A serviced residential area on the east side of the bay, with open roadside ditches on some streets and the Coast's heaviest recorded snowfall.
Where East Porpoise Bay sits, and the other places we attend
around Sechelt. Every name on the map is a link.
East of the bay, inside the District since 1986
East Porpoise Bay lies on the east side of the Porpoise Bay basin, reached from the downtown streets by Wharf Avenue and East Porpoise Bay Road. It was one of the unincorporated areas brought into the District of Sechelt when the municipality was created on 15 September 1986, together with West Porpoise Bay, Sandy Hook, Tillicum Bay and Tuwanek. The Wharf Avenue and East Porpoise Bay Road intersection has been a subject of local argument for years.
This is a family neighbourhood rather than a cottage strip. The District's Active Transportation Network project pairs it with West Sechelt and lists works here that include multi-use pathways on Reeves Road, Crowston Trail and Ripple Way, and ditch replacement with storm pipe. The stated aim is "a safe means for residents and visitors to move around in the community", with routes designed to connect West Sechelt Elementary and Kinnikinnick Elementary. Two facts follow from that list. Some streets here still drain into open roadside ditches, and the people living on them are mostly year-round.
Forty-two centimetres, and most of it after breakfast
On 3 and 4 February 2025 the retired meteorologist Louis Legal measured the snowfall at East Porpoise Bay, Sechelt. His total was 42 cm. Of that, 39.5 cm fell after 8 a.m. on the Monday, and 35 cm was still lying on the ground afterwards. The regional forecast had called for 20 to 30 cm from Earls Cove to Gibsons.
That is the largest snowfall figure published for anywhere on the lower Sunshine Coast in this period, and it was measured on these streets. Buses were suspended for the rest of the Tuesday because of unsafe road conditions. Schools and recreation centres closed. Sechelt Inlet Road shut in both directions above the campsite at 9:30 a.m. and stayed shut for several hours. Thousands of customers lost power across Egmont, Pender Harbour, Halfmoon Bay, Sechelt and Roberts Creek, and BC Hydro reported that "Access to some areas has been challenging, resulting in delays for crews working to restore power."
Snow of that depth loads a roof, blocks a driveway and buries an oil fill or a propane gauge. In an occupied house somebody clears it. In an empty one it sits until it melts or the structure takes it.
The cold snap that broke a 1971 record
On 27 December 2021 Sechelt recorded -11.6 °C. The previous record for the date was -6.7 °C, set in 1971. Snow fell from 23 to 27 December. BC Hydro crews attended 51 weather-related outages on the Coast in the three days from Christmas Day, and three areas were still without power on 28 December.
A house with no heat and no one in it goes below freezing inside within a day at that temperature. The pipe that splits does not leak until the thaw, and then it leaks continuously.
Ebbtide and Hightide appear in two different sets of records
East Porpoise Bay is not one of the four Sechelt zones the RCMP publishes separately, so no occurrence count belongs to it on its own. Two named streets at this end of town do appear elsewhere. Ebbtide Street and Hightide Road were among the streets residents named at an August 2024 public meeting when they described a run of break-ins and thefts the previous month. Ebbtide Street and Hightide Avenue are also where the Sechelt Fire Department's own data place the concentration of suspicious and incendiary fires, which rose from 9 in 2021 to 39 in 2025.
The fire department works from one hall at 5525 Trail Avenue, a few minutes away across the isthmus, with three career firefighters covering the daytime hours and a standby crew for the night. Getting here is quick. Getting here through 35 cm of unploughed snow is a different matter.
What a check in East Porpoise Bay covers
Roof load and eaves after snow, and the path from the road to the door cleared enough to use
The roadside ditch and any culvert at the driveway, which is the drainage on several streets here
Heat on and holding after a cold snap, with the thermostat reading photographed
Pipes at exterior walls, the crawlspace and the hose bibs, or the system drained and the main shut
Gutters and downspouts running clear, and no ice backing up at the eave
Doors, windows, shed and garage on every elevation, including the one facing away from the street
Power restored or still out after an outage, and the freezer contents checked
Mail, flyers and papers cleared so the house does not read as empty
A dated set of photographs from each visit, sent the same day
Most insurers ask that a dwelling with nobody in it be inspected on a set cycle over winter, in a great many wordings within four days of the last visit, by a competent person, unless water is off and lines drained. The wordings are not identical. Check your own.
What it costs
A scheduled check at East Porpoise Bay 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.
