I moved to Vancouver in 2004 and remember thinking it was surprisingly difficult to find a pub. Thanks to this article, I now know why. I do think, however, that Vancouver remains an amazing community, and most of the functions the author ascribes to neighbourhood pubs are met in other ways. Maybe we should just be happy with what we have in Vancouver and not worry about copying some archetypal urban model that requires us to build neighbourhood pubs all over the place. I know that I don't really miss them anymore.

Delta is blessed with an array of interesting drinking establishments.

In Ladner Speeds, offers the best fare and view, with Speed himself available for a good laugh.

The Landing, again is a nice place to visit, with friendly staff and the ever so exclusive 'outdoor club'.

The Rusty Anchor is a quiet out of the way place with good view of the river and an array of 'old salts'.

The local Legion, is like most Legions, the last place for 'old soaks' who have been barred from every pub in town.

The Ladner Hotel, an interesting place, with dangerous sorts, planning illegal activity; a sort of 1940's place, with 1940's characters. I only needs cigarette smoke to completes the ambience. Under constant police scrutiny!

Across the highway is the Sundance, a sort of wierd place, with ever changing staff. It is an American Tavern sort of a place, where long drunk people, talk about the 'old days' amid Orwellian advertising flashing on TV's, drink more booze, drink more booze..........

On the other side of the 99 is another Pub, which name escapes me, with unfriendly owners ans staff.

In Tsawwassen, there is a Legion in the 'chicken coops', a sort of industrial/commercial zone in Tsawwassen. Beaches, a sort of expensive lounge for the elites of Tsawwassen to meet and do business, and the Rose and Crown, a toff-nosed joint, about as friendly as morgue.

Best of the lot........Speeds!

Hah! This is an issue I've been thinking about delving into in my town (Victoria).
This place has lots of nice pubs, but I can only think of one place where you can get a quiet drink after 10 pm. Later on in the evening, virtually every pub here hires some band or DJ to start blasting music.

I also enjoy the Cedar Cottage pub. Friendly staff, good food, but not enough micro-brews for my taste if I were to quibble.

I believe that one of the reasons that drinking/driving is so prevalent here is the lack of neighborhood watering holes, within walking distance of people's homes.

I personally don't have the time or inclination to go downtown, or travel the two miles to the nearest pub, and I'd rather not quaff $6 beers at Earls or the Cactus Club. Hence I confine my drinking to home.

Somebody could make a buck off me if they'd give me a reason to walk less than a mile....

The liquor licensing laws in Vancouver are peculiar, as is City Hall's licensing & inspections department itself.

I'm skeptical at the uses to which the licensing regime has been put. I'm also skeptical about the interests which a bottle-necked licensing system can be made to serve. Guy Gusdal is slippery.

And of course there's that peculiar hybrid, the "non-alcohol cabaret" which most certainly do serve alcohol in a variety of imaginative ways 'til the wee hours of the morning. The sole purpose of these little under-the-radar hideouts is to circumvent national drug laws while providing local law enforcement the legitimate excuses they need to look the other way. I'm still not sure what induced Judy Rogers to allow herself to be bamboozled by Michael Gordon et. al. into recommending to Council this questionable and unexamined innovation in municipal licensing policy. We've paid the price, that's for sure.

I'm all for good neighbourhood pubs run by solid legitimate businessmen/women. Vancouver definitely needs more of them.

Spinnaker's Pub in Victoria is still the best pub I have ever been in, anywhere. The food has become a little steep but the beer and atmosphere remain top rate. You sure can't beat the view, either!

Yup, Victoria's great for pubs. A lot of older 'anglo' (read: english, scots and irish-settled) towns have a strong pub culture. The Maritimes luv their pour-houses - even small town Ontario is in on it. Kingston has some great olde drinking spots. Even starched & coiffed Ottawa has it good - D'Arcy McGees (overlooking the national War Memorial), Heart & Crown, Brigadier's Pump....all brick & stone, hard wood, brass railings, dark leather seats and more imports & domestic micro-labels than you can count. The real thing.

Vancouver missed out on that - I think it's all chains, jock bars and boom-box meat markets. Not sure how much is attributable to policy, and how much to the ambient social tenor of the city itself tho.

The great pubs of Vancouver are actually in North Vancouver. They are: The Rusty Gull, The Raven, Black Bear Pub, Pemberton Station, and Queens Cross. I should also mention Sailor Hagar's. For heavier drinking action, try Jack Lonsdale's or the good ole Lynnwood.

There are some good pubs in B.C., although none that I can take my three-year-old to for lunch, as I could in any self-respecting Irish pub. And there are none in my neighbourhood, although the relaxed rules make some Commercial Drive restaurants an acceptable substitute. My candidate for the best pub in B.C.? It ain't one of those million-dollar microbreweries, even though I'm glad rules have been changed to permit them. It's the Billy Miner, across the street from the Fraser River below Maple Ridge. History without pretense, naturally friendly service, decent pub food of the non-gastro variety, and obviously local people.

Yes, the Billy Miner is a good place, and there are others, but nothing like pubs in the U.K.

The Likely Hotel in beautiful downtown Likely is one of the damn few that fit the bill in B.C. - and it is not like a bloody British pub!

There's a nice pub in Hedley, right above the Similkameen River, where you can have indifferent food but an excellent pint of Black Widow from Penticton. And the Quilchena Hotel bar -- esp. if one takes a jug of Okanagan Pale Ale out onto the patio...And the Middlesboro in Merritt which has Black Bear on tap and pretty good burgers too. The Coldwater Hotel pub in Merritt is neat for the ghosts who drink there but the others are often a bit grim. What about the Crow and Gate south of Nanaimo? Is it still serving good meat pies in an atmosphere redolent of Devon or Wiltshire?

I have lived in Vancouver for 5 years now and truly miss my old town's Pub scene. I am 27 and like a good mix, be it the club-bars downtown to the restaurant-pubs in Kits and on Commercial Drive. However, it is true, we lack a decent neighbourhood pub selection. In Mission and Maple Ridge there are a plethora of pubs you can walk in by yourself and enjoy a few with your text books or some more enjoyable reading. Your mates and their mates would inevitably stop in and sooner or later there would be three tables pulled up by eight or nine. They usually have a good beer selection and some of them brewed their own. I can recommend the Billy Minor Pub in Maple Ridge. Sisto's and The Springs in Mission BC. The Springs brews their own beer and the staff are very knowlegable. If you are out that way, swing by and give it a try. It was my home away from home.

Commercial Drive is good - too bad the zombies come out after dark tho. It almost manages to get a good cultural scene happening...almost. I'm still mourning Illuminaris (you'd *never* see a spontaneous community tradition like that arise in Ontario). I used to be so impressed with the culture-shift in such a close space (that is to say, the shift in ambient social climate from designer Downtown/West End to alternative/radical/unpretentious Commercial Drive only minutes away).

In my Pub on Wednesday night at 8PM we all gathered to participate in a Yahoo NFL Fantasy football draft.
We had 11 wireless laptops up and running.
The Pub offers wireless Internet service so we took over a room and had a blast drafting an NFL team, the website provided by Yahoo was awesome.
So that's my local pub.
I think it's addictive, this Pub.
Remember ' Coronation Street ' , the Pub named Rovers Return?
A local Pub is a treasure.

I live in Strathcona. The closest bar/pub to me is the Astoria it is allowed to stay open and have a liquor license but does not serve the community adjacent to it in any welcoming safe way. I could go up to Commercial Drive but it is too far and not in my neighborhood. There is nothing in my neighborhood no coffee after 7 no video store, no restaurants. It seems the neighborhood is victim to planing and zoning and that is the key to having places to go to like pubs. Bars that are terrible to go to and areas that cater to binge drinking (Granville Street) seem to have liquor licenses and are able to get them easily but a simple neighborhood pub that creates a sense of community is impossible to open. Why is is so many bars can open downtown catering to people that give drinking a bad name and also have to drive to this area and from this area (after drinking) from somewhere else. I have lost count of the amount of times I have walked home through this area and seen people kicking anything over that is not cemented down and drinking while walking down Granville and adjacent streets. The city created this situation then turns around and says pubs are noisy.
Just one pub that is all I ask for in my neighborhood where people are responsible and have a strong sense of community something Granville St. lacks but opens more and more places to drink irresponsibly all the time.
Another thing, I believe establishments on Granville St should have to have bands so that people come down there for a better reason than just drinking. Bars with bands attract more intelligent crowds that like music and want to be entertained. Bars with bands create a music scene which in turn benefits a city internationally. Just drinking on Granville does nothing but make money for bar owners that care nothing about people and how much people drink. Create a band oriented area on Granville and make it far more interesting and open more neighborhood pubs

brain - Amen to that.

well said _brian_

17-mile Pub out towards Sooke (though it;s been a while since I've been there)

The quest for the perfect pub. Hmmmm?!?!

I'm not really very much of a pub crawler or beer drinker these days, though I do like a "good" beer on occassion. A Warsteiner, from Germany. And I do like the hopsy flavour of a Tsing Tao from China. And, of course, the medicinal, soothing and tummy settling properties of a Guinness! Though my current favourite from Revelstoke, B.C. has to be a Begbie Brewery's "Kolsch". Excellent.

And for a pub?

Weeeelllll, my all time favourite, home from which I crawled and chased loose women on many a night, ruining my sterling reputation, has to be the Prospector Pub in Rock Creek, B.C.

Ahhhhh. The memories!

If one accepts that it is the responsibility of a man to drink too much and make a fool of himself over women. :-)

But, in these my Golden Years, :-) I'm much more a stay at home and whiskey man, much to my good woman's relief.

Time and testosterone reduction takes care of those wayward males for you ladies. And a good thing it does. Otherwise our lives would be in a constant state of chaos, and our tiny wee grey cells reduced to drooling blather. Eh? :-)

And, of course, who can talk about beer or whiskey without the occassional bit of BC Green bud?!?! (Which is why we have sons-in-law. To keep us supplied with the odd J. Otherwise they serve no purpose whatsoever. Even ex-sons in law can only assuage their own guilt by passing on the odd joint to the ex-father in law. :-) Like love and marriage. A horse and carriage. :-)

Allah Akba! God Is Great!

Well, my beer drinking days are way behind me (and I'm like, half Coyote's age :), but I do have a group of friends who can still rack up a $300+ bill- strictly beer- at the good ol' Irish Heather in Gastown (the old jail). Double lock your bike, kick back on the patio for some cozy atmosphere... the sandwiches aren't bad, either.

That X above is supposed to be a smile...

There is a restaurant in the quaint old downtown quarter of Abbotsford that is more pub-like than most pubs in B.C. - The Yorkshire Rose. There is often live music in the evenings, the beer selection is favourable, the food as good as British food gets and there is no damned television in the place.

I highly recommend visiting before, during and after your next church meeting.

I'll make the sacrifice and overlook it, Fii. LOL. ;-)

Of course the pubs and the beer is far superior in Washington state. Any hole in the wall bar there has a better selection of decent beer than the entire lower mainland (outside of downtown Vancouver)

Here the big breweries give the pub owner huge incentives to carry only their wretched product effectively shutting out all the true microbrews. In Washington State this practice is illegal.

Another truly absurd example of our archaic liquor licensing is the case of Moonshine in Gastown. They were forced to change their name to Six Acres (the original size of the Granville Township) becuase the city said it promoted drinking. But its okay to plaster your bar with Budweiser banners?

Ooookayyy...and what colour is the sky in your world? I haven't had many good American beers...there are a couple of nice microbrews from around Seattle, but the majority are pretty horrid.

Mission Springs, the Black Sheep in Maple Ridge, and the afore-mentioned North Vancouver pubs..the Gull, Hagar's, the Raven, and the Black Bear.

Oh yes - who doesn't love the suburban pubs? I especially love the ones they stick out in the middle of Industrial Parks. Who doesn't enjoy a dozen or more frosty cold ones before hoping in the pickup to head home after a hard days work?
Suburban pubs are by and large darkened cesspools for stinking, sweat laden redneck morons to trade odds on the NFL. Then drive home drunk and kill someone.
Any urban policy that allows for *ANY* drinking establishment to be located in areas inaccessible to a residence is complicit in drunk driving.
Delta and Surrey being two marvelous examples of how stupid city planners should have their kids splattered across the highway by the drunk drivers they create.

Redneck= racist and classist hate speech, pathetic how some use this word to dismiss and dehumanize. How about niggers hanging out in a bar after work, godsChild? Would that be ok with you? Its not with me and neither is redneck. Think about it.

I nominate the Irish Heather in Gastown.
Then there's the original neighbourhood pub in B.C.: The Crow and Gate in Cedar on Vancouver Island.

I can't believe that Seth prefers beer in Washington State. There's a Welsh word which means "cricket's p*ss" which I think is appropriate in this context. Think of those Nelson Brewery beers -- Blackheart Oatmeal Stout, for instance. Or the Tree beers. Or the ones (name escapes me but it's Irish, from somewhere near Salmon Arm). Or the beers from the small pubs like the Troller and so forth. Reminds me of the CAMRA thing in Britain, every terroir having its own interesting beer. I wonder if the wonderful Merridale ciders are on tap at any pubs?

I recently moved close to the Cedar Cottage pub, and I am happy to have it in my neighbourhood. Low key, friendly community atmosphere, quite good food, and as someone mentioned the beer selection is good, but could be better. All in all a good pub. I also have been to the Crow and Gate, great place. And to answer Fish, I haven't seen Merridale cider on tap anywhere, but that doesn't mean a whole lot as I haven't drank much in the Cowichan Valley...

For eastside Vancouverites I would recommend the basement lounge in the WISE Club at Victoria and Commercial Dr. for a community based low-key unpretentious pub to just kick back and drink a cold one. No food is served, and you can ask the bartender to sign you in to see if you like it. Memebership is required eventually.
It is the only place around Commercial Drive that is open until 2AM every night except Sunday. They have a couple of TV's for sporting events, a jukebox and stereo behind the bar where you can bring in your own CDs to donate to the collection.
The place is run collectively so you can parcipitate in the running of the place, if you're so inclined.

http://www.wisehall.ca/

Hey Fsh, I believe you're thinking of Crannog

Mr. Beer N. Hockey:

While reading this article, all I was trying to do was remember the name on the Irish Heather. I think some pop culture mag at some point rated it the place to get the best poor of Guinness. But after reading your post, I was embarassed that I forgot one of the few redeeming points of my old hometown. The folks who run the Yorkshire are great, and the beer is better. The only problem is sitting on the patio and getting busted quaffing one by memebers of your extended family on their way home from church.

If you are stuck in Abbotsford and have to go to church, though, St. Matthew's Anglican is filled with some pretty solid folks.

"What about the Crow and Gate south of Nanaimo? Is it still serving good meat pies in an atmosphere redolent of Devon or Wiltshire?"
Yes, Fish, it is still open and still great. Best pub food I've had, diverse group of patrons from elderly card-players to local hikers to just folk looking for an agreeable place for a pint.
Great discussion! Can't wait to try some of these places. Is there a published BC pub guide?

Hey homechunks,

Go to merridalecider.com/cider_house.html#

There's a link near the top of the page that provides a list of all the pubs and restaurants that serve their products.

And no, I don't work for Merridale!

Thanks, Grumpy, for the link. They do some lovely ciders and it's good to know it's on tap in a number of pubs on Vancouver Island and in Vancouver. Not, alas, where I live...And yes, thanks, Seanorr, it was Crannog I was thinking of. And maybe it's time for a fall road trip to the Island with a stop at the Crow and Gate -- thanks, Mitzi!

It is great to hear about some pubs that exist in some areas but I think the point is being missed here. It has to do with planing that exists now. There are only a few here and there but not enough. No new pubs being opened that make it easy for someone to walk one or two blocks and sit for some conversation and a beer. I could go to the Wise Hall in East Vancouver but it is a few Kilometers away which is hardly convenient. I live in Strathcona and there is nothing. After 7 PM. Nothing! In the evening you can not even get a coffee or go to a restaurant and sit. There is just nothing except Commercial Drive or Downtown. There is China Town but it lacks variety and in the evening is not oriented to sitting at a table on the sidewalk it is a daytime experience. For a decent place to go. Decent is the key word here because some might say the Astoria or the Patricia hotels are close but they are part of the lower East Side problem at this point and not servicing the neighborhood at large with something great to go to that feels relaxing.
So lets get back to the point of Planing. Bars and pubs can open on Granville Street that create a "party zone" for a certain type of drinker that makes lots of money for bar owners that do not give a damn about them just their money and more licenses are being given for more bars in that area to open but for Strathcona, a great neighborhood, nothing is opening. Just one place for a beer in the evening or somewhere to sit and be sociable even for non drinkers. This is the plan the city is following and once again it creates no sense of community just more unprogressive liquor laws. Strathcona is a large area with more and more housing being developed but there is no infrastructure being planed that gives the variety that other areas already have. I am using Strathcona as an example but I am sure there are other areas that have similar situations. The only way I see an area like Strathcona getting some places to go to is when the neighbors take it upon themselves to take back some areas like the block that the Astoria is in and try to attract businesses to open there and turn that small section of Hastings around. But I do not see any city planing that has any vision to help do this. By the way for anyone interested, I do think this area is the next area to go through a change similar to Main and Broadway. The block either side of Hastings between Hawks St. and Heatley Ave.. It will take time but it will happen.

godsChild...wasn`t that the Bentley I saw parked outside the " Galloping Goose" in Coquitlam the other day? Were you sending your driver...is it Raoul or is it Lance..for a couple of
frosty cold ones to go?

The "perfect pub" is rare. Being able to walk to it is so important, but so rare in British Columbia. I have never been really comfortable meeting friends and colleagues at a pub, then getting in a car and all driving our seperate ways.

That being said, most pub's do a lousy job of their food. Their are exceptions, but I cannot stand it when I get an out of the box burger, out of the package fries, and a helping of bag salad. The River's Reach in New Westminster is an exception, and produces good food. However, the beer is ridicously overpriced.

Jimy Mac's in Langely has great atmosphere, but everyone there arrives by car.

Atmosphere is important, and took many pubs rely on the out of the box "pub flare" package. The Foggy Dew is the perfect example of this.... with fake pub crap all over the walls. The Office in Maple Ridge is changing its name to Houston's - this is another example of trying too hard to attract new customers. Good service there though.

Of course the patron's are also important to the atmosphere. It is freindly, and do you feel safe. Strange violent stuff happens at the Cat and Fiddle from time to time, which puts a bit of a bad vibe on an otherwise great place to watch a game.

The Raven in Deep Cove would be the "perfect" pub, if I lived in the area. Good beer, some specials, ok food, and walking distance for a large portion of their partrons.

Victoria has some great pubs.... however, a little stuffy sometimes.

I know that "Cold Beer and Wine Stores" are the main money maker for many pubs, but I really think they detract from the atmosphere of most pubs. It's hard to explain, I just don't like them.

A perfect pub? Hmmmmm, I am not sure if it exists in Vancouver. But if "everyone knows your name", it means that you are there too much.

Wow, the 17 Mile, that brings back fond memories. However, the Perfect Pub has to be the Crow and Gate in Cedar, between Ladysmith and Nanaimo. It even has resident swans in its pond.

The biggest problem with the idea of neighbourhood pubs as concocted by BC legislators/policing/planning types is that the concept of a "local" comes from a set of islands where people live in concentrated villages, with the pub(s) within a short walking distance of home. Hence the 1-mile or 1-kilometre radius on the plebiscites needed to start one here - with the idea that avid car-drives in need of a pint would gladly park their car at home to go to the pub; but no, even from two blocks away people will drive; and because, as noted, the costs of launching one are so high the "neighbourhood" concept is blown away by market realities. So it comes down to a consequence of our (sub)urban planning priorities - the pub licenses are an attempt to translate a drinking concept from a pedestrian-oriented environment, and just aren't applicable in a country where people confuse their car for their legs.

That being said, I miss a lot of the old hard-core beer parlours. Sure, it's hard to miss the Cariboo but the Ritz and the Blue Horizon and the little hotels on Cordova opposite what is now Waterfront Station (the Grandview, the St. Francis and the, uh...??).

But the really classic "pubs" in BC are the smalltown beer parlours. The really small town beer parlours: the old Mines Hotel in Bralorne, the Lillooet/Victoria in Lillooet, the Lytton, the Princeton, the Clinton, the Coalmont and others; only a few still surviving (most gone by fire; and those in larger towns tend to get renovated as "sports bars").

Well, actually I don't miss the Lytton one little bit; it's kinda dangerous at times, even at low occupancy...a place to avoid, rather than seek out, as with no doubt certain other smalltown bars throughout BC. It just came to mind in the list of old hotel bars in the canyon and Interior I was filing through mentally.

The Lillooet, Clinton, Mines, Princeton and others have all been wiped out by fire over the years (arson and otherwise); more's the pity. I think "the Lake" in Williams Lake also went by fire recently, as with the Clinton. Sad.

whoops, meant "the Princeton" rather than the Clinton, which was wiped out by fire quite a few years ago now.

Always meant to check back in on the Coalmont, which I'd just poked my news into one afternoon (it was at fever pitch...but very friendly by the look/feel of it). It's still there, isn't it? (don't get into the Tulameen much...)

now that's a new one...meant "poked my nose" of course. More like a jungian slip than a freudian one....

A few years ago, we found the Coalmont on a ramble through that country and had a very welcome pint of cold beer before exploring what's left of Granite Creek. This July we were in Princeton again (so sad to see that the Princeton Hotel burned this past winter) and thought we'd drive out to Coalmont again. It was a bit eerie to go into the pub through an open door, see the tables with bottles on them, and not to be able to find anyone around at all to serve us a drink. We called, looked into the kitchen area, but no sign of anyone at all in that haunted little town on the Tulameen River...

In unversity, I used to drink at the Gorge Hotel in Victoria. What a view. At the Gorge, you could get happily plastered in the company of loggers, doctors and lawyers. I really missed the place when it was gone. It even had the "ladies and escorts" entrance.