Rathtrevor Beach Provincial Park

Rathtrevor Beach Provincial Park is Parksville's best asset — a wide sandy beach backed by a campground of Douglas firs and arbutus trees. The beach itself is one of the warmest on the island: at low tide the sand flats extend hundreds of metres and the shallow returning water absorbs the heat. In summer, the warmth makes this genuinely one of the best swimming beaches in British Columbia, not just on Vancouver Island.

The park has a large, popular campground that fills quickly in summer. Day visitors can walk the forest trails behind the beach or simply set up on the sand. In spring, the beach is a staging ground for Brant geese migrating north — tens of thousands stop here in March and April, making it one of the best wildlife spectacles on the coast.

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At low tide, the sand at Rathtrevor flats stretches nearly a kilometre from the treeline to the water's edge. The shallow water that fills back in at high tide has been warmed by the sun-heated sand, creating ocean temperatures that regularly hit 20°C in July — warm enough to actually swim in, which is not something you can say about most of the BC coast.