The first thing you notice when you move to Burnaby Mountain is the quiet.
Compared with the noise and frantic pace I endured in South Burnaby’s Highgate district (oh Kingsway, you and your endless car crashes), life in UniverCity is downright stately – like moving into the medieval books section of the local library.
Shhhhhhh.
I still remember the first night in our new apartment, which overlooks Burrard Inlet. The endless white noise of the city had suddenly been replaced by a sea of tranquility, punctuated by the occasional jarring sound. A bird chirping. Trees swaying in the breeze. The crunching feet of somebody fitter than I walking along one of the nearby trails in a 28-kilometre network that snake back and forth across Burnaby Mountain.
This is no exaggeration. UniverCity, despite its regular condo construction and growing population – expected to hit 10,000 when fully built out – still manages to be such a quiet place that I never want to leave.
It’s also a bit of a mystery to most people – myself included. I grew up down the hill in North Burnaby, but that was long before UniverCity was built next to the campus.
I get a range of reactions when I let slip that I live next to Simon Fraser University.
No, I don’t live in a dorm room. UniverCity has four small but distinct neighbourhoods: East and West Highlands, the Slopes and University High Street. They are complete with modern condo buildings that are blessed with some of the best, most staggering views in all of Metro Vancouver. When you get up here, you really do feel like you escaped to a different place.
And no, we don’t have to drive down the hill to get everything. UniverCity has plenty of shops and services, with more retail space being added. The eatery choices lean too much towards fast food for my liking, but when you have this many students, it’s not surprising.
That brings up the biggest misconception – that UniverCity is just a transient community of students.
It is true; there are a lot of students here thanks to rules allowing rentals. In fact, my girlfriend and I rent out one of our bedrooms to a quiet, hard-working first-year SFU student. Some warned us about moving up here, thinking it would be party central with all those students. It’s been nearly a year and I have yet to hear even one party.
Frankly, the only time I really notice students is during “move-in” periods at the end/start of each month, when the kids are being yelled at by panicked/nagging parents. The parents are hilarious. You can tell it’s the first time their kids are leaving the nest, and they are emotional wrecks. Our tenant’s mom even moved in for a week to show her son how to cook, do laundry, use a toilet brush and – not kidding – hosted a full demo on replacing the toilet paper roll. She stocked the cupboards with food and the best in cooking implements. I have yet to see him actually use them, but they are quite nice.
So while, yes, there are a lot of transient students, the kids also help add a real sense of community to UniverCity. The SFU mall area is a hub of activity for all residents to enjoy when one of the school’s many clubs host community events, like a festival coming in July put on by the local anime club. There’s also a host of interesting lectures on vital topics that are open to the public. Residents have access to the amazing SFU library and you just have to peruse the boards for event notices.
Residents are free to wander the beautiful campus, and it’s a nice mix of middle-agers like me and students lugging around backpacks. If I’m lucky, I get to watch the SFU pipe band rehearse on one of the grassy areas.
But apart from all those students are residents who have lived here for years and either work at SFU or commute to the rest of Metro Vancouver for work each day. One of the big growth areas at UniverCity is with young families – so many that they had to build an elementary school that is one of the hubs for the community.
The trail network, which includes various works of public art, is a great meeting place. We’re newbies, but people have welcomed us to the community and are always up for a chat on the trails.
There are two favourite topics of conversation. One is the Kinder Morgan pipeline, a project that has brought UniverCity residents together due to fears about what it will mean for the area.
The second topic is the white elephant in the room – snow. I know all of Metro Vancouver got hit hard this past winter, but I swear not as hard as Burnaby Mountain. We were buried in it.
When other areas had their snow melt away, UniverCity got even more. I felt like Jack Torrance wandering the snowy maze in The Shining when I tried hiking to the grocery store.
Nothing brings UniverCity residents together quite like the snow, whether it’s people standing at the bottom of our road pushing vehicles up the hill, or those few heroes who offer free downhill rides to students and workers who are stranded when the buses inevitably get cancelled. There’s nothing sadder than seeing a long line of figures trudging down Gaglardi Way in the dark because the roads got too slick.
Sure, the snow sucks, but it also makes the views that much more stunning and the area that much quieter. In two months, we’ll celebrate our one-year anniversary at UniverCity, but it feels like we’ve been here for years.
Chris Campbell is a journalist and a keen observer of the human condition. You can follow him on Twitter @shinebox44
