Horseshoe Bay is located at the heart of one of the world’s most diverse and inviting landscapes for outdoor recreation. Threaded through this dramatic landscape are engaging coastal villages and organized sports facilities such as golf courses and ski resorts. Imagine your days, your seasons, with choices like these so close at hand.
Canada has earned a global reputation for the quality and accessibility of its educational system, from high standard public schools to large research universities and intimate liberal arts colleges. From local elementary schools right up to high-ranked high schools and universities for first degrees or continuing education, there are few locales as naturally splendid as Horseshoe Bay with so wide a range of educational opportunities close at hand.
West Vancouver has one of BC’s best-run and highest-achieving public school networks, with a quality of instruction and facilities that would only be available at the best private schools in most countries.
This is an International Baccalaureate World School with a tradition of high academic achievement balanced with arts, athletics and outdoor education.
The only fully-accredited university on Vancouver’s North Shore, Capilano has a splendid campus nestled amongst the trees, and the latest facilities and top faculty.
Founded in 2002 by a former UBC president, Quest is Canada’s first private, non-denominational independent university, lodged in new buildings above Squamish in a sublime natural setting.
With nearly 50,000 undergraduate and graduate students, UBC is one of Canada’s largest and most important research universities, with a full complement of professional programs in law, medicine, dentistry, engineering, architecture and so on.
The North Shore to Whistler area has a wide range of private art galleries and public museums that cater to any interest or visual arts passion. Because West Vancouver is amongst Canada’s wealthiest and best-educated communities, it comes as no surprise that it is also home to creative community of leading artists, architects, writers, designers and art-collectors. Some of these museum buildings are renown architectural showpieces, including Whistler’s Audain Museum, designed by West Vancouver residents John and Patricia Patkau.
This small municipal museum in a restored house has emerged as Western Canada’s leading venue for architecture exhibitions, plus engaging shows of contemporary art produced by the North Shore’s strong community of painters and sculptors.
One of North America’s leading museums dedicated to historic and contemporary photography, their new building under construction at the foot of North Vancouver’s Lonsdale will be a harbour-side gem, and the hub of a parks and shopping esplanade there.
Western Canada’s largest and most prestigious museum of historical and contemporary art, it is housed in a magnificent former courthouse building adapted by architect Arthur Erickson.
Mining is one of British Columbia’s most important industries, and this national historic site on the Sea to Sky Highway has lively displays and a mining car ride deep into the mountain.
This brand new gallery designed by Patkau architects is nestled into the woods near Whistler Village, being the only museum devoted entirely to British Columbia art, from First Nations masks to avant-garde contemporary photography.
Anglers and boaters everywhere recognize British Columbia as having some of the world’s most gloriously diverse coastal waters. What few realize is that opportunities to fly-cast, pier-fish or chase big salmon and tuna on a charter can be undertaken so close to an urban area. Horseshoe Bay and area have everything a fisherman could desire, from equipment stores, lessons, charters and most of all, clean harbour waters, and lively cascading trout and salmon streams. The same is true for boaters, who have ready access to intimate bays or wide open ocean, places to test sail-trimming or speed along the waves.
What better way to cap a busy day than a relaxing pre-sunset fishing charter (starting right off your own pier) cruising the waters of one of the world’s most spectacular harbours?
North from Horseshoe Bay along the Inside Passage are some of BC’s most renown salmon sports fishing areas. With the best of advice from skilled and well-equipped charter operators, few return empty handed, but everyone returns slack-jawed from the natural beauty they encounter.
Any day you could drop a line from one of West Vancouver’s publicly owned piers, the ideal setting to pick up tips from other anglers or get kids started in the sport.
This active salmon stream with a major hatchery forms the eastern border of West Vancouver, with fishing open year-round. Because of easy access it is actively used, but is also actively managed, with a catch-and- release program for the coho, chinook, steelhead and other fish found there.
Across the harbour in Snug Cove on Bowen Island is this full service marina, with pubs and cafés a short walk away.
More than just a marina with moorage, this is a full service luxury resort on Pender Island in the sailor’s dream of the Southern Gulf Islands.
On the Mid Coast past Campbell River is one of B.C.’s best-regarded sail- in and floatplane-in salmon fishing resorts, with every amenity available.
Horseshoe Bay is the hub of a stunning network of parks that both preserve the surrounding mountains, rainforests and beaches in a pristine state, and also provide locales for outdoor activities, be they extreme sports or birdwatching. These parks are well-maintained and accessible to all. Living in Horseshoe Bay, this string of parks becomes your vast ‘back yard,’ offering every opportunity for solitude or group activities in inspiring natural settings.
Get another perspective on Horseshoe Bay from the nearby Whytecliff Park, easily reached from Marine Drive. Because there are over 200 animal species living in its sparkling waters, it is popular with scuba divers and was honoured as Canada’s first Marine Protected Area.
After a gentle hike through some of the North Shore’s only remaining old growth rainforest, the reward is the National Historic Site lighthouse plus Point Atkinson’s dramatic Vancouver harbour panoramas.
Flanking West Vancouver’s prime retail area, this is a full service urban beach, with restaurants, galleries, golf, sports-fields and a skate-park. The views from its sandy beaches to UBC, Stanley Park and the Lions Gate Bridge are spectacular, and summer evenings it is turned into a spectacular concert venue.
For good reason this has been one of Greater Vancouver’s leading tourist sites for over a century. Impress your visitors with this heart-stopping walk along a cable-stayed wooden-planked suspension bridge, the waters of the Capilano river raging below.
Porteau Cove has the distinction of being the southern-most fjord in all of North America, blessed with great views of Howe Sound and some acclaimed scuba diving location.
A small provincial park just south of Squamish, it boasts a fine swimming lake and a collection of rare petroglyphs created thousands of years ago.
“The Chief” is one of the most acclaimed rock climbing locations in British Columbia, but for those who want a stroll to the panoramic views at the top, there are also hiking and bike trails on easier grades through the glades.
Whether for day trips or overnight camping, the string of four linked ponds at Alice Lake are a magnet for families wanting an alpine setting to swim, fish and stroll.
Access to this beachside stroll could not be easier – just out your Horseshoe Bay front door and up into the peninsula’s Evergreen and Arbutus tree forest, with well-marked trails leading to this quiet beach, with its picturesque islet accessible at low tide.
This is a small rock and pebble beach that is perfect for kids to explore the natural realm.
A less-visited beach adjacent to the railway track in Lions Bay that is a restful retreat from the world.
In Greater Vancouver golf is a year-round sport, blessed with a temperate wet climate meaning that greens are constantly green and it’s rarely either too hot or too cold to catch 9 or 18 holes. The super natural mixture of mountains, ocean views, lush forests and rolling topography produces golf courses that match any style or level or play.
It is a testament to West Vancouver’s outdoors lifestyle that this is one of the highest-rated courses in the region but it remains a municipally- owned, public course.
Established in 1938 on the British Properties west of the Capilano River, immaculate greens and the Tudor style clubhouse mark this as a prestige course.
Perched above the Sea to Sky Highway and built in 1993, Furry Creek has an enviable reputation as one of BC’s most scenic contemporary golf courses.
Designed by the renown Robert Trent Jones Jr., this par 72 18 hole course is the summer hub of one of the leading resort hotels in Western Canada.
This is a creation by the world’s other most famous player and course designer, Jack Nicklaus, it boasts a wonderful balance of lake/mountain views with playing challenges.
Whistler-Blackcomb has been rated “Best North American Ski Resort” by the readers of influential Ski Magazine for the past two years running. Visitors from all over the world flock to skiing there and at the smaller resorts on Vancouver’s North Shore mountains, so living at Horseshoe Bay means an astonishing range of choices. The superb “Sea to Sky Highway” past Squamish to the Callaghan Valley and Whistler literally starts at Horseshoe Bay, meaning it takes under one hour to reach Whistler’s slopes.
Horseshoe Bay’s closest ski area shames many Eastern and European resorts with its snow, grooming and urban vistas. The lifts are open from November to April, with night skiing daily until 10:00. Nearby Hollyburn Mountain offers spectacular and free cross-country and snow-shoeing opportunities by winter, and a hiking paradise all summer-fall.
There is no ski experience anywhere like Grouse, with its stunning wrap- around day and night views of a city of 3 million, and beyond to the lush Gulf Islands and Washington’s volcanic Mount Baker. Vancouver’s keep-fit obsession is the long, steep hike up this mountain, with bars and restaurants and a gondola ride down serving as welcome rewards.
Constructed as a world class winter sports zone for the 2010 Vancouver- Whistler Winter Olympics, everything you can do on snow or ice is possible here. The Nordic centre is a favourite with families, with all varieties and sizes of outdoor equipment available for rental.
Globally recognized as one of the best four-season comprehensive ski resorts, multiple faces of two mountains provide for a fantastic variety of terrain to thrill boarders and skiers at every level of ability. Non-skiers can enjoy the Gondola and Peak-to-Peak rides, and Whistler Village is a gourmet paradise with lively nightlife.
Paul Merrick was born and grew up in West Vancouver, remembering his Ambleside neighbourhood as a “real village,” and remarks on the multi-generational shops that are still there. His grandfather was an engineer on coastal ferries, his father an industrial arts teacher at West Vancouver High and his uncle ran the local gas station. Young Paul played in the surrounding forests, caddied at the Capilano Golf Club, and picked up the wood-working skills that still serve him today in his sailboat design and construction at his East Sooke workshop.
Paul Merrick faced a choice when applying to the University of British Columbia: “There’s not much room for imagination in engineering, so I choose architecture – it looked like more fun.” His natural abilities with freehand drawing served him well as a student, but his real education in design thinking came from one of the School of Architecture’s most charismatic professors. “Arthur Erickson had a Socratic teaching process,” Merrick says, “He showed these magnificent slides of his travels – he took us on mental journeys, talked about pace and place and light.” At the time, Erickson was designing the Filberg House in Comox – his first large house commission – and he shared the evolution of its design with Merrick and his classmates. After third year, he spent a summer working at Ron Thom’s office, working on the details of Massey College in Toronto. Upon graduation, Merrick faced a choice: “I had offers from two firms that were on very different wavelengths. You could say that Arthur Erickson’s office was FM, but Ron Thom’s was AM, and that is what I chose.”
Soon, Merrick was designing small wooden houses in the Westcoast idiom that was Thom’s hallmark. “It’s hard to know where one’s influences come from, but from an early age I had a strong empathy for an organic way of thinking,” he says of these designs. These tendencies are evident in the larger Sciences Complex and Library/ Bridge commissions he was given as part of Thom’s design of the Trent University campus in Ontario, which meet the technical needs of a contemporary university, but retain a sense of handmade tradition. Merrick says: “When Ron put his hand to something, a different kind of light emerged.” After a few years in Thom’s then-Toronto-based office, and some extended travels in Europe, Merrick returned to Vancouver.
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Working with Thompson Berwick Pratt, Merrick was lead architect for the lobby extension and interior adaptive re-use that transformed the former Orpheum cinema in to Vancouver’s leading concert venue, winning Governor General’s Medal for Architecture for his design.
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A felt pen elevation for UBC student house design project
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A sketch for Paul Merrick Family Residence, Eagle Harbour
For Thompson Berwick Pratt he designed the powerful Brutalist forms of the downtown Vancouver CBC studios, then was project architect for the very different interior renovation and lobby addition for the oncethreatened Orpheum Theatre, which won a Governor General’s Medal for architecture. Merrick designed a sublime house in the forest for his family in West Vancouver in 1972, then a few years later formed his own practice. The range of buildings completed since is remarkable, ranging from the Gothic touches of the UBC Alumni Medical Library at 12th and Heather to the assertive wood structure of the Day Lodge at the Callaghan Valley installations for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Merrick says that one of his most important techniques he used as he built his own architectural practice – which has grown to forty employees in offices in Victoria and Vancouver – is to constantly ask “What is the site asking of us?” He regards the current commission for Westbank on the Sewell Marina site to be one of the great challenges of his career. “Horseshoe Bay has the curious condition of the view being north, the sun to the south,” he says. A breakthrough came with memories of the rural English architecture he had toured with is family in the 1970s, with “buildings one room thick” being the perfect strategy he had sought for this confined site having the additional site conditions of steep forest on one side and harbour on the other. “During design development all the notions were there, but they got pumped up a bit, more texture came in,” says the architect of his Horseshoe Bay design, concluding: “Listen to the land, and it will tell you what it wants to be.”