Madeira Park is the centre of Pender Harbour: the government wharf, the health centre, the fire hall, the ambulance station and the RCMP office are all here. Each of those services is smaller than its name suggests.
Where Madeira Park 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.
Madeira Park is the centre of Pender Harbour. The IGA is here, the government wharf, the health centre, the fire hall, the ambulance station and the RCMP office. Everything the harbour has, it has here.
Each of those services is smaller than its name suggests.
The police office
The Pender Harbour Community Police Office is at 12905 Madeira Park Road. The RCMP's current contact page does not list it at all. The detachment that answers calls is in Sechelt: 31 kilometres and 28 minutes by road when the road is open.
The detachment has 35 officers for a thousand kilometres of coastline. Its commander asked Sechelt council for six more members in 2024.
We're limited in our access to assistance ... It's not like Burnaby or Surrey.
The Sunshine Coast RCMP detachment commander, to Sechelt council, 2024
In 2025 the rural areas, Pender Harbour and Egmont among them, generated 1,279 calls in one quarter.
The ambulance
The Madeira Park ambulance station has one ambulance. Until 1 April 2024 it was staffed on a "scheduled on-call" basis. Four years earlier the on-call rate was two dollars an hour. It is now staffed around the clock, which is an improvement. It is still one ambulance.
On 4 February 2025 a Garden Bay woman with a suspected burst appendix called for it at 4:12 in the morning. She was told the crew was in Sechelt and the road was closed by fallen trees. The ambulance reached her at seven. It took her seven hours to reach the hospital in Sechelt.
If the ambulance is in Sechelt, the next one is in Sechelt too.
The health centre
The Pender Harbour Health Centre on Francis Peninsula Road is open Monday to Friday from eight until quarter to four. It has family doctors, nursing, and a loan cupboard. It does not have an emergency department. The nearest one is in Sechelt, 33 kilometres away.
The fire hall
The Pender Harbour fire department is a volunteer department with two halls and five engines. It answered 229 calls in 2025; 79 of them were in Madeira Park. Its own website says insurers give a better rate to houses within eight kilometres of a hall, and ask whether there are hydrants nearby.
In March 2025 the main on Francis Peninsula Road failed and 300 homes were without water for a morning. The emergency replacement of that main, 350 metres of asbestos-cement pipe, doubled in cost to $160,000. There are 230 metres more to do.
Pender Harbour water is billed by volume from 2026: a leak in an empty house is now on your bill.
The water in front
The regional district published its coastal flood mapping in late 2025. Two places on the whole Coast were named as critical: Davis Bay and Madeira Park. The Coast Reporter's account of the presentation: "where essential infrastructure such as fire halls, sports fields and sections of the highway may be inundated within decades."
Who owns the houses
In the 2021 census, Area A (Madeira Park, Pender Harbour and Egmont) had 2,508 private dwellings and 1,562 with anyone living in them. The other 946, 38 per cent, were seasonal, secondary, or empty. That is the highest proportion on the Sunshine Coast. The regional district's own plan for the area says 59 per cent of dwellings are occupied full time, "compared to an average of 80% for the Sunshine Coast and 91% for the province."
The median age is 61. Forty per cent of residents are 65 or older. Households average 1.9 people. In a community like this, the neighbour who might notice an open door is often away, or elderly, or both.
What gets taken
In February 2026 someone cut the wiring out of the electrical box at the Whiskey Slough government dock, taking the runs that feed the moored boats. In December 2022 two ATMs in Madeira Park were broken into before six in the morning; part of one was carried off. In April 2025 a Stone Road man heard noises at his "unlocked tool storage trailer," went out with a shotgun, and was convicted the following year.
A seasonal house at Ruby Lake was entered sometime between December and March; the owner found out when they came back in April.
What a check in Madeira Park covers
Every visit follows the same list and produces the same photographed record:
Doors, windows, sheds, gates, the boat and the trailer: locked, undamaged, where you left them
Docks and boathouses: lines, fenders, the boat, the electrical
Heat on and holding; no smell of gas, smoke, or damp
Water: taps, the hot-water tank, floors, and ceilings; the meter, since Pender Harbour water is billed by volume from 2026 and a leak is now on your bill
Roof and gutters from the ground; trees on the house or the line
Mail, flyers, anything that shows a house is empty
After a storm, an extra visit once the highway is open
The record goes to you the same day, with photographs. It is what the insurer asks for.
The Insurance Bureau of Canada says most home policies set out how often a "competent person" must check an empty house during the heating season, unless the water is shut off and drained. Your own wording names the interval, and four days is a figure to look for.
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.
