The unincorporated area that wraps the Town of Gibsons on two sides, where half an acre is the smallest lot the community plan contemplates.
Where Elphinstone sits, and the other places we attend
around Gibsons. Every name on the map is a link.
An electoral area, not a village
Elphinstone is Sunshine Coast Regional District Electoral Area E, the southernmost part of the regional district, and it wraps around the Town of Gibsons on the west and the north. It is 21.6 square kilometres with 3,883 residents and 1,608 occupied private dwellings at the 2021 census. The director is Donna McMahon, elected in October 2018 and returned in October 2022. The community plan area runs east to the Town boundary, west to Roberts Creek, north into the Sechelt Provincial Forest and south into the Strait of Georgia.
Reed Road, Pratt Road, Chaster Road, Gilmour Road, Highland Drive, Ocean View Drive, Lower Road, Pine Street and Ocean Beach Esplanade are all here. None of them is a town street. Roads are provincial, snow clearing and washout repair follow the province's priority order, and there is no municipal water utility, no municipal bylaw office and no guarantee of a hydrant.
Half an acre is the smallest lot the plan contemplates
Official Community Plan Bylaw 600 sets minimum parcel sizes: 2,000 square metres, half an acre, in Residential A and C; 10,000 square metres in Residential B; 1.0 hectare Rural Residential; 1.75 hectares in Agricultural B; 4.0 hectares in Agricultural A and Rural; and 100 hectares in Rural Forest.
That is the physical reason this page is different from the two Town pages. Houses here sit well back from the road, screened by standing trees, out of sight of the next house. A broken window, an open door or a running tap at an Elphinstone address is not seen by a neighbour, because the neighbour cannot see the house.
Seven mapped hazard areas, where the Town has one rule
Bylaw 600 designates seven categories of development permit area. Area 1A is the coastal flood assessment area and extends from the ocean to eight metres Canadian Geodetic Datum. Area 1B covers coastal slope stability within 15 metres of the estimated future natural boundary. Area 2A applies to all creeks and extends 30 metres from the streamside natural boundary, with 2B for ravines, 2C for floodplain and 2D for areas of low channel confinement. Area 3 covers open slope failures on moderately steep and steep terrain.
Across the boundary, the Town's equivalent is a single freeboard rule in Zoning Bylaw 1342.
Nobody has published which houses are on wells
The Elphinstone community plan says nothing at all about water supply. Area E is a patchwork: some properties are connected to the regional district's Chapman system, and many draw on private drilled wells with electric pumps. No map exists that shows which is which. The regional district's new Church Road wellfield, two wells yielding 54.4 litres per second, is at Church Road and Elphinstone Avenue, with the pipeline from it running along Elphinstone Avenue.
Connected does not mean trouble-free. In November 2021 a water main failure on Reed Road affected 60 to 70 properties and the boil-water advisory that followed was not lifted until 24 November.
Hydrants are the other gap. In an October 2024 agenda the regional district's fire protection commission recorded that an insurance company may treat a hydrant-less property as semi-protected. Much of Area E has no hydrant.
The fire record here is longer than anywhere else on this list
On 27 March 2024 at 7 p.m. a home at the Poplars mobile home park was fully involved.
The fire had started in one of the rooms but quickly expanded.
Assistant Chief Richard White, Gibsons & District Volunteer Fire Department, Coast Reporter, March 2024
Two residents got out uninjured and a pet dog died. Twenty-seven firefighters worked the scene with eight more staged at the hall. Visible flame was controlled in about 90 minutes and it took three hours to fully extinguish.
A fire in the 1400 block of Bonniebrook Heights Road on 7 October 2023 took one house completely and damaged three neighbouring ones.
On 19 November 2024 trees came down across Highway 101 at Flume Road about 8 p.m., and the road reopened at 10:15 with Roberts Creek and much of Elphinstone without power. Elphinstone appeared again in the outage list for the snowstorm of 4 March 2024.
What a check in Elphinstone covers
The gate, the length of the driveway and any culvert under it, on an acreage lot
The well pump house, the pressure tank and the heat tape in it, or the district service connection
Heat running at its setting, or the plumbing drained and the main valve shut
The septic tank lid and the field, including wet or sunken ground above the tank after rain
Hot-water tank, supply lines, toilet valves and the floor under each of them
Outbuildings, barns, shops and stored equipment, with each lock tested
Trees leaning on the house or over the service drop after a windstorm
Vegetation and stored wood cleared back from the walls on a forested lot
A dated, photographed record of every item, emailed the same day
Household policies in this province generally suspend or limit cover on an unoccupied dwelling in the heating season unless a competent person inspects it at the interval the policy names, commonly no more than four consecutive days, or unless the water is off and the lines drained. No two wordings match. Read the one attached to your own policy.
What it costs
A scheduled check at Elphinstone 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.
