Eagle Harbour, West Vancouver: Homes for Sale, Prices, Schools and Daily Life

Eagle Harbour is the name of a bay and of the neighbourhood around it. The province's place name office describes the bay as facing Queen Charlotte Channel, the water between West Vancouver and Bowen Island, and it places Eagle Island inside the harbour. On the map, Eagle Harbour Park and the Eagle Harbour Yacht Club are at the foot of Eagle Harbour Road. A second bay, Fishermans Cove, opens on the north side of the island, with the West Vancouver Yacht Club and Thunderbird Marina on its shore.

Marine Drive is the main road, and it bends inland around the harbour between Caulfeild and Gleneagles. Westport Road climbs the slope behind it toward Westhaven Road and Westhaven Wynd. Natural Resources Canada's elevation data gives 23 metres above sea level for Marine Drive at Eagle Harbour Road, 112 metres for Westhaven Wynd and 130 metres for the top of Westhaven Road. A working railway line runs across the slope between the two levels, and the Upper Levels Highway (Highway 1) passes along the top of the area.

In our view, Eagle Harbour suits a buyer who wants to live near boats and a waterfront park, with a public elementary school a short distance from the harbour. Shops are a drive away at Caulfeild Village. A buyer who wants cafes, a library and a pool within walking distance should look further east, in Dundarave or Ambleside.

The harbour has had several names. The province's place name record says it was once called Fisherman's Cove, because fishermen from Newfoundland settled here with their families in the late 1880s with the support of the provincial government.

In 1929 the Hydrographic Service recommended new names, because the local ones were also in use elsewhere on the coast. Its officer H.D. Parizeau proposed Johnson Cove for the harbour, after Captain E. Johnson, who became the pilot for Vancouver harbour in 1893. The province adopted Johnson Cove on January 8, 1929. On the same day it adopted Abode Island for Eagle Island, to keep it apart from five other Eagle Islands on the coast.

Residents kept the older names. On February 2, 1949, West Vancouver's municipal clerk, R.A. Harrison, wrote to the province's Chief Geographer that the bay was accepted locally as Eagle Harbour and that the island was known only as Eagle Island. The province changed both names back on March 3, 1949. We found no record of who first used the word Eagle here.

The province's record for the community says it appears on a 1914 map of Vancouver and its suburbs and in the timetables of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway. A post office named Eagle Harbour opened on April 1, 1942 and closed on February 15, 1962. On November 4, 2008, West Vancouver's Board of Education approved a Montessori program at what was then Eagle Harbour Primary School, and the first Kindergarten class began in September 2009.

Eagle Harbour is residential. The map data on this page shows no cafe near the harbour, and the one supermarket it lists is the Safeway at the Caulfeild Village shopping centre on Headland Drive. The same data marks a pharmacy and a medical clinic at that centre. In our experience, most residents drive there.

Children's activities are closer. Eagle Harbour Montessori School is on Marine Drive, and the school district says a Montessori preschool and care before and after school are offered on the same site. Parc Verdun, the closest park to the middle of the area in the table on this page, has two tennis courts and a court for other sports.

The map shows yacht clubs and marinas on the two bays, among them the Eagle Harbour Yacht Club at the foot of Eagle Harbour Road, and the West Vancouver Yacht Club and Thunderbird Marina on Fishermans Cove. A buyer who owns a boat should phone them to ask about membership and a place to keep the boat before relying on one.

Eagle Harbour Park is on the water at the foot of Eagle Harbour Road, beside the yacht club. The school district describes a forested public park, a stream with salmon, a beach and a marina within walking distance of the school.

Parc Verdun was rebuilt in 2021 and 2022, after the District surveyed residents in June 2019. The work rebuilt the two tennis courts and the multi-sport court, lined one court for both tennis and pickleball, repaired the trails and put back two bridges over the stream, which the District calls Wood Creek. The District reported it complete in August 2022.

The table on this page lists Seaview Walk among the nearest parks. The District gives two entrances: one across from Gleneagles Golf Course, just east of Orchill Road, and a steep access trail off Cranley Drive at Nelson Creek. It rates the walk as easy, 4 kilometres there and back, and accessible by wheelchair, with benches along the way. Dogs may be off the leash on it.

For a longer walk, the Whyte Lake Trail begins on Westport Road just south of the Upper Levels Highway, at Nelson Canyon. Dogs must stay on a leash in that park. The photo at the top of this page was taken from the Eagle Bluffs in Cypress Provincial Park, which look down on this shore. BC Parks calls the Eagle Bluffs trail a popular summer route and discourages winter travel there.