Tsawwassen Sun Festival

Since 1931, this 137-metre saltwater pool at Kits Beach has been making Vancouver look embarrassingly good.

Port Moody's waterfront park: free spray park, a regionally famous skate-and-bike-trials park, and the best spectating in the Lower Mainland.

A brand-new, gloriously surreal 18 hole mini golf course in Stanley Park, open daily through fall 2026, with a DJ spinning vinyl on late summer nights.

Playland rides, fair food and nightly fireworks at the summer fair.

A miniature railway, a rose garden, a waterfall, and a round of mini-golf in Surrey's 150-acre secret.

High-tech laser rooms and reaction walls where you'll both be terrible and have the best time.

Calm, motor-free Whonnock Lake with a sandy beach and beavers included, for the date that does not need a plan.

Vancouver's end-of-summer fair: wooden-coaster rides at Playland, mini donuts, SuperDogs, and a free evening concert folded into admission.

New Westminster's award winning aquatic centre hides an adults only hot tub, a steam room and a lazy river you can drift for an hour.

Eighteen holes through old-growth Douglas firs in Burnaby, where missing a putt is genuinely the fun part.

2.2 km, 890-plus steps, 242 metres of gain, free admission, and a simple policy: whoever stops talking first is losing.

Vancouver's top-rated escape rooms, where sixty minutes of pressure reveals exactly how the two of you argue under stress.

The 2010 Olympics left Richmond a world-class climbing wall and badminton courts, which is a small cheat code very few people are using.

No ropes, no lessons, just colour-coded problems and a foam floor that makes falling part of the fun.