Pitt Meadows guide
A Rainy Saturday in Pitt Meadows
Rain here is administrative rather than dramatic, and it settles in for most of the winter. An honest, unpadded plan for spending a wet Saturday in a small city, from the Town Centre out to the Osprey Village dike.
Written by June Tam
Rain here is not dramatic. It is administrative. It turns up some time in the autumn, files itself away over the valley, and stays until roughly spring. It is rarely the kind that soaks you in thirty seconds. It is the kind that gets into a Saturday and quietly removes all your plans without ever quite justifying cancelling anything.
The flat ground does not help. There is no hill to duck behind, no weather shadow, nothing to break the sky up. What we have instead is a small city with a compact centre, which turns out to be exactly the right shape for a wet day, provided you accept that the day is going to be a small one.
Here is roughly how I spend one.
Morning: the only walkable block
The Town Centre along Harris Road, between the highway and 119th Avenue, is the one genuinely walkable commercial area in the city, and on a wet Saturday that matters more than it sounds. City Hall, the Family Recreation Centre, Spirit Square and Heritage Hall all sit within a short distance of each other, along with the plazas off Ford Road and 122 Avenue. You park once and stay parked. In the rain, that is most of the battle.
Start with coffee, because everything else is easier afterwards. The Coffee Pitt and Stomping Grounds Cafe & Bistro are the two I rotate between for no better reason than mood. Then Tomes & Tales Books, which is exactly the kind of business a rainy small town needs and exactly the kind that only survives if people actually walk in. A bookshop is a legitimate destination on a wet morning. It is also somewhere to stand still for twenty minutes without buying anything, which is honestly most of the appeal.
Midday: an errand that is not really an errand
The trick with a rainy Saturday is finding something that has a purpose but no deadline. Dinkydoo Fabrics works for this if you have any interest at all in making things, and arguably works better if you do not, because handling fabric you have no plan for is a pleasant way to lose an hour. Coastal Collective + Co is the browse rather than the errand, the shop you go into for no particular reason and leave with something for somebody else's birthday.
The dike trail at Osprey Village is worth doing wet if the rain eases even slightly. The village sits at the south end of the city on the Fraser, shopfronts tucked under townhouses, and the trail along the water is flat, wide and genuinely better in bad weather than good, because it is empty. The South Bonson Community Centre is down there too, and it houses the Pitt Meadows Art Gallery, which is a useful twenty minutes when the sky opens again and you need a door.
Afternoon into evening
Fish and chips is not a clever answer but it is the correct one, and Austin Fish & Chips exists for precisely this weather. Sweet Tooth Creamery does not observe seasons, and neither, in my experience, do children, which makes it the move whenever kids are along.
Later on, The Jolly Coachman Pub is the default. Foamers' Folly Brewing Co. is the alternative when you want somewhere a bit quieter. Neither is a destination in the sense a visitor would understand. Both are the right answer at four in the afternoon in the middle of winter, when it has been dark since the middle of the afternoon and going home feels like giving up.
The honest version
This is a city of about nineteen thousand people. A rainy Saturday here is not a curated itinerary, and anybody selling you one is padding. What you get is a coffee, a shop or two, a walk you regret at the halfway point and are glad about afterwards, and somewhere warm at the end of it. Meadowtown out by Golden Ears Way is where most of the city's retail floor space sits, largely national chains, and there is no shame in spending a wet hour there when the plan needs to be purely practical.
For something more organised, the city runs programming out of its recreation and community facilities through the winter, and the details change every season. Look up what is actually on this year rather than assuming it matches whatever you remember. Registration for the popular things tends to close earlier than people expect.
And if nothing is on, that is fine too. The whole point of a rainy Saturday in a small place is that it does not have to amount to anything. Nobody is keeping score, the fields are doing nothing either, and the rain will still be there tomorrow.
From the directory
Mentioned in this article
Every place named above has its own page here, with the address, the hours and the nearest station.
Austin Fish & Chips
Fish and chip shop on the Lougheed Highway strip serving English style battered fish and chips with the usual sides. Takeout and delivery, with a small amount of seating.
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Coastal Collective + Co
A small gift and home boutique in Osprey Village stocking Canadian made and small batch goods, including home decor, candles, bath and body products, jewellery, stationery, kids items and pet treats.
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Dinkydoo Fabrics
A Pitt Meadows quilting and sewing supplier stocking quilting cottons, wide backs, solids, precuts, batting, patterns and notions. Ordering is online; in store browsing is currently suspended, with order pickup Thursday to Saturday.
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Foamers' Folly Brewing Co.
Independent craft brewery and tasting room in the Pitt Meadows industrial area, pouring its own beers on rotating taps alongside a short food menu and an outdoor patio. Open seven days a week, family and dog friendly, with live music and beer release nights.
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Stomping Grounds Cafe & Bistro
Family run riverfront cafe and bistro in Osprey Village, open since 2011. Homemade baked goods, organic coffee, paninis, breakfast sandwiches and hot lunches, with a patio facing the park and river trail. Also caters.
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Sweet Tooth Creamery
Osprey Village ice cream shop serving hand scooped ice cream, gelato and sorbetto, plus frozen yogurt, ice cream cakes and take home tubs. It also runs an ice cream trailer for markets, festivals and private events.
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The Coffee Pitt
Independent coffee shop on Harris Road serving espresso and drip coffee, fresh sandwiches and house baked goods including their cinnamon buns, daily from 8am to 5pm. The room can also be booked for small gatherings and events.
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The Jolly Coachman Pub
Neighbourhood pub on Ford Road serving Pitt Meadows since 1976. Traditional pub food, daily specials and a full bar, with a private liquor store attached to the same building. Licensed 19 plus, no minors.
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Tomes & Tales Books
An independent bookshop on Ford Road carrying new and secondhand fiction and non fiction across most genres, plus tarot decks and other metaphysical items. Closed Mondays, open Tuesday through Sunday.
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Who wrote this
Nell Vanderveen
Nell Vanderveen grew up on a blueberry farm north of the Alouette and lives near Osprey Village. She writes Pitt Meadows Local and walks the dike from Harris Road most mornings before the traffic starts.
