Things to Do in Burnaby, BC

Burnaby gets skipped. It sits between Vancouver and the Tri-Cities without Vancouver’s marketing or North Van’s mountains, so most people drive through it on the way to somewhere else. Plenty of residents know only their own corner of it. This guide is written for two of them: the visitor with half a day who wants more than a mall, and the local who has lived here for years and still never made it up the mountain or out to Deer Lake. Almost everything below is free, and nearly all of it is reachable on SkyTrain or a short drive.

Quick decisions: where to start

If you only read one section, read this one. It points you at the right part of the city for the day you actually have.

• Best for families: Burnaby Village Museum at Deer Lake Park — free, with a working carousel and a lake beside it.
• Best without a car: anything on the Expo or Millennium Line. Metrotown, Central Park, and Deer Lake are all a short walk or bus from a station; only the mountain needs a dedicated bus.
• Best for food and coffee: the Kingsway strip for cheap, dense Asian food; the Heights on Hastings Street for independent cafés.
• Best for a rainy day: Crystal Mall, the SFU Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, or whatever is on at the Shadbolt Centre.
• Best for a half-day visit: Burnaby Mountain in the morning, then Deer Lake or Kingsway in the afternoon.

Burnaby Mountain and SFU: more than a campus

Simon Fraser University sits on top of Burnaby Mountain like it was set down from above. Arthur Erickson designed it in the 1960s as a single connected structure stepping down the hilltop, and it still reads that way. The architecture is worth a look, but the real reason to come is the land around it: the Burnaby Mountain Conservation Area covers 576 hectares of trails that stay green year-round and stay quiet even on weekends.

Near the lookout you’ll find Kamui Mintara, the “Playground of the Gods” — a set of carved wooden poles by Ainu sculptor Nuburi Toko, installed in 1990 to mark Burnaby’s sister-city relationship with Kushiro, Japan. It’s free, it’s strange in the best way, and there’s nothing else like it in the Lower Mainland. The views from the lookout run west over the harbour. A short walk away, the Centennial Rose Garden holds hundreds of rose bushes and peaks in summer — and yes, this is the rose garden people mean when they talk about Burnaby; it’s up here on the mountain, not down at Deer Lake.

The SFU Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology on campus is free and better than it has any right to be, with rotating exhibits on Pacific Northwest Indigenous cultures. If a free morning on the mountain is the kind of day you’re after, our guide to free and cheap things to do in Metro Vancouver has more in the same spirit, and the Metro Vancouver parks you can reach by transit guide covers how to get to the rest of them without a car.

Deer Lake Park: the one most people drive past

Deer Lake Park sits in the geographic centre of Burnaby, and most people on the highways nearby have no idea how much is packed into it. There’s a lake you can paddle in summer, forested loops that take about an hour to walk, and a cluster of cultural buildings along the south edge that turn a walk into a half-day.

The Burnaby Village Museum recreates a 1920s BC town with costumed interpreters, a general store, and a restored carousel. Admission is free, and it runs through the summer season, with the grounds reopening for the Heritage Christmas event in late autumn. Beside it, the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts programs theatre, gallery shows, and classes year-round, so it’s worth checking the schedule before a weekend visit. Closer to Ceperley House and the Burnaby Art Gallery, Century Gardens is planted with rhododendrons — Burnaby’s official flower — rather than roses, and it’s free to wander. (If you came specifically for roses, that garden is on the mountain, as noted above.) You can confirm current hours and seasonal closures on the City of Burnaby’s Deer Lake Park page and the Burnaby Village Museum site.

Metrotown: beyond the mall

Metropolis at Metrotown is one of the largest malls in Canada, and you don’t need a guide to find it. What people miss is the neighbourhood around it. The Bonsor Recreation Complex next door has a pool, gym, and rink at city rates, which is useful to know if you’re in the area for a few days.

The food is the real reason to get off the SkyTrain here. The stretch of Kingsway running from Metrotown toward Joyce is where Burnaby residents actually eat — Vietnamese, Korean, Taiwanese bubble tea, Cantonese — dense, cheap, and almost entirely independent. If you’re hungry after the mall, skip the food court and walk ten minutes east on Kingsway instead. Our guide to the best food and drink areas in Metro Vancouver puts Kingsway alongside the other strips worth knowing across the region.

Central Park: no, the other one

Burnaby has a Central Park, and yes, people make the joke. Unlike its New York namesake, this one is roughly 86 hectares of mostly untouched forest near Patterson and Metrotown stations. It fills with dog walkers and runners from the surrounding blocks but rarely feels crowded. Inside the park you’ll also find Swangard Stadium, an outdoor pool, and a pitch-and-putt course that’s been running since the late 1960s — a cheap round of golf with no tee time and no membership.

Where Burnaby’s coffee actually is

Burnaby’s café scene doesn’t get the magazine features Vancouver’s does. The gap is partly fair — Vancouver has the density — and partly not, because there are genuinely good cafés here once you know the city is large and the good ones are spread out. Here’s how coffee fits into a Burnaby day, by area.

The Heights — Hastings Street east of Boundary, roughly between Gilmore and Boundary — is the closest thing Burnaby has to a proper café district, and it’s where I’d send anyone who wants the neighbourhood version rather than the mall version. The strip resisted the full chain takeover that flattened a lot of Vancouver’s neighbourhood streets, so you still find owner-operated shops that care about the coffee. Park once and walk both sides. Café leases turn over often enough that any specific name risks being out of date by the time you read it, so trust the street over a list — the density between Gilmore and Boundary means you’ll do better walking in than pre-planning.

Brentwood and Production Way have grown a lot of towers and a lot of retail in the past few years, and the coffee count rose with them. It skews more chain than character, but if you’re already in the area for work or errands, the options are solid. Metrotown is the opposite trade: every major chain in Canada is within sight of the station, so it’s the easiest place in Burnaby to get a cup and the least interesting. The exception is the Crystal Mall food court next door, where a couple of Hong Kong–style milk tea counters quietly beat the chains. And the SFU campus cafés are functional rather than destination-worthy, but the view off the mountain improves any cup considerably — worth knowing if you’re already up there for a hike.

Transit and driving reality

Burnaby is one of the easier Metro Vancouver cities to do without a car, because two SkyTrain lines run straight through it. The Expo Line hits Metrotown, Patterson, Joyce-Collingwood, Nanaimo, 29th Avenue, and Gilmore; the Millennium Line adds Production Way, Lougheed, Burquitlam, and Braid. Central Park, Metrotown, and the Heights (via a short connection) are all an easy reach from a station.

The mountain is the exception: SkyTrain gets you close, but you need a bus for the last climb. From Production Way Station the 145 runs up to the SFU exchange daily, and the R5 RapidBus reaches SFU along Hastings; the 143 also serves the campus but only on weekdays, from Coquitlam. Check live times on TransLink before you head up, because frequency drops outside peak hours and in summer.

If you drive, most Burnaby neighbourhoods outside Metrotown have free street parking. The one rule worth following: don’t drive to Metrotown on a weekend. The lots back up and the surrounding streets fill — take the train.

Three ways to spend a day

Car-free half day: SkyTrain to Production Way, the 145 up to SFU, an hour on the Conservation Area trails and the Playground of the Gods, then back down and a stop in the Heights for lunch and coffee.

Food-and-coffee afternoon: start in the Heights for an independent café, walk the strip, then ride to Metrotown and eat your way ten minutes east along Kingsway. Finish with a Hong Kong milk tea in the Crystal Mall food court.

Family route: Deer Lake Park for the morning — the Burnaby Village Museum and carousel, then the lakeshore loop — with the Shadbolt Centre as a rainy-day backup if the weather turns. Add a paddle on the lake in summer.

Mistakes to avoid

• Treating Metrotown as the whole city. The mall is the least interesting thing in Burnaby. The mountain, Deer Lake, and Kingsway are all better uses of an afternoon.
• Driving to the mountain without checking the bus. Parking up top is limited and the road is busy; the 145 from Production Way is usually the smarter move.
• Going to Deer Lake expecting a rose garden. That’s the Centennial Rose Garden up on Burnaby Mountain. Deer Lake has Century Gardens and its rhododendrons.
• Eating in the food court. Ten minutes east on Kingsway is cheaper, better, and run by people who live here.
• Showing up to the Village Museum off-season. It runs in summer and for Heritage Christmas — check dates first so you don’t find a locked gate.

The honest summary

The old knock on Burnaby is that it’s all suburb and no character. Spend a morning on the mountain, an afternoon walking Deer Lake or the Heights, and dinner on Kingsway, and that line stops holding up. Burnaby isn’t trying to be Vancouver, and the longer you spend here the more that looks like the point. If you’re continuing across the region, our guides to things to do in New Westminster and things to do in North Vancouver pick up where this one leaves off.