Areas We Serve

Two levels and one ramp is most of the geography. At sea level, Marine Drive and the Promenade run east and west from the pier along the foot of the bluff, with the BNSF freight line threaded between the road and the sand. At the top of the bluff, North Bluff Road (16th Avenue) is the east-west spine carrying out to the South Surrey plateau. Johnston Road is the ramp between the two, climbing from the waterfront to Five Corners and on into the uptown streets. Past that the ground stops being a hillside and becomes a grid: 24th Avenue crosses the plateau, King George Boulevard and 152nd Street carry traffic north, 128th Street runs south through the Ocean Park village with Crescent Road turning west off it toward the water, and the numbered streets carry on east until the subdivisions give out.

The fourteen areas in seven groups

The waterfront is three pages for what is really one street. Marine Drive runs the length of it, East Beach takes the quieter residential half, West Beach the restaurant strip and the White Rock boulder itself, and the pier is the only thing dividing the two. Directly above, Uptown White Rock and Five Corners are one piece of ground taken at two heights: the ocean-view towers along North Bluff Road and the retirement residences at the top, and the original town hub where Johnston Road, Russell Avenue and Vidal Street meet below it. Semiahmoo stands on its own at the western end, built around the Town Centre on 152nd Street and the subdivision grid behind it, with its southern streets running close to the Peace Arch crossing at Douglas.

The second bluff is the one worth understanding. Ocean Park sits on top of it and Crescent Beach sits at the bottom, with the 1001 Steps running down between them. That makes it the only place on this list where two coverage areas are joined by a staircase, and residents use it as a shortcut. A van cannot. Crescent Beach is reached down Crescent Road off 128th Street, a single corridor in with no shortcut off it, so the two areas are nothing like adjacent by road.

Behind the bluff the plateau divides into two kinds of ground. Sunnyside, Grandview Heights and Rosemary Heights are a grid of subdivisions, townhome stratas and neighbourhood centres, packed closely enough that the lines between them mean very little to a driver. Elgin and Chantrell, together with Morgan Creek, are the opposite kind of ground: acreage and fairway lots where the addresses sit far apart, well back from the road, and frequently behind something that has to be opened first. Hazelmere is the seventh group and has that end of the list to itself, out where the subdivisions stop and the farmland starts, sharing the ground with the Campbell Heights units. Those seven are how this map groups the fourteen, by the ground and the way onto it. The emergency locksmith page sorts the fourteen into the same seven groups and notes what slows a van down in each. How long a van takes is given on the call, based on where the nearest technician is, and the groups further out take longer.

Which area page covers your address

Three overlaps on this list are worth knowing about before you call, and the first of the three is a group rather than a pair. A Marine Drive address sits on the Marine Drive page and on one of the beach pages as well, East Beach east of the pier and West Beach west of it: read the beach page if the question is the building, and the Marine Drive page if it is the strip, the lots or the parking. Uptown and Five Corners meet on Johnston Road and share the blocks either side of it, with Five Corners holding the commercial hub and the apartments above and behind the shops, and Uptown holding the towers and the residential streets higher up. Ocean Park and Crescent Beach get mixed up more than any other pair here, and the test is height rather than distance: the plateau and the village at 128th Street are Ocean Park, and the flat ground behind the spit is Crescent Beach.

The edges of the coverage area

Three of the four edges are fixed by something other than a business decision. The southern one is an international boundary: Semiahmoo's streets run down close to the Peace Arch crossing at Douglas, and at the far end of the list the Hazelmere acreages run out at 8th Avenue, short of the border itself but close to it. The eastern one is roughly 184th Street, past the Campbell Heights units. The western one is the tip of the peninsula, where the land runs out. Only the northern edge was ours to draw, and it was deliberately left undrawn: the plateau is worked north of Highway 99 as well, on a window that lengthens the further from the peninsula the address sits. Anywhere that is not on one of the fourteen pages is worth asking about rather than assuming, and the answer given on the phone is a yes or a no.

Where the salt band falls on the map

One more line crosses the area list at an angle to all the others, and it is drawn by distance from salt water rather than by any boundary. Its working edge is about a kilometre in from Semiahmoo Bay, Boundary Bay and Mud Bay behind the Crescent Beach spit. That puts Marine Drive, both beaches and Crescent Beach wholly inside it, takes in the bluff-top buildings above the promenade and the seaward edges of Uptown and Five Corners, and leaves the plateau pages outside it. Ocean Park and Semiahmoo are the two the line runs through rather than around, with their seaward streets inside it and their inland ones not. Inside the band a deadbolt can look sound and be seized, because the pitting starts on the cylinder plug and in the spring rather than on the visible finish, and it goes fastest where a brass or zinc lockset is bolted against a steel strike. What it does to this map is that the band runs through areas instead of around them, so two addresses on the same area page will not necessarily have the same problem behind the door, and it is the one distinction a list of fourteen neighbourhoods cannot show you.

• Fourteen area pages, each carrying its own streets, building stock and arrival window
• The total is confirmed before work starts
• The waterfront is three pages for one street, divided at the pier and nowhere else
• Ocean Park and Crescent Beach are one bluff top and bottom, and are worked on the same terms as the rest
• Hazelmere is the furthest ground on the list and is quoted as such rather than averaged into the core
• Coverage carries on north of Highway 99 rather than stopping at it
• Anything outside the fourteen gets a straight yes or no on the call