Freecouver is a book on great things to do in Vancouver for free.
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You don’t have to spend $30 on a museum ticket — or anything at all — to enjoy an afternoon exploring medieval swords, a particle accelerator, or a tiny sidewalk cinema.
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Those are just three of the local freebies featured in Freecouver: 101 Free Things To Do In And Around Vancouver. Out now on Tidewater Press, the guide rounds up free museums, gardens, walking tours, parks and offbeat attractions throughout Metro Vancouver.
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“People walk past that place every day and don’t even know it’s there,” author John Lee said of the Swordplay Museum inside Academie Duello on West Hastings.
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The museum is home to authentic and replica medieval pieces, including helmets, chain mail, “and even replica trebuchet-style weapons,” Lee said. “They also offer free introductory classes if you want to see what it’s like to swing a broadsword. You’ll learn way more than you ever wanted to know about how people maimed each other in medieval times.”
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“That’s what’s great about a book like this — it points you toward places most of us don’t even know exist, even though they’ve been around for years,” co-author Rebecca Bollwitt said.
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Between the two of them, a blogger and travel writer respectively, Bollwitt (aka Miss 604) and Lee already had about 80 freebies in mind when they started writing the guide. They gathered more as they began visiting each site.
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“One of the most enjoyable parts of the project was discovering things beyond the places we already knew,” Lee said.
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He cites the PoCo Heritage Museum as an example. “They have this incredible mural from the old Wild Duck Inn, a famous duck hunters’ watering hole that was demolished decades ago.” The mural was painted in the 1950s by Walt Disney artist Peter Carter-Page.
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“Finding little artifacts and stories like that — things I never would have discovered otherwise — was one of the most rewarding parts of the project.”
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The attractions are separated into categories like Gardens & Nature, Museums & History, and Great for Kids, as well as by area. There are also sections on “freecouvering” in different neighbourhoods.
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The parameters for inclusion were that things had to be free and in the Lower Mainland.
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“Vancouver is also very well connected to the surrounding communities,” Lee said. “We visited almost everything by transit.”
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For a park to be included it had to “offer more than just trees and a playground. They needed to have something unique or historical.”
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Surrey’s Redwood Park, for example, has a heritage arboretum with European ash, Norway spruce, Sierra Redwoods, and Wych elm, trees not found outside California or this far north.
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“We also made a point of excluding places that effectively require a donation to get in,” Lee said. “We debated that quite a bit. We didn’t want to include places that aren’t really free because you have to leave a donation at the door.
