is a run of wooden buildings standing on pilings over the Fraser, left from the era when this stretch of river was cannery after cannery and the boats that fished for them were built and mended right here. The Murakami House is on the site. So is the old net loft and the boat works. Volunteers still cut wood in there. On an ordinary Tuesday in February you can walk the boardwalk and hear nothing but the river moving under the floor.

The festival is what happens when you fill that site with boats and people. The headline is the visiting vessels, heritage boats and tall ships that tie up along the docks for the weekend, and in past years some of them have let you aboard. That is the Ships to Shore side of it, and it is what gets photographed. The part I like more is the small craft: wooden dinghies, dugout canoes, kayaks somebody built in a garage over four winters, all pulled up on the grass with their builders standing beside them looking faintly embarrassed. Ask one of them a question. You will not get away for twenty minutes and it will be the best twenty minutes of your day.

Beyond the boats there is usually live music, a maker and artisan area, demonstrations of the sort of thing that looks easy until you try it, and enough kids' craft tables to buy a parent an hour. I am not going to tell you this year's dates or what they are charging at the gate, because the city publishes that and I have been wrong about it before. Look it up the week of.

Parking, and why you should not

Here is the practical core of this article. Do not try to park at Britannia.

The lots down there are small on a normal day, and the residential streets around Westwater Drive and London Road fill early, get signed, and get patrolled. What works instead: leave the car up by the Steveston Community Centre or near the No. 1 Road and Moncton corner and walk in along the boardwalk. It is a flat fifteen or twenty minutes past Imperial Landing and the Gulf of Georgia Cannery, and that walk is half the day. What works better: come by bike. The dyke path runs right to the site, there is no traffic to sit in, and you can lock up and be looking at a boat inside two minutes.

If you are coming from the north end of the city, the Canada Line does not reach Steveston. It stops at Richmond-Brighouse, and you transfer to a bus running south from there. On festival weekend that bus is slow and full, and I still think it beats circling for a space. Bring something to read.

Building out the long weekend

The festival is a half-day, not three. That is fine, because the rest of the weekend is right there.

Garry Point Park is a ten-minute walk west along the water from the village, and on a clear August evening it does the thing it is known for. The sun drops over the Strait behind the island and half of Richmond stands on the rocks watching it. It gets busy. It is still worth doing. The grass slope on the north side is where families end up and the point itself is where the tripods go. Bring a layer heavier than the afternoon suggested, because the wind comes off open water and does not care what the forecast said at three.

The other thing I would spend a morning on is Fisherman's Wharf, early. Boats sell directly off the deck at the public dock, and what is there depends entirely on what came in: spot prawns earlier in the summer, salmon and tuna later, sometimes nothing. Cash is the norm and a cooler is not a bad idea. There is no schedule you can rely on, which is the point. You go and see. If nothing is tied up, the walk was still good.

One note about dogs, since I always get asked. Biscuit is a nervous mutt and she does not come to this. Too many strollers, too much dropped food, too many well-meaning hands. If your dog is unbothered by all that, the site is walkable and the dyke is right there. If not, the West Dyke Trail on the far side of Garry Point is nearly empty by comparison even on a holiday, and you can do a long out-and-back toward Terra Nova with the mountains in front of you the whole way.

Eating around it

Festival food is festival food. If you want to eat properly, walk back into the village.

The fish and chip question in Steveston is close to a religious argument and I am not going to settle it here. Pajo's Fish & Chips is the one floating at the wharf, which means you eat outside with a gull auditing your basket, and halibut is the order. Dave's Fish & Chips is up in the village with a heavier, more traditional batter, and it is where I take visiting family because there are chairs. When the lineups at both have gone sideways, Garry Point Grill & Fish 'N' Chips sits closer to the park end and catches less of the overflow.

For something not fried, Blue Canoe Waterfront Restaurant is upstairs at the wharf and the view is doing some of the work, which I say with affection. Shady Island Seafood Bar & Grill is the pub version of the same idea and the patio is the whole appeal. Catch Kitchen + Bar is where I go when I want to sit down properly on a warm night rather than eat standing up. Britannia Brewing Steveston is a few doors off the middle of Moncton and it is the most reliable place in the village to park a group of overheated adults.

Ice cream is not optional with children. Screamers Soft Serve & Treats does soft serve near the water and the lineup is simply a fact of August. Timothy's Frozen Yogurt has been the other fixture for as long as I can remember. Steveston Bakery is where I stop on the way out if I want something for later at home, and I have never once left with only what I went in for.

If crowds are not your thing

Come the following weekend instead. I mean that.

Britannia is open outside festival season and it is better quiet. The same goes for the Gulf of Georgia Cannery a few minutes west, which is the other national historic site in the village and the one that explains why any of this exists. Standing in the old herring reduction plant with the machinery stopped and nobody else in the room tells you more about Steveston than a packed festival Saturday does.

And if all you have is the Monday and the forecast has turned, the long weekend has an indoor version. The Richmond Olympic Oval on the river at the north end has skating and a museum about the 2010 Games, though the schedule shifts with whatever else is booked in the building. The Cultural Centre at Minoru puts the main library branch and the art gallery a few steps apart. Neither of those is a maritime festival. Both are dry.

What I would tell a first-timer

Go in the morning. The site is small, the light on the river is better before noon, and the boat builders have more patience for questions before the afternoon crowd lands. Bring a hat, because there is very little shade on that boardwalk. Bring cash, because not everything in a field takes a card gracefully.

The best moment I have had at this festival was not a tall ship. It was a man in his seventies explaining at length why the ribs of his boat were steam-bent oak and not laminated, to me and one extremely interested nine-year-old, while the tide went out behind him.

That is the whole weekend, really. The boats are the excuse.