Where to sightsee for free in Vancouver | Canada Voices

As a not-quite-starving freelance writer for most of my adult life, I’ve never had money to squander on pricey leisure activities. But that doesn’t mean I’ve stayed home jealously imagining what it’s like at attractions that charge $80 for admission. Instead, I’ve amassed a back catalogue of cost-free places to visit in my Metro Vancouver backyard – and this year, I finally decided to share them.

Alongside friend and co-author Rebecca Bollwitt – a.k.a. famous local blogger Miss604 – I researched, road-tested and wrote Freecouver: 101 Free Things to do in and Around Vancouver. Published in June by Tidewater Press, the pocket-sized book profiles our favourite museums, galleries, gardens, tours and more that don’t charge a penny for entry.

Now that the media interviews (including two slightly unnerving TV appearances) are behind us, I’ve been revisiting some of the book’s entries just for fun. And this time, I’ve slowed down and chatted with the individuals who help ensure these attractions remain free: the often-unheralded volunteers who give their time to the places they love.

With a matching lilac tuque and T-shirt, and slightly smudged, black-rimmed glasses, 23-year-old Nova Blundell recalls visiting Yaletown’s CPR Engine 374 pavilion on a Grade 3 school trip. But it wasn’t the immaculately preserved locomotive – the engine that pulled the first transcontinental passenger train into Vancouver in 1887 – that stood out.

“I remember the bricks in the floor, etched with the names of the people who donated to save the engine, which had been sitting outside on Kitsilano Beach since 1945,” Blundell says. That 1980s grassroots effort – there are 20,000 named bricks lining the floor – rescued the locomotive and paid for its purpose-built pavilion, which now receives thousands of visitors every year.

Fast-forward to the post-COVID era, and when the naturally shy Blundell was looking for ways to get out of the house, a friend suggested volunteering here. “I didn’t really talk to anyone at first. But now I really enjoy answering questions about how the engine works and what the capacity of the water tank is. Being here has really helped with my confidence.”

While Blundell points me to several nostalgic exhibits – conductor hats, dining car crockery and a decommissioned check-in desk used by a local as a bar before his wife persuaded him to donate it – I’m superkeen to climb aboard the stationary locomotive. Tingling with excitement as I step into the red-painted cabin, I giddily ring the bell like the steam engine driver I was always meant to be.

Steven Yip also had a long-gestating affinity with the attraction at which he volunteers. Regular exercise strolls often took him past the eight-acre Britannia Shipyards National Historic Site in the Steveston area of Richmond, the city next to Vancouver. And when he retired from a 32-year wireless communications career, it felt like the ideal place to provide him with a sense of purpose.

“I’m really fascinated by the stories behind the buildings here, and I keep learning more about them,” says the trim and ever-smiling Yip, dressed in a bright shorts-and-runners ensemble that belies his retirement-age status. One particular backstory among the weathered wooden sheds and shingle-sided cottages is especially resonant.

“My in-laws were part of the Japanese Canadian internment in World War II,” he says. “And the Murakami House here feels like it’s talking to you about what everyone went through.”

The narrow residence housed generations of the Murakami fishing and boatbuilding family until they were forcibly moved to camps in 1942. Now, it’s been poignantly recreated with bedrooms, living areas, a large kitchen and an ofuro wooden bathtub.

Waving goodbye to Yip, I duck into Britannia’s main shipyard shed. With oily aromas and tool-strewn counters, it feels like yesteryear workers are around every corner. I especially enjoy the wall-mounted quotes from employees such as Doris Forsyth, the lone female working here in the 1970s. “It was more difficult for the men,” she says. “They had to take down their girlie pictures and watch their language.”

With plans for one more Freecouver visit, I consider possibilities such as the B.C. Vintage Truck Museum – where dozens of shiny vehicles await – or the brilliant TRIUMF Particle Accelerator Tour, where you encounter a huge cyclotron and discover how little you actually know about physics. Instead, I beeline to Vancouver’s posh Point Grey area and one of the entries Rebecca covered.

The 1860s building now housing the Old Hastings Mill Store Museum was once part of a bustling sawmill operation near Gastown. But by 1930, it was slated for demolition. That’s when the Native Daughters of B.C. – a local women’s historical society – stepped in to save the city’s oldest structure, fundraising to barge it across to the southern side of English Bay and transform it into a new museum.

That same level of can-do commitment underpins the museum today, according to Anita Lee (no relation), the energetic, chatty woman in a print dress who greets me at the door. President of the Friends of the Old Hastings Mill Store Museum, she co-ordinates around 30 helpers. “Including me, we are 100-per-cent volunteer-run. Our team is the heart and soul of this place,” she says.

Quiet, cozy and teeming with intriguingly eclectic objects – it reminds me of visiting my grandmother’s house – exhibits range from Victorian hair jewellery to whale eardrum bones, from an old mayoral chair to Indigenous fish-skin boots. In one corner, a coffee can that served “refugees” after the Great Vancouver Fire of 1886 sits near tiny woollen figurines crafted as First World War charity fundraisers. It’s a riot of wildly diverse items that wouldn’t fit into a more structured museum.

But that quirkiness is key to the museum’s status as a beloved neighbourhood treasure. Not that anyone here takes that support for granted. Lacking grants from the city, they organize frequent fundraising events. And, like most Freecouver places, there’s a donation box where visitors can contribute if they wish. But without its dedicated volunteers, Lee says the museum simply wouldn’t be viable.

Volunteering here for more than two decades, she recently elevated her personal commitment by becoming the site’s unpaid live-in caretaker. Moving into the 19th-century building’s basement suite, she says, has deepened her relationship with the museum.

“I appreciate it much more now. And I think the spirits have accepted me – they know I’m here to look after this place and help ensure it stays here for years to come.”