A temporary reprieve and an uncertain future for the wading pool at Burrard View Park

Burrard View Park in Hastings-Sunrise doesn’t just offer great vistas — it’s home to a slew of services and amenities for the surrounding community, including water activities for kids in the summer.   

An old concrete wading pool near the playground on the southern edge of the park is “a nice community gathering spot,” in summer, Tracy Bestland, co-chair of the Burrardview Community Association, told Vancity Lookout.  

“It's actually quite a huge amenity here … parents that are home with their kids all summer can take a little break, go to the park, have their kids entertained by staff if they can't afford daycare,” Bestland said, noting that Hastings Community Centre runs programming at the pool. 

But after it was shut down early at the end of last summer due to drainage issues, it seemed like that could be the death knell for the pool, which was at the end of its service life, according to the park board. 

As part of a planned renewal of the nearby playground this summer, the park board intended to remove the wading pool entirely, replace it with green space, and install a misting pole in the playground area. Bestland and two neighbours heard this directly from the park board’s park designer during a private meeting at Burrard View in early January.

Among other concerns about the playground design, Bestland made the case that the wading pool should be replaced with something of equal or better value, which the misting pole was not. 

The plan “was not received very well by the residents,” Park Board Commissioner Scott Jensen told Vancity Lookout, and that reaction led park board staff to change their short-term plans for the wading pool, according to a memo from late January. 

Based on “strong support for its retention, the wading pool will remain for the time being,” staff wrote. They plan to have it repaired in time for operations this summer. “That's great that they're keeping it for another year, but we want something to replace it,” Bestland said.

“The renewal that we do nowadays is to renew those [wading pools] into spray parks, which get better usage and are more environmentally sound,” Jensen explained. 

There’s currently no funding available for a spray park at Burrard View this year, but Jensen said he plans to bring a motion to the board later this year to fund a spray park conversion at Burrard View as part of the 2027-2030 capital plan. Burrard View’s wading pool was floated as a potential site for a spray park upgrade in the 2023-2026 capital planning process, but ultimately it wasn’t prioritized. 

Bestland said the community is going to try fundraising for a new spray park, which the park board estimates could cost between $2.5 and $3 million. The high cost is due in part to the complex underground water infrastructure that’s required, and the need to provide washrooms nearby. The fieldhouse in Burrard View Park may be able to provide the latter and bring down some of those costs.

But Park Board Chair Tom Digby said there’s no guarantee that the park board will prioritize a new spray park for Burrard View, given the cost and other existing aquatic amenities in the neighbourhood.

“It's not automatic that we would replace an old concrete pool with a $2.5 to $3 million spray park, especially given New Brighton swimming pool is right down the hill,” Digby told Vancity Lookout. 

Digby also pointed out there are already two spray parks – at Pandora Park and Hastings Community Park – within two kilometres of Burrard View. Meanwhile, large parts of South Vancouver lack easy access to aquatic amenities of any kind. “It is a possibility that [the wading pool] will reach its end of life and have to be closed, and that it would return to grass,” Digby said. 

In 2019, the park board’s aquatics strategy called for one new spray park to be built every four years. By that fairly conservative goal, the plan has been successful so far. 

A spray park feature was included as part of sθәqәlxenәm ts'exwts'áxwi7 (Rainbow Park), built downtown on Richards Street in 2022. The wading pool at Collingwood Park, near Kingsway and Joyce, was converted to a spray park as part of a larger park upgrade completed in summer 2025. Meanwhile, the park board is in the early stages of replacing the wading pool at Ross Park in Sunset with a spray park, with construction planned for 2027. 

But with 11 old and “outdated” wading pools, including Burrard View, still featured in parks around the city, it will still take decades to replace them all at the current rate. That wouldn’t be too much of a problem, except when that old infrastructure starts to fail, like the drainage issues at Burrard View, the park board will be faced with a decision to either invest in temporary repairs or have communities go without the amenities they’ve come to expect for their children.  

But for now, families living near Burrard View can celebrate another summer in their wading pool, and look forward to having a new playground in fall 2026.

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