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Nicholson Road is an ongoing photo project aimed at sharing and celebrating the different communities in Metro Vancouver. Each week Vancouver Is Awesome will be featuring an image from the previous week, shot in one of the many 'hoods around town in order to draw your attention a little bit outside of the hyper-focus that we usually have on the City of Vancouver. |
This week I decided to keep the North Shore theme going and round it out with a visit to the City of North Vancouver. To most of you, North Vancouver probably means 3 things: SeaBus, Lonsdale Quay, and wicked views of the Vancouver skyline. And you're right! But there's plenty more to it than that.
What was, for most of the twentieth century, the largest shipyard in Western Canada, the Wallace Shipyards/Burrard Dry Dock/Burrard-Yarrows/Versatile Pacific Shipyards closed up shop in the 1990s due to a surplus of shipyards in BC. Since that time the empty warehouses and open spaces were primarily used by the local film industry in what I call a location scout's dream: close proximity to downtown/the City of Vancouver, a lack of public access with good security, tons of open space, and all sorts of industrial goodness.
Today, with the addition of a huge plaza and refurbished, 700ft-long Burrard Dry Dock Pier, the area is becoming a great place to take a stroll and enjoy the awesome vistas North Van has to offer - there are few places where you can better enjoy the Vancouver skyline than from North Van, and the views up the hill to Grouse aren't bad either!
A new maritime museum (the National Maritime Centre for the Pacific and the Arctic) was originally planned to find a home in one of the restored historic buildings, but the Provincial Government couldn't make it happen this time around. On the plus side, a few of the huge cranes, the enormous bow of a ship, and plenty of other artifacts were saved and restored to be featured in the Maritime Centre, and they let the area retain its working shipyard feel. Besides, who needs a museum when you can experience the real thing right next door at the Vancouver Drydock Company?
So next time you head across the water for a snack at Lonsdale Quay, why not venture out a little further and discover what the City of North Vancouver has to offer? You might be surprised!
If you're curious to learn more about North Vancouver's Waterfront project, click here.
Archives of the Nicholson Road project can be found HERE.
