Sandy Cove, West Vancouver: Homes for Sale, Prices, Schools and Daily Life

Sandy Cove is the name of a cove and of the small neighbourhood behind it. The West Vancouver Archives describes the neighbourhood as the land from the corner of Sharon Drive and Marine Drive west to a point just past the federal fisheries research centre, between the waterfront and the railway line. On OpenStreetMap that part of Marine Drive is 857 metres long. Bayridge is on the hill above the tracks, and Cypress Park is to the west.

Three streets hold most of the houses. Marine Drive follows the shore. East of the research centre, OpenStreetMap puts the road between 72 and 91 metres from the shoreline, and the lots on its south side reach the sea. Rose Crescent leaves Marine Drive beside Sandy Cove Park, runs for 829 metres along the slope above and ends at Burkehill Road. Sherman Street, 99 metres long, joins the two. The ground rises from the beach to the railway, which the map places between 121 and 217 metres north of Marine Drive.

In our view, Sandy Cove suits a buyer who wants the sea at the edge of the lot or in view from the slope, and who accepts a main road and a railway close to home. We think a buyer who wants shops within walking distance will be happier in Dundarave or near Caulfeild Village.

The West Vancouver Archives records that the Squamish People named this place Stḵ'iil, and says the name possibly refers to the smell of the mud at low tide. Fisheries and Oceans Canada, which runs the research centre on the shore, says the site held a First Nations village before Europeans arrived and that its waters were valued for rockfish and salmon.

Settlers first called the area Sherman. The archives says the name came from Alfred H. Sherman and Rose Sherman, early residents who owned property here. It adds that Sherman was also the name of a stop on the Pacific Great Eastern Railway, north of the top of Sherman Street. People stopped using the name over time. The province's place name office still holds a record for Sherman as a post office name and marks it as not official. Its name search gives November 26, 1979 as the date of the decision on both names: Sherman was rescinded and Sandy Cove was adopted for the community.

The cove kept its name after an official tried to change it. In 1929, H.D. Parizeau of the Department of Marine and Fisheries recommended the name Ettershank Cove, after Captain William Ettershank, the senior Vancouver pilot from 1877 to 1920. Local people kept using the name Sandy Cove, and it was restored, the archives says. The province's name search gives March 3, 1949 as the date Sandy Cove was adopted for the water.

A fish cannery operated on this shore for more than 60 years. Fisheries and Oceans Canada says the Defiance Cannery was at Sandy Cove from the late 1800s and was renamed the Great Northern Cannery in 1927, and that generations of workers lived on the site with their families. By the mid-1960s the Millerd family, which then owned the cannery, agreed to sell it to the Government of Canada on condition that it be used for research. The Pacific Environment Institute opened there in 1970. It was later renamed the West Vancouver Laboratory and is now the Pacific Science Enterprise Centre, at 4160 Marine Drive.

The map data on this page shows no grocery store, cafe, pharmacy or clinic inside the area. The nearest supermarket in the tables is a Safeway, which OpenStreetMap places inside the Caulfeild Village shopping centre on Headland Drive, with a pharmacy and a medical clinic beside it. For a street of shops and cafes, TransLink's schedule gives the 250 bus five to six minutes from Sherman Street to 25th Street in Dundarave.

The Pacific Science Enterprise Centre occupies the west end of the shore. OpenStreetMap draws its grounds at more than three hectares, with a pier. Fisheries and Oceans Canada's page, last changed on May 22, 2018, lists indoor and outdoor tanks supplied with fresh and salt water, docks, laboratories and offices. The public beach is at the other end of the neighbourhood, in Sandy Cove Park.

Marine Drive is the main road. OpenStreetMap marks it as two lanes that bicycles share with cars, and marks the part from Sandy Cove Park east toward West Bay as having no sidewalk. In our experience, the road is slow behind a bus or a group of cyclists, because there is one lane each way.

Sandy Cove Park is a small District park between Marine Drive and the sea, at the east end of the neighbourhood. OpenStreetMap shows steps down from a marked crossing on Marine Drive, a footbridge 45 metres long, a public washroom and a sand beach 119 metres wide. It marks the beach as having no lifeguard and shows free roadside parking beside the park. Check the signs there for hours and for rules on dogs.

Look at the water reports before you swim. On August 2, 2018, the District announced that Vancouver Coastal Health had lifted a water quality advisory, and that swimming and wading were safe again at Sandy Cove, Ambleside Park and Whytecliff Park. The health authority publishes beach water reports, so read the latest one in summer.

The tables on this page list McKechnie Park, east of Sharon Drive, and Erwin Park, a small shore park to the west. The photo at the top of this page was taken at Caulfeild Park, 1.5 kilometres west of the centre of Sandy Cove. It looks east over the water that Sandy Cove also faces, toward the Lions Gate Bridge, Stanley Park and downtown Vancouver.