Most people who hike down to Tower Beach are thinking about the water. The sand, the logs, the view across the Salish Sea. They walk right past the concrete without really seeing it — two squat towers, weathered and tagged with graffiti, sitting on the shore like they've always just been there. They have, more or less. Those are WWII searchlight towers, and they've been standing since the early 1940s.
That's the thing about Point Grey. The whole peninsula is quietly loaded with wartime infrastructure, and most of it is just... out there. Accessible. No admission fee, no guided tour required. Just you, some crumbling concrete, and eighty years of history that Vancouver mostly forgot to make a big deal about.
This week's issue is built around that beach — but we've got the full four sections below, including what's actually happening in the city right now and a nature pick that's worth your Saturday.
City Pulse — What's On This Week
The Georgia Straight's events listings are showing a few things worth flagging right now:
Kimberly Akimbo is running at the Stanley BFL CANADA Stage — it's the Tony Award-winning musical about a teenager with a rare aging disorder who gets tangled up in a family con scheme. Genuinely weird premise, genuinely good show. Check the Straight for current dates and ticket prices before you go.
The 7th Annual Sound of Dragon Music Festival is at The Annex. If you haven't been to The Annex yet, it's one of the better mid-size venues in the city — good sound, not too precious about itself. Festival format means you can usually catch multiple acts for one ticket price, which is the right economics for this audience.
The Cinematheque is screening Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles — a three-and-a-half-hour Belgian film from 1975 that regularly shows up on "greatest films ever made" lists. Not a casual Tuesday night pick, but if you want to say you've seen it, now's your chance. Check the Straight listing for showtimes and admission.
For all of the above: verify dates and costs directly before you go. Event listings shift.
Urban Exploration — The Concrete That Watched for Submarines
Here's the scout report on Tower Beach.
Take the 99 B-Line to UBC, walk through Pacific Spirit Regional Park toward the water, and follow the trail down the stairs to the shore. According to AllTrails, the beach is named for two concrete WWII searchlight towers that still stand as ruins on the shore — remnants of the coastal defense network that was built after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the threat of Pacific Coast raids became very real.
The towers are covered in graffiti now, which gives them this strange layered quality — military history underneath, decades of tags on top. Nobody's stopping you from walking up to them. This is a public beach in a regional park. You're not trespassing; you're just paying attention.
What most people don't realize is that the Point Grey defenses were part of a much larger system. Canada took Pacific coastal defense seriously enough that gun emplacements, searchlight positions, and observation posts were built at multiple points along the BC coast. The towers at Tower Beach are what's left of that anxiety made concrete.
Bring layers. The beach is exposed and the wind off the water doesn't care what month it is. Low tide gives you more beach to explore. The stairs down are steep — AllTrails rates the trail as moderate, so wear actual shoes.
Nature Adventures — Tower Beach Is Also Just a Really Good Beach
Since we're already sending you to Point Grey: the Tower Beach trail itself is worth treating as a proper outing, not just a history detour.
AllTrails describes it as located in Pacific Spirit Regional Park on the Point Grey peninsula — a dramatic descent to the Salish Sea. The trail is short but steep, which means the return trip earns its reputation. Budget about an hour round trip if you're moving at a normal pace, longer if you're poking around the ruins or watching the water.
Difficulty: Moderate (the stairs are the whole workout) Time: 45 min–1.5 hours depending on how long you stay Transit: 99 B-Line to UBC, then walk through Pacific Spirit Bring: Water, layers, good shoes, and maybe a snack for the beach
The Museum of Anthropology is a five-minute walk from the trailhead, if you want to make a full afternoon of it. Free on Tuesday evenings for BC residents — worth checking their current schedule.
Elsewhere — When the Whole City Is a Ruin
If the Tower Beach towers got you thinking about forgotten wartime infrastructure, the rabbit hole goes deep. Across North America, coastal cities built elaborate defense systems in the early 1940s that were obsolete almost immediately — and a surprising number of those structures are still standing, accessible, and almost completely unmarked.
Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, Washington — about three hours from Vancouver including the ferry — is one of the best examples on the West Coast. The gun batteries there are massive: multi-story concrete bunkers built into the bluffs above the Strait of Juan de Fuca, with tunnels, observation rooms, and gun emplacements you can actually walk through. The park is open year-round, camping is available, and the town of Port Townsend itself is worth the trip on its own terms — Victorian architecture, good food, genuinely charming without being precious about it.
It's the kind of place where you spend an afternoon crawling through concrete corridors and come out the other side thinking differently about how close the war actually felt to people living on this coast. Tower Beach gives you a taste. Port Townsend gives you the full version.