What to Do in Pitt Meadows on the BC Day Long Weekend

The BC Day long weekend lands on the first Monday in August, which in this city means the hottest, flattest, most agricultural stretch of the year. Half the people I know are gone for all three days. The other half stay and quietly get the better deal, because early August is when everything Pitt Meadows is genuinely good at comes due at once.

There is no shade here. That is the single most useful thing to know before you plan three days of anything. The dikes run dead straight across open floodplain, the farm roads have nothing taller than a hedgerow beside them, and the sun sits on all of it from mid morning until well into the evening. Plan around that and the weekend works. Ignore it and you are back in the car by noon with a headache.

Nothing below has a time attached to it, deliberately. Programming changes year to year and hours move on statutory holidays, so treat this as a shape for the weekend rather than a schedule.

Berries, because it is August

Most of the municipality is farmland inside the Agricultural Land Reserve and a lot of it grows blueberries. Early August usually sits in the middle of that season, which is the one stretch of the year when the difference between a berry grown down the road and a berry trucked into a supermarket is embarrassingly obvious. Meadow Ridge Berry Farms and Twinberry Farms are the local names to know. What each of them is selling, and whether they are open on the holiday Monday, varies, so check before you drive out rather than after.

The Pitt Meadows Farmers Market is the other route, and the easier one if you want several growers in a single stop instead of a driving tour of the flats. Check this year's dates before you build a morning around it, because a market is not a fixture the way a shop is.

Get on the water early

Rannie Road runs north through Pitt Polder toward Grant Narrows and Pitt Lake. This is the far end of the municipality, out past the diked farmland that Dutch dairy families took on after the polder was pumped dry, and it does not feel like the same city as Harris Road.

Open water and an afternoon wind are a poor combination, and the wind up there has a habit of coming up as the day warms. That points in one direction: go early. A canoe on the water first thing is a completely different day from one that starts at two in the afternoon and works into chop. The dikes and trails around the Pitt Polder Ecological Reserve are flat, quiet and good for birdwatching, and almost nobody is on them at that hour, if paddling is not your thing.

The dikes, at the right hour

The dike network is the best thing this city has and it costs nothing. On a hot long weekend the usable hours are early and late, and the middle of the day belongs to whoever is prepared to suffer for it. Pitt Meadows Cycle is where you sort out a tire, a tune, or the bike that has been hanging in the garage since spring. That is a Friday job rather than a Saturday morning job, and every August somebody learns this the hard way.

Take more water than you think you need. There are long stretches with nothing at all on them, which is the appeal and also the catch.

Eating in the heat

A long weekend here is mostly a barbecue weekend, and the meal nobody wants to cook is lunch. Hopcott Farms Bistro handles that end of it. Austin Fish & Chips is the correct food after a morning outdoors for anyone not cooking at all, and West Coast Grill covers the sit-down end of things on the afternoon when the house is too hot to be inside.

Foamers' Folly Brewing Co. is the local brewery, and August is the month that fact earns its keep. Sweet Tooth Creamery handles the other end of the afternoon. With children along, the ice cream stop is not a treat, it is the fee you pay for the dike walk.

Check with the city before you commit

The City of Pitt Meadows puts on community programming, and when civic things happen they happen in the Town Centre, at Spirit Square, the Family Recreation Centre and the parks around them. I am not going to print dates and times I cannot stand behind, because they move every year. Look at the city's own calendar for the long weekend, confirm whether the recreation centre is on holiday hours, and check that the market is running before you build a morning around it.

One thing worth saying plainly. This is a city of about nineteen thousand people on a floodplain between two rivers. The BC Day weekend here is a quiet one, and the quiet is the product rather than a shortfall in it.