Life in Coquitlam
We stayed in Coquitlam, BC for a while from May to Jun in 2026, and it was a pleasant experience. We stayed right by the the Burquitlam station because one of my cousins lives with her husband and two kids right there, and her sister lives next door to her. My uncle and aunt live just down the block. I figured that the benefit of staying near them would outweigh any of the pain of having to live in the suburbs but in reality, we actually liked staying here!
For the most part, we just lived our normal lives like we would if we were living here, since we both had to work and so on. But that also meant we got to have a glimpse of what living in Coquitlam is like.
Transportation
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Despite being way out in the suburbs, the Millenium line of the Skytrain stops at Burquitlam every couple of minutes. During peak hour this is every other minute and later in the day it's every 6 minutes. The Skytrain was a huge reason why this was a nice place to stay. We were able to take it to the city, or to Costco, or all the way out to Lafarge Lake or Port Moody for a fun day out with Astra. It's pretty cheap to rent a car here and parking isn't hard, but if I'm being honest we far preferred taking the train because it requires a lot less effort and Astra can get out when she wants on the train and so on.
Driving isn't too bad. Traffic isn't terrible most of the time, but during peak hour it can get quite annoying.
Driving
[edit | edit source]Driving was actually far more pleasant than in San Francisco for two reasons:
- People seem to be good road participants, allowing you to merge and so on
- Cars leave as soon as the light turns green, which implies that they're not on their phones when it happens
Groceries
[edit | edit source]We normally shop for groceries at the nearby Safeway, but also take the train to Lougheed where we pick up some others from H Mart down there. The other thing we'd do weekly is head down to Costco (by Production Way station) as a family. We can fit quite a bit down in the carrying area below Astra's pram, and with that and some elbow grease we can bring back quite a bit of stuff. There are a few other grocery stores nearby that are also available but we didn't frequent them, only stopping buy occasionally.
Recreation
[edit | edit source]Summertime in Vancouver has been a grand time. The weather is mostly beautiful, if a little hot, though it can be mercurial - hot one day and overcast and cold and rainy the next. Most of the time it is quite nice, though.
Parks
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There are quite a few parks around where we stay: Astra's favourite of which is Cottonwood Park because it has a spray park. These spray parksare quite common around BC and seem to be full of children of all ages running through the water and playing. The first one we went to was at Rocky Point in Port Moody, but after that we kept our eye out for ones and Cottonwood has become a fast favourite since it's so close by.
My parents are pretty used to taking Astra to the other parks around, so she's had a sample of others as well - Lyndhurst is nice and big with lots of room to run around in, Burquitlam Park has the cousins nearby, and the farther Como Lake and Mundy Park are much bigger parks with birds and stuff to see. All of these are really enjoyable and easy to walk to or take a bus to. Ironically, Rocky Point at Port Moody is actually closer in convenience because you can just take the Skytrain there. Similarly, Lafarge Lake is also right next to a Skytrain station so it's much more convenient than the geographically closer Mundy Park.
There are a few historic sites as well nearby like the Burnaby Village Museum which is adjacent to Deer Lake Park, both of which are worth a visit. The former because they have an actual blacksmith, a train from San Francisco, and lots of historic old cabins; and the latter because it's got a fun boardwalk from which you can look out at the lake.
Vancouver is also quite accessible from Coquitlam, either by train or car, though much of the West and South-West side will require bus transfers that make a drive much more worth it. So for Queen Elizabeth Park you're better off driving. And so as well for the VanDusen gardens - the welcome centre of which is built out of timber by a place my uncle used to work at.
Indoors
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There are lots of activities for indoors days, though many of the famous ones are quite crowded. The building also has a couple of common areas that are quite nice. Where we stayed, there was a children's room, with sufficient toys and things to keep Astra occupied on a rainy day. But on a few of those days we did venture out to Science World and the Vancouver Aquarium, both of which were great fun to attend. We took the train to the former, but drove to the latter. The FIFA World Cup was just starting at this time so some of the Science World exhibits were awfully crowded!
Outdoors
[edit | edit source]Perhaps the most striking thing about BC is all the natural beauty. I think part of why it's so beautiful is that they have all these tall towers and so the area around Burquitlam station mostly looks like trees rather than the endless sprawl of homes you see when you visit our home city of San Francisco.
We went on a few hikes while we were here. The trail to Admiral Point is mostly flat and a pleasant hike for the whole family. We had 5-year-olds and 70-year-olds and they all did it with a minimum of fuss. Astra is only a year old so we carried her most of the way. There's also a big picnic area there, so we hung out there and had lunch.
The highlight of our outdoors trips had to be the hike to St. Mark's Summit. I'd done this about a decade ago and remember it being a quick up and down. Well, that was when I was a younger man doing it with my equally young cousin. This time, the gang included a baby strapped to me and my elderly parents, so the fake memory of ease played havoc on the party. Nevertheless we made it to the top for a view that was certainly worth it
There's no shortage of much easier outdoor places to visit, though. Lynn Valley, in particular, is quite beautiful with suspended bridges and pools and waterfalls, but has nice wooden stairs and lots of flat paths.
Or Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver
And if you're more of the drive to view type, then the sea to sky highway has beautiful views all the way to Porteau Cove and past.
City Life
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Julie and I have gotten into a routine where we stop by Bjornbar Bakery in Burquitlam for a morning coffee and perhaps a pastry. I don't imagine we'd do this as often if we lived here simply because we'd become extraordinarily obese if we kept up the habit of eating their very good pastries. The Safeway is right across the street as well so groceries are not much of a problem. There are a couple of sushi spots, bars, and boba shops but they're mostly in strip malls that are being scheduled for conversion into these tall apartment buildings. One nice thing about many of the buildings is that they have ground floor retail. Often it's dental or eye clinics, but a few of them are stores which is quite nice. I hope when the strip malls are redeveloped that they do keep room for restaurants and places to hang out.
Because of the Skytrain, however, access to the city is quite easy. Taking the train somewhere is much more comfortable and enjoyable than taking the car, though some places like the UBC campus or VanDusen gardens or Robson street are not easy to get to by train alone.
In any case, most of the city life is up in the city. We found out about Robson street because we were looking to go to Imran's Halal Beef Noodle House: I love the Chinese beef noodle soup; and I was fascinated by the fact that this one was called Imran's Halal. It turns out that the Dongxiang people are a Muslim ethnicity in China. We also enjoyed the fluffy pancakes at Fuwa Fuwa and the belgian waffles by The Waffle Company. It struck me that this must be one of the safer places in North America because there was even a completely self-checkout store called Aisle 24 there with no staff inside.
Gastown was also a fun neighbourhood with lots of bars and things to do for younger people - as we guessed from the demographics in the restaurants - but there were also lots of nice places to eat and we found one that we enjoyed so much we came back later to eat another dinner at: Kozak - an Ukrainian place - with fantastic babka at their bakery.
Overall, to get the full city experience you're going to have to ride some 30 minutes on Skytrain. This is quite a bit longer than taking the e-bike around San Francisco, but it's about the same time as one would spend on the Tube on a night out.
The city itself can get quite grimy. We drove by a Hastings Street one day and it looked like the worst of the Tenderloin. But for the most part, Vancouver is a much nicer city.
Family Life
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The reason we came here to Coquitlam was so that we could spend some time with family, and on that front it paid off. More often than I expected, while walking down the streets I'd encounter my cousins walking the dog or just out and about. We'd go to the spray park together and hang out at my uncle's place.
The tall apartment buildings are also quite luxurious and the rents aren't particularly extreme. In San Francisco, a place like the one we stayed at could probably only be found at the new build areas in Mission Bay - Channel/Verde and so on. This building has quite a few amenities: a work area, a family lounge, grills, a childrens' room, a pool, a steam room and sauna, a rooftop common area with a pool table and so on, and some sort of game room with foosball. The rooftop common area is stunning - firepits, with views of snowcapped peaks, and an outdoor TV which presumably people use to watch games.
One of the most valuable things to me here in Coquitlam is the fact that there are many places where you can let a child run about quite a bit. The indoor areas are nice, and the outdoor areas are quite well-maintained and there are large spaces where there are no motor vehicles. This makes it quite nice to take your child out and give them a spin.
Skytrain access to Vancouver also makes being out of the city not too bad because you're at destinations in less time than it takes to get from our home in SOMA to the California Academy of Sciences.
Education
[edit | edit source]One of my cousins went to school here and she turned out all right, but that's often the case in places where the education has dropped quite a bit in the last decade (e.g. San Francisco), so it's hard to say. However, one thing I do find useful is that there are lots of Mandarin immersion programs here, plus the YMCA by Burquitlam in the building where one of my cousins lives seems to have quite a lot of programs.
