The Point Grey Battery and the WWII Bunkers on Tower Beach

You can still see these concrete bunkers, sometimes called instrument towers, eroding into the bluff here at Tower Beach. They're leftovers from the Second World War, when the Canadian military built a coastal artillery battery here to defend the entrance to Vancouver harbour.

By 1942, the war had reached the Pacific coast. Japanese submarines had already operated off the west coast of North America, with one shelling the Columbia River estuary and another flying over Estevan Lighthouse in British Columbia. Vancouver harbour, with its shipyards and grain terminals, was a strategic target. The Point Grey Battery was one of several defensive positions, with a pair of 4.7-inch coastal guns installed on the bluff above what is now Tower Beach, aimed out toward the Salish Sea.

The battery had a fire command post and concrete observation towers. The soldiers who manned them trained for an amphibious attack that never came, and the guns were never fired in anger.

Today the gun positions are gone, but these concrete pillboxes on the beach below the bluff remain. Trail 4, one of the trails from Pacific Spirit Regional Park to Tower Beach, passes right by them. They are slowly being swallowed by the forest and the tide.

During the First World War, long before the WWII battery was built, this same stretch of beach had been used for an amphibious landing exercise by the Canadian Army and UBC cadet corps.