South Bonson and the Waterfront

Osprey Village is the only part of Pitt Meadows that was designed to be looked at. Everything else here grew out of a farm road or a highway frontage. This grew out of a plan, down at the south end of the city where the land runs out at the Fraser, and you can see the intent in the way the buildings meet the street.

The layout takes one sentence to describe. Barnston View Road and Fraser Way form a short run of shopfronts with townhouses stacked above them, facing the river and the dike trail. That is the entire commercial district. You can stand at one end and see the other end, which is not a complaint.

North of it, Bonson Road runs back up through South Bonson, newer housing that is largely built out. Katzie First Nation land lies south and west. Taken together this is the part of the city that feels least like the rest of the city, and the part most people mean when they say they are going down to the waterfront.

Walking The Village

Park once and leave the car. The whole point of the place is that the ground floor is commercial and the floors above it are people's homes, so the businesses are small, the frontages are narrow, and the customers are mostly on foot. The South Bonson Community Centre is here, and the Pitt Meadows Art Gallery is inside it, which makes this the only block in town where you can get a coffee and look at art without moving your car.

The trail is the other half of the appeal. The dike runs along the river and people use it constantly, which means the village has a rhythm the rest of the city does not: quiet mid morning, busy the moment the weather turns decent, quiet again by evening.

Where To Eat And What To Buy

Stomping Grounds Cafe & Bistro on Barnston View Road is the anchor of the row. Family run, organic coffee, homemade baked goods, paninis, breakfast sandwiches and hot lunches, with a patio out front and the trail a short walk away. It also caters. This is where they took you, if brought here by someone showing off the neighbourhood.

Nearby, KrunChicken does Korean fried chicken cooked to order in sauces including soy garlic and sweet and spicy. Takeout and online ordering, and independently owned rather than a franchise drop-in.

Sweet Tooth Creamery, also on Barnston View Road, sells hand scooped ice cream, gelato and sorbetto, plus frozen yogurt, ice cream cakes and take home tubs, and runs a trailer out to markets and events. A dike trail and an ice cream counter in the same short block is not an accident of planning.

Coastal Collective + Co is a gift and home boutique stocking Canadian made and small batch goods: decor, candles, bath and body, jewellery, stationery, kids items and pet treats. There is not much else like it in the city, which tells you something about where the discretionary shopping happens here.

The Service Side Of The Block

The village is not only for visitors, and the businesses that keep it running through the wet months matter more than the ones that do well in July.

Pitt Meadows Barber on Barnston View Road is a men's shop doing haircuts and fades, straight razor shaves, beard trims and razor line ups, booked online. Slyce Hair Studio, a few doors along, handles cuts, colour and styling. Sour Apple Beauty Bar is a nail bar and tanning lounge in the same row, with manicures, pedicures and gel and acrylic work.

Capture Photography Studio is an owner operated portrait studio covering maternity, newborn, family, graduation, pet and product work as well as headshots, with an on-site wardrobe closet for clients. A portrait studio needs a room with decent light and a reason for people to already be nearby. This block supplies both.

Back Up Bonson Road

South Bonson proper is residential and does not put much on the street, but two things are worth knowing. Intermissions is the concession and coffee counter inside the arena, open through public skating and evening ice times. Anyone with a kid in hockey will spend more hours there than in any restaurant in town, and will develop firm opinions about the coffee. Petra Contracting handles whole home, kitchen, bathroom and basement renovations, additions, decks, driveways, windows and siding, which is the trade a neighbourhood of houses eventually needs whatever decade it went up in.

An Honest Note On Scale

Osprey Village is a short row of shopfronts. It is not a district, it is a block, and treating it as a day out will end in disappointment by about two in the afternoon. Treated correctly, as a walk on the dike with a coffee at one end and ice cream at the other, it is the most pleasant hour available in Pitt Meadows.