Where to Stay in Richmond, British Columbia

What is Richmond known for?

Richmond sits on islands in the Fraser River delta, and the earthworks ringing Lulu Island and Sea Island are the reason a city could be built on ground this low and this flat. Steveston carries the older half of it, where the Gulf of Georgia Cannery and Britannia Shipyard are what the river industry left standing. Cantonese is widely spoken here.

The Richmond Art Gallery and the Richmond Museum handle the civic side.

What are the main landmarks in Richmond?

Steveston owns the register. The Gulf of Georgia Cannery, Britannia Shipyard, the Steveston Museum and Post Office, the Steveston Courthouse, the Steveston Telephone Exchange and the Steveston Tram Museum all stand within one quarter, and the Steveston Martial Arts Centre is there as well. Minoru Chapel stands apart from them.

The Richmond Art Gallery, the Richmond Museum, the 12 Service Battalion Museum, Branscombe House, the Minoru Arenas and the Clearone Badminton Centre fill out the rest.

What is the history of Richmond?

Richmond's record begins in 1879. The city grew on the flat ground of Lulu Island, where the Fraser River divides into two arms before it reaches the Strait of Georgia, and where the ground had to be diked before it could be built on at all. Everything here began with water.

The dike system that keeps the river's occasional flooding off the islands is what made everything after it possible, and it still defines the shape of the place. Vancouver and Burnaby stood across the north arm on the Burrard Peninsula, New Westminster and Annacis Island upstream to the east, and Delta beyond the south arm. Steveston grew as the river industry's town.

The Gulf of Georgia Cannery and Britannia Shipyard belong to that period, and so do the Steveston Courthouse, the Steveston Telephone Exchange and the Steveston Museum and Post Office, the sort of small institutional buildings a working port needed and then kept. Trams once ran here. The Steveston Tram Museum keeps that record, while Minoru Chapel and Branscombe House are what the residential side of the same decades left behind.

Richmond later took on the largest Asian-Canadian share in the country, and Cantonese came to be spoken widely across Lulu Island.

Where is Richmond?

Two arms of the Fraser River set the boundaries. Richmond holds almost all of Lulu Island, the adjacent Sea Island and a scatter of smaller islands and uninhabited islets, roughly 129 square kilometres of delta in the Lower Mainland. Nothing here is high ground.

Vancouver and Burnaby stand across the north arm on the Burrard Peninsula, New Westminster and Annacis Island lie to the east, Delta is beyond the south arm, and the Strait of Georgia takes over on the western side.

What is the climate of Richmond?

The Strait of Georgia takes the edges off. Open water on the western side moderates both ends of the year on ground this low and this exposed, so the temperate band Richmond sits in delivers a mild winter rather than a continental one. The Fraser River sets the other rhythm.

Its two arms run high when the snow upstream melts, and that is when the dikes around Lulu Island and Sea Island earn their keep.

How do you get to Richmond?

Every arrival crosses water. Bridges over the two arms of the Fraser River carry traffic in from Vancouver and Burnaby on the Burrard Peninsula, from New Westminster and Annacis Island to the east, and from Delta on the southern side. Steveston sits at one end.

Reaching it from the middle of Lulu Island is a straight run over flat, diked ground, and the same flatness makes that trip as easy on a bicycle as in a car.