Attraction Vancouver — UBC & Pacific Spirit, Canada

Museum of Anthropology at UBC, Nitobe Garden and the Wreck Beach Stairs

The finest room in Vancouver, a hall of Northwest Coast totem poles behind a wall of glass, followed by a Japanese garden next door and a few hundred steps down to the wildest beach in the city.

Duration: 1 day
Distance: 4 km
Difficulty: Easy
Best season: Year-round for the museum; May to September for the garden and the beach stairs

Print day cards

If you see one museum in Vancouver, make it this one. The Museum of Anthropology sits on the cliffs at the tip of the Point Grey peninsula, on the University of British Columbia campus, in a concrete-and-glass building by Arthur Erickson that opened in 1976. Erickson borrowed the post-and-beam logic of Northwest Coast Indigenous houses, and the result is the Great Hall: towering carved poles from First Nations villages up and down the coast, standing in daylight in front of tall glass walls. The Great Hall reopened in 2024 after a seismic upgrade, and walking into it is the moment most visitors remember.

The rest of the museum rewards slow time. Bill Reid’s yellow-cedar sculpture The Raven and the First Men, the Haida creation story carved from a single laminated block, has its own rotunda. The Multiversity Galleries put more than 9,000 objects from around the world on open display in glass cases and drawers, a kind of visible storage you could browse all afternoon. Outside, on the grass above the cliff, stand Haida houses and poles built under Reid’s direction with the Kwakwaka’wakw carver Doug Cranmer.

Then use the rest of the day the way locals do. Nitobe Memorial Garden, a traditional Japanese garden opened in 1960, is a short walk across campus. Down the cliff, the forest of Pacific Spirit Regional Park wraps the peninsula, and Trail 6 drops a long flight of wooden stairs to Wreck Beach, the clothing-optional beach where students watch the sun set over the Strait of Georgia. The museum stands on the traditional, unceded territory of the Musqueam people, and much of what you see here comes from communities that still carve, dance and argue about how their belongings should be shown.

Getting there. Buses from across the city end at UBC Exchange on campus, including the 99 B-Line along Broadway and the R4 along 41st Avenue. From the exchange the museum is roughly a 15-to-20-minute walk northwest, or transfer to a campus shuttle bus. Drivers use paid parking in the museum lot or the nearby Rose Garden Parkade.

Tickets. Buy museum admission online or at the door; Thursday evenings have historically had late opening and reduced prices. The museum closes on Mondays through the winter and spring, so check the official hours before you go. Nitobe Memorial Garden has its own small admission fee and seasonal hours.

Good to know:

Give the museum at least two hours. The Great Hall alone can take thirty minutes if you read the labels.
Wreck Beach is clothing-optional and has been legally recognized as such since 1991. Nobody minds if you keep your clothes on.
The Trail 6 stairs are steep, long and slippery when wet; the climb back up is the real workout of the day.
The campus is large and the signage uneven; download a campus map before you leave the bus.

Tips & Insights for this route Planning this route? Read our practical tips before you go — 9 tips. Read the tips

Download waypoints (GPX) Points of interest in walking order — not a trail trace.

Day by day

DayDistanceAscentDescentWalking time

Day 1 Hardest dayPoles, garden and the stairs to the sea

Distance4 kmAscentNot recordedDescentNot recordedWalking timeNot recorded

Day 1

Poles, garden and the stairs to the sea

Museum of Anthropology, NW Marine Drive → Wreck Beach via Trail 6 4 km

Navigate this day Print day

From the Great Hall through Bill Reid’s rotunda and the Multiversity Galleries, out to the clifftop poles, across campus to the Japanese garden, and down the cliff to the beach.

Segments

The Great Hall 0.1 km Map

Museum entrance → Great Hall

Indoor gallery with a sloping ramp

The entrance ramp leads down into the Great Hall, where carved poles and house posts from Haida and other First Nations villages along the coast stand in daylight in front of glass walls. Arthur Erickson designed the building around these objects, and it shows: nothing else in Vancouver has this scale or this light. Read the labels that name the carvers and villages. About 30 minutes.

About this place

Arthur Charles Erickson was a Canadian architect and urban planner. He is known as one of Canada's most influential architects and was the only Canadian architect to win the American Institute of Architects AIA Gold Medal. When told of Erickson's award, Philip Johnson said, "Arthur Erickson is by far the greatest architect in Canada, and he may be the greatest on this continent."
Read more on Wikipedia Photo: Mike W. from Vancouver, Canada · CC BY-SA 2.0
Bill Reid Rotunda 0.1 km Map

Great Hall → Bill Reid Rotunda

Indoor gallery

*The Raven and the First Men* shows the Haida story of the Raven finding the first humans in a clamshell, carved in laminated yellow cedar by Bill Reid and a team of carvers and unveiled in 1980. The piece appeared on the Canadian twenty-dollar bill from 2004 to 2011. Walk all the way around it: the figures squeezing out of the shell change with every angle. Other Reid works, including gold jewellery, are in the same area. About 20 minutes.

About this place

The Raven and the First Men is a sculpture by Haida artist Bill Reid. It depicts the Haida creation myth. It was carved from a single block of laminated yellow cedar, beginning in the fall of 1978, and took two years to complete, with work completing on April 1, 1980. Raven and the First Men is depicted on the reverse of the former Canadian twenty dollar bill of the Canadian Journey series.
Read more on Wikipedia Photo: InSapphoWeTrust from Los Angeles, California, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0
Multiversity Galleries and Koerner Ceramics 0.3 km Map

Bill Reid Rotunda → Koerner Ceramics Gallery

Indoor galleries

Row after row of glass cases and pull-out drawers holding more than 9,000 objects from Indigenous communities in British Columbia and cultures around the world: masks, textiles, tools, instruments. It is closer to a library than a display, so pick a region and browse. The Koerner gallery nearby holds a collection of European ceramics donated by Walter Koerner. About 45 minutes, or much longer.
Outdoor Haida houses and poles 0.3 km Map

Koerner Ceramics Gallery → Clifftop grounds behind the museum

Grass and gravel paths

Behind the museum, two Haida-style houses and a group of poles stand above the cliff, built under Bill Reid's direction with carver Doug Cranmer. The original Reid and Cranmer pole was moved indoors for protection in 2000 and replaced outside by a pole by Haida artist Jim Hart. This is free to wander and the best place to understand how the poles were meant to be seen: outside, in the weather. About 20 minutes.

About this place

The Haida are an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. They constitute one of 203 First Nations in British Columbia and 231 federally recognized tribes in Alaska.
Read more on Wikipedia Photo: Gorgonopsi · CC0
Nitobe Memorial Garden 1 km Map

Museum of Anthropology → Nitobe Memorial Garden

Campus sidewalks, then gravel garden paths

A short walk south along NW Marine Drive brings you to the garden beside UBC's Asian Centre. It was designed by Kannosuke Mori and opened in 1960 in memory of Nitobe Inazō, the Japanese scholar and diplomat who hoped to be a bridge across the Pacific. The paths are gravel, deliberately unsigned, and circle a pond past lanterns, bridges and a working tea house. Walk slowly; that is the design. About 45 minutes.

About this place

The Nitobe Memorial Garden is a 2+1⁄2-acre traditional Japanese garden located at the University of British Columbia, just outside the city limits of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Although it is part of the UBC Botanical Garden, Nitobe Memorial Garden is located next to UBC's Asian Centre, two kilometres from the main UBC Botanical Garden.
Read more on Wikipedia Photo: AirplaneMood · CC BY-SA 4.0
Trail 6 down to Wreck Beach 2.2 km Map

Nitobe Memorial Garden → Wreck Beach

Campus paths, then several hundred steep wooden steps through forest

Walk back north past the museum to the Trail 6 head on NW Marine Drive and take the stairs down through the forest of Pacific Spirit Regional Park; counts vary, but expect roughly 500 steps. At the bottom is Wreck Beach, a long, wild, clothing-optional shore with driftwood, views across the strait and some of the best sunsets in the city. Budget at least 20 minutes for the climb back up. About 90 minutes including beach time.

About this place

Wreck Beach is a clothing-optional beach located in Pacific Spirit Regional Park, a part of Electoral Area A just west of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The clothing-optional section is clearly marked with signs and stretches about 6.7 kilometres or 4.2 miles from Acadia Beach, in the north, to the Booming Grounds Creek on the north arm of the Fraser River. The park is administered by Metro Vancouver, though Indigenous claims are repeatedly asserted, particularly by the Musqueam Nation.
Read more on Wikipedia Photo: Arnold C · Attribution