"There is a particular kind of happiness that only arrives when you are not expecting it. I was not expecting it at Domino's."

It was a Sunday. The kind of Sunday where you have no particular plan and no particular ambition, which is, as it turns out, exactly the right state of mind for discovering that a Domino's in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, is serving one of the better pizzas you have eaten in recent memory.

The pizza in question: a large, hand-tossed, custom-built affair loaded with portobello mushrooms, black olives, green and red bell peppers, white onion, and pineapple. The crust was properly blistered at the edges — the kind of crust you actually eat instead of leaving in a pile at the side of the box. The sauce was bright and tangy and applied with genuine generosity. The cheese had the right pull and the right colour. The mushrooms were enormous. The olives were black and plentiful. The pineapple, which I will defend to the end, added exactly the sweetness the whole thing needed.

I ate it in the dining room, which is better than it has any right to be. Metal bistro chairs. A black-and-white photographic mural of the Golden Ears mountains — those twin peaks that define the eastern skyline of Maple Ridge — printed large across the back wall. Afternoon light coming through the windows. A Coca-Cola fridge glowing red in the corner. The kitchen open behind glass, the pizza racks gleaming, the digital menu cycling through images of things I was not going to order because I had already found what I came for.

The box, when it arrived, had a red maple leaf printed on the cardboard. I noticed it. I took a photograph of it. It felt right — a small, unpretentious declaration of where we were and what this was. A Sunday in Maple Ridge. A pizza that exceeded every expectation I had not thought to set. A Best Day Ever.

The Just Gerald Best Days Ever series has taken us to the Louvre, to the summit of Mont Blanc, to the ivy-covered corridors of the Sylvia Hotel. It has also, now, taken us to a Domino's on Lougheed Highway. I am not embarrassed about this. The series is about the days you will still be talking about in thirty years. Some of those days involve private AR tours of Babylonian antiquities. Some of them involve a box of pizza and a mountain on the wall and nowhere else you need to be.

This was one of the latter. It was, genuinely, a very good day.

The Scorecard

Domino's Pizza, 22710 Lougheed Hwy, Maple Ridge, BC · Sunday, March 1, 2026