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The Sunshine Coast, with Gibsons marked
A map of the lower Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, from Langdale in the south to Egmont in the north, showing Highway 101, the ferry to Horseshoe Bay and the eight communities MyCottageWatch serves: Gibsons, Roberts Creek, Davis Bay, Sechelt, Halfmoon Bay, Madeira Park, Pender Harbour and Egmont. Gibsons is marked. The other names are links to their pages.
ferry to Horseshoe Bay
Cottage and home checks at Earls Cove Cottage and home checks at Jervis Inlet Road Cottage and home checks at Greentree Road Cottage and home checks at North Lake Cottage and home checks at Egmont Road Cottage and home checks at Klein Lake Cottage and home checks at Ruby Lake Cottage and home checks at Hallowell Road Cottage and home checks at Sakinaw Lake Cottage and home checks at Sakinaw Ridge Cottage and home checks at Katherine Lake Cottage and home checks at Mixal Lake Cottage and home checks at Dream Valley Cottage and home checks at Hotel Lake Cottage and home checks at Irvines Landing Cottage and home checks at Daniel Point Cottage and home checks at Kleindale Cottage and home checks at Garden Bay Cottage and home checks at Hospital Bay Cottage and home checks at Gunboat Bay Cottage and home checks at Gerrans Bay Cottage and home checks at Francis Peninsula Cottage and home checks at Whiskey Slough Cottage and home checks at Middlepoint Cottage and home checks at Trout Lake Cottage and home checks at Wood Bay Cottage and home checks at Tuwanek Cottage and home checks at Secret Cove Cottage and home checks at Curran Road Cottage and home checks at Welcome Woods Cottage and home checks at Port Mellon Cottage and home checks at Mercer Road Cottage and home checks at Sandy Hook Cottage and home checks at Redrooffs Road Cottage and home checks at Sechelt Inlet Road Cottage and home checks at Gale Avenue North Cottage and home checks at Seawatch Cottage and home checks at Cove Beach Cottage and home checks at Sargeant Bay Cottage and home checks at Porpoise Bay Cottage and home checks at East Porpoise Bay Cottage and home checks at Porpoise Bay Road Cottage and home checks at Mason Road Cottage and home checks at West Sechelt Cottage and home checks at Norwest Bay Road Cottage and home checks at Downtown Sechelt Cottage and home checks at Selma Park Cottage and home checks at Havies Road Cottage and home checks at Nestman Road Cottage and home checks at Westley Road Cottage and home checks at Tamarack Place Cottage and home checks at Bay Road Cottage and home checks at Davis Bay Road Cottage and home checks at Upper Roberts Creek Cottage and home checks at Fir Road Cottage and home checks at Laurel Avenue Cottage and home checks at Whitaker Road Cottage and home checks at Lockyer Road Cottage and home checks at Day Road Cottage and home checks at Mission Point Cottage and home checks at B&K Road Cottage and home checks at Langdale Cottage and home checks at Flume Road Cottage and home checks at Beach Avenue Cottage and home checks at Roberts Creek Road Cottage and home checks at Largo Road Cottage and home checks at Malcolm Creek Road Cottage and home checks at Orange Road Cottage and home checks at Lower Road Cottage and home checks at Soames Point Cottage and home checks at Stephens Road Cottage and home checks at Hopkins Landing Cottage and home checks at Elphinstone Cottage and home checks at Leek Road Cottage and home checks at Granthams Landing Cottage and home checks at Upper Gibsons Cottage and home checks at Ocean Beach Esplanade Cottage and home checks at Gibsons Landing Cottage and home checks at Bonniebrook Cottage and home checks at Gower Point
Gibsons Cottage and home checks in Roberts Creek Roberts Creek Cottage and home checks in Davis Bay Davis Bay Cottage and home checks in Sechelt Sechelt Cottage and home checks in Halfmoon Bay Halfmoon Bay Cottage and home checks in Madeira Park Madeira Park Cottage and home checks in Pender Harbour Pender Harbour Cottage and home checks in Egmont Egmont Coastline and Highway 101 from OpenStreetMap
Where Gibsons sits on the Coast. We cover every community on
this map, from Langdale to Egmont. The other town names are links to their own pages.
More people pass through Gibsons than anywhere else on the Coast
The ferry unloads five kilometres from Gibsons Way. Everyone driving to Sechelt, Halfmoon Bay or Pender Harbour comes through Gibsons first. So does everyone looking for something to steal.
The RCMP's own figures show it. Property crime in the Town of Gibsons rose from 71 files in the third quarter of 2024 to 106 in the same quarter of 2025, up 49 per cent. Theft from vehicles went from 11 to 18.
Thieves are going up and down the road and just quite randomly, trying to get into whatever they can.
Staff Sergeant Jennifer Prunty, Sunshine Coast RCMP, May 2025
The pattern is doors and handles. In February 2025 two people were seen trying vehicle door handles on Park Road, and a cache of stolen tools was found nearby. In October 2024 nine bicycles were taken from a shed at Gibsons Elementary using a pickup that had itself been stolen in Gibsons. Wallets and loose items went from unlocked vehicles on O'Shea Road, Keith Road and Abbs Road within a few weeks of each other in 2025.
None of it is dramatic. It is opportunistic, and it is aimed at whatever is unlocked and unwatched. An empty house with a shed, a boat on a trailer or a car left in the drive is exactly that.
An empty house here can burn for hours before anyone notices
On 7 December 2022 a house on Hough Road caught fire at ten to four in the morning. The renters had moved out at the end of November. By the time firefighters arrived it was fully involved. It burned for five hours and was destroyed. The chief said the damage would make the cause "very difficult to determine".
In June 2025 a house on Bridgeman Road burned with nobody inside. In October 2023 a fire on Bonniebrook Heights Road destroyed one house and damaged three neighbouring ones.
Gibsons has a strong fire department: 45 members, two halls and a town water system. But a fire department cannot respond to a fire nobody has reported. The Hough Road house was empty. The first call came when the fire was already visible from the street.
Older houses, and a water bill that arrives twice a year
More than a third of the homes in Gibsons were built before 1981. In the 2021 census, 140 of them were recorded as needing major repairs. Older plumbing, older wiring and older roofs are where winter problems start.
The Town of Gibsons runs its own water system and bills it twice a year. Use between 1 October and 31 March is billed in the middle of May. A pipe that fails in December in an empty house can run until May before the bill shows it, and the Town does not adjust bills for leaks inside the house. Only the underground line between the meter and the building qualifies.
A monthly check finds a wet floor in the first month, not the seventh.
Trees, wind, and the part of Gibsons with no fire service
The November 2024 windstorm brought trees down on Rosemund Lane and cut off a cul-de-sac. Downed lines re-energized and caught fire. A restoration contractor attended about twenty homes struck by trees across the Coast in 24 hours and said older buildings and cabins "can't take the same type of hit". Parts of Gibsons, Elphinstone, Port Mellon and Langdale were still without power the next day. A separate transmission failure the following week put five to six thousand customers out overnight.
North of town the situation is different again. The Gibsons fire protection district ends at YMCA Road. Everything along the Port Mellon Highway beyond that (Williamson Landing, Camp Elphinstone, Langdale Heights) has no fire service. In March 2025 a house at Wray Road burned to the ground while Gibsons firefighters, who had driven out to it, were required to stand down because the property was outside their district. A study on extending coverage was deferred to 2026.
Keats and Gambier islands are reachable only by foot ferry or water taxi. Keats has been counted at 50 to 80 full-time residents against roughly 900 part-time, and is mostly summer cabins. Gambier has no fire department. A Gambier cabin burned one winter while the owners were away; the water supply was frozen and neighbours pumped seawater.
What a check in Gibsons covers
Every visit follows the same list and produces the same written, photographed record.
Doors, windows, sheds, and gates: locked, undamaged, no sign of entry Vehicles, boats, and trailers left on the property Furnace running, thermostat at its setting, no smell of gas or burning Water: taps, under sinks, the hot-water tank, the basement floor, ceilings for staining Roof and gutters from the ground; trees leaning on the house or the service line Mail, flyers, and anything else that shows a house is empty After a storm, an extra visit for fallen trees, roof damage and power The record reaches you by email the same day. It is the document your insurer asks for when a claim is made and the house was unoccupied.
What your insurance policy probably says
Whether a policy pays for water damage from freezing in a house that stood empty during the heating season can depend on one condition. It is whether a "competent person" was entering it at the interval the policy names, or the water was shut off and the pipes drained. The interval is in your own wording; four consecutive days and seven both appear. The Insurance Bureau of Canada puts it this way:
Most policies outline specific details on how often your home must be checked by a competent person to ensure heat is being maintained.
Insurance Bureau of Canada, January 2026
Your own policy has the answer, and we will read it with you if you ask. If it says four days, a monthly visit is not enough and weekly is. We set the schedule to match the wording, not the other way round.
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The places we attend around Gibsons
A close-up map of Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast showing Highway 101, the shoreline and the places MyCottageWatch attends: Gibsons Landing, Upper Gibsons, Granthams Landing, Hopkins Landing, Langdale, Soames Point, Elphinstone, Bonniebrook, Gower Point, Port Mellon. Each name is a link.
Cottage and home checks at Port Mellon Port Mellon Cottage and home checks at Elphinstone Elphinstone Cottage and home checks at Bonniebrook Bonniebrook Cottage and home checks at Langdale Langdale Cottage and home checks at Gower Point Gower Point Cottage and home checks at Gibsons Landing Gibsons Landing Cottage and home checks at Hopkins Landing Hopkins Landing Cottage and home checks at Soames Point Soames Point Cottage and home checks at Upper Gibsons Upper Gibsons Cottage and home checks at Granthams Landing Granthams Landing Gibsons
Coastline and Highway 101 from OpenStreetMap
The neighbourhoods, lakes, bays, and roads we attend around
Gibsons. Every name on this map is a link to a page about that place.
What it costs
A scheduled check is $55 a visit, plus
$10 travel. The travel charge is the same
everywhere between Gibsons and Egmont. There is no minimum term and no joining fee.
See the full price list .
Where these facts come from
Every figure, date, and quotation on this page was taken from one of these. They are
listed so you can read them yourself.
Gibsons RCMP quarterly report, third quarter 2025: property crime and theft from vehicles Coast Reporter, 6 May 2025: Gibsons RCMP first-quarter report, and the quotation above Coast Reporter, 7 December 2022: the Hough Road fire Coast Reporter, 7 October 2023: the Bonniebrook Heights Road fire Coast Reporter, 7 November 2024: the windstorm, and the restoration contractor on tree damage Coast Reporter, 27 March 2025: the Port Mellon Highway fire and the fire district boundary Sunshine Coast Regional District: Gibsons and District Volunteer Fire Department Town of Gibsons: utility billing, billing periods and leak adjustments Statistics Canada, 2021 Census: Town of Gibsons, period of construction and dwelling condition Insurance Bureau of Canada: protecting your property in winter
Checked 11 September 2026.
Newspaper and government pages do move. If a link no longer works, tell us and we will
find where it went.
