The Flying Beaver
The pub where the planes are a bonus
There is a moment, about twenty minutes into your first pint at The Flying Beaver, when a de Havilland Beaver floatplane taxis past the patio railing at roughly arm's length. The engine is loud. The prop wash is real. Your beer barely moves. And you think: I have been coming to the wrong pubs my entire life.
The Flying Beaver Bar & Grill sits at the north end of the No. 2 Road Bridge in Richmond, BC, tucked inside the Harbour Air seaplane terminal building on the Middle Arm of the Fraser River. It is not a destination you stumble upon. You have to want to go there. You have to know the turn. And once you find it, you understand immediately why the regulars never tell anyone about it.
The food is pub food. Good pub food — the wings are legitimately world-famous in the way that only a neighbourhood institution can be world-famous, which is to say everyone who has ever eaten them tells everyone they know. The fish and chips are crispy and generous. The nachos are the size of a small table. The beer list is solid. None of this is the point.
The point is the patio. The point is sitting on a wooden bench in the summer sun with the Fraser River in front of you, the Gulf Islands somewhere in the haze to the west, and a steady procession of floatplanes arriving and departing from the dock twenty metres away. The point is that this is one of the last places in the Lower Mainland where aviation and lunch share the same postcode, and nobody seems to think that is unusual.
Ten wings, six sauces, one cold pint. The rest is optional.
The wings at The Flying Beaver have been on the menu long enough to qualify as a local institution. Hot, honey garlic, teriyaki, BBQ, Thai chili, salt and pepper, lemon pepper. You get ten. You get blue cheese or ranch. You get a cold pint of whatever is on tap. You sit on the patio and a floatplane takes off. This is the formula. It does not need improving.
I have been going to The Flying Beaver for years. I have eaten the wings in every season. I have sat inside in January watching the rain on the river and outside in August watching the sun drop behind Vancouver Island. The wings are always the same. The planes are always there. The beer is always cold. That consistency is rarer than it sounds.
The Terminal, the Beaver, and the Long Goodbye
The pub exists because the terminal exists. The terminal exists because Harbour Air built it — the world's largest floatplane airline, founded in 1982 by Tom McDougall, which grew from a single Cessna 185 into a fleet of over 40 aircraft serving coastal BC and the Gulf Islands. At its peak, Harbour Air was carrying 500,000 passengers a year and had become as much a part of the BC coastal identity as the BC Ferries or the Canucks.
Then private equity arrived. The acquisition brought the usual promises and the usual results. Routes were cut. Staff were let go. The Sechelt service — a lifeline for Sunshine Coast communities — was quietly discontinued. The floatplane that had connected Roberts Creek, Sechelt, and Halfmoon Bay to Vancouver for decades was gone. A great shame, as anyone who relied on it will tell you without being asked.
The terminal building survived. The pub survived. And Sunshine Coast Air — the independent operator that stepped into the gap left by Harbour Air's retreat — is still flying the de Havilland Beaver on the routes that matter. The Beaver is a 1947 design. It is still the best bush plane ever built. It is still the right aircraft for this coast. Some things do not need improving.
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Georgia Strait. Gulf Islands. A Beaver on the step.
On a clear summer day, the view from the patio at The Flying Beaver is one of the finest in the Lower Mainland. The Middle Arm of the Fraser River in the foreground. The Gulf Islands in the middle distance. Vancouver Island on the horizon. And every twenty minutes or so, a floatplane accelerating across the water and lifting into the blue.
In winter, the view is different but equally compelling. Low cloud on the mountains. The river grey and fast. The planes still coming and going. The patio mostly empty. The inside warm and loud with regulars who have been coming here since before the current staff were born. This is what a proper local pub looks like.
What to Order
The wings are mandatory. Ten pieces, honey garlic or Thai chili, blue cheese dip. This is non-negotiable. Everything else is optional but worth considering.
Six sauces. Blue cheese or ranch. The reason people come.
Crispy beer batter, proper tartar, coleslaw. Classic.
House-made gravy, cheese curds, bacon, shoestring onions.
8oz AAA sirloin, 8 garlic prawns, scalloped potatoes. For the occasion.
Lemon herb butter, seaweed salad, jasmine rice. BC on a plate.
The size of a small table. Share it. Or don't.
The beer list is rotating taps of BC craft and the usual suspects. The Happy Sunshine Bowl — coconut rice, braised red cabbage, Szechuan vegetables, spicy yogurt — is better than it has any right to be in a pub that also serves nachos the size of a small table. The butter chicken is a genuine surprise. Order the wings first. Then decide.
The Essentials
| Location | 4760 Inglis Drive, Richmond, BC — north end of No. 2 Road Bridge |
| Hours | Sun–Thu: 9am–11pm · Fri–Sat: 9am–12am |
| Patio | Open seasonally for plane-spotting · best seats face the river |
| Wings | $18.00 for 10 · six sauces · blue cheese or ranch |
| Beer | BC craft on tap + full bar |
| Reservations | Not required · walk-in friendly |
| Parking | Free on site |
| Getting there | Drive or taxi — no transit worth mentioning |
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The Flying Beaver Bar & Grill
Gerald's Note
I have been going to The Flying Beaver for years. I have taken people there who have never been and watched their faces when the first plane goes past. There is always a moment of pure surprise — the sound, the proximity, the casual way the staff don't even look up. It becomes normal within about ten minutes. That is the magic of the place.
The Harbour Air story is a cautionary tale about what happens when private equity buys something that was never meant to be optimised. The routes to the Sunshine Coast are gone. The staff who built that airline are gone. What remains is the terminal, the pub, and the independent operators like Sunshine Coast Air who are keeping the Beaver in the air on the routes that matter.
Go to The Flying Beaver. Sit on the patio. Order the wings. Order the honey garlic. Watch the planes. Drink the beer. Come back next summer and do it again. Some days are not complicated. This is one of them.
Best Day Ever.
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