Madeira Park
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.
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.
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.
Most home insurance policies require an empty house to be checked at set intervals during the heating season — often within four days — by a "competent person," or the water shut off and drained.
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.
- Sunshine Coast RCMP — the detachment, its 35 members and 1,000 kilometres of coastline
- Coast Reporter, 2024 — six more members asked for, and the quotation above
- Coast Reporter, November 2025 — the Sechelt third-quarter RCMP figures, which the detachment reports for the whole Coast
- Coast Reporter — the Madeira Park ambulance station, staffed 24/7 from 1 April 2024
- Coast Reporter, February 2025 — the Garden Bay call and the seven-hour trip to hospital
- Pender Harbour Health Centre — hours, services, and no emergency department
- Pender Harbour Volunteer Fire Department — insurers, distance to a hall, hydrants
- Coast Reporter, March 2025 — the Francis Peninsula Road main break, 300 homes
- Coast Reporter — the cost of the emergency watermain replacement doubling
- Coast Reporter, December 2025 — the coastal flood mapping, Davis Bay and Madeira Park
- Statistics Canada, 2021 Census — Sunshine Coast A dwellings, age and household size
- Coast Reporter — the over-winter theft at a seasonal home at Ruby Lake
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.