The only street in Davis Bay with a condominium on it, and the western marker of the highway closure of 13 January 2021.
Where Davis Bay Road sits, and the other places we attend
around Davis Bay. Every name on the map is a link.
A local street on the uphill side of the highway
Davis Bay Road is a District of Sechelt local street on the landward side of Highway 101 in Davis Bay. Every residential street in Davis Bay proper is uphill of the highway; there are no dwellings between the road and the sea, which leaves the highway itself as the outer edge of the neighbourhood. Davis Bay Elementary stands at 5078 Davis Bay Road. Two postal codes are in use along it, V0N 3A2 from the rural era and V7Z 0H3 on the newer addresses, and BC Transit Route 1 stops at Hwy 101 and Davis Bay Rd. Snow clearing is District work and this is a tier three local street, cleared after the arterials, the school bus routes and the collectors.
Sixty-one units stand at 5160
The West, at 5160 Davis Bay Road, is a 61-unit three-storey freehold strata built in 2006 under strata plan BCS2127. It is wood frame with a metal roof, a concrete slab foundation and wood exterior. There is an elevator, a garden, in-suite laundry and storage lockers. The average strata fee is about $384 a month and covers garbage pickup, gardening, gas, and management. Rentals are allowed and pets are allowed with restrictions. Unit numbers on file run across three floors, from the 100s through the 200s to the 300s, at roughly 20 units a floor. That makes this the densest address in the whole Davis Bay, Selma Park, and Wilson Creek area. It is the only one where a stranger can walk into a shared indoor space without passing a front door. Across the District of Sechelt, 80.7 per cent of occupied dwellings are owner-occupied and 34.7 per cent of households are one person living alone.
In March 2022 a locker door was unscrewed
A storage room in the 5100 block of Davis Bay Road was broken into in March 2022. The locker door was unscrewed rather than forced, and a bicycle was taken. The method is the point. Removing screws is quiet, takes time, and leaves a door that still looks shut from the corridor. It is what happens in a shared room in a building where a share of the owners are not in residence and nobody is counting who comes through the lobby. A locker check is not something a neighbour does on your behalf.
One of the two streets that named a closed highway
On 13 January 2021 wind and a high tide closed Highway 101 from Davis Bay Road to Westley Road. Winds in Howe Sound reached 74 kilometres an hour, and it was the first time waves had breached the District's floodgates. The seawall dates from late 1999 and carries 48 planters along it that serve as those gates, with the gaps closable within about an hour. An address on this street sits inside the section that gets named when the road shuts, which means access to it depends on which side of the closure the vehicle starts from. The District's 2025 budget lists remediation of the seawall as Priority 1: Critical, with the structure described as being undermined by water and wave action.
The sidewalk money was spent in West Sechelt
The District's $4.38 million Active Transportation Network broke ground on 29 May 2023. It was funded by a $3.24 million Covid-19 Resilient Communities Grant, a $900,000 Growing Communities Grant, $135,000 from the District, and $110,000 from the Climate Action Program. It built sidewalks and paths on Mason Road, Norvan Road, Reeves Road, Crowston Trail, Ripple Way, Burnett Road and Sechelt Inlet Road. All of those are in West Sechelt or on Sechelt Inlet. No street in Davis Bay, Selma Park, or Wilson Creek is in the project. The Davis Bay-Wilson Creek-Selma Park Community Association had already told council in February 2021 that there was no sidewalk on the easterly side of Highway 101 here.
What a check on Davis Bay Road covers
The storage locker: the door, the screws, the hasp and the contents photographed against the last visit
Unit entry door, patio door, windows, and any shared corridor or lobby door found propped
Heat on and holding in the unit, or the supply closed at the unit shut-off and the lines drained
Washer hoses, dishwasher line, hot water tank and the floor under all three
Ceilings and walls below the unit above, checked for fresh staining
Parking stall, bicycles, kayaks, and anything stored in a shared parking or garden area
For houses on the street: gutters, downspouts, the driveway culvert and the roadside ditch
Mail, flyers, and parcels, and anything at the door that advertises an absence
A photographic record of all the above, dated and filed on the visit day
Most home policies carry a clause about leaving a dwelling unoccupied in winter. According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, most policies set out how often a competent person must check the house to keep the heat maintained. Some wordings accept the water shut off and the pipes drained instead. Strata wordings and house wordings differ. The schedule follows your own wording rather than a rule of thumb, and four-day gaps are one figure to look for in it.
What it costs
A scheduled check at Davis Bay Road 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.
