Burrard View Park

The East Vancouver park was set to lose its wading pool as part of a playground upgrade before neighbours organized to save it for the time being.

Author

Nate Lewis
February 11, 2026

Sponsored by

Good morning,

Normally, Nate takes over the intro on Wednesdays, but I wanted to share something important that he’s working on. 

Right now, Nate is asking for a bunch of Freedom of Information (FOI) records on an important topic we’ve been covering here at Vancity Lookout. I can’t say more than that because Nate has sworn me to secrecy, given the delicate nature of the process.

While it’s not going to be cheap, thanks to members like you, we’re able to focus on things like this – doing in-depth reporting that (hopefully) turns leads into impactful stories. 

But here’s the problem — FOIs cost money. In this case, more than $500, though we’re still working to get that price down. For a small publication like ours, which is almost entirely funded by readers, that’s not cheap. 

This is the type of journalism we want to do more of. If you’ve been on the fence about joining because you don’t know what a Lookout membership does, this is exactly what it funds — helping us get information on important issues that haven’t been made public (yet) and helping you get a better understanding of how our city works. 

We can’t share details at this point, but rest assured, we’ve got big hopes for what we might find. If you think what we do here is valuable, consider becoming a member today. We only need five new members to fund the entire FOI request.

Alright, let’s dive into Nate’s story for today.

— Geoff Sharpe, Vancity Lookout founder and managing editor

Editor’s note: In Monday’s number, we said there are five Goldeneyes players playing hockey at the Winter Olympics. That was incorrect — there are actually eight (!!) Goldeneyes at the games, with five of them representing Team Canada.

PS - If you find this newsletter valuable, please consider forwarding it to your friends. New to the Lookout? Sign-up for free. 

WEATHER

Wednesday: 8 🌡️ 5 | ☁️

Thursday: 8 🌡️ 5 | 🌤️

Friday: 6 🌡️ 3 | 🌧️

PARKS

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

Burrard View Park's wading pool will be repaired for use this summer, but the long-term future of the space is unclear / Nate Lewis

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.

The run-down playground at Burrard View Park will get a $650,000 renewal in 2026 / Nate Lewis

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.

We rely on readers like you sharing these stories to help others discover our journalism. Share today: Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin | Bluesky | Copy this url

We want to tell more community stories that the bigger publications are ignoring. But as a reader-funded publication, we can’t do this without your support.

THE VANCOUVER NUMBER

65%

That’s how much waste Metro Vancouver diverts from the landfill into recycling, which peaked in 2024. A new draft plan seeks to boost the amount of waste diverted from the landfill by an additional 15% over the next 25 years. Some good news is that Metro Vancouver has some of the best diversion rates in North America. [Vancouver Sun]

THE AGENDA

Trout Lake during a particularly cold winter / Nate Lewis

⛰️ What do you think of the mountain views from Trout Lake? The city is looking to change view cone protections for the park to allow for new buildings to the north — a plan that 70 per cent of people surveyed disagreed with. Last week, city council unanimously put a pause on the changes, sending the plan back to staff for further consideration, including more public engagement. [Vancity Lookout]   

🤨 Last week, we reported on the scathing audit of the city’s land sale policies and practices. What we didn’t get to is a parallel whistleblower report released the same day, which found the city engaged in “serious wrongdoing” by failing to monitor or enforce whether a developer delivered on $6 million in promised community amenities. Read more. [CBC, Vancity Lookout]

🏦 David Eby is making a push to bring the new NATO’s bank headquarters to Vancouver, which the government says would create 3,500 new jobs. Dubbed the Defence, Security, and Resilience Bank, it would help finance more military projects for NATO members and partners. Read more. [CityNews]

🗳️ The nascent Vote Vancouver party held a moderately attended campaign event at the WISE Hall in East Van over the weekend, where the party announced it would be holding open nominations for council, park, and school board candidates. The highlight of the night was the charismatic MC, Laura, who happens to be the partner of party founder and mayoral candidate Rebecca Bligh. [Vancity Lookout]

❄️ Could Vancouver finally see snow? While the warm weather has been truly lovely, expect temperatures to drop next week, though it's still too early to say whether it may snow. Read more. [Vancouver is Awesome]

Show us your best shot - The Lantern City Photo Contest is here!

The Lantern City is back with 36 stunning lantern installations across five locations in Vancouver! Three categories: Lantern in Focus, Moments Under the Lanterns and Feeling Hot. Submit your photo and get a chance to win some prizes!

HOME OF THE WEEK

Today we hop over the inlet and check in on North Vancouver. 

This one is quite the deal. It’s a 932 square foot two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment located in a great part of Lower Lonsdale with everything within walking distance. The only knock against it, depending on your preferences, is that you can have cats but no dogs.

— Written by Geoff

VANCOUVER ARTS GUIDE

Performance

It’s comedy week in Vancouver with Just for Laughs Vancouver hitting town. I’m not family with many of the comedians, but there are a few classics like Brent Butt, Emil Wakim and Yakov Smirnoff, along with many others. 

Calling all kids ages 9-12 — join Dungeons and Drama from Mar. 23-27, where your kids can journey through the art of improv, character building and more, all set in an adapted version of Dungeons and Dragons, on at the BMO Theatre. It’s the perfect spring break camp!

It’s the 6th Annual Jazz at the Bolt Festival at the Shadbolt Centre in Burnaby, with established jazz artists from Metro Vancouver and around the U.S. performing, from Feb. 14-15. 

The popular Choir Leoni is back with the PopCappella concert, with music from the Beach Boys and more, on Mar. 6-7 at the Andrew’s-Wesley United Church. 

Art

Starting on Feb. 14 for the next year is Every River Has a Mouth: The Visual Language that Connects Us at the Bill Reid Gallery. The exhibition brings together 11 Coast and Interior Salish artists from a range of disciplines that flow across the Salish world. 

There are still a few weeks left to see Familiar Unfamiliar by artist Fei Disbrow. The exhibit focuses on small, unusual organisms called cryptogams, in which the artist uses a camera as a drawing tool, printed directly onto metal, then cut out. You can see this unique exhibit at the West Vancouver Museum of Art.

Movies

VIFF has an eclectic set of movies this week and next, such as the viral hit KPop Demon Hunters, The Princess Bride and Oscar contenders Sirât, the beautifully stunning The Secret Agent, and It was Just an Accident. 

It’s a big oversight on our part that we haven’t included movies from The Park Theatre. That will change going forward! This week, you can catch Moulin Rouge!, the haunting Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Arco and Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie, which, even though it’s all about Toronto, is still worth checking out. 

— Written by Geoff

Want to see your event here? Submit them to our event calendar.

FOOD

Our food editor's best meals, drinks, and restaurants this winter

The Lunch Lady’s duck soup / Geoff Sharpe

By Geoff Sharpe

We’ve hardly been having winter weather here in Vancouver, though snow may be on the way, but bad weather can’t stop us from venturing out and trying food around town.

This winter, I tried some popular classics, lesser-known lunch spots, and a cozy cocktail bar. Some you’ll have heard of, some may be new, but almost all are worth checking out at some point. 

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS

  • A Japanese listening bar sounds like a great idea. Count us in! [Straight]

  • The Fairmont Pacific Rim was named the second-best hotel in Canada. [Vancouver Sun]

  • A transit advocacy group is holding a Heated Rivalry lookalike contest with a transit-inspired twist. [CTV]

  • People are mourning the passing of popular Canucks announcer Jim Robson, who called play-by-play for the team for almost 30 years. [CBC]

  • This newish French restaurant is easier on the wallet than St. Lawrence, but it’s run by the same team. [Vancity Lookout]

Want to have your announcement featured? Learn how here.

GAME TIME

For today’s Wordle, you’ll need the navigate haunted crypts, cast spells against your enemies, and investigate today’s newsletter for hints. Can you work out what it is?

PHOTO OF THE DAY

Nate Lewis

City councillor and mayoral hopeful Rebecca Bligh brought in a crowd of about 100 people at the WISE Hall for a campaign event last weekend.

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.